NH Muni WatchStatewide meeting record

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Select Board

SPEAKER_2 moved to approve a get-carriage between $15 and $25, with a drawing on $6.28. The motion carried. The Board approved three tax exemption applications: one elderly for Map 27, lot 12-3, and two veterans for Map 28, lot 79, and Map 6, lot 28-4-12. Two sewer abatements for pool fillings were approved: $161.57 for 106 Union and an amount for 19 Lovely Lane. Todd Klanoski was appointed to mow conservation land at Mustafield Park, behind the old Franks, and Gardner Mountain. The Board noted lights installation at the transfer station is nearly complete. Regarding road paving on Pudding Hill, work was signed but will be delayed if it conflicts with the Piney Woods Road project. A resident will return next week regarding a reimbursement appeal. The meeting adjourned. Source: https://townhallstreams.com/stream.php?location_id=161&id=75080

Video

For a get-carriage between $15 and $25, drawing will be on $6.28.
Motion to approve.
Second.
Any questions or comments?
All is in favor?
Aye.
Opposed?
None.
Motion carries.
Next, there are three exemption applications.
One elderly, two veterans.
An elderly is for MAP 27, lot 12-3.
The veterans are both for one for 28, Map 28, lot 79, the one from Map 6, lot 28-4-12,
and all three of them, everything is in order, and they fall within the guidelines.
So, we'll second.
Any questions or comments?
All those in favor?
Aye.
Opposed.
None.
Motion carries.
Please.
Third.
When you get to the date on that one.
What year did I write?
26.
Oh, okay.
That's one I just wrote 23.
A little bit behind that.
Yeah.
That's a little time morph in between.
All right.
Next, we have two abatements for sewer that are both for pool fillings.
You guys, okay if we do them both together?
Yep.
All right, first one is for 106 union, it looks like.
Map 26, watt, 66, and the amount of 161.57, and the other one is for 19 Lovely Lane.
Map 21, lot 20.
Oh, 10 union.
Oh, okay.
Yep.
Was there a second on that?
Second.
Okay.
And just so everybody knows, they are approved by the wastewater superintendent.
All those in favor?
Aye.
Aye.
Opposed.
None.
Motion carries.
The last thing here, there's no motion needed on an intent to cut.
This is for the access roads on Pudding Hill.
That's for Map 3, lot 42, map 3 lot 43, and map 6 lot 48.
Is this going to interfere with the Piney Woods Road project at all?
Let me check with Rick, because I think that is going to interfere.
going to be starting any time now.
Yep.
This week or next week, I think, is what Rick said.
But let me double check before I...
Yeah, because I know he's starting in that intersection.
Yeah, and going, yes.
Right.
I'm sure the log trucks are coming down that way, not going up over in the Richmond.
Oh, for sure.
For sure.
So.
So, yeah, I'll check with Rick.
All right, so...
The exact date and when that's starting.
We'll sign this, but if for some reason there's a conflict,
then they're going to have to hold off.
underlawing.
It's everything in the folder, everything on the agenda.
So last week we had asked Jack to get a hold of conservation about the mowing of the conservation land,
Namably the Mustafield Park, the gazebo behind the old Franks, Texaco, and Gardner Mountain.
And Jack did reach out to them through email, and we got emails back from them stating that if the town would like to take it over, they are fine with it because they don't have the manpower time or finances to do it.
They did have one request that if the town was to take it over, they would like to walk the properties for whoever is taking it to show what they want to mall, what they want to keep and that stuff.
and that part I'm not 100% in favor of.
They're all three are pretty overgrown and out of control right now, I think.
For this year, at least, they just need to be moat and maintained so that next year we can see what's
growing that's going to be good to save how the board feels.
I think, and I was going to make motion for a person to do it, but whoever does it, I would think,
can tell what's a wild piece of grass and what they've been planted, you know, if there's a question.
I mean, the only thing I can think of out there, I mean, there's obviously the trees that they planted
that we're not going to mow over. Right. Those will get cleaned up around them. Some of them died.
Right. I mean, if it's dead, it's going to come down. I'm sorry, but if it's in the middle of everything and
it's dead, it's in the way. It's going to be taken care of.
but I know they've, like, at musterfield, they've got some ornamental grass out front that I've talked about last week.
It looks like hell because it's a dead ornament right now.
Yeah, the other two are just...
The other two are just, just mow it.
It's just grass.
It's really musterfield, but I still feel like for this year, we just mow it all.
And then maybe next year it'll start growing it a little better than what it currently is because of the lack of maintenance.
and we'll be able to reassess next year and say, no, this looks good.
This needs to stay or whatever then.
Yeah, you guys have been out there.
I'm not sure what plans they were that.
I haven't seen a single other thing except for that ornamental grass that's right on the corner.
Right on the corner.
The rest of it was just grass and milkweed and there's a pretty good patch of poison ivy out there.
You don't need any more of that.
No.
That I haven't seen anything.
anything else out there. There's no flowers or nothing like that out there.
I make a motion that we have, Todd Klanoski,
the bid that you handed into the conservation with Kerry, can we get that?
Yeah. Yeah. Don't say it all well right now. Yeah. Okay. Oh, God in the Mountain?
Gardner. Yeah. Okay. Will you give us, get us one next week? Okay. Just adding that other one.
Yeah. Yeah.
Okay. Second to Jack's motion.
Second.
Okay. I'll call the vote, but I'm going to recuse myself, obviously.
Any other comments or questions or anything on that?
All those in favor?
Aye.
Aye.
Opposed, done. Motion carries 301.
That problem solved.
That's all we had for business carrying over from last week, I believe.
So the only thing I have is a quick update of the transfer station is I've got all the lights hanging inside the building.
Everything is pretty much ready for Neil to do what he has to do.
I'm really trying to get everything done right now because the lift that they were,
the scissor lift that they were nice to let us use for free for this amount of time.
They're going to be taken back in about two weeks.
so I'm trying to use it as utilize it as much as I can while it's there but that's moving along smooth
and I did get one more piece of the puzzle figured out this week as far as we needed to buy some
or get some our hands on some gay lords to move to put recyclables in to store and Swansea
landfill
gave us two to three big pallets, big stacks of them, already all palletized and ready to go.
They've been Josh over in Swansea.
He's been a huge help to this whole process.
So I'm going to have the highway department sometime when they're going to Keene or coming back from Keene with the one-ton empty.
Stop in there and Josh said he could load them right on the back of it for us.
Perfect.
I think that's all I have, though.
Anybody else have anything?
Dave, do you have something?
Because I have a question for you.
But if you don't have anything, I'll ask it now.
If you do, I'll wait.
Go ahead and ask.
I just remember they do have one more time.
I'm not sure.
They usually do it sometime early in the year.
Every year they have this bike race that comes through.
Do they contact you on that?
They did last year.
I have not heard anything this year.
I understand it's on state highways, but I would like, before they come through town,
have them reach out to you and get some type of control because two years in a row now,
I know myself, come to the stoplight, sat, and there was, you, you know, a whole line of them cut right in front of me.
I almost hit three of them.
Yeah.
And they come down Richmond Road, four and five abreast.
If they're going to be on the road, don't they have to follow the rules?
Yes.
And they also, I've seen them inside the road, you know, with my wife, you know, public urination.
You know, they don't care.
They just stop.
I'll call Jeremy at the State Yard and see if he's heard anything.
Because they're a hazard what they have.
Oh, I don't disagree.
I've had.
Many people asked me to bring it up to you.
Actually, we took over the entire road this morning.
They had a school, the elementary school, had a bike ride from the VFW to the elementary school.
It's over the road for about three minutes.
I saw pictures of it, and the kids all are pretty excited and happy to ride the bikes.
Eric Pooley out and the whole school staff did a pretty good job, working on anything, that.
So that'd be great if you could check in.
I will.
check in with Jeremy, and they may not have notified him.
Okay.
And I think it was like last year they called me, like, a week beforehand.
Yeah.
Because somebody's going to get seriously hurt.
Because this is the one that comes up, like, whatever the road that runs by Sherroy, out of Massachusetts.
I know they come down 119.
Okay.
Yeah, and they head back to Bradaburow through Main Street and then...
Okay.
Yeah, I think they'll come out of Mass on Route 12 and turn on 119.
I'm all the way down.
I know I talk to some other towns about it, and they have the same issue, but most towns don't have the...
If they got the energy and ambition to ride that part, they can use a little common courtesy, too.
I'll call Greenfield, too, because it ends there, so they may know.
Thank you very much.
You don't have to get up, if you have something for us.
Still, you can hang on one second.
No, I had the, just the bike ride.
Oh, that's it?
That's all yeah.
Oh, okay.
Before I forget again, I also wanted to remind the public, not the public sitting here,
because they both already know, but the public watching on TV that the carnivals next week,
over at the home center field, it starts next Thursday, the 11th.
But anybody in town expect to start seeing some traffic in and out of the...
Elm Center starting Sunday, and it'll go right through until the month, the Tuesday after the carnival.
They'll be moving, they're going to be moving all the equipment in starting Sunday and Monday.
So we'll start seeing some traffic.
We'll start seeing a lot of things going on.
And next Thursday, everybody will be able to come out and have fun.
It's going to be a beautiful day and a beautiful weather for the entire weekend.
I should have a dunkin booth with you.
Hey, does anybody else?
else from the board of anything else?
Carrie?
Just a couple quick things.
Jay and G's, we had sampling.
They started today.
They should finish it up tomorrow.
Just the annual sampling that needs to get done.
Yep.
And then we have four weeks left
with this year's budget.
So I just wanted to give a quick update on
we should be at 7.68%.
And we are currently at 17.34.
So we're doing very well.
Four weeks remaining.
Here you're black.
Yep.
That's it.
10 to send oval.
All right.
You have one question, Ben.
Oh, did you get a hold of J.R. or J.
I sent both of them emails to ask, and I have not heard back.
What was that about?
The rail bed behind the racetrack?
Oh, to see if they're going to...
The bids.
If we have to put it back out in bed.
Yep.
I have.
haven't heard from them, either of them.
Well, I would say if you don't hear from the next week and then we put it back out, huh?
Because I don't know how long that grant's good for.
Oh, we have some time.
We do.
They typically, because there is a spotted turtles, there's some turtle out there during the summer months.
So fall is like the better time to do it, so then we don't need to be worrying about the turtle.
Spotted turtle.
So, yeah.
So the goal is fall time for this project.
So we got a little time.
Don't get me wrong.
I love animals as much as the next person, but it seems like every project we do,
we get held up by a turtle or a snake or a bat or a frog.
They've adapted over a years.
They'll adapt again.
All right.
Before I go up, rant on that.
Chief, you said you had nothing.
else?
All right.
I'll open up the public comment.
Ellie Kulanski, Ash Willett.
Since the board has refused to allow my husband and I back into non-public
about an issue that we brought into non-public, I have a question for the board that I'm hoping
for a clear answer on, which is I would like to know why you guys are only approving to
repay my husband and I half.
of the amount that we spent on a project that we had a permit for,
a project that's worth nothing at this point.
We can't do anything with.
The only two things that were alluded to the first time that the board was said that they
would not, that they wouldn't allow us to continue and that you guys would do the half,
is that somebody had heard that we may have continued work up there,
even after the permit was pulled.
Well, that's absolutely not true.
And if you go up there today, then you'll see nothing more is done than what you were given receipts for.
That's exactly where it was left.
The other thing that was said was that it seemed fair to pay us half.
How in the world is that fair to pay us back half for a mistake that the town made?
We did exactly what we were supposed to do.
We gave the town all the information we had.
We went through both people that we had to go through.
We were issued a permit.
Months later, then we're left with, oh, sorry, now you can't have that permit,
and we'll give you half the money back of what you wasted on that.
That doesn't seem fair at all.
And we did what we were supposed to.
We played by the rules.
We didn't do anything sneaky.
And that's particularly frustrating when
it is well known that, for instance, and I'm just going to say it, that, Jack, you've been working on a driveway for weeks without a permit until you finally got one.
You were doing work on that before you got a permit.
You have a building that has had things that have been out of code over the years, and that's okay.
Well, be careful what you said because that's not fact.
Okay, okay. I'm not going to argue that.
Okay.
But things like that happen, and it's, I don't know if it's the good old boys club or what it is,
but I would like a clear answer as to why it's fair, if that's the reason,
that we only get half back of something we completely wasted all that money on because the town gave us a permit.
The town gave us permission to do it.
So I'm hoping to get an answer.
Before anybody from the board speaks, I just want to make it clear that I'm not speaking.
I'm recusing.
Just like I did for every one of the non-publics that happened through this, the whole board can contest.
And the minutes will show that I left the building for every minute, every meeting that this happened.
You did.
So I am recusing myself, and I will let the board do or whatever they want to right now.
Gary, you sent them a letter, correct, stating our feelings on whatever.
I don't have a letter?
No, I did not send a letter.
I had a conversation.
But I just asked that she had sent a letter.
I sent an original letter about half, but the second, right.
The second time they came in to meet with you guys, there was no letter sent the second time.
You just verbally told them what our decision was.
Yeah, that you were standing by half and that you weren't going to meet with them again.
That was our decision.
How come, why can't I have a reason, there must be a reason why.
there has to be a reason why that was the decision.
Point of water, it's non-public.
Even though you've spoken about it in public, we cannot speak about it in public.
But this is my issue that I'm bringing to the board.
This is...
Can't speak about it in public.
So can I go back to non-public then?
I feel like I deserve an answer.
We deserve an answer.
We wasted a bunch of money because the town made a mistake.
You got to.
Not you guys, but the town made a mistake.
And now I have to lose out $4,000 because of it.
I deserve at least an explanation because that doesn't make any sense to me.
So if you guys are going to say you can't talk to me today, then I'm going to ask again,
can I come back in non-public so you can give me an answer.
I at least deserve an answer.
Can I ask a point-of-order question?
I know in the past we've been.
I've had other situations not like this, but situations that were non-public and handled non-public,
but then the party that was involved in the non-public requested it become public,
so that moved the entire conversation to public.
It made it all public at that point.
And it sounds to me like this isn't much different than that.
That's true.
But we need to have another board member.
I remember here who voted the same.
I'm not speaking about it in public unless it's all four people are here.
And she makes a request the next time all four people are here in, it's being recorded
that she's asking for it to come into non-public, from non-public.
Can we reschedule it until next week, come back in when everybody's here?
That's fine. I'll do that.
I'm just hoping that I don't.
come back next week and everybody's here, and then I'm told, again, nobody will talk to me.
You'll get an answer to the case.
Okay.
I think something that the whole town of Winchester needs to understand, that's why we're now
doing it public, is anybody in the town of Winchester, that plans on doing anything, getting
a permit, doing it legally, not behind somebody's back, and, well, we'll beg for forgiveness later.
Do it legally.
The town okays it.
You start a project, don't be shocked.
If you lose your permit and lose all your money, you got into it,
because the town doesn't uphold their own policies.
Their own judgment, the town does not uphold anything.
You guys sit up here and you, somebody's got an abatement for this.
Somebody, yep, yep, approve, approve, approve, yep, okay, it's all okay.
We're asking for our money back publicly.
So the whole town, we tried doing it non-public to keep it hush-hry, we'll just get it done with.
Apparently, this board doesn't believe that we should be paid back 100% of the money we have into it.
For what reason?
I have no idea.
And when we get the reason, it will be brought back up in public so the whole town understands this.
This is a very frustrating thing.
We tried to do it legally.
We did it by the book.
Ask the right people.
We got the permit.
We started the project.
put money into it, and then all of a sudden, we can't do it.
Okay, we stopped.
Can we be reimbursed now that you guys took it back?
Well, half is okay.
What's up with that?
So for the town's people that are listening, if you're planning on applying for a permit, don't do it because a town doesn't know what the hell they're doing.
That's what I've got to say.
It's very frustrating.
I'm disappointed with this board.
I'm disappointed with the people.
Downstairs, I'm disappointed with everybody in this town as far as this situation goes.
It's uncalled for, whatever, you guys made you ruin, but we should be reimbursed.
Because none of it, zero of this had anything to do with us.
All the town of Winchester.
So when we got a response, whether it's public or non-public, I don't care.
It will be brought up in public so the public can finish hearing it.
Because this is ridiculous.
I'll bring it back up.
next week when everybody's here. Thank you.
Thank you.
Is there any other public comment?
I'm assuming you guys didn't have anything else to discuss on that.
Sorry for moving on the panel.
Okay.
No other public comment?
I'll entertain a motion to adjourn.
Second.
All those in favor?
Aye.
Just standing up, both my knees cracked.