TOWN OF WILLIAMSTOWN MINUTES PRESENT: Larry Hebert - Chair, Rodney Graham- Vice Chair, Bill Ashe, Francis Covey Absent: Art Stone Town Manager: Garrett Earls
VISITORS: Mike Sprano, Kathleen Lott – The Northfield News, Kamala Chouinard, Allen Chouinard, Horace Duke Jr., Dave Delcor, The Times Argus, Arthur Kramer, Roland Tousignant, Susan Tousignant At 7 pm Larry called the meeting to order for the April 5, 2010 Selectboard meeting. Announcements: Larry Hebert, Chair of the Select board, made some changes to the agenda.
Under Unfinished Business discuss some survey estimates on Fall Bridge
Road, Young Road and the Public Safety Building. Under Executive Session
we will not be doing that in Executive Session but move it to #6 under
New Business. Visitor’s Comments: Mike Sprano asked about getting guard rails on Getz Road by the pond. Then he asked what was happening on the sidewalk. Garrett explained there is a pre-bid on April 20 and the bids are being accepted on April 4, 2010. Review and Approval of Warrants: Rodney moved SB42 and 43 to be approved. Seconded by Francis. Garrett pointed out to the Board on SB43 is a Listers training for $110.00. He asked the Board to not approve this bill because the person could not attend. After a discussion Rodney amended his motion,SB43 to take the $110.00 for Lister training from NEMRC,invoice number 20868 off this warning. Seconded by Francis and the motion passed by voice vote 4-0. Approval of Minutes: Larry said the first minutes are the March 15, 2010 minutes. Bill move
to approve and seconded by Rodney. After a discussion the motion passed
with a vote of 4-0. Manager’s Report: Update on the Highway Crew: they spent 88 hours trimming on Chelsea Road. Also they are starting to grade the roads. Sidewalk pre bid on April 20th and are due on May 4th. Parade this year will be on May 29th, Saturday. Starting at 5 pm, entertainment after and then fireworks around 9:15. He is still working on Road side mowing. Lastly the server went down this weekend. It has a heat issue which was known before. The way the server is suppose to work is that the six work stations at the Town Hall all back up to the server. The server in turn is supposed to be backed up with hard drives. This was recommended by NEMRC and was purchased by the Treasurer which he says are for his use. Garrett asked to buy new ones for the backups or asked the Treasurer for them to be turned over. All six work stations are backed up on the server so he has no reason to back himself up individually. Francis thought if they were purchased by the Town, then they are the Towns property and should be used in that manor and not in a personal manner. Francis made the motion we purchase two new hard drives for the $200. and we request we get the two the Town has purchased back. Seconded by Rodney. Bill will draft a policy for computers and backups. Motion passed by voice vote 4-0. Unfinished Business: Survey Estimates – Falls Bridge Road, Young Road and Potential Public Safety Building These three surveys are estimates and Larry started with Falls Bridge
Road. The grant for the straightening the road he was able to move that
project up to #1 in the region. That is a 100% to 99% assured of getting
funded on that. Rodney moved to accept the estimate not to exceed $5000.
from American Consulting Engineers to do the survey work on the Falls
Bridge Road. Seconded by Francis. Bill abstained and the motion passed
by a voice vote of 3-0. The third survey is for the potential public safety building. Rodney moved to approve this survey estimate for the potential safety building not to exceed $3700. Francis seconded. Rod explained VLCT architect class produced some designs of the potential building. We should receive the copies of the designs and display them at the Fire Station during the April 10th vote. Motion passed by voice vote of 4-0. New Business: Roland Tousignant – State Police Advisory Board Roland spoke to the Board that he is the new representative replacing Terry Knight. The Board is a liaison between the Towns and the State Police for any concerns. They are trying to meet with the Selectmen a couple times a year so if there is a problem they can see what they can do. Roland presented the Board with a total incident report of offenses to show the presence of the State Police and Sheriff’s office in Williamstown. The Board thanked Roland for coming in and explaining the State Advisory Board’s position. FairPoint Communication – Petition and Order for Pole & Wire Locations Order 22568 Rodney motioned to approve their request. Seconded by Francis. After a discussion the motion passed by voice vote 4-0. Request for Proposal: Auditors Garrett provided examples of proposals from other Towns and VLCT. They found one from a town they liked and asked Garrett to revise it for Williamstown and bring it back to the Board next meeting. Remote Access Policy: Larry said we are revisiting this, we had meeting with state auditors, our lawyers, discussions with Vermont League Cities and Towns and the consensus is that especially that the payroll is not involved in the Treasurers position there is not a need for him to have it. No one else has it. Rodney asked if Larry was asking for a policy or a decision to allow it or not tonight. Larry said decision and later a policy. The Board discussed it and all seemed to be in favor of not allowing remote access. Rodney motioned to not allow anyone except NEMRC to have access to the Towns computers system and we will draft a remote access policy. Seconded by Francis and the motion passed by voice vote 4-0. Larry wanted everyone to be clear that remote access is done as of this meeting. Inter Office Monitoring Policy: Larry spoke there is reason to believe through routine checks on the systems in Town there may be monitoring going on within the offices of Williamstown. This will be a discussion to allow it or have it come to an end if it’s happening. Fran said he remembered some monitoring going on and it was to be determined if work was being done or personal things were being done on work time and no one should monitor anyone else’s office. We should decide if it should be done and he didn’t think it should. Larry said he could say that the system is pretty sophisticated with both audio and visual components to it. We don’t know to what extent it’s been used or if it has been used. It definitely has the capability to be used and it is not the Town’s equipment. He would not want anyone listening to his conservations while in the Town’s Offices. Rodney said this is different than the spy ware program. Garrett said the spy ware would take a snapshot of what employees were doing at there work stations from what he understood. That has been eliminated when the Town went to Disaster Recovery which can backtrack and find a mistake made. Also the employees never signed off on the knowledge they would be monitored. Bill called NEMRC and they explained it is a fairly sophisticated system and he didn’t think it had anyplace in our place of business, period. Allen wanted to be clear this was not the Town’s equipment. Francis was sure he did not know about it. Kamela asked who they thought owned it. Larry didn’t know but it was found in the Treasurer’s office. Kamela said the Treasurer was the IT person before NEMRC. Rodney’s amended motion was to instruct the Treasurer to remove the inter office monitoring equipment from the Town premises by Friday, April 9th. Have NEMRC on a routine maintenance check to be sure that has been done. Seconded by Francis and the motion passed by voice vote 4-0.
This was going to be discussed in Executive Session. It is a letter that if decided would be forwarded to the State Auditors of Accounts to request his assistance resolving issues in the Town’s accounting. Larry read the letter for everyone which asked the questions they would like answered. Bill asked if he was correct that there were complaints from Residents to the State Auditors Office and the State Auditor had written a letter to the Board offering there assistance prior to this letter. Larry said they did receive one. The State Auditors need a formal request from the Board to start looking into this. Just to give people an idea of where we are at as a Board trying to operate the Town. We formed a committee to work on the Water & Sewer rates and to work on the future and current needs of the water & sewer systems. Larry read from an email inviting the Treasurer to attend the committee meeting for information they would need. The meeting was postpone to the next night and he was informed and he acknowledge it. The committee did not receive any information nor did he come to the meeting. We have had a mild winter and there are many things that could be done in Town, we have a fairly good idea where we are at from the expenditures side but no idea on the revenues. We are not saying there is any wrong doing but things could be done a whole lot better. Larry said they have hired an attorney to represent the Town and we discussed what we have done up to date and what we are discussing now. He suggested we do this in open meeting and not executive session so everyone is informed. He advised us that what we have done was necessary and well within our rights. We are committed as a Board and we will get through this. Rodney motioned that we send this request to Department of State Auditor in care of Joe Juhaze, Deputy State Auditor. Seconded by Bill and the motion passed by voice vote of 4-0. Around the Table: Art: Absent Francis: Noticed posted roads sign missing from Rood Pond/Mountain View is in ditch. Rodney: Not sure if they spot grade roads or actually did some roads. He was on McGlynn Road that they had graded and again they are leaving a ridge on both sides of the road. They did a lot of work on that road last year and that water is just going to erode the road. It needs to be stopped. Bill: He said this could be an Agenda item for the next meeting. Looking at the Leagues newsletter this most recent one: Do towns have to have a Red Flag Policy. They do. The deadline for these keeps getting moved forward and thinks it is now June. Preventing identity theft prevention and all Towns are required to have one. Basically it’s for Towns to try an identify circumstances where someone might be trying to gain information that they should not get. He passed out a model policy for Red Flags. This is a requirement from the Federal Trade Commission. Larry: Larry was informed that since the Town did not have a Health Officer the Selectboard Chair becomes the Health Officer till one can be appointed. He asked for anyone would be interested as his schedule if full at this time. A resident of the Town suggested to him that the last thing he says should be a positive note. If he saved it for last instead of the beginning of the meeting people would remember it. He understood the turmoil going on in the Town the past 6-8 months especially around the recent elections. This is not something the Selectboard chose to happen. It is just the circumstances the way they are. There is another crucial vote coming up this Saturday with regards to the Town Manager. This whole situation is nothing the Manager or Selectboard caused. The situation has come to light because the auditor’s recommendations that had been ignored and just got to the point that something had to be done. The more we got into it the more things we found that needed to be corrected. This Board is very committed to get through this and hopefully when this is all done we’ll have policies in place, hopefully the water & sewer rates will be adjusted so that it reflects the future needs of the Town for years to come. As he said before they need accurate numbers to work with. We are in great hopes we can work with the Treasurer, Manager and the Board work together to accomplish this. We are committed to follow through with it and we will follow through with it. We want the Residents of the Town to know that it will get done. He knows a lot of people are accomplish about this, concern about this just as well as we are. Hopefully everything will turn out; it’s just a process to get through. That’s the way he wanted to leave things tonight. Visitor’s Comments: Garrett just wanted to mention we need volunteers for the day of the Parade. We need volunteers to help move town records out of the attic to a place where we have not determined to store them while we do the energy grant work. Contact the Manager's Office to volunteer. Mike reminded Larry about the letter. Tomorrow the residents will be
receiving in the mail a flyer. The backside shows Towns +/- populations
to Williamstown what they have for a Manager or administrator. Inside
gives a brief description of the duties of the Manager or Administrator.
Also in this letter the way the Article was worded: to keep the Manager
form of government vote No. If you want to eliminate the Manager form
of government vote Yes. Motion made by Rodney and seconded by Francis to adjourn the Board of
Selectman at 9:10 pm.. |