Essex Board of Selectmen, Oct. 5, 2026

So we are meeting on the 8th. I'm going to call the meeting of the Essex board of selection to order at 6 o'clock, 601. And just a reminder that the meeting is being broadcast and recorded. We'll start with Brendan's report. You're on, Brendan. So in my report, I did indicate that I've I've been working with the fire chief on a new position description for the full-time fire chief.

He and I traded comments over the weekend and we think we've got a point of agreement, but he'd like to take it back to the board of fire engineers one more time. And this, I guess, Annie, you and I will consider this the first reading of the document. And at your next meeting on the 19th, it's really critical that we get it approved so that we can start the process, cuz it's gonna take all that time in order to get somebody on board. Now, two of the board members are here, and it might be advantageous to discuss this if they have any questions. The draft that we had a point of agreement on is before you.

And Christian is here in case you have questions, or Christian, in case you have any additional comments or questions. And I take it you're gonna bring it back to the board of engineers one more time after

the fire company looks at it, or just after you have had a chance to look at it again? Yeah. You can come up if you two wanna come to the table. It's an extra mic here, but not there. Yeah, so you take that. You can take one of these. And then, Nick can take one of these. Yeah, Nick, can you give him that mic, that Mr. Donahue. This one. We have two, we have two available. We're good. And you can go that way for the camera. Take this.

All right, thanks for coming. What comments or questions or concerns might you have at this point? I think everything was on my end was covered this morning. And then you submitted that out to the board of engineers with the updated version. So I know everyone's been in work all day, so updates may not have been. Right, and we were anticipating approving it. The board was anticipating approving it tonight. But given the fact that we didn't have a chance to really do the comments until over this weekend and early this morning,

we'll still be on track if the board doesn't approve it until the 19th. Yeah, and we can bring this more firmed up version back to the fire company. They won't meet before then, but at least we can circulate it via email. Yeah, we don't have any time after that. No, that's fine. I think the people who did make comments, the comments were integrated into the version 3.3, I think we're at now. Do the board members have any comments or questions right now? Obviously, you'll have time to review this between now and the meeting where you hopefully will vote to approve it. And you can certainly come to me in the intervening time period if you have questions. I'm wondering if we should try to narrow down the residence location a little bit more.

Yes, there were two things that I pointed out in my email earlier today. What kind of constraints do you put around how far away the person can live? And the other one. And it should maybe start with should and not will. Yes, which groups, associations should the position description indicate that the chief should have participated in,

at least initially, without additional permission from the selectmen. So on the first point, Peter, there was talk at the last meeting of 15 miles as the crow flies.

But the chief pointed out to me that that could mean that you're in New Hampshire, and it's going to take you 45 minutes to get to Essex because of the way it works around here. And that's how it works for Ipswich at least, and other communities that might be. And I'm wondering, you can set out some guidelines for people to look at for if somebody has to relocate or if they already live there and maybe would want to relocate. I'm thinking, what X number of miles, and you could rule out cities from the public safety building,

a radius around it for X number of miles, whatever it would be. And except for these communities, if you think it's too convoluted to get here. But it should be a should and not a will, because if we find somebody who lives in Southern Maine who is really good, we might want to make an exemption.

Right, you don't necessarily want to toss out a good candidate. Right now it says we'll live within Essex or in a budding community, or within a reasonable response time as determined by the board of selectmen. If you leave that alone, you have that flexibility. But don't you want to give somebody an opportunity if they're thinking of applying? What does that mean for me? Because for me it might mean Southern New Hampshire for somebody for another applicant it may not be that far and we might lose that person. So if you change will to should and leave the language the same, is that opening up enough, do you think? I think so, yeah, I think that might work. So that's something I could do. Could location be a determining factor?

So say you had two candidates, but one of them lived in Southern Maine. Could you say, well, we like the other person because that person lives closer. You cannot say that. What you could say is you're the most qualified, but we're going to require you to live closer because that's a requirement of the job.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, so you couldn't. If you were both equally qualified, maybe, but you certainly couldn't say, well, this person is more qualified, but we're going to the second person because they live closer.

You would have to give the first person an opportunity to either substantiate that it won't be an issue or move.

I mean, there could be somebody from Chicago who wants this job. You don't know. And they might want to move and exactly give them some guidelines. Exactly. What is a community they could afford to live in? I would say this. You should really give it some thought. I'm going to, for now, in the draft, I'm going to go with should, but we need to nail this down. And your professional experience is what is reasonable in that situation, would you think?

Depends on the time of day, I'm sure. Yeah, and I think Nick talked about it last week or when we met last. I think we have to understand kind of what this means, right? So 15 miles away, 45 minutes, we want this person to be a working chief, so the expectation is they're coming back to calls.

There's not many calls that they're going to be effective 45 minutes away. So I'm not saying that it should be a hard and fast rule. I'm just saying that that's going to be a factor when you guys are kind of determining that. So I live seven-ish minutes away. And sometimes by the time I get there, the genie's out of the bottle. So I think that is definitely a factor. So I think the 15 miles as the crow flies is probably a standard chief Parisian, Ipswich, in Salem, New Hampshire.

He has someone in town. He's got a deputy chief in town who covers the evenings and weekends. So we can look at a model like that as well, if that's what the most qualified candidate is indeed further away.

We can adapt and overcome. It's not end of the world stuff. What I can do, since I'm sure this isn't the first time this has come up, I can talk to labor counsel. Because I'm quite sure that there may even be case law on this. It gets kind of contentious. So I'll look at that. And you'll probably get questions from some potential applicants saying, what is reasonable? Oh, that's my other question, too. And the second part of that question is, what do you think it does when fielding candidates? Do you think people will say, oh, no, I can't make that work. I'm not going to reply. They won't even apply. And I don't want to discourage good applicants. Right. I just want to ask about the deputy chief position.

I'm sorry. The question about this deputy chief that Ipswich has, is that a salaried position?

So do you mean like, I'm just thinking about, well, if we think that that's a backup plan, it isn't really, because we don't have the money.

Autonastics, no. And I'm not saying that that person would have to be salaried, but you could look at doing a rote, like a lot of call departments will do rotations with officers to make sure that there's an officer on call, committed to going to all calls during that window that they're on call. So you could look to do something like that. So you do have the redundancy, and you kind of get the chief some time away or time off. Yeah. Could that be a negotiating point? You do live some distance, so you would have to appoint someone to be a deputy that- Well, you don't necessarily have the money to put an officer on nights and weekends.

So I think it's going to be a case by case discussion of what is being asked, but let me get Labor Council's opinion on that.

Thank you. And then the other point was there were some associations listed. I spoke with Chief Hassell earlier today, and we're in agreement about being a member of the Essex County Fire Chiefs Association,

the Massachusetts Association of Fire Chiefs, and the NFPA, which is what? National Fire Protection Association? Is that right? But there were two others, and the New England Fire Chiefs Association is actually the local arm of the NFPA.

And they sometimes have training in Connecticut? Is that- Yeah, they hold expos in that. One big one you're going to want to look at is what's called FCAM, Fire Chiefs Association of Massachusetts. Yep. I'm a member of it. Most of your local chiefs are members of- Is that the same as Massachusetts Association of Fire Chiefs, or are they two different things? I can't speak to that one, I'm not sure. Which one is preferable? Because FCAM is under international, right? So I think, I don't know, there is a- If it's not on there, it doesn't preclude them from going on- It doesn't, and that's why it says other associations that may be authorized. The issue is, if you're going to be a member that's actively participating, and they have a conference in Denver,

we're not necessarily going to send the Fire Chief from Essex to Denver. Unless there's some really important reason, then they would come to us and- Yeah, I mean, traveling to Connecticut and spending a couple nights, okay, sure. But I'm just trying to bring this issue up now, so that we don't put something in there, and then, well, I'm bound to go to this, I'm required to go- Yeah. Maybe that is in the negotiation process, right? Or, you know- That can be in a contract. Right, so you could put some sort of language on the job description saying, Board of Selectmen is interested in hearing, summarize this, please. But Board of Selectmen's interested in hearing what committees you feel valuable and you've been a part of in the past.

I'll look at that, and Labor Council might have an idea of that, too. Thank you. Okay, so did you guys have anything else, or do you need more time to absorb it, right? Probably need a little bit more time to absorb it. And it would be great, I would like to have any comments by the end of this week, so that when we get ready for the next one, everybody can already have an understanding of what is on the table,

because it really needs to go next time, okay? It's very close to being kind, I think. Yeah, it is, it is. And I appreciate the fact that you- I mean, at first, I did think it was lengthy, but it is- sometimes repetition is good. We're the government, we're here to help. And reinforcing issues- some things are important, so I accept your-

Bureaucracy? Your verbosity, how's that? All right, very good. So then we also had on the agenda, while these guys are here, the search process for the full-time chief, because that's going to step into gear a little bit after the 19th of October. And what was envisioned is this process that was used to hire the most recent police chief, which was we had a preliminary screening committee. A quorum of a board that's participating in the process cannot be on the PSC, so we could have one board of fire engineers member, one board of selectmen member. And then you could also bring on maybe somebody from the fire company, I would be on it. But start thinking about ideas of who you would want to have on that.

I don't think I'd want to have any more than five. So selectmen, board of engineers, me, that's four. Fire company, five, and then maybe one of your higher officers that's not on the board of engineers, something to that effect. We also had a silent observer come in who was a fire chief from another community,

and they watched all the interviews and just sat there so that they could give us- Police chief. I'm sorry, police chief during the police process. And they could give us a perspective as well, which was very helpful, ended up- I think that's huge. And I would, I know I don't have really a say in it, but I think that person should not necessarily be a silent member.

I think they should actually have some say. That's a possibility. And then someone that has experience in managing both a call and a full time. So someone like a Chief McNeely, Chief Parisi, maybe you could grab retired Chief Ray Brin- 100%. Yeah. Like grab those guys. Guys that- All those people? Oh, we know them all personally. Chief Cavant, like guys that have a ton of experience with this because they know what they're looking for. They know what they're looking for. Yeah. So that's- What about a member of- I know some places, again, not to Money in the Waters, but a member of the community that has some- I know Gloucester just did it with the recent police chief.

They actually had five people, five members from the community. We're not going to get that big, I can tell you that. No, not that many, but maybe one. Maybe. Just not just on the- Not going to be the Senate, you know. So, all right. So everybody should consider that because when you approve the position description, there's going to be a time when you should say, this is how we want to do it. So, okay. So we pull together whoever's on this committee. The committee meets privately in executive session because people come in, could have a day job. And until they're a finalist, they may not want their name out there. And then the job of the preliminary screening committee would be to, first of all,

weed out people that you're not even going to interview. And then you'll have interview sessions where you do interview some people. And then you eventually come to the selectman with three names. That's how we're looking to do it. So it's preliminary screening. They make the recommendation of three candidates that we ultimately- And the selectman will be copied on all incoming material. Okay, so you'll already know, and you could come to me and say, well, John Jones, he never got an interview, why not? Because maybe there's something you want to say about it and inject about it. Just so I understand that there's no separate committee after the preliminary screening. Correct. It will be then the board of selectmen discussing the candidates in open session.

Thank you. How long did that take with the police? Was it like three months or something? Yeah, I would say. And even the interviews, we kind of spread those out. We did like two in a night or two in a morning, depending on what we did. And we got through everybody. And then there'll be a period, so there'll be probably those three people who come before the selectman. The selectman will choose. Then we go into a contract negotiation phase. And then if you can reach a contract, that person has to give notice. And then they'll hopefully be ready for February 1st. So can you talk us through the process? Because I was surprised that you could advertise the job before it went to town. We can do that because in the advertisement, we're going to say this is an expected vacancy

subject to action that will be taken by the town meeting in November. Okay. And then you're disclosing. What you can't do is start looking for someone who already works for us, who hasn't given their notice. And you're up. You can't do that. But this is a position that nobody's in. That would be awful. Well, exactly. This is a position that nobody is in. I see. And so you're not upending anyone who already works for us. And you're fully disclosing, hey, if you want to spend time on this, there's a chance that it might fall apart. So that's how we would handle that. And then do you do a rolling thing? So candidate A and B submit a resume.

You interview them. And then you have a couple of weeks. We do issue a deadline. But you could start doing interviews prior to the deadline. What do you recommend? I would recommend getting everything because you don't know the whole pool. And so once we get into this process, we're going to set a deadline whereby everybody's going to have to put their stuff in. And then you can weed out. That works better. And I think we have time to do it as long as we get started. So in terms of expectations, you two should think, who among us wants to do that? I think it could be any one of us. I don't think there's a reason. And same for the board of engineers. But when should they have a person chosen?

Prior to the 19th. So we know. Yeah. OK. So we have to put that on one of your agendas. Who's going to be on the pre-screening thing? October 19th. Before October 19th. Next Lekman's meeting. We are dealing with a member that has had to step away due to family issues. Are we going to be able to do that? He said he would. We can at least reach out and see. I mean, there's something extenuating to let me know. But what we want to try to do is you approve the position description. And then you have the ingredients to start setting up the advertisement, talking to the group that's involved. All of that has to just keep flowing from this. So the fire company should also choose a representative to sit on.

OK. So do you want to go over that now? Who do you want on the committee? We have to do it by the 19th. I think we should. Well, I mean. You have to arrive at the list. You should be on it by then. You don't have to arrive on it now. OK. What do you guys want to do? We can wait till the 19th and talk about it. Because the fire company, if you say. I won't be here on the 19th. Is that the next? Is that two weeks? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think that the chair should be it, frankly. I don't have any strong feelings about it. I mean, either one of you wants to do it. I'd be willing to serve if you're not.

I'm kind of feeling like the building committee thing is a lot of work right now. The school building project. And getting that passed is going to take a lot of time. So if you feel good about it. I'd be happy to. I'm fine with it. I just don't want to agree to it. Because I know it's a lot of meetings and stuff. And it's going to be tough for me to attend them all. And then my position is useless. So do you want to vote on that? Because then that's done. And we'll go and talk about the next person. OK. Sure. Sure. Thank you. So motion to have Dex sit on the pre-screening. Preliminary screening committee. Preliminary screening. Committee. Committee. For the new fire chief.

So moved. Second. All those in favor? Aye. Then I think you've all agreed you want somebody from the fire company. Someone from the board of engineers. And they're going to say that they're next to me. Board of engineers. Then I was thinking maybe a fire officer that's not on the board of fire engineers. Is that of value? I mean, every officer is outside of the board of engineers is in the fire company. Right. We can certainly have two people from the fire company, essentially. Or you can do one and have it as an officer. Does it need to be odd? Odd number. Does it need to be an odd number? I think it's better. And then you should consider what Nick was saying. Do you want to find a fire chief that's

an active participant? Or somebody that's silent? Well, right now you have one, two, three. Because the fire company is and an officer is the same thing.

Yeah. Me. Oh, yeah. So that's what I thought. I thought it was like he's in on this, right? We're counting it. I'm in on it. I don't think the observer should be. Yeah, I think they should only be. They could ask questions, but they can't vote. How's that? Because they would be. They can advise us. I was going to say I'd appreciate their feedback, whether or not they get a vote. I'm up in the air about. See, they can do that when the person leaves the room. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I think most. If they had questions, too, they'd probably have a different perspective that could. And I'm not sure that it matters if it's an odd number. Because I think we want a strong majority. You want to come to consensus.

Not just two to three or something. Yes. You want four to one or five to nothing. We're going to have predefined questions. We did a lot of work for the chief, a police chief. We'll do the same. But they're all the same for everybody. Yes. Yes. Yes. OK. And then my only question for you, Nick, is if you choose somebody who is a chief from another town, what if one of their people wants to apply for the job? Like that would be the only. That would be a you question. You could do a retired chief. Yeah. That's what we did with the police. Yes. Chief Burnett just retired. He just retired. Chief Burnett from Hamilton just retired. He's right next door. He's got. They could do it. I could text him.

Yeah. I'd say, yeah. And he's educated. He ran a very small career force with a call force, Hamilton three or something. Right. And he was a call firefighter for that. I mean, he came up through the right. He understands the system. He knows. I think that's about it. So yeah, those four plus a consulting chief, not a voting chief. And then do you want to have a resident? I was wondering about maybe Josh from FinCon. Oh, that'd be good. OK. I can reach out. Perfect. Good. So thank you. There's a couple of other things. I think, Christian, you had an idea of if the town meeting votes to accept 42A,

either the board of engineers could continue until January 31 and the new chief takes over February 1. Or your idea would be? So the thought process is where the current model is cumbersome with posting meetings. We could look at making the dissolving of the board of engineers effective at that date and have the select board appoint an interim chief, assistant chief, deputy chief, whatever that structure looks like, allowing us to cover the gap from that point to when we get someone in.

I think in an ideal world, we're going to be ready to go by sometime in January or February 1 at the latest. The reality is we may get no interest. Or I shouldn't say the reality. There's a possibility of no interest in the position. And then we're looking. Our search goes on to three, four, five, six months. It will be more effective for the department to have someone in the role without the cumbersome nature of the board of engineers. So the interim chief would just go for however long it took. Yeah. And that's better. Well, OK. So it wouldn't be similar model to what we have now, right? It wouldn't be an interim in my brain.

It wouldn't be an interim full-time chief. It would still be an interim call situation. So you're not blowing through budget or anything like that. So it wouldn't be like you had some kind of full-time presence there if you decided that you wanted it to switch to just a chief right away the day after town meeting votes. On the other hand, the town meeting vote, and speaking with labor counsel, has to have some kind of, this is when it's going to happen. So if you do it the way it's set up right now, and you're going to review it tonight, it starts on February 1. You could keep the board of engineers in place, and then if you find that it goes on and on and on,

because we didn't get anyone, maybe you don't want to do an interim chief until then, even in a part-time capacity. So those are your options. So here are my questions about this. What does the law require? Because I thought it was an either-or. Either you have a board of engineers, or you have 42A or 42. Right, but 42A doesn't say that the selectmen shall appoint a full-time chief. Okay. It says you shall appoint a chief. Here's my, I've been thinking about this since we talked. I'm worried that it's going to be more fuss.

Do you know what I mean? Like how do you structure that? How do you, what are the experts? I mean, right now we have that. We have a chief, and we have a board of engineers. And then this would be a chief with no compadres at the table.

Right, and the accountability for that person, even if it's part-time, would switch directly to being under the board of selectmen. Yeah, I don't want that job. And you could certainly look at keeping it very similar to, like from a structure standpoint, Nick, myself, Ernie, can all remain in deputy chief positions. You're just dissolving the board of engineers, the voting process, the kind of need to have meetings that are posted, because that is one of the big barriers to kind of looking for it.

Is that, it's just the kind of administrative aspects of this that are just a pain in the neck? It's only two and a half months. Yeah, could you have the admin come up and attend the board of engineering, and take notes, or? I think just given the nature, like we can't, so we've got to, we can make decisions once a week, right? So running a department, that's 24-7. Being able to meet once a week for an hour in the morning is not awesome. So I think really kind of opening up the ability to just have a conversation like you would with anyone at work off the cuff when, you know, addressing issues as they arise is pretty important.

And yes, it's only two and a half months, but we also have a lot of work to get done in two and a half months. So it's not like we can just sit back and kind of relax. We kind of want to get this person set up for best case scenario when they come in and they can hit the ground running. You'll be talking about the warrant later, and you're going to have to address it directly. You're not signing the warrant until the 19th, of course, but the warrant will prescribe what date that takes effect. So maybe you want to consider that. Also, we talked last time about whether the board of engineers had an idea on going with one weekday shift versus finding economies in other areas

so that you can keep with the full-time chief the two weekday shifts. Have you had a chance to talk about that as a board?

Yes, so we have had a, we met, we had a lot of back and forth. We met with Ernie, took the initiative to meet with Fire Company. The Fire Company certainly has carved out some ways for the position to get funded. I received an email from a member of the company saying they were working on that. But of course, the end of the day, it's the board of engineers that will have to say whether you want to go that way or the other way. Yeah, I think if we can give you a final answer by the next meeting, we'll be in good shape to do that. I think we're real close, but just want to make sure

that everyone, given everything that's kind of going on right now. But it will be something, something to get the 50 grand. I think we have all seen ways that the math can work. So we just need to make sure that everyone's on the same page. Everyone's on the same page as far as what's being given up and kind of training and everything else. As long as everyone's good with that, I think we can do it. Okay, I think it's doable. And you had a conversation at the Fire Company about this or no. Yeah, speak to that. Yeah, so Deputy Chief Niebuhrle met with them. And we've had some follow up conversations as well. They had some questions.

They got answers, I believe, to their questions from BZ. And they are, I think they're feeling confident, at least the feedback that I've gotten is that they're feeling confident that the money can be found and they kind of had a model. The other thing we're looking at is the ambulance revenue and kind of increasing that and what that looks like. So that's also a work in progress with reports coming. May I ask you one question about that? Ambulance revenue. I mean, I've heard this a couple times that there's some room there that you could possibly raise something to generate dollars. What is it you're raising? And then it can only go to capital or?

Operating or what is, can someone just, I'm sorry to ask. So the ambulance, so when the fire department or the ambulance bills a patient and it goes to their insurance, the insurance company will pay back a defined amount of money and it goes into the ambulance fund. That fund can be used to purchase capital items, but it can also be used to offset the budget. And we do both. In the ambulance line. Right, correct. But not in the fire. Right, correct. I just wanted to clarify that. So if the insurance company doesn't want to bill any more than the patient is on the hook for that increase? No, so ambulance billing is a little,

it's regulated certainly, a little confusing, but basically depending on your payer source, whether it be Medicare, Medicaid, or private insurance, i.e. your Harvard Pilgrims and stuff like that, you're never gonna be able to effect change on Medicare, Medicaid. Those are set by the state or the feds. And there's no, basically what you're talking about is kind of balance billing. There's no lever for balance billing on Medicare, Medicaid. So we can bill them $10,000, not that that's our right. And they would give us $250 and say thank you and please don't contact the patient again. Now with private insurers, we don't have contracts with them because we are a municipality, so we don't need to have a contract with them.

So we can say hey, we're billing you 1500, we're now gonna bill you 1700, and they would pay that amount. So the insurance has to cover it? Correct, yeah, long way of saying that. And you're trying to study what the Delta is between what the max is and what we're billing, is that what we're doing? Right, and we have a third party billing service and the fire department or the ambulance department doesn't go out and bill insurance companies or people, patients. We have a third party ambulance billing company that the selectmen approve a contract with each year. So if revenue could be increased, then when town meeting votes in May,

and there's always a portion of the ambulance budget that is defrayed, operating ambulance budget, that is defrayed by the ambulance money, you could potentially increase that, and if you increase that and knock off something that the general fund was supporting within the ambulance department, because the ambulance fund does not fund the entire ambulance department, then you're gonna recognize the savings there. Thank you. What else while you guys are here, because they've got a lot of other stuff. Is that everything you wanted to address? Pretty much it, unless you guys have any questions. You might wanna run before we open my mouth again, thank you.

Thanks. This isn't his first rodeo. Yeah, thanks so much. Thank you. So continuing on that particular agenda item, it was search for fire chief, but also new town accountant. That process has been done several times in the past. It's very hard to get a decent applicant pool for town accountants, especially at the salary that we can afford to pay. We've already opened up that position, because we do have a letter of resignation from the current town accountant, and we're starting to field resumes. Resumes, we've got one in so far. Generally there, there's so few,

you can pretty much weed it down to three or four or five. And those people come before the whole board of selectmen, you ask questions, just like we did before. So I don't know if you had any other ideas there, but that's how it was done before, and it seemed to work well. How many do we need? You can do it based on one. It means no law against it, but it's generally better to have some people to compare against. Yeah, okay. And we don't have an anticipated data vacancy, do we? We do, sometime early in 2027, probably January sometime. But we should be looking now quickly. Yes, and it's already out on the street. Okay.

Where does one usually field those candidates? Through the Massachusetts Municipal Association. So it's already listed on there. Digital job board, as well as gonna come out in the next printed edition, and the town accountant can put it on a listserv that the town accountant community participates in. And that's what we've done so far. We wanna see if we get those people with municipal experience before we broaden it too much. Yeah. Are there typically other fields that town accountants could come from? Is there like another pipeline that might generate a town accountant that's not municipal? Certainly you need to have accounting experience, but doesn't have to be municipal. And our current town accountant came from the IRS,

wasn't municipal, but there's a learning curve. We benefited because the position was paid less until she learned the municipal side. But also there was a lot of effort put in by people that were already here to get her to that point. So I would say that it would be difficult to look at another pool of people that weren't at least trained accountants. Right. Because even if you're a trained accountant, you have a lot to learn about municipal accounts. But at least in Michaela's situation, she came from like public accounting. Yes, federal. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Okay. The downtown Essex visioning meeting, two of you were able to participate. I know Annie, you were at a school meeting that night.

I summarized in my report some of the things that were covered. I don't know if you had any questions. I mean, there were, interestingly, there were like, let's see, one, two, three, four. There were five matters that each of the discussion groups considered. There were four discussion groups, and there were a lot of common themes that came up among the four groups. And there were also some things that were unique to the group. All of those things have been taken down by the town planner. The town planner's gonna provide everyone with a summary. And then from there, her suggestion will be, let's start to look at how we might fund

some of the less complex things using grants. So there's a plan to take this from visioning to activity. Thank you. Okay. Did you wanna report on that or? I thought it went very well. I was pleased with the- A lot of good suggestions. 86 survey responses and I think like 35 attendees. So it was a good. Did we get the survey results? Yeah. Yeah, they were sent out. Do you want me to send them again? Nope, nope, I can find them. Next is a summary of the Essex Elementary Replacement Project costs. This was written up in my report.

And if the public is watching this recording, the figures will be there. The total cost that the school building committee arrived at after going through all considerations and adjustments is 95,351,985. Funding from the Massachusetts School Building Authority will cover 20,405,325. That happens to be 20 point, I believe it ended up 4%. Yeah. So then the remaining amount- 21.4. 21.4. The remaining amount- Sorry, it's right here. Yes. It's working right out of there.

That's okay. It's working right out of there. Would be 74,946,660. That would then be split between the two communities in accordance with the regional agreement. And it breaks down to, we ran the math on it. It breaks down to 66.64% Manchester, 33.36% Essex, which for Essex would be 24,998,728.

Interestingly, the town meeting article, which you'll be talking about soon, has to list the full amount as if we're not gonna get a subsidy. So that would be the 95 million, our percentage on that, and not our percentage on the subsidized amount. Okay. So where does the MSBA money go? Does that go to each town and they contributed- It goes to the district. It goes to the district, correct. Yeah, because the district is actually borrowing the money. Yeah. Is actually, yeah, they're doing the borrowing, we're doing the repayment. Yeah. And so any subsidy goes to defray the cost of the project for the district. So somebody sent me the answer to

how does the reimbursement affect each town? And I was like, I don't really usually think about it that way, I think of it as total project cost, total reimbursement, and then divided. Is that- Yes, because it's not provided in any ratio. This amount will defray the Essex cost. Because the district is doing the project and the district is benefiting, so the district is getting the subsidy. So it should come up here. It does. Yeah, okay. And then the remainder is apportioned to the two communities. So that's 74, 946, 660 is what is apportioned. Yeah, just some notes.

The estimates for the project are for things going out to bid in 2028. There are budget drivers that are having an impact on the cost, and there's significant requirements from the MSBA about building code and is, I guess, markedly different than it was from Memorial School as things become more and more efficient. Tariff's on steel. I think they get steel from Canada here in the Northeast, so there's 100% tariff on steel. Anything with petroleum in it, any petroleum product also is expensive.

I don't know if anything will change between now and 2028, but it's, all of these factors are part of this very big cost. Big cost. Yeah. Are there any other questions on those figures at this time? You're gonna get a chance this week on the 8th after the community meeting that the School Building Committee is hosting and the district is hosting to talk to everybody on the team if you wanna dig into it a little deeper. So moving to the fall town meeting warrant. Well, let me just, let's just reiterate that. There's a community meeting at six o'clock on Thursday.

And then. Here, in this room. At the school. At the school. Oh, at six elementary, right. At the school. And then afterwards, there'll be an opportunity for finance committee and board of segment to ask questions about specifics. Yeah. Okay? Yep. I just have one quick basic question that I feel like I should know. Once this is voted on, is that price locked in? The price. Or the cost or whatever. Price is a creature of what the bids come in at. You're hoping that the team that estimated the cost put enough escalation and did a good job. As you've seen in surrounding communities, sometimes town meeting approves a certain amount, go out for bid and it comes in higher and you have to go back to town meeting.

That has not. Or you keep value engineering. Yep. For the other two school projects in this district, it had not been a problem. Okay. And just one other thing, because we've been talking about this a lot. If you have your estimate, you have a construction management team, they're all watching to see when is a good time to bid on this stuff. So they're gonna strike when prices are better. So that's all kind of a strategy that they employ to try to make sure that they lock in on when pricing is better. Even down to the level of knowing what some of the big firms,

where they are in their builds, because if they're coming off a build, they're gonna be hungry for the next one. If they're not, they're gonna throw a big number at it. And hope to get it. Yeah. So that's kind of. Specific consultants that do, contractors that do this kind of school building work. And everybody knows who's doing what and when. Yeah. Okay. With respect to the town meeting warrant, the first six articles are now on the warrant. They are, there'll be one more review by town council here, and there'll be a public hearing on this. The planning board will do a public hearing on these six articles. I don't know if you had any particular questions about these. I did. Okay. So I had a question about the purpose and intent,

or is that what it's called? In the planning board articles. Remember, there was some criticism of the OSRD process, because the purpose and intent said something, and then the law said something else. And people were saying, well, the purpose and intent. Which is also part of the by-law. They were both part of the same by-law. So I guess my question is, is that opening us up to challenges by putting the purpose and intent, is it better to just have a clean by-law, or is that always? You mean specifically with one of these six proposals? Yeah. Which one? I think it was the inclusion, might've been the inclusionary zoning. Oh, okay.

Yeah, purpose and intent, six-6.6.1. Yeah, and I just wondered, is that, the purpose and intent is supposed to be kind of fuzzy, and if you look at the second paragraph, and this is maybe a question I should ask of Lisa. And also the data centers. The purpose of this by-law is to temporarily prohibit the development of data centers in town. And I just wonder, when you talk to counsel, is it important to contextualize this stuff, or always, or is there some? Yeah, you wanna make sure that it harmonizes with whatever else is in the by-law already, especially overarching at the beginning of the zoning by-law.

Yeah, and I just wondered, is it always, is it a common practice to always put the purpose and intent in there? I will find out. Because sometimes I feel like, just say it, the by-law is the by-law. Let the language there speak to it, and so, that's all. All right. And then, sorry. Go ahead, go ahead. Mine was on exclusionary zoning. Oh, God, I can't even read my handwriting.

What about how, you go ahead, I can't read my handwriting. So on the financials where recommended by, I'm wondering if, to me, recommended means they're the one who put it forward, and we're talking about supported by, right? Right, so, I mean, or something, some other wording, because if somebody's not on it, then people might think, oh, the board of selectmen didn't recommend that one. So, yeah, if they're not on it. So what you're saying is? Something that makes it clear that it's supported by these. You could say, yeah.

But if you use supported, that might mean that some people didn't support it. Maybe championed by, because a champion is someone that's above all others. I don't know, it's a good point. Is it meant more to be? Proposed by? Well, there's obviously the planning board proposes the planning board articles, but did 5 7ths of the planning board support this article going on? Is it unanimous support? Innisfree versus non-uninearly. So that's the thing. If your board votes for something, then your board supports it. I don't think you can split hairs. You can list it though. There's many other warrants that list it. I don't like that idea. I think when your board endorses something, then that's.

Well, I only feel like a board endorses something when it's unanimous. So there's a whole bunch without the selectmen. Does that mean that the selectmen didn't support? No, it doesn't. So somebody might think that. And see, this is new for us. This whole column's new. So it's important to really think about it like you are. Yeah, I think a good example is Ipswich with their electric light board that they just did at their last town meeting. This light board did not support that article. But I don't think they have a board of public works. But whoever did it, might have been a citizen's petition. I don't remember. So the board already considered putting it in the warrant. We're not doing that because you won't have the data.

So now we're talking about, well, can we list it somehow on a handy sheet? If you start getting a little bit more complicated, you need a separate sheet. I'm not saying you can't do that. Maybe we should say not supported by and leave it blank unless somebody didn't support it. That way, it's assumed that everybody else that's pertinent supported it. But none of these are going to go unsupported. There's nobody here who's not supporting any of these, or we don't know. The finance committee did not support in the way that we mean the override article last year.

And the language that they chose to explain it was very, very threatening the needle kind of thing. So when someone says you support that, to me that says we voted yes in support, we think you should vote for this. So do we have to say what does support mean? Well, I don't know. I mean, like public works equipment, board of public works, and the finance committee supported it. The board of selectments is not on there. And by the way, these are just filled in as examples because we don't even know what the fallout is yet. But you're right. So now somebody says, well, the selectment didn't don't like this or whatever.

We need to figure that out. Maybe think of some ideas. Remember, this sheet doesn't come out until right before. And so you could talk about it on the 19th and on the 2nd. And so give that some thought, I would say. I figured out what I wrote about the inclusionary zoning. So we have some properties in town that are, I think, a cluster of homes on one leased piece of property. And I think there are only a maximum of three in that. Well, you're saying, OK, Canelo Point is a cluster of homes on one property leased out into lease units. Are you talking about three, not leased,

three houses on one property with one common owner? Yes. Yes. We do have that, and they can be up to three. Yeah, but there cannot be an ex. So this is saying six or more is when this kicks in. Both six that are already there. If there are three there and you want to put six more, it's a nine, that's when it kicks in. If you only put five, then it doesn't kick in. But if you put three more, then it would. I don't know. I think it's more than what's existing. You couldn't have more than three principal uses on a lot. What you could do is have a lot that had three houses on it, a big lot, take all of those down, and put up one multi-unit apartment house, for example.

There you would have your six plus, and you would have to include. And there's going to be a hearing on this, so we can hash that out. I think it's, though, isn't it? If you say you have a two family on it, you tear it down, and you put a six family on it, you're OK. Because you haven't increased it by six. You've only increased it to six. So you've only increased it by four. So you don't have to deal with this. Yeah. And if it's vacant, then you can stop at a certain point and not have to deal with it. But once you cross that line, you do have to deal with it. So then beyond that, we're over to Article 7, which is the school replacement article. The version you have had the $24 million, but we were told the town has to appropriate the full amount,

even though the subsidy is very much counted on. And that will be explained to the town meeting. I'm going to add a note to the explanation of the article that talks about that. And I'm going to have town council review that. Thank you. Article 8, adoption of the fire chief statute, the chair asked whether we could say firefighters instead of firemen. We certainly can. It says firemen because town council parroted what it still says in the law. They haven't updated the term. He also suggested that we don't have to say the so-called weak chief statute. It can just say the adoption of section 42A supersedes section

45 and allows the selectmen to hire. We don't need to have that phrase. Right. And then toward the end, he says section 42A also allows the selectmen to hire other officers and firefighters, as they deem necessary, officers and firefighters. So we'll fix that. Article 9, yeah. We need to address Christian's proposal at this point?

Yeah, this is, yeah. OK. So while I- Status quo until the new person's hired. Is that the motion that you'd like to make? No, I'm just saying that that's my thought. I'm kind of feeling that this is going to create more confusion and work. And I understand that it's a lot of administrative responsibility until that point. But maybe they could leverage their admin to help them with some of that stuff. Yeah, and if things start to- if it looks bleak, then we can always revisit and do something different. So the way this is written right now,

the board of fire engineers is in effect or is in existence through January 31. How do you feel? I just think it would throw one more cog in the machine to try and appoint someone interim and dissolve the board without any transition period. It just seems a little too much right now with what we're trying to get done. Thanks. So I think you'll communicate that. I will. Thank you. I appreciate the thought behind it. So I believe it's 7 now. And, Pam, this is actually a public hearing, correct? All right. So I recommend that the chair open the public hearing

with respect to a potential change of manager for Marshview Farm Store. So do you want to open? Can I have the motion? Second. All those in favor? Aye. So the hearing is open. And normally, the board receives a presentation from the proponent indicating why there's a change and some background on the new manager.

Retail in general? Sure. Well, with alcohol involved, yes. There hasn't been any alcohol involved. OK. That's what they're mostly. Yeah. Yeah, I've been in retail for about 30 years prior to my corporate life and health insurance. Now I'm back in retail. I've worked for a lot of food purveyors and general retailers, clothing and furniture, things of that nature, but nothing that sells alcohol. This is the first location that I'll be selling alcohol in. Have you gone through any training? I did. Online training, I have, what was my tip? My tips. That's what it was, the tips training. I did tips training. I was certified under tips. So that's as far as the training goes. Do you serve alcohol you don't just sell?

No, we just sell it. We don't serve it. It's just beer and wine, bottled beer and wine. Yeah. You don't have wine tastings and stuff? Nothing that we do regularly. No. Do we have anything planned? If we have any wine tastings, they're run by a vendor who brings their own one day license. It is allowed in the retail as a special event. But we don't serve anything in the store outside of coffee? We just coffee. Yeah. Does the other board members have any questions? Does the coffee counter require like surf safe manager training? I'm surf safe manager training. Yes. Great. And do we collect documentation to that effect? For tips, yeah. That's on the file. Absolutely.

Great. So the way this works is if the board decides to move forward, this goes to the ABCC, and then they review it as well. I will also mention that in this case, the new manager still has to come and do a Cori check with me. So your vote could be contingent on passage of the Cori check. He also has extensive background at Stonewall kitchen, which he may be familiar with. In Maine. Of course. It's very good. Yeah, it is. So if the board doesn't have any other questions, I recommend the chair ask whether there's any member of the public to speak in favor or against the proposal.

Great. So there's nobody here in the room, but there is somebody on the line, if there are any questions for this applicant.

OK. So at this point, I recommend that the board close the hearing. So moved. Second. All those in favor? Aye. Now it's time to deliberate and come to a vote on whether you want to approve the change of manager. Any conversation? I have no. I have a motion to approve Nelson. Nelson? Yes. Demello? Yes. For the new manager for the Marshview Farm Store? Yes. So moved. Second. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Thank you. Contingent upon the passage of Cori. And so you can get in touch with me, Nelson? Sure thing. For that. And I think you're all set. Excellent. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you all. Thank you. Take care. Here you go. OK. So back to the town meeting, Warren. Yep. Next, beyond Article 8 there, is we're into Article 9, the elderly and disabled taxation fund. Town Council went over this an additional time over the weekend. So I'm going to tell you where there are changes. Under the explanation of the article, it currently says acceptance of this statute will result in, he would like it to say, will allow a new checkbox, instead of the word being, to be added to future real estate and to a motor vehicle excise bills that will allow taxpayers to voluntarily, he adds that word, pay additional money.

And at the end, if adopted, a tax aid committee will be formed to administer the fund, and he put, as required by the statute. And we added excise tax. Was that in there before? Did I miss that? Previous? That was in the original. Was it? OK. Yeah, the last one you saw. So there'll be a checkbox on the excise tax thing too? It will have the ability to do that. Yes. So is there any value in also saying you could make a donation outside of either of those two things? Or is it? You certainly can, anyway. And if somebody says, this is a gift to defray the costs of elderly housing or whatever,

housing for the elderly or whatever, they could do that. But it wouldn't be as structured, because this actually then sets up a group that figures out how to properly administer that and fairly distribute the money. Article 10, this is replacing the carbon media toward the end where it says, in the family known as PFAS, after the industry was successfully sued for, instead of persistence of PFAS and service and groundwater, he suggests the presence of. So I made that change. Article 11, the Water and Sewer Rate Studies, the explanation, the Board of Public Works would like to conduct, instead of planning that will allow the board to set, he says,

studies to enable it to establish water and sewer rates, not in a manner, but water and sewer rates that are sufficient to cover the annual operation. Yeah, that's good. Article 12 realized that there's something new here. And it came up after the last meeting, a discussion about having a GIS capability for the new work order and asset management systems. And I'm like, well, we already have a GIS capability in OpenGov, which is the platform we're building this on. The GIS is already built into the permitting module. So the acting superintendent is going back to the vendor

to ask about this. But I'm not sure. I mean, it was like a $30,000 ad. I don't quite understand why we wouldn't have had that included in what was already funded. Yeah. Also, could there be in that software an integration with the GIS that we already have? It already is. It's using the CAI, which CAI is the cartographic associates is who runs CIA, the company runs our GIS. Oh. Yeah. And so it's already coupled to that. So I'm not really sure why they were, do they mean like training or something on it? She's getting me more information. She asked the question. I'm like, I kind of shot back with,

why isn't that already covered? This is a substantial amount of additional money. So I believe this is going to drop out when you see it next time. But it came up, so I wanted to let you know. The police cruiser and then Article 14, remember we're talking about erosion control for the Centennial Grove, whether that's the labor and materials being provided by the DPW or just providing them with the materials. Also, the harbor master would like to have those boat racks, if you remember, out at the lake. Those are the only two things I'm aware of. Mandy is really going to try to get an answer within

to determine whether they could do the whole job or we have to contract that out. So the marketing group, that doesn't have to go through town meeting to hire them. It came out of the administrative fund. That's right, because that's the actual community preservation committee themselves voting to use their fund. Is Michelle giving you a date? I don't think I know when we're meeting. No, because we were waiting to see when the Department of Public Works would tell us which way it was going to go. But as you know, that's been postponed again. So Mandy is now going to try to work internally to get me that answer, because we have to make an application. And that application has to have the scope of what it is

we want. And then we'll meet. So I guess two things regarding Article 12 and Article 14. Article 12, this is kind of why we wanted to have that meeting before the 19th. Yes. Is to kind of get these numbers solid. I still want to try to focus on that, but is there any work that she can do to kind of get us closer to resolving this stuff so that it's? She is working on both of these. But I don't know whether she'll have the ability to give us something definitive without meeting again with her board. And that meeting's Wednesday at 7. That meeting has been canceled. They've postponed it again.

Oh. One of the members had something come up short notice. The one on the 7th has been canceled. Yes. OK. And another member has having some health matters that he has to attend to. So we don't have a new date. We don't have a new date. I've asked the acting superintendent to query the three members to see what the next date is, where all three of them would be available. And then I will come back to the selectmen with that. OK. Try again. And then on the explanation for Article 14, town council added afterward says town departments and from outside organizations to approve funding and afterward funding from the town's Community Preservation

Act fund for projects, such as clarification. Then he added a sentence at the end. Any projects approved pursuant to this article will be appropriated from existing amounts in the CPA fund. Article 15, again, it's in the explanation

where it says put aside money for specific needs and purposes. He's added subject to future appropriation because it doesn't just get spent. So that tells the public that they have to come back. And then he's put a period there and it started, these funds are generally added to. Instead, he starts the sentence with the town typically appropriates money to these funds at the fall town meeting. In all 12 are here, right? We're going to put money in all 12. No, we are still waiting for the finance committee to tell you what their recommendation is. OK. Article 16, there were no additional comments. That's the reserve fund. 17, retiree health insurance. In the explanation where it says set aside money

for retiree health insurance benefits, town council has added as required by law as a clarifying statement. They're looking at 200, finance committee? No, I thought they were. They're looking at 500. We do not have certification on free cash yet. So that's all dependent on it. Mine is they're thinking 750. We talked last time about maybe 500 for three years in a row. Now, I talked to the town council today. All of our paperwork has been submitted to the Department of Revenue for certification of free cash. So we should be getting that relatively soon. And there's no additional comments on Article 18 or 19. So there you have it.

Thank you. And you're going to send out this cleaner version? Yes. Yes. Thank you. New application form for public events. Yes. At the last meeting, there were a group of people here. We talked with the fire department and the police department about how not only do the departments need

to plan in their budgets for public safety coverage on events that public money will fund. They need to have a better process for understanding an event coming into the town so that everyone knows what's on the table. And there'll be a process to approve the event with the applicant knowing in advance exactly what they're expected to pay and what permits they have to get. So this is just conceptual. But my idea here is they put some basic information down. And then they enter into an email conversation with each of the relevant departments, which actually

becomes part of the record that is put in the folder for that event. So if there are any questions moving forward, and everyone should copy everyone else, if it's a fire department discussion, everyone else that's involved should see that. But they're not going to be weighing in on it. Then likewise, the fire department will see everyone else's, but they're not going to be weighing in on it. There might be questions that come up, and that's why it's important for everyone to see everything. But I was thinking that an application like this would come into the town administrator. I would then electronically send the application to all of the relevant departments at the same time and coordinate getting comments back and answering questions

so that we would have a complete record. And one of the things we'll establish right off the bat is this one of those events that is publicly funded for public safety coverage. If it's not, then there's going to be discussion about, OK, what's going to be needed to the applicant. It's going to be at a detail rate. It's probably going to be around this much money. And each, whether it's fire or police, they can provide that information. And if the applicant says, we're not going to do it because we can't afford that, well, then it will end there. It's probably redundant, but should there be a line for location on town property? I think most people might know, but it

might be good to just have that highlighted for all the members of the board. So it says proposed location, but you're saying? They might say whatever it is, but somebody may not know that it's town property. You'd think they would, but. Is this town property? Yeah. OK. And this is not anything that we're going to be using until really the next round of events because Clam Festers and Santa are going to be in the works. They're going to happen, and then we're going to get into the spring, and things are going to open up again. I suppose we could use this for, could test it out if they're going to have a polar plunge again, because that's. We can test it out for the pancake breakfast, so I have to fill it out.

That's a school district event, though. It's not a town event. Oh, but I still have to file a food service. With the school district. Oh, OK, because what you were saying is even though they have their own kitchen, yeah, OK. Because it's serving public, so you're going to have to figure out what qualifies, right? Like it's an event that happens at the school, but it's a community event. We are going to have to figure out. Do we need public safety at the pancake breakfast? Yeah. Those kids get rowdy. It's not the kids I'm worried about. So maybe put this forth for, if there is a polar plunge,

it's 90 days. They will not, if you're late, they'd be too bad next year. I'm not looking to do that. Not saying that. So I went with permits have to be in place at least a week prior, and they're supposed to figure out how to do that. Yeah. OK. For now. I'll get my act together on that one. I do think at some point it would be helpful to have that kind of time frame, too. I think we can, if you want to give that some thought. Maybe as we approach the spring, let's test it with a couple of events. It'd take at least a month to go through all this, I think. Yeah, it's a 30's pushing it. 45 days or 60 days. But sometimes there's not. Sometimes there isn't really. If you think about the Santa by boat thing,

that's no alcohol, but that's people on the road. It's public safety, yeah. Kids near the water. There's stuff going on there. OK, thank you, Brendan. So I'll just try to phase this in a soft debut, and then we will go from there. Community planning grant for inclusionary zoning. Fortunately, we have heard back the town planner was successful in getting that grant. And so rather than the grant project helping Essex to write its first inclusionary zoning bylaw, which, as you know, is already on the warrant for a base level bylaw, it will now be helping Essex to fine tune

its what might be at the time existing bylaw. And then Ipswich and Wenham, who were co-applicants, they're probably going to be getting advice on doing it from scratch. So it's really good news. How long is that grant for? Is that a two year? No, I think it all has to be done by June 30. Oh, OK. Yeah. So we've been awarded $65,000 to help implement what we vote on.

To actually help refine it into a customized bylaw for each community, Essex will be starting from an advanced position, and the other two will be starting from scratch. So next fall, we'll probably be modifying that. The town planner said, I can get you a placeholder, because the Affordable Housing Trust said, we don't want to wait, because this could just happen, and we have nothing. So she said, all right, I'll help you with that, but realize you can't stop there, because it's not customized enough. And that's it for the report. Thank you. There's no public comment in the room. Any public comment online?