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Hereby call us to order. Uh opening comments from the board. Miss Cameron. None. Uh none for me. Let's do the introductions. I should have done introductions. I'm Brian Lefond, the chair or hi
Sarah Cammer and I'm Linda Ta the assessor. Thank you. Uh hearing no opening comments from the board. Is there any public online looking for comments?
Seeing none, I see one participant. I don't know if that means that's us, but if they don't have their hand up. Oh, no. No, there's no one. Okay. Uh, let's move right on to the status report from the principal assessor.
Okay. I wanted to give you an update on growth. I was hoping to have the the personal property growth completed, but RC is still working on it. But um is at least on the residential, commercial, industrial and growth of chapter land uh
the assessed growth is um 27,324,570. And if I multiply that by our tax rate, um it gives us a tax value of $392,380.83. Okay. What was the growth? 27 million. Um 27,324570.
Yeah. And that does not include what? It does not include the uh personal property and it does not include the um 504s, the 500s, which is wire and cable and all that. So we um we had estimated
400,000. So we're we're obviously going to exceed that. And I'm hoping to have those numbers from RRC by next week to have that finalized. So Oh, did you confirm with them recently? Yeah, that next week looks doable. Robin called today. Fabulous.
Yeah. So that 27 million that was for commercial. Uh that is um residential, commercial, industrial and chapter land growth. Thank you.
I did touch base with um Mike Terrell um and I ran an old versus new report, started going through that uh just to check and make sure there wasn't any large increases. So, we started looking at that yesterday, too. I didn't get to
do anything because we didn't sign both at a class. So, uh but tomorrow we will look at that and go through it. it it didn't look like there was that many, but that's something that we're going to address and then I'm going to go over that with Mike Trello and um from vision from vision appraisal. As far as an
update on the functional and economic obsolescent adjustments that I mentioned in the last meeting, we've completed all of our inspections. Uh and uh we had a total of um 33 functional. Uh 14 of them
were residential. Uh we had eight that was commercial. So Mike Terrell was handling those adjustments or telling us if he's going to make any adjustments on that. We had one town building that was um exempt.
And then um we had completed um uh 10 inspections of those. And then I have a breakdown. So we sent letters to everybody that um you know had um this adjustment. We sent
a letter to them. We asked them to call the office so that we could do an inspection. Uh some of them had no rhyme or reason. If they were if they had a valid reason, we kept the adjustment. If it wasn't a valid reason, um you we we
obviously want to do the inspection. And if we didn't hear from um the the people by via letter, we're just going to take the adjustment off and I can go through that with you. But I do have a breakdown. Um what's what's the cut off for when do
you need to hear from them by? Uh the cuto off was um August 15th. Okay. So we already know who we're going to shut down. Yeah. Yeah, we do. Um, I have two properties that had some very large Could you share a list of that with us?
I will when you get a chance. Yeah, I have I do have some information here. It's not really organized, but I do have it kind of broken down if if you want to go see that. I don't know if you want to do it in probably not today. Executive
session because yeah, while they're not they are exemptions essentially they're exemptions. So yeah, and some of these discounts from what we could tell were some of them were subst were very large. Uh and um
one of them which I will go over uh we thought maybe one of them was like a 40% discount on residential and then a um 20% economic for commercial. So we can't do anything with the 20% for the commercial because Mike Terrell was
looking at that. But, uh, with the 40% on the residential, uh, there's, um, again, there's no reason for it. Um, we thought maybe we would change it maybe to 20 this year, reduce it to 20 next year, at least so
that it's not a big hit to this this um, property. But I can, again, I can't go over that in um, executive session. on the one that is 20% that is commercial. Ask Mike to pay particular attention to that one. Yeah,
you have. I had a conversation with him. That's fine. As long as he's No, no, I have. I I reminded him to look at those cuz he was going to be We want to look at them all, but pay particular attention to the really big one. Yeah. Yeah. There was uh that was one that I brought to his attention before. I did.
You already have. Yeah, I reminds ahead of me. I'm okay with that. Well, I did tell him that if you do make any changes, please let us know so that we can notify either the company or the residents. Um, right.
Because some of them mixed juice as well. So, I said just let us know. Y because this is what we've been doing with all the residential. We want people to be notified. Nobody needs to be surprised. No. No. And what our plan is is that um once the changes are made, we are going
to um send a new letter and attach an updated property record card. Oh, fabulous idea because then that way and even for the people that didn't respond, we're still going to do that. Uh but the good thing is that I started a list of standard
functional obsolescent adjustments, which is really what we need. It doesn't exist in any other talent I've been able to find with any other assessor. So, um, basement access just on the outside, it's going to be
5%. So, anybody that doesn't have any interior access will be five. We had one house that had no piping, like literally not livable, no heat, no hot water. Piping was torn out of the house. That was one that you inspected with Raina.
Yeah. Yeah. that that was granted a 20% discount as an abatement. We're keeping that kind of as a a standard. Um, and then we have one property that actually is a single family home that's attached to a multif family home, which is kind
of a unique situation. Uh, and they have two separate lots, but they're attached. It's just kind of kind of odd. gonna give a 5% adjustment for that because they don't have the privacy aspect. And then if it's a structural
issue, there's one house we went to that you could clearly tell that the structural issues, 5% for that. Was one house that actually was granted um a uh 20% discount in uh 2024 for mold
of those. Um, and I went back and inspected that and the homeowner has sprayed it down with bleach, but still hasn't addressed the problem. So, we're going to actually request a cost to cure uh because he needs to do something with
the house. He was actually rebuilding the deck at the time I inspected it. So, that is something that if we if he can give us a cost to cure um and at least what would we do with that? Well, at least we know he's going he's
going to fix it because he's been granted this adjustment for um it's just in the basement only. If he gives us the cost to cure, there's no guarantee that he'll actually do the cure, right? Well, we will follow up on that. We'll we can give him a certain time period. I'd say a year. Yeah.
He's already had a year. Yeah. So, at least a year. A year and a half. So, yeah, cost to cure and then next year we'll revisit and if it's not cured, it comes off. Yeah. So that's at least at least if that's the pleasure of the board exists at that
point. Yeah. So at least we're starting with some standards and because it is needed, consistency is needed and there hasn't been any of that. So that's what we're we're trying to do.
And then we had 96 economic obsolescent adjustments. Um okay. Okay. How many of those are residential? 16 were residential, 80 were commercial, and on the 80 that are commercial, uh we're waiting on word from Mike Trello
if those are going to change and we'll notify the businesses. Of the 16 residential, six of them we inspected. Um and we I have the results of that. Um, two of
them were affordable units. So, those were already receiving a 15%. That's typical of affordable. They're not market rate, so they're always discounted. And then two properties have So, that was their only Yeah. Okay.
Yeah. And that's that's valid. Um, y because they're again they're not market rate. And then uh two homes were in Lemonster and a certain percentage of the house was in Lemonster. So discount was given
based on that percentage and both they're actually being taxed by Lemonster in addition. So those um I'll go over those with you. So those are kind of valid. And then six at will or they not? Um yeah, they're right near the line.
Yeah. And then uh six of them we sent letters, received no call back. So got a response on that. What are we going to do about those? Uh we're going to take away the adjustment and send a letter with
another property card. And then as far as standards on economic obsolescence which again is the exterior of the house uh tend if if they have a um commercial
influence abuing the property uh with high traffic and all that. Uh we're going to get warrant 10% for that and then 10% if the property abuts the railroad tracks. We actually had two of them that were we went out to visit them
last week and we were there right when the railroad track when the trains going through. Yeah. And everything was shaking. So even though it's quick, it's still Yeah, I know. still kind of adverse. So that's kind of where we've started at
least with some some standards. And again, I I have a breakdown that um I can go through u it's on like a spreadsheet that we put together at least uh to give you an idea. So, we're almost done with our portion of
the residential. We're waiting on vision to complete theirs. And what's their latest projection? Uh well, I know that uh the sales have been completed. Uh the old versus new It looks like they've made some
adjustments. I'm just not sure what point they're at. And Mike Terrell from Vision wasn't sure. So, he said I'll have to let you know, but he's starting his commercial adjustments. So, yeah. So, I I the deadline is September 30th. So,
uh it's coming up. It's coming up, but they told me they would be on time. So, and and they're still saying that. Yeah. Nothing's changed. Yeah. And we've been communicating with them all along the way with these
adjustments because we don't obviously want to do anything to uh to delay their process what they're doing. Yeah. So, we're moving forward with that. I want to congratulate you on becoming
way more proactive than we've seen in this town in forever. Oh. On on some of this stuff. uh not only cleaning up the messes that were there, but now trying to figure out uh how we get ahead of it. So I honestly every time you say, "Oh yeah, we already
done this and we've got that and we sent these off." It's like proactive. Nice. It's refreshing. We're making some headway. We have more to go. I mean, we're Well, we have as we know it's 20ome years to get Yeah,
it did. And and again, some of these things have we don't know how we don't know how long these adjustments have, who put them in, why they put them in, how long they've been there. We don't know any of that stuff. All we can do is say we can correct it
and identifying them, getting ahead of them. That's fabulous. Thank you. And I just want people to know that I had gone up to And I'm not just blowing smoke, by the way. If I were to if I weren't satisfied, I'd tell you. As you can attest,
but Janice and I had inspected uh a couple of the properties on the lake and we came across a very, you know, upset homeowner and uh you know, I had I had told him, I said, "We're just out here verifying data and I just want people to know that we
are fair and equitable. we're doing our job and uh if anybody has any questions or issues before the bills go out encouraging them to call the office we'll give them a record card and we're
willing to do an inspection and work with people because that's kind of what we've done with all of these functional and economic obsolescence nice factors and and even um with some of the exemptions too uh I had one of the senior means I had a a woman that came
in and applied for it and I looked at the record card and uh went out and did the inspection and she actually her grade was too high and there was some things on the card that weren't accurate. So I had completed the inspection and she qualified for it. If
she didn't question that and request the inspection, she wouldn't have been granted it. So it's good that people call us and question stuff. So yeah. Um, and with last time we talked about the chapter land. Yes.
It we had put in the above average. I went and did some research and in the past it was it were kind of all over the place. But I went with average because in the past it appears that a lot of them were average. So I think it's
better just to again to be consistent. If you're grading on a bell curve then most of them have to be average. Yeah. Yeah, we can't have the vast majority of them be above average, which which I appeared to be the case. Yeah, at least from what we were looking at last time. So, I corrected those.
Thanks. Cuz I didn't want any large increases. This is um the sales report. I know we we talked about that last time. Is that what the sales report? That's just a sales report. Oh, we're going to talk about that. It's on the agenda.
Is that the one we already do? We're still doing the status report. Yeah, that wasn't okay. Yeah, that is. I'm sorry. So, other than that, I'm jumping the gun. Other than that, we're um just, you know, continuing to uh do
the inspections. The RFP for the neighborhood review has been sub submitted. So, we'll see. I think the deadline is September 15th. We'll see if we have any any vendors that Right.
Yeah, that's going to be a lot of work. So, I I was kind of hoping that if we can have somebody at least do the whole reclassification of the neighborhoods, maybe we could do the inspections in house just so again so that we have consistency. But we'll we'll see what
happens with that. It's pretty mostly the redefinition of the neighborhoods. That's that's the challenging portion. Yeah. Yeah. Everything to add to that is execution.
And I I I wonder too if um some of the reclassification requires inspections because the h the some of the neighborhoods seem based on old buildings. Yes. Not the new construction. So I think
it's going to be hard to separate them like that. Yeah. Right. Yeah. very hard actually. Right. It was it was something like when when we were looking at the geographic distribution and we pulled up a couple of houses, there were some historic things that made sense, but because we
we're not I don't know all of the houses in town and I'm not inspecting them either. We could not do anything else. So, I think it's optimistic to think they can do that without involving inspections, right? Yeah. have to do some they're going to have to probably drive
around. Like the day that I went and drove around it. It's amazing. You could kind of just tell where it should be divided just based on driving around and looking at different areas. But I think I think there's going to have to be a lot of dialogue back and forth
between you and whomever is doing it. Yeah. Um because they're going to have to coordinate inspections with you. Yeah. and we will notify residents when that does happen. I'm I'm just hoping that they'll be able to maybe just do the
inspections by driving by at this point and then the site indexes drive by inspection is better than no inspection. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you could get a glance at the neighborhood, right? Exactly. And if Right. If you're looking at these criteria to define the neighborhood, then does this
fit the criteria? Right. Thanks. Yeah. It's not a full inspection. It's just Yeah. Okay. Anything else? That's it. I was hoping during the status report you'd talk a little bit about the senior means tested exemption status.
Yeah, I think I have that on as a I didn't see it as an agenda. Oh, I'm sorry. Yep. Yep. That's why I was hoping you'd do it now. Okay. We have eight applicants. Okay. Go nuts. Yep. Eight applicants.
Eight applicants. uh is at your first glance they all look like they will probably qualify. Yeah, this is not a full review. Obviously, you're going to go have to go through we have to go through we have to go through I know Robin has been taking them in looking at them and asking some
questions. So, yeah. So, I think um I haven't had a chance to go through them all because and actually the deadline is today. So, it is. So, they're done. We will um and if if one is mailed and it's postmarked, we'll obviously honor that. So, right,
maybe they'll be mail and voting. I would support that. Yeah. So, but if it's not here by Monday, clearly it's not. I mean, I often postmark things because I can't get to here when it's open,
right? I have no no problem with people using the US Post as a service. Um, so we have eight and could, you know, possibly one or two might show in the mail, but who knows? Uh, and what was the number that we could support to get to 1%. Do you
recall? What's this? Uh, it's 2730. Um, yeah, I know the amount, but based on the levy, whatever the levy is, that hasn't been determined yet. Well, we knew what the No, we have to do it based on last year's levy. We can't do it on next year's levy because we don't we won't know what it is. So,
so clearly the process needs to say last year's levy. Let me look at my and I thought we came up with a number but don't recall what the number was. We did come up with a number likewise. I'll have to get back to you.
It was way more than eight. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's sort of what I wanted to get. In my mind, I thought it was around 20, but uh I thought it was 64, but just picking that out of there. Well, we can I'll verify that. We have vastly different numbers in our
just came out of here. So, well, I'm glad you're going to look that up. I'll look that up. You just look up last year's wedding. Send us a note and tell us how many Well, we you calculated how many we might do based upon that amount. Yeah. I thought it was quite a few.
It was a larger number than 20. I had I had 32 million in my head, but I don't know. I don't want to I need to verify that. I'm not sure. Well, now I'm on camera with very low number. 1% to 32 million would be maybe I thought we would get like 20.
You might have thought we were 20. We look like I'm wondering where I came up with that number. Um just off the top. Yeah. If our levy was 32 million and we were looking at 27 something 2730
then we're looking at about 120 to 130 we could have supported. Yeah. In fact we're going to wind up doing 10 or less. Yeah. I probably guessed 20 applicants or something maybe. I mean maybe we'll have and you know once people get wind of it
in the future there may be more applicants. So, I'm I'm happy that we have the that capability to give a break to some of those people who absolutely need it. Yeah. Um um it's unfortunate it's only eight or 10 took advantage. If we have 10, it'll be 27 $27,300.
It's not a lot of money off the top of Yeah. And what what happens is as for those of you who are watching that u that reduction in the taxes for these people gets spread out amongst everybody else. The amount is going to amount to cents,
not dollars. Yeah. For most people. So, and we can help people stay in their homes for a while longer. And after that presentation at the senior center, we had quite a few people calling and coming in. So, that was
great. People were watching the the video, but we only got eight actual applications. One of one or two of which we had beforehand. Yeah, we had two before the presentation. I think it'll change over time. Yeah. As become people become familiar with
it. Yeah. Right. We do we did have I think maybe two people that came in that did not were not granted the circuit breaker by the tax repairer and we're going to look into that and and I don't know I mean sometimes tax repairers don't
suggest stuff like that. So they don't have a circuit breaker. We can't give them the break and they need to get it for next year. Unless they can amend it. Well, actually, they can't amend it in time for this year. It's too late anyways. Date was today.
I actually heard someone last week say, "Well, maybe I get my taxes redone in a week." I don't know. I didn't do that, but I think you were in the office. I was when By the way, that was also very well handled by our admin. Robin did a nice job. Really nice job on that.
Awesome. Anything else that you want to cover during the That's it. Status report. So, we expect a written one next time, right? Yes. You'll have a written one. You norally do that in the middle of the
month. We've been a little busy. Yeah. You find something, but chasing all of those inspections. Oh gosh. Yes. Nice work. Very nice. Um, we have a great team.
I don't know if you had an opportunity to look at the email today. I did. I um finally was able to dig in and start. So the re I have a headache. It's because I spent the much of the afternoon and part of the morning
watching some or a couple of our old meetings and trying to figure out what was being said and so I can modify the I am sorry minutes if you want to take one or two of these just let me know you can feel free and as you know some of our meetings
were a headache um others weren't so Um, I don't know if you had a chance to look at the March 12th. Yeah, I read through it and I read through the 19th as well. And did you have any suggested changes? No.
Oh. Um, then I would entertain a motion that we approve the minutes of individually March 12th. Motion to approve the minutes of March 12th. I will second that. I on it. I March 19th.
Motion to approve the minutes of March 19th. I'll second that. I I I'll send you I'll submit a copy. Uh oh. We're supposed to put a pro approved date on them now, right?
We talked about doing approved dates on them. I'll put notes with approved dates. Okay. And then send them over to you sent down the clerk's office. Thank you for doing that. But I'm not volunteering right now.
I didn't think anybody would want to. I didn't want to volunteer for that. We just had started to fall for a while. I know. I was Thank you for Thank you. that I don't quite have enough minutes left in the day. Yeah. Right now. Not enough minutes to do minutes.
Uhuh. Okay. I'm in prime time now. Yes, you are. Yes, you are. Actually, I need to add August 13th to that list. And yes, I'll add today,
September 3rd. We're still behind in October. I'll be able to take some off. I should be far behind by then. We'll see. I set up a like a assembly line so I have all of the minutes and then I open one up and then I fire up
the YouTube or Facebook and put it on uh 1.5 or 1.75 so everything gets set a little more quickly and get through the meetings instead of two hours I get through in an hour if I find something that's either
inaccurate or which there's not a lot of inaccuracies there just a lot of things that were not easily understood. Some were skipped. So, I added some stuff. Yeah, they kind of require us to go through. Danielle does a fabulous job. Absolutely. Putting together the the first draft of
those minutes because sometimes it's even I was sitting there and I would go, "What did we say?" There was one I did that was like four and a half hours long and I must have listened to it three times. So, yeah. Yeah. It's just it gets it gets you. Yeah. Thank you, Danielle, wherever you are.
Yeah. you greatly appreciated. Oh, I couldn't appreciate that more. Um, do we have invoices, expense, vouchers, billing errors, or anything to sign today? Just one link and I know you have to come in for that, but I don't want
So, is it dated tomorrow? It has no date on it. Let's leave the date. Yeah, Sarah can sign it today and I can bring it in and sign it tomorrow and it'll be it'll be um and it's for one of the chapter lands.
Yeah. Um and we can talk about chapter land in public. So, what addresses this one? 47 Prospect Street. Oh, perfect. I have two of the ones that have
they received roll back invoices that are going to make payment on that and those properties did not have a lean nor an application. So we won't let them go back into chapter land until uh 27 at this point
because they didn't it hasn't happened yet. The deadline went by Oh, we talked about one. Is that one of the ones that got extended? That was the What's that? Go ahead. That was the one you were bringing up. I just interjected.
You could interject. There was one that we were asking about that we extended the time because they said they were going to catch up. Did they catch up? Well, we extended it to 2026. So, we're not going to right now. So, we've already we've already missed they've missed a deadline. Uh
oh, that one. Yeah. again and I don't know if he's made the payment yet. Uh but there's another one that has made has made is going to make a payment. So well it sounds like two people are at least going to do that. So that's good. At least I'll come in tomorrow.
We'll get that revised. I think this is the end of them too. So Oh, that's great. Yeah. And we for anyone that hasn't responded or brought them properties back to full value. Absolutely. Which is part of some of the growth that we've had. It also makes me really happy
that if there was supposed to be a lean on them, they're complying. The town puts aside gives up revenue. Yeah. For that, right? So, it's good that we're exercising or making sure it's enforced.
Well, it needs to be. Town doesn't exactly give up revenue. No. Well, there's a break, but other properties in pro in town pick it up because our tax lane doesn't change. I'm just trying to be cautious. You're
right. You're right. People about their taxes. So, other people are paying more. Other people are paying more than they should because those properties properties have a reduced value. Yes. And they don't have a lean and take and so we don't have any leverage.
No, I appreciate that correction. Thank you. Sorry. No, no, it's good. We often talk about people need to hear that. Oh, look, we have all this additional re No, it's not revenue. It's not revenue. It's just we're we're spreading it more fairly. Yeah, other people are paying that.
We're all paying it. It does need to be fair because everyone else sends in their application. And right when we've started this new process, when we send out the applications, we include a whole write up that is on the state's website about
all the instructions. 61B 6. Yeah. Is one for each clause and everything that they're supposed to do. Submitting the application, the lean, and I'm going to make up a spreadsheet for chapter all the clauses like I did with all the exemptions. I want to do that
so that it's clear because there is so much so many different factors with each one. It it's uh I want to have it all together. So when someone comes in, okay, you need this, this, and this. No, recreation. Look here. Yeah. Oh, agriculture. Look here.
Even for us too, it it it's just it's a lot of information. Like Robin first started, she said like overwhelming and and it is it just needs uh there's a lot of information. So that's on my list of things to do. Anything else needs to be signed,
reviewed? No, that's it. I did want to mention I did make contact with Randy Mercier. He's actually going to come in on I believe it's the 24th. Oh, good. and we're going to start um the um the billing. We want to put the
exemptions in m uh not mun in vision so that we don't have the duplication efforts in munice. I'm not sure what's going on with that bridging issue. I think he was trying to sort that out and years now. Yeah. And we are now doing or Robin's
going to be doing the billing. So, I really hope that we can keep him on board because I I don't think it's going to go smoothly. I've talked to other assessors that have the cloud version and they had a lot of issues last year and with no bridging issues, so I don't
anticipate it being right. I don't know how long the town's contract is with Mun. It ends in December. Oh. Oh, I'm not sure about Munas, but Vision Vision of Randy Mercier. I'm not sure. Oh, sorry. Randy. Randy. His ends in December,
but I think he's well worth whatever it takes. Whatever it takes. Munis is Tyler, right? Yeah. There's also the the other end, which is Open Gov. They do the same things. Do they do billing though, too? Yeah. Tax billing.
Yeah. I don't know what their rates are, but Yeah. Um, when I was at that GIS conference, they had like opposing booths. Yeah. And they do the same things. Yeah. Except that Open Gov is well, supposedly
at some point they're going to try to have tax um parcels within their system so that you can just upload to that system. That would, but they have no idea when they're going to do it. So like Oh, it's like a it's like a pie in the sky, a purple unicorn.
Yeah. Well, maybe there's hope there. I do need to uh did mention to Izzy that we are not trained. So, we have no idea how to do we're doing everything from getting the file up until Mileen's doing
the billprint and Robin and I have no idea how to do any of this. So, we need some training. I don't think that's in Ry's contract to train. And frankly, he works with 22 properties. He did tell me, Linda, 22 22 other towns, not properties,
municipalities. Yeah. Municipalities and he assists them with the billing and everyone that I've spoke with raves about him. The bills going on time, any issues. I know in the past, Munice is just a nightmare. We had an issue with the uh motor vehicle
commitment and we called them and had to put a ticket in and it well and and before you there was there were people who quit different positions because they didn't want to deal with munis anymore. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, it's it's I know that there's a lot of frustration not even in this town
in other towns with Munas. So, but um so hopefully uh he's well worth the money and things will go smoothly and he deals with this every day. So, he's he's going to come in, he's going to look at uh he's going to do a test so
that we'll be ready in December and then we're going to get the exemptions in division. That's something we're going to start so that we can avoid the whole duplication effort in Munas. It'll it'll save a lot of time because I know I spent a couple Friday nights
Friday night here last year. Yes. Uh sorting out or trying to sort out the issue with that. Right. So hopefully we can avoid that. So getting into vision is less of a
burden. It's supposed to be a much easier. And all you do is you once it's in Ununice I mean once it's sorry once it's in vision you just take the file upload it and I guess there one thing that you check off
nice in uh munice and it'll automatically do it the right way. Yeah. Okay. So that's that's what we we need. That sounds promising. Yeah. So and my preference is always for us to
work in vision rather than immunist. wherever possible. Yeah, because Munus is a financial system and it's got not MUN is a financial system and vision is is something that we as a sister the appraisal system. Yep.
So the more work more work that can be done there the better. Yeah. And we have the support with vision. I can pick up the phone and call them and get a response right away. Right. Mus is totally different. Seems less responsive. Less responsive.
Yeah, last year didn't go well with the response time and now Izzy is leaving. So, I don't know what impact that's going to have. Um, he resigned last um he's submitted his resignation. What's his last day?
Uh, he will be uh leaving on the 25th, which is actually a Saturday, but he'll be of September. Of course. Yeah. But he's got a lot to do with year end and getting everything ready before
and and the classification hearings in November. Yeah. November. So he's got to be done with his motion. Yeah. And as long as he understands that that's got to be that's involved. We were late last year because
everything wasn't ready and we need to not be late this year. Do we have a land use director? Uh there's a temp Well, there's someone filling in that's part-time. Okay. I think she's from Fitchburg. So, okay. Yeah.
But I I know that there's they're trying to hire and then I I know the um I think they're hiring for an assistant building inspector because the uh the admin is retiring. Lisa Snowman's retiring. There's a lot
of retire right now. Yeah. Okay. So, well, that was news to me. I had not been paying attention. It It probably ran rampant through town hall, and that's probably as far as I got. Yep.
Yeah. Um, and as you know, you and I really can't speak for the week. Mhm. Otherwise, it's very true. Yep. I guess we could have probably done that one. That's okay. I was thinking in retrospect I probably should
I'm good. I just I probably would have picked up the phone when that happened. I had a very busy couple of weeks. Okay. And that's it. I don't have nothing else going in the office.
So, have they posted Ezy's job yet? Not that I know of. I haven't I haven't heard as of yet. Are they going to think about getting an interim like somebody back from that used to do it? I don't know.
Or somebody else. I'm not sure what I'm not sure what the plan is. Consultant or Yeah. I guess that's a the town manager. I'll have to make sure it gets done. Yes. Yeah. Kind of important role. So yeah,
I when I found out I was like, "Oh, no." I had somebody that knew the town. Yeah, already it's my take. Yeah. Anyway, okay.
Uh 2024 sales. Now you can now the sales report. I have one copy of this, but so that's just an idea. So, I was looking with some of the adjustments that So, these all those are all qualified sales.
Yes. Um, actually, let me look at that. Not maybe I may have to cuz it'd be really good to have that information. I think um Right. I think that's Yeah, I think that was something we mentioned last time cuz there's like one here that the percent change is like
0.14 or Yeah, I would just like to know I can the difference between because your total assessed value and sales price and I'm hoping that I'll have that information from vision. I'm actually
going to be out of the office from the 8th to the 18th 18th. So, I'll be back on 22nd. Do you want this? That Monday is I think it's I think it's the same one. Oh, I think it is too.
It's the same report. Yeah, that I res resorted and played with Excel format. No, I did mess around with it. I messed around with I was like, well, I want to know what's qualified and unqualified here. That that needs to be one of the
It should be one of the columns. I'll do another um I know you can export those things from vision. I Yeah, I just um I don't sit there with the software. So I can actually there's so I can call them and
we'll guess you'll call them for a customs report and they're going to go, "Oh yeah, we already got this one boxed up cuz somebody else asked for it." Just as long as they don't send it to you as a PDF. We do not. Yeah, I'm tired of PDF.
That's hard to actually It's Excel. This version is a PDF, but the Excel is what? Right. Exactly. I can actually I'll Excel, but the old versus new uh we're going through that. I already had Robin start looking through that and
kind of highlight stuff. And that's one thing that we're going to check and that needs to be done every year. Yes. Just check. uh that whole situation in 2023 could have been avoided if somebody looked through that. So yeah, that's why we keep asking for those
and that's why the select keeps asking when you go to classification. Yeah. So is anybody here going to get really whacked? No. I mean if I'm going to harp on something, it's going to be that. Well, rightfully so. But we're uh we we
have been that's been something that I've been concerned about. So I'm anxious to get back feedback from vision because I was looking at some of the old versus new and it looks like you know I I don't know what they're projecting.
At one point it could be between between 8 and 9% increase which seems like it seems like a lot. last year was like six on the average, but the sales I don't know my my house has increased a lot in the past just four five years. So that's just how things are going.
Other towns have gone up more than more than 10%. So it uh just but I'm thinking in the past four years my house has probably gone up like 40%. Yeah, it's crazy. my land and house. My taxes haven't
No, the value of my house, but my taxes haven't gone up that much. Right. Well, they've gone up. They've gone up, but not that not by that amount. Right. Yeah. Right. Right. I don't think you discount. No, I think I'm around 28% increase. Yeah.
Anyway, nice. Yeah. But no, we will be checking that anything that's a red flag. The other thing that I have not plugged that into an Excel sheet. So, when we do the classification hearing, one of the things that we're going to I
would really like to focus in on is anybody who had a significant change in their taxes. Mhm. By of more than, you know, some percentage. Whatever the percentage is, we'll pick one. Yeah. And and you have the sales right here that shows the percentage.
I bet you can get that whole file printed. You want to to focus. Do you want We'll we'll focus in on, you know, we're going to have a we'll we'll have an estimated tax amount, tax rate. Yeah.
Um and and we and where someone's based upon that where someone's total tax package goes up significantly. We really like to highlight those. There are going to be a few that probably go down because, you know, something
happened to the property. Um, but there'll be some that go up a lot. And that was one of the questions that that was asked two years in a row by the select board. We were almost ready to answer it this time. I just like to be right in front.
Okay. Do you want the list of the the properties? Yeah. Yeah. A detailed list of Yeah. Yeah. And we're going to I think obviously we have to notify It's all public record. It is public record. Yeah. But
so, but it it would be easy um you know in an Excel sheet and then you can you can write a formula that flags a percent increase or you can just sort them or you can sort it and do it too.
Yeah. And then you can you know not you necessarily but several other people can whole mess of ways to do that. It can help. Yeah. Exactly. No, I don't think Sarah can because she could, but she can't.
She could do it, but I just don't think you have time. So, yeah, some of these like to speak for you. I know. That's middle age, isn't it? You can you can kind of tell a lot of them are new construction. But I will say on some of these in
But those are just sales. These are just sales. on some of the inspections that we've done with the uh obsolescence, some of them have actually uh gone down because when we've gone out and inspected, there's been other things
that have been addressed. So, just because these people had a discount, we did a thorough inspection. Yep. Perfect. So, but there are some that that will be impacted. Okay.
All right. So, I will get that list, a new list, qualified list. Um, if you want next time I can bring the old versus new and we can go through that. That's probably Yep. That's we start there. Yeah, that's probably a better if it's old versus new as far as value
is concerned. Yeah. Then, uh, those should be the ones that are the biggest difference should be the ones where the taxes are changing the most. Mhm. So that that might be a better than better. I actually like that better. Thank you
for suggesting it. That's um rather than say, well, if your taxes were this, if the tax rate is that a percentage too on it, I have that back at the office. Yep. Fabulous. Great.
Why does it feel like we're actually going to be prepared? I'm not saying that yet. Well, I I need to see Terrell's report. Well, exactly. We haven't gotten the the final and I I still need to see the qualified unqualified.
Right. Right. Right. But we You were busy, but we will get that soon, I'm sure. Like next I'm looking forward. Yes. And I'm looking forward to getting uh because I keep looking at the changes and and
I want to know the percentage myself and I don't know. Um, I would be guessing. The reason I was pushy in August about it is cuz my time grows shorter and shorter as September arrives. So, I think there's a song in there somewhere.
Well, that's I'm sure the Beatles wrote a song about it somewhere. Oh, no. I was thinking back to something that the days Oh, I thought you were going to say used to get mad at my school. Oh, yeah. That, too.
Um, okay. We're on, I think, review of accomplishments for assessing report. Did you have a chance to look at it? I did. Did you get a chance to go through it? I don't remember. I'm pretty sure I did. May I look at it? Yeah, you can.
Actually, it it generated questions. Oh, yes, it did. Yes, I did read this. One of the questions was we you here said generated policies and trading procedures, but do we have a book of them someplace? Are they in a book someplace? They're They're not in a book, but
they're on the hard drive and they're in a share drive. So that is that something you could point us to so we could look at it? Yeah. Cuz I actually think maybe we also ought to do a book or make it public somehow. I'm not sure exactly the best
way to do that. Yeah. But if we have written policies, we ought to have people be able to see what the written policy is. Yeah. including us. I mean, I don't know if you want. We have We can put them in a binder. Our
goal, it doesn't have to be. I mean, it could it could be done electronically. I'm okay with that for now. I mean, then people aren't going to understand some of the like putting in the baitment in unice. That's kind of what it is. The instructions, but it's it's there. It's
documented. So, if somebody wants to look 10 years from now what they were thinking, it's there. If you want to get certified for ISO 9000, you have to have written policies. That's something that our former
colleague would have mentioned. Uh you don't necessarily have to actually be doing that. As long as you have the written policy, they don't check up to see you actually doing the policy. Now, from my perspective, it makes no sense to have a policy and not follow
it. Yeah. Right. So you know but you could do that instead of the ISO 9000 certified. It is important because there was no policies. There was no instructions. There's no documentation. Now we have the document. There was a a notebook that had some
things in it and it didn't have everything in it and there was you need to have the documentation just to keep the wheel turning. Yeah. And then if somebody leaves at least with instructions on what to do. Somebody's leaving, right? No. Okay. Hopefully not. I don't want to say I'm
I'm just saying at least No, no, don't. It's making me very uncomfortable. But um but in the event that somebody else, even if somebody else needs to do it, we can go to our one drive and it's
right in there. And Robin Robin's a fan of no paper, so she likes everything electronic. I tend to be like both. So, oh no, I like to have paper. You collect a lot of paper. You collect paper, but paper
sometimes paper is better because at least at least you have it in the event that something happens, right? So, I've um I like to have both. I have a backup. It's always good. Um there is one thing uh with the website, we are starting to look at
that. We're going to put together a a dummy website for you guys to look at before it goes public and make your comments. So, we're going to put it together. We're kind of working on it Robin's work and with Tara and then I'm going to work on adding some other stuff
to it and then once we get it all set, we want you guys to look at it and approve it. Okay. Honestly, that's what I thought we were going to be doing for the last year and a half to two years, but the It didn't happen. Well, it did happen. it just it became too bulky and it was
too pie in the sky and it wasn't executable. Yeah. So hopefully we can actually put something together that makes it easy for people to find stuff. Um and that it it's easily updated.
So I'm I applaud the effort and keep going. So that's coming. Nice. Um, okay. That was that was my feedback from there. I think even today you talked
about some more things that you were doing that you could add to this list of stuff. Yeah. Yes, I do remember reading this. So, yeah. No, this is a great list of stuff. Great. It's great. Well, I wrote this just because I think
some days you had spins when you think of everything. You go in the office and with and what I walked into. Yes, functional obsolescence on here. I don't remember now. That might be I don't think it's on here. Keep going. Keep adding.
This could be added to. Yeah. Oh, yes. We had 131 total. Okay. So, that's on there. Okay. So that one we're actually starting to address that now. We do have um land condition factors too
which is another directive that yeah I'm thinking I feel like that goes neighborhoods than the condition factors right because right now the neighborhoods are site indexes.
Yeah. the um and the site index neighborhoods factor in land issues, right? Most of the um lakes have the land condition factors. Yeah. Some well I can't I can't say that that
a lot of them are in the lakes but well we have a lot of lakes. We do have a lot of lakes but there's some other properties too that and again we need to come up with like with this functional and economic obsolescence there needs to be some standards for
land condition one of them so I'm all ears on what you come up with for that cuz like yes just looking through those like what constitutes a steep slope can we get a percent grade stuff like that like you know my idea of
steep is not the same as other steep, right? And and who's going to calculate that percent grade when they go out to the site, right? How do we do that? You can bring me, you know, make a triangle. It's not that hard. Just something you need to do.
Yeah. Well, for for example, there was a get the treble. Some of the fire roads have really really steep and we noticed this last week. One side's flat, the other side is extremely steep. And we were kind of looking at those because they have that
condition factor and and that should remain. Well, for some for some some of them it should remain others that don't make any sense. They have no comments. It's the same thing as the other. Well, and you're seeing that you're probably putting it on their cards. We Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. That's going to what? Go ahead. Finish. I was going to say that's going to really help when you go to define that. Yeah. Yeah. You can pull out the cards. See paper. Yeah. Yep. And even having um like the
10% for commercial influence and for the railroad tracks that should apply to anybody that has Yeah. proximity to railroad tracks. Yeah. So, and that's why you can use how proximate to railroad tracks.
How proximate to railroad tracks? How close to the busy road? Yeah. Half a house in another town. Yeah, but that's not a land that's not a land condition. But honestly, when the that whole thing happened in 2023, that's the granular
information people are looking for. Yeah. And didn't exist. It doesn't exist. Yeah. Yeah. Working on it. We're getting there. Starting the list and there'll be other stuff that we can add. But I figured while we were going through this, okay, well, we're going to start it and Yeah.
then come up with some stickers. like roads mass mass dot and this and um has done they have a whole site where they have done their surveys and then they have projections and they classify
the roads based on um like artery um smaller road smaller sub artery local road and so that could really help with that traffic part too right um so that that does exist and is out
there. Now they don't do traffic surveys every year. So the way they come up with the data in between years is based on the population growth they see around and they do a calculation to think about how much more that has increased if they
haven't done it. Could they do our neighborhoods? I don't know. Masto or or CI something company like that that so that's the department of transportation. Oh okay. But with the roads but they have they they have the surveys
and the data. Yeah. So someone looking at that data could go well that's that's what I'm going to call a heavy traffic road. Right. That's the starting point. That's what I'm going to call a med you know medium a low. Yeah. Um Yep.
And well, you know, if you had your own GIS, you could just plug that in. Yeah. I was just thinking it's just this I mean, it's just too bad. It's too bad that we couldn't find somebody that can do that, take that data
and somehow do our new review. At least that first step, that would be great. Well, I I strongly feel it has to be a combination of somebody or a a pair like somebody with those skills. Yeah. And somebody with the assessing
understanding because the two separate are going to make errors that just Yeah. Yeah. So I hope well I really think that we need to when we
do get the findings if we do get a company we really need to go through or if there's or if there's things that you know somebody like that could make as a visualization then a person could go and look and say yes and then they could upload it and adjust it.
Yeah. Right. That I mean that would be great if that was public. Is that public information that we could get access to? Because that's probably I looked that up and it was on Mass GIS. Okay. I'll have to call CI. Yeah. What?
Call CI and see if maybe they can. But you said it was the mass then Department of Transportation. Okay. I'll do some research. So that should be a resource that CIA already uses, but I don't know that. So, I guess I just don't know what the fee
per each of those things is going to be for you, which is why I have opinions, right? Okay.
That seems very very helpful though. Yeah. I did get a electronic copy of our neighborhood from CI the whole map. Oh, the current map. Yeah. I couldn't reduce it no matter how many times I tried. I found a smaller
version of it. And that is actually being included in the the package, the bidding package. Oh. So, if you need a copy of that, I I got an electronic version of it. That'd be great. Yeah. Send them over.
Cool. Uh 41A warrant income for limitation increase. So, I didn't get a chance to write it up. I'll write it up in the next week or so. Okay. And we can review it at whatever our next meeting is, which we'll be talking about later. That's simple enough though, right?
Always like to put up there for I know it's one of those we have to pick a number or an index of some kind. like it's it's income related. So we could do something that was very similar to the
thing we just did based upon circuit breaker. Yeah, I think that would be interesting. Well, that was my initial thought was to circuit break, but I just didn't know if you had some other way we could I'd rather index it because I don't want to have to reset it every couple years
because No, it be it would be good to have it tied with whatever circuit breaker is. It may not be it may circle breaker times 1.3 or or times 7. I don't care as long as it's tied to it. What are what are other people doing for
that? I can find out. A lot of people don't. Nobody. Very few towns are using 41A much. But if we could find anybody that had that was using it that was using it tied
to some index. Yeah. Then that would make sense. That would be helpful. And you know the index in conquered might be different from the index in athol. Yeah. Yeah.
But we could get the range and right it's hard for me to just come up with a number. I would prefer to be tied to something like that. Circuit breaker is just hot a high income level too. Well, we have a
our current 41A is a very low income level. Yeah. And it should be something much more reasonable, but I don't know what reasonable is for this community. It should maybe we take a look at the average income in town.
And I mean, it's particularly low. the top at 10 the bottom 10% or the bottom 15% or the bottom 20%. I don't know what it is. Yeah, cuz it's it's very low, especially with the inflation that we've been having. Oh, yeah. Great.
Oh, our current one. Oh, yeah. It's it's it's that's why we're going to address it because it's just it's it's obscenely low. That's so Okay, I I'll I'll put I'll propose something if you can find out what any
other towns that might be using 41A are using if they are indexed to something. I will I'm actually going to I'm going to an ATB ATB uh case hearing tomorrow. Not a hearing, but like a class. Oh, okay. A hearing class.
What? Uh that was just a um appraisal uh whole change that's coming was a continuing it thing. Um so that that was actually was very informative but we um when we get
appraisals it's it's going to be totally different than the ch making major changes. So so we have to review them. It's going to be totally different. Okay. Um okay. So that was today and then tomorrow the um assessors
association. They have a like little hour and a half conference. Oh not at a location. Yeah. It's actually going to be at the Baruka Elks and they have in their summer cookout. So there'll be a lot of assessors. So I should be able to ask that question. Yes. Ask around
which is good. That's where I get most of my information. I always call at the camp. Hey, it works. But conferences are great for that. They are. I I tell you, there's just so much uh just the networking and the information you get.
It's nice to not be isolated. Yeah. Yeah. And everybody uh we have a great group of assessors are always willing to help which is great. So, and they always have these conferences which is just so helpful. That's how I got all this information about senior beans.
Yep. So, but I'll see what I can find for tomorrow. A lot of them don't do it, but I will find out what the income level is. Anybody doing a 41A? Yeah. Perfect time to find that out. You got everybody. Yeah.
And they'll be having a cookout. So, let me say hello from us. Yeah. Right. We don't know anything. Um, master plan response. Yep.
So when's it due? October. [Applause] I mean, most of those things aren't things we do. I know. I think the zipper to just one page, but protect farmland and support farmers. Yeah,
that's chapter land. Well, we already Right. So, we just say uh this is accomplished through chapter land and we are reviewing the chapter land use in in town. Mhm. You want Can I write on this? Is the only copy?
Oh, I didn't send you electronically. I thought I sent it electronically. Well, this has the free hole punch in it. So, I think you gave me that. I don't want to write on it. No, write on it. I thought I sent it to you electronically though. Okay. I If I didn't, I will. I thought I saw it then. I I think I did. I think I sent
it. But I think it was It was around the previous meeting time. Do you want to go through the day before the previous meeting? Um, you want to try to write something out now or do you want you want to do it now?
Well, you're you're going to be away tomorrow. I'll be there till 2 tomorrow at the office. Um, yeah, cuz I have to come in and sign something anyway. Uh, we can sit down.
Okay, we'll go. You have some time tomorrow. Can you set some time aside so that we're not going to I can What time can you come in? Interrupted. I'm just going to I'm going to try to go through and get all my maps if um my map updates done. What time is the clerk's office open?
Cuz I have to get Yeah. notorized. Well, she opens I know they close uh they close for a while day. Yeah. Oh. So So one open till 12 to 1. 12 to 1. Okay. I'll come in shortly afternoon.
You can set some time aside. We can work on that as well. Okay. Do you want to come in at 12? Will 12 work? It'll be a little bit after probably. Okay. All right. It shouldn't take us long cuz I Hey, I'm totally fine with you doing that. Like I look through it. Let you know what it is.
I mean, support a range of housing options for all ages and income levels. That's that's planning. That's not really They have board of assessors, but that's not us. uh they're just trying to see who can help with what. But we can also talk about and like in something like that we could talk about
the fact that we are using exemptions to assist to help people stay in their homes or Yeah. be in their homes. So So you know supported to the extent possible right within our purview.
Yes. So, yeah, that was a lot of great work Jack pushed. Yes. All right. Thank you. Yep. Oh, um, GIS mapping. Yeah, I made a
Are we ready for that? I made a short thing. I I really did keep it short. Um, so geograph GIS is geographic information systems. It's taking layers of data, putting them on top of each
other, but then using tools to help look at the data and visualize it better. Um, but it all also now is a really powerful outreach tool. Um, so I wanted to show you on the
second slide here all the things people have already thought of and come up with apps within GIS to use. So there's agriculture parcel analysis. So you can look at the parcels and compare among them. Um, there's address data management to make
sure things are right. If you look all the way to the end on the upper right, equitable property value and tax parcel management right here. Um I didn't want to do a billion slides. Yeah.
But if you just type in that would be helpful like tax parcel data management. That's what we need. So these are all pre-built sol um applications within a mapping platform called RJS. There's other mapping
platforms, but honestly, those other ones require people to know code. This does not require people to know code. So, this one's called ARC. Yeah. Arc. Yep. GIS. Um, so these are all solutions that
have been to common problems. People need solutions for an assessment. Um, and once you buy a sub subscription to that software,
you have those solutions. Oh, they're already available to you. You just have to import the data. Okay. Okay. That would be great. And that can be done with a an Excel file. Okay. Okay. Um, there's a little there's there's more to
it. When you when you have an Excel file, you have data in columns and and rows. And the data that's in columns are all of the attributes that go with that.
Those first two points in the row, which are going to be an X and a Y, your location on the Earth. And that location on the Earth is what makes it geospatial. And all the fields are all the stuff attributed to that one spot on the Earth. So like a house is actually
going to be a polygon versus of a point, but you just dump all the data that goes with it on there. So that's how CI is able to pull up the card. They have all that data and they've organized it into this nice looking feature to pop up.
Vision does the same thing. That's that's how that works. And so it's a visualization. So I put this in terms of like how it could be useful within the office. like it has those tools available to you. So like if you have an Excel file and you upload it, you have to mess around in
the fields to get it to display what you're looking at the question you want to ask and answer, but then it's there for you. And if you put it into into a map, you can export it as an app, post a link to it on your website, and everybody in town can see what you want
them to see. Okay, so next slide really quick. I just put at the top less paper equals less time used which equals perhaps more time available for the other things you have to do like all the all the inspection.
Um and so like the first step would be decide what data you need to collect for assessments. So instead of having to come out with a with a notepad and multiple pieces of paper, write everything down, and then have to transfer it later,
you could decide what data you need to have, put it on this app that on your phone that exists on your phone called Survey 123. You open the link to it, you type in the information, you click submit, and now it shows up on your computer
within the application. So, like, is it Robin who goes out and does all that? No, Denise. Denise, why is that backwards in my head? I'm sorry. Sorry, Denise. Sorry, Robin. Could go out and have that. Or if you know you're not going to have internet
connectivity for that, you could use our JS field maps and you could pick the locations you want to go to and you just tap on it, type it in, and then you come back to the office and you sync it and that information is there. And you could export that information also in an Excel
file if you need to. Um, and a couple other types of files and then upload it into CMA if you you needed to do it that way. I mean, vision. That would be a um a time savings. Like they do that even with the appraising. They do people go out with iPads. Yeah.
And they out in the field with uh the iPad. And then they automatically sync it and it exports it. Yeah. I don't have an iPad or No. And I a tablet. I don't and I need to get another um laptop because the one that I have in
the office updates. I don't want to remove it because our maps automatically update every week from there every Monday. And so, uh I need to I've been using my own and I cracked the screen this week. So, it's
here. Go ahead. That booklet right there, if you had a chance to read it, shows a lot of different ways people have used it in assessing. Okay. So, I didn't go into great detail on that. No, that would be good. And I don't know if that's something that even CI since
we're involved with them, I I know that the uh the new flood maps were going to be updated. They So, maybe that's something that they can I'm update. I'm sure they could. Um they they use that. This is the same software but they
um are running it as a company. Um so for the thing if you want more than what they're outputting it'll be additional cost. So, should evaluate whether it makes more sense to have your own for certain things,
right? Or to go to them. And I don't I don't know what we're contracted to, but like if you go to their site and you look up Lunenburgg, there's a there's a login opportunity. If you click on it, if you
are given um you can be given viewer access to certain things or um I forgot it's a develop not developer access whatever there's like five layers of stuff that um user types that you
could be and if an option is to have to pay for a login in there to access the stuff and do some things yourself that you can then export for it that might be cheaper. Yeah. Um but I I don't know. But it's the same
software and I I do know how all of that part works. So if you had a login, that would work. MassGIS, if if towns had a login into MassGis, it's the same thing. You could then take that information, put it in your own org or use it within
that org if you have certain permissions and do the same stuff. That would be helpful. No, we had that near mapap subscription and that we didn't renew that just cuz there was so many people using it. But that would be good to integrate it
and if we could do it with them vision actually at I called Data Scout which is the company that was at that training that I had gone to last fall and they have quite quite a nice program. Uh so I'm waiting
on cost for that. It sounds like a lot of similar stuff. I it probably it is. I actually was at the near map booth um when I was there and I'll um there's some other things I'll I'll mention here that might be some similar things. Um I
it actually would be easier to do this like in a workshop and tour and show you things. But like this is what we got for now. So I was just saying like decide what you need to collect. You make a digital map and then you can upload that information in real time. And that's
like slide four here. You would it whatever you're putting in on your phone from survey 123 or you're putting in your field map and uploading it would go to RGis online. And that if you have a map and you put a link on it and click
share to public, you can share with everybody. Yeah, that's not always the best thing to do cuz um people don't know what they're looking at until you you work on it or whatever. But that's where like let's say you do come up with a neighborhood map
and you want everybody to see where they're classified. You could have an app where people click on the color, you know, the the um neighborhoods are attributed by color and they click on the purple and they go, "Oh, I'm in I'm in the purple
one and that means this and I'm on the pink one or whatever colors you want." And that is an instant app and it's just simple. you configure from RGS online your map. You click a button that says instant app and it takes you through how to configure it.
Yeah, that would be so that would be really easy. You click the button, you have a link and now you can put it on that website that you're designing. Um, and I put an example the previous visual map of the neighborhoods.
And these instant apps are also all of those things you saw on slide two as potential solutions. Those are apps people made to handle many of the problem the visual communication issu issues and stuff. And then you could
actually get feedback from people. It could be this group right here getting giving feedback about what we like. Let's say you reclassify slope. You could show us all the slopes of the
whole town. Or we want to look at lake communities and we've noticed there's a 1A, 1B, two, and the locations don't seem to make sense. You could show that visually here and everybody could see it and tap on it and
not rely on having to print all of these documents and and tape them together and stuff like that. So that could be really helpful. And so you could make a survey, publish it, publish the results online and then if you wanted to, you know,
within you could certainly show us here, but if you wanted to, if you're in RJS online, you have an account, there's this thing called hub, which there's a hub just for assessment that organizes all the common things people use as a web page and then you just put your
fresh data on there and link and the whole community could see that information if you wanted them to. Wow, that would be good. Do they have any kind of a a workshop coming up just so that we could go to it? Is there anything that Yeah, there's a there's a Northeast users conference that happens in
Falmouth every year. It's October 20. I think it's the 25th to the 28th. There's a conference fee associated with it. What was it? Northeast. Northeast ar. It's near. N E R N R N E A R C
N E I can send you a link to it. Yeah, you don't have to look that up. And then also if you wanted to monitor what's going on with all of your different parcels as they're getting uploaded, um you could make something called a
dashboard. And so you could see, oh, I've done 400 here. I need to do 200 more to get to my goals of 10% of everything. Here's how many I have left to do. and and you could see that and you could also see where you've gone and
so you could see where else in town you wanna you want to go to like when they were trying when you were trying to get um to make sure um all of those inspections were done and people were notified in advance.
No, the cyclicals. the cyclicals. You could have if if you had this, you could go, "Okay, they're going on these streets." And you could highlight the streets and you could send that map with the affected parcels out um to people
or you could find all of the people on that street that would be affected, get an Excel spreadsheet of the list, and then like I don't know, what is it? Mail merge and just Oh, yeah. and and send it all out. So, um those
are just some like quick and easy. Um but then if the town actually did something like this, there's a lot of collaboration that could happen across like I feel so bad when I hear that like the the parcels
from planning didn't get over to you. Yeah. We don't receive any we them up ourselves. Yeah. Um, and then also like when um the deeds weren't that great, like there's a parcel reader now that like can it takes
the deed, it finds the verbiage that that it talks about it, and then it inputs it right into the system, and then you can look at it, make sure it's right, of course, and then you're done. Like, that's so nice. And I I don't know if there's an electronic link yet with
Worcester deeds, but but like that would be great if if we could just Yeah, I have like three of them. Interesting. Yeah, it it was really amazing. I like I did not know that existed and that's amazing. Um but you can also get satellite imagery of parcels. You can um
there's several companies that link with this software that you can say, well, I see you're doing an aerial view over the town in the next month or so. I want to purchase that. And you purchase it with credits that you get within the organization.
And now you have it. And you could get historic imagery that way. And you could compare and contrast and see when things were built, which is what near map is doing. It's using that that satellite imagery that they they've been paying for. And then
yeah, an update. Oh, see somebody put a deck on. Yeah, that's one good thing. But, you know, like conservation could see infringement on conservation areas that way. Y um you could see unpermitted development
that's that's occurring. Um, certainly you'd have to spend a you'd probably be spending a lot of money if you're doing it on a weekly basis, but like on an annual or even quarterly basis, that could be helpful, especially if you can get it right around the time that you know you need to close the books.
Um, it would be great to know what it what it would cost because I do think it would be helpful. Oh yeah, I I got that right there. Um, street traffic results from traffic surveys that have been studied can be viewed on there and there's some things that you can do to look at it.
State surveys, federal surveys, town surveys. Anybody who's published the data really online, you can upload it. Um, so does I can get realtime data of hurricanes coming across, you know, like
but but the street traffic results if do they publish do most people publish it? Mass dot has a whole set of streets. So, it depends on um who shared what. That's true. But mas dot is online with that information. Is there an incentive for people to
share? This would be great even for other departments because the storm drains, sewer conditions. That's what she was getting at Sarah was getting to. Yeah, it's reasonable. It is there an incentive for people to share though? Because if there is, they'll do it. If there's no incentive,
nobody's going to Well, so I think in Massachusetts, we have Mass GIS and um I think because it's state funded by local tax dollars, they share a lot of their data. Oh, yeah. Okay. Um there's certain data that they
restrict because of, you know, 9/11 uh security and stuff like that. But it's it's out there. Like I I search a lot of this data. Um but like for storm water runoff, the the the
stormwater task force um and DPW have to follow the NIP permit. And to do that they have to figure out elicit and and
they they have to figure out a number of discharges coming in and out of sewers. Um but they also have to know where storm drains are when they were cleared last and stuff like that because um sediment delivers a lot of phosphorus which causes algae blooms and stuff like that. So
all of like most towns they have to map all their storm drains. They have to inspect their sewers on a regular basis. There are some towns that um they put a GPS on their snow plows and you can track the snow plow.
I don't think we have that. We're not doing that. We're not doing that. But like big cities do stuff like that and and you can track it in real time. You can like there's tons of environmental data that you can get, but that's not this topic here. But you could get tree canopy and
you could find out we're in town like we don't have a lot of trees and if we wanted to become say u an arbor an arbor arburidum area in some part of town or something a tree America there's all sorts of stuff you could do with trees
you could find that stuff and and put it in not our purview. So, the cost for online only um it comes with all the things I just mentioned is $2,200 per year and additional users of 400. So, 2,200 is the first user.
Yep. Okay. Mhm. And then any additional so if we if planning used it or we our department had it. Yeah. That's fairly inexpensive once you made the initial inspection. Yeah. There there are more
complicated things that you can do with Arc Pro, but like if we wanted to put out maps easily and apps for people to see as you're updating neighborhoods or updating something like this would be a really cheap option. Now you can see like a user is 400
bucks, right? You can call up the CI and say what if I want to be a user on here? Can I can because the way it's organized within an RJS online is it's you know just drill box um there are people who are users and they can look at the data
and maybe share the data but then other things within a whole organization are divided into individual groups. So they could have NCI and I don't know this but they could have a group that says Lunenburgg and if they want to give you access to your Lunberg data as somebody who's
going to do some work in it they could add you to that group and then you could peel the layers out but I don't know if that's an option an option within a company. I I um Mass GIS I don't know if they do that but it's it's it's all the same structure
inside that large organization. Um, so I wanted to point that out to you because I think Oh, that would be helpful and we have a great relationship with them and it would be it would be great if we could somehow link it with vision too because right
now the record cards, you know how we had that extra sheet in CI, he had that one sheet that summarized and they didn't they didn't match vision because they were updated different times. Yeah. And we only update the the cards once a year,
right? Which is a PDF that's stored. We'd have to pay for like the live membership, but right, they take that data from a camera system. But it would be good if there was another option. I mean, right now I actually administer uh an online organization, but it's a
nonprofit. I can't do that in the same orc. Yeah. But that's definitely something if if you wanted to go that route, I could help you with for quite a while. Yeah, because we I mean just even the the uh fossil value analysis
and and so I just put this on paper, but you can actually go and and type this online and and and look at some of the things and you can probably get a um a trial login and and and play around with it to see if it's something you're interested in.
Well, Before we go that route, should we contact CAI and see if we can just become a user? Yeah, that would be good. Yeah, they have access to it because then we wouldn't have the $2,200 and the user fee is probably different because, you know, this is what they're charging.
Well, and they will probably charge you something for administering their work, right? Because it's it is a lot of work and there's credits that go into it and stuff like that. But you could also contact MassGis and see if that's a thing. It's a state-run agency, right? But CI has already done all of that
build of of the site. So it it would be good to see what they have within Yeah. other I'm sure they must offer other options to other talents because I know vision this company data scout they have they sound like similar
they work directly with vision and integrate with their system and it they have quite a lot of different options with mapping and and there there are several options um this is one I'm familiar with so and I I
just see it as a way to save you a lot of time but if there's another option that's going to work great for you. You should do it. But I just would love to see you be able to see have those visualizations without all the print and and taping. We definitely need more automation.
Yeah. Well, which leads to me to something else that propped up while I was thinking about this whole thing. You don't have a a tablet. Robin, I mean, Denise doesn't have a tablet, but I don't understand why. No, I think we
should investigate how much it would be to have the tablets when you have to go out to do an inspection right now. You're you're doing paper, right? We do paper and then trans transferring that somehow into a computer into a computer.
So, if it were done, even with just a tablet, that would be one less step. It would be if it were done once on a tablet, you basically saved yourself some additional work. Yeah. And if that tablet were able to contact Mhm.
your your GIS, I'll just call it GIS cuz it could be anybody. Mhm. Um then that would save you a heck of a lot more work. It would save a lot. So it would it would make you much more efficient. Um and all this
we've made a lot of progress. We talked about that. But we could make faster progress even and be more efficient if we were actually able to do stuff on our tablet automatically get in. And and honestly, if you do something like this and you wanted to download an
Excel file from Vision, you could then import it in here and tweak everything. That would be great. My thought process, too, was we have our cyclicals. We're gonna have to continue that 10% every Yeah. I would just love for you to be able to
forever try to do some of this in house. We can save Mhm. save the tons of money. That what what what was the contract this year for uh I think it's going to be 17,000 that we're going to pay for
and for a couple of tablets and if we can some training obviously. Yeah. And also I did not talk about this but if you are in an organization as as a user they can turn on this
online academy that teaches you how to do a bunch of those things and it's free if you have that type of organization. I wonder if they would come out and show us a demo. Do you think that's something they would do? Um they have an office. They have an
office that you could reach out to. Yeah, I can I can send you an email. Yeah, that would be good. Yeah, cuz at least that way. No, there's there's a Northeast office. I I think it's in Massachusetts close to Boston, but I I don't have it off the top of my head. I'm just curious.
Yeah, their their main office is in Midlands, but they have an East Coast office and it's it's in this area. I just Well, it's in the Boston area, but I don't remember. No, that would be great. At least if they could show us and we could
Yeah. I mean, we could even go through the the CI well the online well to show them. CI give us some of this functionality for for a user fee. I'll call it a user fee.
Um, and what would you charge? Let's say they're they're getting charged 400 bucks. They have to do some work to it, but it's a,000 bucks. Yeah. Yeah. Or even if they even if they charge you 2,000 bucks, but then you have access to your data.
Yeah. Right. For the town, I think it's worth it. Yeah. Right. Cuz right now we just have the we don't really have much. And if if you have um certain user rights to make certain things that would be Yeah.
So about a year and a half ago I went to presentation that was being done by CAI here and they were talking about all all that kind of stuff and I sort of tuned out because I knew we couldn't do it. Yeah. We we weren't ready for it. Y
and it was it was additional cost but it wasn't huge amounts of money if I recall correctly. Okay. Uh, Jen wasn't there. It was back when Heather was here, so she would know more about it, but um, and Julie may remember some of it, but um, probably not that
much, but I also don't remember that much of it. But it seemed to me they had a a lot of what you were talking about as Yeah. I mean, capability. I teach this as a class to high school students. I am confident you can do it. Yeah.
No, that would be great. I mean, you might be open to we do need to work more efficiently. You need to check with CA, see what they've got. Check with Mass GIS GIS to see what they've got. You also have um you have mentioned a
couple of others. Yeah. Dave Scott, we we put in a call to them, too. Yeah. So, you might want to have a conversation about their capabilities and then you can just we can get some costs together, weigh all of your options there. Yes. The second thing after we figured out
that we definitely want to go with somebody, um I still actually we should do an investigation into what it would take to get a couple of tablets for those of you doing inspections. Yeah. Cuz it doesn't you have a computer. You
don't have a a town laptop though. No. So we're not asking for an additional laptop. We'd be asking for a tablet to be used on site site inspections and that would be good to be able to use for the zoom too because well be then you could use for some
other but the justification would be for for if you're doing field work. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right. I don't know if there's any grants or anything that we could. So first first let's start the investigation. We we can start figuring out how to fund it later on.
Yeah. We do need that. Even uh even measuring devices, I mean, yeah, I mean uses a laser. I I use a measuring stick. One day I had to go out with the the one that we have in the office, the measuring tape, which
didn't have the end to clip onto anything. That was a night. So, we do need Yeah. definitely get uh a couple of things. So, just better equipment. We have sometime and I'm not going to put on the next
agenda, but you should come to us with a proposal for Okay. what kind of hardware you need. Yeah. Because I think you need hardware. We do. Mhm. We need um we need to get uh Jen uses her phone. I use my camera. We
got some cameras. We couldn't they were like cheap. We just need some quality. If you don't quality, they have a built-in camera. that well and we need the technology. There are iPads these days that come with a GPS locator in them.
Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Yep. And they're not they're not that much expensive, right? Yeah. I know. You know, we got to take our budgets, but if you were able to do some of that in house, it would
reduce the the the number of hours you're chasing people. Yeah. And I think and also the amount of contractor expense we have. Yeah. Right. I think it's a save in the end, but it does take a bit in the startup to
get that the way it needs to be. Right. But I'm looking at the cost of what we're paying vision and that goes up every year. So, if we can start doing some of that in-house, granted Denise is only 19 hours, but even if we
discuss, we'll probably have that discussion at some point in the future about maybe more hours. If we could do more hours, that'd be really useful. Yeah. Yeah. It's not on the agenda, so I'll talk about it today, but we we probably should talk about that. Just something that
sooner rather than later. Yeah. Yeah. Because that's essentially where out of growth is. And it's amazing just getting out and inspecting, driving around. We see so much that
Well, and imagine if Denise went out and had it all collected and didn't have to deal with a bunch of transfers in the office. Right. Yeah. The knowledge is already transferred. Yeah. Right. Well, thank you for the GIS.
Great. Uh, it was as short as I could make it. Exciting. Well, no, it's good. And then, but it's exciting to think we could actually automate and and and streamline some of the stuff that I I have been hoping that when they hire a land use director that would be
something that they bring on, but it's been a while, right? Um, anything else? Okay. Postpone topics. The criteria for clause 18, we still need to keep that on
the list. Um, and that's the income uh levels for clause 18. Um, we actually need to figure out how to put that together. We have had no one try and I think one
of the reasons is we don't have any guidelines. Nobody really knows about it. So, clause 18 will be created if we need it. We don't have it right now. Yeah. So, I want to keep it on the list. Yeah. Okay.
I I want to u the policies binder. We actually talked about the policies earlier. I brought the binder. I remember that. So, we need to add the the chapter land to that. Yeah. Because that's not in that and add some other stuff. Well, and you said you have a lot of this stuff online.
We do on the one drive. So, it's very easy to just add add it into. Right. At least we've got a starting point with that binder and Ron was kind enough to share that with us. Most of it's a lot of the modules and stuff that he's added
added in but there is no chapter lane section there which cuz he doesn't have any in ever they don't have chap. Yeah that's different. Um, I can add the um the website
also for a u postpone topic if you want because I'm not sure. We're we're kind of working with Carol and she has time and we took it off the list only because we needed to basically put a stake in the ground and say here's our starting point and u I think it's worthwhile to put it
back on as potential. Yep. Mhm. Uh anything else? upcoming meetings. This ought to be fun. So, sorry. So, well, Linda's not available from the 8th.
She said to the 18th. 18th, right? I'm not I'm not available from the 18th till the 22nd. And I know the 24th was a conflict. So, Sarah had a problem with the 24th. Our next meeting will be the 1st in October. So,
maybe Um, yeah. I can't. I can't. No, I know. Yeah. Um, there's no way we could do one sooner cuz you're going to be gone and there's no way we could do it through the 24th. We could do it on
something other than the Thursday if we had to. I mean, other than a Wednesday, but I don't know when that would be because I you you just basically got to count me out from the 24th to the 26th. It's just not possible for me. Um,
no. I'm sorry. No, that's fine. The 29th, by the way, the reason we're having this discussion is there are only two members. We really had to have the forum and we really need a third member. So, anybody that's sitting here watching us
do this, please consider submitting your name as a potential. We really need a third person. Yeah, we uh we get we've gotten a lot of work done. Um there's still a lot to do as you can
tell. So, thank you. Sorry, didn't mean to do the political announcement. Oh, uh 29th or the 30th. 29th is a Monday. It's a Monday. I have the first scheduled, but I can
move that October 1st. Uh well, what's the difference between the 29th? There's not much difference. It's not it's not worthwhile. So, let's just go ahead with the first October 1st and we will have an executive session right on that. We will need to have an executive session because I hopefully we'll be
reviewing Yeah. eight or more uh sen senior means senior means and tested and we should have the report from Mr. Trello. We should by then. Yes. We hope cuz it's October. I know they've been Yeah, I know they've
been working on it and we've probably been pushing it. I'll make sure if if it comes out earlier, you can send it to us. Yeah. And and we can review it so we're a little more prepared. Actually, if you hear anything that says they're going to delay, please let us know that as well. Yeah. Yeah. I have not heard anything
and I know that they've been actively working on and we've even had this surprise of these functional and economic obsolescent adjustments too, but Okay. So, we're going to go ahead with October 1st as our next one. How about October 15th? Is that a problem for anybody?
Okay, we'll leave the remainder of them out there and and uh we'll see you on the first. Yeah. Okay, I'll see you tomorrow. Sounds good. Uh is there anybody from the public on
I don't see anybody. No, it's just us participating. Uh any further board comment? No. Nothing else? No. Then I would entertain a motion to adjurnn. Motion to adjurnn. I'll second. All in favor?
I. 8:25. According to that clock, you can shut