Camden Select Board extends coastal armoring moratorium 180 days

[0:15] Select Board Chair (presiding officer): Okay, good evening. Are we set there in the back? Super. Welcome to the town of Camden Select Board meeting for September 22nd. We've got a nice agenda tonight. It doesn't look like it will be a super long meeting, so that's good. [0:39] Select Board member: Never say that. We're optimistic here. [0:43] Select Board Chair (presiding officer): Here first off is public comment on non-agenda items. Do we have anyone who would like to speak? If you do, please remember to state your name and where you're from. [1:00] Allison McKellar, public commenter: Good evening, Allison McKellar, 79 Mechanic Street, and overall I just want to express my very strong support for what has felt like increased enforcement of speeding, really since maybe early spring. The best way that I have known that there's increased enforcement is that I've had the benefit of sometimes being a fly on the wall for conversations with teenagers. And as a mother of a teenage boy with many teenage boyfriends, I am just so incredibly appreciative of the enforcement that has happened. I know there are many officers that participate in this, but there is one specific officer who has been complained about quite a bit. In some of the teenage circles, which I consider to be just a really wonderful sign, and that officer is Officer Carty, who I was also really glad to see that you guys picked up that habit or tradition of pinning new officers, and this is such great timing too, because I get to get the ear of our newest recruit here, but Officer Cardi, I understand, is at the academy right now, which concerns me greatly too, because that is sometimes the point at which we lose our officers, but I know that Officer Carter in particular, I really think has probably saved lives that we don't even know about, and I hear the complaining, and even some a little bit of complaining from parents, it is annoying if your high schooler loses their license for a period of time. I know that a lot of the time officers are probably going to hear pushback, they probably don't get a lot of thanks from the actual people that they're citing, but I just, I just want to say I really support. And I heard once while I was on the select board that there was frustration because they felt like when they did start ticketing people a lot, there was pushback from elected officials, and it wasn't something that I was aware was a dynamic. So, I just think it's important that gets put on the record. There's a lot of support. I know that I'm not alone in that, and that also as you're talking about working with Lincolnville. I didn't get a chance to watch that meeting. I know you're discussing some things with Lincolnville. I don't know if this came up or not, but I think safety on the lake is another really important issue. It's an issue that was brought to me many times, and I never really felt like maybe much progress was made there. There was a moment when there was gonna be Camden Police Department presence on the lake with taking lake warden shifts or various things like that, but I do think that the lake has become a more active and sometimes dangerous place, and that there's a lot of bad event to both Camden residents Lincolnville residents just the general public to have more enforcement out there, and that the threat of getting pulled over by somebody is important. Also what's been suggested to me before more educational signage at the boat launches reiterating the rules the water safety zone the importance of slowing down when you go by paddlers things like that. So sometimes I mean I'm not dictating some kind of action item that I'm suggesting, but I think sometimes when it's heard that the select boards in both places or in one place are supportive generally of something, that helps town staff to know that if they see opportunities that they can feel comfortable moving forward with that. So kind of like the increased speeding enforcement, you know, if everybody just knows the select board is [5:13] Select Board Chair (presiding officer): behind that 's helpful so thank you thank you is there anybody else here to speak concerning a non agenda item and thank you Susan for joining on zoom we hope you're feeling better soon any other non-agenda item great okay super moving on chief badge pinning of new officer patrick mitchell thank you chris [5:40] Select Board member (enforcement/law enforcement liaison): Before that I would like to thank Allison for her comments. We are trying to do everything in our power to step up enforcement and increase our visibility and presence. We've gotten a ton of compliments, so thank you for publicly speaking. I'll let Trevor know when I text him tonight at the academy that he got a little shout out. But again bringing back our badge pinning ceremony for our new officers, again not only is it you know a milestone in each officer's career to publicly get their badge Pinned on, it's also a way for us to introduce those officers to the public who might not see them for their first beginning of their shift in career while they're on night shift, and that way you get to know a little bit about them. So I'm going to call up Officer Mitchell. Yep, just stand and face the crowd. So Patrick Mitchell began his law enforcement career in Maine in the summer of 2019, serving as a reserve officer with the Agunquit Police Department, while also working full-time as a federal reserve law enforcement officer in his home state of Massachusetts. Patrick quickly developed an appreciation for Maine and had already spent considerable time exploring the mid-coast region. In the fall of 2019, he decided to make Maine his home and began working as a correctional officer at the Maine State Prison. After realizing that correction was not where he wanted to build his career, Patrick felt that the pull to return to law enforcement and transfer to the Maine Judicial Marshals. Even after leaving his full-time position with the Marshals, he continued serving the agency on a part-time basis. Patrick later stepped away from law enforcement for approximately two years to work with as a member of the Bath Ironworks Security Department. However, his desire to return to law enforcement, particularly patrol work, remained. That ultimately led him to apply with the Camden Police Department, where he was hired as a patrol officer in August of 2026. Outside of work, Patrick enjoys spending time with his wife Lily and their two dogs, Waylon and Cash. Working for the Camden Police Department has provided Patrick with a balance between his professional and personal life, while giving him the opportunity to enjoy everything the Camden community has to offer. Patrick looks forward to continuing his service with the Camden Police Department, getting to know more of the people who call Camden home, and building relationships with the community that make Camden such a special place to live, work, and serve. So at this time, I'd like to call up his wife Lily to pin on his badge. Do [8:36] Speaker E (unidentified): you want to get it with the [8:45] Select Board Chair (presiding officer): seal behind? Oh sure, why not? Thank you. Next [Speaker E (unidentified): item] on the agenda is the approval of board minutes for September 8, 2026. We have a motion or any notes of change required? I'll [9:26] Select Board member: make a motion to I'll make a motion to approve although there was a spelling error that I caught but I can find it later it's nothing something no material change no it was something Bobby said that I think we've misspelled from our club okay there's a motion to approve I'll second that motion any [9:50] Select Board Chair (presiding officer): further discussion nope all right those in favor susan you do have to take it off mike to say i if you want to be counted i awesome thank you very much so promotions approved five zero all right dave thank you for handling the next agenda item on the mcgunnicook lake water level update okay so this is just an [10:23] Town staff / dam operations presenter: update so i was contacted by the main dep about a water level complaint and the person that called his name is laura pay she's the hydropower coordinator for bureau of land resources main department of environmental protection she asked if she could come down and do a site visit is it? I said, sure. Wanted to do that. So I gave her the lake level policy and she came over. And so I've been doing this for, you know, about three, and a half years now. And when I first looked at the policy, I kind of questioned a lot of the things in there and wondered what's this all, you know, it seemed like it was a little, like some of it wasn't, didn't seem all that pertinent to me. But as I have been managing this for three and a half years, I found that this lake level policy addresses just about every aspect of the watershed and I didn't know all that when I first looked at it so one of the questions I did have when I first started was okay minimum flow is so just so everybody knows there's this basically the lake level policy and it tells us how we handle things and in the time frame that we're at right now is basically summer operation July 5th to October 1st basically requires us to on September 7th to draw down the lake we do a drawdown and the reason the drop that drawdown exists is for flood protection so we start to draw down on September 7th and we're supposed to get to around 25 inches below 20 to 25 inches below the spillway that's in preparation for hurricanes so if you didn't have the lake drawn down at that point you would need a significant amount of time to release water because you can only lower the lake by two inches a day roughly With everything open completely up, and you really don't want to just open everything up and flood everything, because the high water flows are more damaging or just as damaging as the low water flows. So you're trying to lower the lake to about, like I said, about 25 inches, because, like, I think it was three years ago, we had three inches of rain and a 24-hour period overnight. So I had been looking at, been tracking the weather. It was a Sunday, I think, and I was looking at it, and I was like, okay, it's a niche, an inch of rain overnight, we got over three, and it was kind of a, it was isolated and kept on rotating around the mid-coast area. And when I got in the morning, the lake had come up three feet. So if you back calculate the time it takes to reduce the lake to be able to accommodate that amount of water, it would have taken, you know, 18 days roughly. So nobody has a crystal ball and knows 18 and days in advance what, you know, how much water they're gonna get. So that's a good example of how his historically, I think the town had been going through these cycles of hurricanes and getting flooded and said, all right, this is a component that needs to be in the lake level policy. So it is one of the other questions I kind of questioned was, you know, it says that you have to set the gate at an inch and a half. So the gate is roughly two and a half feet wide, and it's, and they say open it up an inch and a half, that's, that's the minimum amount you can open it in the summertime basically. So around July, the Fourth of July, you want to, you want to have the water about six inches above the spillway, and that's where it was this year. And I never opened the gate again. I set it to minimum flow right around the July time frame when I was six inches above the spillway, five inches I think I was above the spillway, and I shut the gate. I didn't shut it, I kept it, I opened it only to an inch and a half so that this, the spillway [14:39] Select Board Chair (presiding officer): you're talking about is the one, the east? Oh yeah, so the control point is the east dam [14:43] Town staff / dam operations presenter: not the west stand, right? So that's what everything is measured to. It's, there's a benchmark there. There's a staff gauge there. And that gate is open to an inch and a half. Like I said, that's the minimum amount that you can close it to. And I always wondered, you know, what that meant. So I was just following the policy. So, and Joe Sawyer ran the hydro powered plant. I think he was a, you know, person that lived in Camden. He was, it must have been an engineer, pretty smart guy it seems like. And he was a big part of, I think, developing or coming up with some of the data that they, used to develop the lake level policy. And when I started looking back at the notes that he had, he had some calculations that he said that pretty much when your gate is open at an inch and a half on the spillway, you are releasing about six cfs, cubic feet per second, so inch and a half is supposed to equal six cfs. How do I know that? There's no real way of doing it other than a mathematical calculation or having some instrument that can measure that, and we did that. So the lady from the DEP came, and I was kind of, kind of interested in this because one, I wanted to make sure that it was accurate, that the inch and a half was equaling what they thought it was, and it was almost right on the money. It was 5.7 cfs. So in all actuality, we were letting out a little less than we should than we could have been, you know what I mean? So after she reviewed everything, she reviewed the lake level policy, she said she was going to head back and do a write-up after we did the, calculation or the assessment of what was being released from the gate. And then after she got back, she wrote a letter and pretty much explains that we're an extreme drought period right now, and that everything looks good the way we're managing it, the policy looks good. She did an assessment of, you know, what the flow through the watershed would be if there was no lake there. And you guys saw the letter. So I think it says everything thing is pretty good. Then I went back and I checked the data, and since 1978, okay, between now and 1978, there's only been one time, correct, correction, two times that the lake has been actually been higher than it is right now. It was in 2023 and it was in 1991, okay. So that means every other year since 1978 it's been lower, in addition to two other years that was equal to what it is now, 2019 and 2021 was exactly where it is now. 2023 it was a little, it was at 27 inches Below spillway it's at 29 now and in 1991, so that's a long run of period of time that shows consistently how the water's been managed, and it was significantly lower before, right? So people say it's never been this low, it's a big misstatement. It's never been managed this well. No reality, this is where it should be because the policy was developed not just to maintain the lake levels, it's to maintain the whole watershed, it's to maintain levels in the lake and Seabright empowerment and Seabright. Empowerment is a shallow basin that is dammed up by the Seabright Dam and it's it's it's it's more easily reacts to higher flow or less flow unlike the McGonagall Lake which is a huge registered reservoir that takes a lot of water to change the level, so any changes to the lake level policy will have a huge impact on the Seabright impoundment as well as the river. So one of the things you got to keep in mind is that several just before I got here and talking with Dave Bolstridge they had some. Really big problems at Seabright Dam with complaints on the level of the impoundment above the Seabright Dam below the East Dam and that was because the Seabright Dam was leaking and it was a little. [19:47] Speaker E (unidentified): Lower than this that if like normally the minimum can I ask a quick question? Yeah, are you using the. [19:52] Select Board member (Bob): The same is it the 2000 revised in 2009 dam that they told us about last night? I'm just curious is the lake level the operation guidelines is that from 2009 the ones that you're using? Okay, I'm. [20:07] Town staff / dam operations presenter: Just curious if it was the same one, it's 2009 and yeah, that's what I seem to have here, that's what they handed, that's what they handed out last, I think that's what I think that's what it, that's the late last time it was updated, okay, but I think a lot of a lot went into this when they figure this out, it wasn't just something that somebody you know dreamed up like sat down and said all right we're going to do this and they took everybody's you know everybody's concerns into mind when they made up. This policy, so one of the other questions I had was Joe Sawyer, right, because you know maybe he was wrong, so I had our engineer who's really good at this stuff calculate that out and I'm gonna let him kind of give you his findings, great, of what Joe Sawyer his calculations, so and then I'll probably just kind of go a. [21:01] Speaker I (unidentified): Little bit on after before we go with Justin. I'm getting a notification that there's no volume on the YouTube. Maybe interest the same Lincolnville had it same problem, but I will say that he posted that YouTube this morning it was [21:17] Select Board Chair (presiding officer): was fine. I'm not sure what's fine. Yeah, the same thing happened with our meeting last time as well. [21:23] Speaker I (unidentified): Yeah, I just got a notice about that as well, so I'm not, you know, I feel like it's a chronic thing that's, yeah, and not just isolated. Yeah. [21:33] Speaker E (unidentified): Well. [21:37] Dave, dam operations presenter: I'll try to speak loudly, but I don't think I'll be able to speak so loudly they can hear me on YouTube if it's, they will tomorrow. So as Dave, let me just, Dave, are we live on that? Sorry, I'm over here because we're having a hard time with the HDMI cable there, so we've resorted to the backup. So Dave, as he noted, asked me to take a look at lake level, how it changes, how the dam operations impacts that. So very basically, the rate of change in the lake level is equal to the flow into the lake minus the flow out of the lake divided by the area of the lake. So your flow will be in, say, cubic feet per second, your area will be in square feet. You divide cubic feet per second by square feet and you will get feet per second, a rate of change in the depth of the lake. Flows into the lake, it's precipitation and then the associated runoff. Flows out of the lake, the flow through the dam, evaporation from the lake surface, and then groundwater is a little bit more complicated because groundwater can flow into the lake or out of the lake depending on what's happening with the water table. You can have a lake that's gaining or a lake that's losing either way. The only thing that we have any control over here is the flow through the dam by opening and closing the gate. And really for kind of to simplify things, we consider groundwater and evaporation as our uncontrolled losses, and I'll just call it evaporation. So the, we looked at the flow through the gate in the east dam, it's a 30 inch wide gate that's submerged about 13 feet below the spillway, 13 and a half feet below the spillway. This is a common equation for flow through a submerged weir. The short of it is I calculate that based on the water level currently and on the 16th of September, that I would expect 5.8 cubic feet per second flowing through the east dam gate. As Dave noted, when DP came out, they measured it empirically with a velocity meter and came up with 5.7 CFS. So somewhere in that ballpark and the two seem to confirm each other. We Know that there's some amount of leakage around the dams. There always is. We also know that there's a little bit of leakage through the west dam. It's largely closed, but there is a trickle going through it. So we're going to assume about five percent in leakage. So that brings us up to about six cubic feet per second coming through the east and west dam. That's under our minimum flow policy of the dam open and in, or sorry, the gate open an inch and a half. So that's our flow area pulled an updated area off of recent GIS data set. The impoundment area includes McGunnicoke Lake, a little over 1,300 acres, Norton Pond, a little over 130 acres, combined impoundment area of 1,485 acres. So again, back to our first slide, flow in, flow out, divided by the lake area. We know our flow out from the dam is about out three cfs, and we know the lake area is about 1400 acres. So what's missing here is our evaporation and other losses, but we'll get to that. So what does that dam flow mean and change in lake level So we'll just look at that. So we have our change in lake level is going to be equal to the flow through the dam divided by the lake area, the same equation just simplified to take evaporation out of it. What that tells us is that at the dam at minimum flow, current minimum flow per our policy, an inch and a half open, we lose about three inches in lake level a month through the dam. Importantly, that's typically over a period of two to three months in the summer. Most other months we actually have gaining levels in the lake because of higher precipitation. But for the period of time we're looking at here, which is July 1st through September 1st, I think I went back and looked at the weather history and we had about half an inch of rain over that whole two-month period so almost negligent, more negligible. So over that period we saw the lake dropped 25 inches. So that's 12 and a half inches a month that we're seeing the lake drop between July and August of this year, which is also interesting because that's exactly what the drawdown is. So if we lost If we lost 12 and a half inches in the lake and we just calculated that three of those inches were for flow through the dam, then we can assume that we had nine and a half inches of loss to evaporation and other losses to groundwater, really to groundwater and evaporation. So over three times the loss through the dam we lose to evaporation. And then as Dave noted, Joe Sawyer had looked at this exact same question on September 27th, is when his notes are dated, 1988, so almost 40 years ago, and at that time on September 27th the lake was three feet below the spillway. He had noted a lake level drop of 12 inches per month. He calculated a loss of evaporation of 7.6 inches a month and the loss through the gate, and at that time he calculated an inch and a quarter open of 2.9. So numbers are definitely different. He's calculating it a little bit differently than I did, but we get very similar answers. The other thing that he looked at is, and at this time it looked like the question that he was trying to answer is what happens if we go from the gate open one and seven eighths inch to one and a quarter inch, and what would the change be? And he said, well, you'll save about 12 percent in lake level, you know, about a little over a few inches or a couple of inches in lake level. I don't know what came out of this, because the policy that was eventually written is an inch and a half. So maybe they looked at these numbers at the time and they split the difference and [28:23] Allison McKellar, public commenter: it used to be three inches to two inches. It did get, they changed it over the years and [28:31] Dave, dam operations presenter: so it sounds like it's been whittled down to its current inch and a half. So that's really kind of just a quick snapshot of what's happening today with the lake. It's not really answering any questions about what happens if we change anything. It's just what's happening today, and the key takeaways are in these drought conditions, low water conditions, with the dam set at minimum flow, it's about three inches a month in lake level loss, and we would also expect somewhere between seven and ten inches over that same period, a month, in evaporation. Any questions or comments or thoughts on that, in that, in some of the historic calculations are yours. Did [29:14] Select Board member: What does a quarter inch of gate opening do to the river? [29:20] Dave, dam operations presenter: Well, I looked at what happens if we did what essentially amounts to having the flow. And you would achieve that by closing the gate a little more than a quarter inch, but not a full half inch. But let's assume it's about a half inch would achieve that reduction in flow. Flow. So if we were to close the gate and reduce that flow to three CFS versus the existing six CFS, that would reduce the amount of lake level loss through the dam by about an inch and a half a month. And again, that's really only applicable for two months out of the summer when the lake is really losing. And generally speaking, that's August and September. Most Julys, there's enough precipitation than it's gaining and definitely by October the lake is gaining historically. So what does that mean for the river? Well, it means that instead of six cubic feet per second flowing into the Seabright impoundment, you'd have three feet per second flowing into the Seabright impoundment. The Seabright impoundment's about 75 acres, give or take, so it's considerably less than the McGonnock Cook impoundment. So there's considerably less water you would lose to evaporation. But I still, if rates are equal between the lake and the river, which you would think they would because the climate's the same and it's the same weather and same temperatures, it's reasonable to assume they'll be similar, we would lose about one CFS out of the Seabright impoundment to evaporation. So that means the flow into Seabright, three CFS, the flow out of it into the lower river would probably be closer to about two cubic feet per second versus where it's at today, which would be about five cubic feet per second. So the flow in the river would be a little less than half of where it is today at minimum. What happens to the Seabright impoundment? I think the water level would probably stay about the same because that's not gate controlled, it's controlled by flowing over the spillway. It's essentially a bathtub with a faucet going into it, so as long as that faucet it's putting in more water than we're losing to evaporation, the impoundment would stay full. So under certain conditions, because of course, the one that's, you know, way more complicated than we're going to get to here and probably is more complicated than I'm able to get to is the complex hydraulics that happen with groundwater. And if you have a really dry season, you can have bodies of water that are losing a lot to groundwater because the water table so low, so that absolutely can happen. Or if the dam's leaking, that's the other, you know, my assumption that it stays mostly the same level in the impoundment is based on the dam not leaking. [32:14] Town staff / dam operations presenter: Great, the other part too is the water moving through the Seabright. [32:19] Dave, dam operations presenter: So your detention time, the water would sit in there for twice as long. [32:25] Town staff / dam operations presenter: It's pretty shallow, the temperature don't go up. [32:29] Select Board member: Yeah, I mean, that's the question that I was going to get to is what does that change though in the water quality in some of these bodies? [32:34] Dave, dam operations presenter: We don't, I mean, we haven't actually calculated what that would mean for, you know, how much warmer the impoundment would be, but we know it would be warmer. Warmer water, you obviously is more prone to algal blooms, which then has corresponding dissolved oxygen sags. You know, that's an impact to that impoundment without question. The degree I can't say, and then as far as the lower river reducing its flow by half or a little more than half, that's also going to be impactful to the benthic macroinvertebrates, the bugs that are living in the soil, and just the general health of the river if for two months out of the year it's largely dry. So the benefit there kind of on the lake end is that you save about three inches of lake level, and the downsides are there's going to be some impacts of the Seabright impoundment and the lower River presumably there would also be some impact to water quality of the lake itself if there's it's I mean theoretically yes but it's such a massive body of water that those impacts you know the amount of time that the water is sitting in the lake the amount that it would actually change is pretty small with the changes of the dam i think that 's kind of highlighted a little bit in how little the dam affects lake level as compared to the evaporation you know we have a lot less control over the lake [33:59] Select Board Chair (presiding officer): than we do over the smaller impoundments. So if you needed to make a recommendation, there's a lot of interest in what should the height be, you know, from our discussion yesterday in Lincolnville as well, and we don't need to make the decision here tonight, but it's probably something that it sounds like there is interest, you know, certainly in Lincolnville too, of talking about the watershed and the information that you have there is, it's pretty cool, this is, you know, good comprehensive and Interesting way of looking at it, comparing the evaporation and natural loss compared to dam caused loss. One of the questions that was brought up yesterday in yesterday's meeting though was, what is the minimum flow that the DEP would allow? Because they said, yep, you know, five is within the range. Well, what's the range? And based on what you learned through their calculations, would you recommend, and this is not an official recommendation, but changing that to a one inch as compared to inch and a half? I was going to three instead of five. [35:24] Dave, dam operations presenter: Or six? I think for me, on the balance, the, amount of water you're retaining in the lake, it does not warrant the cost to the downstream impoundment and river. But honestly, for me, I don't have property on the lake. Right. I don't have a business that's dependent on getting access to the lake, so you know, that balance point for me is going to be very different than somebody else. As far as what DEP would actually establish as the minimum flow, we don't necessarily have that answer yet. My understanding is the three CFS or about three CFS, that number is essentially their calculated flow through the watershed if there were no impoundments. So if there was no dam, what would the flow be? And it's about three CFS in August and September. And so that would be kind of their baseline. That would be the absolute lowest they would go, but they've acknowledged that the McGonagall River, the McGonagall Lake is a really complex system and it would have to take, they would have to take a much closer look than just that kind of basement three sea of bass. [36:47] Select Board member (Bob): That's great Bob, you had a question? Yeah, I just have a question, I mean, or more of a statement I guess. I think Lincolnville, what we heard from them last night is basically 50 of the watershed is in Lincolnville, was there, was what they were saying, and that they basically have no control over it, and so they're not being heard. And I think that everyone wants to be heard, and so I just think that they need to be part of the conversation. So I think that's a good point, and I think there's [37:16] Town staff / dam operations presenter: A process for that. I do too. Oh okay. So it's important to note that you know that you understand that there's already a formal DEP process for property owners to do this. They can file, they can do a lake level petition, and then all these things get figured out by them, and then they said it and that's what it is, DEP says it. Yeah. Oh and but then you have to follow it right, and if you don't follow it there's repercussions for that. But that being said, I think you're going to find that not everybody gets what they want. Okay. Do you think that based on our [37:54] Select Board Chair (presiding officer): conversations last night with Lincolnville, which were really pretty good, and we talked, we talked about another committee type establishment, something that does. I know we've got the, I don't know the proper name, the Gonna Cook group who Pat works with. [38:15] Speaker I (unidentified): I'm gonna cook watershed. Yes. [38:20] Select Board Chair (presiding officer): Is there anything that we should be doing more with them as far as reach out with this information? Information and as well as getting a little bit, I know you have a question, I really think [38:32] Town staff / dam operations presenter: this isn't about politics, I think this is about science and I think it's about flood resiliency and I think you let the DEP figure it out. Nobody here is qualified to make those decisions because they're just going to be political. Okay, if you want to make a political decision, you know, a science-based decision using politics, that would be a way of doing it. I think, I think if it was, I think the fair way to do it is you let this get sorted out by the DEP and let them go through it and figure it out the way they want if the people that are complaining want to do that they have all the will all the ability in the world to do it 's sorted out by not us not Lincolnville it's sorted out by them it brings everybody in it's there's there's hearings there's they talk about public access erosion other interests with fish and wildlife habitat there's all kinds of things they have to consider with this when they do it and i think it's the most comprehensive way to do this it's developed for this reason and I think that any change to the policy would be unwise because it's been established by people probably smarter than us [39:44] Speaker E (unidentified): that have seen it for many years. Most definitely. Yeah, if you have a, if you don't mind [39:52] Tom Resick, public commenter: It thank you Tom Resick 67 Rawson. So I live right on the river at the Rawson Avenue bridge, and back when we had that three inch rainfall back three years ago, I mean we're in the hundred year floodplain, the property my house is in the 500 year, but it was scary, and that was just three inches of rain. So you've heard from Lincolnville, I mean we haven't complained, but I can, I'm going, you know, if there is, if the, if this is being discussed, we will get together a lower river because the Maguntaka river shed people, that's the lake, that doesn't represent in general the people on the lower river. So if this is going to be considered to change the policy, which I think is crazy, it's, I mean, if it, especially if it's mostly Lincolnville people or that are asking you to change the policy for Camden and for Camden lower river property owners [41:00] Select Board Chair (presiding officer): last night was more about a discussion to talk about it in general. It wasn't to move forward with policy change, it was just saying hey we're interested in having a voice on this because it does affect us and we're a neighboring town, right, that was, that was the nature of the conversation. It wasn't about getting into the inches, in fact we were interested in this [41:26] Tom Resick, public commenter: report too, right, well there's Camden residents who have not complained because they agree with the policy. Yeah, so we will need to organize and show up and be part of this if this is going to be considered to change the policy. But I would just say, you know, I think Dave's done a great job managing this and to, if it's been working, why would you change it? I mean, for Camden residents anyway. And I also wanna mention, I don't, I remember the worst people that got flooded during that incidents was Norton Pond. They had more floods in Norton Pond than it was worse than us that it actually went into their houses, right, so got to consider all that, but please keep us lower river people informed if you're considering any changes, thank you. That's, that's, that's good dude [42:22] Town staff / dam operations presenter: one last thing we didn't talk about and this is important too because he just talked about it is that any increase that you that you add to the water level now is a decrease in your flood resiliency, right, so yeah it's a decrease in your ability to respond to a flood. So if you carry more water in the lake because you want it to be higher at this time of year, you have less response time to a hurricane at this time of year, so that's the other piece of it too. Yeah, great, thank you [42:56] Select Board member: I think it's it's just well as I mentioned last night and I mean the watershed for the lake goes well beyond Lincolnville it goes up to Searsmont but what we're talking about here is the lake and specifically it's the river and the zebra compoundment which is all Camden and let's not also forget that calculation you said Justin is based on if there were no dams well if there were no dams there would be no lake at all so in order for there to be a mcgonnock lake we have to have those dams and we have to have them closed but for us to have a healthy river we have to monitor them and it gets to be the town of camden who decides that policy and if people have a little lower lake this year that's just the nature of a really dry summer and that's a shame but yeah the dp sorry [43:53] Select Board member (Bob): Sorry, but I think having the DEP do it so that it's out of all of our hands, because I don't think we should be the ones setting it just like you just said, Dave. I think we put it in DEP's hands and even with all the other things going on with the river down river, they're going to be, I mean, we still have permits and all those things to get for all of that. Like, I think letting them do the whole watershed and figuring it out and giving us what our low level, high levels are. are and if they give us a quarter of an inch we take a quarter of an inch if they say no we say no I mean I just don't think that we're in the place to make those decisions I totally agree with you great [44:34] Select Board Chair (presiding officer): well thank you for the information the report yes please if you have to come up [44:39] Select Board member: to here because of the mic some great data and calculate remember to say who you are and where [44:45] Vicki Henderson, public commenter: you're from thank you i'm vicki henderson 35 riverside drive and i am one of the river people i don't pretend to understand all of the numbers and the percentages and the volumes and this and that i do know that a little while ago we had some repairs done to the seabright dam and we were forewarned that the level of the river would be affected. It was. We watched it every day. Well, when the work was done, it slowly came back. It was a happy time. Now, within the last week or two, it has drastically gone down. And hearing some of these things and trying to comprehend some of these things, I just am curious to know you have some depth to the lake, you have the volume of the lake. The river is a really very fragile ecosystem and it continues to go down. Lately I am very concerned about that. Fortunately the loons have gone but we have our migration of the winter ducks. We have all of these wonderful gifts for us and it affects them. We have great fishing on that river. The warmth of the river is affected by the level of the river and I'm concerned about that. People paddle boarding, canoeing and whatnot. All of this is affected. I realize the lake offers all of that too but I feel like there's something more there than there is on our River and I am just curious to know when will we see a turnaround in that, when can I be assured that there is going to be a better level again. [46:47] Town staff / dam operations presenter: So I can use, let me have your spot, thank you. So and I sent the letter out to let everybody know I was gonna lower the Seabright impoundment because I knew that can be tumultuous lowering that lake level especially at this time of the year and because we're doing that spillway reconstruction on the Seabright dam. So in order to do that work on the dam closest to the powerhouse, I needed to get the water to go around the backside of the back spillway. So what I had to do was lower. So right now, basically you have a concrete structure and then they have flashboards that are about 10 inches high, okay, about this high. And I needed to lower the water level down below the boards because I wanted to take some of the boards off the very far end so the water would go around and pass the boards, once the boards were removed, which would allow me to work on the dam on the section that we're working on now. So I monitored throughout the weekend, came in on Sunday, it came down, it was probably right around 11 inches so that's what you're seeing is when it went way down. Then what we did was we pulled the flash board, and then I closed the gate on the Seabright Dam, about the upper gate, and that allowed the water level to start coming up. And with one board removed, the water level came up to about halfway on the flash boards right now. So that it came up about four or five inches. So you saw it go down, you saw it come up, and notice something come back. It came back up pretty quickly, and then it kind of stayed kind of right where it's at right now, because we're still working on the dam, the Seabright Dam. So we'll probably be done work on the Seabright Dam, oh, I'd probably guess maybe another week and a half. And then at that point, we'll put the other flashboard in, the water level come back to where it always is, and that'll be done. So that's the answer. [48:52] Vicki Henderson, public commenter: So let's see, that I really wasn't aware that there was more work that's still working on it now [48:59] Speaker E (unidentified): of that we're still working on it, that makes more sense. Okay, what basically again, Dave, if you can [49:06] Select Board Chair (presiding officer): just the two second update on, oh, what you're doing, so if anybody wants to follow along, you can always [49:12] Town staff / dam operations presenter: go to the Crowdwater website, because I monitor daily the progress of the Seabright spillway resurfacing. I document all the water levels, and I also take project construction photos in that app, so you can always look on that. But just to tell you where we're at right now, so we've, we've mechanically removed three inches of the surface of the entire spillway on the right hand side. It had a huge sag in it. All the old concrete has been taken out. The rebar that was rusting and eroded has been ground down and coated with epoxy, and then what they did was they shot created the sag in the spillway surface, because it was kind of like this as opposed to being flat, and then they basically drilled and put anchors in, and now they're putting wire mesh across the top of it, and now they're in the process of shot creating that surface, and they're about quarter to a little more than an eighth to a quarter away done. And once they're done the shotcrete, we should be finished. We have noticed that there's some problems with the flashboards. I don't know, I don't know if we're gonna be able to tackle that this year or not, but that's another portion that should probably be repaired, but a couple more weeks we should [50:40] Vicki Henderson, public commenter: be finished, so appreciative. No problem, it's not aware of such a continuation, but you can go on [50:49] Town staff / dam operations presenter: our website and you can look on the Spotify website app and you can look at the progress [50:55] Select Board member: Every day. Okay, so could you repeat the Crowd Water? I'm just gonna say crap, not Spotify. [51:02] Town staff / dam operations presenter: Yeah. Oh, Spotify. Sorry. Spotify. Isn't that a music app? [51:08] Select Board member: I haven't found that playlist yet. Spotify. You're right. I'm sorry. I'm not. [51:14] Select Board Chair (presiding officer): So I don't even have that. We stated again clearly what the app is that people grab water and water. [51:20] Select Board member: Yeah. You don't even need the app. You can just go online and find it. Great. [51:23] Speaker I (unidentified): I think I think that we have been putting this information out onto the text my gov as well. [51:30] Town staff / dam operations presenter: We did about the original, yes. We didn't talk about, we don't get progress reports on that. [51:36] Select Board member: yeah that was on august 19th but you can find the card water on the town website through the [51:41] Town staff / dam operations presenter: Meganica. Yeah, and you know you can look at it every day and see where you're at. [51:48] Select Board Chair (presiding officer): Great, thank you. Thank you, Allison. On this, I [52:02] Allison McKellar, public commenter: just want to say briefly, and I do think the town has a lot of this information available, but it is challenging to find. I actually haven't been able sometimes to find the direct link to that Crowdwater app. The policy is somewhere. There's some stuff on that Magunacook Watershed Project resource page, but it might be helpful to actually have like a dedicated page. The McGonagall Watershed Association has a water levels page that I sometimes direct people to because it links to our policy and to the Crowd Water app and then to their water level gauges, which sometimes are not working, but it gets, it gets a little confusing, and it might be helpful to try to take all the information the town has, put it in one place, and then the only other thing I would say about this is that whole Seabright impoundment situation is quite complicated, and years ago when that water level was dropping very significantly and this whole room was filled with people very, concerned. One of the things that we were informed about was that there were legal obligations to keep the water level at a certain level. There were rules about inflow and outflow, and that's all, a lot of that is left over from former lawsuits, actually, from residents who first sued former dam owners and then had water level orders imposed before that dam became a hydropower dam, then the town operated the hydropower dam, and then when we relinquished the license and by weed, that was the select board before me, but they agreed to operate under the same guidelines as had been adhered to while it was a FERC licensed hydropower dam. And in that document, it actually says two, the gate stays two inches open. Another document says that the minimum flow is 12 CFS. I asked DEP if any of that was still enforceable. They said it was a question that was up in the air, that it might have to be answered through litigation If somebody tried to challenge it 's just kind of a mess. So I do think you're wise. If somebody wants to have a different policy, probably asking the Dp. To just sort it all out, because the minute you start coming up with something different for the lake. But there are downstream issues and that and you know you guys can understand a lot of time on that. [54:45] Speaker E (unidentified): So, well, thank you, Allison. [54:48] Select Board member (Bob): I have one more question for Dave. Can we ask the ep to do that or does there have to be a petition to know it's a petition from the people, from the people. [54:56] Town staff / dam operations presenter: Okay, and one other thing that we didn't talk about is that the only 2 months out of the year where our minimum flow and our policy is around where they want it is 2 months. Months there is a potential that they would say for the other 10 months you can't lower it to [55:14] Select Board Chair (presiding officer): what we lower it now. Yeah, they might make us, that's, that's the risk of going with DEP's control. [55:20] Town staff / dam operations presenter: And there's a reason, yeah, there's a reason for it because it's based on science, right, yeah, super. [55:26] Select Board Chair (presiding officer): Thank you very much for all the input on that, appreciate it. The next item on our agenda then is the consent agenda, which is the assembly permit for the oyster festival for Lyman Morse and a victualer and lodging renewals for Cousins and Anderson Inn. Finally, any discussion? Nope, moving on. Town managers report, Ben. Thank you, I'll [56:06] Speaker I (unidentified): try not to be as long as I normally am. That's okay. [56:08] Select Board Chair (presiding officer): We just have a lot of great news, we've got, there you go, we have 15 minutes according to you, so [56:14] Speaker I (unidentified): first from the town clerk's office, the absentee voting will begin on Monday, October 5th and will continue until Thursday, October 29th. We have to end absentee voting unless it's a special circumstance the Thursday prior to the Tuesday election, so and you can request a ballot online, line or via phone, or you can come in and take one with you or vote right there. We'll have absentee ballot box outside the 29 Elm Street and we also have the voting booth inside the lobby. The town office is going to be closed to the public on Thursday, October 8th so that our finance office and clerk's office staff can attend the annual Maine Municipal Association Convention. It's a two-day event, but we all figured that Thursday would be the most beneficial day for all of us to attend. It promotes networking with Maine municipalities, great trainings, idea sharing, and it's just all facets of municipal government and their employees so it's a great training the opera house this past weekend was the 22nd Camden International Film Festival so it was SIF and there were 15 films shown in the opera house as well as the film industry pitch and numerous workshops and the opening night film Boat Builders was completely sold out oh Jeremy I know okay so planning and development update the planning board is currently reviewing yeah do you want to read you read it okay the planning board is currently reviewing a proposed eight unit residential development at 88 Elm Street which is across from the Renny's Plaza and the proposal includes the renovation of existing of the existing building that fronts on the Elm Street and the construction of two three unit buildings at the rear of the site and the board has already held a pre-application meeting and site walk the planning board is also reviewing a proposed expansion at the Nordhaven Open Space subdivision at 440 Belfast Road and Nordhaven is seeking approval for an additional 18 units for a total [58:42] Select Board Chair (presiding officer): of 28. What excuse me when is that when we're still waiting on more information okay [58:49] Select Board member: this is just so you have to be scheduled we're in the process it's just what's in the works [58:54] Speaker I (unidentified): the zoning board of appeals reviewed and approved an expansion in the shoreline zone at 152 Bayview shoreline zone expansions are the majority of the zoning board of appeals reviews the planning and development department is working on a Main Historic Community Building grant application that will be submitted to the Main Historic Preservation Commission in October the application seeks funds to preserve and restore the light tower on Curtis Island the town is partnering with partnering with curtis island lighthouse foundation on the grant for matching funds as the grant requires cost share match to come from non-governmental sources and this project builds on the town and foundation jointly funded preservation plan that was completed in 2024 the planning and development department also learned recently that the mid-coast council of governments which is mccogg is what we call it safe streets and roads for all federal highway administration funding request was approved in Partnership with Camden, Rockland, Rockport, Rockland, Thomaston, and Warren, MCCOG is developing an SS4A, which is the Safe Streets and Roads for All, safety action plan to improve roadway safety across participating communities. The project focuses on identifying high-risk locations and developing strategies to reduce serious injuries and fatalities for all road users. Additional work includes the multimodal assessment in Warren, traffic calming study in Thomaston, and demonstration projects here in Camden, Rockland, and Thomaston. The department is currently reviewing the town's zoning code to determine what regulatory changes are needed to address the new state-mandated housing rules that must be implemented by July 1st. I'm not going to talk about the coastal armoring because you can. And also Jeremy and I are working with the NIFWF Montgomery Dam and Harbor Park restoration redesign. And we're currently meeting with the design team and the stakeholders, which is the windjammers and properties that will be affected by this project and so we're going to bring the plans up from 90 we're at 90 plan design right now meeting with all these stakeholders will bring us up to 100 plan so those that means those [1:01:36] Select Board Chair (presiding officer): Who about the river yes yeah sure on the uphill upside of the dam upside of the dam and [1:01:46] Tom Resick, public commenter: And so, [1:01:48] Select Board member: Yes, people abutting the aboundment and then further upstream a little bit. And then also the windjammers, because they use Harbor Park and then the reeds, which on the American Boathouse, we have met with windjammers, the reeds, the property owners on above the abutment. We actually met with one today already. And so we're going to continue to meet with them and talk about the project. [1:02:14] Speaker I (unidentified): It's going really well, too. Can I ask a question? [1:02:16] Select Board member (Bob): Question what is a demonstration project oh going back to that yes so that would be these are [1:02:25] Select Board member: Projects designed to slow traffic down is what and we're hearing a lot of that you've probably heard that and I guess PD is doing a lot of enforcement so demonstration projects would be something that can be moved to another site they don't want to spend funds the feds don't want to spend funding on traffic control meaning slowing traffic down they don't want to spend funds to just for instance put in a tabletop which is like a there's one in rock in rockland where it slows traffic down it's Like speed bumps, but they don't want to pay for the actual installation of one. They'll give you equipment to do a demonstration of something like that, or so it's demonstration type projects that we could then, we'll keep, but we, my plan, this is what I'm thinking about this, because we had to submit a proposal, and then now they said okay, we'll think about this more broadly now that they have the funding proposals, that a demonstration project that we can take from Maguntacook Avenue or Hard Nav or to Ames Terrace, that we could move from one property to another prop, or one location to another location, with the goal of slowing flowing traffic down in those locations. The idea is hopefully that the demonstration project actually works, it does what it's supposed to do, and then we could implement something permanently. They won't fund something permanently, but they'll fund a demonstration project and materials that can be used over and over and over again from a different location to another location. So that's the idea, and they're only funding those in three locations here, Thomaston, I think you said, in [1:03:58] Speaker I (unidentified): Rockland. So thank you. Yeah, I had no idea. Yeah, I understand. Just a couple more things. Fire Prevention Week is October 4th through the 10th. Change, so I can't read, I'm still in denial about reading glasses, as you can tell. Charge into fire safety, safe charging is a super power, is the theme, which focuses on the everyday charging habits that can help reduce the risk of lithium ion batteries fires to keep our homes and communities safer. October 5th, we'll have Camden Fire EMT Kevin Callahan. He'll be providing an educational program about the safe use, charging and storage of the lithium ion batteries from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. And that's gonna be here in the French conference room. We're working on the Zoom option as well as the in-person sessions. So this topic is currently the most frequently asked question we receive from the community. And also, the Camden Fire Department will be hosting a Struggle Well program for first responders in November at the Opera House. We'll have a flyer up on our website. Site, but basically it's, it's the objective is to enable participants to prepare, practice and implement an individualized plan for personal growth by transforming struggle into strength, enabling them to be of continued service to themselves, their family, their work, their community and their country. That's all I have. Yeah, follow up on your [1:05:41] Select Board member: The dam removal and the Harbor Park restoration. There has been questions about who the project manager is from NIFWIF. Jody is that person, and I'm assisting her with that project. We have met with NIFWIF multiple times, so Jody's that person. There is no other affiliation from the town that is involved on the project. We are the ones that are communicating with NIFWIF, letting everyone know that. [1:06:06] Select Board Chair (presiding officer): Okay, there's one thing that I don't know if you intended to put in or not. It was a question I had about the bridge. Did you have time to find out anything? I put that question out but I [1:06:19] Speaker I (unidentified): did not get an answer, so I will need to revisit that. Okay, and what that was, just for people, Jody [1:06:27] Select Board Chair (presiding officer): and I were talking about how to best handle the bridge this year and if it can get removed, moved like it did a couple years ago during the Harbor float removal and potentially not store it down on the public landing like it had been but somewhere else, so it's just something that [1:06:47] Speaker I (unidentified): Jody and I had talked about. That, yeah, there's room up there, up at Public Works or up at [1:06:53] Select Board member: Wastewater. Earlier there's a need for more lay down area at Public Works, so I'm going to work with Dave on trying to permit some lay down area and I would assume that there's a location up there that we can probably bring that when we permitted in and built that, just let you know it was a seasonal bridge, that's why it's going away, right, so I assume it can get over to Public Works. [1:07:17] Select Board Chair (presiding officer): I will talk to Dave about that. I just didn't know what's required with the length and moving and [1:07:22] Select Board member: trailers, but yeah, I think it was, I think it was October is when it was going away, I believe. [1:07:28] Select Board Chair (presiding officer): Leave, typically it's usually when the floats come out because it's the same crane, correct, they do take advantage of the crane. Yes, it's later than October 1st, yeah, depending on what they do storm wise and stuff, but so sorry about the joy then. There's just one thing that we'd mentioned, yeah, super, thank you very much. Any other questions on the manager's report or anything? Nope, next is I put it on the agenda, anything relative to the meeting that we had last night with the select board of Lincolnville and so I'd put this on here just in case we had happened to have some personal things or things of interest that we wanted to talk about. You know it was unfortunate that the volume didn't work on youtube but that it is live now and i've heard from both the chair and vice chair today and they said you know what a positive right move forward for the towns to work together which to me is kind of an obvious thing to work together with neighboring communities where we've got shared interests and shared lines and it's the same area and we're all working with fewer things that are more expensive so the more we can work together as i said to kern it's it's like not quite automatic because there's legal pieces sometimes involved but to be on the right page for working together one of the things that we mentioned is potentially doing this on an annual basis. The last time there was a discussion like this it was evidently about four years ago. I like the idea there were the topics that were brought up and I'm mentioning this just so in case people couldn't hear about it yesterday had to do with the McGonagall watershed and Chris so brought up a good point be given that it's a you know large watershed that's more than the lake you know something that we Lincolnville and Camden have an opportunity for is making sure that you know the pesticide piece is similar for both that's that's a good point where we both affect the same thing with our policies. There was also a discussion about EMS and fire Mutual Aid and I'm throwing it into one category where granted it was two categories on their agenda but they're related and there is interest from both groups about reforming the ems at least group again to meet every six months. It had stopped about 18 months ago because of for the most part a lack of a quorum that could be established but if we basically look for maybe fewer members but representations from the three towns camden hope and lincolnville that are affected by the at least the ambulance contract that seems like that would be a good start and we talked about it coinciding with budget work so you know december january time period to do that and then six months later or so and we also did have a discussion too that really kind of dovetailed to what we had spoken about before in the prior select board meeting with a report from dave on midco solid waste and everything that kern was talking about with midco solid waste we'd already heard here too but that's okay. It was a nice way for there to be, you know, open communication, and there was some attendance by the public who also spoke on a couple of items. But I thought it was a well-run meeting. I think I've summarized everything, but maybe I missed something, and maybe there are other things that other people wanted to mention, and Susan too, you know, if you wanted to contribute. Obviously we'll see you come off mute as well. [1:11:44] Select Board member (Bob): I just wanted to thank Lincolnville for inviting us, and it was the EMS review board that they wanted to reconvene, and I would love to see us do this with Hope and Rockport as well. And then I think it would be really cool once a year for everyone to get together, especially with Hope and Lincolnville, because we share so much with EMS and all of that, and we're all just such huge contributing factors to that in those budgets. But I think that I thought it was great meeting, and I actually heard from like five different people, two of the board members and three of the people who were in attendance today, thanking us for going and appreciative of that. [1:12:25] Select Board member: Yeah, I think you summed it up well. Yeah, you outlined a path forward and a meeting schedule for two or three of the four issues, but for the McGonigal Quartershed, was there any framework about who would be meeting when? [1:12:43] Select Board Chair (presiding officer): No, I don't think that we, I didn't note that we really had one. one and I think we were recognizing and again have some discussion tonight about it and again [1:12:54] Select Board member: that's referencing the, you know, there's multiple levels of, because even like as I think Allison referenced, the entity that's called McGonagall watershed Association is really focused just on the lake, the, you know, they're not really a watershed, and so it's sort of for people watching, like if you've ever driven, all I know when you come up from Hosmer pond as you press, there's a little sign there that says you're entering the mcdonough big watershed, because that line of mountains is the side of it so it's that whole area, so it really is, it does go up to sears mott, and it's a much bigger, you know, figuring out what those policies would look like is very different than some lake specific issues, but i think we'll continue to have those conversations [1:13:44] Select Board Chair (presiding officer): conversations is what it's about. Jody do you have any thoughts or you know you worked with [1:13:50] Speaker I (unidentified): Lincolnville actually, for a while, I did 20 years. It's not, it's kind of cool going back. Yeah, I just, I know that they, there's some interest, there's quite a bit of interest regarding the Knox County mutual aid agreement. And I'm a strong proponent that we work with the other, well, like they said last night, like Dave Kinney had said last night, that, you know, if we start, the other towns will be interested to join. And it should include, obviously, the input of all the fire chiefs. But I think the ultimate decision sits with the select boards and, you know, councils. But I think a document that written back in 1958 and I'm not understanding the pushback that's coming with wanting to update a document. I will probably will never understand that. Maybe I don't get the full, have the full story, but it just makes sense. [1:14:57] Select Board Chair (presiding officer): Yeah right, and for those who are listening tonight that didn't hear the other piece, there was an issue that one of the towns had because the agreement was 1958 and the insurance company said well, but even before that, I mean, she [1:15:17] Select Board member: Farley brought it to us. Yeah, in March or February last year saying hey, a, you know, this document, this agreement is really old and I think we should move, we should look at reviewing it and updating it because it does date from 1958. And there was some support from the board, it wasn't even, and then he's had some, I think he's had some pushback from Knox County to that, there's resistance to update it. So if we start with three pounds and say [1:15:52] Select Board member (Bob): say let's move forward. Yeah, and I don't think it's not up to us to update that document because [1:15:57] Select Board member: that's not, it isn't, but what he was looking for was support from the board to say that yes, the town of Camden would thinks that it's valid to up, to look at updating this. Yeah, and yes, that agreement document comes from, but if these three towns who are already in, as we said last night, we're already in a agreement because of ambulance service, therefore as we're having that conversation to say these three towns that are so interlinked also may enter into a mutual aid [1:16:31] Select Board member (Bob): agreement. So can I ask, I don't know if this is okay or not, but we haven't done a motion yet or any of that, but Jody, is there a possibility of reaching out to the Knox County administrator to say hey, is there a reason that this hasn't been updated since 1958 and let [1:16:46] Speaker I (unidentified): let them reply to us. I don't think it's the Knox County administrator their own, I mean, I know [1:16:52] Select Board member (Bob): The Knox County mutual aid is right. The president of it right now happens to be the Owls Head right. [1:16:56] Speaker I (unidentified): Right, so it's fire chief, so is there a way to reach out to them to give, I think it's been done, and then there's been pushback that they don't want anything to do with it, so basically that's. [1:17:07] Select Board member: The long and short of it that we've seemed to get last earlier this year when she Farley pushed it was no, we don't want to have that conversation, so it's best again, so if we start something on our own and then some of the other towns say hey yeah that, and again this is also trying to implement and learn some lessons from the tragedy of what happened last summer, and so hey there are some things that we've learned that didn't work and we can start okay. [1:17:38] Select Board Chair (presiding officer): Okay, well, there's probably more to do about that later to get that. [1:17:43] Speaker I (unidentified): Rolling, but yeah, that's gonna that'll be more meetings for us to. Figure out, I think it probably starts with the fire chiefs. I think they, can set the ground, you know, the,, the foundation for that. And then probably we'll look to the boards for support. Yep, and input and whatnot and I also think we should be asking for a meeting with hope. [1:18:06] Select Board Chair (presiding officer): Oh, that is that meeting that? Oh, as far as, the same. So, like, yeah, that's what we said last night. Yeah. Right. And the other thing that I would like to do,. As well is have the same sort of meeting with rockport. Yeah. if it, if it's possible. it would be nice. Nice if we could do this fairly soon, I'm thinking at the end of Rockport, like, 30 days from now, you think much like how Dave Kinney. Put the letter to us saying, hey. Let's have a chance to get together. as a select board in a public form, like we did last night. would pick you know just a few you know just like three or four items like they picked that were mutually of interest for both towns do you would you mind putting a letter to the town of rockport town manager to say hey let's start with rockport and then that's one more town. [1:19:11] Select Board member (Bob): and then we can work with why not yeah and i also think the only thing i'm going to say about that chris is that if we are going to start the ems review and we want to do that hope rockford's not involved in that and that's right no this is done sooner than later with hope so that we can get. [1:19:27] Speaker I (unidentified): moving on those things would be great well i think we're talking about two different things yeah we're talking about like the select boards meeting on common items and then eventually we'll do. [1:19:39] Select Board member: The fire, the mutual aid, right, part, yeah, I just don't see why before the end of the year we [1:19:45] Select Board Chair (presiding officer): couldn't try to have a meeting, right, I agree, before the end of the year to try to meet with Rockport, and that's great that we want to do that, and do I have a head nod from Susan too on that? Okay, good. Jeremy, sure, please, something go right into the EMS world really, but the [1:20:05] Select Board member: congressionally directed spending, that application that I had sent out for renovations to our facility down here, Public Safety Building, Hope and Lincolnville were obviously were in a partnership with them, they wrote very strong letters of support for that project. I just wanted to let you know, so that was not us just seeking that funding, that was Hope and Lincolnville fully supporting us seeking that funding and a regional approach, so I just wanted to let you know [1:20:37] Select Board Chair (presiding officer): and matt heath did a great job last night too i thought presenting from what he's seeing and he also did it i thought he showed great leadership as well in the way he spoke about the different elements and what's really going on and updates with the two ambulances and how things are working that was you know wonderful insight and i was glad he was there to be able to bring that because that 's important because one of the benefits of having the ambulance closer is for lincolnville really compared to being over in Rockport and Hope, to have that here, and now we have two here, and he went through the details of how that works, and I think that was, that was really important, and I'm glad that he did that. Bobby [1:21:28] Select Board member (Bob): I was going to say something, but I don't think I don't care about it. [1:21:31] Select Board Chair (presiding officer): Okay. So anyway, Jody, if you could, let's see about getting a letter together for that so that we can get Town of Rockport. And then maybe if there's room in November to meet with Hope. [1:21:53] Select Board member (Bob): I think we need to meet with both of them before the end of the year. I have room for some. Yep. [1:21:57] Select Board Chair (presiding officer): Well, November is, so that would be good. All right. Anything else, though, on the meeting with Lincolnville? Moving on. All right. Move on. Moving on. Ah, super. Good. Thank you. Remember [1:22:12] Select Board member: when you said this was going to be a quick meeting? Yes, I did. I did. And we're doing okay. [1:22:21] Select Board Chair (presiding officer): Public hearing items, Jeremy. Public hearing for endorsing the State of Maine General Assistance [1:22:27] Speaker I (unidentified): assistance ordinance and new guidelines and dependencies for 2026 and seven, so I am, I have asked Janice to be on here. She's our general assistance administrator, so she is the person who writes the memo and keeps us up to date as far as our agreement with the state of Maine. And I didn't, if you had any questions you could certainly ask Janice. anything about the general assistance program that Camden, it's a little unique in that the general assistance is provided by or is funded through the trust funds that the town holds, and each trust fund has its own purpose, so but I, if you have any questions Janice is here there to answer anything I [1:23:22] Select Board member: guess I would ask only if there are any notable differences between this and previous versions? [1:23:30] General Assistance administrator / town staff: No, not really. Basically what this is, routine annually, the state DHS runs the program and they mandate the municipalities to all have a general assistance program and they update the appendices and what they feel are the averages for Knox County. But we're not bound by these obviously because it's very low, as you can probably see in the reference sheet. So with our trust funds, we have the flexibility to allow more for our residents because we don't get reimbursement from the state like other municipalities do, so annually they just ask towns to adopt the new penances and the new ordinance that they've come up with and you do have the option if you ever wanted to we could write our own ordinance if we don't agree with the states, but generally we just go with the state, so it's really just a routine thing that they ask every year to for towns to adopt the new rates for the next year and they did go up a little bit which is more than they usually do, but I'm assuming this year we'll probably get a lot more requests for heating assistance and electric bills right, seen quite a few of those [1:24:41] Select Board member: already so the state basically we have to meet or exceed their standards and we do, they set the [1:24:49] General Assistance administrator / town staff: standards most municipalities have to go by that because they get reimbursed by the state for their programs, but in 2007 our town manager back then made a deal with the state that we wouldn't ask the reimbursement, we just fund it by our trust funds, so we just set the guidelines just so we apply the rules pretty much the same but we have the flexibility to change what we allow, like for example someone comes in with a rent the state says 900 but their rent's 1200 we can help them with the 1200 if They qualify. We don't have to stick with the states because we don't ask for [1:25:24] Select Board member: reimbursement like other municipalities. The question was more the state standard sets a floor which we have to meet or, yes, yeah, okay, it's set by the Department of Human Services, right? Thank you. And so it's your job to distribute the request to whichever [1:25:49] General Assistance administrator / town staff: It's individuals that come in that live in town. It's open to the residents. If someone is in need of rent or heat or utilities, basic necessities, they can come into the town and fill in an app, their state application, and we interview them and decide whether they qualify. We have different [1:26:07] Select Board member: different funds like the Pascal Fund, but you would distribute to the applicant to the [1:26:12] General Assistance administrator / town staff: right fund. We would do that for them. Yes, we did. We determine what fun, we just have to determine the eligibility. All right, thank you. Yep, do [1:26:24] Select Board Chair (presiding officer): we have any comments from the public? The only question I [1:26:27] General Assistance administrator / town staff: have, when you say we determine that, who determines that? I determine the eligibility, but then Jody and I will determine which trust fund they qualify for because we manage those trust fund accounts. [1:26:41] Select Board member: Yeah, for the record, it is now a public hearing. It is about what you're hearing. Yeah. [1:26:45] Select Board Chair (presiding officer): Yeah, so we do have to, I don't see anyone in the sea of people, in the sea of people here, and then there's nothing that we're missing online, so just because it is a public hearing, yeah, no, give adequate process, fine for that, but seeing none, any further discussion? [1:27:12] Select Board member: I'll make a motion to approve the updated second assistant ordinance and guidelines and appendices. [1:27:20] Select Board Chair (presiding officer): Any other discussion from the board on that? I just want to clear something to Bobby's question about [1:27:25] Speaker I (unidentified): who determines, and I know that you're part of the Trust Fund Committee. This is different than what the Trust Fund Committee is, yeah. So the Trust Fund Committee is responsible for the provider agency requests from area, like Camden entities that provide assistance to Camden residents, like district nursing, AIO, and then any type of something that's above and beyond immediate need of general assistance, like food or shelter. Like for example, if somebody needs a new roof, that would go to the Trust Fund Committee, so those are the larger items is what we would see come through, but not the day-to-day need, basic needs [1:28:10] Dave, dam operations presenter: of residents. Okay, so general assistance at the state level, wouldn't that, wouldn't fund someone's [1:28:15] Select Board member: Oh, absolutely. No. Right. Yeah. Yeah, we do those several. Great. [1:28:24] Select Board Chair (presiding officer): Well, all those in favor. Hi, any opposed? Seeing none, the passes, you know, 5 0. Thank you, Janice. [1:28:39] Select Board member: You're welcome. Sure, though, from you guys. So yeah, it should be. [1:28:42] Select Board Chair (presiding officer): In your packet there's a page. Yeah, awesome. Yeah, great. The next item is the public hearing for a consideration of approval of 180 day extension to the moratorium ordinance to prohibit the hardening and or armoring of coastal shore lines. Jeremy. All right, thank you. As you probably [1:29:05] Select Board member: recall, I'll try to be brief. Hopefully you read the memo. Hopefully it was clear for you. It's only a page and a half. I also just so you know, I did draft a little possible motion at the end, so it's not too complicated for you. But back in June, when was election date, June 9th, voters approved a moratorium on coastal armoring. This is armoring of the shoreline on the coast. This has nothing to do with them against glake or Hosmer Pond or anywhere else. This is just along the coast. It was retroactive back to April 7th, which was the date that it was first discussed at the select board level. Moratoriums must be approved by the voters initially, and then subsequent extensions of that moratorium by statute are allowed to be reviewed and extended at a hearing by the board. And so you have to make progress on the ordinance and making changes to address the moratorium, and you've got to identify that the moratorium, the need for the moratorium still exists. We are making changes or we're making effort. We're getting there somewhere. I will say it's hard to get groups of people together to meet. It's just very challenging. So we have met now twice a working group. It's an ad hoc group, and Chris, I had mentioned this to you previously. I've got two members from the planning board, two members of the harbor committee, and two members of the conservation commission, and Chriso has been involved or he's been abreast, kept abreast of the information and where we're at, and I met with the chairs of the three committees. So that's Liz Goya, chair of the harbor committee, Barb Oland, the chair of the conservation commission, and Lucia De Cordray, the chair of the planning board, and I asked them to pick members from their respective boards. I didn't want to be the one to pick them. They picked them. We have met Twice. We had a workshop as recently as this past Tuesday, or last Tuesday, with Rob Wood from the Department of Environmental Protection to go over how they handle these. We're going to be having a workshop. I did put in the memo that it's November 12th. Now I just got word today that November 12th doesn't work, so it likely will be November 16th, 17th, or 18th, it sounds like. We'll hold it here. Midcoast Council of Governments, working with the Maine Coastal Program and the town, is putting on this workshop on nature-based solutions for shoreline armoring. So that's just another effort to address the issues and have this group come up with ideas on how we can more better address the coastal shoreline erosion problem. problem. Justin Gove, I have, he was here, the engineer, he's working on it with me too to address the issues that the moratorium identified of impacts to our municipal infrastructure, meaning the roads. Harbor Road was damaged pretty severely over the last couple of years. So for massive shoreline armoring projects in Sherman's Cove off of Harbor Road, we want to make sure that those projects either they're bringing rock in, if they're going to do them, they're bringing it in on a barge and doing it from the water side or we're looking at ways to be compensated or put money in escrow or something for projects that are if they're going to come from the land side and use our town roads which are not really built for tens of thousands of pounds of rock constantly over that road to do an escrow or something with them to pay for damage in the future so that's what we're looking at i've also worked with and i mentioned it in the memo the main climate program at the main office of community affairs they reached out i reached out to them and then they reached back out to me i was looking for assistance it was really on that technical assistance grant that we're looking for tannery i said i got two projects i got the tannery and i got this other one going on in camden the shoreline armoring can you guys help any way to help can I use that technical assistance for that and they said no we can't for the Coastal Armoring I said well can you think about other options for us and they did they actually figured out a way the American Planning Association which I'm a member of based out of Chicago has a cooperative agreement with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and there's a main group of that of NOAA Northeast so they have a Cooperative agreement, the American Planning Association is going to be working with the coastal, the climate program, MOCA and NOAA together. They're going to provide us with some technical assistance on working with this, on figuring out this issue. It's an issue that is, it's a ripe issue. It's most communities across the state are dealing with this right now, and the state is trying to figure out a way to handle it on the state side. So they're going to look at us as kind of a model ordinance on how to develop this. Not that every community is going to adopt exactly what we adopt, but it's like the process to get there, and the model org is a model ordinance. You don't have to adopt it, you can change it however you wait when you want it, but anyways, long story short, we're making progress. The problem still exists. The hope is to have proposals to voters for June so that we can only extend, only have to extend this one time. We might have to extend it because I think we get to like March or April and not all the way to June. But this happened when we did the peer moratorium, we actually did three extensions on that one. I do not want to do three extensions on this. I want to get this project done and moving forward. I've also Brought Will Gartley and talked to him about it, being an engineer representing landowners. He designs a lot of these armoring projects on the coast. So he's aware of what's going on. He's talked to me about the high velocity zones that we have, which we have high velocity zones. These are FEMA designated zones. All of our outer harbor, which is from Lyman Morse over to the Yacht Club, out to Curtis Island, over to Sherman's Point. That's outer harbor. That's all still a high velocity zone. And then you go to a coastal harbor, which is Rockport line, the Lincolnville line, that's high velocity zone. So those are sensitive areas, that you can't do everything with a nature-based solution. Likely. I would also add, I had, when I was Steve Pixley, we went from Lincolnville line all the way down to Rockport town line, looked at the entire coastline and I had digital maps going with me. and i was identifying certain locations that are problem locations that are you can see where the problem is going to it's going to be so we got a good idea on what's our coast looks like and the other areas that are very sensitive from an environmental perspective like significant wildlife habitat wading bird habitat those would be areas like the stream that comes in i call i'm calling it dire brook dire brook road goes off to the left at lincolnville at the lot at the town line there 's that brook right where they the last culvert, last bridge that was fixed on when I did the project. If you go that, if you follow that all the way down to the ocean, it is a really amazing beach down there. And then if you follow Spring Brook all the way down to the ocean, it's an amazing beach down there. And if you go down to the Rockport line down where I don't know what it's called but the cemetery is there, and down where Betsy Sherman lives now at Charles Call, Charles Collie's old place, that's a really amazing marshy beautiful sandy area. Those are significant areas and that's where sediment is being replenished in the ocean and that creates that wildlife habitat. So those are areas we want to make sure we're, I think, protecting. But I think we're doing good, I think we're making progress. The problem still exists. So that's what I have. I can answer any questions from you and then you can take some questions from the public. One at a time, please settle down, I know. And then I did come up with kind of a recommendation and possible motion for you that would work and get this out for another 180 days and we're going to continue. So I did on my department's web page, if you go to the links on the left hand side of the page, there's a link for coastal armoring shoreline moratorium. It has a plethora of information. There's a video there. That was the video. We did a Zoom workshop with the guy from DEP. So that's up on YouTube, channel. You can get there right from my, that my department's page. And there's a whole host of information on there that people can kind of be brought up to speed on what the issue is really about and what we're doing to try to address it. [1:37:57] Select Board member (Bob): The only question I have is, are we holding anyone up that's trying to get something done right this [1:38:03] Select Board member: Second, no, okay, I mean, I say no, there was a project over on Sherman's Cove, in Sherman's Cove, that wanted to continue with an armoring project. They've got a lot of armor on their property already. They wanted more armor and another stretch. I actually had gone out there with the DEP, IFMW, Marine Resources, I mean, there must have been 12 or 13 state staffers there, myself, Shenley when she was here, Clint came down, and then it was because they knew that we had this moratorium and they had the state. geology geological survey people were there too is it 's a it's a unstable coastal bluff if you look at sherman's cove over time that has changed a lot it used to be a very from an environmental perspective a very thriving very lush wildlife habitat it was saltwater marsh you had people could clam in there it was it was a really and now you look and there's a lot of sand it was a lot of beachy area what happens that beach it gets replenished from when erosion happens and you want that to Replenish the beach. What happens now in Sherman's Cove, and it was interesting talking to the geological survey, there's so much armor around Sherman's Cove now that the beach, the sand is now disappearing, and it soon there won't be any sand if they continue armoring those shorelines, and it'll just be rocky, which isn't the best for eelgrass and a whole host of other things, some wildlife habitat, waning bird habitat. So the DEP, and I'm just getting back to your question, the DEP is now any project. That is in Camden, they're sending back their applications and saying Camden has a moratorium, Camden is working to address this locally, you wait until their projects, they're, they've addressed it locally. So that's where they are right now. I haven't, outside of that one project, I haven't heard of anyone beating down the door. We did change it to allow some permit by rules, like if a project qualified as under a permit by rule as a repair or something, we could just let that happen, so we've done that a. Couple of times, right, those that have meet the exemption in the moratorium ordinance, those have gone through, and there is language in there for emergency. Sure, there's a house really close or septic system that's really close to the shore, we make a determination that it's an emergency, you got to do it, we're going to let people do it. So you're saying that there is no model yet that all of this work is going to generate a model. That the state will use, yeah, they're leading the way, yeah, that's good, lucky us. Well, I've heard that, honestly, and people have reached out to me and they talk about the peer ordinance that we drafted. Other communities reached out about that one, they've reached out about this, they've reached have about short-term rentals. We are doing things that I think communities need to look at and address, and people are looking at us as a model, so it's not a bad thing. And a lot of a lot of the coast of Maine is looking at exactly this. So we need to assert or certify that you're making progress, and I got to say from your description you, there's there's a lot of work being done, and yes, we're making progress, but how do you certify the need, the need? I expected you to say that there was people who were wanted to armor, and that's what we're trying to prevent or modify. Is that the need, or are you saying there's other areas that have need of protection? In no, the need is the need identified in the moratorium language, all those whereases, whereas the town, if you go into the language right, there's a lot of whereases, there's a lot of whereases. Whereas can cause beach erosion by depriving them of their natural sediment and sand supply, leading to sour scouring of sand. All those whereases still exist, nothing has changed to address that. So voters approved this, right, they identified the problem and they said yes, this is a problem that needs to be addressed. We have a ad hoc working group that's working to address the need. Nothing we have done in the last 180 days has addressed the need identified that voters said yes, there's a need. Does that help? Yes, okay, yes, thank you, make sense. So you would need to make motion, make a motion, ask for public comment, but make a motion and for the most part say that identify that based on the hearing, based on my information to you, the problem still exists, and that we're making progress, and we're going to continue it for another 180 days. [1:43:04] Select Board Chair (presiding officer): Awesome, give the public a chance to speak, seeing none, could you just so moved, do we do we have a, do we have language, do we have a motion? I'll make a motion [1:43:17] Select Board member: that based on evidence presented in Jeremy's memo and this discussion this evening, problem giving rise the moratorium still exists and reasonable progress is being made to alleviate these problems, therefore we should extend the existing moratorium another 180 days. We have a [1:43:33] Select Board Chair (presiding officer): second all those in favor perfect any opposed you're right I 'm in favor awesome thank you Thank you and any opposed seeing none the motion carries thank you Jeremy for presenting that next to last item a select board reports does anyone have something they would like to report on I have like three items I got a couple go [1:44:13] Select Board member: Go for it, Chris. I got a happiness ad. [1:44:16] Dave, dam operations presenter: A happiness ad, great. [1:44:18] Select Board member: The sad is a notification that there's a memorial service Thursday at 4 in the amphitheater for Dave Jackson. Long time everything in Camden and Rockport, but very involved with the library parks for many, years. [1:44:37] Select Board Chair (presiding officer): And when is that again, Chris? [1:44:39] Select Board member: Thursday at 4 p.m. in the amphitheater. Okay. Is there a rain place for it? Not currently, no. I have no idea, but I mean they might just go in the library, I don't know. But I think currently the idea is to do it in the park in the amphitheater. [1:44:52] Speaker N (unidentified): Perfect. I think Chris, oh actually I was at the library board meeting and I think the plan was to go to the opera house. Jody, had you heard that was what the trustees said? Now that you mention [1:45:09] Speaker I (unidentified): mention it, yes, I'm sorry, Dave Morrison did come and ask if that was okay. Yeah, if it's raining. [1:45:15] Select Board member: Yes, if it's raining. Yeah, because the only amount of occasion I've seen is that it's still at the park. The other item I had is that chairlift rides at the Snow Bowl start on October 4th, which is always a lot of fun. And just keep in mind we can only tell you there's a fewer number of people who can come down at one time they can go up on the chairlift, so contemplate just taking a nice stroll down the hill. And there is [1:45:49] Select Board Chair (presiding officer): Thursday is going to in Thursday is going to be sunny and 64 degree. Yeah, the [1:45:53] Select Board member: weather looks pretty good for Thursday. Are they doing breakfast for those two? I believe there will be, not on every, not every week. That's the ski club who does the breakfast [1:46:03] Select Board member (Bob): rather than the mountain. I used to do it all the time when I was a kid. [1:46:06] Select Board member: I think they're gonna do something, but I'm not sure. [1:46:09] Select Board member (Bob): If they need any help, I'd be happy to help by the way, even though I'm not, I don't use a snowball that much. And then the second question I had about that, are they having like a stand where they're selling garb, like the snowball stickers and shirts and stuff like that and saying, hey, season passes are available and that kind of stuff? [1:46:26] Select Board member: All season passes are available with the early bird discount, especially for residents. And yes, staff is huge. I mean, they're there because it's like they're selling, they sell tickets for the lift rides and so all that stuff is there. It's out there. Most of the merch is actually sold through the side country, okay? And then they think it would be cool to have some access, you know. Yeah, they'll all be there, they'll be there. Cool, all of that, they're always out there. [1:46:54] Select Board member (Bob): And when do the season passes, the early bird special? When does that stop? It goes to the end of October. So yeah, this is a perfect time to get it out there. [1:47:04] Select Board member: Yeah, right. I've already got mine. Yes, just one thing. Tomorrow the cemetery association is meeting at one o'clock for the purpose of having a demonstration of the new cemetery software, which will be, if they do sign the contract to get this work done, it will be posted on the on the website and have all the information for the web, for the cemeteries. And so that's a demonstration tomorrow here at one o'clock in the in this room. Well okay, good. It's a it's a demo. Great, Bobby, not [1:47:47] Select Board member (Bob): really, except I would really love for the Budget Committee to, from someone from there, at some point over the next month or so, to come in and give a budget committee process and when meetings are gonna be and if we're gonna start that anytime soon. I know a lot of towns are already working on their budgets and [1:48:05] Select Board Chair (presiding officer): having those budget meetings now. I know it was curious, Jody, there was discussion during the last budget cycle about trying to do some things earlier, and I know you're stretched with doing two jobs essentially right now. What appetite and time I met with [1:48:26] Speaker I (unidentified): Sarah Scrivenich and I think was just Sarah, like a month ago, maybe three weeks ago, I don't know, and she is working with Matt Wolf about putting together a [1:48:43] Select Board Chair (presiding officer): schedule so that will be forthcoming. Okay, great. Susan, do you have anything to report? You're [1:48:54] Speaker E (unidentified): on mute. Yeah, well [1:48:59] Speaker N (unidentified): I was going to follow up about the Dave Jackson event because I was at the library trustees meeting, and then the other thing, just I took a walk through the Mountain View Cemetery yesterday with my emotional support dog Bug. The cemetery looks beautiful. The restoration of the stones I think is almost finished, the cleaning of the stones. I could see that they were working on the lower section, but everything on that upper tier from one end to the other is sparkling. It absolutely looks stunning, so, you know, hats off to the to the cemetery committee for commissioning that. And it really is a lovely and a fascinating walk through town. So I would encourage people to go and take a peek at it. And that's all for me. Thanks. Great. Thank you. [1:50:07] Select Board Chair (presiding officer): I just I have a few things. One, and this is for my colleagues to know, too, that. In preparing the budget, how I'm doing that is on Wednesdays, midday, when Ken and I, the town manager, and then we meet with Bill too, we get together to go over the agendas for the upcoming meeting. Meeting so it's the Wednesday before the Friday when the agenda officially goes out so I'm just asking if you've got some things that you want to have in that next agenda if you could get me the list of what you have one could say by 11 59 p.m. Tuesday night, you know, something before. Yeah, usually we meet at 1230. But I wouldn't want to say oh we do it on Wednesday and I get it at five I wouldn't, we would have had the meeting and we do have to get March to the operational tempo some. But if you could, if you've got some items of interest. By Tuesday night, that would be helpful to not everything can make it, but at least we can usually talk about it in last time for example we discussed where certain things were. And a couple of things weren't ready yet and so we move on and it's a it's a Janice prepares the brief because there's some staple things that are in there and that was that's helpful and then we go over what can fit in and what needs to fit in operationally on that [1:51:46] Select Board member (Bob): I just wanted to make a comment because we got we got this from Jody about emails because I didn't know it until you sent us those statutes or whatever they were from MMA but that if an email is sent to all of us then we are not to comment we can't send an email back to the person only the chair can that's right so if someone is looking for a comment from a specific select board person they should send the email straight to that select board person or if you want everyone to comment send an Email separate email to each select board person and correct me if I'm wrong [1:52:20] Speaker I (unidentified): About that, it well there was all, it was the bylaws, right, select board bylaws, and I believe without looking it right that is the traditional rule. It could come from the chair or the chair could direct it to the town manager, town manager, or a select board member to respond might be a thing, but it also said in the same paragraph that it doesn't preclude any select board member from responding. Okay, so it's kind of open. Super. Yeah, but I think best practice would be that there is no response unless it comes from the chair or from the town manager. Yeah, that is the [1:53:01] Select Board Chair (presiding officer): best case, and if there is something that comes up that I'm not a good person to go ahead and respond, that somebody else, it's their thing, then I'd say hey Krista why don't you go ahead and [1:53:11] Select Board member: And I still think that we could have some kind of almost an auto reply that the same way that someone who stands up in public comment, we do say thank you. So we say thank you that, you know, acknowledging receipt of the email and, you know, and a response that says thank you for your comments. Comments we will consider that right or something just I just know one of the things like running [1:53:44] Select Board member (Bob): for select board I know one of the biggest things was lack of communication to those emails everyone [1:53:49] Select Board member: said that thing of I wrote them and I never heard back and never exactly even heard that from Lincolnville last night but right but it's also that thing of anything that is a communication. The communication is official record, and we can't as individuals be doing responding and making commentary on things that the board hasn't discussed. So it's it's sometimes the best practice is not to respond, but it's hard not to respond. On yeah and but I do think that we could have something to just at least acknowledge [1:54:22] Select Board Chair (presiding officer): Yeah that's where I was, that was actually going to be an item I was going to bring up again. I have four items I can go through them. That would be great. One of the items was the clarification that Jody had said. I appreciate you doing taking the time to do that, and yes I'm not always great but I'd like to be every I try to be better about it as far as responding, and I know Jody's has helped with some of the responses that we've needed to do, but I certainly we want to make sure that we do in the End, you know, respond. It might not always be immediate, and typically, you know, for me, when I'm looking at items, unless it's life safety on the weekend, no business hours, right? A couple of things we didn't talk about during the manager report too. One was the building on the public landing. I don't know if that could be something that we talk about. I can give you a quick update if you want. We [1:55:28] Speaker I (unidentified): Holly actually reached out to Nancy Hughes. I don't know what real estate company she's with, Camden. And she's going to sometime this week come and take a look at the space and see what we might be able to get for rent. We have two individuals interested in renting the building so far. And so I'll bring that information back to the board. And I think you also asked about an update on the window wall. Yes, so work had been suspended for a little bit. The eye beams on the snowball itself were about four inches out of plum, so I'm picturing it to be like that and not like that, so or like that, yeah. So they weren't parallel, so we had to get another engineering review done and the once the to provide some sort of fix to it, and once that is in place, then it's going to be another about week and a half to finish up the window wall. It will be it will [1:56:40] Select Board Chair (presiding officer): be in place by the time the snow flies. That's good. And I also in our Wednesday meeting too, I talked to Jody a bit about what can we do for a summary, brief, fact-based bullet item that goes ahead prior to the minutes, but it's something a lot briefer to speak to the facts, kind of the Joe Friday approach of the select board, that these items, these items. This was the result of the vote, and at least it's informative, without getting into any sort of characterization of the narrative in 1 way or the other. And it's just something that will continue to work on. I also, we do have the need at some point to go through the. The long list of priorities that we have, I didn't want to do it in this meeting because not everyone had a chance to look at that consolidated. I kind of look at all of ours. So, potentially. the 1st, October meeting, we can go through. Those priorities to make sure that we're in sync on top. Few that we have each, so that's all that I have for my select board. All those in favor voted for zero to adjourn. Awesome. Thank you.