Board of Selectmen - November 17, 2025 Regular Meeting

001Good evening. Today is Monday, November 17th, 2025. It's 7:00 p.m. Before we begin, I'd like to observe a moment of silence for three people who have played a part in the town of Winchester over the last several years. Uh, first passing away on November 4th, former police officer or retired police officer Salio passed away. Former Border Selectman member James Dvita passed away on November 12th. and World War II veteran and former commander of the VFW Post 296, Ed Sweeney, passed away on November 13th. With that, like to call the meeting to order. >> Say your name. >> Kevin Bishop, >> Troy Lemir, Paul Harrington, >> Todd Archalashi, >> Glenn Oius, >> William Hester, Please join me for the pledge of >> allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic

002for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> Item number three, agenda review. Does anyone have anything for the agenda? Seeing nothing, moving on to item number four, the approval of the minutes of our regular meeting on November 3rd. >> So moved. >> Thank you, Troy. Is there a second? Any discussion? Seeing no discussion, all in favor? Opposed? Abstaining. 601. Moving on to item number five, citizens comments. The board of Sluckman welcomes public comments. Speakers be limited to three minutes. Please give your name and this is an opportunity for you to address concerns that you have to the board, not a discussion with the board. If a response is required, >> it'll be from the town manager's office prior to the next meeting. >> Frank Alberry, uh, 108

003short drive. I just want to congratulate all the members of the new select me. I hope we do hope you do a great job for the town this year. That's all I can say. Things things can get better and I hope they will get better. Thank you. >> Thank you, sir. Next. Anyone just hit that right button. Thank you. Mike can more land road Winchester. Congratulations on the win. And better not mess it up or he'll blame it on Trump. Uh, I've only got one thing. Seeing it's getting cold outside, maybe the town could ask Ralph Nater if he could open up the old Dana Electric building for for a few people that are homeless. And seeing that he got a tax break, gets a tax break on his buildings. and will not fly the

004flag in front of the his shrine in the West End. Maybe he'll maybe he'll let somebody let you people open it. I'm sure someone will donate some money. I'm sure I will. They if he needs the money for the heat. Good luck in trying though. my finger roll back. >> Thank you. >> Anyone else wish to speak? Lane of 1187 saw Milh Hill, Windset, Connecticut. Um I would like to congratulate our Boris Lechman. I pray with all my heart that they may come together and make a better town, a lot more safer town, not just physically but for its inhabitants. My concern concerns of the students mental health and the staff members. More and more we are facing many crucial fears of assault, harassment which may lead to many parents wanting their kids to stay

005and be homeschooled. Many of these students have gone through so much of their time as it is trying to go from period A to B without dealing with bullying, discrimination, let alone assault and harassment. So, I pray that we and all of you board of selectment members can work together and have a way to make our schools safe, not just physically, but mentally for our students because they are our future and they will be the future leaders that will make our town even better. Thank you. >> Thank you, Blaine. Anyone else wish to speak? Seeing no one else wishing to speak, moving on to item six, the town manager report. >> Thank you, Mr. Mayor, and good evening uh board selectment and new members. Great to have uh two new members with us. Um to

006begin, the economic tours continue. Since our last meeting, I had the opportunity to tour DRT aerospace here in Winstead. I was generally impressed by their work uh with their current operations focusing on manufacturing parts for aerospace industry. Dirt's impact goes uh well beyond that. Notably, they are credited with inventing the pop top can. You were with me that day, right? No, you weren't. No. Um, the pop top can design that everybody knows. So, when you're enjoying that uh cup of soup, refreshing beverage, we owe this local company in town for actually coming up with the pop top can. So, I was thoroughly impressed with, you know, their whole operations. I again thank EDC for setting up these tours and uh we're going to we're going to get out to as many businesses as we can,

007but it's just been absolutely a great time meeting these business managers or the owners. They are definitely invested in the community and it's it just pays dividends in the long run. So, thanks to EDC, you can spread the message and you guys are meeting tomorrow. Um moving on, school safety committee. Our monthly school safety committee uh took place recently with a continued focus on uh of enhancing communication between schools, the town emergency services. The groups recommending that we use Everbridge as a communication platform. Participation in these meetings continues to grow with all stakehold stakeholders now regularly attending the meeting. I can say with confidence that everyone around these tables is committed to the safety and well-being of our students from preK all the way through graduate school. Um, and this is all of the schools

008that are here in Winchester. It's the college, it's, you know, Gilbert, it's Pearson, it's Hinsdale. You name the school, they're in the meeting. The state police are in the meeting, our local police are in the meeting, EMS is in the meeting, fire's in the meeting, fire marshals in the meeting, and together we are working on plans. So, uh, communication is constant between the group. But the big thing that, you know, we were stressing in the beginning is when schools run drills and people drive by these schools and and and they see a bunch of kids out, their immediate response is to either call the town, call the police department, and if the college was doing a drill and we were unaware of it, we kind of look like we've dropped the ball. Um, well, I

009don't know what's going on. And as a parent, me being one myself, that's fearful to not even know if it was a drill or not a drill. But I can tell you in a very short period of time, all of us are going to be in this Everbridge way of chatting and we're going to know what each one of us is doing. So when the phone does ring in my office or downstairs in the police department or any of these other schools and a parent or a grandparent or simply a resident is wondering what's going on, we're going to be able to tell. We'll know that the drills are happening. We're not going to advertise it. Obviously, we want to run drills as they normally should, but um kudos to this group getting together, talking

010things out, throwing all the ideas on the line. I thoroughly enjoy those meetings every month. It's a two-hour meeting, and we crank for two hours, and I have some real dedicated individuals that are in there, and the biggest concern is the safety of these kids, prek all the way through college. So, um school safety committees, uh met uh Northwest Community Bank Foundation Grant. The town is grateful to announce we uh received a $3,000 grant from Northwest Community Bank Foundation. This gift directed to the resident assistance fund will support families and individuals who are struggling hardships not met by traditional federal or state programs with costs rising and holiday season is approaching. These donations is especially timely. Our sincere thanks goes to the Northwest Community Bank Foundation for their ongoing generosity and support. uh they've continued

011to uh give us money into the resident assist fund every year and this is uh yet another year where they uh contributed $3,000. The 27 budget development uh is well underway as I've been reporting and this week alone um all of the big milestone we're hitting is that all of the capital requests are due in. Um we did give the board of education a little bit more time just because they uh they do have a new board, but we are expecting their capital requests a little bit delayed. Um, and then from there, we're going to do exactly what we did last year, zerobased budgeting. We're going to send out blank forms to all of our department heads. We're going to show them the typical history of where their accounts were coming in. They will plug

012in numbers and then each one of them will come up uh to meet in the town manager's office and we're going to run line by item by line item justifying what each line item is made up of. Um, and then obviously the budget's all due to you guys on or before March 15th. I think March 15th may fall on a Sunday. We'll do what we did last year. We'll give it to you guys on that Friday. I'm not going to come in on a Sunday just to turn I'll turn it in early. Um, but we'll do the the the typical what we did last year. I don't know if I'm going to go with a 14page recap, but it'll probably be at least 12. Um, just clueing in on, you know, the budget drivers, where

013some successes were, where nonsuccesses were. Um, I will tell you that early projections right now and I've always looked at budgets after doing them for almost two decades is it is a marathon. It is not a sprint. Numbers come in every single day and some numbers look very fearful when they first come in. I don't want anyone to panic when they may hear a number or it's it all comes together. And the biggest picture and and what I've really firmly believed after many years of doing budget is expense side is an important factor, but the revenue side is just as important because when you're at home and you're managing your budget, if you have the revenue coming in, it's very easy to pay those household expenses. So, I try and really drill down on the

014revenue to ensure that we're getting every dollar of revenue accounted for. uh when we're putting this budget together, our uh finance office between Emory and Tom, they do a heck of a job every year supplying numbers, supplying information. So, kudos to them. Um not only are they starting to work through the budget process, but we're in process of getting our audit done. Um please don't try and talk to Ann Marie um because she's pulling her hair out. She's laughing at me right now, but she's doing herculean effort. uh she plans on coming in possibly the day after Thanksgiving because that's how much we want to get this audit done on or before December 31st. Um she's committed to it and and we're going to get it done. So that's the budget process. Uh SS4 safe

015streets for all. We did go to RFP or RFQ. We did receive six proposals um back. We're in the process of weeding through those six proposals and then selecting the actual company that is then going to take over the safe streets for all in the meetings with our residents and then come up with a plan for safe streets for all. For our newer board members, I'll point out that this is fully funded by the federal government for $250,000 so we can then get a plan that we can then potentially go out and unlock some federal and state dollars that this is what state and feds are looking for. Where's your plan? This is a professionally developed plan and these are the funding that we need in order to execute this plan. So that's off and

016running. Um deep trails grant application. Uh if you remember uh on October 20th, this board of uh selectman did authorize us to do the matching funds. We are looking to uh submit the grant on or before December 18th. Currently you can apply up for a million dollars. Um, we are going to get as close to a million dollars for the Sue Grossman Trail that we could potentially get from the deep trail grant. Um, and we went back, we did what I call value engineering. Um, Bill was in that meeting because he's on the Sue Grossman Trail. Original number came in at almost $5.5 million. >> That's correct. >> It was basically I saw the room get deflated in Sue Grossman Trail that we weren't going to be able to pull this off. we may only

017be able to do phase three or phase four. Um the uh board uh group tasked me with doing a value engineering. I brought in the engineers. We were able to bring in the project completion both stage three and page stage four for just over three million bucks. Um this Sue Gman trail we're going to get it done. Um, we're going to get more updates and then unfortunately once we get everything, we ship it off to the DOT and they basically look through it for a year and then you'll get shovels in the ground in 2027. I know a lot of people you hear things, well, where's the shovels? Where's the shovels? This project tenatively does not have a start date until September of 2027, which checks all the boxes for both the federal and the

018state money. Um, but uh long story short, Sue Grossman Trail won't begin until the uh September of 2027. roads update. Um, we expect to have our DPW director uh provide a more detailed road update in upcoming meetings, but for now, I wanted to update not only the board, but obviously our community um with either roads that have been completed or very soon will be completed. Um, and I'm going to list them off in no particular order. Dayton Chapel, Old Cols, Holland, Price, Morningside, Brookside, Wani. Obviously, right now we're digging up and putting the infrastructure in Spring, Rockwell, Ridge, Superior, and Orchard. Uh the DPW did a tremendous job towards the end of the season. We we I put a huge rush on them to get as much stuff done as they possibly can. Those are

019the roads that either have been completed or will be completed in a very short period of time. I also wanted to point out that the DOT is still planning to install the new catch basin on Boyd Street this year, finally resolving the issue that has persisted for many, many years. They still I'm planning on on on putting that catch basin in to prevent all of that icing over there. And last but not least, a heartfelt thank you to the Northwest Hill Exchange Club for installing the Field of Flags to honor Veterans Day. Their contribution brings real meaning to the observation of the important holiday in our community. I drafted a thank you letter. I noticed tonight that I did make an error. If you care to sign it, uh putting your thank you uh to

020them for putting those flags up in the green. It'll be in my office starting tomorrow. Hope to get it out by Friday. If you wish to sign it, it'll be up there. With that, we'll turn it back to the mayor to the board. If anyone has questions, >> we have any questions for the town manager. >> Just one question, Paul, on Sue Gman. Yes. >> Um >> you did the value engineering you said come in right around 3 million. Do you guys add a 15 20% contingency in that? >> Yes, we do. >> You do? >> Yes. Right now, it's sitting at a 20% contingency because it's still early on in on the phase. Once it's been designed and we get shovels in the ground, you start to see that contingency come down. But we

021are planning with that three $3.2 million budget a 20% contingency. And we have an incidental line item that's set at 15% right now. So we are overly projecting the number cuz we don't want to start the project and not have enough money. So currently we probably are a little bit even more on the high five point some way too high but we are for we we are shooting high to make sure we have all the money we need to finally get this this three and four section done. Uh important meeting on Thursday with the DOT for rights away. Obviously you know some of the trail we're going to be going down uh Raleigh Street. We're meeting with them on Thursday. Um, we also have to use the uh uh Department of Motor Vehicles uh uh

022driveway. Um, so we're meeting with them and uh they called the meeting. So that's exciting. Um, so it's it's it's becoming realer and realer every single day. And I want to thank that Sue Grossman Trail uh group. I've never seen more harder working individuals, volunteers that have so much passion to get this done. Um, and they've been a tremendous help. Um, helping me simply I sometimes I just don't have the time and they do a lot of leg work a lot. So >> correct >> um update on 44 paving now that the uh contractors gone off of Main Street. >> I'm glad you asked me that. So uh Eversource has not confirmed uh if they were going to pave it this year or not, but you did ask a question on the 1020 meeting about

023other utility companies. No other utility companies uh claimed that they were going to be doing any type of work in the next 10 years on our main street. Um that's anywhere from uh Frontier to anybody else uh uh we even called Castle uh which is a fiber optic line. So once Eversource and uh for the newer board and for maybe people tuning in for the first time typically Eversource only does a repair of where they actually broke the road. working with the DOT. We have uh made Eversource go gutter to gutter. So, we're going to get all new road. Wherever they ripped it up, they have to go gutter to gutter. Our main street's going to come back to the where it was. There was talk that they were going to try and mill it

024and pave it this year. The temperature dropped recently and mills are starting to close. I'm unsure and I haven't got confirmation that they were going to be able to get it done this year. We may be looking at springtime before we mill and pave it. though. But the good news is we're going to gutter. >> I would push for it for this year >> trying >> since they they're finished. And um I have a contact with the state if you'd like. I'll give you the number to for the person that's in charge of that. >> So just so you're aware, they're not 100% complete yet. If you saw what they do, >> they were on um case right over by town hall. If you look street, >> they want to complete it all because if

025they break the road over between, you know, uh uh the the bodega and the other building, they're replacing all that. Like, I'm not going to have patch pave jobs. I want them to come in one time and pave it. So, any side street that they broke, they're going gutter to gutter with that as well. Uh we're just simply not just going to allow them to just pave main street and let our side streets deteriorate. No. Whatever they broke, gutter to gutter. You're going to get some complaints on that main street if we have to drive through that all weather. >> I know. By as soon as the plows hit it, I fully aware. I'm hoping because I look out my window every single day and I already see a pothole starting to form. >> Oh,

026>> I've already pointed it out. It's right out my window and I stare at it. If you know me, I walk around my office when I'm on the phone. Uh, and I stare at it every day and I've already put it on our liaison's radar where if minimally you're not paving, you're going in and you're at least fixing what's already been ripped up. Other questions? >> Um, you mentioned for the school safety committee that they're moving to Everbridge and I know that that's a system that a newer system that's being used. I was wondering if there's an update on like how many people in town have actually signed up and how that's going. >> Um, I I'll get you the exact number and I can email it. I can tell you that we were uh

027we have roughly 8600 people signed up for it now. But let me put a big asterct on that. One of the things that I wanted to do is I lobbyed the state of Connecticut and if you all remember way back when you could sign up for 211 and a whole bunch of residents did sign up for 211 when that became a popular item. We were able to take that database of 211 and we were able to upload it into our Everbridge account. There was one small error and and we're not the only town that has done that and lobbyed the state and they were more than willing to partner with us. Every once in a while when we do send out an Everbridge, I get an email from somebody that now lives in New Hampshire.

028Hey, why am I getting Winchester updates? And I have to tell them, way back when you signed up for 211, we were able to grab your phone number. When that happens, I can go into our database and I can actually delete that number. But to have 8,600 phone numbers at our ready is such a valuable access because when you know seconds matter, you know, if there's something critical going on, it's a great way to communicate with people. Um, so about 8,600 people right now. I'll get you the exact number. Might be 82, might be 83, it's over 8,000, I can tell you that. >> Thank you. >> Anything else? Moving on to item number seven, finance director's report. So before we begin with that, uh Amarie's here today. We're going to do a little bit

029we're going to do the same finance report that that you're used to that you see in your your your packet. But Amarie again uh doing herculean effort. She wanted to run you all through um the capital projects. This is something that select former select woman uh Perez had requested. We couldn't get it done with the audit, but I thought the board it's still great information to see capital items um throughout all the years as far as we could go back where they stand, what's left in the account. Um so I'm going to pass this out as well. Kimberly, your choice on what you want to go through first. Um >> do my normal. >> You do your normal and then go through the capitals >> and then I can walk through the capitals. >> I

030got one for you. Okay, sir. Thank you, sir. >> And these are hot off the press. That's why they weren't electronic. Um, she literally walked into my office, I think, at 5:30 to review it with me. So, um, it went right to the last minute to get this done. Um, so I'm just going to go through my normal just a quick overview highlights of the um where we're at as of October 31st. Uh, so we are 33% into the fiscal year. So current year-to- date property tax revenue uh is 16,354585, which is 56.03% of what's budgeted. That's in comparison to 14,857483 uh for the same period last year which was 54.33%. Pass through tax revenue 23,139 58% of the budget um compared to 147219 which was 24.54% of last year's total revenue year to date

03119,815812 48.31% of the budget and that's compared to 17,993518 for the same period last year is 44.09%. Uh total expenditures 12,581184 is 3630% of the budget. That's compared to 14,391957 which is 35.27%. I'm realizing that I completely left off the whole section on municipal aid received in the month of October. Um, but I do know off the top of my head, uh, that we did receive our next, uh, installment of our ECS. And off the top of my head, don't know. Additionally, um, I think we received a little more grant money from the state that we get on an annual basis. Cash flow at October 31st, approximately 25,251,000. Of that, uh, 20,867 is invested. $457,000 in the Northwest Community Sweep account, 2,596911 uh in stiff, which for the new uh selectman, that's the state investment

032fund. Um and then our Northwest Community Bank money market account uh holds 17,81363. Uh October capital expenditures, there's a pretty long list of them, so I'll go through them pretty quickly. Uh 7,989 for town hall repairs and upgrades, 38.85 85 for police station repairs and upgrades. Um 72,210 for the SCBA replacement project, 64,537 on annual road maintenance, 41,118 towards the digital radio upgrade project, uh 250,899 for the purchase of plow truck number nine. That is one of the uh capital expenditures that's being funded over a 5year period. 9750 for Rockwell Street drainage, $75,000 for our guide rail replacement program, 50 uh $5,750 for Price Road Mill and Paving, 9350 for Walker Field Back Stop Replacement, 7,836 for Senior Center repairs and upgrades, an additional 69,900 for senior center mechanical repairs and upgrades. that I believe

033is for the heating, air conditioning, some system over at the senior center. >> It's both heating and it's all age back. >> Okay. And then bond expenditures, uh 74,246. The majority of that was uh a release of retainage to the contractor, 11,290 on Wani Road, 350 750, excuse me, on Spring Street, and 42,826 on various drainage projects. That's just a quick overview and then let's go over to the big fund 179 summary that you all just received. So I know that the select men that um have been here previously have seen this schedule. Um this is all of our ongoing capital expenditure accounts. And what I've tried to do is really go through this um and with the help of our public works director, we have been meeting uh several times to go through each

034of these line by line item, particularly the ones that relate to public works and put notes in here on where we are um in terms of these projects. So off to the side, what you see on the schedule that you've received is a fraction of what is in my worksheet. So in my worksheet, there are columns going back to 2018 each for each year of the budget and each year of the expenditures. So I had to kind of try to condense it so that you could get something that was not the size of a poster board. So what you have there is the budget for all of the years for each project. And then Um, did I give you total expend? Did I give you 20 26 expenditures? Is that a column >> you did?

03526 expend. >> And then the open encumbrances, which is which is just our open purchase orders and the total expenditures for all years. Um, and then what the remaining budget is when you look at what we've spent plus any open purchase orders. So, as you I won't go through all of them. You can go through these kind of at your leisure. uh read through the notes. All of the ones that are ongoing. Um I made notes off to the side. Some of these notes are more for me to some extent. Um but some of them are for you to review. Things that I want to highlight. These are done by at a department level. So each of these departments, the first four digits there, it's really three digits for the most of them are the

036department numbers. Um and so you'll see section 210, that's our police department. And you'll kind of get an idea as you read through the account descriptions. 211 is the fire department. Uh 215 is for ambulance. 311 then begins public works. And that is the bulk of our capital expenditures. So you'll see 311 annual road repairs and our LOSA funded road repairs which is the grant that comes from the state of Connecticut. And then individual project line items for all of the projects. Um, and you'll you're going to notice that I use a lot of different colors. Uh, the ones the first set of colors that you see a couple three line items, particularly Highland Lake, Storm Drains, Hallebert A, and the Upland Road. Those are uh items that line items that we need to look

037at in conjunction with the bond money that we have out there because we had some money allocated from our general fund that has been not been spent, but we also have money being allocated in the bond projects. So that's kind of a highlight for myself so that when we move forward with the town manager, with the director of public works discussing the bond projects, we know to kind of look at these as a whole and when we do our planning for next year's capital budget. Um so you have a variety of line items in 311. You will have road projects, facilities, uh cemeteries, trucks, um you name it. That's all that's in all of those 311 accounts. Uh we have The next highlighted section all says communities challenge. That is all uh state of Connecticut

038grant projects that uh we've been granted uh money from the state of Connecticut under the communities challenge. Uh so you'll see those kind of segregated out into that little blue color there. And then I want to really focus just on the bond projects because I know that is that is what select and Perez had asked for and I know that the selectman always want where are we with the bond projects and uh Jim Rollins could not be here tonight uh but we did go through again we spent a couple hours last week uh with Tom and Jim and myself going through every single line item and Tom and then Jim and I went through again today and went through all the bond projects and all of the general fund funded capitals that uh you'll see

039that are not highlighted. Uh so the ones in kind of the orange color, those are the ongoing projects. So or the ones that have a little bit of money left over and you can see from my notes where they are in the process, whether they say they are ongoing, if they are in progress. We tried to give you an expected completion date if they are in progress or what the open items are for each of them. Um next section the bright green those are the projects that are in the planning phase or have some sort of they may you may see a little bit of spending. Most of that little bit of spending on those uh is typically engineering costs. Um and then on that particularly you'll see target dates for those projects. Um some

040of those I will just highlight. So Hallebert Avenue there's two pieces to that. One is lots, one is non lots. So the lot is funding from the state of Connecticut local uh >> transportation >> local transportation and capital improvement program. Um so that is a that uh the state has committed right now $1.2 million for that. We are waiting on confirmation from the COG to determine the status of that funding, whether that is unlocked for us currently. uh what the targeted project date and if there is additional lots of funding that we can unlock uh for this project for Holliber app. Uh we will have this discussion at a later date of potentially pulling those grant-f funded projects out of the bond so that we don't expend money that is grant funded that we can

041only spend 23,300 in total. It does not ma matter whether we're getting reimbursed from the state of Connecticut or not. That goes towards the ceiling of the whole bond project. If we kind of parse those out and pull those out of the bond project, um that would free up additional funds that we can use for other road projects. But that will be a discussion with the town manager for the next year's capital budget depending on the timing of these of this project. There is another one in the same situation which I'll talk about in a little bit. Um so you can see here most of these that are in the green there are targeted start dates of spring of 2026. Um and then in the yellow the few projects in the yellow the three of

042them there those are 2027 and beyond. um and particularly uh Newfield Road, that one is 2027 and beyond. That's why you don't see a budget for most of those. And then Lake Street is another one where the public works department was going to try to get lots of funding for that. So that may be another one that gets pulled out of the bond project or potentially into another bond project if we run out of if we expend all of our funds before that one. The other project that uh is grant funded that we're probably going to pull out of this bond project is the Grantville Road project because that we just got reconfirmation uh that that is a federal local bridge program that is a 100% reimbured grant program that is on a reimbursement basis

043upfront money that comes from us. The state of Connecticut just uh confirmed the start date now on that will be fiscal year 2028. So, but that is 100% grant funded, but it's on a reimbursement basis, but we typically have enough cash flow to to to front the cash and get the reimbursements on those. So, that'll be a discussion again pulling it out of the bond project because that is going to that would eat up a significant amount of the remaining bond available bond money. Then all the ones in the kind of muted purple color, those are all of the projects that have been completed or are essentially complete with a couple of little follow-ups afterwards. So I think the town manager mentioned some of these. Marshall Street, Case Avenue, Whiting Street, phase 2, Case Avenue

044Bridge, Elm Street, West Wakefield, Taylor Brook Bridge, Hannneathan Road, Indian Meadow Drive. Those are all part of the some or of those projects or all of the project was part of the bond package and those are all essentially completed projects. Um and then as you go down to the rest of the schedule you'll see a couple more recreation senior center our annual computer replacement program. So there are a whole bunch of other completed projects that are normal annual capital improvements that I have pulled out of this schedule. As most of you know, it's a pretty comprehensive list and I wanted to try to pull out the things that we no longer need to see because those projects are complete. As we go into the budget season, we will be looking at if there is funds

045available from any of those projects, any underover over budgets that we have to kind of clean up this capital fund and potentially unlock any money that is available to fund future capital projects. that has to be approved with the uh annual budget process to reallocate. >> Before we open up for questions, an item that tends to sometimes um get debated a lot is, you know, roads getting paved. If you if you look first page, threequarters of the way down annual roadway maintenance, you know, there was over the years $1.1 million. You can see it has an account balance of$189 322 left to it. in the interal road maintenance isn't just for paving and fixing roads, but it also is um removal of trees, tree trimming and all of that. So, you know, this becomes a

046point I know a few members of the board have said to me, well, next year's budget, we're going to we're going to put money in to pave. We're not afraid to pave anything. You know, the town is not. We simply need the funds in order to pave. But you can see that over the last few years, we've been given well over a million dollars. We only have $189,000 left. And as Troy would tell you, it's what, a million dollars a mile. So $200,000 doesn't get you much paving. But um so there's the breakdown of what's been funded over the years. Um in terms of of paving, I I think a lot of the times, you know, the bond projects come into play. Well, we we authorized 23, you know, $3 million. A lot of that

047had to do with infrastructure and it's fixing the stuff underneath the road. And you'll see that listed all on page two and a little bit on page three that we're not holding back any type of pavement. We would pave it all, but we need the money in order to do it. So, you can see that in that account, we just did a bunch of paving. There's only about $189,000 left to pay. And that's not going to get you more than quarter of a mile when you're talking a million million dollars a mile. So, um, problem we're going to deal with in the budget, but I I wanted to put it publicly because there are times I do go on social media and I I hear why isn't this, why isn't that, um, it's simply a

048funding uh, source that if it's funded, we'll pay, but um, right now we only got $189,000 left for payment. Um, that doesn't get you much pay. So, I would say if you go through the schedule, if you have any questions, if you have anything that you want answered, followed up, um I would probably at this point, just because we're coming towards the end of the year and we're kind of swamped with the audit, um I'd say run those three Paul's office if there's line items because either myself or Jim Rollins can kind of give some followup on if there's any questions on those what you're seeing in here. I know it's a big schedule to kind of take in all at once, but if you, you know, walk through it, if there's something you don't

049understand, you want to see more. There is a whole lot more columns that I not sharing with everybody because it's >> you've gotten some of them previously, but I don't think you want to see them all. So, kind of tried to to narrow it down so that you just sort of see the overall picture of where all of the capital projects are at. >> Questions? Go ahead. >> Hi, >> I have a question. really um for you about the how do you choose which roads you're going to pay because that does come up a lot in the discussions. So interesting topic that um we did a road uh study many years ago um in fact we just did another road study with AI technology um and it just drove all over the roads um and

050right now what our intern is doing is compiling that information and somewhere in the budget process I'm going to come and I'm going to show you you know the F roads and I'm going to and I'm going to assign a dollar amount to each one of those roads and then it's really going to be up for conversation of which roads do we want to take on? I'm not going to, you know, keep the report secretive. I'm going to let everybody know the condition of our roads. I'm going to assign a dollar amount. But the other thing that needs to, you know, be spoken is that when a dollar amount is given to a particular project, we're assigning that dollar amount at today's value. If we wait three, four, five years to take on that road,

051put the inflator in of 15, 20%. Because what the cost is now, and if we wait five years, that million-doll road could be a million and a half if we wait that long. So, I want to give you all of the roads. Um, obviously, the ones that they're going to be on the report, but the A- roads, we're not even going to really talk about. They just got done. But I'm going to give you guys every single road that we have, the the the the grading of it, and then the price in order to redo that road. And I'm going to give you two prices. I'm going to give you a price to pave it, and I'm going to give you a price for the infrastructure and the pavement of it. And you know, I

052I caution the board that if you're gonna just pave a road and not address the infrastructure, if the infrastructure breaks underneath that road, we just are ripping up a million dollars a mile to then fix the infrastructure to then pay a million dollars a mile to repay because we just tore up our brand new pavement. So, I'm going to give you all of that information. We're we're we're well along the way of it. Um the hard part now is signing the dollar amounts um and and and getting good numbers so we don't underproject, you know, what it's going to cost to pay for road. >> So just to clarify what Paul's saying, um it's a million dollars a mile with infrastructure and base. So it doesn't mean that the mile of road is going to

053have to cost a million dollars unless you're doing the whole road totally brand new. So, you could pave a mile of road um two inch mill, two inch pave for a couple hundred thousand dollar, maybe $300,000. Um but that's not touching any infrastructure or the base of the road. So, if the base of the road is bad, eventually the road's going to fail quicker than But it's a band-aid, but it's not always like uh it's going to be a worst case scenario. It's a way of getting roads that are um close to failing paved again to keep them going as long as the infrastructure is good. All the drains are working correctly. That's the problem with Winston. Most of the drainage is the problem. So that's why we're not getting anything done because the drainage

054cost way more than the road cost. So I >> I I concur to drainage. I've listened to stories through the water and sewer for the last five years and the drainage is horrendous in town and even our infrastructure water and sewer is pretty old on top of it. So, and they don't have all the funds to cover some of this stuff to take care of it, you know, and that that's an issue for for them. But >> what I found out in the last two years, because it took me two years to figure it out, >> that the way Winston works is we have a combined line item that we take everything from. So nothing is specific other than the bond, nothing specific to paving. So what I want to change on this board this

055year is I would like to put a paving line so our, you know, residents can get some roads paved and know that they're going to get paved instead of putting into tree work or potholes or infrastructure. But we're, you know, there's still there's a lot of work to do. you're going to have to make a couple of line items to to separate it out. So, and then it's going to cost some money. So, we're going to have to figure out where that money comes from. >> But is that with the bonding is specific to the roads. So, that helps with that. But, if you take a line item out of like public works and you make specific choice, you're tying the hands your hands on how to use funds and that's not always >> advisable.

056That's how I do it. I my I superintendent of Northwork. I have a p line item for paving. I pick three roads usually because that's what I can handle for the year and I do all the infrastructure myself replace that but I have a line item for that too. Okay. And the money that I have for paving is what I bring to my uh for selectman and that goes to the taxpayers for the budget. So then I have that money to pave those three roads. That's how you got to do it. If you try to pick it out, you'll never get anything done. And that's why we're doing peace meal work. We pave a little piece. You don't want to do that. I pave the whole road from start to finish. You don't want to

057do pieces because that's where failure creates when the salt gets in the joints and it ruins the road. So, you're just throwing good money to bad. So, we're going to try to work on that this year. >> Well, let's get back to >> And then I had another question for Emory. >> Yes. >> Um under the Elm Street um bond line item, >> there's a $10,000 um >> that's retainage. >> Yeah, retainage. That project's been gone for quite some time. >> It's not >> what's holding up to 10,000. >> Ask Jim Rollins that question, but we did f we did just make a payment to Richards recently to release most of the retainage, but there was I don't know what the open item is, but they withheld $10,000 off the retainage. >> Right. So that

058means that they have to fix something, but it's been almost two years since that's been finished, right? >> No, it's finished last summer. >> Yeah, I was here. Um, and I saw him completing that. >> So, it's over a year last year, I would say. Yeah, over a year. But >> I don't know the specifics of the what the retainage is. >> Well, that's one of my questions you need. I want to have answered by that retainage is still in there. >> Yeah, I can find I can tell you that our our public works crew hold our contractors accountable and they're not going to release, you know, money until >> they feel that the project is there's a punch >> 100% done like small items. I don't know what that is. Well, again, it's been

059a year, so it needs to be done in a >> timely manner. We just paid the remainder of the retainage we just released. So, >> and it's not showing in the 1031 report. >> I'm not sure. You know what? >> We just I didn't think you know that. >> We just released this, you know, $70,000. So, there's there is obviously some ongoing stuff. Bart and Jim are probably the best people to >> talk to on that, >> which I like I said earlier in my town manager report, either the first meeting in December or the second meeting in December. I do want to have Jim come in do a full recap of what we completed this year and then projects that we're going to be looking at over the winter time so then when the

060spring hits you know >> yeah and that's kind of what we tried to put in the notes >> here and then it's what's moving forward and then obviously we'll be in budget time we'll get a clearer picture I am going to come I don't want to tip all my my my carts tonight but get the board to start thinking that another way of looking at it may not be a popular one but another way of getting a whole lot of roads done is potentially going out and bonding roads as well. Um, you know, you look at, you know, roads, you drive on them for the next 20, 30 years. Should you pay for it all up at once? It's a way of getting a lot of roads done and pay foring it over time. Some

061towns do it, sometimes do it as, uh, I'll use my pay as you go. U, which isn't a popular saying in our finance. They looked at me strange when I brought that up. But I'm going to come with a lot of different options that this board can fully, you know, debate, have a conversation of, and decide which way we want to go. But I think it's important to note that the town's not sitting on a whole bunch of money, not wanting to pay roads. We have $189,000 left to pay roads, and that's not going to get you a whole lot of payment. >> Other questions? >> I I just want to thank Ann Marina Crew for for doing this. This makes it a lot easier for all these projects to >> have until 5:30 tonight

062to read or to keep up and keep track in this morning. I spent a couple hours getting ready for some of those columns that you have and just like okay >> and I know it's a lot to like it's a lot of taken but we're kind of >> you know we kind of do this on a peacemeal basis of something that since I got here we've really been trying to >> kind of you know tick a little bit away and the problem is I go in I find adjustments that I need to make and then I have to remember to make those adjustments in the system then I have rerun reports and pull all the data because this does this is not a system report. This is a generated report from the system. So you

063have to look at every year in itself and accumulate it all into one schedule. >> Nice job. But we did, particularly on the roads, we did collapse all of the old years into the one year of the the 2500 account, which is our one account, the annual, you know, road repairs account. And I will kind of address select um select Lamir. I I'm not I'm not too jazzed about adding accounts because I've been trying to reduce the number of accounts and and reducing the number of accounts and not adding an account for every year, which is what we used to do. We'd add a road repair line for this year and then we'd add a new account for the next year. It creates a whole lot more accounting issues because now we've got six years

064worth of road repair line items open that when we don't need that. We need one line item. We need one line item for LOIP. we need one line item for road repairs and we use that same account number on an ongoing basis. And what that does is it keeps it very clear um as to what money is remaining, what budget dollars are rolling from the previous year into the new year with it and then adding to the new year of funds. So I'm not too I don't want to add any accounts because it just it really it does. Now, you can take that account and say you've got a budget of a half a million dollars or whatever it is, and you can earmark a certain dollar amount of that to be spent kind of

065like, you know, kind of like on a sub account basis, but not really tracking it in in the system because for our purposes, it makes it a whole lot harder. The more accounts you add, it's adding to this, you know, massive dump of accounts. >> Yeah. As long as we can earmark it, I have no problem with that. You you can you can have your one line item which keeps the system >> just like we do and then have sub line items of that >> office supplies or whatever in the budget you get those budget books and every line item within the budget >> is is kind of earmarked for a particular thing whether it's you know memberships or trainings or whatever >> and we do use that I look at those bud those project

066budgets all the time to figure out what line item is this supposed to come out of. >> Yeah. Because then we can guarantee those projects will get done if they're earmarked money's earmarked for that. That's what right the whole point is. >> I mean and that's just and that's also making it clear what the account is to be used for you know in particular like so >> couple questions for you. One before you got to capital did you mention a line and expenses for police station repairs >> or was that just >> there is um >> was that related to the flooding? Um, yes. I believe there is still some ongoing. >> Are we ever going to get ceiling tiles downstairs? >> And there was some issues with the insurance company that was going back

067and forth with that. Um, there are a couple of these line items that you you will see in my notes that say consolidate with accounts below. So, we had one that was earmarked for police department plumbing. At one point, we didn't use it. We want to kind of roll that into the one line item for town hall repairs and upgrades. There's like two accounts for the fire department. One was for station upgrades, one was for other. We just like to create an account for everything. So, and I'm trying to reduce the number of accounts that we have. >> And on page three of the capital. >> Yep. >> Walkerfield backs stop replacement. There are $650 remaining. >> Yeah. And now I haven't talked to Tam yet. Is that >> project completed? >> I assume it

068is. I pull it off of there and put it into the completed because I haven't talked to Tanya to make sure that there was no followup stuff that she, you know, needed like finished stuff that she need. >> That's why I left it there more for my own purposes to just follow up with her to make sure that it's if that is remaining, >> you won't see that on next schedule. I'm going to put that in the in the hidden closed project section. But then we'll reallocate. We'll bring you guys a reallocation if there's money that >> we have to look at that. And part of the problem of looking at this whole reallocation is going back several years. >> Um I don't have a lot of faith in in those closed projects of what

069shows as remaining budget because going back to like 2018, 2019, maybe 2020, a lot of the budgets were not voted into the system. So it might look like there's a plus in a line item. But so we're going to have to come up with a way of kind of starting with what our fund balance is, backing out our bond projects, and then kind of backing into the number that's hopefully a positive number that can be reallocated because there are some projects that are closed and complete that were either never funded or were over budget and were never funded. >> We're we're in a deep cleanup mode. We're we're as I'll say, we're geeking out uh big time uh in the finance office, but we're we're cleaning it up. >> So, we have great numbers. Um

070it was >> this is what's taking like it's every time I look at this, I try to do a little more to try to get to where we can do that analysis of looking at what's hopefully that there's money that we can reallocate to others. Just for clarification, so I was involved in that backs stop project. >> Um that was a capital from from last year. She had two two quotes $52,000 and $37,000. So I brought a contractor into her had it reququed. It came in at $17,000. I'm like that was substantially cheaper. So he he he may there may well be I believe that project is closed. I went down and checked it with me and everything. I think it's done. So If there's 650 left, you say you bring that back into like

071a a locked or or hidden fund. Does that stay with park and wrecks at 650 or does that go back into a general fund? And >> well, so what happens the charter doesn't the charter doesn't roll funds that have been allocated to capital back to the general fund after a certain number of years, whether they are unexpended funds, it sits there and the only way those can be reallocated is via the budget process of you can't allocate funds from a project that you know wasn't completed or was is completed and you can't we don't have the flexibility to just reallocate that that to some other project. it has to go through the budget process which is a little bit cumbersome um just in terms of doing business if you're looking for funds you know to

072say hey we got this emergency project can we take it from this line item when we we can't so that reallocation has not been done since this fund was kind of set in stone uh Bruce kind of set July one of 2018 as the start date of looking at these really is looking at this [clears throat] there stuff going back further than that. The problem with just accumulating every single year is in the reporting and not closing the fund every year. And that's part of what our problem is of me having to do each years. but to reallocate those projects like I was saying normally I could go budget versus actual and figure out was it over or under budget but because I don't have a lot of confidence in the not in the spend

073side so much on the budget side because a lot of times the budget was only being loaded for the town's piece of say a grant project. So when it should be loaded at 100% of the expenditure. So it might look like we've got surplus or might look like we're over not too confident. So, we have to kind of do a backwards analysis to figure out what funds are left over. So, that $650 would not particularly stay with park and wreck. potentially could be if there was a request in the capitals to move that to another line item. But for our purposes, we're going to look at the fund as a whole because there are so many old closed projects and then hopefully determine that there is surplus left over. Then take that surplus, build from

074that surplus to be able to fund next year's capitals. So normally we're we've been taking from fund balance. We may not need to allocate from fund balance because we may have already available funds that have already been allocated from the general funded prior years. That's the hope. >> You think you're going to be able to do this by budget season? >> Yeah. >> Excellent. >> Because we have a good idea of where our current open so we're going to look at it from an open project standpoint. So, we're going backwards instead of from a closed project standpoint because I don't have a great deal of confidence in that in the status of those closed remaining funds. We're going to look at it from what's our fund balance? How much do we need remaining of those

075open how much open project balance do we need? Back out all the back out all the bond stuff that is embedded in here because that's a whole separate animal in itself. >> And then look at just the the remaining budgeted stuff. now and compare that to do we have enough money in the fund that's going to cover that's going to cover those projects that are outstanding. >> Does that make sense? >> Yes. No, it makes complete sense. You're going to at some point look at the older closed projects to see whether >> No, we're not even going to look at the older closed projects. We I'm just taking them out to try to make a list of ongoing [clears throat] projects that are still active because those are the ones that we need the money

076to fund. So, let's say we've got $ 1.5 million of ongoing projects. Do we have sufficient fund balance to say we've got, I don't know, you know, $5 million of fund balance. Let's back off what we need for the current projects. What is remaining? We then should hopefully have money left over to be able to reallocate to other projects. >> Thank you. Any other questions? To say that the finance office is slightly busy would be >> if you come to my office, bring a match and some lighter fluid because [laughter] amount of paper in my [clears throat] office is ridiculous right now. >> I avoid I avoid that hallway at all cost because >> but they they've been doing I've said it three times. They've been doing a great job. It's important as we get

077through the budget that we're going to be in a tricky budget year um that if we have the ability to swipe capital accounts to refund other capital accounts, it just saves everybody and we're we're working >> well and it doesn't make sense for us to continue to leave money sitting >> on the table that's already been funded from taxpayer funds >> and then go out and ask for more tax >> more money when you actually >> when we probably hopefully have funds at least some funds available to fund capital projects without reallocating >> and once we do this the initial one it it's a lot then you start looking at on every two or three years it becomes a little bit it's not going to be as much money you know and I don't know

078if we're going to have a lot of money where we're all some days you're like oh we may have a lot and we may not >> you can look at it on an annual basis because on an annual basis now I know the budgets that we're loading and I know the expenditures that are running through there where I have a good handle on those so there's a little more confidence in the over under budget on those projects. >> You can do the swipe, >> right? Because there's not very old historical data that we're working with. We're only working with say last year's projects. We're not working with six years worth of projects. >> Right. Moving on to item number eight. >> Thank you, Amber. >> Correspondence. Does anyone have anything? Seeing none, moving on to

079I >> did for boards and commissions, but if you want to >> Moving on to item eight uh nine, boards and commissions. >> Typically, this is a item that I do not speak on. I did receive an email over the weekend from uh Sleman Bishop. Um I thought he had his request was was was really good. Um and it was a simple one. Hey, can you get us a get him a list of all of the boards and commissions and all of the current members and their expiry date? um uh to me and I said that's a great request. Not only am I going to get it to you, but I'm going to print it off for each of our board as well. So, this is what you see in front of you. With that,

080I'm going to stay in my quiet world, drink my water because I'm going to have to talk again. But that's what this piece of paper or that packet is is all the boards and commissions, what what what we believe is the most up-to-date information. Um the date they were appointed and their uh uh expiration date. So, great request. So, let's just cover the the standard first. >> Uh boards and commissions, we have uh one reappoint today. Um Andrew Champagne for the ad hoc water level committee party unaffiliated member. Um term end date will be 10 of 27. I make a motion to um reappoint Andrew Champagne to the ad hoc water level committee party uh unaffiliated uh member seat term ending 102027. >> We have a motion. We have a second. Do we have any

081discussion? >> I'll second the motion. >> We already had the second. Oh, >> sorry. All in favor? unanimous. And then we have uh one resignation, Candace Buchard, Winchester Housing Authority, party unaffiliated. Thank you, Candace, with her service to the Winchester Housing Authority. Um while we're still on boards and commissions, selecting Poso, do you wish to remain on the vetting committee? >> Yes. Okay, we need a Democrat on the committee. >> Question about the vetting commission. What is the process? >> I was going to get to that step next, but so normally someone's going to submit an application to the town clerk's office. The vetting committee is going to make sure they're eligible to serve on the committee by charter, which is complicated sometimes. Um, make sure they match party affiliation for the board. um so

082one party isn't uh over represented and then they present it to the rest of the board at the first step would be the consideration stage. So it would be they apply it's vetted by the committee then they're added to the consideration stage. Nothing happens there. Just continue looking uh to the next meeting which would be the second meeting which would be the nomination stage. We would vote on that and then the third meeting they would be voted onto the board. >> So it's a process that takes at least two months to get through. >> Yes. >> Why do we have such a >> get to my next part of that? Um we need to streamline that process. I mean, I would think >> six to eight weeks is too long for someone to wait when

083we have uh 10, 13, 15 plus openings. Um, when people volunteer, that's the best time to seat them, not two months later when they may have changed their mind. Um, so after we set the vetting committee, we should look at streamlining the process and making it a little more aerodynamic. >> Just a recommendation, Mr. May, you may get more people to volunteer once you fix the >> Yeah, [laughter] >> you're you're vol asking somebody to volunteer what they're not knowing what they're about to your board, but I just point out you may want to do that first, then you may get better volunteers. >> Just my two cents on that, >> right? Well, the vetting committee we need first. >> Well, wouldn't you want to set the parameter first and then you may get >>

084Well, we need the committee to discuss the parameters. >> Oh, you want the vetting committee to set the board >> and then they'll present it to the board to to vote. That was my thought unless other members of the board wanted to discuss that and then set the vetting committee. >> You think that I mean it just seems like an extra step again, you know, when the board's going to make the open decision. if you've got people that are willing to participate um and they're eligible and I understand the need to determine eligibility clearly but once they're eligible then it should be brought before the board and I think that's something we as a board can make the decision on now instead of going through >> I think that that's reasonable u because technically the

085vetting can be done as soon as they submit the application >> because that's going to get >> what's the history of this Todd you got more time in this >> it's went all over the place >> when I first got on on the board. As soon as you applied, you were voted onto the board. >> Okay. >> Uh some of the selectmen had trouble with the charter because sometimes the charter is different for different boards and commissions. So sometimes somebody wasn't meeting the criteria to be able to be seated on that board. So they wanted to look at the process for a longer period of time, which is how they added that consideration step. Um but I think we can do the vetting as soon as they send the application in and you know the

086first meeting I >> nomination appointed. >> Yeah. >> Well I thought we talked about that I thought last time cuz before this there was three steps. There was consideration >> right? >> We did nomination and then the following meeting we did >> right. >> So we had knocked it down to two steps but I think we can probably do it as well. Glenn takes the applications. If there's a conflict because of their residency or something, he can figure that out. Give us give it to the board and we're done. >> I'm Glenn. >> Yeah. Yeah. That's that's >> Well, he does it anyway. >> No, he doesn't. He just gets the application and sends it to us. >> Well, that the the vetting committee can do that, right? And then the next meeting >> Exactly.

087>> They're up there. We all get a copy of the application and we can all vote on it at the first meeting that it's presented. and I'll sit on the vetting committee with Bill and whoever wants the vetting. >> But I I have a I have a question. Is the board uh the chair of each board are they at all involved in vetting? Like I feel like they would know. >> Okay. >> No, because we we we appoint the the commissioners, >> but are they do they give any sort of recommendation based on what they need and you know what they need on the board? >> Sometimes sometimes they do, but we [clears throat] necessarily vote to >> Yeah. after I'll I'll be on the betting committee. >> Okay. >> I may interject that I

088think what you all have come up with is that it will take no more than two weeks to get somebody and I'm saying worst case scenario if somebody puts their application in on a Sunday or a Friday you got to give the vetting committee some time. Well, that's >> so that's the two. So if you if it comes in on Monday, it's not going to be voted on that night. So the worst case scenario is it's going to take two weeks because that's the next meeting. So to all anyone wondering or or hoping to get on it, I think what the board just decided to do is that if you put your name forward, you possibly have a uh an appointment coming within two weeks. No, no longer than two weeks. >> Unless it's an

089emergency, which we have seed >> unless it's an emergency. Yeah. Yeah. We could get one Monday morning. >> But we also have had >> I think only once or twice in the last years we did have applications come in at 10:30 at night on a Sunday >> and they they wanted to be seated Monday and that's you just again if it's >> the biggest thing there that's facing us here is there's not a whole line of people >> right >> wanting to join these commissions. We got a lot of empty commissions. >> So let's make it as easy as possible and get them filled. Does this require an action item right now or to act on this or just because it's a policy. It's not a >> policy. Okay. >> Moving on to item uh

090that was it right though? >> That's it. >> Moving on to item 10, unfinished business. We have nothing on the agenda. Item 11, new business board liaison assignments. Select Poso in Lamir requested this to be on there. We put it on the first meeting after every election. Um, first step, does anyone that's on a liaison want to get off that liaison? So, >> Yes. Bill, Bill, you had said you wanted >> Yes. I would like to step off of the conservation commission. Okay. >> And I would like to go on the board of education because water and sewer meets the exact same night. So all I and all I've been doing actually for the last two years is just walking across the hall. Actually, I've been doing that to an awful lot of meetings. So

091I feel everybody here at some of the meetings. So yes, so conservation commission come off and then I can do water and sewer board of ed and I'll stay on the historic commission. >> Okay. And did you let the the new selectment know you can be on as many commissions as you want? >> And we can have more than one on to a board if so desired. Um there are a couple that aren't on here, but that's all right. We'll get to that. >> Yeah. >> Yep. >> Or at least. >> That's because I have one that's filled out here. >> Do you want me to take off what I'm what I want off or >> Yep. >> Right. So, I'm getting off of wetlands and then I'm getting off of zoning >> uh wetland

092inland wetlands. Okay. >> Yeah. >> And >> I'm staying on uh assessment appeals. >> Wait, hold. What was the other one you wanted it off of? >> In the in the wetlands and zoning. Planning and zoning. >> Oh, okay. There you are. Okay. >> Um stay. What did I give you for a list build? You got it. >> So, you're on BAA. Um yeah, >> you are on >> ethics. Ethics >> and those were the two that you remained on. >> Uh and then the ones on the bottom, what were the um uh aging and the housing author? Housing authority and the um uh >> what was the other health department? >> Health department. Uh >> we don't need a liison for that one. >> You don't. >> Okay. Um, >> I would like to

093fill in for planning and zoning. >> Okay. Any other ones you want? >> Um, is there someone currently on the Economic Development Commission? >> Uh, nope. I'll take that one also. >> Okay. >> Chair any commissions? >> Uh yeah, I'd like to be join Bill on the board of education as leaison and I'm also interested in the ethics commission. I see that's on call. What does that mean? >> They don't they only meet when they're >> there's an issue >> issue. Okay. >> Yep. Uh, okay. Architectural review is an act inactive committee. So, we don't need one there. Uh, does anyone want conservation commission? If not, I will take that one. Uh, just for the record, you do not have to attend every meeting. Um, but try to get there or at least be available

094to them. >> Uh, I'm sorry, Mr. Mayor, you're going at it. Okay, >> I'll take that one. Um, inland wetlands and water course. Troy got off of that. >> I'm going Thursday, but that's the last time. >> Um, does anyone want that one? >> Which one? >> We can't [laughter] have that much time in my life. >> Long meetings. Bill, you ended off at Soldiers Monument. >> I'm off Soldiers Monument. Um, and I'm going to do um I'm going to do a joint liaison ship on the uh planning zoning commission and also the economic development commission. >> Okay. >> And I'll keep parking racks. >> Okay. Does anyone want soldiers? Oh, I might as well do it. I don't have enough commissions. >> Just put Hester's name on the rest of them. He'll take >>

095Yeah, you might as well. [laughter] >> I tease everybody. I have a room downstairs. So, >> give me the keys to my office. Hang on there. You're only going to four meetings a week. You can do five. You know, don't be surprised if I pop in another one, guys. >> Well, tag team on the education. >> Yes. Anybody want the housing authority? >> Uh, you picked that. I'm sorry. >> Someone should be on zoning board of appeals. >> Uh, Paul. >> Oh, we stay in. Okay. >> I believe he is. >> He's not here. We can put him on a whole board. [laughter] >> Okay. Be on the DAA. The citation hearing the board of ed. No, just sorry. I'm sure he's too ba. >> I don't know if he will or not. Yeah, Terry's

096got this copy. >> How'd you get that name? >> I asked her to do it >> when I popped in this afternoon for us. Um, >> ad hoc water level. Looks like Candy was on that as the liaison. Not sure when they need >> Oh, they'll take that one. He lives at the lake. >> Yeah, I'm told. >> We'll give it to him. Put him on there. >> Yeah, just tell him he was appointed. He [laughter] was anointed. I know he's watching. So, you got it, Paul. >> He's not watching yet. >> You can Well, you can say uh thank you later. >> Does that cover everything? I believe it does. It looks like everything is covered. >> Historic and inland wetlands. >> Historic. I'm going to stay on historic and I'm doing inland wetlands.

097Oh, you're going to do another one as well. >> Yep. And water and sewer and board. And >> don't forget you don't. It's not necessarily Thursday night. >> It's as long as it's not the third Wednesday because I have to actually a job that I have to do that meeting where I'm the presenter instead of the listener. >> What I did the last two years, just so you guys know, is I I look at the agenda as soon as it comes out and I read through the agenda. Sometimes the agenda is like they got to review their water bill. Um free up a member and then and then they're out. It's literally 50-minute meet. I don't even bother going to meet. >> Uh like with park and racks, I'm heavily involved, >> but I still

098only maybe went to six, seven meetings in the last two years. However, they called me a few times. I'm always available by email, video phone. I have the laptop or home the phone. If they need something during a meeting, they know they can call. Well, they know I'm watching the meeting at home and and I'll pick up and and we can discuss it. So, you do always have the option of doing electronically as well. >> Yeah. >> All right. Moving on to either >> who was on the zoning board for the field. I just >> I don't think you can do both plan and zoning and zoning boards of appeal. >> As a liazison, you could >> but not as a member. That's true. >> Because the liaison just reports back to us. You don't

099have voting rights or >> Yeah. None of these liaison ships are voting rights. So that's correct. >> And more of an observe and report role. >> What do you want? >> Um, [laughter] >> which date does that one meet? >> You better call your wife after all. >> I think >> uh if something comes up and the meetings meet at the same time or whatever, we can revisit. >> Okay. >> They're set up future meeting as long as we add it to the agenda. >> Want a GBA? >> Less is more. Trust me, you'll figure it out. >> Better stick with the two for now. Yeah. Yeah. [laughter] >> Uh, what you wanted did EDC? >> EDC and planning and zoning. >> Planning and Okay. >> All right. Moving on to item B, 2026 board

100of selectman meeting schedule. >> Thank you, Mr. Mayor. With an attempt that it won't take us three meetings this time because we kept messing up the dates last time. These are all of the meetings by charter. every boarding commission is to set their meetings for the 2026 calendar year. What's before you is uh the first and third uh Monday of every month except if Monday is a holiday, we then move the meeting to a Tuesday. I would need a formal motion to approve the uh uh meeting schedule as presented and we would include this in the minutes. Um we triple checked this. I even had the mayor check it before he came down here tonight. We believe we got all the dates right this year. We're not taking three attempts at this. >> I'll make

101a motion to approve. Second, >> Cheryl. Thank you, Troy. Any discussion? >> All in favor? >> And I apologize. Uh meetings beginning at 7 p.m. >> Yeah. >> Um we have to say >> 6 p.m. >> Wow. I >> 7 p.m. is too difficult for too many members to >> 6 p.m. is too difficult for too many members to >> So, um Mr. Mr. Cler, if the if the motion could reflect um and please um correct me if it's wrong that the the schedule as presented with a meeting start time of 7 p.m. >> Yes. >> Okay. >> And then was there a second? Yeah, this >> because it goes actually in the audit report. >> I want to pull my second back though. >> Uh any discussion? >> Seeing no discussion. All in favor?

102tried 6 grudgingly >> maybe 6:30 middle ground. >> Troy wants to do 3:45 so he can just leave work. [laughter] >> Item C, draft discussion on the draft speed camera ordinance. Town Measure Harrington. >> Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So, before you tonight is just a draft of our speed camera ordinance. Um, as you may or may not be aware, but I'm sure everybody's aware, um, in ordinances, we have to have three meetings that the ordinance is before the board of selectmen. they can talk about it a little more, but I've learned in the past when suggesting ordinances that first I give you a copy of it, we talk about it, and then we begin meeting one, which tenatively would be set for that first December meeting, which would be our first meeting, legal notices, all

103of the information would go out very publicly of what the ordinance that is looking to be passed uh contains. I'll tell you that the ordinance, the draft ordinance that is in front of you was written by the town attorney with the state statute uh in mind in that pretty much on this particular ordinance. There isn't much wiggle room of things we can change. We have to follow the statute to a tea. Um I guess if you had an opportunity to look it over, was there anything glaring? anything that you you thought, you know, maybe I should go back to the town attorney and get clarification on? And is this board ready to go to meeting one of three in December? Also, that in order to fully submit to the DOT to allow us to have

104the speed cameras, not only do we have to have the ordinance, we have to have a public hearing as well. Um, one of my suggestions is is that um, somewhere in between the three meetings, we have our public hearing. Um, possibly between uh, the ordinance second meeting and the third meeting, we call our public hearing, let the public come in, weigh in on it. Um, and then you'll decide if you want to pass the ordinance on the third meeting, get the public to weigh in between the second and third one. Um, and so this is the ordinance that does uh allow us to then put up not just speed cameras, but uh uh attorney Nelligan did write it if that we ever wanted to go to the red light cameras. This incorporates that as well.

105So we're not back to the drawing board trying to incorporate red light cameras and creating another new ordinance and confusing everybody. Let's just do it once. Um get it over with and then it gives us the flexibility down the road. Um if there's questions about and I know we have some newer board members about um the speed cameras, I would say wait just one second. Let's talk ordinance first and then we can open up for a broader subject on on speed cameras. >> Only thing I had was in reviewing the proposed language is the in the first sentence the the public act with the footnote should be removed because it only references the statute. Usually you only have reference to the public act when it hasn't been codified into the public into the statute. >>

106That's why it's always good to have an attorney for it. [laughter] I agree. You're right. Uh you're right. >> Footnote and the >> Yep. >> other questions. >> I just had a question I wanted to clarify. Um, on the second page under 157-27, I just noticed that it said that um that the images will be reviewed uh by a sworn member of the town's police department or an employee of the town is designated. Um, who would that employee be who would be reviewing um besides somebody from the police department? And would that involve hiring somebody extra? >> Excellent question. So um I guess to first start per uh charter I am the uh traffic authority and then the chief of police is our designate. Um so it would be up to you know me as

107the designate. The way the chief and I have originally saw this until we get our feet underneath us. It would be myself, the chief and then also the uh individual that works in the dispatch center. Um would be the three individuals trusted with it and possibly one of our sergeants to review it. Now, depending on the amount of uh tickets that are issued, um I don't know if you had a chance to look at the potential revenue source, this would be an area where we could fund an additional employee to review um those speeding tickets. So, in the beginning, we're going to keep it small until we get our feet underneath us. Keeping in mind, um I'm going real really down some rabbit holes. The first 30 days, the only thing that can be issued

108is just warnings. um letting people know that hey, you went into a speed zone. The only thing that can happen in the first 30 days is that they get a warning sent to them. After that, then it's either no action, warning, or speeding ticket. And it would be one of the designates that would elect to decide, you know, what they would get. Um we may create a policy internally. You can't have favorites in this. You know, I think if you know, it's a bad plate read or something like that, but I can't imagine there ever be a reason why you would not take no action or issue a warning when the person that maybe drove through it 2 minutes before, maybe was driving 7 m hour less than you, they did get a ticket and

109you didn't. Um, I think that's something we'll work with internally to say you speed, you get a ticket. Um, these zones, I'm going really down rabbit holes because I think it's important for the public to know these zones are clearly going to be marked by state statute. 1,000 ft before the camera, you're alerted that you're entering a speed zone. 500 ft before the camera, you're alerted again. And then you're actually in the speed zone. Again, the first 30 days, the only thing that can be issued is actually a uh a warning. And then after that the system becomes live. There was a question that um somebody had asked me is where is the first locations this is why I wanted room selected. >> They're going to be notified also that they're speaking. Okay. I know.

110So Paul, if you could clarify maybe for the the audience watching too because I'm pretty sure there's a bunch of them watching because there was a big discussion on this over on Facebook over this. This is this is discussion on the ordinance. We we had multiple meetings on the canvas. >> Um we discussed this. We looked into this. I think kind of the unanimous feeling was we we had discussed the the one that they put up in was it Washington? Mhm. >> Um I happened to go through that right before our first meeting and it was like you got to be kidding me. They have three signs and it starts so far back that you see warning entering a speed zone. You know going to be on camera, you're going to get a ticket. You

111actually go through them. If you go through that and you're speeding, you absolutely 100% deserve the ticket. If you get the ticket, you just simply don't care, right? >> Because I mean the ones in Washington have little flashing lights on them. now entering now entering radar cameras on like >> 70 and a 25. >> There was some Facebook comments that this is a tax to balance our budget. >> Yes. >> I hope we make zero dollars on it. However, we have 55,000 cars a week on Main Street and the average speed was >> No. [laughter] I got my I got my cuts >> 118 miles hour was the high. No. 121 mph wrong. It was 148 mph. >> Okay. >> So, >> oh, that's right. That was going That was going >> That was going

112towards North Park. >> In essence, we're any we're we're 70% of the people driving on the roads that we set up these cameras a while back to get our information were speeders. To Select Poso's point, this discussion began last March when this uh statute was was passed. I presented to the board this idea. Um I think it was select compos that says get me information and my exact response was there isn't much information out there because it's so new. Let me see if I can get a company to give us our data. And that's what you know you all got to report. I know our new selectman I I I sent it to them over the weekend. They got to see our real data that 70% of the people that are driving are >> 5.9%.

113>> 7. She's got the down. >> And and here's the thing. We set that we set that to not even record till they were at least 10 miles hour over the speed limit. >> That's when it started recording. >> So my um yeah, my concern I I totally understand all that and and all of the great values. My concern is actually about the ordinance here. I think um I think that you know members of our community might feel a little uneasy about you know outsourcing to a machine this stuff which I understand. Um I do like that it's um going to be reviewed by a human. I think that's a great part. I it's really the part about an employee of the town versus the police department. I'm just I just wanted to seek clarification.

114you know, it's very different whether someone, you know, who was, you know, hired to sit in an office and look at something and has no experience with that versus someone in the police department. So that that's the only >> it would be an employee in the police department would be somebody from, you know, >> the fire department >> and I can tell you each one of them depending on job description, it doesn't really line up into their job description um whatsoever. >> I almost disagree with the the whatifs, right? I mean, if you're reviewing a computer and it says the guy's 89 miles an hour in a 25, I don't care who's reviewing it. If you're doing 89 and 25, you're getting a ticket. >> Hey, >> that's it. I I I don't care. You

115know what I'm saying there? This isn't a gray area like that. This is a radar gun. It's It's calibrated, Paul, at least once a year or I know the company >> Multiple times throughout the year. So, it's not like they could say, "Well, I wasn't really doing 89. I was doing 27." No, you weren't. >> No, I I totally agree. I just I just think that, you know, it will make it an easier sell to the town and make people feel better about it if they know, you know, who if we just clarify who it is on the human side of it is actually reviewing it. I I'm not, you know, I I totally agree on the merits of the cameras and that it's going to bring safety and revenue and all that. I just

116I just wanted to clarify who it is that's actually going to be in charge of approving it according to this because it says a swore me member or employee of the town's police department or an employee of the town >> as designated by the traffic authority >> which would be me obviously in >> which is referenced earlier in the statute in the proposal >> um and if you don't get them here we're going to get them in North is what we're doing >> we're way ahead of our cameras will be in stock pretty soon will have it will have it. >> I think it's also very important to clarify for those that are watching that this isn't going to cost us an arm and a leg. >> Zero. >> This is, you know, >> thank

117you >> because that was someone was posting that it's going to be $85,000 per camera and that's not >> zero. Zero zero. >> Um I know the board had had an ability to to look at the Excel sheet. We did go out to bid. We got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight proposals back companies that do it. Um, this was shared with the board many many months ago. I think it was in September. Everyone was was uh uh on to the Sightream proposal because Sightream there's no monthly maintenance. There's no capital outlay. Um, sure sitream is taking a little bit more of the ticket revenue, but we don't owe them anything. All this money goes into an escro account. We take our percentage, they take their percentage. So, if as the mayor said,

118he hopes we make no money and everybody obeys the law. They just made a huge capital uh outlay and we're not on the hook for any of the money. Um I think it's also important that uh this board had tasked me of asking the chief of police where the initial cameras should go. Um we have to make it very well known. So, I'm not giving any trade secrets to the community. Um the first one would be Route 44 Main Street, area uh 480 Railroad Cafe in Mario's. that's pointed in both directions. So, two cameras there. Uh, Route 44 Norolk Road, area of Dry Dam. And last but not least is North Main Street area between Swallen Street and Route 20 near the sewer plant would be the first six relocations, six cameras that the chief

119is recommending that we employ. >> Just a question on that. Why not the area in front of the Y which goes to 25 miles per hour? We got that curve. That's a very dangerous curve. That one might be the way the camera works. I printed a >> a pretty cool diagram. And if I remember going back, they like that straight shot so they can get a wider uh I guess the best recommendation. Go on and and type in like speed cameras and watch the YouTube videos that all these companies put out and you can see how these cameras work. I agree with you because you want to get them. I know exactly where you're talking. Um I think they like that wider street so they can get more so much pedestrian traffic in front of

120that YMCA, you know, with swim team and everything >> and it's just >> Well, hopefully we slow them down way before there >> and it stays that way. >> Seems like to speed up around there >> for Cheryl and Kevin. >> We have to leave the cameras there for 18 months. After the 18 months, we can move them to a different location. >> So, >> we'd have to go back to the DOT. Um the the good part there is all this stuff being done in the background. We haven't spent $1 with Sideream. They're gathering all the information. They're gathering all the data that they're going to submit to the DOT. Uh once we check our boxes on our end, and then DOT, I believe, has 60 days to respond to say yay or nay. I

121think a question came up um was we're a distressed community. Does that play a factor? It may, but I've seen that in Hampton, Connecticut, which is also a distressed community, they were able to put cameras on their uh state roads. So, I don't see this being any different um than what Hamen Hamen was able to do down there. Um again, early in the process, community members here, community members watching at home, there will be a public hearing. In fact, when we set it, I want to get a date where Sitstream, the company that we're going to uh work with is actually here answering your questions. Bring the experts in. I don't claim to be an expert in anything. I want to bring the expert in. So, if there's a technical question or anything, they're here

122to answer. You're hearing it right from the company that that that are putting it out there. The owner and inventor of these cameras, his name is Andrew. He promises he will be at the meeting. >> So, I'm I'm going to go back a little bit old school back in the day. Um, if everybody remembers, you don't want to go through Canton really fast because you're going to get a ticket. >> Yeah. >> I think we need to be like that, too. According to the report that we just got here, our Winston PD did 71 traffic stops last month. That's like two a day. You could do two in a in 15 minutes out there. So, this is kind of a request for the chief and the town manager. I think we need to get a

123patrol stepped on main stepped up a little on Main Street. Let people know that you can't come speeding through Winston anymore. Slow down a little bit. Yes, there's there's ideas about changing the traffic. you know, maybe putting the two lanes on the riverside, put parking here. That's a state road. That that's going to be a lot. I would like to see us slow them down now here. And granted, so the people that are listening, all that money that we give out in tickets goes to the state of Connecticut on any state road, but >> we get a small percentage though. >> I thought we get like 10% or something. No, >> not cameras. We get all of it. Well, now company minus >> there. >> We get less than 50%. But I would like to

124see it's happening now. >> Let's let's start stopping people on the corner straightaways coming going because I'm getting complaints. Why is the coming into town? Why is it painted coming in? Why are you choking it down? I'm like that's to slow people down. So if we get out there now, get ahead of this. Maybe we can find different locations for these like by the schools where it's a little bit more important. >> Oh, we got more coming, >> right? initial three to get our feet, >> but this is back to the the other side where I'm hearing big brother is looking down on you and I I also not really thrilled about it. So >> So to select man has to >> and that's coming from my big brother. So >> this is the third

125or fourth time we've had this discussion. We talked about putting cruisers on Main Street, one with a cop in it, one without a cop in it, just having the lights on. We did it for two, three weeks, stopped doing it. >> We brought it up another time. We had them looking on Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays around the Y to stop people. We did it for two, three weeks. >> Speeding gets stopped. Now, >> you're right. Canton was one of those towns when I was growing up. >> We just didn't even go that way because if you went through Canton, you were at 27 and a 25. You were getting yanked over. You were getting a ticket. And that was >> try speeding down south. >> And not to go wacko over this whole thing, but um

126more than we already are. Uh the state came to us with a plan. Do they still plan on doing the lighted crosswalks and all that? I mean, I know they started their >> Yeah, we did their lane diving and stuff. Yes, >> there was a plan presented to you and I haven't heard anything on that. >> There was a plan presented. Right now, they're still in their uh factf finding mode of what did the lane dieting do? Um they're still gathering information and then we'll meet again probably in the springtime and and you know, I'm not afraid to >> you need crosswalks. Yeah, we well and they had great ideas with the crossworks with the with with the with the plastic ballards and everything like that. There's a whole big plan um that I had

127the engineer plans. They're still in my office actually, but we are at the state's, you know, uh call the to get it done, but I have no problem uh calling the state of Connecticut and >> getting our feathers. >> I have no problem. >> Uh before we move on, page two, 157-26. >> Yep. Uh you're adding to violations or fails to stop such motor vehicle when facing a steady red signal on a traffic control sign. Such failure is detected by an automatic traffic enforcement safety device. Red light camera. >> Yeah, that was the point where uh Kevin, excuse me, attorney Nelligan suggested that if you're going to create an ordinance, create the whole ordinance. So if you ever decide that you want to enlist a red light camera, you're not going back and creating a

128whole another ordinance. Then we also added violations if you're caught passing a school bus with the red lights on the speed camera. >> That state statute. >> That's a state statute where you you what uh >> speed cameras under a state. >> What the mayor is suggesting is that this company not only does all of this stuff, they also can put cameras on buses and and get the people that are >> Well, I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about on the speed camera, not additional cameras. So camera would there be a bus stop at the camera location main stop? >> I don't think the camera's going to be able to do that. I I I'll ask but I think the camera is just trained to do one thing and I don't think it's looking

129for other violations but >> it would have to stop like right there in front of it. >> Well, is the camera trained to not only do speed but also other violations? I don't I've never heard it but I can ask now that you think about it. Paul on that same statement just correct the spelling of device so that we don't have to >> spelling on what device >> device >> you spelled >> device >> d e v i s e >> device >> any other questions >> I just >> just you know as a newbie just coming back to in 15728 I'm just curious because it's going into the ordinance so this means these these uh fees are set for as long as this ordinance is in in place the $50 >> these fees are

130set by state statute. >> Okay. Um, yeah. Um, so it's $50 for the first violation. Any additional violation is $75. We are allowed to charge a $15 processing fee. That's set by state statute. Any town that's going to put uh uh speed cameras in same fine for a month. Um, if you're in Fairfield County, you don't get to charge 100. When you're up here, you don't get to charge 50. Every every town that enlists speed cameras, fees are the fees. >> But great question. So, I read through this um on Friday and I it seems to be okay to me. I didn't really find any uh I'm bad at spelling, so I would have missed that, but I uh I went through the whole thing and I I thought So, what do you need from

131us tonight? >> Really nothing. This was not an actionable item tonight. This was just your first chance to look at a draft ordinance. If the board uh thinks that this is ready for prime time, we will start meeting one. I think our first meeting is December 1st, right after Thanksgiving. We'll do meeting one of three to get the ball roll. >> Do an unofficial vote to find out if the board's already. >> Well, you don't have to Well, you don't need an official vote tonight. You can that Well, >> put it on the agenda for >> Yeah, just put it on the agenda. It seems like there's general consensus, which is fine by me. >> Go ahead. >> But starting at the December 1st meeting, you're going to want to vote to move it to

132the second and then between the second and the third, we'll do a public hearing and so on and so on. >> Anything else? Item D, wall and sill infrastructure report update. Hope you had your water. >> Yeah. Uh, and I wrote a lot about this because one thing I am not is a uh engineer. Um, so I did send out this report uh I think sometime last week when I got it. It's roughly a 100page document. Um, Wallen is the 118 acres that we're looking to develop. We are out to an RFP and an RFQ uh for that particular structure which is due sometime in December. Uh former selectwoman Perez suggested that um we test the infrastructure underneath the ground. We'll spend a little money to test the infrastructure underneath. What I'm about to read

133is my takeaway from talking with our public works director, talking with uh our gentleman that works in land use and talking with Apex. um in no particular order, but this was all of this um summised in a page and a half document. So, I'm going to start reading it. Stop me at any time. Um first, the storm drainage system. Overall, the system is in good shape. There are a few catch basins that require some attention and maintenance, but nothing out of the ordinary. Most of it is what you can expect to find in a system of this age. Remember, that system is well over 20 years old. Um, it's safest for any developer looking at the site to assume assume those basins will need routine care, cleaning out overgrown vegetation, dredging them so they hold

134their full intended value. This is pretty standard with old basins and is not a showstopper, but it's fair to at least flag it now that when we do bring in developers, I don't think this is an issue, my opinion that we need to address as a board. I think if this ultimately land ends up, you know, getting u developed by developer, we let them know, hey, those catch basins are 20 years old. You're going to want to clean, you know, I don't think that's a cost that we need to take on our part. >> It's very It's not very costly. >> It's not very costly either. >> And what's wrong, the castings are good. It's where they put the pipe in and they pge around the pipe. That always deteriorates after 20 years. So that's

135why >> Yeah. and and let's say we and my other thought behind this was is let's say you give me authorization I go clean it now that property may still be two to three years from being developed by the time you're pulling permits by the time you do your design what does it look like then get it to a developer they're going to have to clean it anyways you might as well just clean it when they're ready to to build on it moving on uh the water man the upper portion of the main appears to be intact and and likely ready to reuse and those aren't my words that's coming from the apex report which is positive. Um there is however an issue in the section from Wallen Hill to about the halfway point along

136the main. It looks like this isn't due to any kind of break or major failure but rather a valve that isn't closing all the way. Pretty common problem according to the experts. Sometimes if you exercise an open and close of the valve a few times, it fixes itself. If that doesn't work, we can bring in a leak detection company to check for the leaks to find out exactly what's going on. But this is a more a matter of putting in a little effort to figure it out than fixing than the fix itself. It's not a huge showstopper or a huge expense. It's just a matter of a little bit of time of all right, is the valve sticking? Is it not? Again, um I do and I was hoping I would get it, but I

137don't have a price on what that would look like bringing in a professional to do it. Uh, but again, not a huge showstopper. >> I wouldn't even touch it. Let the developer do it. >> Again, this is why I wanted to bring this to the to the board. There's a few other questions I want to ask before we wrap this all up. Um, next up is the low pressure sewer system. The manholes themselves seem to be in decent condition. The issue is the pipes and the valves inside the manholes need to be replaced. This is a relative minor repair, but it does mean we could we couldn't pressure test the force veins, the main pipes until the work is done. The expectation is the force veins themselves are probably still in great shape but they

138still need to be tested. A separate question came up of whether they are functioning valves at every individual lot on the system or if they or if this needs to be addressed. Um electric and communic uh communication um the conduit that they're running down uh to provide cable and electricity and all that seems to be in great shape. Apex did note that fiber optic cable uh is the new latest trend. There is no fiber in that. We would let whatever developer potentially is going to purchase it to let them know that there are no uh fiber optics that are running down the conduit. They can do as they wish with it. Um there is cable, there is phone, um so and there is obviously you know electric. Um taking a step back their words um

139the report is very encouraging overall. Most of the infrastructure is good or repairable condition and there wasn't any major surprises or big ticket items to identify for storm uh drainage system. I don't think the town needs to do anything at this point but to have the eventual winning bidder for the site handle any needed drainage fixes bas basin maintenance as part of their development plan on the water main. Um what we're recommending is we work with our water water department to actively test uh and exercise those valves. Basically run them through the movements to see if it clears up the issue. If we still can't get that section to shut down completely, then we may need to bring in that leak detection company. And as far as the low pressure system, um we're suggesting we

140hire a contractor to open and remove the valves in a representative uh sample of manholes and pressure test the connecting pipe section. This will give us a much clearer picture. Um, in general, that's what's in this 100page document. We're in great shape. Why I wanted to bring this at the board level. We are due to get uh bids back sometime in December. We can post this document online as an addendum to at least let you know the contract or the developers know this is where we stand. We do I do want to get you the prices of those items. Maybe we do address them, maybe we don't. But I think this report alone, how glowing it is, >> is going to even attract more interest in that property up there. >> Absolutely. >> I'm going

141to open that up for now board discussion. Um, but we were >> So, I'm going to tell you right now, out of 1.7 million of infrastructure, it's not even a drop in the hat. What needed what needs to go on that property because it's only partially done. So, but that's a very encouraging report. all the stuff that they u mentioned. I read what read through the report three times um just to make sure I got everything and nothing was um of a costly nature. So um it held pressure. It just didn't help pressure for lawn that's a valve 20 years. You expect that. Everything that that got that is damaged on there for not being used for 20 years is expected. So, a developer going in there knowing that they have that much in there.

142It's going to be very little for them to repair. They need to add to it anyway. The town should leave it alone, sell it as is with that. That's my opinion. >> Other was actually surprised it was in good shape that it was in too for something that's never been like a lot of prayers at night >> because I've seen systems used for a hundred years that doesn't sound as good as that. So, I was actually pretty surprised. Um, not GL. It could have been a lot worse because all those water pipes, those gaskets could have been leaking and that would have been really expensive. So, holding it a little bit if it's just exercising a valve. I I bet almost the crew could do it, but it may not be. It's a gate valve

143goes up and down. It may not see there could be a debris piece of debris in there that's holding it back. So, I'm actually surprised. I'm not surprised about even the drainage up there being in good shape like it is, you know, and and I I saw the pictures, too. I went over the report. They're full. That's not a bad thing. Remember, it's a pressurized Well, it's a pressurized system. So, there there is going to be bleeders in there throughout the system just like there is around Highland Lake. There's bleeders to bleed that. You don't want air in any any system at all. So, I was surprised. It's in good shape. >> Yeah, I was pretty happy. >> I was very happy. >> Yeah. >> Anything else? >> No, I agree. But I think I

144think Paul, you should put that out as an addendum. Let the Yeah, let the potential biders know. >> Absolutely. we're looking at, you know, 90 95%. >> And I don't think we should look at paying doing any repairs at this point. I think leave it to those people whoever whoever gets the winning bid because >> that's going to be part of how they're going to develop the property. So, let them do it. Any changes they want to make, they're responsible. >> On that point, too, that's another thing that they'll be thinking of. So, that that system was put in for that development that was approved. >> If they change anything about that, they're not going to be able to use that anyway. So, why would we put money into something that we have no idea

145what's going on? >> Good point. >> Because they're just they're gonna they're going to use the mains. >> Yeah. >> And then >> Good point. Excellent. >> Yeah. >> All right. This will go live um first thing tomorrow morning. Um we'll get it out there. Uh it'll attract more attention. Um and then uh maybe a I'm asking the board. Usually the board comes to me, but um when we created this RFQ, RFP, we did say we were going to create a selection committee. Um start thinking of names. I do need to form that committee. Um you guys gave the town manager the opportunity, but I we we work in that partnership. Um come up with people. You know, I you know, obviously we we did say that, you know, somebody from Gman and York. We

146do have the uh owner of Taichi, our our town planner group has agreed to go on it, but you know, you you want residents that live up there. I know a few if you know some, you know, obviously we need them to buy in onto it, but this could be a yet again a transformational project uh for the town of Winchester that, you know, this this could this could set us on our way. Maybe some numbers from planning a zone if they like >> you don't because they're gonna ultimately have to >> make the decision. >> Yeah. Yeah. You don't mean the two bites of the apple. I don't I'm not a huge one because they're ultimately going to have to approve or disapprove because they're going to have to go back for all the

147approvals again because it's all expired. So >> maybe former select woman would be interested. >> Funny you brought her name. [laughter] >> I talked about twisting. >> I I got to give it to her. I I mean I'm I was grumpy at that meeting where I had personal uh thought that I had wrote a very nice RFP and she said >> no why don't you spend a little money and get the professionals to do it. I wish I didn't spend the weekend writing the RFP. I could have g got that back but she was 100% right and also testing the infrastructure. So you can see how well it's been paying off. So it's been great. >> Absolutely. >> I think I'm done. You guys know >> moving on to item 12, citizens comments. Order selectman

148welcomes public comments. Speak because we limited three minutes may speak once. Uh please make sure you turn on the microphone. >> Where are we? >> Just the red button. N >> flashing. There you go. >> Kim Higgins, 20 Crescent Street, Winstead, Connecticut. Thank you for the sidewalks. I almost got hit by a car. I would really like those sidewalks to be bright and shiny and especially at night, especially by St. Joseph's, especially by Camp Pizza. By the way, thank you for that. Second thing, if you're gonna do this big development up on Wallins Hill, which I am 100% for, you're gonna have to fix Wallen Street because going up that, you can't hold soda in your hand while you're driving up that street. So, that's got to be on the plan. Any developer looking at

149that's going to go, "Holy moly, what is this? Who wants to drive this?" So, that's all I have to say. Thank you very Oh. And did you talk to anybody about writing grants for our schools? Because >> Yeah, I remember last meeting I said, "Please speak to someone about starting to write grants for our schools because there's money up at the state level we could get. We just need the grants to be written." And that's all I have to say. Thank you very much. >> Thank you, Jim. Anyone else wish to speak? So I do have a couple things for you. So you mentioned that fact that the the cameras would start on the state road which I agree with 100% considering almost all the pedestrians in town are on Main Street. The businesses are

150on Main Street and with all of the people that live on Main Street and the apartments above the buildings, everybody that wants to shop there is parking across the street and they're trying to walk across. So, having said that part, uh I've been like a almost like a homeless bum uh since July looking at these crosswalks. One of the glaring things that I found is the St. Joseph's, as my wife was talking about, uh St. Joseph's crosswalk. I have seen almost a hundred people in the crosswalk where cars went through. also uh women with babies in carriages where cars came through on both sides when they were in the middle. So that's not a good thing, especially at night. That crosswalk is not lit. It's very dark. Now to your point over on YMCA, exactly

151the same problem. And we've had people die over there. >> Yeah. >> So that's very I think the crosswalk. So now I'm going to go to William. I think your idea is fabulous. I barely ever see police on Main Street with enforcement. Almost never. And I never see state police. Now, I understand you don't have any control over the state police, but that's their road and they don't do anything nothing as far as uh enforcement. So, if that the cameras are going to solve that, but you're going to add another problem. As soon as you put the camera on where you want it there, people like me who speed a lot are going to go right around. And where are they going to go? They're going to go by the two schools. So, Hinsdale is

152now going to become a big problem. And that brings right down to the Pearson school. And if you can manage to put a camera somewhere around there, that might solve the problem. But the kids are going to be at risk. Now, that's just something to think about as far as future cameras, right? Um, typically I don't respond, but I will say because you brought up a huge concern and in being a father of young kids, it won't be long after once we get our feet underneath. This is where I'm suggesting to the board school zones and all of that. We have a huge list of we need to control speeding all over all over this town. We want to start on Main Street, but we have a plan to control speeding throughout town. >> Absolutely.

153So the one thing that I see is I see it already where the cars that don't want to go down through town any kind of problem. So they come down Hinsdale, they get to wet more, they see the kids and they make a left onto Crescent and come up past me and that and then they go down mountain >> and that is another big speed zone here down mountain. So just so your guys are aware, right, I think I got it covered. >> You guys are doing a great job. Thank you very much. >> Thank you, sir. Anyone else? Moving on to item 13, selectman's comments and reports. Who has a bill? >> Just one quick um so someone come up to you just before the meeting. We're wondering if when we lay these agendas

154out, Paul, um executive session a lot of time we put before selectman's comments and reports. Um we've been in executive session for an hour and a half, two hours. Could we move that in the future if we have executive session due to selectman's comments or reports before? Because when we go into executive session for an hour and a half, we come out, the room's empty, most of the people watching at home have shut the TV off and it was actually a good point that was brought up. >> We have done that. Um I gotten familiar with this board. Um, and I know when we're going to be in executive session for a lengthy period of time versus a shorter period of time, if I feel that we're going to be talking about a a subject

155matter that's going to keep us there for a lengthy period of time. Recently and in the past, we I will move the agenda around so that selectman's comments, public input goes before um the executive session so that when we come out of exe, we're not, you know, people aren't waiting around. Um, it's really based on what I feel the subject matter going into executive session. If it's going to be, if it's a, you know, short, hey, I just need a direction, then no biggie. But there are times I know when we talk, you know, Wallen Hill and everything. >> If you go back to those agendas, you'll see that selectman's comments, public input was always before we entered uh into exact session. But tell that resident, yep, agreed. Agreed. >> Oh, [laughter] we were doing

156it before you asked. I got two things. Um, first thing is I want to um have you put it uh another RFQ out for town attorney for the new board. Um, and my second thing is this is piggybacking off of Mr. Poso's Select Poso's um proposal. Um, I don't know if it was last year or the year before about bringing back awards for uh or uh some recognizing businesses once a month. Um, I think we should do something for uh figure out some kind of funding. Uh, we can make a plaque. Um, and then once a, you know, either once a month or once a meeting, I don't even care. Probably once a month would be sufficient. and um bring in longtime businesses that that survive through all the horror stories of um in Winston

157and work our way down, you know, and >> invite them toward comes to mind. >> That's the first thing that comes to my mind, too. >> You know, I mean, there's a lot of businesses struggling out there. Um you know, there's not a lot of foot traffic. Um, I know the economic development committee is doing their best, but um, I spoke with a lot of the business owners and you know, times are tough. The the construction on Main Street hurt them. Uh, the speeding hurts them, the parking hurts them. So, we need to give them something, give back to them and and have them come in and explain to uh us maybe they have an idea of how we can help them. So, we've discussed this in the past, just a business recognition. >> Yeah.

158>> Thing. I know EDC does do their thing, too. But, >> so I got a list from >> the assessor's department of just businesses in Winchester, >> and it's the list of businesses is thicker than this packet. I mean, there's >> hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of businesses. It's not just not just Main Street. All the little seamstresses do or whatever. just some even if it's a paper thing with a with a sealed town seal on it. >> We've given those out to some businesses. I know Kim Pizza still has theirs hung up. >> Yeah. No, I think it's I think >> co >> So, is that coming from the town manager or the board of selectment? I am not against it. I think it comes more from the board of selectment. Um

159I think it's >> I get to have a little fun with you. Um, I think that's a wonderful job that you know you and maybe some other the board members recommend committee and >> and tell me which one you want on the agenda and I'll put it on the agenda, >> but we got to have some sort of funding to make the >> It's very minimal. I We're not going to do awards and all that, but you could print a >> well something that they can have on their store >> certificate of recognition. print that way. >> So are you you're volunteering to >> you give it to So you just volunteered to head up the business recognition. >> I would Yes, I would volunteer for that. If somebody wants to help me, that would

160be great. >> You already started the leg work bill. [laughter] you guys. >> So then I'd ask uh from the town manager's uh office is get me the business um honor before the Thursday prior to the Monday meeting because I do like to start getting the agendas together, you know, Thursday, you know, Friday, you know, Friday the latest, but I I try and get them done, but there's always last minute things. Um it'll be on you guys to invite that particular business owner or manager here. We can prepare. I'll bring the certification or the recognition down with me. Um, but I have nothing against I don't think we ever formalized it, but coming from the board, I think it's it's it's a great thing. I don't I think we can come up with that recognition

161on a piece of paper. We'll laminate it. We'll make it look good. Um, >> maybe work with EDC, get their, you know, opinions in terms of who they recommend. And I think it should be a collective effort um with the EDC because it I'm impressed with all our boards and commissions, but recently I've worked very closely with our EDC commission because we've been on tour. They book an hour and if you all know I like to talk and we're there for like three hours because I completely geek out in some of these places. Um and I love it. But um yeah, let me know just you know I'm a phone call or an email away. Show me the business and it's on the agenda and we can do it you know >> right after pledge

162allegiance. Well, >> in the beginning so that people can go back >> before the meeting maybe before we even start. >> Well, then you're asking people to come in. It's nice when people are here. My recommendation is you get through the approved minutes, citizen comments, and before town manager report. Maybe break it off there. >> So, it's early early. >> It's early on. >> Um, and it's before town manager report where you know I'm >> who you going to make responsible to make up the certificates. >> You give it. It's we already have a temp >> generically. I mean, it's going to be the same certificate. We're just changing the business name. Just give me that. >> We could cover >> by Thursday and I can get it printed by Monday. >> You're ready, Bill?

163>> Yes. >> Yeah. >> I'll add it to the list of things I got. >> I'll tell you, as one of those business owners on Main Street, the certificate's not what I want to hear. I want to be listened to. I want >> Well, that's your opportunity. >> That's I understand that. I just think you seeing progress and seeing this progress that's happening with Main Street with the speed cameras and other things that we've talked about. I think that is what the businesses really want to hear and they want to be felt because as you may recall a couple years ago before you guys took up the street cameras I brought it to the board in comment. I went in and spoke to almost every business person on Main Street about signing the petition and

164we got every single one to sign it and all I heard from them was that good luck. Nothing's going to change. And I'm so glad that things are changing because that is important because we need our businesses and we need to make sure they're successful. You want to give me a piece of paper, that's fine, but I want to see action. That's what I want to see. >> So here you have the opportunity to uh to you know recommend what you feel is good. And we also lost the WOW group that was you guys are on fire and then all a sudden >> I Yeah, Annie, I don't know what I've need to >> we need to regenerize that Wow group. A >> little bit I get what you're saying and I I walk every

165weekend. I walk the businesses and talk to all the business owners as well. >> I'm not worried about Main Street. Well, >> we we know you guys are there. I'm I'm talking about the little mom and pop. >> Again, if if you get a copy of the assessor's office of just the businesses, I mean, the little embroidery shops that have been here for 27 years doing embroidery, those recognition because we we drive by the main street businesses every day. um the guys that fix Long Road, that's a legit business >> that's been there. Um that are in the outskirts, the little teeny farms that have been selling eggs for 47 years. And >> um just a little recognition for them as well that basically more we recognize you. We haven't forgot about you. We realize

166you're you're just as important as the little shop on on Main Street. So >> other comments? >> Yes, I needed just clarifications. Um second, you said >> I said it wrong. RFP. >> Yeah, RFQ. I would assume any attorney group has the qualifications because the word attorney after them. So, you want an RFP. >> And your RFP is >> just walk me down the road just so I can start. >> I I wanted to search for the pricing on the town attorney. >> So, you're looking for pricing on [cough] >> correct >> on the laundry list of items that >> Yes. I thought it gave us a pretty good price last time I looked >> compared to what I know the going rate will be. >> It's always good to check. >> Um, one thing

167I just want to say and I don't know if this is possible and is there any way to get our agendas out earlier than Friday. I know that's the last possible day to get it out under the charter, but it's, you know, when I was on the board of ed, we would get them on the Wednesday before our Tuesday meeting. That gave us plenty of time to go through be this also gives the citizens time to whether they want to participate and be here and that's really important to me. So if there's any way to get it maybe Thursday at least just one extra business day would be very helpful. >> Um understood. Let me ask you this. Some of the the delay I know what's going to be on the agenda. I'm already thinking

168of the next agenda as you can see. What is taking us the time is the packet itself. >> Are you going to want to packet on that Thursday? Because sometimes for a prime example, the finance stuff literally came in Friday morning with that. Agendas are easy. It's that backup information. I can get you the agenda early. >> I would start in with the agenda would be great and then >> Yeah. So at least there's as long as agenda is descriptive of what's going to be addressed. Y >> but you know just so that we are giving our citizens advanced notice, sufficient notice. Um that's why I was asking for it on Wednesday because I was used to getting packets on Wednesday. Um but you know I do understand there's a lot involved in doing that

169but that's why I'm asking whether it was possible. So that's my >> agendas are easy. you know, some of this, you know, even with the ordinance for uh the traffic cam, I not making excuse. I'm relying on other people to get me the information and I'm trying to get it as Listen, I would love to have this done and in bed by like Wednesday because then I have to worry about it, but I'm frantically running around usually Friday morning getting every last piece of document that I need and even some of the times I don't have all the documents and I hand them out to you on Monday. So, but we will work on getting you getting at least the agenda out earlier and then the rest of the stuff um >> should correct the

170typo on unfinished business. So, that's spelled properly. >> Well, just we use the same format all the time. I don't want to repeat that. >> We got rid of the special meeting that was uh put up there a lot. Um I I will admit to the new board members, I am not a great speller. Okay. Um, so >> join the club. >> That's what Google's for. >> Kevin, >> yeah, I just wanted to to make a comment more for for people here and and at home. Um, I just want to say it's welcome everybody to join a committee, a board. Um, there's there's so many openings. I've got a list of openings here of all these committees that need people. So, whatever your area of expertise, um, please, it's it's actually very meaningful, I'm learning,

171to to be involved in in your town and you get to know great people and you get to be involved in something that you're passionate about. I mean, we've got openings on architectural review, conservation, the cultural district commission doesn't even have enough members to function yet. Um, historic commission, housing authority, inland wetlands, Laurel city commission, recreation board, uh, zoning board of appeals. So, whatever your thing is, uh, we our discussion here tonight actually made it easier uh and quicker to join a board. So, so we need we need people. I mean, democracy only works when we're all involved and we can fill all these volunteer positions. So, so please um pick your passion. Uh, get involved. We've made it easier. Um, we need everybody to contribute to the town. >> I'm next. So, I want

172to thank the veterans for the Forest View Cemetery and Soldiers Monument on Veterans Day. uh listened to it was kind of cold outside that day, so we actually got to listen to Jack say the Gettysburg address inside Soldiers Monument and I thought I was standing next to Lincoln, so that made me feel pretty [laughter] good. Uh the other thing I wanted to share uh the water tank projects for for the waterworks uh are coming in under budget and I want to send out a special thanks to Bart Clark for being diligent and his nose to the grindstone and the time and the effort that he put in uh to make that possible which is which thank you Bart for that. And last but not least, uh, being a former member of the charter revision commission,

173I think I'd like to start some discussion on some charter changes here. I think we need to bring it up about the town clerk position. I think some of it uh the board of selectman's positions every two years is potential to change this board every two years where the board of education is rotating basis. You know, some are f uh the four years, five members are four years and then they flip it. So it's so it's continuous otherwise it could be too much of a change. So I'd like to somehow I talked to selectman Marino about that um about doing some charter change again especially for the town clerk's position. Uh we have someone that's qualified that just does absolutely doesn't want anything to do with going out and campaigning. It's a two-year position. Think

174about it. Every two years you got to go out and fight for your job, >> right? >> You know, I was on it before. I had some ideas. they kind of got squashed, but now it should be a little bit different hopefully. So, >> um, since it's not an item, uh, on our agenda, do you guys want that as an agenda item for the December 1st meeting? Okay. Um, so charter. >> Thank you. Thank you, everyone. >> So, I'm going to list it as possible charter revision. >> Yes, we have to have a committee. We have to pick people. >> Yeah. Let me get the rules and all. had five people before, two from each side, Rs and D's, and then someone kind of neutral in the middle, and then just kind of go from

175there. >> Oh, there's a whole litany because there's state statues where you can't have more than onethird elected officials. So, if it Well, let me bring everything so you have it and then you can have a great conversation about it and and and see which direction you want to go in, please. >> Um, and there you go. >> Okay. >> All right. Uh, Bill, you said >> I'm all set. All right. And then wrapping it up, uh, I'll be for the 11th year, the Saturday after Thanksgiving, which is the 29th. Rest of the board is welcome to join me at Stop and Shop to ring the bell. That's the thing that nightmares are made of from the Salvation Army. >> Are you wearing an elf costume? >> I will have a Christmas hat. That's all

176I will commit to at this time. >> I committed to it, Todd. >> I can't let the cat out of the bag what the rest of the outfit will entail. Uh, from 9 to 11, I'll be there. The rest of the board is welcome to show up as well. All the money that we raised at Stop and Shop in Winston for the Salvation Army is kept in Winston. And also, as Select Hester mentioned about Veterans Day being cold, this one's a couple weeks out. Freezing for a reason, East End Park, December 12th, 6 p.m. It's a Friday. Uh to raise awareness on homelessness in town. I'll be there for that as well. >> What was your ringer date? >> Saturday the 29th. 29th. Happy Thanksgiving. That's right. Select the mayor's gonna be there. >> I

177might dress up my Santa. >> He does have the Santa beard sometime. >> Uh and then lastly, since this is our last meeting before Thanksgiving, wishing everyone a safe and happy Thanksgiving. >> Same to you. >> We will see you on December 1st. >> I'd like to make a motion to adjourn, please. >> All in favor? >> Unanimous. Thank you. Turn your mics off. Yep.