001Good evening. Today is Monday, June 2nd, 2025 at 7 p.m. I'd like to call to order the regular board of selections meeting. Linda Grao, Troy Lamir, Paul Harrington, Todd Archalashi, Cloneius, William Hester, Candy Perez, William Po, Selectman Marino is excused. Please join me for the pledge of allegiance. Aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. I put it there and I forgot I was that close. Yeah. Who moved it? I did when after the parade. Ugenda review. Anyone have anything? Candy? Yeah. I'd just like to ask you all where you might if you want me to make this an agenda item or you'd like to discuss it uh under I guess or during the
002town manager's report or where else on here. But um I thought I I would do it here. But I think we need to talk about the what happened with the referendum with with two parts of it. Um because we are responsible in some ways for the whether it's a fair election or a fair referendum along with town manager registars and the town clerk. So I wanted to talk about two things with that. So I could could make a motion for an agenda item or I could do it like I said in another part. But I wanted to make sure that I do this in a way that's productive. So we can put it as an agenda item under Wouldn't really be new business, would it? If you want to go, you could do like a
003six. Okay. Do you want to do it right after town? So we'll do sixut under town managers report. Item A will be Referendum discussion. So I make a motion to add to the agenda discussion on the referendum held May 27. Do we have a second? Second. Oh. Any discussion? All in favor? 60. Anything else? Moving on to item number four, the approval of minutes of our regular meeting on May 19th. Make a motion to approve those minutes. Second. Thank you, Bill. Thanks, Troy. Any discussion? Corrections? I have um a correction. Okay. Um I ask to amend the May 19 minutes as presented. Item nine, boards and commissions. I ask that subsections two, three, four, and five be deleted. The applicant names, board or commission titles, party affiliations, seat type, and term end date were all
004omitted at the May 19th meeting and should not appear in the minutes. Item nine, subsection one, a resignation was acknowledged. Item nine, subsection six, an appointment was unanimously approved. Both should remain. This correction should be made to reflect the accuracy, accountability, and transparency of the May 19th meeting. The re corrections will also coincide with the recorded May 19th meeting where selectman Lamir mentioned only that there were four applicants for consideration. Okay. Do we want to table these minutes to have them corrected or do you just want to make a motion to remove those sections? If you could just delete them, I don't think we need to table them. It's just that the other action would be that would have to be under boards and commissions that the that the four people are now entered into
005step one tonight and not step two. If we're taking out the recording of them being right, if we're taking out them being on the first step as a nomination, taken out of the record, then that means that they would have to start over now. Yeah. If we deleted them. Okay. Yeah. If they were never mentioned, the names were never presented. You sure I didn't say the names? No, you did not. the names. I was not present. I listened to the I listened to the meeting. Mistake on my part and um I did have an applicant that was interested in in a board and commission. She did reach out to me to find out what the status of her application was. It was never mentioned in the meeting. I reviewed the minutes of the meeting again
006on YouTube and it was the names were never mentioned and they should not be in the minutes as presented. I apologize. Okay. Um, since I made the first motion, I think we should table this until we can actually So, I make a motion we table the minutes until we can actually double check to make sure. Okay. I'd rather hold off. We can somebody can double check and make sure that it was whether they were mentioned or not. Okay, there's motion to table. Second. Okay. Any other discussion? All in favor? All in favor of the motion? Yeah. This is the table. The motion to table. All in favor table. Sorry. Uh 23 abstaining. No orain 501. The minutes from May 22nd. That was a quick meeting. I like the motion to approve those. Okay. Is there
007a second? Thank you, Bill. Any discussion, corrections, or additions? I just would mention just for the record for the meeting and for subsequent that it was just special time meeting was for the sale of walnut property. Any other discussion? All in favor 501. Item five, citizens comments. The board of selectman welcomes public comments. Speakers will be limited to three minutes. I may speak once this round. Uh just hit the red microphone button to turn it on. Perfect. Good evening. Frank Oliver, 108 Shore Drive. Um, something very interesting happened this past week. We had Memorial Day where we had over thousands of people on Main Street celebrating the parade and in 24 hours nobody showed up. There's a big problem in this town for you guys to figure out in the next couple of months or
008a year where this town is going. That is a big problem. The way I look at it, nobody won. Nobody Nobody won. And what you were saying that you're going to bring up the discussion, it's a big big problem. I hope this can solve it. I hope this town can come alive again and show its patriotism to do everything that's necessary because of being citizens. I don't have an answer. Surely like to work with you, but I look at it as a very big problem. So, thank you for your time. Thank you, Frank. Anyone else wish to speak? Yep, you're good. Yep. Good evening. Michael Ferrell, 147 Shore Drive. Uh, two quick things. First of all, a big thank you to you guys for the budget. Um, damned if you do, damned if you don't,
009but I recognize your hard work didn't come easy. Thank you for what you've done for the town. Speaking of doing things for the town, I have two issues I'd like to bring up that I believe are outstanding safety issues. I live at 147 Shore Drive, so I go up and down East Wakefield quite a bit. In January of 2024, I sent in an email through the town portal with several pictures of the fence, what is left of the fence, and three barriers that are fallen over and a dilapidated looking lot that the town of Winston owns. This lot is at the corner of Birdsall and Herbert Street. Uh, I asked that the fence be fixed. I asked that the barriers be picked up, that it give be given some attention. If we're going to send
010blight officers out into the public and we're going to send code enforcement officers out in the public, we should care enough about our own properties to clean up our own issues. That was January of 2024. In March of 2024, I sent in a followup. I ran into Jim Rollins at a sewer and uh sewer commission meeting and he said, "Yeah, we got to do something about that." He said, "We were thinking of making it into a calming park or whatever." Apparently, we need calming parks nowadays. I don't care what you do with it. Nothing happened since January of 2024. So, I sent in another email in January of 25. It went unagnowledged and nothing has happened. However, I'd like to share with you another sidebar to the story. In the middle of winter, I went
011by that parcel and there was two public works trucks there, a backo, a whole gaggle of DPW, folks. And I was so happy to see one of the fellas was actually standing there with the open butt end of the top fence rail in his hand. It looked like he was leaning on it. Went did my business, came back a half hour later, everybody was gone. There's a spring there. comes up, creates ice in a sidewalk on the other side of the street. Sand was spread, the backo tracks. Not a thing done to the fence. So, it's now been a year and a half since I sent this thing in. This I'll give it to you. I'll pass it around. This is the lot. What that doesn't show at the very top end of that is
012the top rail of that fence is now protruding right into the middle of the sidewalk at belly button level. You won't know that now because it's completely covered with brush. But at that height, an unsuspecting mother with a stroller might think that's just a bush and try to push it aside. It's going to hit a kid right in the head. A skateboarder, a jogger, anybody that's traversing on that sidewalk is going to get the open end of that thing that's been there since January of 2024. Not to mention the fact that it is a colossal insult to the people who live in one of the busiest corridors of residential properties in this town to come home at the end of their day every day and see that horrible looking lot withstanding the safety issues. Can
013we please get a hold of something in public works and first and foremost protect the town from liability and fix the blaring safety issue that the guy at DPW was holding on to and then just left. You shouldn't need Mike Frell to come down here tonight and preach adnauseium about this crap. That has to be addressed. Not only is it an insult and it's an eyesore and it's a blighted property that the town of Winstead owns, it is a safety hazard. Has to be taken care of. Stop insulting the people that that neighborhood, not you folks. I have the utmost of respect for you. We need a huge culture shift in the people who work for this town for public works who collect a paycheck and allow something like that to continue to go on.
014Somebody in management has to say that's not good enough. That's not the way we're going to run our town. You're over time, so if you could wrap up. Sorry. One more thing real quick. And I should note that the town manager has already engaged with me on this and I appreciate his time. The sign in the lobby of town hall punctuation mayor errors letters missing letters half out of the sign. I know we don't have any money, but it doesn't take any money to open up the cover of the sign and fix the damn writing. Please, if we're going to invite business owners and property owners to come and join themselves in our community, can we have a little bit of pride in our flagship building, town hall? And by the way, Mr. Town Manager,
015the call lights still did not light up in the elevator. And that's a safety issue because if you're stuck in an elevator and you have need to communicate with the police, EMS, or fire department, they need to know what floor you're on. You can't tell because our lights have been out for months. Thank you. Anyone else wish to speak? Glad this is suggested to you. One of my neighbors knew he wasn't going to be here for the vote on Tuesday or the weekend and they a month ago they asked they live in Florida. They asked if they can get a mail ballot sent to them and they were told no. I don't know what the ruling on that is. They were told they had to be in town either to, you know, to pick up
016a ballot or to vote on Tuesday, but they told them your office went and mailed them a ballot. We'll look into that and get back to you. Thank you. move on to item six, town manager report. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Where to begin? Um, I'll start that uh obviously as uh all of our residents know and obviously the board knows that we offici officially adopted our fiscal year budget uh last Tuesday. And anyone who sat through the budget season knows it isn't easy and it's a lot of late nights. It's a lot of hard work and and yes, emotions do run high, but the process is the process and now we have a budget, but the dust is now settled and the budget is in place. And I just want to remind everybody which what
017what makes Winstead so special. We're neighbors first. So, we have a budget. Now, we get to go back to being neighbors. Um, some of the things that we did differently this year when it came to pushing out the budget was we were obviously out on our social media channels. We were very engaged on our town's website. We had the board up on the town green uh very early I think two weeks before we first were advertising the annual town budget meeting and then secondly once we adjourned the annual town budget meeting we reminded everybody when the vote would actually take place on that Tuesday. something different that came up. It was a it was a suggestion and I and I readily looked into it is we were on the radio station. Um not only did
018we advertise the uh annual town budget meeting, but then we advertised when the actual vote was. And when I say the word advertise, a lot of people think that there's a cost involved to it. There was no cost to the town when the local radio station picked up the story and did repeated stories. And I'm just going to stop right and it just turned back on. I just saw the monitor turn off over there. I not sure if we lost the YouTube connection. I caught it out of the corner of my eye, but some things that we did differently this year than we've done in the past is that we were trying to engage our residents more than ever. I am open to any suggestion possible of how we can engage more. I will note
019that, and it's not an excuse, several communities around Connecticut do have a problem bringing out voters to vote on a budget. It is one of the largest expenditures that the town obviously makes every year on the total budget. Yet, when you look at the numbers of referendums throughout the state, very few of them crack over that 10% match. In fact, there was a town, I won't name the town, but the budget actually failed yet it passed and per their charter, if not enough people come out, it automatically goes through. So there's a town that actually their residents came out, voted the budget down, yet the budget still passed because it didn't meet the threshold of the amount of voters that come come out again. Um, we did things differently. We'll do things differently again next
020year. I want as many people, this board wants as many people obviously to vote on a municipal budget. I I thought the things we did this year were were were clever. They they touch people that listen to the radio, people that are on social media, people that use our websites. Everbridge is growing. Uh we still thought we'd be a little bit better with our subscriptions, but I'll take this opportunity to plug our Everbridge. Um go under our town's website, sign up. You can get emailed and or text messages of updates that are going on. But again, this is a plea to not only the resident that spoke, but all residents. If you have an idea, we are all ears. It was a simple idea that came from this board. What about a radio station? And
021look, we were on the radio constantly and follow-up stories and then and I was appreciative of the follow-up story of after the budget even passed that they they did the story. So, they didn't go away. So, um I'm all ears when it comes to, you know, putting out ideas for uh for the town budget. There is just one thing because I I do need to address it. The signin town hall that was brought up, we do have one on order. Um a professional looking one, so it's on order. We actually have two on order, one for each floor. Uh so that's coming but I wanted to hit that. Um moving on to uh more uh more things economic development. Uh on the economic front there is a ton to be optimistic about. We're continuing to
022see strong interest from developers. Two national companies have made commitments in Winstead. Obviously we know Marshalls is moving forward. That should be open. The big question is is when are they opening? I heard this summer. It's going to probably be in the fall. But I promise you, if you're going to do holiday shopping, that store will be open for all your holiday gifts. Um, secondly, as I mentioned at the uh the town uh annual budget meeting, Domino's corporate is moving into our main street as well. Um, so that's pretty exciting um that we have two national tenants. The investment speaks volume about the direction our town is headed in. Let's not lose hope. Let's stay optimistic and let's continue these investments into our town. I also want to highlight a huge milestone. Uh 108 East
023Lake Street. It's that old convolescent home. Officially closed on Friday with a developer um that ended up paying the back taxes and also the blight. Um that developer has over 15 years experience of doing this highly funded and they are looking to turn that into 20 or 30 condos. Uh I hope to be cutting that ribbon uh in the notsodistant future, but that has officially closed. We do have new owners of 108 East Lake Street on Friday. Got a little nervous. They were supposed to close on Thursday and then I got a phone call. It's not happening. And I got real nervous and then ended up scheduling it for Friday and it's officially closed in new owner's hands. So, um, with the budget behind us and unlike last summer and I think that slide that
024I put up at the annual, uh, town budget meeting where last year I had 63 days where I didn't have to worry about a budget. It was either the budget we're in now or the budget we're moving forward. I just had 63 days and that's what happens when obviously, you know, we have we have failed budgets. So now I get to turn my attention on growing the granless. And there are four sites in particular that I want to publicly put out there, let this board know that I'm going to be laser focused and putting a lot of my attention on. First one's going to be that Wallins Hill. Uh the location has potential, but it's going to require a careful honest look. I'm exploring all the options from the past and present. And right now
025I believe a public private partner could be the best route for the town. But that's one area I want to concentrate on. Next area I want to concentrate on is our legacy buildings on Main Street. There's enormous ontap potential here. I've already been in contact with one national company looking at taking on one of the buildings um and and to put them in contact with that owner. No huge movement on that yet, but that is one of the buildings. But there's still plenty of opportunity. This is where I think we're going to need to partner with the state to unlock even more development. But the next area we want to look at, Wallins Hill, our legacy buildings. Then moving on to the Sue Grossman Trail. It's more than a trail, everybody. I stated that at
026the last meeting. This could be the biggest economic catalyst that this town has ever seen or will see for the foreseeable long-term future. This could create such a boom down in that area because the trail isn't just a trail, but it's going to provide water and sewer all for that area, which we could bring in housing, we can bring in development, we can bring in industry, we could do so much down there that would increase our grain list where all of our wishes could come true without ever having to ask any of our taxpayers to reach any deeper. information that I was hoping to keep quiet and it's big was that the state of Connecticut, the Connecticut DOT has come across with a $500,000 grant to help us match the $2 million federal uh money
027that we were granted a little over two years ago. If you remember back about a year ago, I had the unfortunate pleasure of letting this board know that the $2 million that we were getting from a direct federal uh grant was that we needed to come up with $500,000. And when we brought our working group together, uh they worked tirelessly. They still continued to work tirelessly to move this project forward. But the thing that stood above it all was how are we going to get this $500,000? Happy to report with uh Tom Herskll, if you haven't met him, he worked tirelessly, persisted on me to continue to make phone calls to the Connecticut DOT to try and get this $500,000 match. We were awarded it. I can confirm it because on Thursday we got the
028commitment, the fund letter for 500 grand. It was released on Facebook this weekend. We as a group wanted to hold back not because we didn't want to share great news with you but because when we came out with the news we actually wanted to share the full development with you and the plans with you which makes a lot more sense that hey not only did we get 500 and 2 million this is what it's going to do. So unfortunately the news got released this weekend um it was sent over to me late Friday and then again on Saturday. Okay, it was a little, you know, salt in the wounds, but the great news is is we got the $500,000 match that's going to put towards unlocking the $2 million. All of it's there. Now, the
029real hard work begins. Um, and we're going to make the announcement, but I'm going to make the announcement bigger and grander when we have the actual development plans. We want to show everybody in the town, but I I think some of our residents potentially saw that, you know, 500 was awarded. I didn't want to ignore it. So, I did want to mention we did get the 500k from the state of Connecticut, the CT dot, and we thank them. And lastly, on what I'm going to be concentrating on is traffic and and and uh uh the the lane guiding measures. If you remember back a few weeks ago, maybe even two months ago, I was very proud to let you know that the DOT has signed off and they were going to come in in early
030spring and start painting some of the lanes, start lane guing everything down and and and see it. Um unfortunately, I have not seen them out there. uh my calls have gone unreturned in terms of that aspect, but right now when on one side of the table they're they're giving us $500,000, it's like, okay, how hard do I want to push them? So, we're pushing them, but we're respecting the process. Um I don't know. And if the answer was because Eversource is out here on our streets, which slow traffic down tremendously today and going to continue throughout the summer, but that is on the radar. But further more than paint, what are we really going to do about calming our traffic down? So those are the four things really quick again because I want to put
031them publicly. Wallins Hill, Legacy Buildings, Sue Grossman Trail, and obviously our our traffic issues on Main Street are the four areas that you're going to see me now laser focused on amongst all the other things to do. But those four key things should help our Grandless grow. Um again, uh moving on, and I know I'm going way over my aotted time if there was one. animal control. Uh, as you know, the Sarah Small dog case was back in court on Friday. I was there. Happy to report uh that 10 dogs have been released to Winchester and eligible for adoption as of that day. Um, we are going to be back in court for two weeks for the remaining 11 dogs. Can't say enough about the rescues and the volunteers who stepped up and that are
032working tirelessly to help these animals. But the case is on the way. I can't go too in depth because obviously a court case, there's a civil matter, there's a criminal matter, but town of Winchester from the court did get 10 dogs on Friday. They're starting to get adopted out. We have to go back to court in two weeks to deal with the 11 other dogs, but we're moving along in the uh in the Sarah Smallac animal case. And last but not least, the Eversource Gas Lane replacement uh work continues on Main Street. Um I did place a call today. What they told us was that they were going to be in the median. Well, they were right outside my office window and they were so close to those islands out there today. You can see
033where they they literally cut the road. Uh I need to follow up on that because that is not in the median. That's literally right down the the gut of, you know, the main road. So, I'm waiting to hear back from Fortunately, they did not cut the road. I did watch them today. They must have got a little extension from uh Connecticut DOT because they were not off the road at 4:00. Um they weren't even sweeping the road at four o'clock. I I am keeping them to, you know, their toes. But again, stay alert. I I want to also commend our officers and our flaggers. I saw several occasions when I had a chance to look out my window to watch our officers and the flagmen literally walk patrons across the street so they wouldn't, you
034know, hit any car or have any cars hit them or anything like that. Um so that's been really good. I will note um if you do need to park on Main Street, hug that curb as tight as you can. Unfortunately, uh a vehicle did lose its mirror today. Um happened to be one of our staff. Um so hug those curbs as much as you can, but uh hopefully they'll be out of that area as quick as possible. And lastly, let's keep the momentum going. There's a lot happening and even more opportunities ahead. As always, to this board, thank you for your support and your commitment to making Winstead a better place for everybody. That'll open it up for questions. Any questions from the board? Seeing no questions, moving on to the item that was added,
035Candy, the referendum discussion. Yeah, start. I want to be sensitive about how I introduce this and start talking about it. I was sitting at a on Saturday night and I was I've been thinking about this, right? Um because I saw a couple things during the referendum that I feel um well I'll talk about so I'm sitting in AMP trying to figure out how how to do this because you know when you sit at AMP and there's a program there and you think you're in Winston and look at all the positive things that have happened like AMP and then you look down the street and there's a lot of positive things that happen. So, I don't want this to take away from positive things, but we also know that it's important for our community, for our
036residents to have confidence when we hold a referendum and confidence when we hold elections. Uh, just like at the national level, when they call for it, we want to make sure that that confidence is there. So, there were a couple things that occurred um that were decided and I don't know who uh but it was decided. So, having said all that, there's two issues I think we as a board of selectmen need to whether we address them tonight or whether we have uh another discussion about it afterwards. But there's and I think it will need further discussion. But the first decision I want to talk about is the decision to handc count the ballots, the paper ballots. And I know there was a post about why, and I know I was sort of told why,
037and it was supposed to be a um money saving effort and whatnot and and that part is commendable, right? people are looking out for the uh you know the good of the taxpayer good of the town and everything but there's been a lot of questions about the handc count and and and for me having been through the discussions when we were at Gilbert not being able to have a machine going forward and that part of the charter was adjusted so that at Gilbert during a town meeting it could be a hand count or a machine count. Um, I suppose that may have led to some confusion on some people's parts, but the charter is very clear in terms of our budget referendum vote is supposed to be my by machine vote. It's very clear. It's
038like in the first sentence. Um, so I guess we need to figure out who made that decision and who has the authority to make that decision to change it from a machine count to a hand count when the charter is clear with what it says. So I think that um I don't know exactly where that discussion started or came from, but I know that this board was not informed of it. Um, and and I don't know uh who's in on it, but it's a the charter. It's, you know, the charter and it's either the charter you change it or the charter is you follow it. And I'm sorry that it might have been expensive, but it build again it's a confidence of what we have and what we don't have. And then the second issue,
039I just want you to know that I had other outlets to do this, you know, to bring this up, but I chose not to. I I chose to try to solve it as a as a local issue, right? I chose to solve it as a local issue. That's what I chose to do. I'm not saying what other people are choosing to do, but what I did. The the second issue I think we need to figure out what happened with this was an oversight or how it all happened, but there needs to be public notice, right? We talk about public notice in government all the time, right? People also talk about transparency all the time. They hear that all the time. So when there was a change in whenever there's a change in in voting dates
040or times, there should be public notice. Public notice includes the town website. Public notice includes the town social media page. Public notice means uh putting it on the town clerk's board or putting it outside in the little case that's out out there. uh it may maybe making a little press release for a newspaper and that's usually what public notice means and public notice is important so that everybody has an opportunity to know about what's happening. So what happened was the official call of the meeting for the refer referendum on the 27th is out there. It's under legal notices and in the legal notice it talks about the referendum on Tuesday and it talks about the days that the town office is open. Nowhere in any of that legal notice did it talk about Saturday. Last
041Saturday, the town clerk's office was open for absentee ballots. You could say, well, that's, you know, that's really good because, you know, Connecticut, we all talk about having more opportunities to vote and, you know, Frank brings up, we want everybody to vote. And you could talk about the fact that, yeah, we just get everybody out to vote. That's great. Another opportunity to vote. So from that side I think okay well that's commendable that that we're going to do that except that there was no public notice. So, Saturday was added as an additional date and it was posted on a political RTC Facebook post that came out Friday at some point Friday later in the afternoon evening about that town hall was going to be open up on on uh Saturday. There was a further post
042about it that was going to be open up on Saturday for weekenders, right? And so, you know, somebody calls me and says, "Do you know about this?" I go, "No, I don't know about it." Um, not that I have to know everything, but when it's, you know, it's something that concerns the board of selectment, I don't even know if all of you knew it. I have no idea. Um, there was a decision made to open up town hall on Saturday morning and I don't believe it was everybody knew. I know our town manager didn't know cuz when I called and asked him uh he didn't know but then so you know a little time went by and then you know the the the budget you know it passed um which which is really good thing
043in my eyes. I mean that's me. I have signs out in front of my yard and all that kind of stuff. Uh, but I also found out that there was other information that some people got on Thursday afternoon around at least 2 o'clock in the afternoon that Tom Hall was going to be open on Saturday morning for voting. And I think it's that public notice piece that really concerns me that how did some people know. Was it a select group of people that were told? Not everybody got to know. Did it have to be weekenders? Could it have been, you know, somebody down the street who's really busy with their kids and can't make it on Tuesday because they work out of town? It could have been a lot of people. And I think that
044it could have been handled a whole lot differently. And so I want to make sure that a it's on the record and b that it's solved so that when we have our elections this coming November that things are handled properly. You know I I I know there's a couple other election things from last last fall that I had some concerns about but that that's a different story. So I give this all to this board uh because it is not something that I alone can solve. I mean I I I alone could make a complaint to the state but I did not because I came here instead. So hopefully uh we can figure this out and make sure that all proper lines of notice, all proper lines of decision making are in the hands of all
045the right people and not something that was just decided somewhere else that that all of a sudden there it was. So, I'm just curious, um, Candy, isn't there, um, like open voting all the way to the vote? I mean, isn't there absentee ballots? I mean, there's there's all different ways that you could vote early. Correct. Well, actually, the Constitution amendment from the fall was passed by the people in the state of Connecticut. However, it only gave the legislature the opportunity to make changes to absentee ballot voting. And the state legislature has not acted on that just yet. But absentee ballot voting, you can be one of the reasons that you can absentee ballot vote right now is that you're not in town. And it's not a question about whether somebody should have the right to
046absentee ballot vote. My question or my concern is it wasn't publicly noticed. There was no public notice of it. Well, I mean, you said you saw it on RTC thing and I'm sure it was on Facebook, too. So, there was no RTC in charge of public notice. No, they just we So, how did the RTC know? They probably just carried it forward. How did the RC? When you find out information, you carry it forward. How did the RTC know? Because did the Democratic Town Committee chair get notified? I don't know. I'm just saying there's there's ample opportunities to vote early, right? So, I don't see how this is any different than any other avenue of voting early and why somebody didn't have a chance. I mean, that it's because it wasn't publicly noticed and everything's
047supposed to be publicly noticed when it comes from government. Good. I think Candy means publicly noticed by town sources. I I think that so the town's Facebook page, the town's social media sites. Um because I checked every website, every department that was connected to the referendum to see if it was there and maybe I missed it. I checked Tuesday the boards. But I still don't understand I understand what you're trying to get at, but there I mean at the end of the day it didn't jeopardize anybody anything. Right. But just because it didn't jeopardize doesn't mean that it was right. Like I could have just said, "Hey, the budget voted." And I could have like not brought it up here and wait for the onslaught that I usually stir up, right? Because usually somebody has
048something about something I said, right? So, I'm trying to do it in a way to be respectful of what happened. I can file with the state election commission a complaint and then we'll find out if it's right or wrong. Uh, we can find all that out. Um, I decided not to do that. I've never done that. So, I I figured I would do it here. I mean, somebody here must have the answer to these two issues. the the waving the machine vote and how an additional day that was not included in the legal notice gets posted so that the public would know especially when we know that people knew on Thursday when I thought it was Friday afternoon I was like okay well maybe it's just a you know a timing issue but the town
049manager didn't know that's pretty significant in my that his building is open and he didn't know because when I asked if he knew. I'm not trying to put anybody on the spot here. So I just think that this has to be corrected. So if no one has any other suggestions or anything, I would think that perhaps a uh group from this board, a bipartisan group, maybe meet with the registars to talk at least about the machine vote. I think that's probably appropriate. Um, I think we have the charter set, so we don't need anything on notice. I don't think we need to put an ordinance or anything together because we have the charter for that. I mean, public notice is public notice. It's usually given as long as it's only about somebody forgot to make
050a public notice. Hopefully, there was nothing intent behind any of that. And I hope that it was a decision that was made in this building. So, so that's enough for me. Anyone have anything else? Okay. Moving on to item number seven, correspondence. Anyone have anything? Item eight, boards and commissions. Troy. Okay. Um, so I'm going to pay attention and make sure I mention names tonight. Um, so we have a reappoint um for Mike Frell to the Water and Sewer Commission. He's a Republican and he's a full member and his term ends 6 2030. So we don't need to v vote on that. Um, excuse me. Oh, we do have to vote on affiliated. Okay, you're listed as an R. I make a motion. I make a motion to reappoint Mike Ferrell to the water and
051sewer commission with the term ending 6 20 23rd. Second that. All right. Thank you, Ky. Thank you, Troy. Any discussion? All in favor? Unanimous. Okay. Then unfortunately, we have another resignation. Um, this came in, I believe, today from George Clawson. He's, uh, resigning from the Water and Sewer Commission. Um he's a Democrat and is he's a full-time member. Um and there is a little letter somewhere here from George that I'm going to read. Um this is probably Okay. All right. Um and then we go down to consideration. Thanks. Yeah. Thank you, George, for your years of service. Um we know that uh you've done a lot for this town and we appreciate it. Um then we go down to consideration which is going to be full of the nomine nominations and appointments. Those are getting
052moved up because of a error. So, um, under consideration, we have, uh, Sally Chznney, um, looking to get on the Conservation Commission, a party's Democrat. She's looking for a full-time seat, and her term would end five of 2027. Then we have Addie Sally. No, Addie. Mhl. I don't know how to pronounce that. Mel uh looking to get out of coverage conservation commission also party is unaffiliated. She's looking for a full-time seat and term would end 52029. Um then we have Stuart Pollins looking to get on the historic commission. He's just a resident. Um no party affiliation looking for a full-time seat. term would end 12 of 2025. And then we have Anita Garnett looking to get on to the Winchester Housing Authority. Party is Democrat. Mom looking for a full-time seat. Her term would end
053for 2028. That's all I have be before we move on. I just want to reach out uh and thank George Collison personally for the last four years that I was on the water sewer commission with him. He brought a lot of knowledge and experience to that board. Uh helped us move it forward quite a bit. I'm sad to see him go, but I have the utmost respect for him as a leader in this town. Like Troy said, um I I certainly have learned a lot from him. So So thank you, George, for everything you did for us guys there. Thank you. Anyone else? Thank you. And just uh just reminder, we have several openings. Architectural view committee, conservation committee, cultural district, the historic commission, the housing authority has an open sea inland wetlands, the Laurel
054City Commission, their work is just finishing up this month, but right around the corner. They'll be needed again. Recreation Board and Zoning Board of Appeals all have openings. Item nine, unfinished business. We have nothing. Item 10, Bridge Street update. Town Manager Harrington, public works Director Rollins. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Mr. Rollins, uh, there was a question at, uh, board of sement meeting two weeks ago about Bridge Street. Um Jim wanted to come in and and and update the board on Bridge Street and he's also here for the line item transfer 25 uh-17 uh7. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to uh Mr. Rollins for a Brit Street update. So yeah, uh like town manager Harrington just stated two weeks ago at the board of selectment meeting um Troy had asked about the
055status of the Bridge Street intersection and I didn't have an answer for him. Um, still don't have a good answer for you. The the situation over there is some of you remember we we got a pretty sizable grant um to redo that intersection to make it, you know, more drivable, safer for pedestrians and motorists. And it's been engineered, it's been designed, it's it's essentially ready to go out to bid with just a few little tweaks. Um, the holdup is The gas man that had to go in there had to go in first. They had to change the depths of it. And then part B of that is the gas company is putting a gas man across Bridge Street Bridge. So they're going to be in there. They were supposedly going to be out of there
056by the end of June. They haven't even started yet. So I don't know what their timing is. Um, our next step, we really wanted to get the the basic intersection plan painted on the ground first to see how it works because nobody loves the design. It's just the best we could come up with. So, we actually wanted to paint it on the ground so that people can get used to it and we get feedback before we spent big money on doing it right. And I really wanted it to be painted during the busy summer season because that's probably the busiest intersection or that's probably the busiest time of year for that intersection because of all the people heading up to the lake. So, you know, we're hoping that they can get in and out and
057then we can get this painted and at least catch the second half of summer with summer usage. Um, so that's the best I can do for an update. It really hinges on, you know, when they get off the bridge. we, you know, this just the other day we were discussing can we just go and, you know, mark the road up now and it doesn't make any sense because they're going to be digging it up. So all that cost would go for nothing, you know, because it's not cheap to to paint the roads. Um, so that's that's the update. So just just hang on one second. Just to add to that, Jim, I don't want to put you on the spot, but that gentleman, Mr. Frell, spoke about the fence. Is there something we could do
058to fix that fence, please? Well, first let me say he's not wrong really about anything he said. Um there were there's a number of complaints, not just by him. Um it just gets lost on the desk filled with other requests and we typically go to what seems like either the biggest liability or the biggest improvement for the most people first. It's essentially triage decision making and that one never made it to the top of triage. You know, it's the answer is as simple as that. as it's also as uninspiring as that. Well, after tonight, can we move it up the list a little? It'll it'll because I bet by that I know exactly what he's talking about to the top of the list. Whether it stays there long enough to get accomplished in his time
059frame or yours remains to be seen because that's just the nature of how the calls come in. But it it was noted all the all the reasons and I do have to he's not wrong. We should have gotten to it a long time ago. Um that's yeah, that's all I can say. It's nature to business. Understood. I know exactly what you're talking about, but I did see that myself. So, so my question is so Bridge Street intersection with I'm not sure the name of the street by the package store there. I know there's water problems coming down that hill. Is that going to be addressed with this too? Remember, Mr. Llland likes to bring up stories and I know there was something with drainage further up whether there was a spring or something. I thought
060it was maybe a water leak, but then it's not a water. It's not a water municipal water. It's it's ground water or some source. We we keep chasing it up the hill, right? We'll chase it uphill again. And as soon as we chase it uphill, we put active drainage. It dries at the drainage point. It just weeps out 10 ft above. I I don't know if we'll ever catch it if we go all the way up. Um is that part of Canavo spring? Maybe. I hope not. It's It's groundwater. could be a spring up further that nobody even knows about. When the gas company was in there, we got we got in their trench. There's there's a hodgepodge of pipes going up there. We think it was water management from when they put the water
061manes in some 20 years ago. Those weren't carrying water, but water is coming out somewhere. The drains on the sides of the roads all seem to be working. Uh but to answer your question, we'll chase it uphill at least beyond the work area that is being done as part of the intersection whether it pops out further up or not. You know, that's that's the problem. You you do new pipe, new stuff in the ground, you put stone around it, now it's a place for the water to travel. Yeah. Any questions on the street? Are you still talking about a a rotary or roundabout? No. What is what is the configuration? The the roundabout or the rotary traffic circle, whatever you want to call it, in theory works well with the type of traffic and the
062complexity intersection, but because of the side slope on there, the engineers said it's just not the right application. We and as big as that intersection is to have a fully functioning traffic circle there, we would have needed that to be even a little bit bigger and it just wasn't in the cards. So So what is the traffic pattern? It's going to be it's too hard to explain. It's essentially just narrowing everything up and exaggerating the turn. So you have to actually stop and see where people are coming from instead of just blow through intersections like they do now. Again, there's no good there's no good option. Um, so no more one way. Yes, there's there is still a oneway going up Bridge Street. Um, okay. So, again, once we once we mark it out, it'll
063be a lot easier to see. And will everybody love it? No. Will enough people love it? Probably. I I I if I could think of a better solution. I mean, I could think of a better solution, but that's not that's not open to us. We we'd really like to extend Depot Street right down through where Carell is it Carell Burwell. Burwell and then head down to Case Avenue, but that's that's not going to work. That property is not available to us. So, it you know that's going to keep that intersection a giant mess. Thank you. But less of a mess, I think, when we're done. At least that's the hope. So, you're going to use curbing to direct people or are you going to use Well, for now we're going to paint, but then yeah,
064curbing curbing and raised sidewalks and raised crosswalks and all that stuff will, you know, essentially slow it down and make people have to go that way. So, and it's going to create much smaller crosswalks because that's that's the killer. You can't even get across that intersection. Then you got people coming out of 10 Bridge Street and they don't know where to go, which side of the street, which side of the uh the stop sign to go on. you can't see by bumping the traffic. I guess it would be east in that coming up Bridge Street. It opens up visibility to 10 Bridge Street. So again, there's there's no silver bullet, but we had a lot of a lot of people involved in getting it to to where it's drawn now. And none of us could
065come up with something better. Who knows? Maybe you get a bunch of people driving it and someone will come up with an idea that wasn't thought of and doesn't have more downside than upside and we can implement that into the plan when we put it to bid in the winter time. But that's why we want to paint it and get it used and try to get you know the real the feedback from the real world rather than from you know engineering principles. Yeah, I had the priv privilege of walking that intersection. We were picking up garbage that day. So it's tough. I was looking at it. That's tough because of the slope because the train used to come through there and everything. So that the plans are engineered. Are they available? Because I just would
066like to I think maybe on the website. Are they on the website or in the office somewhere? I just want in the office. You know, there's a similar thing that they did they did in Torington over by the was it north end McDonald's with the movie theaters and fitness. They did use paint there and A little on that note, make sure you are aware of tractor trailer trucks because that's the problem that happened in Torington over by the movie theater. They made it too sh too small and the tractor trailer trucks are having a real hard time getting through there. I think the biggest issue is it's the hill. How do you make it so you're like this? I mean, even on the motorcycle, you come up, I got to take it high because if
067I get too low, my legs are short. I don't want to lean to the left. I won't be able to pull the bike over. So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's, you know, again, the engineering standards have truck traffic in mind, but the real world, you it can look good on paper, but you throw the slope into it. Yeah. And it doesn't look like it's a tractor trailer zone, but you get stuff coming from sterling, you know, down. Oh, yeah. I see. And that's how they exit. So, it's again, this is why we want to we want to paint it before we build it because it's but we got to get Eversource out of our way first. So, anything else on Bridge Street? Mr. Mayor, if I would because the door was open and and and and
068I'm saying this only because I want the public to know. Um, Mr. Frell, you know, you and I have emailed a bajillion times. The emails that were sent in 2024, I wasn't here January 2025. I'll take ownership because I was here. You know, if I saw it, you would have definitely got a response from me. But this will be hanging in my office until it's no longer hanging in my office, which means it's fixed. So, it's the safety part. What I want the community to know that when you reach out to the town manager, you do get a response as you know, Mr. Frell knows whether it's late at night, early in the morning, I'll respond. If I missed the email in January 2025, I'm shocked at myself. I'm going to go back and see
069if I can find it. But, uh, I got it. Uh, Mr. Mr. Rollins and I will talk, but um yeah, we'll look at it. And again, um if you didn't get a response from me, you know, it's unlikely because I always respond everybody just acknowledging it was there maybe not necessarily. So, I just wanted to bring that up, but go ahead, Mr. Mayor. Moving on to item B, 25-17, proposed line item transfer by the director of finance. Um Mr. Rollins and I are both going to walk you through as you see 25-17. We we started to look at obviously uh closing out fiscal year uh 25. First item obviously is our general labor uh in the public works department uh will be uh under spent uh because we did have people um that left us.
070We had positions that have gone unfilled. So there's, you know, roughly 88,000. So the first thing we want to do is we want to obviously replenish the overtime line item that has been overspent. first item and then uh the the remaining two items is maintenance of vehicle and fleet repairs and Mr. Rollins, you want to take them through the 30 and the 20. Yeah. So, uh maintenance of vehicles uh it's 311826 a very heavily used line item for our department. Uh trying to keep that fleet um going and you know operational plow trucks especially are just money pits especially the old ones. Um, so we got to, you know, the end of last month and we were on fumes in that department or in that uh line item. So all I did was prorrate how
071much we were spending per month and just extrapolated that out over the next two months so that we had enough to keep that pace going. Um, oftentimes this time of year it slows a little bit just because they're really assessing trucks. They're spending a lot of time doing that, assessing them, putting their list together so they can get busy on it over the summer and have them ready for for winter. So, it tends to slow down. But since we had that 88,000, I wanted to put it into that account just so that they if they could start ordering parts and getting them in stock, the sooner the better because then it speeds up the the build process later because we we always lose time, you know, waiting for the budget. And then last year when
072it didn't pass, it put us way behind and really made it uh made it tough to catch up. So we uh we wanted to add 30,000 to that and that will easily get us through uh the rest of the season. Uh the fleet repairs line uh fleet repairs is it's kind of a a mini capital line that we have. It's it's for stuff that's not big enough to be considered capital and it's to just kind of replace and refurbish and upgrade, you know, vehicles and equipment. And um basically that 20,000 is going to go to a uh a reversible vibratory plate compactor to minimize the the settling in the trenches when we when we excavate. Right now we're doing it with a jumping jack, which is a lot better than what they used to use,
073but we need to go another level um to to make that part of our work more uh more efficient and done once and done right. Uh that was maybe 5,000 of that money. Uh the other 15,000 we had put into the capital budget a replacement vehicle for the superintendent of streets. Uh he's the one that's on the road the most. He's the one that's making stuff happen. He's the one that basically builds the list of things that have to be done and checks on it and he's just on the road non-stop. His truck we wanted to move down into a different position that doesn't drive so much and replace his. Well, that did not make it into the the capital budget. So, we tried to scramble because again, we're trying to keep these vehicles as
074long as we can and just running one long and hard wears them out prematurely. If we can stagger them to lighter duty use, we're going to get better uh cost effectiveness out of it. So, what we did is we transferred his truck back here to the uh the facilities uh maintainer who doesn't put anywhere near the miles on, but it's a perfectly adequate vehicle for him, moved his vehicle over to Phil and we're going to add a utility body so he's got everything he needs with him all the time, saving just countless miles and hours of driving back to the shop to get stuff. So that was about 15,000 of that. So that's where those two lines are going to. Um so essentially we got what we needed for you know roughly what $70,000 less
075than if we had bought new. So the thought behind this as well is um we are looking to you know address items in next year's budget with uh some potential sur definite surplus money in the public works budget with hopes that next year um we don't have as many issues and potentially return surplus money in the maintenance of vehicles and the fleet repair line item. It's kind of preunding items get them going now that we have a budget. We're confident with the numbers that we will have 88,000 and and actually a little bit more than that in the general labor money transfer into into these three line items now to obviously a top off the overtime line item because of the winter that we had and then start looking at these vehicles, start addressing them
076now. Make a motion. Motion. I move that the board of selectment approve the line item transfer of $88,000 from line [Music] 1-31-194-000000-00 general 8000 for line item 1-311-197-0000-0000 00 overtime $30,000 for line item 1-311-826-000000-0000 maintenance of vehicles and $20,000 to line item 1-311-826-00001-0000 fleet repairs for a total transfer of $88,000. Second. Uh, can you just amend your motion because you read the number wrong? It was on the page wrong. It should be 1-311-194-0000. Oh, because it's missing the one. It's missing this second one. So, yes, I amend my motion for that. All right. Any other discussion? All in favor? Unanimous. Moving on to item C 25-18. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So, these funds are going to be transferred out of the assistant town clerk salary line to the positions absenced as resulted in lower than
077expected expenditures in that line. Additionally, a portion be reallocated for the restoration of records line as we now anticipate expending the full budget amount by June 30th. expenses incurred that we're looking the roughly a little over $1,000 incurred are related to the Atkins printing cost and the reconfiguration of the Hicks room uh which we did bring our town clerk in to help uh set this beautiful room up. We have a motion. I move that the board of selectment approve the line item on transfer of $300 from 1-120-19-4 zeros dash four more zeros assistant town clerk and $750 from 1-120-809-00002 and then four more zeros awful lot of zeros here in the amount of 750 50 to $300 for 1-120-197-4-4 zeros. Compensatory time $200 for 1-120-86-400-4 office supplies and $550. uh 120-828- 00002-40 in indexing system
078for a transfer total of $1,50. I'm zeroed out. That's a mouthful. We have a motion and a second. Is there any other discussion? Seeing no discussion. All in favor? Unanimous. Thank you. Item uh D, not A. 25-19 refunds is recommended by the collector of revenues. I didn't catch that. F. Wow. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Did not catch it on the agenda. Uh before you tonight is a recommendation from our uh uh tax collector in the amount of $9,824. As you'll see on the sheet, they are all over payments for the one, two, three, four, five uh particular entities. uh totaling just over $9,800. Motion. I move that the board of selectment authorize the refunds recommen recommended by the collector of revenue in the amount of $9,82428. And thank goodness there's no more zeros. Is there
079a second? Second. Thank you, Wendy. Any discussion? Seeing none, all in favor? Thank you. Unanimous. Item E. uh actions on items relating to finalizing the town's fiscal year 2526 mill rate. So when you pass a budget on the first time, we get to actually or you all get to set the actual uh mill rate uh now and we can get the bills out on time. So before you tonight, and it will be a a signature needed, is to set the uh tax rate for real estate, personal property, and motor vehicles to be set at 29.17 mills. Based on the grand list of October 1st, 2024, I'll note that that 29.17 mills is exactly what we've been promoting when we were putting out all of the proposed budgets. Real estate would be due on July 1st,
0802025 and January 1st of 2026. personal property July 1st, 2025 and January 1st of 2026. Motor vehicle is due July 1st, 2025 and supplemental motor vehicle due January 1st, 2026. And yes, that does include the 30-day period of before interest is starting to be charged. And you said we could set it, but you just said it. No, you would have to vote on it. You said we could set it. Oh, so I would change the bill rate to 27.17. You said it. I'm sorry. That's what you said. No. Do we have a motion? So moved. Is there a second? Second. Any further discussion? Motion is for the mill rate at 29.17. You sure about that? All in favor? Unanimous. Thank you. I'll note we'll get the bills out uh immediately. We'll start the whole process
081from our end. So, um, uh, that's the official copy. The mayor started it. Sorry. I ran with it. Yes, you did. Moving on to item F, town manager contract addendum. Mrs. Yep. So, in front of each of you is the amendum amendum to the employment agreement of town manager Paul Harrington. Uh this document is an addendum to the employment agreement the town manager Paul Harrington signed effective April 22nd 2024 between Paul Harrington and the town of Winchester collectively referred to as the parties. Whereas the town and Paul Harrington agree that effective on this should be revert back to his anniversary date which would be April 22nd. The employment agreement will be amended set forward below. Now therefore I the town Now therefore the town and Paul Harrington agree as follows. It will be a public
082document. So, we just need a motion to approve the addendum to the town manager's employment agreement. I make a motion effective April 22nd, 2025. I make a motion to approve the amendment um with the caveat of the April 22, 2025 um effectiveness. We have a second. Second. Do we have any other discussion? Should we talk about any of the pieces? Sure. Does um that he does get a little bit of a salary bump and with the regular contracts of other employees. Correct. That is correct. So it's that uh in the pension we still put in the amount of pension that was designated but he doesn't have to match it now. Correct. So that doesn't change what we would be putting in. It just changes that he is not matching medical and dental. He's going to
083be more in line with other town with HSA deductible and 18% contribution. And then the other change is some car allowance because he doesn't have a car as people in public works that we just heard from were the people from the building. department or anything else. So, he will receive a little bit of an allowance for his car use town business. Any other discussions? I think uh one thing that was uh brought up uh this did get sent over to the labor attorney. The labor attorney did review it. He did send it back to the mayor. Um so, I know that was a question that was uh asked before. So, the town town labor uh attorney did review the contract and did send it back to the mayor. And we could not do it before
084this because we did not. Any other discussion? Seeing none, all in favor? Unanimous. Thank you everybody. Item 11, citizens comments. The board of selectman welcomes public comments. Speakers be limited to three minutes and may speak once. Please give your name and address. Who would like to speak? Frank. Yes. Frank Oliver 108 Shore Drive. My question comes up with the bond issue we did in 202122. Uh I remember that I live on Shore Drive and that was in the fifth year or the fourth year of the program. The second year of the program they came in and they did the strip the crack line thing. Now that would my understanding at that time that means that would be a followed up with some sort of paving plan whether it be a capital job or the uh
085rival and but nothing's been done. So is it still on the list shore drive on the original bond list? Well, we might not be chip sealing short drive because of the proximity. No, I know. But I mean is it still in the bond? If it was in the bonded, it will still be in the bonded if you might. If it was So when when the town went out to referendum, all of the streets were listed at the referendum. Nobody has the power to remove one of those streets from it. So if Shore Drive was in it and and Frank, I apologize off the top of my head. I can't remember all the streets. There's a bunch. I can I can email you or call you. I don't even know if I have a way of
086contacting it. It's still in the plan. If it was set originally in it, it will still be in the plan. We are still working off that bond. Yes. Yes. If it was in the plan, it stays in the plan. Yes. And I understand from the other discussions I had with you. Yeah. Because chip sealing, right? No, we don't want chip ceiling there. No, I understand that. All right. Just want to know that it's still something to look forward to. Yeah. So, nothing nothing could change on that bond. Nothing could be added, nothing could be deducted. That bond was set for specific specific roads. We we don't have the power to change them. So, okay. Thank you very much. Anyone else, Mr. Speaker? Good evening. Michael Ferrell, 147 Shore Drive. Uh, few quick things. Congratulations on
087the Sue Gman money and East Lake Street. Huge for this town. I said in the swim and water commission and the Sue Gman trail specifically opens up immense opportunities for us. So awesome feather in your cap there. Uh last item to discuss for me. It's kind of a pet peeve that I've had since I've been coming to meetings here at uh city hall. Zoning board of appeals planning and zoning sewer and water board of selectmen. And this is kind of a rhetorical question for you guys. Why do we lock town hall, city hall when we have meetings? There may be some history that I'm not aware of. Maybe it's a labor contract thing. Somebody from public works has to be here. I don't know. But we do a great job with our social media. We
088want to engage our community. We want to engage our our citizenry. We put our agendas and our minutes on social media. We we ask you to be a part of our democ democratic process and then we lock you out. I don't understand that. It seems counterproductive. We can come in through the elevator and I've been a part of two organizations in the last five years that have had to replace elevators and you don't know the term sticker shock until you have to replace an elevator. So, in the spirit of inviting our people into our flagship building, into our meetings, and showing a gesture of good faith and openness, I just can't imagine wanting to open a business or move here and come down to a meeting and the doors to city hall are locked. It
089makes no sense to me. And I get it. We all, you know, we we shepherd people into the elevator, but I think it's a security issue when it happens. We come in. I can still get It's a security issue for the building and for after the meetings, right? But the other thing is, I mean, it could be solved with technology, just like schools have those magnet locks on the door. I believe there is one on that that you can set them for times of meetings, let's say. I think that somehow there some that door may communicate with the old dispatchers console. I don't know. I'm not sure. I haven't been involved in any discussions. I don't want to get into the weeds. I'm hoping that somebody But I I do know that when we first
090started because the building used to be wide open all the time. Yeah. Good idea these days. The back door was open, the front door was open that things started happening out in the world that hadn't happened before, right? And then people were found in our building that weren't supposed to be understood. And please understand that I'm only talking about during public meetings. No. No. So the security came and then there's a key that can there there's specific keys that you push that door in and it stays open. So you either have to give everybody the keys understood or not or you know maybe this is 2025 though it can't be that hard. We're going to invite people to be part of our process, right? But there's not technological piece that has to be done and
091then there has to be the people that can program it. I'll leave it at this. I'll tell you one thing that that I did notice. um on a meeting thing is when you have board of assessment appeals on a weekend and they're inside and people come and that aren't used to coming to this town hall would miss meetings because they couldn't get in. They didn't know they had to go in the police department. Well, I think that you know having been in the building at other times I put signs on the windows. I've opened and put a little little something inside the door. I know last weekend there was a little something inside the door. Uh, so there are ways to keep the door open if the chairman of the committee or the people doing
092it went down and opened it with with a little thing and then remember to take it out later. Well, I know you guys got a lot on your plate, but like I said, if I'm thinking of coming here and opening a business or I'm thinking of moving here and I want to do some business or start to see how government runs, I think a really great first step would be to not lock me out and let's not overburden what is already clearly a very tired elevator. And not for nothing, society can use a walk a few steps. So, let's promote good health. Let's promote open government, a welcoming environment, and let's unlock the damn doors of city hall, please. Thank you. Anyone else wish to speak? By the way, that elevator does get stuck once
093in a while. Been there, done that. Um Jay Markwell 68 Overlook Road Everbridge Paul I may I suggest everything you did for the referendum you do for Everbridge because that is such a vital important part of communication in our town. So, you know, everything you did, I can't list it because I can't remember everything you said. Just thought I'd suggest that especially in emergency situation, we really need as many people on it as possible. Thank you. Anyone else? Moving on to item 12, executive session discussions on town owned properties. 48 Bridge Street, 99 Hubard Street, 124 Rockwell Avenue, and B, discussions regarding selection of a site with the lease, sale or purchase of real estate. Make a motion we go into executive session with the town manager along with us. and second a second. And
094that is in reference to Connecticut General Statue section 1-200 subsection 6B. Uh the blue room's open. Blue room's open. You got a motion and a second. So in the blue room, all in favor? Unanimous at 8:21. Um click your mics up before you head out. Oh, your mics are off. So, my mic's back on. Yeah, it is 9:10 p.m. We are back from executive session. Item 13, new business, possible action on executive session items. We have no actions to take. Item number 14, selectman's comments and reports. I just got one comment. Um, the budget got passed. Um, there was two things that people voted yes for. It's the school and the roads. I want to see some paving being done now that the budget's fixed. Mr. Maybe we could have that clerk come in. Yeah.
095With Jim. That clerk that we hired out of the bond money. Oh, yeah. We have a new clerk. I've never met him, so that would be good. No, but I mean to for the bond and getting advancing all that. So maybe idea to do that. Yep. Yep. I agree. That gentleman's name is Gabe and I I will get that on uh meeting coming soon. That way we can just know what the schedule is for this. That's what you want. Yeah. And and we all get an introduction to any other comments. Make a motion to No, no. I got something first. Uh thanks to everyone, both sides that came out to vote at the referendum last week. Um we, as you heard earlier, we would like to see more citizens uh involvement in the election process,
096but thank you to everyone who came out and vote. Uh Friday, June 13th is the Laurel Bowl. Tickets are still available in the town clerk's office. Um it's always a good time and it's at Crystal Peak. Make motion adjourn. Second. All in favor. Good night. Thank you.