October 20, 2008
Present was Ramesh H. Advani, James C. Lehan, Robert J. Garrity, and Jack Hathaway, Town Administrator.
Jim Lehan called the meeting to order. Jack Hathaway read the agenda.
Ramesh Advani held a Moment of Silence at the beginning of the meeting for Maddie Savoie, a ten year old from Norfolk who passed away from cancer, and Taylor Meyer, a 17 year old Plainville student who had been missing since Saturday night from a party in Norfolk, and was found dead earlier today in Norfolk.
LIBRARY AWARD
The Board of Selectmen presented an award to Ann Asci who served 20 years at the Library, and will retire at the end of the month. Sarina Bluhm, her supervisor who has worked with her these years, also commended Mrs. Asci.
CAPITAL WITH ADVISORY BOARD
Arlie Sterling, Chairman and Pat Snead, Vice Chairman of the Advisory Board were present. Board members also present were Jim Tomaszewski and Cathy Elder.
Ramesh discussed how to go forward with the capital needs in the future.
Ramesh noted that $192,000 in prison mitigation money was cut from state funds. That would have been our capital budget.
Arlie said fundamental changes are going to have to take place. They will rise to the challenge. The Advisory Board had hoped to get back on track with capital spending, but that probably won’t happen now – such as ambulances, cruisers and computers for the school. This is a big disappointment when they realized they couldn’t get back on track.
Arlie said the moratorium should continue at least until another town meeting. We have made great investments in keeping vehicles and roads in great shape. Cruisers are an important item and a new ambulance. We will plan for little or no increases in revenue, at least now. Arlie said he doesn’t believe we can defer capital for one more year. We need to keep it up. Arlie felt smoke detectors at the school is an important one. He doesn’t think we can not do it. He will look at increases in fixed cost. If revenues don’t increase, then the cost we control will decline.
This would be a million dollars which is a huge amount of money. We have no program to deal with this, but need to present a balanced budget. We need to find a million dollars or not spend capital, and discuss how could cuts be made, and what would happen.
Jim said a lot of information regarding this subject took place at the last Advisory Board meeting. The statement was made that they are reducing state aid for either 2009 or 2010. They have begun the process of looking at services with the Chiefs, schools and other departments. He suggested more open forum meetings. Maybe get input from citizens. There will be cuts in police, teachers, etc.
Rob said that he is opposed to the Library user fee, but here is a direction in which we are going to go. He said we need to open it up to the town. There are different levels of things we can do.
Ramesh said we are all coming at it from a different spectrum. We are not where Rob is, but early doom and gloom. He can’t talk about specifics, but need to make an effort to communicate. The expectation is that there will be cuts. This will be a difficult situation, and we need to start the information process.
Arlie said that the information process has already started. The town has already tried a few things such as not mailing the warrant and bylaws as the Bylaw Committee has written.
Ramesh mentioned the sorter for the Library, new ambulance and smoke detectors for the school. He said these are issues if we don’t have a town meeting. Arlie said we put a vehicle replacement program in place. It is $8000-$12,000 to repair ambulance. We could make the payment in the fall with an Advisory Board transfer for the sorter. Cost of approximately $10,000. Smoke detectors for the school are $17-21,000. They may have the flexibility to buy time. The School Committee is aware of the issue.
Pat Snead said we shouldn’t react, but we should use the time to come up with a contingency plan to be ready.
Jack said he came up with the idea of cancelling the fall town meeting. Jack said we started out with 22 articles. We are down now to 12 articles. Jack has talked to several department heads about their shortfall. He left a message with the Bylaw Committee, and we haven’t posted town meeting or any legal issues. We have the flexibility to call a town meeting at any time. It saves us about $5,000, which is paying for printing, mailing, town clerk costs, constable posting, police details, etc. Jack doesn’t think we need the town meeting at this time, and we can always call a special if something comes up, or we can wait until the spring meeting.
Jim thinks we should cancel the meeting. Rob was concerned about the 43D going in before we vote the downtown. Jack said it won’t change our availability for funding. It’ll change dynamics. The deadline is October 28th, which is before town meeting. We can add the B1 district at a later date. Rob hates to see fall town meeting go, but is okay with cancelling it.
Arlie said the Advisory Board has not had a chance to discuss this. They have spent a lot of energy on these issues, and you can defer and take up action later and respond to the town’s financial situation. They can take up initiatives since last town meeting. Arlie did say the EDC and Bylaw Committee were passionate and may not have the enthusiasm later.
It was agreed by all to cancel the Fall Town Meeting.
WATER DEPARTMENT DISCUSSION
Stephen Olson, P.E., Environmental Partners Group and Remo R. Vito, DPW Director present.
Ramesh said that this is not a public hearing. He said this is not open to discussion and questions from the public. You can listen and be informed, but this meeting is mostly to inform the Selectmen. This is not complete information and there will be another meeting. Ramesh said that once we have all the information, we will have a public hearing for the residents.
Jack said this has been a trying time for both the residents and the town water department. He said it is expensive and we realize that. Jack said that Steve Olson is a qualified engineer with Environmental Partners Group. What the Water Division and department have done is to react to the quality of water and development of the water system in Norfolk. They looked at causes of the issues and preliminary results. We had some discussions with the lab looking at pipes we submitted. We have some information to share from a variety of sources, but not from the lab.
Butch said they went back from 1980 forward. Butch said they will look at issues. Steve has researched all the records and researched the water system from 1980 to now. Butch said we have some results back on the pipes and preliminary actions we can take, but we still don’t know that much about the pipe. To do this, they solicit homes and take a piece of pipe and have it analyzed. They don’t think it’s inside problems. They need to do more extensive analysis and look deeper.
Steve Olson said he has worked with the Town about a year and a half. He has been on this issue for about a month. He gave his biography and said his specialty is drinking water and treatment.
Steve explained a timeline that he had given out.
Steve said they looked at water quality and found the pH of water is 6. Tapwater sampling and tapwater copper levels were decreasing. LCR is the lead and copper rule. He said they take samples from customer’s houses. It is taken first thing in the morning as it needs to be 6 hours stagnant. They take a one liter sample. 23’ of 1” pipe is 1 liter. If there is a filter on a tap, you don’t use that tap; you use another one.
High pH, low alkalinity, and low chlorides are the 3 things that cause pitting corrosion.
Steve said pitting corrosion is different than uniform corrosion. Lead and copper rule is uniform corrosion. Butch said that pitting is a new thing they are looking at. Uniform creates the health issues, pitting doesn’t. Pitting is more a surface issue. By resolving uniform, we may be creating pitting.
Steve said he has not seen this to this extent in any other community. Mostly pinhole leaks in other communities. Steve feels Norfolk is unique in communities with copper. He is seeing pitting, but not in concentration like he’s seeing here.
Butch will check other towns. Wrentham switched to PVC because of it.
They want to know the type of copper and know that it was Type K.
ACTION ITEMS
Jim Lehan moved to accept a donation from the Brabants family of a 4 foot granite park bench to the Town of Norfolk for the Norfolk Cemetery. Rob Garrity seconded, and it was so voted.
Jim Lehan moved to allow Norfolk Community League to conduct their annual Jingle Bell Run/Walk on Saturday, December 13, 2008. They will secure police details as required. Rob Garrity seconded, and it was so voted.
Jim Lehan moved to allow the Knights of Columbus (John Macalone) to conduct their annual fundraiser for special needs children at the Transfer Station on Saturday, October 25th from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Rob Garrity seconded, and it was so voted.
BIWEEKLY CALENDAR
Jack read the Biweekly Calendar.
OLD BUSINESS
Jack said that Franklin agreed to sign today, satisfying the water issue.
Everett Street meeting. Jim said the Walpole Selectmen agreed it’s a dangerous road and were very supportive, and agreed no truck traffic on Summer/Everett. It was suggested to put up a barrier “local traffic only” at end of Everett. Also stop signs.
Jack said the School Building Committee is meeting tonight and reviewing the Request for Services for an Owner’s Project Manager.
NEW BUSINESS
Jack mentioned the Committee Chair meeting. He discussed the Stormwater and follow up to the Stormwater article, earth removal and inspection fees. The boards will consolidate data and send to Jack.
Jack said they discussed reorganizing staff in town hall, but now did it and under 43D, they need that to happen. They are now under Bob Bullock. Rob said the best benefit of that is cross training the staff so that the public is always served.
Jim Lehan moved to appoint John Weddleton to the Public Safety Building Committee for the life of the project. Rob Garrity seconded, and it was so voted.
Jack said on a serious note, with respect to the tragedy in town (Taylor Meyer death) over the weekend, he wanted to publicly state that the public safety officials did an amazing job from Saturday, around 5 p.m. when we first found out about it. Many of them worked straight through today (Monday) with some of them sleeping in offices in their chairs, but the work they did coordinating efforts of a tremendous amount of different communities was exceptional. We owe a level of thanks to the different communities and METRO LEC and they all came and assisted with detective work and coordinating the searches on the police side. Jack said that anytime there is a tragedy, you have to think about the crime side of it, if there is one. On the fire side, there was mutual aid. There was 100-200 firefighters from area
communities helping, and the same on the police side with people helping. Jack highly commended Police Lt. Carroll, Fire Deputy Chief Wood, as well as Chief Stone and Chief Bushnell. They did yeoman’s work, and an outstanding job. Jack said this had a horrible ending, but the work they did was very impressive. Ramesh thanked Jack for his assistance as well as he devoted his own time over the weekend to helping. The Board will send commendation letters and letters of thanks to area communities who assisted.
ACCEPTANCE OF MINUTES
Rob Garrity moved to accept the minutes of September 15, 2008, regular and executive session, and October 2, 2008. Jim Lehan seconded, and it was so voted.
At 10:35 p.m., Rob Garrity moved to go into executive session for pending litigation. Jim Lehan seconded, and it was a roll call vote: Rob Garrity, aye; Ramesh Advani, aye; and Jim Lehan, aye. The Board will not return to open session except to adjourn the meeting.
At 10:50 p.m., Rob Garrity moved to adjourn the meeting. Jim Lehan seconded, and it was so voted.
This is a true and accurate report of the Selectmen’s Meeting of October 20, 2008.
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James C. Lehan, Clerk
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