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Select Board Meeting w/Department Heads

Video

everyone. This is Monday, June
29, 26. Kingston
Select Board meeting. It's our monthly
department head meeting as well. And can someone
remind me why we decided to do this at one? Was it just to drive something
different? Yes, we have to rush on. Okay.
Oh, yes, please remember your microphones.
The other rationale was that we assumed
that our department heads would want to get into their office, get some
stuff down in the morning.
And then kind of clear things up, so by the time we met in the afternoon,
they would be in a better position to come and join us,
as opposed to feeling rushed and having to go in and out, that type of thing.
So that really was the biggest piece of it.
So keep one thing in mind that this afternoon meeting,
not only in the department heads, that other people could get tied into things,
obligations in the morning that they can't get out of.
That's exactly correct. That's exactly correct.
So we thought we tried it for a while and see how it worked out.
That was the reasoning.
So as department
heads and others are thinking about this as we do this for the next maybe
a couple of meetings of our monthlys.
Let us know how you feel about it.
I mean, if it works better for you, that's great.
If you say to us, man, I had my day and I was rolling and all of a sudden I had to call
it a complete stop and come here to do this.
So maybe it won't work for you.
But we'll try it and see how it goes and let us know.
Okay.
So we'll start with Pledge of Allegiance.
Okay, for which it stands, one nation, under God,
individual, liberty, and justice.
Sorry about that chair, Robin.
It does it every time.
It does it every time.
Okay, we'll do roll call.
And I'm going to start to my right, because I want to finish up at my far left.
So for the board.
I will.
I will. I can do that.
I can do that.
So in this case, we'll start with Abby.
Zarkowski is our recreation director.
Next to her, Pedro Avila, our building inspector and code enforcement officer.
To his left is Tom Rowan, our highway agent.
And to Tom's left is Chief Joel Johnson, police chief.
And then board members, Peter Bakie, Electra Alessio, who
who is our vice chair as well, Glenn Coppelman, I'm the current chair.
To my left is Robin Carter, our current select board administrator.
To her left is Lorraine Swede, board member.
And to Lori's left is a new face to most of you.
Let me introduce, and it's my pleasure to introduce, June, Philbrook,
who comes to us most recently from the city of Portsmouth,
and will be taking over the role of, well, actually is taking over the role as of today of Select Board Administrator.
And there will be a two-week overlap with Robin, who will be also in that role for the next two weeks and help to transition June into the role.
And then at the end of the two-week period, Robin will then reduce time to part-time and carry
on with her human resources duties. So, I think I've got that all right.
You do, thank you. Okay. So, June, thank you. Welcome. And would you grab a mic,
please, because I'm going to ask, oh, there we go. You want to just do a quick hello to everyone?
Yeah, I would be honored to. So, as mentioned, my name is June Philbrook. I come to you
with previous municipal experience from the city of Portsmouth.
where I've spent my last four years, focusing on not only, of course, municipal government, but regulatory compliance as well.
Community engagement, I did hold a seat within the city clerk's office, starting from administrative assistant and concluding as acting city clerk.
I am very excited to be here and very excited for the opportunity that the select board has offered me to
occupy the seat of Select Board Administrator Robin is instrumental, and we've only
been speaking for probably, I'm going to say a week and a half, but as many of you have engaged
with her, she's very knowledgeable and she's very open to communicating, which is wonderful.
I am looking forward to not only building my rapport with the Select Board, but spending time
getting to know department heads as well, seeing how I can help you, how to make your jobs easier,
how we can work together, but also beginning to build a rapport with the community.
And I am very happy again for the opportunity to see you at the state, so thank you.
Well, we're glad to have you here, June, and welcome.
Thank you.
All right. Fire Chief Graham Pellarin is strolling in as we speak.
And Marissa's in the audience.
Graham, you didn't hear this introduction, but June Philbrook is our new Select Board Administrator.
And I'm sure at some point you'll have a chance to chat more.
And coming in next to you is Marissa Federico, our finance officer.
Yes, we have.
All right. Very good.
Okay.
First item on the agenda is Solid Waste RFP recommendations, and this is a follow-up to the discussion we had at our
last meeting. And Tom, I think I'm going to throw this your way to start us off on where
where we are at this point. I should mention also that we have representatives from two of the bidders
in the audience, waste management and ELM. Well, I think we all had two weeks to go through
the information provided. There were two letters provided to the board from
each vendor and I send a short letter with my opinions and I think today is the day we choose and I try to keep things simple at the end of the letter. It's it's all about either continuity or a little cost savings and
the unknown, you know, what I think, from what I've heard through other towns, albeit
there are small towns, but their service has been fine.
So I've spoken with the references, and so now it's, I think it's decision day, and I hope everyone
read and has their thoughts and if there are any specific questions towards the vendors I
don't know if that's something you'll entertain but you could certainly the two that are
here if there are any concerns they'd probably be the best ones to ask so thank you
Tom questions comments from the board I would only go off of what Tom said I
At this point, I don't think it would be appropriate to have any more direct conversation with the vendors
because then it just lends us to have to put more information out because the third vendor's not here.
So I would be opposed to not opening it up for further discussion.
You would be opposed to opening it up.
Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Thank you.
And I would agree with my colleague only because I think we have a full understanding
are the two options in particular, more than the three, but the two really came down to choice
between two individuals, two companies, I should not have, and I think the information
that we had was pretty clear. I appreciate the letters with subsequent information that was
provided by both waste management and ELM, which kind of helped clarify a few issues that we had
raised at our previous meeting. I thought that was very helpful as well.
So if you'd like, I'm prepared to make a recommendation.
If you wish, Peter, did you have anything else to comment on before we do that?
Okay.
Okay, I'd like to move that we award the bid to ELM for the five years beginning in January 1, 2028.
And to, if you could add to that, we're going to have to negotiate a contract.
That's correct with them. So I'd like to include that as part of the motion.
Yes, I would I would welcome that as a friendly amendment.
Is there a second?
Somebody, please?
Second.
Okay. I do want to comment that...
So further discussion.
Okay. I do want to speak to that a little bit.
Voice management has been with us more than 10 years, and they have been a terrific vendor.
I rarely hear complaints, but I still believe and wish they had sharpened the pencil
a little bit more. The issue of recycling going to Londonderry instead of Rochester
might have been a change in the Delta to stay with them. That's one thing. By the same
token, my background in business is a self-employed individual, and I have a lot of respect
for self-employed people who tend to work 120% to make it work. And we've had good recommendations
from neighboring communities that have contracted with ELM.
And so, and the Delta is about $50,000 a year less.
And I expect they will have the same service, if not better, than we had from waste management.
So I hope I'm not wrong.
Thanks, Ellie.
Further discussion.
Yes?
Yes.
Okay.
I think the RFP responses that we got were great.
I think, as Tom pointed out, I think as Tom pointed out,
each vendor has a strong suit that we needed to look at, whether we want cost savings,
whether we want continuity and, you know, the W&O kind of thing, or Kasella, who also had a great
option for allowing people to decide if they want curbside. But because we had never actually
talked about that and would have to have been, I think, a town meeting thing, I don't think
that was a viable option for us to choose that, because people had to then direct pay to
Vesla. It's no secret that I ran a campaign to stop curbside recycling in town
because I don't think that it's a service that is cost-efficient or cost-effective. And the Warren
article, there were 1,459 voters, and 459 voters, and 45% of them agreed that they didn't want
curbside recycling. So I have to go with my conscience, and even though I believe
ELM is the best choice of the ones in front of us, I cannot support any contract that has
curbside in it. So it's not against ELM or any of the companies, but I personally cannot do that.
Peter, any comments? Okay. The only comment I will make is more or less echoing what Ellie
has said and that the service and and also Tom and through this whole process that
the service that we've been provided from waste management has been excellent so
there's no question there at all and I stated at the last meeting that unless I
could be convinced or otherwise provided evidence of the fact that another vendor
would not perform to the same level that that I feel
be obliged from a fiscal responsibility point of view to to choose the lowest priced option.
And in this case, that's ELM, so I would support that as well.
Peter.
I do, I would want to add that. This is, this is one of our largest budget items in the town of Kingston.
And I do want to thank Tom and Lisa for the probably countless hours you spent going through the bids, the time.
There's a lot to look at. There's a lot of numbers to figure out.
And I do commend Tom, at least about the time that it did supply the information to the town of Kingston.
It was very helpful. Thank you, Tom.
No question about that.
If there's anything further, I want to call for the vote.
All in favor of the motion? Please say aye.
Aye.
Aye. Opposed? One. And abstentions, there are none.
So the motion carries three in favor.
One.
oppose and no abstentions. And by the way, we have one board member missing, so that's why there are only four votes. But nonetheless, we have a quorum, and we did just have a majority vote. So I want to thank the bidders who are here, as well as the one who's not here.
We realize that it takes a lot of time and effort to put those bids together, and we appreciate that as well.
Thank you both. Okay.
We'll see you again.
I have a 130 time slot for A.A.F. CPAs. Does anyone feel that we want to wait until
1.30 to do that, or should we just move forward with it?
Move forward.
I just have to make sure that I know Emily's here, but there are other people on the team that are supposed to be here.
So I'm just going to go check real fast.
If they're walking in the door now, we can start early.
Yeah.
As long as they're here.
If you can sort of gather around that corner, that would be great.
Bring a few chairs forward.
Welcome.
Good to see you again.
Are all of your folks here who are going to be here?
Okay.
Because if you, we had scheduled this for 1.30, and if you didn't have everyone here, we would wait until that time.
But if you're all set, then we'll go ahead and move on with this agenda item.
So this is A-A-F-C-P-As.
and I'm assuming this is an update for us on where you are at this moment, and I'm going to ask
that for the purposes of us knowing and also for the person doing the minutes for us, who's doing it
remotely, that you introduce yourselves, each of you, or one of you introduce all of you or
something so that we've got all that down.
And please, you're going to have to use the microphones.
You've got that one, make sure it's pressed and green.
Okay. Okay. Well, leave it on the table, but bring it close to you and use your outside voice.
There you go.
Sounds good. Okay. Thank you, everybody. We're happy to be back. I am Lisa Whitamore,
partner in the advisory practice at AFCPAs. With me today, I have Josh Stone, who most of you have met last time,
director in the risk advisory practice. Emily Feely is a director in the advisory practice,
and Alicia Stratford is our manager in the advisory.
practice.
Alicia, you said?
Alicia, yep. Thank you.
All of us collectively have been intimately involved in the
forensic accounting and internal controls work for town of Kingston
over the past few months. So today we want to give an update on where the
project's at, what our current findings are,
and what our recommendations are for going forward.
Some interesting things, as I expect everybody
has anticipated.
And, yeah, so just to kind of refresh our memories on what the objective was.
So we're looking to establish an accurate baseline of the financial activities for the town of Kingston
by validating different key classes of financial transactions.
So we will looking specifically to validate the Interfund transfers for the time frame of January 1st,
all the way through May 30th, 2025.
We were going to recommend different corrections in the form of journal entries for things like
one-sided entries, unposted transactions, misclassified deposits.
We're going to reconcile and validate the Planning Board escrow accounts and validate
to validate transfers related to police details and ambulance services.
I'm going to turn it over to Emily.
She's going to walk through the work that was done to date.
And on this first slide, it's kind of the summary of our findings to date.
So Emily, press the green.
Thank you.
I would have forgotten to do that.
Thanks, Lisa.
So as Lisa said, I'm going to walk through the work done to date,
and then we'll give you sort of a status of those original items that we said that we would
accomplish and then our recommendations.
So an overview of the work process, there was a lot of collaboration between ourselves,
Marissa, and the external auditors, both for allowing us to understand the activities of the town,
but also some of the challenges and reporting issues.
So great thanks to both of those parties.
We've had a lot of discussions around the structure of the funds and our scope.
What should we be looking at?
What should we, you know, not be looking at, or, you know,
be moving to a different phase.
As Lisa said, this is 17 months of activities.
So we were looking at bank statements, ledger detail, amongst the financial records.
That's really our focus.
We did investigate and rerun a number of the QuickBooks reports,
because what we found was that some of the historical reports were, I would say, out of date,
in that they were originally, you know, created, printed, and then at a later date changed.
And so they didn't always reconcile back to,
the QuickBooks reporting that is current as of now.
We, through our process, proposed 14 journal entries.
That was to correct errors, tie out the Interfund in aggregate.
That's 1.6 million of transactions.
And again, our work was really focused on those interfund accounts, not for the financial statements as a whole.
We shared that information with the auditors to make sure that both sides were in agreement.
I know that the 2024.
audit is a discussion item and is being moved forward with.
So I will say that both sides are in agreement with what we found, but our scope was more limited
than the auditor's scope.
So they have different adjustments than we do, but it was good for us to get collaboration on that.
And again, we've summarized our observations.
We've shared that both with Marissa and the auditors, and we will share those with you here today.
As part of that, we believe we've identified.
the root cause of some of the historical problems, and along with that, we've had some other
general observations that weren't came up through the process of doing our work, which again,
we will go through.
So the next slide is the status of key activities.
Those are the four items that were outlined in the original engagement letter, what our,
you know, first phase consisted of.
And I have a status that's next to each of these, which we will go through.
Before I do that, I will say that this is meant to be a neutral comment.
There are comments in here about exceptions and limitations.
Those are not meant to be negative.
It is just, like I said, a status update of where we are at.
In some cases, we are saying that we don't necessarily suggest that more work needs to be done,
and in other areas, we are saying that we do suggest more work be done.
So with that being said, the first item was reconciling the interfund balances,
and we are saying that that is complete with a couple exceptions, which again, we'll go through
in a little bit more detail.
Recommending corrections, as I said, we have.
the 14 journal entries, which we proposed, so we were saying that that is complete with some
limitations. Again, we will go through that. Reconciling the planning board escrows, we are saying
that's partially complete, and validating police detail and ambulance transfers, again, complete
with some limitations. So what do we mean by limitations? Limitations means that in some instances,
we were unable to access enough supporting documentation to propose an adjusting entry to the
dollar. So in other words, having an absolute accurate journal entry. We know enough in these
instances to be able to propose a journal entry that will correct the error at a high level
to be able to pass, say, the audit. And this is a very similar approach that the auditors
historically had taken for when they were proposing entries. Again, we let's go through our recommendations,
but we're not necessarily suggesting that it's worth more work incurred to try to get down to that level of detail.
In other words, we think in these instances it is close enough.
It's a good basis and we're comfortable with the judgments that we've made.
The exception items, so there's two that we have here.
The impact fee analysis, we're saying this is on hold pending
pending further discussion because this is an area that we went into this with a general expectation
on how much work was going to entail along with the rest of the Interfund accounts.
But as we went through this, we went through this,
process, it became clear that that particular account is much more complicated and requires
more time and attention than the other accounts. So rather than incur the time and the expense,
it made sense to pause our work on that so that we could get understanding of the time frame that
we should be looking at this, the level of detail, and also really coming up with a
tolerable level of exception that everyone is willing to live with in this.
if there is one.
The other item that we noted as an exception is there are some interfunded accounts with
library, grant, and trust accounts, which in some cases, the corresponding books and records are
maintained independent of the town, and so the level of analysis that we can perform
without that detail is limited. But again, this is not an area that we suggested that we needed
to do more work in, especially with we discussed with the auditors and those
were not funds that were giving them concern either. So it did not make sense for us
to continue down that path. The last item here is partially complete. So the planning board's
escrow inter-fund account is reconciled. We did include that in our analysis. However, there
are a lot of cash accounts and transactions which we did not necessarily get to in detail.
But again, this was another area that was not a concern of the
auditors. We did not see anything through our work that we felt needed to, where we needed to
spend time there. It would have been a large level of effort for Marissa to be providing that level
of detail. Any questions up to this point at all? So from there, we can talk about what our observations
were. I always say first and foremost that QuickBooks is an imperfect system for municipal
accounting, especially when there are multiple funds, the way that QuickBooks
is set up is that each fund has its own account, if you will, or its own file, company file.
And in order to do the accounting, you need to log into each file. They don't speak to one another.
And so if you have a transaction that impacts two funds, which we'll go through an example in the next
bullet, you're having to do two journal entries, but you have to log into each system to do it.
So that takes time.
and it's cumbersome, and at a high volume of transactions, it leaves a lot of room for error.
It's not unusual.
Anyone who's using QuickBooks at a municipal level is going to have this challenge.
However, that's coupled with a large volume of cash receipts and disbursements that are being transacted out of the general funds bank account.
So anytime the general fund is receiving or paying cash on behalf of another fund, that is going to require essentially two journal entries.
And again, in two different company files.
So someone has to log into one, do the first entry correctly, log out, log into the next one,
remember what was the entry that they had done on the last account, and how should it be reported on this account?
It's not as simple as doing the same entry on two.
You really have to think about the true accounting behind it, and that's where things can get messy.
It's a very manual process.
And again, it's open for error if there aren't controls in place to be able to catch when.
entries are missed, which in case they were, or when entries are recorded backwards, which that was also happening.
So again, a high volume of transactions, manual process.
Other areas of concern, there's a lack of timely transfers.
What we were observing in the files, again, for the time frame we looked at, is that, again, a lot of activities happening in the general funds,
and while some of that activity pertain to other funds, those funds, the activity is not being recorded.
while it was happening. It was like a, you know, several months later, someone was going back
and trying to record all the activity at once. Again, there's no ongoing monitoring to be able to catch
issues and errors. And when you're doing these sort of bulk adjustments, maintaining the support
to say this is why I'm recording this very large entry, here's all the revenues that it's associated with
or all the expenses, if that's not maintained, then someone else who comes in later has a very hard time
understanding when the numbers don't line up, and that's exactly what happened here.
I will say that there was also a large amount of backdating of journal entries.
And again, because there's this timeliness issue happening, that necessitates somebody going
into the accounting system, and, you know, we are here in June, someone's going in and entering
in transactions for, say, April.
That is, again, not ideal, and it makes monitoring this very difficult.
It also means that, like we said in the beginning, and
reports that were previously run from April now they no longer tied because someone in June has changed the reporting and so it makes record keeping very difficult lastly I'll say that there is a very high volume of deleted transactions which unfortunately QuickBooks just out of the box allows you to delete transactions that's not ideal in any accountant will say that that one of our number one rules is that you don't want to delete anything even if it goes in by accident it's in incorrectly and you recognize it
We always reverse entries so that there's a paper trail to say, this is what happened, it went in, but now we're reversing it and zeroing it out.
So, again, it was a bad process and something that we would obviously recommend as part of changes to processing control.
And there was over 500 deleted transactions over the 17-month period of time, which is.
It's huge.
And so taking all of what I just said in totality, we think that, you know, this really does create an environment in which fraud and misappropriation of funds and uncod errors can certainly perpetuate.
Not to say that we have uncovered or have proof of any of that, but it certainly creates an environment where it can happen.
Can someone at least verify that we're not doing that anymore?
Yes, so there's already been changes for some of this.
My understanding is that a new system, a new financial system, is in the process of being implemented.
So, of course, that, to the degree on how that is set up, can alleviate some of these concerns.
I'm sure Marissa is no longer deleting transactions.
Well, and we can look into the current 2026 financials and audit trails and stuff as well and verify that.
We haven't done it because we've been focused on the.
testing period but we can take a quick peek as part of phase two. Yeah, and that's one of our
recommendations is for us to take a look at that activity. Sorry, I didn't mean to derail you.
No, no, it's a good question. We like the open dialogue for sure. It's important. But yes, it is something
that caught our eye as well. So I did mention a couple additional observations. Again, these are
not necessarily due to the transactional work that we were doing, but just as part of the overall
process, these were conversations that were had.
So for the audit, again, the 2024 audit, we just recently provided the auditors with our journal entries.
I also know that they were also instructed to go ahead and finalize their 2024 audit as they had it.
We also, as part of our process, realized, the two groups realized we were working with two different sets of data.
So with all of that being said, there absolutely needs to be a process.
and the inter-reconciliation to say if the audit, the 2024 audit is issued as is, we need to
make sure that the current QuickBooks data, how can, you know, what is the difference between
those two and making sure that those entries are properly reflected in 2025, so the 2025 audit
can begin on time. So that's one item. Secondly, I understand that the 2024 audit will have an adverse
opinion because of two factors, one of which being the impact fee.
which we already discussed, we are recommending and know that that needs more work.
So regardless of the work that we did, and again, the journal entries we provided to the auditors,
it's our understanding that that won't change the audit opinion for 2024.
Any questions on that before we, again, we have some recommendations on what we think makes sense to move forward,
but that's our observations on that.
We already talked about the software change.
Emily, Lori.
So, me personally, I'm confused on why you had a statement in here under the audit concerns,
the first bullet.
I think I need to understand why you're saying the impact fees are out of scope.
Iowa scope is probably not the right terminology.
I would say it was in scope, but as I said in the beginning, we paused that line of work because
it was going to entail a lot more time and effort, and based on our conversations with Marissa
and there was already some investigation being done, so we didn't want to duplicate any efforts there.
So maybe out of scope maybe isn't the right wording for it, but I would say that with the work that
we have done to date, we have not done enough to be able to say this is how you correct the impact fees
and get an unqualified audit opinion.
Okay, so I would like to amend that a little bit.
They were partially in scope as our focus was on the interfund activity, so they weren't going to be analyzed in terms
of the inner fund activity and they were we did not so the original scope also included
specifically called out reconciliation of the planning board so we did that we did not have a
specific focus on the impact fees in and of themselves outside of how they related to the
interfund transfers so they were out of scope for an individual to be really dialed in on
okay so if we want further work then that's on phase three
it would be a scroll to mention yeah yeah yeah and again we would want to make
sure that that work is is defined in a way that the auditors are in agreement that yes that
work will correct the problem from their perspective and also with Marissa and the rest of
the town to say this is the information we have available what's the best way to
move forward here so that we're not spinning our wheels
item that we have on this list again we mentioned the software changes quickly so we
know that that's moving forward it's a good thing because as we said quickbooks is not a great
system however we do want to call out that by transitioning to a new system now that will
create an additional stress on the finance group because it's just another again change to manage
when they're still clean up to be done in the prior periods that brings us to sort of the
last observation which is the staffing and segregation of duties despite the fact
that we have been looking at as alicia said the interfund accounts there is still a large
amount of cleanup that needs to happen for 2025 beyond the interfund accounts and I
know that Marissa is working hard on that but it in our perspective it seems like a large
level for one individual to try to clean up while also trying to do the day-to-day
so that 2026 doesn't fall into the same issues um so again i think it's just something we
wanted to raise to this group to be aware of um and we can talk about next what our
recommendations are and implement a software on top of that yes yeah so with all that being said
um the last slide are sort of next steps and and our recommendations um so the very first one
is to um increase the scope to investigate the deleted transaction
again it's it's a large volume so it does raise a red flag for us and we think that that
that would be something that's appropriate just to give everyone a little bit more comfort over what was
going on there can i ask the question yes what would that entail well i think we could do a couple
approaches a sampling approach is a is a possibility again there's 500 transactions
and so maybe there needs to be a sample of of some of those to see what was the
story behind those does it make sense that you know did someone delete it because they
just didn't put it in the right fund you know that could be a very plausible explanation or is
there's potentially something else going on it could also be very difficult to come to a
conclusion on deleted transactions because number one they're deleted and number two if
there was no notes behind them no supporting documentation we can do some analysis and some
trending on them to see if we can identify any factors or
any misappropriations any instances of fraud that it occurred but again because they're
deleted and just based on historically what we've known with um documentation being retained and things
like that and notes and what have you it could turn up we might not be able to conclude
but we'll you know go down that path see what see what we can find and um you know we won't go down a rat's
if there's no rats hole to go down so yeah the second item is to determine the approach to
reconciling the impact fee accounting to within its haulable variance so that's what i said before
that that there really needs to be collaboration of all the groups that are interested in this
to come up with a approach that can get that done as quickly but to the degree of detail as needed
to satisfy the auditors yeah and we'll work directly with the auditors to work out of
for that and of course Marissa how comfortable they are and what that tolerable variance
would be the third item that needs to happen is analyzing the difference between
clickbooks and the 2024 audit because again that that activity needs to go somewhere so if
it's not going to go in the 2024 audit then it needs to be a part of 2025 and I don't
want to speak for the auditors but I know that from our perspective as auditors it would be very
difficult for us to start an audit if we knew that the opening balances did not agree
that would be a large caveat so whether or not i mean we are available to help with that but
we can also you know work with with you folks to say this is the process we would take if we were
to do it ourselves but we are here to support you in that number four is to determine the
best timing to begin the phase two work which was to recommend and present internal control
changes so process changes again we want to be cognizant of the fact that there's a system
conversion happening so it wouldn't make sense for us to come in and make a bunch of recommendations on
how to improve quick books when that has a you know short lifespan so but again at the same time
we know system conversions can sometimes take time and we want you to be able to you know
implement and see these improvements as quick as you can so it's we will be looking to to you all
to help us in that regard and in timing have you had
discussions with Marissa and at least have a thought in mind about a time frame
for when you would start phase two we have discussed the timing of the system
conversion but I think we we need a little bit more detail on exactly you know is
there going to be a true clean cut over and should we really just focus on the new
system we're happy to do that but we we need a little bit more
conversation I think to be able to give you a concrete plan
and a system conversion is a huge undertaking right you can't just plug it in one day and
start your transactions in it you need to make sure your chart of accounts is correct your
data is clean and scrubbed before it goes in how many historical years you want to
pull into it if that data is correct it's got to go in you have to obviously set up the
internal controls you have to set up all of the different instances for the funds or you know
they're called instances or you can consider the
different entities for the fund so that like Emily said you're not logging out of
one quickbooks going into another one lot and going so this software should hopefully
have them all in the same place but you want to set up individual instances for
so you can easily toggle in between them so that setup has to get done it it's a
big undertaking and you want to take your time and have it mapped out
correctly so that it gets done right and you know and has the proper control
and segregations in place and all of that so yeah are we crazy to have started this
implementation transition to a new system in the middle of the year you can do it
anytime as long as I mean you really can as long as the data is clean and it's
set up appropriately and you know as long as it's configured you've got
clean data you've got your charter of accounts you've got all of your instances for
your different funds and then
not right I mean we want to go forward and we want to get it done right we don't want to be
with pickbooks anymore right and we want to eliminate the problems we've had in the past
quick all that's in place yeah quick books isn't the right software I think
everybody can say that yeah and middle of the year is better than the end of the
year if you don't have auditors you don't have the auditors you've got if you do run into
issues and you've got time to yeah a little bit more time to figure it out than if
you were at the end of the year I'd say beginning of the year is
more ideal but you're making me feel better yeah you're it could be worse yeah so
for the first three bullets of those phase three so you have to right those would be
phase three right doing the deleted transaction we could put that we could we could
just scrap the original phases that we initially put in the proposal because now we
know more right and just move up the on the priority list like we want to look at the we
want to pull the deleted transactions and the validate the fraud risk
earlier as soon as possible so that could be obviously pulled into phase two or
that we'll call it the next phase and then the internal controls make sure
that internal controls are set up properly as well as well as talking with the
auditors on the impact fees because that's going to impact the issuance of the
audit right so absolutely so you know July 20
seventh is when we go live with our new software so we want to obviously
get as much data as accurate as possible so we start with good data right not
to say that things can't be adjusted yeah and the BS and a software yeah so
how much of this would impact go live that you're talking about how far into
go live are you how much work has already been done nope so we have weekly
meetings and their tech team is already starting to set up chart of account the
first second week of July they're doing a final data poll from quickbooks to set up
the chart of accounts what do you mean by data poll they're gonna get an updated all of
our balances and set up the new system so we actually don't have much more time to
records up between they're not going back they're just pulling over this year's
data yes yeah just for 2026 right but any adjustments that we do to correct
two thousand twenty four and then additional adjustments adjustments for
2025 are going to have to be reflected in BS and A which likely means that I'm
going to need to manually book them probably in QuickBooks you'll do it in both
and in BS and A to make sure that they're both matching how married to July 27th are you
I'd have to talk to them okay find out if there's any
they squeezed us into a slot because someone else got canceled
the alternative is that we're gonna have to wait till the end of the year I don't know
at this point where they are with the implementation how far that would have to
I'd have to talk to them okay so you're asking that question because I feel like
because I feel like that's gonna come up really quick and there's a lot of work
that still needs to be done and it might not be in a clean
enough position to meet especially if you're saying in the next two weeks
they're gonna start importing set data sets so I'll just pause there with that
thought I think it's gonna come up really quick and I feel like the data might not be in
a good enough spot to convert the opening balances how much work you know you
yeah you know we say yes go ahead and do that and you're working that and it's you
right before we'll live or right after what what do you think for timing what that
yeah what you would have to do then once you get those okay no kidding here's the good data yeah
what do we think for timing then so i think there's maybe two two issues at play would be so the impact fees
themselves that is sort of the one issue of investigating that figuring out how to fix it and the
process going forward that's an isolated issue i would say the bigger another the second issue
being that the financial statements as a whole the 2025 data for you to be able to the auditors be able
to do that that audit and get through it there's still a lot of cleanup that needs to happen outside of
everything that we've talked about any cleanup that's happening on those two items if you convert
into a new system you're going to end up doing journal entries in quickbooks and in the new system
so it i would say the impact fees we still have more discussion
to have around what data is available but i to me that is a quicker um investigation than
marissa without support trying to clean up all of 2025 on her own um and so that that that actually
is sort of this last uh recommendation is considering the resources that will be needed to support
finance in these efforts to clean up 2025 while maintaining an accurate 2026 you know day to
transactions i think it's a lot to ask um and so yeah i think our our recommendation would be
um to potentially have external support to either either they can handle doing the 2025 cleanup as a whole
and marissa can focus on system implementation in 2026 data or separately they can focus on
transactional work while she's you know cleaning up historical data i think those are items to consider
yeah and we have a we have an outsourced accounting function
within AFCPAs that is just supplemental accounting staff on an ad hoc basis that could
come in help with everything help with cleanup help with um they can do bank reconciliation
they can do payroll they can you know whatever it is month end close APs anything all of that they
can dig the transactions out they can come in for you know any dedicated amount of time
or they can be part of your ongoing staff like at the end of every month just come in for a few days and do
the close or they can do your transaction processing through the month what have you but
it there again it's just an outsourced accounting supplement on an ad hoc basis you're not paying full-time
staff so that is a that is a service that if we wanted you to put something together for us to
review you could do that yep yep yeah definitely definitely but there's also the matter of when to post these
um adjusting journal entries that we proposed as well so there's the 14 journal entries
that we proposed a total 1.6 million um in adjustments that need to be made as well so right
those still have to get posted yeah and we what we told marissa was we'd work with her and
in sort of go through a thoughtful process because it really if the 2024 audit is going to be issued
as is have them issue it then reconcile quickbooks to the audit say where are the differences okay post those
adjustments so that they're they're posted and then anything that is left over that wasn't
already covered will be the rest of our transactions and then we can get those posted so that it's
done in a thoughtful manner and you're not having it go back and again do more reconciliations to try
to figure out why the numbers don't line up i can only speak for myself but i am fully supportive
of closing the 2024 there's not going to be any good news coming out of there
think we take the hit recognize the problems that we have and you
ensure that we don't have them going forward so in my estimation i suggest that we accept the
twenty twenty four report and and accordingly and move forward i think that makes the most sense
because it with that transition it's going to be very scary and we don't have enough support staff
for mirrors and now if even on footbooks we don't have enough support staff so i think it's
important that we close the door in that and move forward as quickly as possible
do you have anything hinging on the 2024 audit at all closure it's called closure
just making sure that we're able to to report it to get it out there okay move forward
and move forward okay i just want to clarify so under that understanding um there's no intention
to go back and have 24 be reissued with a clean opinion you're just going to accept the adverse opinion
I think that was an option that plots they gave us to revisit after we have time
to relook and work out some of these differences um they weren't sure if we wanted to reissue 24
or make the adjustment adjustments to 2025 start of year so that was still in discussion it's not
i think it would change the amount of work that goes into impact phase do we clean up 24 or do we
focus on 25 yeah i i agree i think that to the degree that to the degree
that 20 everyone can move on from 24 would be ideal i think we still need to understand
the baseline of what happened but i think that the tolerable error that everyone could live with
for the 2024 activity is larger if we're issuing the audit and not going back
okay and so then whatever the journal entries that you have to make then you'll
work with plodzic to and then do all what you need to in 25 right right right reissuing
yeah that it would be our focus for the impact fees would be 2025 and and forward that
that would be the expectation okay and i did want to clarify as well if we do not get the
two thousand twenty four audit tied up odds it will not move forward with the
2025 audit which will delay us setting the tax rate so there is a bigger urgency on getting the
2020 audit tied up there are a lot of agencies that are asking for it i could probably hold them off but
setting the tax rate is we need to get on that yeah so that was all that we had um in our
presentation so thank you very much by the way yes so question question for me then i'm assuming
that this is sort of your report back to us at the at the end of phase one are you sort of saying
that phase one is done at this point yeah i think that we what we're saying is that um we completed what we
set out to again with those limitations and exceptions that we outlined but through our
recommendations i think you can see that we're we're not suggesting that we go back and and try to
you know nail everything down 100 percent so yeah i think we would say phase phase one is done
and to lease this point we think it makes sense to decide the best way to move forward with you all
rather than following the letter of the original and that was going to be my the second part of my
question is that based on what you said it sounds like uh
you might want to restate how how you how you propose moving forward from here
yeah that's that's exactly what i hear you're saying that what you had originally
thought might be face two and phase three may not be the same now now that you have a
better picture on the status of the accounts that you could better formulate a proposal
moving forward would be best next steps so that we get clean and hold by the end of
25 or so at it yes well we also want to look into the deleted transactions right
exactly yes impact fees internal controls anything to help the system conversion and then
the potential for outsourced account supplemental outsourced account at least
temporarily until you get that right yep yep so essentially all of your steps that you
bring on that page right yeah and you can get back to us with a revised a revised a revised scope and what that
looks like in a revised fee estimate for that yep okay I can do that
this week if that's okay sure anything we missed Marissa okay okay
okay are you sure you don't want any more sets of auditors well you guys
are making me feel better I guess that's the bottom line yeah and I want to
convey that comfort level to our residents in the community yeah you know we
messed up I don't see any you know we need to fix it now that we know
the problems area is concerned we need to institute the controls and systems so
it does not replicate itself again yeah and like and like we outlined it was just
an imperfect system yeah a massive amount of transactions a small or a single
person staff so you know it's a it's a it was a it was a it
was a swirl it was just a swirl we're we're not looking to lay out excuses
there are plenty of them yeah and there are there's plenty here so yeah but as
Ellie said the board and the residents should be glad to know that it's being
worked out and and when this is all done will be in much better shape yeah and on
better footing going forward right Marissa yeah there you go yeah
absolutely and I don't check with BS and A and find out if we pushed it how far out
how much of a grace period we have to sort of so I will be back in touch can can we
almost have a discussion with them or a look at the scope with them to see like
maybe maybe with you like where things are at and how much has been done and what the
big picture looks like Thursday morning I can send the info out oh okay I think
that's a great idea that sounds that sounds like a productive idea yeah yeah I just
I just want to see like where everything is and what the big picture looks like so
that it makes more sense for you to both work together yeah
yeah painously so that you're not duplicating efforts that are unnecessary
right right and you what you may do can help implement the system faster for
example yeah because they may they may be comfortable with the data that they're
going to be pulling in they may be like you need to do X Y ins it
so what time do you or you'll just send me the invite right okay okay
okay okay okay okay what's the um firm that you're using for the PSA okay they have
their own conversion team okay all right meet great okay okay any other questions from
you folks for us no further comments
no I mean just in general I think Marissa was great to work with or I'll speak
for the whole team but I think Marissa was great to work with she you know knows the
path that things need to go down and she's working hard to get it there get the
get the town there and Plosnik was great to work with as well they were
collaborative always available on a call we sent them out journal entries we kind of
put some pressure on them to review them in a short time frame so they
we're good with that so it's been a good collaboration to get to this point so yeah good
to hear yeah department heads any questions or comments for these folks
Peter anything no I don't but I do want to say that it was important for you all to
be here today to understand some of the challenges we face through our municipal financial
audits as we go forward is it it will impact us down the road but I know I personally wanted
to have a clear understanding of what seems to be the problem what we're
doing to correct it in the kind of the timeline that we're heading towards to get
it finished because you all man most of Europe are also residents of the
community and you will let people know that we are definitely have taken a
proactive stance and moving forward I do want to add that I think we should
take the suggestions of a firm that we hired as far as putting the new system
online I know this 27 is a big
everybody's excited about putting it on there but if it's done incorrectly we're not
finishing we're not fixing the problem we're not doing what they recommend so I
think we really need their guidance and support and if they have people that can help
us get ready for that then we need that but if we implement it before it's ready
we're going to be right in the same situation around so and that and that's where
the discussion between you folks and BS&A is going to yeah I'm interested in the
big help to try to coordinate that timing and what's
what's what's best for the whole correct situation thank you
yep any last words seeing none okay thank you all for coming in appreciate
it last words yay accounting is it national accounting day is that what you say
oh there's a day for everything there has to be one thank you very much thank you
folks happy birthday America okay I'm going to know I was wondering if Marissa might want to start
and then Marissa I'm going to start around the table with department heads would you
would you like to go now so you can be on to other things or would you rather rest?
to move to the 2024 audit and I have an update for that because it all kind of
interconnect so I wouldn't mind going first okay okay with everyone else because you all
waited so please okay all right so I did send out to the board the draft audit for
2024 I did want to go through a couple of things just so make sure everyone's all on the same
page and we understand what the implications are there plus its office is closed
this week so we're not going to hear from them this week they're going to be back on
Monday so if we do have any kind of feedback we can give it to them to that effort there was
some information about the trustees that were in the report I did send that to the
trustees so they can review the language kind of include them in that I did want to
notice on page 22 of the audited report there is a language about
interfront transfers that's going to be added the way that they stated it I was not
percent happy with and we're going to add some language and they already agreed to it so
we will get a revised draft on Monday to next Monday next Monday to speak to the
efforts that we are doing with AAF CPAs instead of just leaving it as well it
doesn't tie I really thought it would be fair to add something about the work that's
being done to tie it out thank you so that is going to be in there I did want to
also draw your attention to pages 50 and 51 so at the end of the audited report
and that lists some of the issues that Plodzick noted interfund balances we
knew that was an issue that's a repeat comment that should be streamlined with the
new system the second thing that they noted is the amount of the number of bank
accounts that we have and it's across two different banks which makes it tricky
so that is on there.
AAS is going to help us work on internal controls.
That was phase two, which might get reworked, but they are going to help us with internal controls
and trying to find a way to have someone check my work instead of just like a quick sign-off.
Actually have someone help to check out the work.
There is something new that was in there, and I need to investigate this.
They talked about uncollateralized bank deposits.
So in short,
the FDIC only insures up to $250,000 per depositor per bank, which means if we hold more than that
and say partners or TD, it's not covered.
Partners Bank and TD Bank already have different systems, but they both have systems in place
to collateralize that, and so they basically spread the risk out between a whole bunch of other
towns who have the same situation.
Plodzik noted that we had uncollateralized balance.
at the end of 2024 and I have to talk to the banks because that's outside of us.
That's something that the banks do on their own.
I don't know how that happened.
I don't know if that's a reporting blip or if it's a legitimate issue.
So I am going to be researching that.
You'll need to talk to the bank.
They're very familiar with that.
It's not unusual we did it with the school budget because they have millions of dollars
going over at Sanborn.
And the banks do collateralize because you're right.
There's a limit on each account, but they collectively pool.
regionally. It's not one bank, but it's several banks or investment institutions as
well. So I'm not worried about being under collateralized, and my guess is the bank is making
sure that their money is collateralized. So you, I think you first call, it may be the only
call you need to be to be. Certainly talk to the bank, because it's not usually a problem,
but not the only town that has that issue. And as I said, the school has $40 million a year
budget plus whatever they've gotten all the savings.
So they're not going uncollaritalized either.
So I'm surprised to see the comment, but maybe they just need some paperwork to make sure
that we know what we're doing.
I'd never seen that one before from that.
One thing that I do worry about is I don't know.
The way TV bank processes their collateralization is outside of QuickBooks.
It's not recorded in QuickBooks.
And I'm afraid that Plodzick maybe just didn't get the statement from TV Bank because it was outside
of kind of that usual finance process.
So it might be a simple fix, but I am going to double check and make sure that we're covered.
I don't think it seems like an odd comment.
It sounds scarier than it really is.
I, me too. Yeah, I agree. I agree.
So that was the only sections of the actual audited report that I wanted to point out.
There's a lot of information in there. It is kind of weighty to go through, but those are the things
that I thought were the most important for us to talk about.
The management letter has some repeat comments.
But remember, because we were getting the audit so late, we didn't have time to fix things.
So it mentions the signature stamp.
Our current treasurer does not have a signature stamp.
That is not happening anymore.
That's an old comment.
There are a number of things that we've fixed, but they didn't get caught, of course.
Exactly.
Because of the timing.
And I don't see it appropriate to make any changes because that was the status for 24.
Exactly.
Right.
Exactly.
Steel data checks, again, that's a repeat comment.
That goes back to what AAS was mentioning.
about reconciliation issues and stuff.
That's being addressed.
The investment policy we're already looking at,
so that's going to get addressed.
Plodzik did mention encumbrances that in
2024, it looks like things were encumbered
before we had invoices.
That's a timing issue of when accounting is booked.
That's not, that's something that's easily fixed
that we are already on, but they did find that for
2024.
Police.
Detail account ended 2024 in a negative balance, which is not correct.
That was not in the bank.
That was accusatively, excuse me, Chief Johnson.
That's only an accounting issue.
The bank itself was fine.
It's just the accounting records did not match the bank.
It has already been addressed.
It is not negative.
It's fine.
But that was a temporary snapshot of 2024 that did show up in the audited report.
And they did mention.
cybersecurity policy.
Did we ever finish that?
What's the final status on that?
I know we saw it.
I thought we upgraded it.
Did we not?
I don't recall us doing that.
No, we should bring it back.
Okay.
They don't have to put it on a to-do, all right.
June?
To get that out on the to-do list.
Welcome.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Yes.
So that was it for the audit.
I don't know if you have any questions.
No.
And if you don't, there is a page that is in my packet for you to have you sign off that I have to give to Plodzik
so that they can issue the 2024 audit.
So if you're comfortable signing it, if you have questions, that's fine.
We can go back to them.
There's never been an audit in my belief in usable governments or schools or whatever
that didn't have corrections, areas of improvement.
So I think we go with that and sign off and move forward.
Okay.
So that is ready for you if you're comfortable.
We'll do that when we get to that folder unless you need it now.
No, no, that's good.
Okay. That's okay.
So non-audit-related stuff.
So we have maybe the new system implementation.
We'll see for the end of July, first week in August.
The 2024 audit, I'll probably be finalizing in some time in July, if this all goes well,
with all the adjusting journal entries.
The 2025 audit field work has been done.
schedules for the August 5th to August 7th, which is the week of implementation for the new system.
So the auditors will be here in this room for three days.
The budget, I will get information out hopefully by July 20th so that each department can start
to prepare their budget for 2007.
It's going to be due to June and myself by August.
17th. So that's a tremendous amount of work in a short period of time in my
office, and I just wanted to request that I have seven days notice. If you have
something you need, it's perfectly fine, but I need seven days notice. I'm not going to
be able to do a fire drill for that two-week period. It's going to be jam-packed.
Brian, take for that. No fire drills.
Yeah, right. Are we fairly caught up with the balances for our department is?
Balances, meaning like, what they had.
spent to date expenses to date. Is that all caught up anyway? I have been sending it out.
Lisa did get back to me with some corrections that I have to make. So definitely when I send
everything out, let me know if there's something that isn't correct. Let me know so I can
get on it. Until I talk to BS&A, I don't know where we stand now if we're going to push the
implementation. But as of right now... Assume or not. I mean, you've got to go forward right now as
as if we're going for July 27th. Because I don't see a lot of wiggle room to putting
I don't either. So assume we're going to go forward for the end of July. So let's get
everything else as much as possible. Yes. Caught up. Right. Make sure they need the information.
They're going to get it back to you guys for us. I mean, the log is they have to have it.
You know, I know, I know, I know. Yeah. So the first week of July, I will send it out by the end of June,
which is tomorrow. So I will send out updated year to date so that you have a little bit of time to look at it,
digest it, and send it back to me if there's any kind of correction.
that needs to be made so I can get it done fast because I believe it's July 7th or 8th that they're going
to be getting the final data from QuickBooks to be put.
And six is a Monday, so.
Yes, it must be the, it's probably the same.
Yeah.
That's next Monday.
I did get the phone line audit information from Robin, and I'm going to be trying to finish that up
and fine-tune that to find out how many phone lines we have, who has them, if we need everything,
and all that could stop.
He's a cell phone audit, yep.
I do owe Chief Johnson some information and I will get that out for him.
For the fire department, there is an audit that's due tomorrow and I have that on my list
to get the information to Kelly for the insurance audit.
Not Kelly.
Yes, it's not due tomorrow.
We can start it tomorrow.
Yeah.
So, yeah, if you can get a test this week or whatever.
Perfect.
Yep.
It's on my list.
We'll get it.
And I'm still continuing to support AAF.
So depending what direction we go in, that's quite a lot of data that they've been getting
out of the system.
So I'll continue to support them as we need to.
The BF and A, they're pretty good.
You don't have to give them a lot of direction, and they kind of run with it, so it hasn't been
terribly burdensome.
But the AAS certainly takes quite a bit of time.
So that's what I have on my plate.
I don't know if anyone had any questions.
Lori.
So we have.
You talked about the Block 5 stuff?
Do you have that?
Yes.
The Block 5 documentation is in your packet.
So we have wireless access points that are expiring ASAP.
They said early July.
They didn't say when, but I heard from them last week saying it needs to be done like yesterday.
So what needs to be done?
So what does that mean?
Wireless access points.
So there's a company called Maraki that they contract with for us to get our wireless
access that's expiring.
This is something that we.
We were going to try to get funding out of the infrastructure fund.
But now that there's a delay with that, we need to get this done so we don't lose wireless
functionality.
So it's a matter of paying up front about it, right?
Yes.
And then we can submit a bill to get it out of the infrastructure.
Yeah, once we resolve the other issues.
Okay, then let's move forward on that as well.
You said you have it in packets.
What was the cost?
Oh, I want to say it's $6,400, I think.
The invoice and all the documentation is in there for you to take a look out.
I want to say it's $6,400 and change.
Is that also in the folder for?
Okay.
So that was one of the things presented to the trustees.
Yes, it was rejected.
Okay.
All right.
Yes.
But it's at the point where we need to get that done.
I did take the liberty of contacting Block 5 today, and I told them to move forward
because I don't want us to lose the functionality.
Oh, absolutely.
And get it taken care of.
They're going to hold the invoicing for us because they know we're maybe working out some stuff.
I don't know when that's going to come in,
but they are going to hold the invoicing,
and they have to go through their purse.
purchaser to get you, instead of this Maraki, they're going to move to new software?
I don't know if software is the right term, but new technology for us to continue wireless access.
So if it isn't all resolved amongst ourselves internally with the town by the time it needs to be paid,
then you just pay it and we'll make it work.
We'll deal with.
Work on a reimbursement.
As we're, yes.
Hopefully reimbursement from the trustees, yes.
Yes, yes. So that fact that is in your.
packet to be signed today so I can give it back to block five and make it official.
Okay.
But they are working on it.
Is that something we can do when we get to the folder, or do you need that now?
The sooner, the better on that one for me.
So just from an accounting perspective, where would you charge that?
If we needed to, where would, what line would, on the chart of accounts would you put that against?
Because we have this a bunch of computer line.
Probably the user.
I would probably call that a software.
user fee because that's the way that we access wireless.
The computer software user fee?
Yeah.
Okay.
That's where I would choose unless you feel like you want it somewhere else.
It's for us to use the software.
Okay.
So that's what we'll put that against for now.
Robin's going through the finding it.
Because she handed me the folder and I said, I think you need to find it.
So while Marissa is looking at that, I'll just bring your attention to the financial information that you
that you should all have in front of you or that you were given.
It gives us our updated cash flows as of June 8, I believe, is the date or at the end of May, maybe.
We've got revenue stuff.
We've got cash flow, and we've got budgets.
And I, like I usually do, I go right to the back page and look at where we are year-to-date.
And you'll notice that we're about almost exactly 50 percent.
of the way, halfway through the year, and we're 35.3 percent expended.
So, I mean, that is really good.
Thank you to everyone around the table who's helping out with that, and so that's good.
It also appears that from the cash flow planning, that by the 1st of July, which is coming up real fast.
And Tammy, you can confirm this.
for us that we should be expecting a fairly sizable chunk of property tax revenue in.
Is your mic on?
I'm sorry.
Now is it on?
Oh, sorry.
So far, we've collected $10.4 million for the $2,000,000,000, first bill, and we have an outstanding amount of $2,0.26 first bill, and we have an outstanding amount of $2 million.1, and we are collecting money very quickly downstate it right now.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Good.
Thank you. Okay. All right. So as we go around the table, as you individually, department heads,
if you have comments or questions about your individual budget items, please address them as part of your comments,
and we'll deal with it that way. But, Marissa, anything else from finance at the moment?
Okay. That's good. Okay. Thanks. Tammy.
I'm going to be short and sweet.
Other than the taxes, next week we'll be sending out the civil forfeitures for the remaining unlicensed dogs.
And I've set up some training in August for the upcoming elections.
That's all I have.
And reminder, the election is in September, the day after Labor Day.
Oh, boy.
And in November.
Okay.
Okay.
Primary in September, the election in November.
General.
Yes.
Okay, thanks.
We'll see you all.
there. Yeah. Okay. Abby?
Um, things are super, super busy at summer camp.
Last week was the first week of summer camp.
Um, and it's been a little crazier than anticipated.
Um, but we're working through that.
I'm trying to think what else that's not summer camp related.
Senior events are on pause until the fall.
Um, we decided October 19th, which is a Monday for our, um, trunk or treat at the plains.
I still have to fill up.
out, um, facilities use request form for that.
I just haven't had a chance yet.
Um, but that's coming up, um, and then otherwise just getting through summer camp,
which is fun, but busy.
Nice job on the updates to the handbook, apparently.
Oh, yes.
You did a good job in that.
I didn't even think of that.
Um, yes.
And then also the electronics use policy we updated, which we've had a lot of great
feedback upon.
I was,
worried that I was, yeah, I was worried I would get a lot of pushback from the
parents, um, but I've had people come up and say it was good.
Parents who just opted them to send their kids.
Nope.
So just for background, she updated it to make it so the campers, oh my God, that never happens.
Well, Ellen's not here, so you're, I know, right?
Um, that the campers can't bring electronic devices to camp.
And they used to have two hours in the morning and two hours in the afternoon to be out on their
iPads or tablet.
or whatever. So they opted to remove that. So that's what this update is right now.
Very well done. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Just because, I mean, it's summer camp. We're not, we don't need it
to send me on our tablets. And our counselors can't really control that. So it's, it's a lot to ask of
people to control something that's almost uncontrollable. And I have one thing on my to do list and I've
asked you. So what is the status? I don't know if you got with the chief about the webcam for what? No.
We have a status? Nothing. So we need to update or we're going to put security
hammers at the pickle wall court area and they're being donated by one of our committee
members. And the access would be like an access. So I just need to touch base with you on how
you would like to control to have access to that as well. I think that as long as you, I think you should
control it. If there's a problem, put it on a thumb drive, file a report, and I'll take it from
there. Okay. All right. I don't need to see monitor or anything like that. Okay. Thank you.
Sounds good. Thank you. Yep.
Keep it as simple. Anything else, Abby? No. Busy, busy, huh? Yeah. Questions for
Abby? All right. Thank you. Pedro.
All right. Thank you. Pedro. We are in a really busy season. We have been receiving an unexpected amount of calls in the tune of
over 120 calls over the weekends, which can be really busy during the week.
And we are working on many areas of code enforcement and building the department, and building
permit as well. With regards to the health department, we perform a water test for the
park track and the children's beach.
Yes. Yes. Yes. Both of them came.
negative okay so we were hesitant to try to put our calendar because we didn't know
what to expect and if something was happening then we'll need to reprogram but right
now we posted a calendar in the town web page is going to be we're going to
be performing another test in the next two to three weeks and we're going to
keep it three to four weeks apart hopefully and if something shows up in the
result then we will need to perform various tests
on probably inter-daily or weekly basis,
it depends on what kind of bacteria we found.
With that being said, also with regards to the busy times,
Vanessa has helped me to put in Freakid answer questions
that is going to be posted in the town website,
asking residents to please bear with us
and allow us 10 to 15 business days to process a permit
because we are busy.
We want to get to you, but
While I'm viewing a permit, if I receive 10 calls of a permit that was submitted two minutes ago, 48 hours ago, or 24 hours ago,
we'll detain my process to proceed and get ahead with the volume that we're expecting.
We also are addressing and surveilling code enforcement matters within the town.
Today we posted E-S-C.
E-C-S-C-I.
Two, yes, which is two east LLC.
We went and we posted the building.
We had, that came to us by Peter Beggie in 2024.
We were able to connect with the business owner.
He did came and met with Glenn Greenwood back then
because I was in the office when he came in,
but for some reason they haven't proceeded.
We received a complaint on that.
So we went there today.
We are not.
not going to give them too much time. At this point, they need to prove to my department
that they have already an appointment with the planning board to go and have a hearing.
If that is not happening, this is going to go to legal. We're going to go and figure it out in front of a judge.
Okay. So this is the, for folks who don't know, this is the site on Route 125s that the
planning board actually, several years back, revoked the site plan. And I think it's the only
one that town has ever done that way because there were
it was an environmental cleanup company, but there was all kinds of storage of hazardous material,
and it was right on the wetland.
And, again, resistance from the property owner and the business owner, so it was shut down.
Since then, business has moved in, has not gone through site plan review.
And so that's what we're looking to do is get them to do site plan review.
And in the meantime, you've taken the action of talking with them.
Yes.
And if they don't come in to do site plan review, then you'll be taking steps to season to assist or whatever.
It's going to be full, I'm using, it's a health RSA, and we're probably going to inhibit the ability to that building to be open to any type of business.
Okay.
So we're going to close, actually, the ability for them to perform in any type of business over there.
Okay.
I just wanted to make sure that folks have the detail because I think that somewhere in our packets, that was an item to come up.
And since you've already brought it up and discussed it, then we don't need to discuss it further.
There's no action for us at this point.
No.
Okay.
No, we, like I said, as of by the end of this week, I'm planning to send that legal letter, CC, the town council on that.
So that we can prep for litigation, it need to be.
Hopefully it doesn't have to go that route, but if it is a route, it's going to say.
take, then we will take the matter very seriously, and we want this to be concluded at this point.
Two things that happen.
There are two other properties that have directed sign.
One was a misleading sign, but information I have from the state is that one of those signs is going to come down.
The other sign, they apply for it.
They said it's going to be interior lighted with lead.
What they forgot to mention is that it was more.
motioned. So we will need to enforce on that.
It's just, I think that's that happened on our day-to-day.
We have been working with the state census portion.
We have submitted all the information.
We communicated with them last week.
We are looking to communicate with them this week to try to close that matter
and bring up the census for the town to an accurate number.
Right now, it's inaccurate.
We don't have a specific answer yet as to how many.
However, the communication is leading to at least 9,000 people in town.
And you've submitted all that information to them.
So now we're waiting for them.
Yes.
And is it that recent, fairly recent, Pedro?
I'm asking because
if we need to poke the bear a little bit, maybe call our executive counselor,
you know, call off some of the politicians to get moving in this because we need that
information, ASAP, to move forward with the budget for next year.
I will definitely send a quick email on that if I see that is giving me a roadblock.
The biggest hurdle on that was the fact that we were asked to prove our numbers of permitting.
And 2021 to
2022 and 2023 as well as portion of 2024, we're challenged to get through because those were
the paper application.
And still, as of right now, I'm still getting permit cards from 2021 coming to my office of
permit closing at this time of age.
But we don't have the paperwork to match those permits.
It's not recorded anywhere.
So we're just dealing with the challenges we have and working towards a resolution of
any matter that we find fine it's been a monumental
mental task honestly how it takes he has taken a lot of time sure a lot of a lot
of time but other than that we like I said we are busy my department is
collecting some revenue there we are working with Marisa to coordinate with the
impact fees and we're gonna be keep we're gonna remain working with all the other
departments to make sure that
everything is done correctly and according to statute any budget issues
that you're aware of not not as far no okay all right I forgot to ask you the
same question have you no okay good thanks Melissa
good afternoon things are going well at the library things are going fine with
budget planning one issue at the library involves building damage we had
column of stones that just came down right in front by the front door no no
injuries there's nobody there was that was that some of the veneer type stone
the veneer there we it seems like there was water getting behind it and then
there were bugs that got behind it and it made it come down so I've been working
with Tom to get that fixed in addition to the one that came down we have
concerns about the one next to it showing some potential
damage and I'd like Pedro to come out and just take a look at some of the
others just to make sure that it's safe because that was scary I wasn't on site I
believe it was over the weekend and when you sent me the pictures it was a little
little concern yeah just a couple things a couple big things happening I
started a group of wellness and health care professionals coming to the library
there are about eight or nine of them to talk about how the library can help
with community health outcomes we had nurses there and doctors and physical therapists
and mental health professionals so this is going to be an ongoing thing the
library is also gathering health information to give out to the public because we
don't have and we have Exeter Hospital which isn't super close we thought that maybe we could be
kind of a hub for helping some of these medical professionals get
information out to to our people and we have developed a relationship with
Exeter Hospital if you remember they gave us five thousand dollars to work on
this kind of outreach so that's what we're doing the other we have summer
reading happening as we do every year we did some collaboration with the
schools and we had over a hundred people sign up for library cards this
year as part of summer reading so that's
great we start in earnest on July 7th with Papa Joe coming for story time I'm
told she's really popular so people are excited and the other thing we have going on it's
really our foundation that's doing it the foundation is a separate 501c3 that helps
raise money for the library they are working with Partners Bank to bring a
farmers market to Kingston the dates for that that we're looking at now are August 11th
September 8th and October 13th and we've gotten permission from the Carriagetown
plaza owner to hold it over there and I've talked to the chief about what we might
need from his department and and I am working with Partners Bank and the
foundation to make that happen so we already have flag hill winery is going to
be involved you've got some candle makers bunch of farmers we're looking to get
more farmers so I think that's
going to be a lot of fun in a way to raise they're talking about it being a way to
raise some money for our foundation but the the more important part is that it's
just going to be a nice thing to have in Kingston I think so that's it okay thank
you any questions for Melissa all right chief Johnson oh sorry Tom Tom
oh I'm with me I've just
I can go home right now no no no no no all right Pedro I do have a
building permit at my house from 24 so thanks for reminding me we'll add that to the pile
all right so we're doing a lot of so we're doing a lot of preprapped for a lot of
hopefully September paving a lot of ditch work lot of tree work we had some
culvert replacements you know the usual and we're starting to we'll be
starting roadside mowing this week a lot of a lot of roadside to mow probably
probably hoping I was hoping it was we were going to do the Greenwood beat
project last month but it's probably more likely going to be within the next
week or two I don't think this week will happen but we'll get in there get that
going the Department of Corrections Rockingham Department of Corrections has a
program for municipalities we've taken advantage of for the last few years they did
some work at Millstream I'm hoping
that this hearse house easement will be cleared up by August fingers crossed
because I'd like them to at least get a roof on that before I mean it's it's bad so
we'll see if not I there's plenty of work they can do and of course we as you all
know we had the bulky waste event that was you know a dumpster full a lot of
couches probably a dozen mattresses or so
so it was people showed up so so I mean based on your sort of lackluster
report is it something that we should consider continuing doing yeah I just
think it's a because I don't think it's a terrible thing to offer we don't lose
money we actually made money I mean a few dollars but but but
it's it's just one of those there some people you know I take my stuff up
to Raymond or new you know I have trucks I just do but I don't think it's a
terrible service it's not it's not onerous for us to go down on three
hours on a Saturday and you know fill it I'm sure I don't you know I drive
around you know look at it after the we probably should well
This is just a thought I had as I was driving the streets of Kingston going.
My God, after a yard sale day.
And that's what I was thinking because I saw a couch for free.
I saw numerous couches.
But that's, you know, we'll keep that in mind for next year.
So the big thing this month, hopefully the governor and council will be, it's in front of them.
There's, there should be two.
I know definitely the one grant would be the main street bridge account is in front of them mid-July, 19th I believe they meet.
I'm not sure of that date.
I don't know if it on the docket also is that other small grant for the stormwater asset program,
the non-matching one for $30,000.
That should be in front of them this month, I hope.
So mid-month, end of month, we should know if that's the last, well, I say the last,
one of the last hurdles besides wetlands and, you know, the whole thing.
There's a few other things that need to get squared away.
But if that does happen, that's a potential, potentially, I'd have to talk to CMA,
but it could happen as early as this fall.
So that, I'm just bringing that to your attention because it is a reimbursable grant.
So, you know, we'll have to work that out.
But anyhow, yeah, and the only other thing I want to mention is, do we have,
if, I should say, if bacteria presents itself at either beach, do we have signs?
No.
Okay.
Yeah, we should have a dedicated, last year I think we hung it off a tree limb or some foolish thing.
We should have a dedicated spot for bacteria at the beach, if it does occur.
And you usually typically get those, they're red signs.
You usually get them from, if we do have an outbreak of cyanobacteria, they'll provide them.
But we just need a better place to.
Like a posting board.
For the, yes, for the.
public to see just a thought as he was mentioning it that's all I got okay meeting
adjourned oh my budget's fine except for except for everything yeah we're very
close on of course that's that's due to the winter right over time line is you know and
and it just happens there's a tree down Friday there's a tree you know that so we
should be we should be okay but that's it's very tight should
even out as time goes on yeah if you there's no more wind no more trees down
okay there will be no more or just call salsa call the police department yeah okay
Lori but any other questions about your budget so um 41 94 hours with your
improvements and repair line yeah do you have that earmarked for stuff because you've only
expended yeah yeah four three hundred most of it's gonna be for this
this roof no not the cupola even just the the the overhang the flashing yes
basically the the cornice work around the building there's aluminum on top of that it's got to be
redone and that's probably the lion's share of that okay um and then under the sanitation
budget for special collections you have 2512 for a budget was that to run the collection
for those first couple months yeah I believe that was yes so we'll have to move
money the labor and whatever into that line right because that was the money
that we right put that three three month window okay yeah so we'll have to get
with more so make sure we move that yeah because that should be at a hundred
percent spending sure yeah yeah absolutely and then signs talking about greenwood
we have a swim at your own risk or life guide because primax came back and
we should probably have that posted we used to right and i you don't know right and i don't know right and
and i don't know that's on a fence is a couple size well yes we do have we had them made up i think
paul your previous director had them made up for each park and i thought he had them at the
be honest i'd have to reread the sign to see if it is if it is on that sign it's
just one through ten and it's not swim at your own risk it's not it's not it's not prevalent
probably a good idea along with the a board that you permanently put that in and then hey
you can so there you go on it is that it lorry yeah okay okay uh tom
uh i don't know the status of all of the historic district signs but i know some of them are in the new ones and uh so thank you very much for doing that yep uh we put the four in h d one up okay we have not done the ones on hd2
someone had told me they were in decent shape that and they look decent to me i mean they look okay well the chair of the historic district commission said that they looked okay so we have two spare
at the highway garage we'll keep them in the sign
trailer great thank you
we didn't move any locations because
new posts new post with the polys
yeah vinyl sleeves and a cap yep yep yep yep so these they look good yeah thank you
Tom one thing you can't see uh the plain cemetery from the road unless you walk down in
that but i do know somebody that has
service and they know a week ago Friday and they couldn't get over the condition of
well you guys are keeping that it's been a long time just it's looked that nice so yeah yeah
yeah and unfortunately that burial took place the timing was right but we do try to you know
because lisa works there so if we have a a burial and we don't we try to at least do that area so it's
out of respect yeah yeah yeah they're looking good the guys do a good job doing it
Yep. Okay, thank you, Tom. Now, she, Joel Johnson.
I don't have much. As far as complaints go, I seem to be getting a lot of them lately.
I don't know if you've read the little Facebook posts a couple weeks ago.
Yeah, it was interesting. So for that reason, Kingston residents will no longer be getting breaks on anything.
Your response is very good.
I'm kidding about the breaks.
Christy, but... Yeah, he just rocks a lot of them based on me, but it was a good time.
done. My budget is doing really good. Thirty-nine point five percent. I anticipate some overtime being spent in the near future.
Hopefully I'll be able to keep it within my budget. That's my only real challenge right now.
We're busy. About 30 arrests this month. Just various things, domestic violence, drugs, assaults, whatever.
just the normal.
Kingston. Staffing, status quo?
Staffing, nobody's leaving, so...
There you go. So it's status quo.
When they leave, that's when my problems will begin.
So, that's it.
Chief, a question.
Do you think it would be helpful on...
I know Chris has probably got a lot on a plate,
but maybe for something out there, because people do read Kingston's police profile
and might look better coming from you.
I hate to say this.
And I don't want to cause any unforeseen problem, but there's something that's going to happen really badness down with those electric bikes with those kids.
I got an issue the other day.
It's going to be a bad, bad thing.
I agree.
But there's a lot that says they can ride them.
Yeah, it's just, I mean, well, just maybe something on the lines that have used to caution.
I came out of the driveway the other day, and I had like six of them.
And those things are flying.
And there's a weird noise.
I'm like, what that's that noise?
And they're going fishing.
They got fishing, I got nothing against fishing.
But these are really little, little, little kismos bikes, and they are freaking moving.
And it's just, it's coming at a time.
I'll put out a caution.
Just a caution thing, just to kind of keep an eye on them because it's unfortunate.
Joel, do you know of anything at the state level that for legislation that might be coming up on that?
No.
No.
It's going to take a tragedy before somebody gets up.
You're exactly right.
And hopefully it won't happen in this town.
Correct.
But it's nothing to say that we can't post some signs, slow down, or something.
You might want to think about a regulation.
Can we put a regulation in town?
What's that?
Can we have a town regulation regarding electric bikes?
I don't know.
I don't think so.
Okay.
I'm just asking.
I'm not into micromanaging, but that.
They all go under, I think, 28 miles per hour.
The normal speed limit is 30, so you can't get them for speeding.
You can catch, you know, you can.
I'm not going to write a kid a ticket.
you know, that's a problem.
I'm just saying a caution.
Yeah.
No, I get the caution.
You can't be a pack in a handicap.
I want to make an example.
I'd love to make an example, but it's like, they just
And they don't need to be registered, right?
No.
The vehicle, no.
No. No. So I get everything going against me.
If they needed to be registered, there might be some more
enforcement action.
No, it's going to take the tragedy.
But anyway. And then they'll blame me, but that's okay.
It's not okay.
You know what I'm saying.
Okay. Any questions for the chief?
I have one.
And it's mostly budget related.
So you have a line salaries overtime grant.
What is that?
Because we weren't budgeted for anything, but we have an expense against it.
We have the highway grant.
That's probably what it is.
We will pay them overtime and then get reimbursed for it.
Is that what you're getting?
I don't know.
Yeah, it's good.
Yeah, the only grant I'm running right now.
Yeah, the revenue would be in another.
line anyways.
Yeah.
Yeah, so as the grant money comes in, Lari, I'll reimburse that.
Okay.
Oh, gotcha. All right.
Anything else?
Nope.
Okay.
All right.
Chief Caloring?
Last, but certainly not.
Well, best for last.
So you've had all this time to now be thinking.
I know.
Well, for the first 17 meetings, I usually go first.
That's why I switched this side of the table.
I'm not, I'm smart.
Well, you catch on.
Just take you.
that side of where you?
Budget is fairly
normal for this time of year.
I do, at a protective clothing,
I have $25,000 that will be getting spent.
Unfortunately, it's about $6,000
per set of turnout gear,
but I'll be doing POs for that.
We have some expiring this year.
Other than that,
I had talked to you guys about a paramedic
that I'd
given a job offer to
as long as they had passed the
CPAT test for the
state in New Hampshire. They did finally pass.
So Julie Sanborn was hired
June 24th
as our first day full-time with us.
So she's in Fire 1 and Fire 2
right now. So
she's on probation for six months.
So is that one of the two?
Yes. So right now we currently have two full-time paramedics.
One is graduating paramedic school
in October. That'll give us three
and then I still have one opening from the original
two postings.
I have a new administrative assistant, Tara Engels, who came to us from Chester Fire.
She's settling in nicely.
I will bring her over at some point to make introductions.
But if you get an email from Tara, it is a real email.
And then the last thing I have is at the end of the week.
Thursday, it's supposed to be 100 degrees.
So make sure everybody's hydrated.
Make sure the kids are hydrated.
Any issues?
Call 911, the fight department.
any plans for cooling station or anything like that?
If we get calls, I can open up the station, the training room for a cooling station.
The state EOC has started a weather event.
The Emergency Operations Center, they haven't said they're going to staff the EOC yet.
But we'll take it as it comes.
Okay.
But we are prepared.
How did your festival go Saturday?
The Brew Fest.
Thank you for allowing us to do that.
We have about 150 attendees.
was fairly well.
The association made about $800, so not a huge fundraiser, but everybody had a good time and two quick periods of rain for about three minutes each, and then the sun came out again.
Excellent.
Questions for Graham?
Before you guys and ladies all leave, I'm looking down the list, and shortly coming up here, Abby,
is a discussion item for us, the recreation parent guy.
update and I know you talked about that briefly was there anything else you
wanted to say about it no nothing else okay anything the board wishes to discuss
with Abby about it no I was good with it okay thank you and before they leave
we might look also at B on number three be in number three joint loss
joint loss committee just kind of bring it to their attention yeah we need we have a
joint loss committee we need to have one we need members we've had one volunteer
Vanessa jetty has has has offered her name up but we still need members I
don't know how many we need I want to say well we had one before it was three
four I don't know what the limit was we had a there's a secretary and there was just a mix
of department heads employees select board member was on it I don't know if we had any
like outside committee members it um from what I remember from a few years back
we meet like a couple times a year just I think it's quarterly quarterly yeah make sure
that there are no safety issues in any of the buildings and that was a way to
kind of address it through the joint loss committee just in case to up I believe we
would nominate Graham and Joe I served my time I was on for about five years but I think
we would also have Primex
site visits as well or yeah yeah yeah because I remember at the fire
station they had a problem with some wires under a desk they had a problem with
the block and knives on the counter you know I'm surprised they don't
automatically do it annually anyways yeah to be honest with you they should just
very have something yeah the I'm sure there's an RSA for it I know there is an
number or there's an app for that yeah there has to be more employees than management
money so it
can't be heavy management so it's defined it's defined it's defined it is defined
it says more employees so we are definitely delinquent and not having this
committee so so as department heads if you could look at your staffs and maybe
talk about it and see if see if you've got some folks who could could volunteer for
this activity that'd be great and would you like to serve on it for the select
sure for a while okay well you have experience yeah I've done it before I'll do
it again it's no problem at all we actually have another volunteer we do who oh
Joan
so can this is I think probably the third time we talked about it can we set a deadline
if we don't get volunteers we're gonna assign people by the next one because we have to
let's have a dead down for the next department head meeting fine pick a date
And you guys and gals can tell us who they're going to be.
But by the next department they meeting? Is that okay?
Or sooner?
Sure, that's fine.
I think it should be sooner because I think we were supposed to actually do it today.
Well, we haven't had one for three years, so I guess another 30 days.
We meet again in two weeks.
How about we set that as our time to have names?
Yes, absolutely.
Thank you.
So any names that you'd like to put forward?
Get them to June.
There you go.
And we'll discuss it at our next meeting.
How many people are you looking for?
I don't know.
Three or five?
Well, if we have one department head, one select board member, and one administrator, then we need at least three more.
Three or four.
One, three, three, you guys can get some of the other group.
Regular employees.
Maybe one from each?
Well, it's good they come up with.
Please fire and highway.
One from each.
All right.
Also, the personal manual update.
Did they have any thing to add to that?
D.
Which number is that, Peter?
D.
3D.
Personnel manual update.
Current version distributed to department heads, any input.
Oh, there you go.
Good.
Good.
Good catch.
Any changes?
Do you folks have any comments on the personnel manual?
Which I, I know.
We know you all read it, right?
I'm told here that you were distributed a copy.
I emailed Robin the changes I would like to see on the fire department agenda.
So I have looked at it, and what's been happening is we've had it in place since 2008,
well, the most recent version, and we've just kind of been pasting it, taking sections.
It really needs a overall rewrite.
I have it drafted.
However, I would really like to sit down with the department heads because there are things that I think
that will affect the employees, and we really want to get it right, so we're following
the policy.
So if you're okay, I'll have a meeting with all the departments sometime, together.
Does that sound okay?
Sure.
And obviously in your HR function?
Yep.
It fits perfectly.
It does.
So we'll do that, and we'll hopefully get it right and get a new one out for a little than a month or so.
All right.
Take some collaboration, I think.
Okay.
Any last questions, comments?
Okay, go forth, be happy, be safe.
Happy Fourth of July.
Yeah, happy fourth.
Thank you all for coming in.
Do you want to take a few minutes' break while we were at it?
We could take a five minute.
How about that?
We've been at it now for a couple hours, so we could take a five-minute break, come back at three.
Okay.
And if you shut your mics off, please, that would be helpful.
We want to come back up, and we'll talk about the, where is it?
Well, we're going to jump ahead to old business, the FFR.
it's item number six so we can do that and Graham can get on his way well I know he likes
to be here it would be nice to go home today but it is my birthday so it's item 6a in your
packets we receive councils and Primax's input copies distributed to the board and
to the fire chief and Marissa for final review so did you have any comments on the final review
No, I think the attorney's comments about the contract itself are valid.
So I think we can, when we had met with Marissa and Ellie with FFR, they were very easy to work with,
or it appeared to be.
So I'd be okay sending that back to them for revision and see if they're okay with it.
Okay.
Back to FFR?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I did read over the...
Please.
I did read all the comments from the attorney, and I thought it was pretty well later.
There wasn't really anything that I thought that FFR wouldn't have much of justice here.
No, there's nothing air-shattering.
No, not at all.
Not at all.
And I like the ending comment they had on the amendment.
I thought that was pretty good.
Any comments from the board?
Robin, did you have anything?
I do.
So, Graham, will you be communicating that back to FFR?
I can.
I didn't know if you wanted go from the select board's office.
How did you?
what that handled?
Six and one and a half dozen other.
I can send back...
I don't know what you typically do.
Just send back the attorney's comments on the drafted contract.
Yeah.
See if they're okay with it, and then kind of go back...
Because you really haven't been communicating with it?
Yep.
You have?
So I don't mind, but I just wanted to ask.
Yeah, no, I can take care of it.
Okay.
And you'll get us a final when you're done.
What's that?
You'll get us a final when you're done?
Yes.
Okay, thank you.
Okay.
The only other, I guess, concern from the attorney was the differentiation of billing between residents and non-residents.
So I think at some point, and not today, but at some point, we should probably dive into that a little further.
I understand that a lot of people consider the ambulance covered by their taxes.
I guess I look at it a little differently that to have an ambulance ready is covered by their taxes.
in the state of the ambulance and the providers.
But if you take an ambulance ride yourself, then, and especially if you're getting paid from
insurance or insurance will cover it, then that should be billed to the residents.
Now, that's going to be a big change, but that's the way I've always looked at it.
So, and we do have a few people that have certain insurances that pay them directly,
meaning the person, the resident, or non-resident, however it may be, and sometimes that makes it back
to the town of Kingston, sometimes not.
So I definitely think, like, those people should be brought to collections.
But I can, I've done some research over the past year or so.
I can bring, like, proposals to look at.
Well, if you could bring us some recommendations, sure.
Yeah, differentiation of billing, so it's fair across the board.
But, like I said, my outlook of billing a resident is different, meaning my taxes as a resident at
Kingston pay for the staffing of the station, the ambulance as it is,
But if I need to call for my mother-in-law that lives with me, then her insurance should cover that
because it's not fair to pass that between everybody in the town of Kingston.
By the same token, the idea was if you didn't have insurance, the town would absorb that for
a residence, but everyone gets billed.
So we may need some language on those that get paid directly by their insurance company.
We may need a clause somewhere in some agreement.
That allows us the opportunity to build, you know, to go after them for non-payment.
And I'm not sure the right venue to do that.
I don't know whether they sign something, not when they're on the way of the hospital,
but there may, we may need something somewhere else that makes that connection.
A lot of that is just a billing agreement between us and Comstar, a billing company.
Yeah.
And would also, so that may change the FFR contract as well.
But I feel like that's putting the cart before the horse.
Let's get the FFR contract.
Oh, I agree.
I'm signed right now as we bill today, because right now we're working without a contract.
They said they had no problem working without a contract with us because they've been doing it for five years.
But let's get that contract signed as is.
And then I've done a ton of research on billing.
And, you know, some towns and cities, you have to meet the national poverty standard.
Others, you know, if we bill Lori for an ambulance ride and she disputes the bill under a hardship,
then she has to provide banking information, you know, stated that she's on a fixed income,
which I don't want to have to meet the poverty level.
By no means do I think, you know, if you only make $5 a day that we shouldn't charge you.
But, you know, there are millionaires in Kingston that we take and they say, well, I'm not going to pay my bill because I'm a resident.
You know, if somebody can afford to pay the bill, they should.
But we may want it even do a Warren article next year to clarify that.
You know, think about it.
I mean, I'm not saying that's which way to go.
But those of us that have been around for a while, the assumption was that we wouldn't get built initially.
And then the change so that everyone gets billed.
But if you're not able to reimburse the balance of copay, if you will, then we would not pursue that as a town.
But everyone got built.
Yes, that's the way it is now.
Everybody gets built.
Right.
And in certain circumstances, it can be forgiven.
Correct.
And that would be a lot more work for your $70 a week to have to write those people off.
It would be, you know, if we transport 10 people, 10 Kingston residents in this week,
and five of them now want a hardship, then that's something that the board would have to review as the executive branch of the town.
Not today.
But if we put in a warn article, nobody's going to do that.
a vote to charge us more, you know what I mean?
Right, that's true, too. That's true.
HR can do it.
Yeah.
I'll do some research.
I'll bring it back to the board in a couple weeks or a month.
Okay.
Because right now we don't even have them prove hardship.
Correct.
Right?
So at a minimum, we should have them do some process that proves hardship.
Which, and again, I think that hardship should be soft hardship.
Sure.
I don't know if that makes sense.
Right.
Not, not, yeah, poverty level, right?
Yeah, define what that means.
Right.
But right now we have no criteria other than I'm not paying my bill.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
I will send FFR that contract as revised.
See what they say.
I'll bring that back to you.
Either a final or comments from them.
If they have any things that they want change or whatever.
Sure.
And if they want to have another meeting, then I will
sit Marissa and yourself.
Yep.
That sounds good.
All right.
Great. Thank you.
Thank you.
And you're welcome to enjoy the festivities, but.
I'll look at you, Jenice.
Okay.
Check is you're fancy?
All right.
Let me back up for a second to 3C.
Did we do everything we needed to do with the parent guide?
That's all set, right?
Yeah.
Okay.
Personnel manual, anything to do, anything?
We're good there.
Okay.
Liaon reports.
I'm going to start with Peter this time.
Nothing?
Okay. Ellie?
No.
Okay, me.
Oh, what have I got?
I had two meetings since the last time we met.
One was with the Energy Committee.
Talked about a lot of things at that meeting.
We got, oh gosh, what do we do?
We got an update from Dan Doyle, who's on the Energy Committee,
but he's also the Facilities Director at the School.
And the school is high school, and particularly,
doing a lot of investigation of ways that they can, you know, conserve energy.
And he talked about that.
Also, a lot of end-of-life things that are coming up with that building,
things like roof and I'm talking about huge money.
So I know that wasn't particularly energy related,
but he did discuss it with the committee just to let us know what was going on.
Can't wait to meet the new superintendent.
Yes, yes.
I think he starts this week, right?
July 1.
Oh, July 1, okay.
The one thing I do want to make sure the board is aware of is that, well, you know that revision energy pulled out of the project
where we were looking at putting solar on the landfill because they reached a point where the connection
to the grid was going to be too expensive, and it resulted in their numbers, if you will, not
penciling out.
It wasn't profitable enough for them.
And so a company that developed solar on landfills, and they've done a lot of them,
asked to come and do a presentation to the committee, and they did.
And they're very interested in making a proposal to Kingston.
But since they were not one of the original bidders,
I have a question, and I raised this at the meeting,
and I need to speak with the chair of the committee again, that it's my opinion, it's my opinion,
that it probably needs to go out again so that if there's anyone else who's interested in bidding
or looking at it or making a proposal, that they should be allowed to do so.
If we, right, if someone else, if we, I, if we're going to consider anything to be done on
the episode of panels, it should also go up to bid.
I think we need to really talk to Tom about that because there's been some whale and tear on that, on the surface on the, and I'm not sure at this point I would support.
Right now, I'm just, I'm just saying, I don't know that it could be different, depends on what Tom tells me, but it's my understanding, there's been problems with a covering, and because of the critters on the grazing out there that had,
that has presented some problems.
Well, not only that, but just the, just that, that landfill is, is decomposing and it is shrinking, and they are monitoring that.
So regardless what they put for stanchions or whatever they're going to build those things on.
It could shift.
It's absolutely going to shift.
So, I mean, there's a lot of issues.
Okay.
And this is coming from a party that wants to put their solo panels on there, but we should probably look into somebody else to get us some better ideas on the stability of that location.
Correct.
Before we spend all the time getting these bids brought in.
Right.
Right.
So more to come on that, but that presentation was made to the committee.
Then the watershed management plan committee met.
They did a field trip.
They met at the Kingston State Park, and the state park manager walked the group around, and we talked about different areas where there could be some potential improvements to things like erosion and sediment control and all of that.
So that was a good visit.
As I said, the park manager was very welcoming, did a nice job touring us around.
Can I just add, I want to state for the record, I recused myself from any interaction with the state park with the watershed.
So Glenn attended that meeting in my stead.
So he'll, anything having to do with the state park in the watershed, I'll be recusing myself.
Did we buy the state park?
And I didn't know.
No, no, no, no, no.
It's just that they are a significant stakeholder and landholder on Great Pond.
Yes.
And things from that land and from that site can affect the pond.
Gotcha.
Okay.
So it's not that we were planning or are planning to do any work on it.
It was just informational for us.
And it's possible that we could provide information back to the state park system and make some recommendations.
But no, nothing.
I was being hopeful.
Oh, yeah, no, no, no.
I'm not opposed to us owning the market.
Yeah, not yet.
Not yet.
Not yet.
The other thing, Tom Osteen, the chair of the committee, is in the process of two grant applications,
one of which is a new one for the, it's from the Pasadipar region, Estuary's partnership.
He should be hearing an answer on that grant soon by the middle of July.
And that's for a program largely for public information on managing septic contribution to the lake, if you will.
So making people aware of what septic systems do to affecting the water quality and, you know, making recommendations to homeowners for property owners for how often and, you know, how to deal with septic systems and making sure they're operating correctly and so forth.
So that would be a grant to do a lot of public information in that respect.
And the second one is a re-re-do of a grant that Tom applied for last year.
It's a particular grant through the Department of Environmental Services.
It's federal money, and he had done the grant.
He was ready to submit it, and at the last minute, that money got pulled back.
It wasn't available.
He received word from the Department of Environmental Services that
that money was going to become available again.
So hopefully he can dust off that application and put it in.
Because what that application was for was to do some of the erosion control work at Greenwood Beach,
which is some of the work that Tom is going to do some of, but if we got the grant,
we'll have a way to pay for some of that work.
So more to come on that, but good news on that front.
And I think that's all I had.
Oh, you heard the report on the signs for the Historic District.
They're up now, so that was very good.
Okay, Lori.
So Rex met a couple weeks ago, and I'm just going to ask the question that they asked me to ask.
Is there a possibility that we can string lights on the trees and the plains for atmosphere, really?
You mean like all year long?
Yeah.
No.
I was thinking for Halloween, actually, absolutely, for Halloween for the event, absolutely.
For trick-or-treat, I would have said yes.
They're just talking in general, and mostly the big part, which there's not a lot of trees.
Like the side of the firehouse, there's no trees to hang them from, so I don't, anyway, I told them that I wouldn't pose the question.
So if they want to do it for, because they're going to do trunk or treat out there, right?
And so if they want to do something for a specific event, we're open to that possible.
For truck of trade, anyways.
I would say, yes.
I would say for the event.
For that event, yes.
Event-specific, not just in general.
On a case-by-case basis, for an event, we could entertain.
Would there be any concern for damage?
Would there be any concern for a tree damage?
Yeah, there would be, absolutely.
It needs to be coordinated with the highway department.
And depending on what, what?
And it's on.
I see.
Depending on what they wanted to put up, they may not be able to do what they want to do.
Right.
Okay.
Right.
Let me see.
So, budget committee met their meeting every month.
They're meeting again 15 July.
Hopefully the chair is going to coordinate the meeting time because I know there was a conflict for the last meeting.
But they do have a new person on the budget committee.
Stephanie Zulofi.
I'm going to hand her left.
Have we appointed her?
They did.
They appoint their own.
We don't have any questions.
Right.
They do their own.
Okay.
She asked a lot of great questions.
A lot of my questions that I was asking about budget kind of stem from the conversations that they had.
But she's got a lot of knowledge, and she's kind of doing budget analysis as well.
So I think I was happy to hear her input in.
into the meeting, so that was good.
Heritage met and talking about signs, right?
The Welcome to Kingston signs, two of them, at least one we know was stolen.
The posts are there and the signs gone.
Where?
On Marshall Road.
On Marshall Road.
Really?
Getting toward Fremont.
Yeah.
The poster there, no sign.
All the mounting hardware is there.
Sign is completely gone.
That doesn't make any sense.
Oh, sure it does.
I don't want to say.
say this. Yeah. No. It makes sense, but think about it from a theft point of view and a resale
point of view. So because the signs have been up for several years and my understanding the school
does the postings, like they do the, we buy the frame, the woodwork, and they do the framework,
but the budget comes out of highway and the highway agent is not, highway director is not comfortable
supporting any kind of effort this year because of his budget.
So the heritage is looking at alternate means to fund.
So it's about a thousand dollar cost between the signs themselves and the wood.
For each sign?
Total.
For two signs?
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
It's expensive.
So they're working on that.
Okay, so that's that.
There was a question that Ernie posed.
He won the efforts.
to clean the headstones in the cemetery. And he asked about volunteer camps. So I don't, I don't know where we stand on that.
We used to do them pretty, pretty religiously as far as getting everybody to sign them. So can you check into that?
Marissa used to run it, but I don't know who's, who's handling, who's tracking our volunteers if the signs, if the form is up to date.
So we just want to make sure that people are signing them.
Is that the one that Tammy brought?
last year?
Yes, I think so.
I think the board approved it.
Yeah, yeah.
So we'll have to get that just as a general for us, because some people have new members that they probably should be signing that anyway, and we have that on record.
So Tammy sent me an email last week regarding somebody needs an extra trash can.
And the way that we've been doing it is we charge for the cart, which is $75.
And then we've been prorating for the year.
So right now, there's two years left in the contract, and it's $122.40 for each year.
So if we did it for that, for the $75 in the next two, this year, which is half over, and next year is $319.
But considering this year is half over, and this is something we want to have to think about for the next contract, too,
we want to do proration? Do we want to pro-rate the year as well? So there's only six
months left in this year. Should we charge them for six months they didn't use? Or do we
charge them for the remaining six months and next year plus the cost of the trash can?
So when you, so there's the fixed cost for the can, for the trash can? Yep, 75 months. Yep.
Right. Regardless. Yep. And so you're talking about the possibility or you're asking the question
about prorating the service part of it.
Yep. And how we've been doing it is you get it in year two, so you're paying for four years.
But this year's half over. So do we want a person to pay for the full year, for this year,
or just for the months they're going to use it, and then for a full year next year until the end of the contract?
I mean, my opinion is just logically you would do it from when it starts and through the end of the contract.
I mean, that's my, what it would it be confusing to just have a monthly rate?
So if they got it in October or they get it in November, then we know it's 13 months.
Just a monthly thing.
Yeah.
We'll more than need to calculate.
I like that, and then we can come up with that schedule and provide it to the town clerk because...
Consistent.
Yeah.
And so moving forward, a full year is a full year, but however many months you are into the months,
it's divided by 12 for the year.
This is for another bin, right?
Yeah.
Right.
when we get the new one we'll have to figure out how we want to do that but okay all right great
well i mean if if that system works i mean maybe that'll work for the new contractor too
it would just be different numbers yeah yeah all right so that's that um tom doesn't know it yet but i
spoke with Heidi from um down to earth and we're going to have a meeting after the holiday to just talk
about plantings out here just to get a rough plan and then figure out oh around town hall yeah yeah
because that was on the initiative list just to just to just to get a
do the two parts right in front so hidey will come over and you know they have different sunlight
different water needs and she'll evaluate that and then we'll go from there and i don't know if it's
anywhere else but um i'm just curious about the status of their request to the trustees and how are we
moving forward with infrastructure like what's the status of that where are we well last i knew um we were
waiting for them to bring it up at their july meeting because they didn't have a full
for compliment of individuals to do a vote they had a lot of discussion and uh the chair reported
back to us through robin um and the chair even offered his own particular position and how he
felt about it which was pretty positive i thought um but he wasn't speaking for the whole board
the whole trustee board so so if i remember correctly the form that we came up with
had like um no we don't support it yes we support it but it was also like a condition a conditional so they
didn't vote so we have no sense of what they're going to do until they vote correct okay so having
said that um you know we have between block size and the financial software we could still potentially
have to reallocate up to 80,000, $86,000 from the existing budget.
Yes.
Um, and we, we don't, we don't have a choice. I mean, there's this black five stuff like this wireless access point.
We have to do that.
But we're really going to have to start looking at lines we know that reallocate funds.
Yes, we will. Um, it would be nice to think that after the trustees meeting in July that we would have a more definitive answer.
answer. I don't know that for a fact, but we know that they're short of, at least a member, which means that if in any given meeting, they don't have even a compliment of folks. They have four.
They have three that agree.
Right.
And they meet July...
They meet July 15th, I think, next week.
They meet July 15th, I think. It's our off.
It's between our two meetings.
Oh, okay.
So, I'm going on going to just to see what they're going to say.
So.
Um, yeah.
Okay.
But you're not the liaison to the trustees, Glenn.
But it's a public meeting, so I was going to go anyway.
Yeah.
I might go.
Good.
Just checking.
Okay.
That's all I have.
All right.
Okay.
Let's, how come this is under, oh, it's under old business.
Okay.
Meeting minutes.
Public meeting minutes of June 15.
So.
move motion by ellie second by peter discussion all in favor say aye aye aye aye any
opposed abstentions that's unanimous and the non-public minutes of the same meeting
june 15 2026 so moved motion by ellie second by peter discussion all in favor say
aye aye aye any opposed abstentions that's unanimous as well and we'll pass these back to
and it was still in the old business uh the fr business agreement we talked about that
with the fire chief so we're all set there the work from home policy there is a copy in your
folders uh and it needs board approval and sign off anything further that we need to do on that
it's in the so i think it's because i raised it i think the last meeting that um we should make
sure that whoever's working from home that they have read it just to make sure that
you know they're set up to work there and well and even and in the policy itself there there are paid
there is a spot for employee initials yeah yeah so this needs to be once we sign off on it it needs
to be provided to any employee who's doing remote work and i think there's in here it's not just
like a normal it's not just um that's part of your scale
schedule it's also just from the off day that you get to work from home the ad hoc just to make sure that people are can actually they're set up to do it from home they have their right Wi-Fi and all those and then we never signed it right right so I'm I'd like a motion please to authorize or to authorize a select board signing off on the policy and it's dated June 29 of 2026 and it is rev zero it's the initial release so moved motion by Ellie second by Peter
discussion in favor say aye aye any opposed extensions that's unanimous okay so this is six public comment number one let the record reflect there are no public members here number seven new business review and consideration of the 250th anniversary provided by lori copy to be found on
the orange holder so the sons of the revolution are doing a lot with us for the 250th and part of which is we had a donated flagpole we're getting that put up in the cemetery
and they want to do a stone dedication so we got that approved through the cemetery folks and part of they've been fabulous by the way part of um
what they want to do also is just reading a proclamation um and they provided the whole thing and robin just made some few minor tweaks on there but i think what they wrote is great because they're going to do a replaying at josiah's tomb and just do a general dedication to all of the patriots who died in the revolutionary war yeah and do markets and yeah it's going to be great so uh robin i assume this is your handiwork
it is it's lovely we've got lovely sort of parchmenty type paper
and the proclamation is there i don't imagine you want me to read this no didn't think so
we should date it for that date right so i'd like to do this by motion that uh that we that we sign this
there's a space for each board member and it's adopt it says at the bottom adopted on this day by the select board
board so i'm assuming that today's date would be appropriate because it says adopted by okay
may i have a motion please so moved motion by ellie second by peter any discussion in favor say aye aye aye
aye aye any opposed abstentions it's unanimous so we're adopting it on this 29th day of june thank you oh and just as an
FYI I know that the 250th committee didn't ask me to do this but I have reached out to the
governor's office and I'll be getting something from them also to be read and I had made a request
for the governor to attend that was turned down it was it was officially it was turned down
but but we will be getting something to read so and I'm going to send a note to Erica
just to let her know that I just hadn't gotten around to it yet
all right let's see the action item list is in your folders
robin anything on the comments for town council in regard to cable so yes we got an email
today from the representative at Comcast I have not opened it yet but we do have feedback so we
we should by next meeting have that nailed down okay so we'll keep number one on the list
number two also looks like most of these are yours Robin to follow up with
San Susi about the discrepancy on the assessment and I think we have something on the
agenda do we know yes so San Suisi was going to try to provide an update for today's
meeting so I could discuss it with the board bring it but at the minimum they
decided they can come to the July 13th meeting if you want further explanation on
why we'll also have documentation but also they'll come to that meeting so invite
invite them yes Robin sending spreadsheets oh this was on the
that's done that was on the solid waste bids there were some parts of the
spreadsheet that didn't show the the numbers because the columns were
too too narrow but that was taken care of so that's done Robin to inform
Charlie Anderson of the board decision to offer map our 40 lots 37 to
46 to a butters which I've done I've called Charlie and he is aware of the
situation okay told him might follow up okay when we're ready to do that okay
thank you also yours Robin town council working on correspondence and will then
address the process to formally accept Lafave Drive as a town road yes so I
got all the information pretty much that our council has requested and now they'll
take that in and review it and get back to us but before we do anything
to accept the road we have to settle out what we're doing with mr but yeah so
they're working on two things okay yeah because we can't do one yeah they're working on
all things yeah right we need to make sure that the road is in final shape correct
one way or another before we do anything to accept that's correct so that deadlines
tomorrow is I lost track of the plan is the plan to have someone go out there on the
first or tomorrow to see it we're beyond that in that in that
we received a letter from the contractor's attorney so now everything's in
the attorney's hands tomorrow has it doesn't unless he does something it really has
no impact because it's between attorneys now okay I believe that the developer
didn't have intention of that's correct completing the road therefore it's in the
hands of his attorney dealing with our agenda okay so the status of it is the status
of it
It stays as is until we have a resolution through legal counsel.
Okay, number six, Robin, to send department had recommendations on wage increases to Marissa.
This is done.
It's all done.
Okay.
Number seven, Robin to have a draft of the personnel manual and Ellie, you are going to edit it?
Yep, I haven't finished that.
I have not done that.
Okay, so we're keeping that one on the list.
Number eight, Robin, to follow up with Kim regarding the, we keep calling it a cheat sheet sheet,
but information on the process for trust fund requests and such.
How are we?
So I still need a follow-up on this.
I mean, we've talked, but I haven't followed up again since our last couple's.
Okay.
So we'll keep that one on the list.
Flipping the page to number nine.
I still.
I offered to Robin to draft the thank you letters to the volunteers, and I have not done that yet.
So keep that one on the list.
I still, it's on my list at home.
I just haven't done it yet.
Shortly.
Very shortly.
Ellie?
Yeah, I did speak to Glenn Greenwood about the CIP scheduling process, and he was preparing a memo for all the department heads.
He had just finished it last week when we met with him.
And I believe it, one of the time.
out actually actually I think it did too because I saw an email and I'm pretty sure I haven't
seen it but I but he did tell me it did go out yeah so we should be all set on
number 10 number 11 Lori following up with town hall streams regarding the
picture and picture issue okay you've reached out to them all right so we'll keep it on the
list for now number 12 is one for the highway admin administrative assistant Lisa to
follow up with deputy health inspector regarding article 1302 what is 1302 I do not so this
is one that Lisa brought to our attention and Tom when she was reviewing it and it needs a
home it's the solid waste one is that 1302 I think it is it's an ordinance the regulation
yeah and I think we decided at the board meeting that maybe should go into the
health department but it really isn't something that needs to
with highway or Lisa we just need to we just need to we just need to find a home
for it okay it's yeah the solid waste and littering right right right so it came
to light because it needs probably some updating and who's gonna take that role
that's kind of work and you don't think that it belongs under health no it probably
belongs on health but I think Lisa was only bringing it to the board's attention
because she was saying some of the updates
probably should be made to it oh or it's an older policy and there was some
stuff in there that didn't apply because there is no solid-wix committee things
like that so we need to find a owner for that to update it so should it go
to Pedro is it had a building department yeah so that's why that's on there you know
I don't know that it belongs it's it's a toss-up it could go either department
because there's some that's kind of a health hazard but a lot of it is just
littering which would be a trash thing
which would be highway highway so why we leave it on the list for now and
let me give it some more thought but that's why it's the air would lease okay all right
well we'll keep it on the list number 13 is a is one for Ellen to ask the
health officer to get water testing plan schedule posted as well as the
results waiting for him to complete it says I thought Pedro reported out on that
and said it was done I thought he did yeah all right so number 13 is done number 14
Robin regarding the work from home policy we've done that number 15
Robin to get the address of the applicant for the facilities use request that we
looked at last time at Magnuson Field as it was not on the paperwork
so I did follow up with her she's actually found another location she's not going to
use Magfield so that's going to be avoided okay so number 15 number 15 is off the list
16 Lori to check with Marissa regarding the $30,000 in the bridge grant
and research into inconsistencies okay so we'll keep it on the list 17 is
yours also regarding coordination with Abby on the webcam that's done number 18
Robin giving the first Congregational Church the opportunity to rewrite and resubmit
tax exempt status request letter so in the I think in the orange folder we
have their updated information it's either one of those olders okay so we'll get
to that when so we can check it off because if it's if it's done Ellie the next one
is yours regarding Planning Board draft policy with defined deadlines for road
completion yeah we have I talked to Glenn about it last week but we've not done
anything yet okay so we'll keep it on that keep it on there and the final one is
is a ASAP one for Robin, probably eventually June, to determine date for summer volunteer
barbecue. Oh, here we go. Yeah, we do a during National Volunteer Week, which is in April.
We do mention of it here. This year, we actually had a proclamation from the governor,
which we read and shared with all the boards and committees and volunteers. But then in the
summertime, we do a town.
barbecue event for volunteers.
And employees.
Well, and employees, yes.
Everybody, right, everybody.
So.
It's happened at the fire station.
It's happened at the fire station.
It's happened at the highway garage.
It's happened.
Where else?
Any place else?
No, usually one of those two days.
One of those two.
So, Robin, do we have any update on that?
I think it's probably going to be in the fall with everything going on on.
No, and they've had in the fall before.
Yeah.
It's just with, obviously, a new person at a fire station, a lot going on here, and
summer is really hot to have that, so.
We'll get eight weeks.
I think we're thinking in the fall.
All right.
Hopefully not, hopefully not past September because then the weather starts.
Probably early September, time.
Yeah.
Okay.
Early September would be like.
Maybe right after the election or something.
After prime.
The weekend.
Oh, that would be good.
Here you go.
What do you think, June?
I like it.
Okay.
All right.
So you have to have one that's down the road for me.
You'll get used to it.
I think that would be a really good idea to get after the elections, bringing the community back together and having a community barbitur is really good.
Why do you close it out?
Well, I should, in between closing that between two different elections.
Yeah.
Right, too.
Yeah.
As far as the action item list, I can work with June to assign ones to her versus ones that we'll stay with.
Sure.
Is that good?
Yep.
And I'll let sending you know that too.
Yep.
Okay. Very good.
Under board business, are there other matters that the board would like to bring up?
Peter.
You can add under the action item list for me.
I'm going to speak to Tom, and we need to look at the property down at Greenwood as far as ownership.
There's a bunch of lines.
It's kind of a crazy lot down there.
That's what he figured that out.
Well, we're going to find that up.
But what I'm requesting, what I would like to request of Tom is to maybe look up at some type of
a board, like a notification board that you talked about, like they have down at Kingston Lake,
something they can post the no life guide, if there's a bacteria thing going on, any information
that we want to put on that, and he could actually probably build a box with a plexiglass face on it.
So something that looks nice and a location that would be easily seen down there.
Sure.
So I'll speak to him about that and get some ideas before he just goes and does it.
Okay.
But I will talk to him about that.
Okay.
It should be a notification board down there.
Okay.
So we'll add that to the action item list and put Peter's name on it, and we'll hear back next time.
Public comment number two.
There still is no public out here with us, so we'll move on.
Number nine, financial and administrative matters, and that's in our orange folder.
Let's see, what have we got?
We have assessing items, and the first one is something that we just discussed from the action item list.
which is a, looks like a request from the first congregational church.
It's a revised letter from the church for the board's consideration for approval.
We need a motion on it.
And I thought we already, did we not do a motion on this already?
God, I thought we did.
This is the one they missed the deadline?
So, I believe so.
There was a, it's for the tax exempt status.
Yes.
Right.
But did they miss the deadline the last time?
Well, I think it's, yes, they missed, yes, and it's something they've been doing every year, but for some reason.
They thought they didn't have to do it.
Or it got missed, or...
Then the question came in, I think, also, the property pieces, because don't they, wasn't that pie-shaped place where they park?
Wasn't that also in question they want to...
Oh, yeah, across the street?
Exactly.
So there was a multiple that were late, and then they...
We haven't even looked at that.
So...
So what happened with this, they did not submit their application.
They came back with a letter, which is the back backups right there.
And as part of that, you had questions about the other piece and if they filed an application in the past.
And they have filed an application in the past.
So they wrote a new letter explaining why they missed the deadline and just bringing it back to the board for approval.
And the board did ask them to give a better explanation.
So in the past...
they have also asked for tax exemption for that piece of land, but they've always done everything on time.
And in the past, has it ever been denied from the assessors?
That that's not...
Okay.
So it's not a question of the eligibility.
It's a question of the missing deadline.
Is that correct?
Okay.
I'm not opposed to granting them relief this year, but if it happens again, it'll be out of luck.
I guess that's how I feel.
I mean, they've been doing it for years.
have tax exempt status, but they're getting it's the paperwork because if we make exceptions for them,
then there are other organizations in town that will want the same kind of exception.
And I don't mind doing it for the first lapse, but I won't support it again, as much as I hate to say that
for a long, established church in town.
I must be confusing this with another one that must have had a similar situation.
Because I can remember voting no.
That was VFW.
Okay, it was not this one.
Were they?
very similar thing where it was a change of people and they requested that we do it and we
I think the vote was three to two yep and we granted it because it was very similar
circumstances it was like an oops we forgot kind of thing right well they won't forget for
a while since we're trying to deny it for it so they'll go forward they get in
large is in a different group that did not have anything to do with forgetting they just
no not the VFW
FW. That's different. I remember that one.
Yes. Okay. So I don't have a problem granting it later, but recognizing that
everyone makes a mistake once in a while.
And this is in one shot at it.
So there's a memo from the assessor. Well, I mean there's a letter from the church.
Yeah.
Is there the initial one? Is there any follow-up from?
The assessor is saying that they're eligible. It's just that they were asked to rewrite their letter to the board.
So they rewrote their letter to the board.
So they rewrote their letter to the board with a different explanation.
So that's this top letter?
Yes. So that's the...
Maybe I should read this.
Okay.
This is from Elaine Prestapino, Director of Ministry of Support Services.
Date of June 18.
I'm writing on behalf of the Church regarding recent tax bill pertaining to charitable tax exempt
status for U-10, lot 12, and tax-map U-10, lot 20.
First, please allow me to apologize for not submitting form B-T-L-A-A-9 prior to the April 15 deadline.
Due to a change in how the church previously received notification regarding this filing requirement,
the deadline was accidentally overlooked.
The failure of the first congregational church to submit form B-T-L-A-A-9 on time was an honest and unintentional oversight.
We have since taken steps internally to establish automatic reminders and procedures to
to ensure that future filing deadlines are met in a timely manner.
For more than 300 years, these properties have been used continuously for religious and charitable purposes,
serving not only our congregation, but also the broader Kingston community through worship, outreach,
fellowship, and service.
We respectfully request reconsideration of the removal of the charitable tax-exempt status for these properties
and ask that the exemption be reinstated.
We appreciate your time, understanding, and thoughtful consideration.
of this matter, respectfully submitted.
Elaine Preston.
I move that we grant the First Congregations Church request for being misstated as a tax-exempt organization.
Okay.
Motion by Ellie.
Is there a second?
Second.
Second by Peter.
Any discussion?
I'll call for the vote. All in favor say aye.
Aye.
Aye. Opposed?
Aye.
Oops.
Motion fails.
We have a tie vote.
a tie vote.
So I would ask that we bring it up at our next meeting when Mrs. Faulkner is here.
Right.
And that way we'll have a full board vote on it.
Correct.
And one way or the other, it'll...
Correct.
It'll happen.
Something will happen.
Okay.
So at our next meeting, Robin, or June, we will have that on the agenda.
We'll have that back in our folder to deal with it.
Tax Deed Review.
Tax Collector's Deed.
Deed.
This one is for MAP U5.
lot 45.
I'm just looking for the
street or the
It's right in the top. It's
Four Wadley Point Road.
Oh, there it is. Sorry.
Yeah, okay. Four Wadley Point Road.
It says any questions ask Tammy.
Okay. Does anyone have questions?
And this is for a tax lien.
This is the one we talked about and voted on, right? Yes.
Okay.
We did so I know.
So a motion, please to go ahead.
to go ahead and have us sign off. We all need to sign it.
So to sign off on this tax deed.
Motion by Ellie, second by Laurie.
Discussion.
In favor, say aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Any opposed?
Extensions.
It's unanimous.
We have an appointment to public office, and this is for the Heritage Commission.
I think, Lori, you might want to say something about this,
but it's for a new member that they'd like to appoint, have us appoint.
Liz, is it Moran or Moran?
Yeah, she's been pretty active in the Heritage Commission so far.
So she wants to become an official member.
She's just all in, so I think it's a great addition to the commission.
And the commission discussed this at its last meeting?
They did.
So when we're done with this, I guess that was the other thing we need to talk about.
I didn't write it down, so I forgot.
Right.
The process for making appointments.
Yeah.
We do like to have.
prospective members come and just introduce themselves to the board.
So I don't want to hold this up, but I'm going to ask that she'd be invited.
Maybe, Lori, you could invite her to a future meeting and just...
You can come in and just say hello for a few minutes,
just have to stay the whole night.
So, oh, it has you as chair, Ellie.
Look at that.
Oh, boy.
It's an old form.
It's an old form.
Just cross out chair.
I put it on yours.
We're just, my name's, my...
full name's not on this tax deed then, so we need to get that redone, so we're going to have to sign it again.
Okay.
May I have a motion, please, to sign off on the appointment for Liz Moran?
I move that we appoint Liz Moran to the Heritage Commission.
For a term of, well, for a term to expire, March 31, 2027.
Okay.
So it says.
Okay.
That's part of the motion.
That's perfectly fine.
Second.
Second by Lori.
Discussion.
In favor?
Say aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Opposed?
abstentions. That's unanimous. And thank you to Liz, if you're watching or listening, to
volunteering, and we appreciate that. And I'm sure the Commission appreciates that.
So there's a little confusion on how, what the process is, it's not written, what the process is
of getting somebody on a committee or a board, with the exception of the ones who can do it themselves,
meaning the budget. But, so, um, the few experiences that I've had and the,
that what I was told was that the committee or commission takes a vote.
They talk about it.
They welcome the person.
The chair sends the recommendation to the select board administrator.
The paperwork is done.
We sign it.
If they're here, great, if not a later date.
Then it gets to the town clerk.
The person goes downstairs, swears in, and they're good to go.
But I think Glenn had a different inquiry.
interpretation with how the word gets to the select board administrator that you thought the resident or the volunteer does it?
Yeah, my recollection had been that the person who was interested in becoming appointed actually wrote their interest.
Yeah, to the select board. And we took it from there. And so Lori and I had a discussion about it and we viewed it differently, so we thought we
would. We've done it, but we've done it both ways.
I mean, does the board have a preference?
It doesn't matter to me. I like the idea of it going through the chair of the committee because then they know the individual.
Are they really interested? It sounds like a little extra filtering process. I think that's important.
Yeah, sure.
But that's not to say that someone else could come directed to the board and say, gee, I really would love to serve in that committee.
Can you appoint me? Is there a vacancy? We'd check that out and put her on.
I think both, both things would be okay.
June
Just set that down.
Don't hold it.
Thank you.
Because when you hold it, it creates all kinds of noise in through the mic that gets picked up on the...
To be learned, I guess I wanted to inquire further, and just as this is me speaking from my previous experience.
Is there, like, a running list of vacancies that the town makes available, whether it be, you know, with
the town clerk, for example, since they have their oath of office book where they come
and sign, that is also made available, like, let's say, on the city website somewhere, if there's
like a designated board commission and committee page, so that way residents are aware where
vacancies are, because from my previous experience, any time there is interest, if they see
that a vacancy is present, then...
It's a great idea.
if there's like an application for a board commission committee, which I've created in the past.
So if this is something the board even is interested in, I can work alongside Tammy to maybe create something.
But we make applications available, a resident can submit an application, and then if there's a vacancy, you know, similarly this select board administrator can review for that information.
and then if it aligns, we can bring it forward to the board.
Yeah. Just don't make it too formal. I think a letter of interest is really a, we're a small town.
It's not like you get 25,000 people to choose from. But I think a letter of interest,
a list on the website is terrific, a great idea, and let people know where there are openings,
and if there's a particular interest, and then have a form for them to fill out and submit.
to the board. We can even make it like an electronic form. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. That was the
mice from upstairs falling down.
I did and then that distracted me so I'm going to. So while you're thinking about that, I mean, is the board
comfortable with letting June sort of move forward with this and come up with a
recommendation for us and yeah and coordinating with the town clerk I think is good at
Yeah. Yeah, I was just telling me, we had, there is a page on the website for volunteer opportunities that I created.
So I'll work with you to kind of, to kind of, um, work through that.
It could have a window, but you don't need this.
Because it doesn't say, it talks about time commitments for each one.
So a lot of people think it, you know, they underestimate the commitment. So we can work together to figure out kind of then blow it out
to see because some of them are full.
Well, but you
really, you might want to talk with Tammy because she's
in, she's really involved
with the public more.
Yeah. I think that
is a good opportunity for me as well,
just starting to build up
liaison approach. Yeah.
Can definitely work with Tammy. She'll
have an idea, but also reaching
out to
the different department heads
or the different
commission committee. The board's commission, committee
the chairs because I think something that's really good to promote that I've promoted in the past is it's always good to reach out to the chairs because you want to speak with the chair to see if there is that, you know, kind of personality alignment as well to make sure that it would be a good fit.
So I would be happy to work with you.
We can.
Yeah, give one.
That's great.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay, I think we made it through all the stuff in the orange folder.
Peter is starting to work on the
what used to be the purple folder is now the
multi-colored
The multi-colored and very well-organized
folder for invoices and such.
Okay, we have some
correspondence.
The first one is from town planner
Glenn Greenwood, and I'm not going to read it because it's the
item that we discussed that Pedro brought up
and it's the property on Route 125
that
that Pedro is following up on from the code enforcement issue, and this was to notify us from the planning department that it's in process.
It's in process.
This is the package that went out to town departments, including us, for the update to the capital improvements program.
So there's a form, and if we have any capital improvement projects that we want on here, we should list them.
Glenn is looking to get these back by July 23rd, so we should have it on our next meeting's agenda, please.
And in the meantime, the board should be thinking about any such things that we would want on the CIP.
Sure.
I don't need not be getting the email on that.
Oh, okay.
There you go.
Okay. I'd like to hold on today.
Okay.
Thank you.
Yep.
The next one is a letter from Robert Griffin, dated June of 20,000.
26 addressed to us regarding dam repairs and surface water levels of long pond to bring all parties up to date concerning repairs to the dam at the east end of long pond.
In September 2018, the water level was lowered so that the engineering company could gather necessary data for flowage and design studies.
Study and design remedies were accepted, and the state permit for remediation was issued.
with permits acquired, design and engineering firm hired, and construction firm hired, fall of this year, 2026, is the set time for commencing of the project.
Plans are to start lowering the water level of Long Pond on September the 1st.
Construction on the project will continue when the water level is sufficiently lowered.
The project will probably take six to eight weeks.
As noted in a previous letter,
If you believe your well water level is connected to the level of Long Pond, this summer may be an ideal time to investigate and alleviate this situation if it may be a problem.
In conclusion, I have arranged to have an informational meeting at the Kingston Town Hall on Wednesday, July 1, two days from now, at 7 p.m.
It will be a quick dam project overview.
I'll answer any questions I can.
And this is a question.
courtesy to keep all informed. Thank you for your attention. Robert C. Griffin, representative,
oh, a copy to Representative L.E.R. Realty. Very good. Email from Camp Lincoln,
from David Lovely Talon. I believe he's the director there. Director of Camping Services.
Good afternoon, Robin. I'm reaching out to ask if we would be able to place a banner for YMCA Camp Lincoln's Centennial Celebration.
on the Kingston Greens. I assume that means planes. It is a six-foot-by-three-foot banner.
The centennial celebrations are scheduled for July 26th at YMCA Camp Lincoln to celebrate our 100th summer.
It is open to all campers, families, alumni, and community members. We will have program areas open, a cookout, water slides, and water games, and a camp museum set up.
You can find more information at, and it gives the website.
We want to promote the event as much as we are able.
If we could put up a banner on the Kingston Green or in front of the fire department, that would be greatly appreciated.
Please let me know what is possible.
Have a great weekend, and it's signed by Dave Lovely Talon.
How big was the banner?
Six foot by three foot.
I can't see us doing that at all, and I'll tell you why.
Because if we do it for Camp Lincoln, we're going to have
a lot of requests along the way for other events throughout the town, or other towns for that matter.
I just don't see it as a possibility. Fire station, maybe, because it's Kingston.
But I don't know. I don't know how anyone else feels, but I don't want a six-by-three sign in
blames for Camp Lincoln, because we'll have to do it for others. That's the only reason.
Did he indicate for how long he wants to do it?
Maybe we should get clarification.
I'm not opposed to it.
It doesn't say, but the celebration is on July 26th.
Yeah.
So it would be basically for the month of July.
Well, three weeks in July, assuming it started now.
I think I would want clarification on how long he would want it.
I mean, he offered it one of the locations of the fire station.
Was it at the fire station or across from?
In front of, I thought you said.
Yeah, the land in the market.
Because Rock River Road goes down to the Camp.
Lincoln so or in front of the fire department that's something
that's great and I'll be happy to could the fire chief perhaps yeah we could that's
good point Robin we can dictate the time frame and the location but you're right I mean
camp Lincoln is right behind right off right I'm not close to it at all I mean if the fire
chief's okay with it I would I'd be fine with it there and I'll be happy to follow up and
that's okay all right how long would we want it
for I don't I would not want to put out for the entire one I get at least two
weeks I'd say two weeks yeah I would be comfortable with that I mean we're not even
doing our own manners for our own promotional so so two weeks leading up to the
celebration on July 26 yeah yeah let me take a picture that so I can tell
Graham do you want to just take this you can take this okay as long as I can take it yeah we
didn't vote on that do we need to vote on that
It's not a facility's use or anything like that.
I think just, we'll ask the chief and see how he feels.
All right.
The record will reflect then that the liaison, Ms. Alessio will discuss with the fire chief.
And the board's recommendation is anyway that if the fire chief is okay with it on their site,
that it be limited to a two-week window prior to the event on July 26th.
Yeah.
Is that good?
Yeah.
Okay.
All right.
And one more thing in the correspondence folder, and again, it's another code enforcement issue.
Oh, and this is from somebody who lives on Lafave Drive.
Please see attached letter.
Town of Kingston, Board of Selectmen, and Code Enforcement, and Building Inspector.
This is from Myra and James Stock, owners of 11.
Lefevre Drive.
As a permanent resident of 11 Lefeave Drive, I am writing to formally request an investigation
into what appears to be an ongoing zoning and code violation in the road frontage at the property
at 14 Lefeave Drive, which was built, previously occupied, and the dwelling recently sold
by Robert Pellegrino.
The road in front of 14 Lefeave Drive, parentheses, the entire road,
is still owned by Mr. Pellegrino, close parentheses, is currently being used for the unauthorized
storage and accumulation of two undrivable motor vehicles, a large dumpster and multiple heavy
slash commercial pieces of equipment in various forms.
This accumulation seems to constitute an illegal motor vehicle junkyard under
State RSA 236-112, as there are two or more.
more unregistered or unserviceable vehicles kept exposed to the elements on a residential road.
This also seems to violate Kingston's local zoning ordinances, governing permitted uses in a residential development.
Aside from being an eyesore that negatively impacts neighborhood property values,
this ongoing situation prevents several urgent public safety, health, and environmental hazards,
potential for hazards, hazardous fluid leaks.
oil, gasoline, coolant, draining into local ground soil, safety hazards, stacked
equipment, and unserviceable vehicles pose a physical safety risk to neighborhood children and pets,
and health hazards, the stagnant debris creates a breeding ground for rodents and pests.
I respectfully request that the appropriate departments in the town of Kingston conduct a site inspection, issue a formal invoice of
violation to the road owner and enforce the immediate removal of said vehicles and equipment to eliminate potential hazards.
Thank you for your prompt attention to this situation, respectfully submitted Myra stock.
It said this came in, and this is from Robin, a note saying that this came in today, which is the 29th of June, and a copy has been provided to our code enforcement officer.
So, Anton, our highway agent.
So I believe it's been passed on to the appropriate departments.
Anything else that would be, Peter?
I think maybe we should reach out to her and to the complaint so if she understands that we've heard the letter.
And right now we're in negotiation with the attorney, and it's still a private road.
So that is a private road until we accept it.
It may be an issue with fluids leaking, but it's still a private road.
So I understand time is going to get the notice, but we should probably wait until what an attorney says before we open another can of worms.
That's my, my thoughts.
I was thinking of the same thing, and that's sort of a sticky with it, right?
It most certainly is.
It's a private road, so we can't dictate, what, other than the DES element of stuff, you know, going into the ground.
Correct.
All right.
So you'll follow up.
or you and June
you and June will follow up
just so they know we read it we
we acknowledge it but we're kind of enough
sure
okay
is there any other business
do we need any
oh do you have stuff
I'm going to have two just before you guys
okay we also have this
which is the
um
yes
for Plodzik and Sanderson, the 24 draft audit report.
This is what we talked about earlier with
Marissa, and
we need to sign on this.
Also, Robin, and this
P.O.4. I works.
I mean, we just have to sign that
there's two other tabs, but there's
no place to sign for us.
Marissa tab that, so
if there's a tab, that means you must need to sign
something. So even if you're signed the bottom of the page.
Well, that may be for the chairman to sign
this one here. Yeah, that's probably what it is.
And then the other one
has nothing right.
Marissa nicely marks it for us.
I don't know that we took a vote on this,
so we probably should just to
cover our bases, but
this is regarding the
2024 draft audit report
non-attest services draft
approval. And
what we're signing is a letter that says by
our signatures below, we acknowledge
receipt of the following information for the town
of Kingston for the fiscal year end of
December 31, 2024.
And it lists all the information.
And we have received
the above information, have reviewed it, and
understand the information presented, and
accept and take responsibility for the
information they are in. Does
anybody want to look at this before we vote on it?
All right. May I have a motion then to
sign off on this, and we all need to sign it.
So much.
Motion by Lori. Second by Ellie.
Discussion.
In favor, say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed?
Extensions? That's unanimous.
And this is something that Marissa needed back, so
she didn't need it immediately, but she needed it back
fairly soon.
So we'll... Okay.
Beliefs? I didn't look, but I believe so.
These are the two that seem to need
a vote on subsequent tabs
for your signature as chair.
So we have
a purchase order
from Highway Department for
I-Works, which is one of their software
packages. It's for the renewal of that.
It's for...
Oh, and it's going to put that line into
a negative, so...
But it's for
$7,500.
What's the line then?
It's line 4312.
I'm sorry, it's Department
432-12, line 36.
How much is it for?
$7,500?
Oh, yeah, just by $250.
Right, so it's going to put
it in negative by $2.50.
Do you take the vote on that?
We did not. So I need a motion, please,
to...
That's all right. I seconded it.
We just didn't vote?
All in favor, say aye.
Aye.
Aye. Any opposed?
Abstentions. It's unanimous.
Okay. I was in moderated for 35 years.
I know. Well, that's good.
That's why they fixed me around.
Yeah, well, you know, we all have our purpose in mind.
That's exactly correct.
All right, so we all need to sign the purchase
order and then then the agreement itself which needs a signature and that would be me probably
it says effective date the moment is put to these days everyone everyone I think we're
missing somebody on here maybe Lori the next purchase order is for one of our contractors
and this is for the stormwater compliance for permit year number nine
which is from July 1 of this year to June 30 of 2028 so it's a two-year period of time
and I authorize and this is and this is for Verdantis
motion by Ellie to sign off on it it's for an amount of
$23,800 and in the line there's 29,000 so it leaves a balance of
a balance of 5,200.
He's the second.
Second by Lori. All in favor say aye.
aye any opposed abstentions it's unanimous so that's the purchase order and then there's
a service agreement this is for Verdantus by the way which is which is as I said one of
our contractors and it needs a signature here
Peter you might know so that the other grant that Tom talked about for
stormwater isn't that possibly to help off it may offset some of this
cost for the stuff I honestly don't know that I can ask them that I will
ask them that so the question was that at a grant would that assist with a storm water
management yep because there's a line item in the budget for it but I'm hoping that it
kind of offsets us a little bit but I don't know is there anything else hey it's still daylight
there's hope I mean can I have the folder so I can put these back in it oh I didn't sign off
you have I
no I'm supposed to do but we can adjourn oh we can oh we can okay so I'm gonna update this
and give it to you all right I do have an item that was presented to me that
probably should go into non-public I could summarize it but I'd rather have the
board it's employee okay so personnel yeah so it's on the agenda I did mark it as the
item if you want to do that and it shouldn't be long but we should probably
do is there any other public business to do all right and I'd like a motion
please to go into non-public session for RSA 991 dash a colon 3 to C
motion by Ellie second by Peter roll call Peter yes Ellie so we are in non-public
at 426 p.m and we'll come back into public only only to close and we'll come back into
public session only to close out the meeting but otherwise all of our public
business is completed thank you all