Select Board
Minutes of the meeting of 7/18/18
Meeting Opened at: 4:06pm
Select Board Members Present: Carol Edelman, Chairperson and Donald Coburn
Also in attendance: Justin Cole, Jon Sylbert, Rebecca Wolin, Joe Baker, Mary Makuc, Peter Chait, George Cain
The Board met with Joe Baker and Mary Makuc of the Community Center to discuss how to proceed with hiring a person to fill the administrative position currently filled by volunteers. It was agreed to follow our normal hiring procedures and place a help wanted ad.
Miscellaneous Items Reviewed:
- At the request of the Planning Board the Board voted to appoint Nancy Marcus until the next election to fill the vacancy on the Planning Board.
- At the request of the Council on Aging, Rosalyn Halberstader was appointed to a 3 year term on the Council on Aging.
- The Board accepted Kay Purcell’s resignation from the Council on Aging effective August 15, 2018 with regrets.
- Amidon property – a resident suggested that the Board should look into whether the state would be interested in purchasing this property to build a better boat ramp. The Board asked M. Noe to follow up on this.
- Annual 2nd homeowner’s meeting – this has been scheduled for Saturday, August 11th at 10am.
- Basketball court – the current tiles are not staying securely in place and have been causing injuries. The Parks Commission has locked the court to prevent any future injuries until a satisfactory solution can be found.
- Dept head meeting summary:
a. Time off – it was agreed that any time off for department heads that is 2 days or more needs to be communicated to the Board. It was made clear that neither the Chief and Sergeant nor the Director of Ops and Foreman should take time off at the same time.
b. Our insurance agent met with the group to discuss new programs, claims/losses, available grants and credits we are eligible for that would reduce our premiums.
c. Financial team – since there has been some questions about the new forms and procedures it was suggested that Justin and Stephenie have a meeting with everyone that uses them to go over any questions and open more dialogue. M. Noe will send around feelers for the best time and date to do this.
d. Kenn had requested a summary report of calls from the fire department. Shawn said that a summary is submitted each month with the payroll and can be viewed when the warrants are signed. Carol and Don were fine with this.
e. Pole mounted speed indicator – The Chief confirmed it is broken and expensive to fix (couple thousand). The Chief is not sure how soon this will be fixed as he does not have any extra monies in his budget to make the repair. Originally he was requesting to use free cash at the special town meeting to purchase a new one but this was removed from the warrant by the Board and Finance Committee.
f. Shawn confirmed that the firehouse will not be available for the library to move into until the originally scheduled date of Sept. (The library is requesting to move the date up to Aug.) It was suggested to schedule the Fire Chief and Chair of the Library Trustees at the next meeting to discuss this further.
- Cross coverage procedures – After reviewing the department structures Carol thinks that most items can wait until the person responsible returns to handle the transaction. However, we will continue to be aware of coverage concerns, and attempt to plan sufficiently for absences.
- Resident’s request to waive the current transfer sticker fee – Don and Carol both agreed that the application clearly stated the time frame for which the sticker was purchased [through June 30, 2018].It was unanimously agreed to deny the request to waive the fee for FY19.
- Request from Libby Wolf to install 2 gardens on town properties; 1 in front of town hall and the other at the community center which would be maintained by volunteers. The Director of Operations has asked that Libby meet with him first and provide a planting plan; the Board agreed and will wait to hear further from Shawn.
- This Tuesday there will be another meeting of the SBRSD assessment subcommittee. The committee is asking for recommendations from each town on their preferred method for assessing the towns. Upon reviewing available data, Carol tentatively favors the 5 year rolling average formula. Don said that any formal vote made should be done when a full Board is present.
- The Board met with Justin Cole for the following Accountant & Treasurer items:
a. FY17 audit started with the forensic reconstruction of FY17, not the original items posted on Monday, and is approximately 50% complete.
b. Payroll – everything is generally fine.
c. FY18 revenues are preliminarily complete; a final audit of June still needs to be done.
d. FY18 expenses will continue for 2 – 3 more warrants. Final invoices for FY18 are due no later than August 6th.
e. Justin is going to suggest to the auditors that once they are done with the FY17 audit that they start the FY18 right away (end of Aug. beginning of Sept.) if feasible. If the auditors are able to do this it would delay certifying free cash for one month.
f. FY19 – the only notable item was that a 3 year reconstruction was required due to an unexpected retirement. This individual has a retirement account that was separate from what all the other employees have.
g. Over the summer we will have another actuarial study done (GASB75).
- The Board met with the Finance Committee and to discuss the following:
a. George asked that departments be reminded that no one should be charging anything on their personal credit cards or being personally reimbursed for town purchases. If a vendor is unable to invoice us departments may come to the Administrative Assistant to have the item purchased with the town credit card.
b. Schedule for monthly reports – it is dependent on how many days are in a month and when the last warrants of each month are signed. Typically they are sent out by the 10th business day of each month.
c. Year-end transfers have been completed and it doesn’t seem that there are going to be any issues.
d. Question of an additional special town meeting to handle the unexpected retirement and the town’s portion of their benefits. Jon suggested that we transfer from reserve fund instead. Justin said that if there were going to be a special town meeting for another purpose it would be possible to move the funds from the retiree stabilization fund at that time.
e. The Finance Committee requested that in any decisions with regard to financing broadband decisions, the Finance Committee will be included.
f. Jon stated that the vote for the bond for WiredWest approved at a previous town meeting [2015?] should be rescinded at the next annual town meeting so it can be taken off the books. Any other outstanding financial items should also be taken care of; Justin will provide a list.
g. Jon agreed that unless there was a need the Finance Committee would not be meeting again until the next joint meeting on August 15th.
- Warrants were signed.
- The Board approved the Bidwell House’s request for a theatrical event permit and all alcohol one day permit on August 4, 2018.
- Minutes from 7/10 & 7/11/18 were approved.
- Administrative Assistant’s weekly report was reviewed.
- Police Chief’s weekly report was reviewed.
A motion was made and unanimously approved to adjourn the meeting at: 5:40pm
Submitted by:
Melissa Noe, Administrative Assistant
Approved by:
Monterey Select Board
Select Board Members
Minutes Book
Town Clerk
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