Shutesbury Board of Selectmen Meeting Minutes April 17, 2007 Members present: Chairman Rebecca Torres and Ralph Armstrong. Debra Pichanick was absent due to illness. Also Present: Town Administrator David C. Dann and Leslie Bracebridge, recording. Meeting opened at 7:08 P.M. Appointments 7:08 P.M. Police Chief Harding: * Cooleyville Road was closed due to a weather related washout. * Moms and daughters RAD class starts Tuesday April 24. * The contractor for the new Franklin County radio system will come in Thursday to work out final details for Shutesbury. * A MIIA representative will contact Chief Harding to make recommendations for school safety. The School Safety Committee needs to present something to the School Committee. Looking for new ideas from an outside source. * People are out and about at the Lake. * The Chief will be present at Town Meeting. A replacement cruiser is not in the capital budget for this year. It is hoped that repairs to the current cruiser will diminish. 7:40 P.M. Selectmen met with Joanne Sunshower who had delivered 2 citizen petitions for Annual Town Meeting Articles earlier in the day. Planning Board members present: Chairman Deacon Bonnar, and members Carole Mizaur and Jeff Lacy: * First Citizen Petition Summary: Affirmation of a zoning bylaw revisions timeline for no later than the 2008 annual town meeting, put forward by resident Michael DeChiara with notification to members of the Planning Board. The Planning Board had no objections to it. * Second Citizen Petition Summary: Establish a committee answerable to the Planning Board that would recommend methods through which the town can preserve and protect its critical natural resources, to let residents know that the Planning Board is making a response to the April 4 Public Hearing feedback. Three objectives of the committee: * Gather information into a pamphlet, to also be available on the website, and contact people, to provide individual land owners with information and resources for planning land protection. * Re-visit Shutesbury’s participation in the Community Preservation Act. * Develop a prioritized list of natural resources of value to the town to be protected. Response discussion included to following points: * The Open Space and Recreation Committee may already have similar objectives in their mission statements. * The Planning Board will have a report at town meeting that could address this topic. It will be important to make a statement at town meeting. * It’s too late to rescind the citizen’s petition. * The Board of Selectmen will hold a joint meeting of land use committees at their May 15 meeting to discuss the best way to achieve these objectives. It will take some manpower. Other Planning Board topics discussed: 1. Chairman Bonnar reviewed proposed Planning Board sponsored town meeting articles: concerning Wireless Communication Facilities, Small Wind Energy Systems and the Rate of Development. All three articles follow from the decision not to go forward with the comprehensive revisions in 2007. The Rate of Development would have been a limit of 10 dwelling units for 5 years in the comprehensive zoning revisions. The replacement article is for a limit of 8 dwelling units through 2008. The Small Wind Energy Systems bylaw first developed by the Energy Committee and then revised by the Planning Board remains the same as it would have been in the comprehensive revisions. Deacon and Becky have both asked if and received reassurance from Town Counsel that the articles will be “OK.” 2. Jeff Lacy: Asked if the Planning Board could get more money from this annual town meeting to commission additional illustrations of the proposed zoning, for other educational materials, and to drum-scan” the 8 prepared illustrations. The hurdle would be to get a dollar amount together, and have the Finance Committee approve it in time for town meeting. There is still $1100 left in Master Plan funds a few hundred dollars in this year’s budget, and additional funds already budgeted for FY 08 Planning Board expenses. Planning Board members left at 8:30 P.M. 8:30 P.M. Fire Chief Walter Tibbetts: * A $3900 contract for Fire Fighter Equipment Grant (Action Item #5) will be used to upgrade the Jaws of Life equipment originally bought at the same time that Leverett bought complementary Jaws of Life equipment. Leverett will upgrade its equipment at the same time to keep them compatible. * More information will be gathered concerning a mutual aid agreement that Chief Tibbetts had understood through the Local Emergency Preparedness Coalition (LEPC) was to be approved at Shutesbury’s annual town meeting. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is mandating that in order for towns to receive reimbursement for the costs of other towns’ shared services during emergencies from the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency (MEMA) the towns must have a pre-existing mutual aid agreement. Since the Fire Department already has a mutual aide agreement and Chief Harding has recently reported on a legislative effort underway for statewide mutual aid for police, it seems that the mutual aid agreement referred to by LEPC must be meant to cover other groups such as the Board of Health and the DPW. Neither Selectmen nor Town Administrator have received any information about this MEMA mandated mutual aid agreement, especially relative to a town meeting warrant article. * The SAFE program (Student Awareness of Fire Education) is in progress at the elementary school. A May 8 graduation ceremony at the high school, to be attended by state dignitaries will be a big to do for the 4th grade graduates. * The Fire Department personnel remain at 7. A prospective new member is no longer available. The lack of volunteers everywhere is thought to be due to lifestyle changes and more stringent training commitments. Eventually small towns will have to look at regionalization. * Between March 31 and April 6 the department had 11 calls: brush fires, smoke investigation, Wendell structure fire, car accidents and medicals. For the first time, pay went over $1000 for fire fighters. * NIMS Training for the next level: ICS 300 required only for Police Sergeants and above and Fire Lieutenants and above. o Selectmen unanimously voted to sign a form from the Western Region Homeland Security Advisory Council for reimbursement to hourly, not salaried employees for NIMS Training. (Item #6 under Select Board Action Items below.) o Becky will ask the Personnel Board if they can make a policy that fire fighters get paid for the time they spend at NIMS training. o ICS 400 is only for Chief Harding and Chief Tibbetts; because they are both salaried they won’t get paid. * Shutesbury, Leverett and Colrain have made a request for 50 programmable Motorola federal surplus equipment radios that are within the usable band width needed for the Shutesbury communications system contemplated by the Emergency Management Team. Chief Tibbetts hopes to receive between 15 and 20 of the radios, valued at $600 each at no cost. The only costs involved would be for band width programming and batteries, if needed. * Chief Tibbetts will get cost information from the Highway Superintendent for a possible reimbursement to towns in Districts 3 and 4 that will pool their losses together for the storm that hit the area on Sunday and Monday. It might cover the costs of repairs to Cooleyville Road. The information is due at 2 P.M. tomorrow afternoon. Reimbursement funds are not guaranteed. * FY 07 Fire Department budgets for maintenance and operating are just about at zero. This is due to a backlog of maintenance on the trucks. Having the trucks done off site takes the liability off of the town for the local maintenance and puts all the liability on the business that repaired and inspected the trucks. The CPA compressor had major problems. A makeshift repair was done for a couple of hundred dollars; it will need a $1500 repair next year. 8 donated self contained breathing bottles all came due at once. If the budgets come up short a second year in a row Chief Tibbetts will seek to increase the budgets. A lot was done this year to get up to compliance. Some money will be left in the equipment line that due to reimbursement from a matching fund grant that came back will run over into next year. A lot of specialized training ate up $1800 in that budget line. * Leverett put Connect CTY on their annual town meeting warrant also. * Yesterday the emergency action plan was implemented. The Lake Wyola water level started 18-24 inches below the spillway and rose 2 to 2.5 feet in about ten hours bringing the water level up to 6 inches above the base of the spillway. Chief Tibbetts worked with Gate and Dam Keeper Howard Kinder and received on the job training in monitoring and calculating water levels from former Dam Management Committee Chairman William “Bill” Elliott. The flow peaked very quickly. Walter now has access to the websites that Bill uses for calculations. They use ½ the rate of flow of the Swift River as an indicator for the inflow into Lake Wyola. The rate of outflow is subtracted from the rate of inflow to determine the rate of rise. They notified Leverett Emergency Management Director Jim Field and Richard Brazeau of the Lake activity. Before Chief Tibbetts left, David reported that Highway Superintendent Tim Hunting had called David earlier to especially thank Chief Tibbetts for the time he donated to flushing a culvert on Cooleyville Road. Tim wanted the Selectmen to know that Chief Tibbetts “saved the day” for the Highway Department. Becky thanked Walter for all the time he has given, including tonight. 9 P.M. Resident Matthew Herschler and Pelham resident Roger Conant spoke on behalf of the town meeting petition article submitted earlier today: The article is a resolution for WFCR, licensed to the University of Massachusetts by the FCC, to act more within the mission statement of the Public Broadcasting Corporation specifically in the areas of representation of ethnic, cultural and geographic representation. Further, the resolution seeks an open application process for board members and public access to meetings and public input. The current WFCR Advisory Committee is comprised of people from the five colleges. Roger and Matthew are WFCR listeners and contributors belonging to a group trying to bring democracy to the station. The same resolution will be presented to the Amherst and Pelham Town Meetings as well. Matthew will attend Shutesbury’s town meeting and speak on behalf of the Article. Topics 1. The quarterly Select Board review with projected timelines has been rescheduled for the next meeting. 2. Selectmen did not discuss Lot M-30 Select Board Action Items 1. Selectmen postponed approval of previous minutes until Debra could be present. 2. Signed vendor warrants in the total amount of $578,533.44 and payroll warrants in the total amount of $76,735.32 by unanimous consent. 3. Reviewed and unanimously voted to sign the May 5, 2007 Special Town Meeting warrant. Reviewed and unanimously voted to sign the May Annual Town Election warrant. Reviewed Annual Town Meeting warrant discussing the order of the articles including the new petition articles received tonight and unanimously voted to sign the warrant as discussed. 4. Reviewed a prepared Phase One Application for a Massachusetts Technology Collaborative grant for low income renewable energy and energy efficiency implementation projects by municipalities in the amount of $100,000: $80,000 for a wind turbine installation on a monopole and $20,000 for energy efficiency projects around Town Hall. Because the Town Hall houses the senior center, it automatically falls into the low income category. It is written into the application that the project is contingent upon the annual town meeting passing the small wind energy systems bylaw. David described the grant application as “a long shot.” If the application is accepted then there would be a second application process. The grant application is due April 20. As Chairman of the Board, Becky invoked the rule of necessity making the points that there are only two Select Board members present, they have a grant application with an April 20th deadline, and that Becky has a stated conflict of interest because she is related to an abutter of the site. Following the rule of necessity, both members of the Board of Selectmen would need to vote on the grant application. A motion was made, seconded to sign and submit the phase one grant application for the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative Clean Energy Choice Grant for Low-Income Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Implementation Projects by Municipalities. Discussion included: wind turbines are mechanical by nature, the application is for a self supporting monopole, this would supersede but not derail the original wind turbine proposal, the costs of which have gone up $4,000 to $5000 for the turbine and an additional amount on the tower which would require going back to the Finance Committee for more funding. Selectmen unanimously voted to sign the phase one application. 5. Unanimously voted to sign the contract with the Massachusetts Executive Office of Public Safety for the SFY 2007 Firefighting Equipment Grant (previously submitted) in the total amount of $3900. 6. Unanimously voted to sign the NIMS training schedule described by Chief Tibbetts. 7. Becky agreed to represent the Board of Selectmen for the Highway Superintendent’s annual review. 8. Selectmen signed letters of thanks to Animal Inspector Denise Chiminiello and out of town professional volunteers Cora Carpenter and Kelly Almeida who assisted Denise at the April 7 Rabies Clinic. New Topics Ralph reported that he worked with David to create a Power Point presentation of the Lake Wyola Dam that will be reviewed at the Saturday, April 21 combined meeting of the Lake Wyola Advisory Committee, the Dam Management Committee and the Board of Selectmen. A motion was made, seconded and unanimously voted to adjourn at 10:02 P.M. Respectfully submitted, Leslie Bracebridge Administrative Secretary 070417 detailed Selectboard 3