good evening call the meeting to order this is a meeting of the Hanland Select Board and Board of Health being held in the townhouse auditorium on April 7th 2025 6 p.m this meeting is being conducted in person and remotely using video conferencing technology please
stand for the pledge of allegiance [Music] 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 is anyone recording the
meeting other than ourselves it's Kristen Rivers hi Kristen Rivers from the Wilberham Ham Times they're all typed out ready to hit enter as soon as you say that yep yes yes uh do we we have any minutes no
no okay first item on the agenda is the fire department update regarding the fire station renovation and expansion who would like to begin why don't you introduce your committee for thousands in attendance
well I mean selecting Craig Rivvice is on the committee chairman Mark Barbara Lance Travalian Gary Pzel and Ed Riggnney at the end there i'm not on the committee i'm so you're just some random guy that
came in yep um just brief up to date 2019 i think we came in front of the board it was um said the building assessment study should be done so we had that done um I don't think the board was happy with that and was instructed
maybe possibly a different approach we had Tecton come in and they gave us um some ideas some drawings that didn't really work with the price and our site um we went back to the drawing board and we came up with the third um architect
here mark the name of the architect is Sosio and Associates that's how you say it exactly so right off the bat they seem very um up to-date they gave us great feedback
and they came up with a floor plan um that that would work with some budget adjustments the the committees worked very hard up to this date um so like to thank them for that they've been great you know work with the architect and
them as well so I guess I'll turn it over to the chairman he can give you a breakdown of the of the price of where we're at do you have the drawings still up there i can show them if they'd like sure yes
please the ones that we saw on the uh Yeah we had that at the other meeting the other meeting last set if you have them so well Brian's looking for that so basically we got back from the architect last week some numbers that's what we've
been waiting for um the project we have come up with and you'll see on the drawings basically is existing station our existing station as you guys know is right around 5,000 square ft currently whole um yeah that's the site plan i got a page two and that's actually good if
you see the shaded area that's basically the outline of the current station and the rest of the hatching around you can see is the proposed expansion renovation for all intents and purposes what we what the design basically is is squaring up the building you can kind of see if
you go back a little bit Brian um small scale down a little bit yeah just so you can see it on screen yeah and that's fine picture too so basically what we have here is a U existing station which was five the
lower area now that is addition renovation is approximately another 5,000 square feet there is a second level if you will with this design which is over the middle section which is
designed now as a completely unfinished future use area if needed storage and mechanical area so what we're looking at right here is everything on the first floor um we've configured it this way so all the apparatus as you guys have seen
is exiting entering from north road and then the rest of the area is designated now for the basically what a fire department needs the hot zones the cold zones give us our training room gives us our the office area um very importantly our turnout gear which is in kind of the
back left corner along with all the cleaning the gear extractors and trying to keep all the contaminants and stuff when we come back from calls kind of isolated and arrest and away from the rest of the building um the design right out of the gate these guys came back
with a design this is the final one we did some tweaking here um we thought fit the site as you know working with what we were able to work with um we feel this design that they've come up with here addresses um our needs that we have
certainly now for equipment for storage for safety certainly especially around the apparatus the bays everybody knows who's been there um right now it's it's a dangerous place there's no room between vehicles you know you can certainly get into the nuances of how
much bigger vehicles are now you know fire equipment is now it was you know 50 50 60 years ago when the building was designed um you know we've got an area for the public right up front so they can come in um it's basically a a it
flows well and that's basically the that is the design that we've come up with there are a few tweaks to this that we we we would be doing um but for all intents and purposes this is the design do you think it'd be better to show a 3D rendering versus that one oh sure yeah
absolutely i like the 3D one yep that's that's a great shot on the pro shot yeah right there is good y that's a great shot the blue walls indicate the existing station that is there on North Road now and everything around that
would the gray walls um would be new right so Mark with such a large scale change and not just throw it out there how much is there you've got some change of purpose there how much more is it just
to build that instead of rehabbing or gutting what you have basically because I you got a million dollars for electrical which I assume covers the whole building at that point yeah so I mean just did that come up maybe this
might answer so what what we basically well the reason we've done this and what we have is at the end of the day we're certainly keeping our existing building obviously there's there's extensive remodeling all inside the price that they're giving us is all new mechanical
electrical plumbing that sort of answer and equipment vehicle parking and I think one of the the main features of this is all the the the auxiliary services if you will are
on that back wall so which would be the the west wall and so we don't have to do any trenching in the existing floors which is expensive we found out when we did Wilberham that every time we cut a floor and dug a trench to put in a soil
line or whatever uh is just brutally expensive so by going across the back have all of that in the same flow mhm because of the if you could go back one slide to show the the
verticals of the roof line what we're doing is taking the third bay the existing bay and down a little bit more and making that higher and then with trusses we'll gain some space for
storage as well um so that's that's the bulk of it now the electrical service that's there um really won't suffice this whole building so we're moving it out of the office area and putting it in the other corner
and then all the mechanicals for this project will go in that upstairs truss area if you will uh and we're getting floor space where we need it so not only from a safety perspective of
uh manpower and uh all the chemical aspects of firefighting today uh but we're picking up storage space that we drastically need between vehicles and just a place to put things it's uh faith closet would
look good compared to this well with the total for instance you had a certain if you will length of bays all added together you had the you know three bays plus the one in the back which total running length of x number of feet do
you have the same here or you've you've figured in a little more there's there's if you go back to the top thing yeah yeah there's one currently we've got four bays right three three on North Road one in the back right this project has five bays so we do we do have an
extra bay but obviously the the the benefit and you can see what we've got drawn in there right now is every piece of apparatus that we have up at that station right now so you can see is it's kind of hard to judge because it looks like it's tight but there's you know there's the appropriate amount of room
between vehicles between vehicles and walls in this in a in this fire station certainly nothing anywhere near close to what we have currently your your original building was built for a fire truck that was roughly 6 feet wide and 19 ft long right right don had brought
it up before about the OSHA requirements we don't have the separation etc for apparatus right and some of the older vehicles that are there you're never going to get them in that size again so today's trucks are more like 8t wide and
38t long um so we're looking at you know anything that we would be replacing down the line is going to be a bigger vehicle so we might have a little bit of extra space now but we're not going to have because of you know water you don't have
water here in this town so we we need a sister put in uh where we don't have to depend on the brook and the river and whatever so we can pick that up as well right in the front of the building is that in here
no I'm saying is that in this yes yep really yeah so part of part of the concern was you know again if we're basing this on safety part of part of the thing is filling up trucks um right now people are climbing up on top of trucks filling them up where's the
Where's the sister it would be out in the front area what does it What does it go under the parking lot right no I know no under here under Yeah project plumbing no it's a it's a separate I mean it it
is in there it's a 4,000gallon sister tank but going back to when we were going through the well issue on Main Street do you think that's going to work i mean we were seeing numbers coming out
of those wells that weren't good both in supply and quality what would that have to do with the sister tank standalone storage tank we could fill it oh you're storing it you're you're bringing water to it you're not okay with the existing goer
we could fill it from wherever we want we could fill it from wherever we want we can get river water we can truck it from another town and it's just a holding tank basically right right that that just you know would I don't want to get into a
history lesson but we know we lost you know the main street we used to have Scantic River with the dam it was easily for us to access drafting wise or the dry hydra on the bridge which we no longer think can do um either one of those so it just adds another level of
one fire you know suppression for this area plus we can fill up safely um in our own you know department it would be linked piped into the side of the fire station so we can easily build trucks from inside the architect says the sistern was listed under fire
suppression so so fire suppression isn't in the building sprinklers and the sistern sprinklers it is sprinklers we need to put the sprinklers because of the second floor
um I think we need to put the sprinklers in regardless i mean we have not only by by code but also we have millions of dollars worth of equipment in there why wouldn't we want to protect that well I mean so can you just tell me E2 is what
engine engine two okay engine two engine one B is brush brush truck brush truck tanker oh sure the brush truck have we seen that yet t is tanker right and SQ squad yep rescue one yep it's a pickup
truck antique yep oh that's the antique one right okay yep and car one car one that's the ATV also and then the top left here is our UTV off-road vehicle oh yeah okay all right all right and so
in the back you've got storage you've got your your gear yep very back corner we have our SCBA to fill our tanks now in its own separate room getting air from outside not being in the middle of the apparatus bay which should never be fire hose storage and we've got a
corridor and we've got men's and women's bathroom and shower right off right off the bay so when you come back if you needed to you can kind of decamp decontaminate there washer and gear dryers for our equipment then down to the left you see all those little little boxes that's where all our gear is
stored in a separate room there and we've got a storage closet behind B1 is where you we would have like mechanical storage or if you have any equipment storage workbench then we come down to what we call a public bathroom if you will and then a regular little small regular
laundry we have EMS storage and then we've got into our training room which isn't down the bottom corner with this kitchen the training room will have a closet where all the furniture can go out so that if we need to do first aid CPR we can clear
that space kind of like we ended up doing the police station in Wilberham where you could clear it out open it up dual purpose you currently don't have washer there do you or do you we do we have a gear extractor not a closed wash machine gear extractor do you have to
upgrade septic for this well yeah a septic a new septic plan is is included under what excavation general requirement or I think there's a line for I see earth work it's a best practice if
if you can provide a washer dryer for your book so they don't wash their clothes if they have youngsters at home if they're old like me doesn't matter but the younger younger people it's um my son's a fireman and he washes all his
gear at at the station sure right there is a um a detailed breakdown of every line which goes into further detail of what's under each line item okay that the architect provided so I don't know that's not in here but you have it right we'll have that for advisor what's the
separation between the driveway and the the new building ballpark currently if you the neighbor's driveway on on the eman that's actually a good picture right there so currently the edge of the new building is at the
driveway so if you if you know where the driveway is right now maybe a foot there's a couple pins out there it's about a foot or so from the existing driveway both corners front the front and back corner of the driveway so yes part of this is the driveway would need
to be relocated again we know we we own that that is an ement we own the property obviously keeps going farther up to the right there's a property owner right there it goes up to the right but isn't the driveway pretty close to the stone wall already
stone stone walls well there's several stone walls on that hill it's not it's not and if you relocate the driveway which is a preexisting driveway may have to be wider we brought out the code cuz that
driveway dates from You mean the entrance off the road the one going up to Bernie Clark's old house talk about that one is that thing that looks like a kidney is that the sister that's about the location of it yes sir that's where That's where it would be
that's the actual grass that's That's a little island right now but it's actually drawn in you can see it we've got right next to that little shaded area right to the left of it Don that's the proposed so so it's about it's about 4700 square ft now right about five
roughly about 5,000 the 4,700 and we're going to increase it to 12,348 total correct 2,000 on the second floor unfinished upstairs 2,000 unfinished upstairs where's the stair where's the access back door back back halfway
across the back up the back there's a stairwell right there exactly and the is that also because you have to you're going to raise the middle bay exactly so the trusses will will peak
that up a little bit correct give it some continuity and we it'll get some additional height in that section and the purpose of the tall bay is bigger equipment someday i'll I'll
long be gone before I get to vote against that the bigger longer you you when you go to fix a thing you can't open you can't open the hood you can raise the cab inside but you can't do that now
no the front so you're good for the base elevation that's a benefit but not the purpose yeah I know i just you know and and another thing too is is right now if you guys been up there since we really don't have any storage we have so much stuff on the floor or or against a wall
it's terrible having wall space and go any fire department you now have the ability to mount stuff on walls get off the ground tools equipment hoses so again having taller walls in certain areas the ex the existing restrooms are probably about the size of a portaotty
maybe the portaotties bigger and probably maybe better nice is the uh was the pad poured farther away than we needed to if this It's good no I'm saying this is outside this envelope yeah it is outside the building envelope
okay good to know we need to do go through another four years of that right Don what's the timeline for something like this i mean if this goes through just the way you planned it here right better while you're doing can you construction
right in terms of keeping the fire department operational or the building operational what happens then great question I think and that is sort of the benefit of maybe doing a remodel is we can keep call the left side the current part of the station up and running as long as possible you know in the ideal
world they would build the right side um so you know there would be a transition time um you know try and make that during the warmer weather right I mean the ideal world if if it went through if it passed this year in town meeting we
would get immediately the architect project manager on board get the project going the ideal world is you would have the rest of this year and over the winter time get bids out get everything ready to go and then start in the spring that would be ideal for certainly equipment wise moving wise wouldn't be
any faster than that so and again that's just my thoughts on the time frame by state law you would have to hire an OPM to manage that project because you're over two million sure is that in this cost it is not in this cost well you
know it's a soft cost it is soft yes oh it is absolutely these costs that's a negotiable one though with the old typically is in five to 10% of the the cost two
to Okay these I just these cost estimates I noticed are Boston Union area area yep yeah yep is great question i asked the same thing i said "Okay we get a little cheaper out here." And again we're
hoping certainly Western Mass Union rates are should be less um the um the the thought certainly is if we had the ability to um you know nobody has a crystal ball we don't know
what next year will bring we don't even know what today is right now you know as far as where we're at um we would want to with your guys kind of guidance and a little help here and maybe advisory is what do you do about escalation what do you do that's a real question i mean
it's changing it's changing daily um you know one thing I do want to point out is when the architect came back with these breakdowns they were at 9.8 total um we went through we met last week as a group and we went through line
by line because there is like a 20page breakdown to this we went through we eliminated cut if you will redesigned and took out about $480,000 right off the bat so these numbers a sheet I sent you over the weekend of that 7.9 is kind of what we
have is I almost want to call it a today number we have to talk about maybe a year because they need those escalations they figure about 5% in normal times of an escalation so that is a discussion we would we would have to have on the best way to approach that um I mean the
building's a building we have the design like I said we've worked um a lot of angles here to try to get what what gets us checks off all the boxes gets us a safe station to work out work out of um you know separates the the good from the
bad as far as you know contaminants gives us our storage um and gives us the potential to to ex I hate to do expand but for any future needs that the department might have future proof right um you know we've got now upwards of
what close to 30 30 people in the department so again you know we have training right now at about 22 people in here it's maxed out there's no room so um you know we we've we are blessed with having you know a good recruit we got a
cadet program so we're getting people coming in so that kind of keeps keeps us going certainly but um you know we want to continue that and have people be able to want to come to a station that they actually feel like you know we're in the fire business okay which which is the
number cuz I've got you got the CE number here of 7.4 then your spreadsheet number 7.9 what I highlighted here the 7.9 that's after we took that's this cover sheet
this one right here okay so this 7.934435 that was the revised number after taking out $480,000 talking to the architect and reducing down the owner's contingency from 10% to 7% okay and the soft cost
from their original 20% to 15% so that's that's the 7.934435 and that gets back to your point because the soft cost wasn't detailed on that other breakdown sheet okay but what we felt was that if by taking the for the 480 out of the the nut so to speak then
we could adjust the the compensation as well and as you said the limiting materials right you can always go back and do something with the second floor later once you framed it you can do whatever you want in the future it depends on on heating bench heating ducks duct work which may run through
there so you might not have enough headroom in all areas up there shorter firefighters and just for clarification that that second floor when you raise that middle bay and you extend another bay of equal size so you can fit the
larger trucks you have to trust it mhm because you're trusting it that space is just there now you know to to support the architecture so right but you were talking about using it for storage right i mean I love these as training setting
up you know rooms to search in and you know primary secondary shirt search i mean we never had that kind of uh square footage before where we can do we've done it in the truck maze you people climbing under when you go back to the senior center as you recall the heating etc is up the cross area up and that
that was the other thing is is doing this design obvious majority that middle bay is in the middle of the building mechanical can be centrally located there and then branch out from there so again we also designed it I think Ed mentioned too is more or less all the plumbing is on the left side going in
one row there's no plumbing now in the corner the bathrooms are gone from where they're at so again trying to be efficient um you know generators in the back electrical service will be in the back trying to keep things easy for service later too clean as far as construction goes too um you know and
it's it's you know we've already sort of figured in our head too is you know we have to move equipment we've got highway right there it depends on what time of year this happens but you know we've got highway so we'll we'll figure out a way we will be operational we have to be right this this enables us to be operational and you know we we looked at
you know what if you relocated totally it's just out of sight no no but the question had to be asked right i mean you're so high how much more is it for a whole new thing i did some research on this building i was I was shocked at what it originally cost was 36,000 and you got a grant from the
federal government of 15 of that 36 and what 64 four 64 right and then the following year the well failed so they had to put the second well in after that conservative conservative estimate new
building this building knew somewhere else it' be 15 million and those were rough numbers we had to ask the architect we knew that that was going to come up you know right we have have that answer oh well absolutely and so do we um again to to get us to get us
the space safe all in one spot off North Road this design actually works cuz remember you know to put two more bays you know we looked at designs with bays going the other way doesn't work you can't do it with the roofs this capitalizes on what we have go up in the middle then you can actually mirror now
on the right what we have more or less on the left so it's this was the AR the No I originally thought that we'd get by with two larger bays on the right but that was leaving the bay in the back correct and like you say that doesn't let the flow work properly like this design it's dangerous trying to get that
huge tanker truck around can't park so and we didn't talk about it too but with this design now guys parking it's in the back and you kind of figure the parking's in the back now because we we do have a lot of room between the back of the station we went through and and we you know from these designs there
were windows that are not there any longer as part of the cutting process uh and a couple of doors and uh just carved where we could carve to achieve that 480 it took a complete the brick facade change yeah we don't need brick on on
sides on the back brick went away $144,000 right there so again we we took a scalpel to a lot that we know we just don't need we're not looking for frills we're just looking for utility sure there's other things we can you know as project if you when we did Wilberham we
did a lot of things with relative to owner will provide so you're providing appliances but you're not providing them at the markup of the architecture right right and that doesn't seem like a lot but it adds up to a lot oh yeah yeah
well like my dad always said the town doesn't need to make a profit no right joe how long is this building going to last us 100 years we're going to be here well no offense to you let's hear from
uh you ask the youngest one right again part of part part of what I No I'm asking what do you see is the future of the department this should take us e easily 25 years if not longer into the into the future
easily the one thing that's not going to change is the width of trucks because they have to change all the highways in America and bridges so 8 ft's about as big as as wide as they're going to be the weights have changed considerably
um the the truck that was bought for $18,000 in 1966 um we just ordered one in Wilberham and it's now $990,000 and it's that's ludicrous and it's 48 months delivered is that a
ladder or an ambulance is now 28 months delivery yeah I saw I saw Williams I think it's William Town Williamstown just Williamsburg just bought an ambulance for 450,000 well but I I asked that question because
I'm not I'm not a believer in 24/7 if we'll ever get to 247 fire service in town well I I took a look at But would it serve that's our thought but if that ever came to pass
would this building serve you don't have it would okay it would you could also adaptable i mean it could Yeah it it could be adaptable or you could have um say EMS is contracted out you could put a requirement that they house their
vehicles here and that would save the town money there's some reason they couldn't operate towns you know they've done it in other towns so I don't see why I took the liberty of of looking at your last 5-year assessments in terms of
property either commercial industrial or residential and then um uh personal property so in 21 it was 673 million this year is 977 million of
the combining of those numbers so your assessments are going up i would imagine that you're going to get requests for more and more services just because that's the American way today we did a good job of telling people about
911 and now they call it all the time for everything we're running in Wilberham uh somewhere to 16 to 18 calls a day and a lot of those are ambulance 75% of our service over there is is that so
this can accommodate that i don't say we should go to that i'm just saying that it's irresponsible for us to to even come up with a building that doesn't service at least 20 years and materials we're using again block construction um
you know we're not we're not all of a sudden changing what we're doing to wood we're we're keeping it as similar as possible brick far as I'm concerned guys on the front that's it that's all we need just to kind of match what's on the left so and again on the south side north side will be blocked it's kind of
against the wall that can be blocked so again you know steel steel and block is you know the materials we use well you've obviously put a lot of thought and work into this and it's it's very very appreciated and uh we'll see what
the town says and if if it were to advance you know we would like to to look at perhaps creating a video of the existing station and um deal with the marketing of the
real things that are there and what it does what do you think i mean you just gave us a little preview of your presentation you're going to do it again possibly at the advisory hearing in two weeks the architects are on board to coming to the but in terms of the town meeting
uh are you going to present which I think is better than having the outside person do it when we sent out the contract for the architect about that oh yeah yeah believe the architect is going to I have to say what we learned um from before I think it speaks better person
they'll be there so are you asking who's going to bring it forward yes I mean you got three minutes make it worthwhile right the thought was the architect will be there for technicals he's not going to present right good no no not at all
they're there as as I think what we learned recently yeah correct right right right whatever time we have and I I think we had discussed in our meeting all the documentation that Mark's got is finalized we'd like to put it on the website we do oh absolutely to make it
available to the public as soon as breakdown we want to get that to you guys because I said we made some last minute $480,000 of cuts which they haven't had a chance to update that and they're gone all right great thank you gentlemen thank you thank you
carrie take us she's fine how are the kids doing good doing good they're doing good they're John's got his own photography business in Boston oh nice christina is the vice president of the University of
Vermont Hospital wow and Tanya is a lawyer he used to work i haven't seen him since school seven well we miss you as a sealer you know since we dropped all those people and you know the state said you couldn't
work here anymore how's it working out sure state pays for it or they bill you i have no idea what they do but remember if they seal it anymore yeah basically I don't get my gas in town i go someplace real estate
insurance i don't know if they know i miss seeing them on a reg i don't think they do what are you guys up to um no state of water district appointment commissioner thing what do we got ready John we're ready for you
this is You too come on over hey how you doing i'm well thank you wow you got sunburn good evening gentlemen good evening hi good evening gentlemen good evening
we have a position open on the water commissioners bill volunteered to join our board and uh we're asking uh for permission from the board are you going to be hooked up
Dale or No I can't remember yes okay yes interesting thing yeah okay great well I mean I'll speak I know Dale personally for decades it seems like although he's much younger than me scores uh scores scores nice
but uh he's coming from a great family in line he's always been very involved and one of the best scout masters we ever had too so I mean thank you for that ringing endorsement when he gets into something he gives his all he really does
dale you have some background in the water stuff right uh yeah yep and actually approaching like 50 years in the construction business oh and most of that is in infrastructure and you know I I just I
got the letter for the original open house and I looked on the website and they said "Oh there's a vacancy." So I said you know why not thank you great i'll make a motion to appoint Dale Hatch to the uh vacant position of water
commissioner i don't know the ter term to be determined by the town administrator second any further discussion last chance quick all in favor i can talk to Brian about the duration
yeah we just make sure they're all aligned yeah make sure you He's got to get on your notes he's got to get sworn in by Eva too right y She's She might still be down there right now she might be down there she was when I came up oh yeah shocking
great great thank you all right you're in You're in now you're in the deep water now literally [Music] uh budget review what do we got
got money in the budget uh it has not changed since we last looked at it all right president the only thing I need I need to get you the number Ryan for next week for enterprise right okay yeah we got the we got the advisories next week regulation that's why we need that
number for that article we a bad year no but last year we did need extra money i don't see the revenue side really increasing and we know the expenses are going up at least for salary and also we know that the number from Maxim had a pretty good increase built in so we're
going to need more from the tax side okay which you want to give the solar money to the inter you already gave it away to conservation didn't you that was a joint vote I believe uh uh annual review and sign the annual
town meeting warrant how we doing on that can you explain to me again no no no no let's not the CPA thing yeah no is it on or off one is one isn't right Brian the Machog
Land Trust stuff okay so last town meeting we appropriated $110,000 of CPA funds that $110,000 included the purchase price of the property plus transactional costs
so the confusion so that appropriated money but it didn't authorize the board to actual make actually make the purchase of the property so that's where article 28 comes in here article 28 is a is an it's
not an appropriation article it's an authorization article that allows the board to purchase the property for a specific price now the 110 is not correct um I had uh I talked with uh Cherry from the
Minichog Land Trust this afternoon and we cleared up that that's not the actual price she's going to send me the the appraisal that they had for that property and that's the amount um that can be put in there i also talked with
town council about putting um language that talks about not to exceed a purchase price of whatever the appraisal is and that will give the board latitude in terms of if you think the purchase price is too much or that kind of stuff by as a matter of law we can't pay more
than the appraised value of the property which was part of the problem um the article that used to be on here which is now taken off was the was the request for after the town bought the property to issue a conservation restriction to Menach Land Trust on one and a half
acres of the 2.3 acre parcel um and Min Land Trust has agreed to withdraw that because they don't have the boundaries of the conservation restriction they're hoping to get that um article
29 B mhm is their request for funding to design engineer and construct the the trail light improvements parking and trail improvements which they don't know exactly where that's going to be until they do that which means we can't define the bounds of the conservation restriction until they do that so so
that one's off all 29 what What used to be yeah old 29 is off old 29 yeah so that that will clear up that okay everything else is is essentially the
same what if the town doesn't vote in favor of article 31 even though it's state law article 31 so well accessory dwelling unit our general our zoning bylaws would be preempted
right by the portion of the state zoning act that says by right the wild west would continue basically which is technically what it is right now which 800t 900 ft 800 800 ft would be by right as a matter of state law we could deny
it but then so our building inspector could deny you know could deny the building permit then they would appeal the building permit go to the CB and then we then we go to court and the court would say state law preempts your local bylaw and give you out money so if they vote the town votes no on 31 do our
bylaws get rewritten or do they just stay the way they are until somebody approaches that topic so our bylaws can remain how they are how they're written they can't make us change them okay but they would not be enforceable if they were challenged okay do we have the te I know I've seen the text for the bees one
do we have the text for the ADU so I talked to town council about this we So because the the planning board public hearing is happening on April 16th after um this is going to be posted if we were
to post their public hearing text in the warrant we would have to go through and essentially make any additional edits that they make on the floor of town meeting cuz that's what's going to be that will that's what would have been posted right so the only requirement for
the warrant is that we give notice of of the the the topics to be discussed so the downside to that that I talked to town council about is it's there's a shorter amount of time that people have to digest the proposal the public
hearing draft is available currently um because it's required to be uh it's required to be noticed so now where is that oh it's on file with the town clerk not online um I I don't know if they put it on online they should if they have not well I think if we if we post the
warrant online I think we could post draft at least of the two i would amendments i would agree it should be on the town just say their drafts right now but meeting that would give you 90% of the sense yeah yeah absolutely i understand i remember the time when we
rerad zoning and all said "How are you going to put it in the uh the five places approved in town?" And you can't you can't put 40 pages on there right you say available at the town clerk for review yep and again we're hoping that the school committee does something about
the other article john's pushing that one h what yeah i mean John brought it up at the school committee meeting last week so yeah he did as well as the K Cabota I believe as well he asked how many Kabotas they had did
he asked how many and what would they say they get back three then I said "Well we'll get back to it." Yeah let you It's expensive piece of equipment there i don't want to lose it i do that every meeting
all right anything else in here uh quickly Brian you want to bring up that request from uh Becky before we go to meet We got to We got to We got to uh Well I thought we'd have marker for both things since he's the next thing no no we got to we got to sign this do this
both yeah don't you have like seven just last pages over there for us yeah I got to I I just noticed they're all doublesided so let me print them out i'll get them for you still vote if you wanted to we want to sign them tonight don't we we
can vote on it vote now and I'll I'll get them i'll get Okay so we'll have them in the office okay make a motion to close and officially uh publish the town meeting warrant for the town meeting May 12th 2025 second all in favor i Okay we
have the dog letter i like it right and we have anest a unexpected request for a liquor permit for the senior center yes it's the art show I believe greg you've seen it advertised around town yeah there signs up their
typical one and I said uh you know heck didn't they withdraw one two or three weeks ago they did yeah so a motion to approve the request for the is it the Hamn Art Guild Artisansic River Artisans
right for a uh wine and beer permit April 12th and April 12th and 13 for the times requested second all in favor I Okay now we have the highway sell better see that's their plan yeah
everything looks like everything looks like it looks better everything looks like uh we have the highway department superintendent of the highway department thank you
you have some bids yes any comp any comparisons to last year or the [Music] like the street cleaning and the catch basin and
street sweeping went up $2 oh okay so this is bas cleaning actually went down $5 okay good from last year's price was 205 great now so we're saving three saving three bucks um asphalt that's
kind of a a moving target but I think I did include last year's uh Lauren had printed out last year's spreadsheet there yes it's close it's It's a little bit cheaper this year a
little bit cheaper you're open to award two right for the asphalt is that what you're hoping to do or no yes so this year um uh it was it was recommended and I thought it was a really good idea that that we award um the top or the lowest
two biders for the asphalt um FOB the pickup plan um this this gives us a little bit more flexibility as far as um say that you know like what happened last year where one company the company
that had won the bid they were several miles away uh you know you run into other other situations such as you get all the way to a plant uh and it's closed or it's shut down you know shut down because they're working on
something um so this kind of gives us the flexibility to uh go to the second second as chance would have it um the top the or the lowest two they're right
around the corner from each other if if we True Stone used to be somebody else before Oh they were okay yes on Birkshire and Northeast paving isn't around anymore or Well they didn't uh they
didn't put it put it in this year oh they killed it last year oh they were low last year that's right it was probably why they out of business yeah we got to we got to bring it back
so um yeah basically um what I sent along was was everybody's bids for all three services and then at the end was my my recommendations and uh how how many sorry how many tons how
many tons do you buy like when you do your you know like you at section of Allen Street how many tons of asphalt oh jeez that was probably several hundred really did you use Wind River last year i'm
sorry did we use Wind River last year we did not i thought it's always been JR like forever it it has so uh what I had done is JR had agreed to hold their pricing and so with that we can agree together to extend the contract i think
I've sent letters out to the board in the past right um are we have I have no complaints about JR at all no I mean doing it forever but I mean you got 20% difference in price how do you Right right so we'll you know
I'll have to just see how they how this Wind River so they've got a I think their head office is in it's somewhere in Mass like maybe Marboro or something like that and they've got kind of satellite locations in different areas um they service the Springfield area i
know uh Mson had them uh for the same service and didn't have any any So you check references so to speak yes um but there's a you know there's a deadline listed on on the bid specifications
um I wonder myself how how they could be that much cheaper but you said we went down on asphalt by $5 no what did you say earlier uh street sweep i'm No I'm sorry Craig uh catch basing catch basing yes so in what you
had written here the contract may be valid for one year the contract may be extended for up to two additional 12-month periods was that in our last year's work yes so I believe it was now you said that the company that we went last year
is no longer didn't submit a bid correct so we can't extend with them if they were a lower price we could we could problem is they're 20 miles away yeah is it tough it's so economically miles 18
miles to be exact yeah um and you have to maintain the temperature mhm correct are you finding it hard to maintain that temperature bringing stuff back and working with it yes you are okay yeah um not so much during the the very warm uh
summer months but you start getting into like spring and and fall and uh it makes a difference it makes a big difference you end up you know you you use what you can use you actually end up having to get more to keep a certain amount warm
in the truck like the inside it acts as like a shell or an insulated how close are these two new places are you recommending compared to 10 and 11 miles I think it was uh they Birkshire is one and then Palmer is about the same distance whether we go to the Palmer
plant in Palmer or the Springfield plant it's on uh oh jeez I forgot the name of the road but it's over by uh 291 um O'Brien's Corner nice so the mileage difference there the mileage difference makes a difference in
keeping that temperature hotter absolutely oh yeah okay um I'll make a motion that we endorse the highway superintendent's recommendations and award the contracts to the people
listed companies listed second any further discussion all in favor thank you started on uh Brian perhaps uh that could be expanded in the minutes to show the recommendations
thank you thank you all right we have uh what we got now we got the select board members report the senior center building committee met this morning and finalized
a number for that I believe was sent out to the board for their recommendation for the senior center repair article and I believe 230 was the number Brian yes yes yeah I received that this afternoon and I forwarded it out to the
board there it is and the planning board is going to be busy with a public hearing i don't know if you heard back Brian did you I saw that Concom is having a Zoom hearing the same night and I don't know which one we get
more play but work out the room arrangement I guess yep and that's it uh fire department building committee met last week but they were all here so we know the outcome of that there's a little meet like Saturday morning or something did they or was it
no last week I think it was on a maybe it was on I don't remember on a Saturday morning the only thing I have to report as you know that the there was um a mult mediation at the Wilberham Middle School
and it was $400,000 and the regional committee paid for the uh paid for that out of their END account and they're waiting for insurance reimbursement i pointed out to the superintendent that
the Wilberham lease would appear to require the town of Wilberham to pay for the Boulder remediation rather than the school committee because the lease says that if the if there's any structural or
nonstructural damage uh ordinary or extraordinary foreseen or unforeseen or even in the case of such casualties deemed as the nature of the acts of that the town would be the landlord which would be the town be responsible
for up to over $30,000 and the reason I brought that up is I thought it's really important to keep the E and D to be used for education rather than so he is looking into that and said that we'll see what happens with the insurance and
if they don't he'll certainly approach the town which goes back to our entire discussion about who's responsible for maintaining the building right right i did see they use some of the END to reduce the assessment as well yeah which what has
been past practice for many years all right anything else con ministry's report um one issues that's come up is the whether we want to extend a letter of credit so the town had to take out a letter of credit when it applied to
Verizon for whole attachment license agreements mhm and we've been trying to uh push this down the road as far as we can um but the bank really wants to know if we want to and Verizon wants it the
letter of credit extended um there's an annual fee to that of a couple thousand dollars so we pay the fee and the licenses stay active with Verizon or if we don't pay the fee then the letter of credit is going to be is going to be
taken away and the licenses would be considered by Verizon to be null and void so if we were ever to go down the route of municipal fiber then we would need to uh go back through the whole license pole attachment aerial survey
which was quite expensive i recall it was paid for by the grant right reminds me what happened to that shortfall that remember they came back and said there was extra work that wasn't covered by the grant like 40 grand or something like that i think we covered that at ARPA
right who was it was an ARPA expenditure made a lot of ARP right so so I I think we're trying to balance the likelihood that that project's going to continue to go forward and we're also the wild card is is what's charter going to do because
they've they've made some statements that they're going to do a fiber to the node upgrades in town but now that's been pushed back 10 months now and we don't know if that's ever going to happen and didn't Verizon ask for a letter
of approval of interest for us to allow them to come in and do something too um I think that was charter I think that was charter that was smart to keep the LLC open i hate to say it it
shows maybe to charter we're keeping our options open so and as you said it's not huge money right so so I'll ask the treasur to renew it for one year and then we'll see where we are and I'll reach out to charter again and press them on
if they're serious or they're can't say that on TV uh not serious okay any word on the flag pole insurance thing or um Mark might have an answer for that um is insurance going to cover replacement
of the flag pole a claim will be filed with the motors and insurance company um it could it could take some time but the flag pole been ordered um I don't have a delivery date yet but it's been ordered a new
light a new flag light and pole uh from the local um flag pole company that we discovered oh centuries centuries out of business they are not out of business but the last the last time we had to replace a
flag pole they were kind of phasing out their their flag pole side of their business um I think you told me I bought the last one they had in stock i believe that that's true yes
no deal though so just and just so what what usually happens in a situation like this is you know I've got the invoice for for the flag pole and and the other items um you know I was going to pay for that out of out of the SRA account and
then now that I have the invoice I can put a package together and and send it to the insurance company for the department all right um if you want both bases to match I do have a bunch of cobblestones that match the that I
bought to go around the newer flag pole if when you want to do the project and put the new one up I'm happy to donate those and they can be set up so both bases look look alike sure just two i was thinking about that the
other day too okay two quick items for Tom Leading um parking lot lights we did that last time i I don't know how dark it's going to I I have no idea how long how many is going to last so I don't know how dark it's going to be it's obviously going to be light when people
arrive mhm but could be dark when they leave that was an additional expense mark rented some lights right i don't know if the board wants to do that again um well I think it'd be better at the beginning the last time we got him for
the fall town meeting which was obviously much worse i mean obviously the leaving part it'll be dark then cuz even knocking out a couple of warrant articles Brian you still got us at 11:30 so uh Mark they weren't terribly expensive were they those were the
highway lights you got that time i don't think they were i want to say it was a total of around 500 both of them well let's do it right okay and then obviously childcare
I'd reach out to Steve again okay yeah you get those groups like the Key Club they're always looking for commitments that up there yeah projects the Key Club above the Influence Club Lumberjack Club all of them the
Lumberjack Club yeah that's the I think it's a group that they don't affiliate with any other projects so they cla all the kids who don't have a chess club something like that are lumped together in that kind of club they want to participate without a label per se
so it's a no label club no it's called the lumberjack club i'm telling them so they have a label yeah but they're not like the chess club the AV club or something like that i don't know whether to believe them yeah I know like look at these this serious private remembers we've used
them before great kids okay can I add one suggestion to that because I know it became an issue at one of the town meet is advertising how long they're going to stay until Oh yeah right now yeah cuz they left early mhm
oh for the childcare yeah okay yeah yeah anything else no make a motion to go into executive session for the purpose uh subject to MGL30A section 21A section 2 really to
conduct strategy session in preparation for negotiation with non-UN personnel or to conduct a collective bargaining session with the highway superintendent without a return to open session second john PL all right executive session going you
well you and and the hundreds of people online too oh yeah you have to watch the championship game instead oh yeah that's right that's tonight do got screws