Town of Otis
All Boards Meeting Minutes
March 28, 2016
The meeting was called to order by Roberta Sarnacki at 6:30 pm in the Town Hall conference room. It was announced the meeting was being recorded.
Present: Chair Roberta Sarnacki, Selectman Don Hawley, Selectman Bill Hiller, Joann Austin, Lyn Minery, Michael Ernst, Sandy Pinkham, Terry Gould, Jeanne Randorf, Keith O’Neil, Derek Poirier, Russ Loring, and Walter Engels
Assessors: Things are going well. The Real Estate and Personal Property abatement applications are in. They received 36 and they have been doing actual on-site inspections and have submitted any changes to the mapping company.
Town Clerk: The Rabies Clinic was successful. Forty-three dogs and cats came and 18 dogs were licensed that day. The Presidential Primary was also successful – the online voter registration really helped the voters with a lot of their questions. Lyn hosted a Town Clerks’ meeting here and a state representative was here to explain the new election laws for early voting for the November elections. Lyn contacted the Public Records Division back in December for the town’s record retention schedule and just this week got the okay from them to go ahead and destroy the requested records. She has been issuing both Marriage and Dog licenses.
Cultural Council: Jeanne is currently working on the 2016 events schedule. School field trips are coming up and on May 20th and 21st the school will be hosting the Great Encampment at the school where the kids get to experience what life was like during the Revolutionary War. They plan on having the town tag sale again this Memorial Day weekend and June 18th will be the Community Concert and Picnic at Izaak Walton with Wanda Houston and her band entertaining.
Energy: Things are moving forward with the turbine. The site is cleared, the road is two-thirds done, the turbine has been purchased, the eagles have been studied and have been determined to not be a problem, and Verizon and Eversource are on board with moving ahead with the project. We expect the turbine to be delivered in September or October.
Finance Board: Budget meetings are in progress and we appear to be ahead of schedule and are within Proposition 2 ½ requirements.
Fire Dept.: The calls have been light. They just recently completed CPR recertification. They are expecting delivery of the new truck in June.
Investment Advisory Committee: We have received the funds from the wind turbine bonds, have invested them per the strict rules governing them, and are working with outside bond counsel to ensure compliance.
Highway Dept.: They borrowed the overhead power company mower and touched up the roads with the grader. Pine Road should begin in about two to three weeks and should take about one week to complete. They are still working on widening Lee-Westfield Road. They just spent another $1800 repairing fuel and brake lines on the small dump truck.
Library: They will have another artist coming in for April. Library usage has increased with the good weather coming in.
Planning Board: They will have another Site Plan Review on April 11th for the solar farm proposed for High Rise Road. Contrary to what was reported in the Berkshire Record, the Planning Board did not vote to support St. Paul’s Episcopal Church.
Police Dept.: They have been busy with calls. They finished an Active Shooter course last week. Officer Pettibone will begin taking a Firearms Instructor Course next week so we will have an in-house trainer. The Kops ‘N Kids program for the April vacation is already full and they will be going to see the Blue Man Group in Boston.
School: Six Southern Berkshire districts have met with Mass IT and the Secondary Education group to see if we can consolidate resources. Our school is definitely ahead of the curve for IT for our students. Joann also attended a meeting of small rural school districts in Shelburne Falls last week and we all have similarly unique needs. They are trying to get a separate initiative to support these unique needs and try to get additional funding through that initiative. The new pump for the school will arrive this week but won’t be installed until the April vacation so that the school won’t have to be shut down for two additional days. The school is planning to dedicate a two-person bench in the Library on April 6th in memory of a teacher who recently passed. Don mentioned that he and others had walked the access road from the Highway Dept. to the School and felt that would be a good second access point for egress from the school. In winter the snowthrower for clearing the sidewalks could be used to keep that access clear and ATVs or four wheelers could be used to transport handicapped students. The school is open to whatever needs to be done for the new Safety Complex.
Technology: They met last week and Laurie Flowers from the school attended. We felt it was important to keep the school and town in sync with each other as we move forward with the broadband. We are waiting for news of the grant we applied for to rewire Town Hall. The Fiber Broadband project is progressing but there is nothing concrete to report yet. Larry has been walking some of the poles and they may prove to be the most expensive part of this project.
Waste Water: Everything is running good and there are no issues. Fratelli’s had to be pumped out again, so Chris will be asked to issue a letter to them stating they need to be under contract with someone to do regular maintenance on their grease traps. This is common practice throughout south county. Keith was able to reduce his budget request again because with less parts there is less breakage. He is now using the new Extreme Series of grinder pumps. They have a lot less upkeep because the whole pump doesn’t need to be rebuilt when it is removed. There are only three parts now that are easily replaced when there is a problem. Keith will be attending Back Flow Prevention licensing and Cross Connection Surveying in June. He would also like to purchase a small utility trailer for grinder pump changes. He could keep everything staged on this one trailer including a 200 gallon water tank so only the trailer needs to be brought to the site. This will prevent a lot of unnecessary setup and teardown that they have to do now.
Zoning Board: They have one hearing that is being continued to June. Ed Partyka is providing the correct forms for continuing this hearing past the 100 day requirement.
The meeting was adjourned at 7:01 pm.
Respectfully Submitted,
Lisa D’Orazio
Selectmen’s Secretary
Town of Otis
List of Documents
A copy of the email sent to Russ Loring from RRG will be filed with these meeting minutes.