Shutesbury Board of Selectmen Meeting Minutes January 9, 2007 (as amended on 2/6/07) Members present: Chairman Rebecca Torres, Debra Pichanick and Ralph Armstrong. Also Present: Town Administrator David C. Dann and Leslie Bracebridge, recording. Meeting opened at 7:00 P.M. Select Board Action Item #1: The Select Board voted to accept the Saturday December 16, 2006 Select Board, Lake Wyola Advisory Committee and the Lake Wyola Dam Advisory Committee joint meeting minutes as written. The Select Board voted to accept the December 19, 2006 Select Board meeting minutes as written. Becky clarified that the $250,000 price for the dam, noted in the minutes was only a rough estimate; it was not a specific figure. The Select Board voted to accept the December 27, 2006 Select Board meeting minutes. Becky commented that people attending that meeting who live below the dam want to be notified of any meetings, documents, etc. concerning the dam. Leslie added the name of a Leverett resident, who had called to request and stopped in at Town Hall to see documents concerning the Emergency Action Plan, to the list at the person’s request. Debra did not vote on the minutes on the advice of the state Ethics Commission, because the location of her home qualifies her as an abutter to the dam. Appointments At 7:05 PM Selectmen met with Police Chief Harding: * Active week with a break and enter with assault, and a domestic. * With assistance from Fire Chief Tibbetts and the Amherst Fire Department the Automatic External Defibrillator (AED) is installed at the elementary school. School staff are trained in its use and must be re-trained 2 times per year. Now people in sports and others who frequently use the school will be trained. * The department is searching for a boat motor to adequately serve their needs. * The balance of the minimum number of new radios needed to operate in the new county dispatch system will arrive next week. * Some Governor’s Highway Safety grant funds have come in. The first block of money never came in from the federal government. The delayed second round of funds will be used for the "You Drink, You Drive, You Lose" program. * School busses with children on-board and police cruisers are exempt from the anti-idling law. At 7:20 P.M. Selectmen met with Fire Chief and Emergency Management Director Walter Tibbetts, Gate and Dam Keeper Howard Kinder (HK), and former Lake Wyola Dam Management Committee (LWDMC) Chairman William "Bill" Elliott (WE) and current members Paul Lyons (PL) and Leo Riendeau (LR). Debra Pichanick moved to the audience on the advice of the state Ethics Commission, because the location of her home qualifies her as an abutter to the dam. David distributed bound copies of the Lake Wyola Dam Emergency Action Plan (EAP) and the Dam Inspection Report to Chief Tibbetts, each member of the LWDMC and to each Selectman. Discussion included: * How the LWDMC will restructure to take over the functions that Bill has been performing, now that Bill has resigned from the committee, including the major activities that must be completed as outlined by Morris Root in the report. * Dam Engineer Morris Root will remain under contract until after the state responds to the inspection report and bid documents for the drawdown are prepared. Though the Selectmen have talked about putting Morris on retainer after the contract expires (date needs to be looked up) it has not happened yet. * Review of the EAP: Montague has not been a participant in the way that Leverett has. Montague uses their pre-existing 500 year flood plan. * Discussion of assignment of major roles and responsibilities and who would contact Engineer Morris Root if a situation of concern were to develop. * A suggestion was made that a final bullet in the EAP listing responsibilities for the Dam Keeper, "Provide leadership to assure the EAP is reviewed and updated annually and copies of the revised EAP are distributed to all who received copies of the original EAP" would better be done by Emergency Management Director Walter Tibbetts than by the Dam Keeper. * In response to a question of how to proceed; Bill, Paul and Leo all agreed that the process for obtaining permits for the repairs is a bigger responsibility, than anyone present at this meeting from the committee was prepared to take on. Becky (BT): The Board of Selectmen is trying to "get a handle" on how much outside support will be needed. A September/October drawdown is anticipated. Funding is still needed. The Dam Committee will need to be present to explain the dam repair project. There’s a lot of work to do. How can Selectmen best support the Dam Management Committee? What can the Committee realistically do and what support is needed. Bill’s resignation will create a vacancy. What skills would the Committee need to fill in his position? PL: What is the Select Board view of the Committee’s role and work? WE: Summarized the tasks still needed: finish off the engineering work, bring that to town meeting and complete the permitting processfor a September/October drawdown. Town Administrator David Dann (DD): Town Hall could offer some assistance and some could be hired out. LR: Shutesbury needs a professional Lake Manager position to take over Bill’s role. BT: Retainer or Manager? A manager would need a job description. DD: While the town is looking at a town manager position, it needs to move forward to get ready for the drawdown. PL: Would be personally overwhelmed to take on all of these projects. One nice day he agreed to serve on a committee. BT: What are reasonable expectations for the committee? Can members assist Morris Root in collecting information for town meeting? WE: The Committee’s role has been advisory. Bill worked with Engineer Root and used a model Emergency Action Plan (EAP) presented by the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) engineers at the Dam Safety National Conference held in Boston in September 2006 to create the Wyola Dam EAP. (The model was developed with a great deal of input from many agencies involved with dam safety.) The Committee met when specific things needed resolution or to make decisions on background work. PL and LR: Agreed WE’s concept was their understanding of the Committee’s role. They never signed on to the Committee to develop permit applications. While not saying they don’t want to be involved, they want to be clear about what others might do. Who is realistically able to accomplish the tasks? WE: Recommended a specialized firm do this and listed a few that already responded to the previous work. The town can develop a new scope of services. Bill did a lot of work not covered in the original scope of services including interactions with the Conservation Commission; it’s very time consuming and not easy. LR: The town also needs help with technical aspects of monitoring lake levels. WE: The monitoring equipment, purchased with leftover funds from the 1992 drawdown belongs to the town. Anyone with a computer can read the data. Howard monitors levels manually. WE: One of the Committee’s roles was to engage Leverett and Montague in the Shutesbury process. Leverett participated more than Montague. LR: Possibly the committee could continue looking into the future based on past events. BT: Requests another meeting within a month. HK: Will talk with the Assistant Dam Keeper who did not have any idea of all of the responsibilities listed in the EAP for the Dam Keeper when he agreed to assist, either. At 8:00 P.M. the Selectmen met with Finance Committee Chairman Eric Stocker (ES) and members Patrick Callahan (PC), Lori Tuominen (LT), Russ Greco (RG), Russ Wilson (RW) and Al Springer (AS), Shutesbury Elementary School (SES) representatives: Union 28 Superintendent Joan Wickman (JW), and Business Assistant to the Superintendent Charlie Paulin (CP), Principal Robert Mahler (RM), School Committee Chairman Daniel Hayes (DH) and Committee members Daniel Greenberg (DG) and Michael DeChiara (MD) to review the proposed FY 08 Shutesbury Elementary School budget. (Addendum #1) ES: Summarized that the Town has done a lot to support the local school and the region. The Finance Committee’s goal is to keep all budgets around 3% increases. There is increasing pressure for projects around the town including the Lake Wyola Dam, building a new library and rebuilding the Highway Garage. The circumstances of the regional school budget due to Amherst’s budget might help to decrease Shutesbury’s contribution. The FY08 SES budget request is a 7% increase from last year. DH: Acknowledged Eric’s summary and asked JW to address how changing formulas at the state level have impacted the SES budget revenues. JW: Noted that an $88,000 reduction in projected revenues, mostly from the restructured "Community Partnership for Children" (CPC) grant program as itemized at the bottom of each of the last two pages of the SES budget (Addendum #1) are the primary reasons for the 7 SES budget increase. If those decreases were factored out of the budget, then the budget would only increase by 1.34%. Due to a merger of early childhood departments at the state level, schools were advised to plan 08 budgets without any CPC revenues. The funding formula has changed to a voucher system that follows the individual child. So, the school cannot anticipate receiving the $88,000 that previously kept the pre-school program been self-sufficient. Both JW and RM spoke to the importance of having a strong pre-school program, not just educationally, but also because it serves as the farm team” so that children will continue in this system to stem the tide” of an already declining enrollment. Schools are obligated to provide a program for special needs pre-school children. Were Shutesbury not to have a pre-school program, it would have to pay tuition to Amherst for the one and potentially two students who may need services in FY 08. The combined costs of tuition and transportation for sending two children to Amherst would be a financial “wash” compared to Shutesbury running its own pre-school program. BT: Could SPED circuit breaker funds be used? RM: They could probably cover services but SPED wouldn’t cover the $15,000 transportation bill. Also, since circuit breaker funds look at the individual child, the expenses per child might not push both children over the circuit breaker funding threshold. Student projections are about 15 each for pre-school and kindergarten, though that’s hard to pin down at this time of year. JW: Doesn’t want home school and “choicing out” children to leave Shutesbury because it’s hard to get them back into the system. Schools across western Massachusetts (as well as some urban and suburban schools) are experiencing enrollment declines. Costs don’t go down significantly from a classroom of 20 students to a classroom of 14. Chapter 70 formula I is based on enrollment, not costs. DD: Does this budget anticipate the same staffing pattern? RM: Yes, although until the children show up, the numbers can’t be trusted. MD: If you don’t get kids in pre-school, you don’t get them in the system. BT: The $13,000 instrumental music program was not in the 07 budget when it passed. It was a built in cost that was put in later in the summer after a staff person left. Are there anticipated program changes in the 08 budget? JW: The instrumental music is in the 08 budget at a reduced rate from FY 07. Overall, the 08 program is almost exactly the same as ’07; it’s a “level service” budget. There is an additional enrichment piece, with its own line item to do some activities with advanced students. ES: If the budget would go up 1% if revenues didn’t go down and if staffing is level, why are salaries going up almost 9%? JW: This is not due to an increase in programs. The budget reflects an increase in classrooms for struggling students that the CPC used to pay for. CP: There are two different causes: the need for additional staff and the CPC used to pay for part of the aide salaries. The CPC reduction was all taken from payroll. JW: If we get any CPC money, it will be used to reduce the budget by that amount. We probably won’t know anything until after town meeting. RM: The voucher system is frustrating for school planning as well. The parents can take a voucher child anywhere. What if child doesn’t come here? JW: Throughout Union 28 the CPC funds are zeroed out. This is not unique to Shutesbury. DD: From experience, he thinks the voucher system is income based. So we would be able to gauge how much would come in. JW: It’s also based on working parents. The voucher is a parent choice program. DP: What is the Head Start program? She’s never heard of it used up here. Multiple responses: There’s one in North Amherst, and one in Turners Falls. It’s an income based program and parents don’t have to work. CPC is income based but parents have to work. Many times parents participate in the Head Start programs. When CPC was set up they tried to set up a program not to compete with Head Start. Both programs fall under the early childhood program umbrella. In Shutesbury pre-school tuition is $25/day with a scale for low-income. DH: Currently the Shutesbury pre-school is self-sustaining. RM: $25 is the market rate. Finance Committee Chairman Eric Stocker asked to get back to the initial question: What will the School Committee do if the Finance Committee says hold to 3%? DH: The Committee will take whatever information it gets tonight and look very hard at what we would do. All on the Committee feel very tied” to the pre-school program. Whether or not the Committee could achieve 3% he didn’t know. PC: Is it helpful to hear us say 3%? We don’t know what our revenues are going to look like either. Our message is that 3% is the ball park” figure that we are looking at and we hope that you will look at working toward that. ES: Roughly speaking that’s the amount the town can look at with Prop 2.5. Last year we spent $300,000 of free cash. We’ve been very lucky to get away with that 2 or 3 years in a row. We’ve also already used free cash for the new school telephone system. The cash pile is dwindling. MD: Unfortunately every year everyone is in the guessing game. Is there advice to state officials to “re-tool the funding stream?” BT: Do we try to think of a ½ way contingency fund? It’s really difficult to justify building the budget on this. There will be more funding. These are very conservative figures to build the budget on. Also, work with the music program. RM: Doesn’t know that we won’t see the money at the end of the year from the music program. Select Board Chairman Becky Torres summarized this as “an exciting time.” We have to all work together for the budget to get passed at town meeting. There are three groups at the table trying to make this work. School Committee Chairman Dan Hayes commented that the School Committee is very careful in spending, giving as an example how the food service program is keeping on track this year. “Throughout the year we are very cognizant of the budget.” Becky: Education is a “very thirsty creature.” If we doubled your budget I’m sure you could find very good ways to use it. MD: We shouldn’t introduce new things such as the music program add-on; even though our budget could cover it. BT: If you can sustain new programs that’s one thing but the next year’s budget is up. If the Finance Committee uses free cash one year, they have to come up with it every year. ES: We could have a school budget based on a certain amount of Chapter 70 funds coming in and if more funds come in then they would go to the school. RA: Expressed concern about the general increases. Almost everything we do increases every year it seems to be a compounding process. It’s a really bad precedent to use free cash for operating. Referring to the second to last page of the SES 08 budget proposal, RA read the actual 06 budget of $1,351,295 and noted the 07 and 08 “creep” going on. It’s the cost of doing business and it seems to be compounding. RA worries when he does not see funds coming in from the state. Eric Stocker asked about the 11% increase in the Union 28 budget. CP: The SPED Secretary job was dispersed into all the schools. Each school had a secretary but in this budget the position was pulled altogether at the union.” There is a decrease at the local budget but an increase in the union budget accounting for 6% of the 11% increase. ES: Reiterated his question of a 3% increase limit. $63,445 would have to be decreased. MD: The kids will fix the dam. DH: We can’t answer that tonight. We would have to look really hard at the budget. The only hope that we really have is that the numbers from the state will increase. We will continue to monitor revenue streams and look at budgets, look at contingencies, and the creative things we have done in the past. RG: It would help us to know what you might cut. Reality helps. Put a human face on it. DH: We need to do that as a committee. DG: Isn’t it the state’s intention with restructuring to keep funding coming in? Theoretically, is it possible funding will be higher? CP: The restructuring will put every poor student in the state into the pool. Funds will go to places such as Holyoke and Lawrence first. We’ve gotten disproportionate money for many years. The state is now going to ask, “Who in the state is most needy?” I think it will be much harder for Shutesbury. MD: There’s a different party in power so we can’t predict. BT: What is the total cost of the preschool program? JW: $61000 from grants and $46,900 from tuition. Next year projections are for enrollment to decrease. Though they’ve heard of 4 new families, until they come to the door, they can’t be counted. Without planning for any CPC funds the School Committee is looking for $77,800 right now. The next School Committee meeting is January 17. DD: would like all budget figures by the middle of February. Because of a new Governor, his budget will not be available until Feb 22, so the House budget will be late. ES: Does it make sense to wait for state figures before meeting again? The Governor’s budget might matter this year. LT: We’re not “anti-education.” Most of us are parents and are under the gun. We’re behind you. DH: We’ll look at salaries and whatever we can do. We may have to look at a contingency. We have to discuss that. The next gathering of the Finance Committee, the School Committee and the Selectmen: Tuesday March 13 at 7:30 P.M. RM: Even if the Governor says a lot, Shutesbury may not get a dime. ES: Make some cuts, combine with a ½ contingency, and put a face on it. DH: The region is also approaching the budget that way. BT: A lot of what the region has done is to identify mandates. They’re in tough shape. They’re not talking level services. ES: If Amherst can only increase 1%, they’re going to be in tough shape. JW: 40 positions were lost at Gateway Regional. It’s painful. Becky really appreciates all the work that has gone into the FY 08 SES budget. 9:25 P.M. Selectmen met with Fire Chief Walter Tibbetts: * Chief Tibbetts presented 4 copies of the revised Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan. One for the Board of Selectmen, one for the Board of Health, one for the Town Administrator and one for the Town Clerk. * Chief Tibbetts presented and recommended the Board of Selectmen adopt the new Tri-state Fire Mutual Aid Agreement to replace an agreement signed in the early 1970’s. The membership agreement has been reviewed by Attorney MacNicol, who serves as counsel for Tri-State Mutual Aid, Inc.) The Board of Selectmen unanimously voted to adopt the new Tri-State Mutual Aid Inc. Membership Agreement. Becky thanked Chief Tibbetts for his efforts in coordinating and preparing the agreement. * Chief Tibbetts presented, and requested the Selectmen sign off on a draft EMS Service Zone Plan application as prepared by the Town of Amherst. Because Amherst contracts to provide services for so many surrounding towns, they got permission to prepare the plan for all the towns they service. All towns are required to have to have such a plan on file. The plan names the Amherst Fire Department as the primary service provider for Shutesbury. Shutesbury will get a final approved copy of the entire plan once all towns have signed off and the plan has been submitted. Selectmen unanimously voted to sign the EMS Service Zone Plan application as prepared by the Town of Amherst Fire Department. * An Executive Office of Public Safety fire-fighting equipment grant usually at $15,000 has been dropped to $4,000, which might be further reduced. The application just came in and has to be submitted by January 19, 2007. Select Board signatures are only required when grants are awarded. Selectmen unanimously voted to authorize Chief Tibbetts to apply for the Executive Office of Public Safety fire-fighting equipment grant funds. Topics 1. Selectmen did not review the Planning Board timeline and did not discuss a possible meeting with the Planning Board as suggested on the agenda. 2. Selectmen did not discuss the snow emergency procedure as suggested on the agenda. Select Board Action Items 1. See start of minutes. 2. Selectmen unanimously voted to sign vendor warrants in the total amount of $102,160.40 and payroll warrants in the total amount of $77,085.48. 3. Selectmen unanimously voted to sign a Chapter 90 reimbursement request in the total amount of $105,000 for work done on Pelham Hill Road. 4. Selectmen unanimously voted to sign five library/equipment loan notes, three each in the amount of $40,000 due in the consecutive years of 2008, 2009 and 2010 and two each in the amount of $35,000 due in the consecutive years of 2011 and 2012, for a total amount of $190,000 for the combined purchase of a dump truck and to fund the library accessibility project. 5. See unanimous vote for the Tri-State Mutual Aid Inc. Membership Agreement above. 6. Following review of three bid proposals and a letter that resident Michael B. Hootstein (who was not able to be present but had asked that his letter be included in the meeting record) Selectmen unanimously voted to sign a contract with Hydrogeologist Jessie Schwalbaum for a Town Center Hydrogeologic Assessment. 7. Unanimously voted to approve the Sugarloaf Mountain Athletic Club request for its annual 10-mile road race. New Topics Selectmen instructed David to draft an endorsement letter for Library Trustee’s Massachusetts Library Commission grant application. Debra reported some funds from the Barr Ashcraft Estate have been received and with more to come, Selectmen discussed putting the Ashcraft funds toward the estimated $20,000 in matching funds that the town would have to pay if the grant is awarded and accepted by the Town. The meeting adjourned at 10:45 (?) PM. Respectfully submitted, Leslie Bracebridge Administrative Secretary 070109 Selectboard 4