we're gonna stop that till you're h there i am okay okay did all of you receive the minutes of the last meeting yes I did not that I sent out to you i did not bob Gross oh I sent it to you
i sent it that was yesterday I believe or Monday i don't remember which or Tuesday okay well let's start we're going to start with David anyway and we're going to do the u the minutes and all at the end so uh David let's start with you and
your greater and the tractor where are we at on it please did everybody get the email uh link for that the letter that I wrote all the
information was on that okay that was the one where the Milton was 426475 yes yeah okay also had the the lease program on there as well i saw it did everyone see that
i don't know that I did when you know Dave may I make a suggestion when you send us anything date it the email was 312 yeah mine came through not as an email well an email but it's a letter so it doesn't have a date on it i've got an
email at 3 the March 12th yeah see I don't have that i have the same thing you have maybe the office okay so um anyways the the cat graater was Yeah little bit more uh and then the
John Deere uh came in very similar uh only a little less mhm their lease programs are a little different the cat the cat I believe was a monthly and the John Deere was a yearly
program and I talked to Chris from the District 2 DOT and he said "We can use capital plan uh chapter 90 money to pay for the lease." That's if we choose to yeah but I mean then you don't have it
for something else you need it for right the roads and maybe some other projects that we might have yep i haven't done anything with preapproval for roads yet because I was waiting to see what how this would turn out mhm
okay i've also found Tim's I think I sent that to you uh I s found Tim's uh proposal or bid for the tractor that we have that we want to fix up or fix and he came up with around
$7,000 to fix that yeah I think it's Yeah I got it here 7500 yep um and he said the tractor was only worth 45 um but doesn't mean we still can't fix it um I did get a bid on a a K Cabota
from Brookside over in Philipsson that was $33,000 for that tractor came with two other attachments that we don't have but that tractor would support all the attachments that we have in the yard i was information that I collected
together we appreciate it very much you did a lot of lot of work on this so this one that one would be in addition or whatever you we're going to do would be in addition to the new zeroturn mower yeah the zeroturn mower is is is definitely something that we need that
other tractor we fixed up just before we stored it it cost us quite a bit of money before we stored it okay may I ask what a zeroturn mower is i mean I know what mentally I'm
picturing it but you know what it would do by the name but is that what it would do bob you have an answer for that yeah well we know it's a zeroturn motor is a mower you sit on and it it you can go right up to a tree or hopefully without hitting it then you can turn around 180
degrees or whatever number degrees you want to turn because of the way it's organized in it transmission so it's very efficient quick way to mow uh they're pretty much all the commercial guys use them now and uh you know if the other one's worn out and Dave says we we
need a new one because we probably have to mow the grass over at the library now too i I guess u that's something I think that we should that I would personally support i have some questions about some of the other items but um that's a that
that kind of money I think I could support in in as a part of our capital uh outlay this year uh my questions if I may continue about the we had the greater on the schedule for I think 27 28
um and I talked to Tim about the grater and I talked to um the guys down at Ammeris Welding where Dave Dave you got a bid from them from Darren down there right to do what Dave please um that was just to fix the hydraulic leaks all the
you know the pistons that are leaking um and there's some welding that needs to be done on the mole board and um they just said that there was some repairs that can be done to it uh it's not a new mboard it's the the mole board is bent
out on both ends from years of grading so we have to put washers in there to straighten out so that the blade won't break when we go to use it so the blades don't sit flat on a bowl anymore on either end so they they said they would try to
straighten that out so that you know the blades would sit flat but it's not a new bowl new bowl anyway so after talking to Tim and talking to uh Darren down Valley Welding Ammeris Welding you know that as Dave knows those mold boards always get bent
because you hit a piece of ledge and uh that because of the way the thing is built it uh it bends it and so you got to straighten it or replace it with a used one but you know excuse me i'd like to see um a little I'd like to see our
our present greater being used for another year or two and then maybe look into used like we did in the past because that money is it's a very significant amount of money we're talking Dave and uh for the amount of greater we use I know we need more of a greater more greater than say Pelum
because we have more dirt roads than Pelum i don't know how we compare to leverage but uh I would like to see more time i'd like to see that our greater or present greater just fixed up for the kind of money we're talking and you know sort of limp through another year or two and then find find and study this this
issue deeper uh before we put a brand new greater i I don't like the idea of you dipping into your your uh state money for the greater either because hey you need that for the roads and but you don't have to do that if you pull the money out we got to take put more money
in somewhere else so uh I think the way you're using the money now is has been workable for the town so again I think the leasing idea unless the the state is willing to give us some additional support I don't think is a it's a great one considering the numbers that you've
got out here on your on your document um as far as the tractor goes I I really support fixing the old tractor and you know I know you've had a hard time uh finding somebody that would do the work for us but uh you know that K Cabota sounds on the surface it sounds like a
pretty decent deal but depends on how hard the damn thing's been beat you know the I don't know if he went down there to to to look at it but um that's a pretty small tractor depending on who owned it they might have really beat on it uh but it does sound like a
reasonable I don't know how many hours are on it do you know off the top of your head no I just I asked him how much it was so I I did go down there and look at it it's a very clean tractor yeah you did yeah and what does it got for implements besides the bucket or It's
got a front bucket and it has a snowblower attachment for the back and it also has uh another attachment i believe it's I don't know if it's a broom or what kind attachment that was and you got a broom on your on the loader ner does that work we No we have
one for the tobacco um that we use yeah so that that's my take on this Dave is uh I would like to make sure you're well equipped on there but I I think I'd like to hold off a table to the the greater for this year
bob as you remember these are guesstimates as to when the things have to be bought there it's not set in stone i understand that i I do understand that just for the people who are new on the committee you know it was a big spreadsheet we can't manage to find a
copy of it but and it had every year and a guesstimate as to what we would be replacing yeah um this the first we've heard of this particular issue uh you know since we bought the last one used so that I
did take the time to talk to Tim and to talk to of course meet with Dave and that's my take okay okay bob George has his hand up uh before I start with my question um that whole
schedule I hope that after we've made our decisions about the request for this year and we've wrapped it up that we can have more meetings to kind of work on that because I looked at it and our numbers are wildly off and the years are going to be a little off but the numbers are definitely Oh yeah they need
everything yeah everything's gone up so high yeah we've got we had the grater for at $90,000 and so we weren't even close so I want to talk about the grater um I mean my first reaction to the tractor is sounds like you put some work
into it maybe we put a little more work into it and make that last if we can that's my first thought but we can talk more about that i'm definitely in support of the zeroturn mower um I'm in support of the grater but how we're going to it is an very expensive item
and what's intriguing to me here is we have an opportunity a different way to finance it than we have um for any other items that we purchase in this town and and that is the chapter 90 now I know how essential chapter 90 is to our town
and I know that it's increased in recent years if I'm not mistaken Dave and you can correct me on that um to what extent of the chapter 90 you get can you live without it so for
instance I I'm throwing out numbers if chapter 90 is $100,000 and you tell us I can get by with 70 the lease will be 40 or 50 annually can we make up the difference in your operating budget for the years
during the lease so let me try and rephrase that so if it's 100,000 and you say you can live without you could make it work with 70 but the lease payment is going to be 40 a year then really you're short
$10,000 and so we could make that up in your operating budget during the years of the lease and that would take and we can use cash to cover that because that would be a small amount even it was 20 or 30 a year we could use cash for those years it would be temporary use of cash
we could keep it out of the operating budget and the question is to what extent can you live without chapter 90 money and and and just to frame all this we are experiencing and I'm sure you're all aware of very difficult year in balancing the budget on the finance
committee we have a $360,000 deficit right now and still numbers are coming in and none of them of course don't help us and so we're trying to manage that as well right um to answer your question um
Chapter 90 money can be used for a portion of it um like you mentioned it could be used for one year and then figure out how we can make the payments for the next four years if we decide we can't afford the
greater with this lease program you can give the greater right back and you don't owe any money on it so there is a way out if you have problems if we have def you know some situations with that so this this lease program is
designed for that out if you need it after the five years you pay a dollar and you own it so you only pay five years on it the first payment on the CAT grader is the trade the $12,000 for the
old grader we don't have this year yeah and John Deere is giving us $20,000 for a grater that's not even worth 12,000 um on this particular grater that we or we're hoping to get um they're the 385
right yes yep um and that and that's the total cost of what we pay they've the cat graater I don't the cat I think it was a John Deere grader on the on the original it was $700,000 for that machine they took off 200 and
something thousand they wanted to try to be competitive with CAD and they beat him um this grater that we have we've had since 1998 so it was a used graater in
1998 and it's 40 years old so it's on borrowed time if something if we decide to wait now say another year we don't know how high the cost of these graders are going to
go you don't know if that grader is going to make it and I don't know if any any of you have looked at the numbers on what it costs to rent a grader or to have somebody grade the roads for us you gave it to us in your letter i did and it's super expensive
$19,000 one bid to grade the roads once the year was here somewhere there it is there's another one that's $12,000 but they don't include the roller the roller is $7,000 on top of that that's to have someone else grade the roads for you the
lease is $12,000 mhm yeah i mean not least but rent a a grader for $12,000 a month the amount of time that it would take to grade all of the roads is more than a month you know you you're looking
at I can't tell you how we graded the roads probably two and a half times last year with that grater and I'm gingerely using that grater right now because our roads are down were down to the ledge because
the roads have not they've been neglected for years and you know you guys were so uh generous in giving us extra money to help build up the roads and we using hopefully the right material this time and we have been building them up but
we're still we still have some places where the greater it stops the greater dead when you hit the ledge and with that mboard and with the how old the gearing is on that machine um if it does go down and we don't have a backup we're going to be renting a
grater or we're going to be hiring someone to take care of those roads so that's that's just a and and so so what happens if um and I understand Bob's thinking because you know you know it is an
expensive machine um I can't imagine it going down in one or two years from now that cost of that machine going down and the difference between the machine that we have and the machines that I'm looking at is the machines I'm
looking at are they have safety features on the mole board so if you were to hit a piece of ledge with the Mboard it automatically releases the blade so so that there's no reaction time in between and it won't bust up the
machine it won't hurt the machine but that grater that we have now is everything's manual on it so it's it requires a quick reaction on the driver's part to make sure that the machine doesn't get damaged i can't
train the new guys that I have on that grater because I don't feel it's safe enough for them and like I said I think the grater is on bar time i I do understand Bob's thinking and I I totally understand the reservation
especially when you have a deficit of 3 $300,000 which I didn't know about till today um the the green tractor I'm look I'm willing to try to see if I can get that fixed but we are without a tractor right now we don't have any way of blowing our roads down with it with the
blower that we have because we don't have a machine to use it we have to borrow a tractor from another town to hook up our blower so we blow the leaves off the roads right now we're just we're living by on our dirt roads so I'm not I'm not trying to persuade
you either way i'm just trying to give you the information you need to make the right decision however you just you you guys decide that that's fine we'll work with what whatever we have um but I will say that our maintenance budget this year I
mean you guys had to give us extra money because of of an older pickup truck that we have um the one ton we had some work done to that that still needs more work we didn't quly fix the pickup truck now we got to come up with money
to fix that tractor um the zeroturn if we can get that that that would be a big help um and I also appreciate your concern about that too we can use the other zeroturn until we
you know we can use it to like make up for mowing on the sides of the roads in areas where it's really rough we could use it like a flail mower type thing on the edges so that we don't beat up our diamond mower we've had issues with that we put thousands of dollars into that
cuz the computer didn't last um so I mean I'm just saying when I started this position I wasn't starting in a good position most towns most towns have two tractors two mowers
um most towns I know we're a backwoods town but Lever has four tractors um and they've lent two of them to us so that we can at least get our leaves blown off the dirt road so when we go to grade we're not trying to grind the
leaves into the road and so anyways that that's where we're at as far as our equipment um I hate to keep repairing this grater and putting more money into this grater because it's 40 years old but that's up to you guys i
mean like I said David all we do is make a recommendation to the fincom it's up to the fincom to figure out how to how to how to finance it and George you have your hand up again I believe or did it never come down yeah no my No I put it back up um
well so I guess I was confused about the tractor because I thought that you might be able to get it fixed and get it operational again and it was more a question of do we want to spend that money or get a new one and I'm just hoping that I'm wondering if we could repair it soon and get it back into operation and if you're telling me that
it's it can't be and you're going to have to wait months before you can use it that changes my equation yeah that that tractor I don't know how long it would take to fix it all the pumps all the pumps need to be replaced on it the tractor needs to be split in half and the pumps need to be replaced on it tim
took it out and he had some work done to it it cost over $4,000 and it came back and it wasn't working it wouldn't go forward wouldn't go in reverse it wouldn't do anything and and he said the tractor was only worth $4,500 which I don't I'm not sure if I agree with that i think those old tractors are super
tractors um but it it I don't know i have I haven't quite got to the point where I've talked about fixing that tractor yet because I wasn't sure where our budget would be at the end of the year um the beginning of the year yep I can get it right in there you know July
and get it right in there but we need it now well you can come to the finance committee um and talk to and you know another fin transfer if that's what it takes okay i'll work on I'll work on getting some estimates for that tractor yeah and
contact AJ you have AJ's email or Bob yeah I got Bob's yeah yeah and Bob's and yeah let's talk about that um certainly don't want to leave you without a tractor so one of the questions I had earlier um is that reasonable to think that you
could live without some of your chapter 90 money and we could finance the lease through the chapter 90 and then the finance committee to some extent can make up for that in your operating budgets that would I think be financially one of the better ways if we
were going to approve the greater i think it's one of the better ways to uh finance it for that it'll be up to you and the finance committee not us no that's true that's true um but I can tell you this if I know that um you know this alternative exists it would be
helpful for me to make a decision yeah definitely you know I'm thinking about the finance side and I there's no question in my mind that we need a new grader and these graders take a serious beating and I know the new technology in the equipment is so much better and
safer and less prone to more breakdowns because that's what's going to happen if we keep the greater that we have now it's you're just taking a chance that the grater can get can go down during the middle of the the subgraating season
and then you don't have the option all you have the option to do is either rent a grater which is going to cost you $12,000 which is ridiculous I think and that's not counting the delivery and the pickup of the grater that's just lease of the I mean the
rental of the grater um I know it's two hours away to get a grater down here yeah it also it's not gonna it's going to you know impede in the flexibility of your time especially if you have an urgent need for it yeah there is a possibility that if something did happen
we could borrow a greater but then we're fighting with the schedule of whatever town we borrow it from and then if something happens to it do we feel do we feel obligated to fix it because it broke while we were using it um could we
rent it to other to other towns i don't know if we get a new one we might as well make some money with it yeah I like you thinking um Lebert has a grater it's a lot newer than ours um and New Salem has a grater that's a lot
newer than ours um so there is a possibility i mean there's I have a good relationship with Matt and I have a good relationship with Aaron there is a a possibility that we could borrow the grater for a day or two here and there uh to to you know somehow get it in
between their schedule of their grading matt just pulled his graater out today i was going to pull mine out on Monday and take a look at it get it all greased up take another look at it and you know and then see what we can do i can get by with the leaky pistons it's the mboard
that I'm worried about the the big pipe that that actually supports the moard is busted off on one end it's it's actually a good two and a half inches round so it's a big uh bar that
holds that Moboar together and it's broken on the ditch side so that's why I'm concerned about that but I I could probably conceivably get Amoris Welding to weld that i don't know if they would you know because there there there are certain things
that they won't work on because they can't guarantee their work um but the writing's on the wall it's this year next year the year after i I can tell you um and I you talked about the chapter 90 money we have
$344,000 of chapter 90 right now available to us and I just found out we have a 230 something,000 coming to us this year oh and you don't have to use the chapter 90 money every year you can you can get
preapproved for the first year and then you can try to get preapproved for the second year if you if you feel you still need to use the chapter 90 money at that point um so that there's flexibility there so then it sounds like you might be able to manage the paving of the
roads and the maintenance of the roads while also dedicating some of that 90 money chapter 90 money to the lease yeah uh excuse me can I speak up here a little bit to all due respect to to Dave
and to George I did look into this i did talk to to uh cameras welding i did talk to uh Tim I did talk I didn't talk to Steve because I don't he's not available for me to talk to but I know that he didn't uh bring this forward to our committee last year and I never
mentioned it to me when I was on person to to him so you know again I just want to repeat briefly that I think we could fix this it's a reasonable amount of money 168 I think was the estimate and uh it's a very simple machine they don't
according to Tim according to Stony according to uh Rick over in Pelum there's not a you know there's not a lot of technology in these older machines which is one of the benefits of the machines frankly uh the newer machinery with with lots of sophisticated digital technology is much more difficult and
expensive to repair i know that the day wants to upgrade is greater i just think we should wait and have a very modest investment and we'll still have a used greater that we could sell yeah if there's an emergency and our greater is broke there's ways of dealing with it uh
and I fully support the highway department and I want the tractor to be repaired the green tractor if it's possible i know Dave does too uh I also would support the mower but I think we should put this table this particular item uh and and and and do some more
research and one of the things we haven't really investigated is it takes time to do is used uh what what's the market what what's the cost what's how's that option uh play out uh for the town and that could save us a couple
hundred,000 which is not insignificant so I would like to uh suggest that's what we do here yeah that's that's will come when we discuss this probably next week Bob right now we're just trying to gather the information does anyone else have any
questions okay very good okay David thank you very much you're welcome and I And if you if anybody needs that letter that I wrote if they haven't received it just let me know yeah please if you could send out
all that documentation one more time it would be okay all the all the current stuff don't send the one you sent initially that you know initial one with the estimates for the I actually deleted the first I got it right here i deleted the first one yeah you deleted the first
one the I just wanted to mention too that the new graater comes with a uh plow to help in the winter time and a wing plow to push snow bankings back this year I had to drive the front end loader on the snowbank and push the snow bankers back
i saw you doing that on Baker Road it you have to do that very carefully because those tires on the grater are worth a lot of money and if I blow one of those tires trying to push the snow bankanking back uh it would have cost
the town and then we would have been out overloaded to load the trucks and to use to plow with so I just wanted to mention that because I the lo the loader isn't new and just so you know some of those some
of the tires that are on the loader have slashes on the on the outside of the tires so I had to take I had to do that very gingerly i wouldn't let the other guys do it i just did it myself because I knew we needed to push the snow bankings back because they weren't able to get
the the snow over the bankans um so anyways there's an advantage to that new greater and and there's one more thing that's an advantage to it is the one thing that people are concerned about is crowning on the road the Burkhog has
been talking about it there's a lot of conversation about crowning on the roads and stuff the old graater is done by eye there's no way of knowing what you have for a percentage of a crown on the road the new braiders have the
technology to make sure that the crowns are crowned properly and if they are crowned properly use you lose less material on the roads i hate to lose any of the material that you guys spent the money on and I'm working on getting the roads
sprayed and I talked to Matt over in Lever and him and I are just putting our heads together to figure out how we can get a roller so we can roll the roads if you roll the roads you won't lose the material and they'll stay longer and you won't have to grade them as much so that that's just I just want to throw that
out there um thank you very much for considering Okay i do notice also Dave that you're talking about the need for new tires on the grater the tires on the grater cannot be fixed anymore so we have I have one I have one
spare that cannot be fixed either but they will put that tire on on one of the rims so we have one spare if we lose any more than one tire bald then we're going to have to buy all new tires for that grater and feel free
to find out how much those greater tires cost you're looking in the thousands i'm talking tens of thousands to buy six new tires for the greater wow so that's just about Thanks for asking that question by the way okay thank you David
you're welcome are you due to leave now yeah I I uh told them that I was running a little late but that's fine yeah because I was watching I'm watching my watch thinking to get you out if you need to be out thank you i just wanted to let you guys know that you know Bob and I
met with uh the principal and the superintendent i thought it was a great meeting um and it seems like this is going to be a process that we're going to have to go like this might be a couple years um I've reached out to uh Dennis Clark
uh seems like the next step is to try to get a consultant in to kind of figure out how to make this driveway uh mo most efficient um I reached out to uh the building committee i reached out to Ann
Cook and Stephen Dalamus just to see if they have any leads um I haven't heard back from anybody haven't heard back from the from Dennis Clark um but um yeah you know I thought it was great super
productive um I did meet with Ann on the we so we met I met with Bob on Wednesday i met with Ann and Matt Foster on Friday and we just kind of walked around the building a bit he Matt did point out a couple windows in the library that are
um need some attention there's some rot on some of the sills on the interior part the exterior seems like it was fixed over the summer but just some some parts in the interior that need to be looked at so we're going to figure out that um but yeah just wanted to let you
know and Bob probably has has some some stuff to say too yeah I'll just add to that Nate uh yeah we had a nice meeting me the superintendent the principal and Nate met and we talked about the driveway the parking lot of school and yeah uh this one thing I forgot to
mention to Dave while he was here uh talked to Tim about that issue too and in the past the town has done that that kind of work where the highway department is sort of the contractor uh we got a as asphalt company down the
road usually works for us warner Brothers All State there's a guy that works for them down there his name is uh doesn't matter remember his first name but his last name's Hoo he runs their estimating he's going to have to come up and meet with us dennis could do the
prep work with his excavator he's a real master at that uh pulling off the the asphalt that the town can trunk it to a recycling uh mill that that doesn't charge to accept the material and then do the grading needs to be done so we got to put that together in a package so
we can uh get that work done present it next year so I think that's we we'll work together and Good that's good thank you both of you all of you for that you okay sign out thanks yeah byebye good night okay
now we have to start with the Lake Wyola associate advisory committee and uh Mark is here I think but I don't see a picture but that's okay and Frank here it comes hi Mark hey hi and Frank is in
there no people are jumping around my screen yeah right a little bit hard there okay okay now as I understand it there are some definite problems at the dam and you
apparently have already spent some money to get a a pretty good um review of the issues now I know CPA met the other day did you meet with them i I I met with them about three or four weeks ago yeah
and uh made it uh and uh I put in an application for CPA funding to cover 25% of the cost uh for the engineering work that's that would be done next this year in preparation for the actual repair
work the following year okay so then we have and you say the 75% remaining is expected come from a grant from the office of dam safety we're hoping that we're hoping right and those funds just got opened
up about three or four days ago and so our dam engineering company GZA out of Springfield is going to be applying for that grant if um if we don't get the grant I'm not exactly sure what happens but everyone is well there's a good will
let me make a suggestion to you i was talking with Gabe about this because to me the logical thing to do and and to the two of you on the fincom uh would be for us perhaps to approve
the $41,000 with the provision that if it does if it isn't needed for the grant you get the grant then we keep it and apply it to the work that'll be done in the next year thereby keeping reducing the amount that we'll have the town will have to
spend next year when that's a lot of work and a lot of money y and to me that made that made a lot of sense because that way we will have it and we just hold it if we don't if you don't and if hopefully we don't need it hopefully you
get the grant and then that's 40ome thousand that can just be applied to it and reduce the amount of the appropriation or the borrowing for the next year is that something I need to do or that No no no no no nothing you need to do okay when the if it is approved by
FINCOM the article will be written in such a way that it will state that it's to be used for you know the uh three 75% of the funding for the planning uh and then there's a a provision in in the
article that will say it will be held should it not be needed it would be held over to the next year to be applied to the actual work okay because Gabe Gabe knows how to word that stuff i don't but uh we it was I had all of a sudden thought to me that made a lot of sense
because you know we've got to guarantee that you have the money to do the engineering at this stage because if you don't then we've got a bigger problem we all have a bigger problem and George has his hand up so in in regards to um
paying for this initial cost in that grant why couldn't we ask the C CPA for the full amount and then if we get the grant the CPA would only have to fork over 13775 instead of the full
amount uh I don't know the answer to that question i was you know this this is what the CPA recommended that I apply for was for the 13K and and and they like the idea of getting matching money but you know the CPA I I guess I don't
have a sense of how much is in their coffers and but certainly um I wrote the CPA grant application you know in such a way that you know the project totally qualifies for CPA funding yeah that's really important and they
have a lot of money from what I can tell um they've got I know that they forked over 130 something for the track in Ammerst but they were they were approaching $400,000 so I imagine they would have the funds
but if that's a recommendation that certainly you have to follow it right Mark but um it just seems to me that um if the grant money doesn't come through CPA if it qualifies at 13775 it can qualify for the whole amount and I'm
wondering if it's not too late to ask them if they could be our backs stop instead of the finance committee and the other thing I want to mention too is looking at and and I was trying to pull it up right now looking at the expense report that we see and looking at the balances of our different funds which I
look through as a member of the finance committee we have $45,000 set aside for the dam 35 of it is called dam permitting and 10% is called dam project and I remember a number of years ago Becky the former town administrator said "This project's coming we should throw
some money at it and and put some money aside for it is what I meant to say and so we have $45,000 on the sidelines that I think we can also access for this project so if this portion of the and my final
point if this portion of the project qualifies for CPA what about the next phase of the project when we get into construction would that qualify for CPA funding and then of course does the state have grants for that kind of work too because the state has a lot at stake
here right this isn't just a Shootsbury issue this affects everybody downstream yeah um it's hope it was the original hope was that we would get the 44,000 or so from the office of dam safety and then we would get
75% of the construction cost from the same group okay so that you know that's that's the goal i want to get as much out of the state as possible yeah if they do those two things we're golden yeah because that if that was a you know the the the guesstimate was 150k for the
damn actual repairs and improvements now God knows when they wrote this that was recently this is very recently november but you still don't know what's how you know how numbers change and Yep everything else agreed so yeah if we
were to get 75% that's a rather nice amount that would be that with the 45 we have in hand and the 13 coming from CPA um it would have no impact on the tax rate
well uh it depends on where we put the 40 if we put the 40 in 40 with 41 okay you you confused me no I'm saying if you know if we get the grant for the Yeah oh yeah right okay yep right and we've
already got 45 towards the remaining Yeah 125,000 or whatever it would be then um the 75% grant if that covers part of that then we've got more than enough money because the 45,000 would be more than 25% of that cost that's all
I'm saying i'm being optimistic yeah not I know I shouldn't be but No no we've got to be we've got but at the same time we've got to be pessimistic enough to plan for an alternate or you have to finance committee has to plan for an alternate scenario yeah i you know again
I think there's a lot of money in the CPA funds and I think whatever the town has to whatever portion the town will have to fund I think we can get it from the CPA it's I want to look there first um we don't know what else they have in hand matteo may have a different take on
it but Last I checked they had a substantial amount of money in that account but we don't know what they have planned either or what they have requests i don't know well we know that we know that most things generally aren't of a a
magnitude like this right right but um except that they did no question are bringing to town or already did a special town meeting 136,000 was it for the track so we know about that i'll get you the number but we don't
have to dwell on it now very good yeah did I speak very good okay any other any questions bob you have a question yeah I have a a comment or a question first of all it's good to be pessimistic because when you're wrong it's good you got to be ready so but I just want
to be clear about what this application should be to us for the article i mean can we sort that out tonight or within the next week or something because that's important for us to establish i mean I hear all these funding options but what we need to know is how much can
we ask for from town meeting so maybe George and Mr rivers can Mark can figure that out we're not going to be concerned with anything from fiscal 27 we're looking at fiscal 26 yeah I know what we're looking for then is the is the uh
engineering type piece so that's the uh total of it' be 41 325 right approximately what do we need to ask at town meeting that's what we have to establish here that's what figure out figure out question yeah and that's
actually up to fin right well it's up to fin to figure out where to get it but we need to know what it is well y well we on paper we know it's 155 in total at least that's the initial estimate Oh no that's the year
following right now we're just doing the engineering for this year oh I was looking at that as two pieces and the first one was this year yeah the first one is this coming year and then the And so it'll be so 26 will
be the the uh what is it 55,000 and 27 and that's not us that's the total total amount roughly oh I see no I thought the 150 you're right i thought the 150 included the 55 no that's on on the she one of the pages
document this is a $25,000 project right got it no and so that's and we're looking at that for the next fiscal year and I would very much appreciated the fact that they told us that that would be in the next fiscal
year and it was done that way on the document from the uh from the company so I just like from my point of view I'd like to know what you know what the CPA is going to provide to you with uh what if you can give us that number we can
then figure from there yeah the CPA is going to uh was going to give me 25% of the $55,000 which is 13,75 and then we were hoping for from the office of dam safety the
$41,325 to give it to to get to the total of 55,000 that's for the preliminary work the engineering that's for u for um design permitting and construction planning that's what you said in your letter yep
but that grant money won't be in hand though until when i mean is it do you have any notion about that oh I think that's that's this year yeah it just got released but uh it's it's my understanding that you know in you know a few months that'll be
available awarded and who who files that uh application um the GZA our engineering company is going to is going to file that and they have a grant group that applies for grants all the time so yeah so that when will we know that grant will be approved i mean that's
important information for us um I don't know that I don't have an answer to that but I can find out if you'd like i appreciate that very much now that's why I suggested that we apply we we you know suggest that we take the do the
41,000 and then we could roll it over against the 150,000 the next year in in Mark's letter of January 22nd he says the actual affairs which currently are projected to cost 150,000 are expected to take place in 26 most likely in the
fall which is fiscal 27 right so I think that the finance committee has enough money to backs stop the CPA or the and even the the grant right in hand yeah I think so yes we can file for the grant and we have a backs stop and the finance committee in our expension report we
have that account that holds uh No this will be next year this We have it in the account now yeah I know but it's not Which account what account are you talking about our expense report we have an account that was appropriated yeah the uh We have a fund emergency
emergency money that you people can help fund but you're not doing it in 25 we're doing it in 26 yeah but we have the money now it could be spent in 26 on i don't know that it can i don't know your I can tell you that we have a special
fund set up that we funded years ago and actually I'm looking and there's three of them and so one is called draw down permitting $26,000 you were talking about so maybe we can or cannot access this for this I don't know Mark
something for you to think about maybe and then something called consultant permitting that's $35,000 and then and dam consultant permitting and then another one called Lake Wyola Dam project 10,000 if we have access to those funds for this project because they're not sitting in operating
account they're sitting in special funds that as far as I know are not being used $71,000 right there so and the reason I raised my hand is I want to ask a a different question beyond the financing and it is our job as Ellen said to
decide whether we want to move forward with this project or not what happens if we say no are you asking me yeah uh well it all it all depends um best case scenario is the
is the dam will continue to deteriorate uh but it's uh but it's not going to burst it's not going to break um um worst the next opt uh scenario is that we get hit with a micro burst like we did in I think it was
1998 and and the dam starts it starts over topping the dam in that case it's because of the concrete on top is not is not stable anymore there's a fair chance of that way the dam could wash out and be a catastrophic failure probability of
that is very low i mean you know what's a chance of getting I think there's no way that we get out of this this is something we want to do yeah that's I think so too but I I still want to ask the question you know it just feels like it's a question we should be asking i agree i totally support this it's just the longer we
wait the more it's going to cost us think of it as routine maintenance and uh um and it's something that's should have been done probably six years ago i did that actually yeah uh and but we had there was no kind of leadership to drive it at that point in time um thank
you for your efforts Marco we appreciate it no no no problem glad I'm glad to help i keeping the lake full there's a gentleman on fin may I suggest that maybe George you talk to someone and
find out those three accounts exactly what they were to cover and for what yeah how flexible are we with those yeah exactly that's what I'm saying yeah yeah no I will i'll ask Gabe gail i'm going to reach out probably I'll ask I'll talk to Gabe about it but I'll
probably ultimately go to Gail yeah I'm not sure it's not going to be until Wednesday she's not coming in on Tuesday so and I'm not sure if Gabe will know unless uh unless Becky you know had you know pretty good notes
well she might talk to Gail about it yeah that's why I was thinking that Gail probably Yeah well G Gail usually works on Mondays doesn't she no she's Tuesday Thursday okay but she she's gonna be up in Maine on Tuesday she's visiting family for a few days so she'll be in on
Wednesday of this coming i might just send her an email anyways i could just give her a snapshot of the three accounts and say because I would be much more comfortable knowing how much of that money could really be used or is it totally really tightly earked i'll I'll I'll send a screenshot of those accounts
and say how much flexibility do we have i'll send her the contract and say please look at the section about the costs can we use this good that would be these costs or are there specific costs and well I'll try and get good answer from her on that that would be wonderful yeah and if if she can't give me an
answer I can probably fill in some of the blanks i'll see see you on the email okay great any other questions on this one i'm almost I'm just thankful it's not the 150,000 this year no we were trying
to plan in advance and Yeah well we appreciate that and we appreciate your your work in getting CPA money and and the and in finding the grant we really do thank you
Frank do you have anything to say you're muted you're muted Frank we can't hear you sorry about that i have nothing to say on the dam i have something related to the Shootsberry Elementary School parking lot that's why I came on oh
that's why I had Mano but yeah I can after Mark's finished I can bring that up if you'd like okay that's fine okay Mark do you have anything else uh nope so my only follow-up item is to find out when the grant will be issued if and we get it or not but when's what's the
projected date that they get release the funds no they must have a a due date for the application so that's at least a start right i'll tell find out and I will send that to George or who should I send that to oh you can send it to me
that's fine and then we'll for he'll forward it out actually and CCL is probably why so the two of us Thank you i appreciate that yeah so we all at least we have coverage back up very good we appreciate your work on it though yes we do Mark we appreciate your flexibility with these meetings too no
problem glad to help great okay uh then Frank you wanted to say something yeah in reference to the um Shoes Elementary School parking lot before it's paved and Bob might be able to help me i don't know if it was Chief
Tibbitz or Chief Lenny brought up using sisterns cuz the drains uh the downspout drains from all the gutters go underground and out to the field and one of the chiefs and I don't remember who brought up the idea of
putting sisterns in to have have a water reserve because there's no water in that end of the town it'd be great for the school help with insurance so I just wanted to bring it up to capital planning and I I missed the last school meeting to bring it up then that if you do that type of huge paving you could
actually incorporate that and in the long run and it was something that one of the fire chiefs wanted for a source of water right now it just drains into a field and that whole parking lot drains into a field so may I ask that okay this is not going
to be considered this year no no no no no no right but may I suggest you pass it along to the school and when they write up their proposal for next year that perhaps they mention it there because there's no way we're going to remember
at least I'm not okay no okay that's good hey hey Frank uh we did talk about that i talked about with the principal of the superintendent and uh did mention that that was an idea that Lenny brought forward to uh I don't know to what committee came out in this committee but
in this committee something we have to study and make sure that if there's going to be drainage going into a tank and there's going to be a tank there's going to be a place for it and there's going to be a way to get the pipes conduits into it so that's definitely part of the project is that
consideration oh good okay did I miss that other Okay I appreciate that thank you all but but given your concern Frank it's probably a good idea that you you kind of monitor it too as time goes on and make sure that I will rather not put a nice pave parking lot and then dig it
up after the fact i see the state do that on roads okay thank you all thank you thank you for your concern bye bye okay now there are four of us left so we can still have a meeting and right now
um let's see the first thing we have to do is approve the minutes of February 27th that I sent out a couple of days ago did you receive them yes I received them and read them
bob did you receive them oh he's muted bob you're muted sorry I did find them out i'm gonna read okay and Michael's away so I don't know if he received them or not read them i read them just out of curiosity but I
can't say that I can approve them since I wasn't there yeah you have to abstain probably okay then so do I have a motion pertaining to the minutes i'll make a motion that we approve these u minutes uh do I have a second can I make a comment now or should I no wait till we
wait till we open it up so I'll give you the second second it okay now is there any discussion yeah uh on the in the minutes uh I don't know which paragraph this is but underneath the paragraph of DOT uh the highway request for a tractor for snow removal that that's what he said
that's what my notes said that's not really what it's for but it's it's for mowing and so forth but how did I get snow that's what the green tractor is for it's got for mowing machine and Okay I'll correct it so just a tractor would would suffice
yeah just keep it generic yeah okay i can I'll make that correction that's all I got okay any other corrections okay then all those in favor arbanitis i McKay I abstain okay so we will I will
send this then to the town clerk so she has a copy of it once I make the correction and now the next thing is to form our board since we haven't done it yet we've been meeting for two meetings now and you know we still haven't uh who's gonna be secretary who's four
people here huh we only have four here tonight uh because Nate had to leave to go to school committee so should we put off yeah oh yeah he's the chair and the secretary no don't do that hard enough for me to be both last for the for that
short meeting okay so what do we want to do i'd say we put it off to the next meeting well I I'm not I didn't take minutes i hope somebody did no I didn't i didn't recording the recording that was a thing
recording oh that's true the recorded but we're still supposed to submit written minutes well you can watch recording is Yeah I could in my abundant spare time what are you guys trying to do not get your real estate tax bills on time
well didn't we just I just paid No I don't guess you're right get those out yeah okay then okay we'll wait till next next week next month next week next meeting 27th our next meeting is the 27th yes i So I can't make Oh no no i
don't have a I don't have a date for the next one oh I haven't seen two okay when you know where I'm going to be on the 27th where i'm going to be in Hadley at the capital planning oh that's right that's that thing figure out how to sign in to to go to it yeah bob did you sign
up for that yeah I did i did i'm going too yeah so we're going to have a blast well you know hang up on John Tricky it's capital planning Ellen you got to you got to show up i know but Yeah it's uh you know best practices and capital planning yeah I tried to get on to it
but you know to sign in but it required me to have a state whatever which I don't have yeah I had trouble logging in too eventually I figured it out you don't have an account with MMA a Ellen no I never go to MMA oh well I think we should be able to get
that for you maybe Gabe can help you with that yeah well when you know John you know John Tricky at all no I don't know the name even he's the chair of the fin he's on the state he's on the finest committee organization part of MMA and
he he's he's running it I think pretty much so if I'll call him and see if he can send you an invitation yeah that would be great he's the one that told us about it yeah I saw I saw it come through but as soon as I hit MMA code or whatever I said I can't do this okay
Mike michael you might want to consider it too i don't know you're probably not a member of MMA no mixed martial arts is that what that No no it's It's like mixed martial arts political mixed martial arts okay then
when are we going to have a meeting gentlemen um how about the 3 april yeah that's doable for me what day of the week is that that is a Thursday april 3rd thursday in April thursday i
can make I can make George I'm looking i'm looking yes I can do that okay so 436 o'clock yeah so has to email Nate and see if he can make it would you do that Ellen or can you handle that oh
who nate yeah I'll email him soon as I get out of here okay okay but we'll still have a quorum okay then we can discuss all of the requests okay great very good one other thing we should talk about too Ellen tonight is
the um just briefly is the request for open checkbook oh I the problem with that is it okay under our bylaws bylaw that formed us section two indicates that it all officers boards
and committees including the select board and school committee shall by February 1st of each year give the committee on forms prepared by it information concerning projects so it has to be sponsored by a committee and because they're going to end up picking up the tab for for the yearly right
thing on my on their budget like I do you know that's why that's why the citizens that's why the citizens approached AJ and I think no that's why the citizens approached AJ because they knew that and yeah AJ was going to bring it to us and we have been inundated and
he's inundated and so it's been missed and so we can't do okay we can't do anything now because the due date was February 1 maybe next year so we got somebody but you know what you've got to realize is all the town all the big towns and all that have it have a whole
different accounting package and every package than we do they have munis and apparently it's easy to do munice with us we don't even know what the cost would be with through Vadar because there'll be a cost there of them linking
in as I stand it from Vadar will do it but I think we have to do it next year so might as well just table it well I honestly I don't think we have to no choice i I don't think we have to do it at all but it was requested and so I think formally we should acknowledge the
request now if they missed the demo um they did go to AJ with it and it's unfortunate that AJ didn't bring it here it's or me for that matter I guess because I knew about it um Okay i will tell you this Gail thinks
she has something better that costs nothing she does she printed it out for me today yeah I I think it works great and so we're finally going to talk about that on Tuesday and hopefully we're going to have more information and it's going to turn out to be as good if not
better it's certainly better because Gail will be able to keep private information out of it which was her and Gab's biggest concern um with good reason yeah yeah no no I'm not questioning that at all and um honestly I liked Open Checkbook because I saw the
real benefits of it we have departments come in with budgets to to to request for the future year and we can look at how they've been spending up to that point in time on our own um but it turns out Gail has basically the same information available to us and can
publish it every time she publishes the expense report so right I think that's the way it's going to go but I was trying to make the pitch Ellen that we should at least have the opportunity for the open checkbook to um to be purchased if that's the case but we'll let finance kick it around yeah please do and
furthermore we can't do anything this year through capital planning and it would just be the cost of the thing knowing that somebody has to sponsor this because somebody's going to have to pick up the yearly tab and in in uh her note yeah in Amanda Amanda emailed me
and um I took a look at the requ bylaw and say asked her to look at section two because she says she didn't even know citizens could do this and the answer is no and furthermore the February 1st date is gone by so she well you know yeah
it's I would say that she did make the request she's just going to formally make it to us and well she didn't make that made the mistake not her and that's what I'm concerned about it's not that you know she did what she thought was the best way to approach it as a citizen
and the finance committee chair I'm not blaming AJ i'm not blaming me but we had not brought it to this committee which by the way hadn't even scheduled before February 1st now that doesn't mean we couldn't have filled out the form and sent it in right well she actually said she approached the Fincom thinking we
needed a sponsor to send it your way which she was correct on you need somebody you need somebody who's willing to to take the uh you know and also to pay the bills after the Yeah no and that's you know the finance committee will decide that you know I we could put
it in the accountants expenses and add $2,000 to the accountant expenses for the annual maintenance if we had to well yeah okay and incidentally uh also in her note to me she said the yearly is 1,200 and Gail's found out the yearly is at least 2,000 right we're going with
the 2,000 number okay you know about that then yes I heard um I I do think that the ultimate solution is in Gail's hands and I think satisfy the request it doesn't necessarily have to be with Open Checkbook to keep make that information
public information otherwise we're just going to get requests you know they're just gonna go to Grace and they're gonna request this stuff and it's going to end up being more work for Gail well there's so much that you know because of HIPPA and every other alphabet soup you can imagine that you
know you and you know if they're concerned about the school we don't even pay the school like the teachers individually you know it's one lump sum goes to the school one lump sum goes to the region that's right no that's right and the count told us that or again there not going to be able to see inside
the public the the regional school or the elementary school because that's held done by union 28 and of course right which is something that if they want to see they're going to have to get it from them yes well I'm wondering now does the does Ammerst have open checkbook i believe not okay northampton
has it she gave us a list of local towns that have it was not on it okay because she gave us a list of all the towns in Massachusetts have and it was like 10 towns in the whole state and Northampton has it so I went to their website i found it and I started looking at how they're spending money in the fire department and in the highway department
i didn't spend a lot of time on it but it's there you could see it it and it's you know it's classic general ledger style it's just one transaction one dollar amount doesn't necessarily tell you what you're paying them for it just tells you that right yeah just tell you when the check was written yeah exactly
yeah bob got to go okay yeah I do i do pretty soon because I've got a I've got a family zoom at 8 motion to for you okay then I need a motion to adjurnn second no I didn't make it i I need one
moved second okay any discussion okay all those in favor i Okay gentlemen we will see you on 43 when notice okay bye bye bye see you