Acton Select Board appoints fire chief, road committee member, signs special town meeting warrant

[0:03] Speaker A (unidentified): It's funny sometimes he sees a connection. [0:14] Speaker B (unidentified): That's pretty good, I'm sure. [0:17] Speaker C (unidentified): Why are they watching our meetings? Camera is on. [0:21] Chair/Presiding Officer: Everybody all set? Yes, sir. Call the meeting to order. First item, salute the client. I [0:30] Speaker A (unidentified): pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. [0:43] Chair/Presiding Officer: Okay. Warrants and bill signed? Yes, sir. Approval of the agenda. [0:52] Speaker E (unidentified): I'll make a motion to approve the agenda. [0:54] Chair/Presiding Officer: Second. Moved and seconded to approve the agenda. Any discussion? Seeing none, call for a vote. All in favor, all opposed. Minutes of the last meeting. Make a motion to approve the minutes of the October 7th meeting. Do we hear a second? Move the second to approve October 7th minutes. Any discussion? Call for a vote. All in favor, all opposed. Time administrator update. [1:20] Speaker C (unidentified): All right, so most of the items you're dealing with, I've kind of put under pending, so we can just review them and keep up with them. Just a reminder, tomorrow is tax day. Taxes are due tomorrow. We do not take payments over the phone, and we do accept postmarks. Hopefully we can get one last call tomorrow with those two questions. And we are doing absentee voting. I think we're over 200, 225 people have already voted in person in Acton. So the window has been extremely busy. So no other updates. Is that higher than last year? That's higher, yes. [1:52] Chair/Presiding Officer: Okay, thank you. Slight mode update. Start with John. [1:58] Speaker F (unidentified): I have a couple of things. I'll do this for Dan, who's not here. The Mary Grant pumpkin carving will be this Saturday. Not Mary Grant, from 2-4. So people can't get in there and, you know, reach out through the forest. I don't know if it's town business, mayor business. [2:27] Speaker E (unidentified): No, I told them I'd go down and take care of it. [2:30] Speaker F (unidentified): Okay. So I'll let them know that at some point. All you have to do is come down to the fairgrounds. There's plenty of rocks across the street right now. I'm sure there's plenty of rocks out there. [2:41] Speaker E (unidentified): It's all rock out there. [2:43] Speaker F (unidentified): Alright, I'll let Mike Benjamin know that. Well yeah, he can't, he can probably. [2:50] Speaker E (unidentified): It's too wet, the road's [2:56] Speaker G (unidentified): pretty rough. [3:00] Speaker B (unidentified): Can't, oh, alright. [3:03] Speaker E (unidentified): You have to find something on site if you're doing it. Oh, I see. Yeah, you have to find something on site if possible because that road is pretty tight. [3:13] Speaker C (unidentified): So I think part of the discussion, too, from John's point is we want to make sure the board, select board, is okay with blocking that off and putting that road there, those rocks there. [3:21] Speaker A (unidentified): That's why we already agreed to that. [3:23] Speaker C (unidentified): I don't remember who actually. I know there was talk about you possibly doing it. We just want to make sure it's a board decision and, you know, based on a committee recommendation. [3:29] Chair/Presiding Officer: We did talk about that. Yeah, I don't remember. [3:33] Speaker C (unidentified): This is to keep the ATV off the property. [3:36] Speaker B (unidentified): Away from that riverbed. Off the property. [3:40] Speaker A (unidentified): I don't know. [3:41] Speaker E (unidentified): I thought we had already okayed that. [3:43] Speaker C (unidentified): Okay, he may have. [3:45] Speaker F (unidentified): All right, I'll let Mitch go. Okay. I remember talking about it when he was in here and he sent us all those pictures, but I don't remember. [3:55] Speaker C (unidentified): All right, we put this, you guys voted to do the signs. [3:58] Speaker E (unidentified): Yeah, I thought it was all in there. [4:01] Speaker C (unidentified): So when you have a chance, they'll be happy to hear that David's still willing to do it because they want him to. All right. I want to know. That's all I got. Yes. Dave? I have nothing today. Tom? [4:13] Speaker B (unidentified): I attended a Warren Finance Committee meeting the other night. I thought it went well. Fairly quick. They, tonight, have taken a vote on the two Warren articles for the special time meeting. Anything else? And we'll hear about what the results a little later. That's it? [4:40] Chair/Presiding Officer: Okay. I have nothing. Department Head Committee Chair updates. Deputies. [5:03] Speaker A (unidentified): All right. [5:06] Police Chief: So we'll start with just the town report. So on 9-13, Sgt. Chavette and I assisted the fire department on Stanborn Road. It was a lost 2-year-old girl. We found her pretty quickly. It was within about 30 minutes of her being lost. But we worked really well with the fire department. I was very impressed with the amount of personnel we got from the fire department. And state police assisted us as well. We communicated very well. I kinda let fire department be command. I told dispatch that really quickly that all radio communication was gonna be through them. So there wasn't a lot of, we're talking to the same people. You know, oftentimes when we work together like that, it doesn't really work that way. And it just seems like a lot of overkill. But we found her, she was just playing on the field in the way back of an orchard. But it was scary, there was some water on the property. Two years old? MR. Two years old. Wow. MR. Sanford PD investigated a violation of a protection order on 9-19, and it was basically a 65-year-old resident in an attic room. They had a temporary warrant, and Deputy Marshall made an arrest of that individual, and he was brought to the jail. Deputy Marshall received a call from York PD about a 29-year-old female that alleged that she was sexually assaulted somewhere in Acton at an unknown location about five days prior. He went down to collect an evidence kit, and I believe that CID right now currently has that case, and they're looking into that. [6:44] Speaker B (unidentified): Did you say a marshal? Deputy marshal. [6:47] Speaker C (unidentified): Oh, that's his name. Deputy marshal. [6:49] Police Chief: We have a deputy sergeant, a deputy marshal. I didn't know we had U.S. marshals. Yeah, we got some cool deputy names now. So, and then deputies responded to Apple Valley Campground after a leading Hampshire Police Department called us about a female that had been wanted on a domestic violence criminal threatening charge, but we could not locate her. So one thing that I'm going to be starting – That's it? For the report? I'm sure. Yeah. It was kind of a not so – [7:26] Speaker C (unidentified): Or you leave out the chapel ones. [7:27] Police Chief: Busy month. But I leave out the chapel ones. Oh, yeah. They like to hear those too. [7:30] Speaker C (unidentified): They like to compare, yeah. Oh, yeah. You got to give them a second. Sorry? Oh, yeah,, yeah. Yeah, [7:41] Police Chief: so I responded to Dogwood Drive, and we ended up getting a call from the VA center about a 63-year-old male that was suicidal. He had made statements that he wanted to kill himself using the police department. So we ended up talking to the individual, bringing him to the hospital, and I ended up basically bringing him to the hospital and then also doing the yellow flag behind him. And then we had Deputy Sergeant, and she arrested an individual from Shapley that was 30 after investigating an incident on his road down Nottahome. Adams fled the scene later and was located by Sanford Police Department. Adams was charged with DV assault times two and was held on $10,000 cash bail. What's DV? Domestic violence. Oh, okay. Deputy Carr responded to a mental health call on Newfield Road in Shapley. That was on 9-20. There was no grounds to take the individual into custody though. But she did agree to go to the hospital. That's always good when we don't have the ability to force people to go to the hospital, but they want to go. It's awesome. We obviously want people to get help. Okay, so there's a program that I've been kind of spending some time, especially on Sundays and stuff. I was thinking about my time over in Milton. Some stuff that a lot of municipal police departments do are property checks. So I kind of put together over the weekend, one of the weekends I worked, like property check forms. So I could offer residents the ability to, if they go on vacations or we have a lot of seasonal homes, that they could basically put in a form and I made a PDF, like a fillable PDF that we can post on our website. And then I would just, I'd basically take care of it myself completely after that. Where they fill it out with their contact information, when they are going to be gone, when they plan on being back, and then also having like a contact person that's here. So let's say they're down in Florida, but they have a neighbor that's their friend that takes care of their house. Perfect. Well, they have their information. They have a key to their house. And then I can just kind of create a list of those houses. And while I'm on my patrol, if I have extra time, I can stop and I'm driving by their house. I'm going to stop, make sure that everything looks right, and I'll also keep in my mind knowing, hey, these people are seasonal, okay, yep, hey, that doesn't look right, why is this truck here, why is this van here, stuff like that, so, you know, this isn't guaranteed checks, because it's obviously during my contract in time, I can't expect other deputies to do this, and it's going to be, you know, when I have downtime, so it's going to be depending on my calls for service and the call volume For the week. But I have the forms. I've provided them to both towns of Afton and Shapley for them to be posted on their websites and then basically the forms can be returned either in person here at the town hall, either here in Shapley and they'll get them to me or they can email them right to me. And I won't be going into houses unless there's an open door and I have to call for backup and we'll be clearing the house if there was an open door. But I'll just be kind of checking. Sometimes I'll get out of my car, I'll check. Sometimes I'll just drive by, kind of look around, see if it looks like there's anything that's out of place. But I thought it would be kind of a good thing to offer the residents here. [11:31] Speaker B (unidentified): Thanks for taking that initiative. I think it's a good program. Sounds awesome. [11:38] Police Chief: And then one other thing I want to announce, so the sheriff's office put it on their Facebook finally. So this will be my third year doing the Citizens Police Academy. I don't know if you guys know what that is or have heard about it before, but three years ago now I started a Citizens Police Academy. So it's where we have people that just are, if they're interested in law enforcement, some people might want to be police officers, some people just really like law enforcement. They want to know more about it, and they come in, and they're free classes that we offer. It's going to be one day a week. They're going to start on every Thursday on January 7th, and it's going to last until March 11th. There's a graduation that's held on March 12th. It's going to be all at the training center in Alfred. The classes are from 5.30 to 8.30 p.m., so a lot of people come after work. Last year I think we had like 21 people, the year before that we had 25, eliminating classes to 25 people. We've had a couple of alumni from Acton. My first year I definitely had two people. I think last year I had one person from Acton. It's, you know, it's a really good program. We hired, we just hired last year one guy that was in the class two years in a row. He wanted to be a police officer and then he was like, hey I want to come work here and he's at the Academy right now. So if, you know, you're interested in law enforcement, if you know somebody that's interested in law enforcement, if the public knows somebody else in another town, you just have to be a York County resident. That's all the – you have to be a York County resident with no – at least 18 years old and then no prior felonies. So that's about it. But you learn a lot of different stuff. This year will be a little more hands-on. We'll do traffic stops. You'll actually, like, put on a fake vest. Well, not a fake vest. It's a real vest. But put on a vest and do a real traffic stop. We'll do it in the – if you guys have ever seen the new training center, but we have an attack center basically, so we can put cars inside, which is cool because I can simulate traffic stops at night and during the day. I turn the lights on and off. We have the VR headsets, which is pretty cool that I can use, so I think it's gonna be a really good time. I'm slowly evolving it every year to kind of learn what people like, it don't like, the big canine demos, community placing, just different. Yeah, I mean. Asking for a friend who gets to taste someone? No. I'm asking for a friend if you got to taste someone. I mean, if you had a volunteer, maybe we could talk about if you had some expired taste. But, yeah. So, I mean, it's a lot of fun if anybody knows anybody interested. [14:16] Chair/Presiding Officer: Okay. Thank you so much. Yeah. Yay, old business. [14:29] Speaker C (unidentified): I have an update from a department manager. Go ahead. Sorry. So this comes in from Dan Krantz, APAC director. He asked me to read this statement to the board and the public. So we've recently been experiencing technical difficulties with the live streaming of our public meetings. These issues have included video freezing and intermittent audio interruptions, which have impacted the ability to watch live meetings without disruption. We are actively working on this with our streaming provider, Town Hall Streams, to identify and resolve these issues. As part of this effort, we anticipate installing a replacement microphone sometime next week, which we hope will resolve the ongoing audio concerns. Terms. In the meantime, we will make every effort to upload complete meeting recordings to the YouTube channel as quickly as possible following each meeting. This will allow residents to watch the meetings in their entirety without interruptions experienced during the live broadcast. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your patience and understanding as we work towards a permanent solution. So as we've mentioned a couple times, it's happening only during the live broadcast. When he uploads them, that doesn't happen. The board talked to him briefly this evening and we are working as quickly as we can to try and resolve it. [15:45] Chair/Presiding Officer: Okay, old business, sign special crowd-meeting warrant all. [15:51] Speaker C (unidentified): Right, so I have put the recommendations from the Finance Committee in here. I don't know if you want them to share. [16:07] Speaker G (unidentified): We did have our pretty good meeting tonight, and the Warren Finance has agreed with a 5-0 vote to approve one of the articles, Article 2 and 3. In fact, it was very well received by much in favor of a step one in the process. [16:39] Speaker E (unidentified): Great. Awesome. You guys met twice, right? [16:42] Speaker G (unidentified): Yes, we met twice, yeah. [16:44] Speaker E (unidentified): Out of curiosity, why did you have to meet twice? [16:54] Speaker G (unidentified): Well, there's something else I forgot. Some influence came in that perhaps we should wait and there was a lot of misunderstanding about whether we were going to have an actual I want to use the right word, public hearing or not. And we were all under the wrong impression that it was going to be an ordinary public hearing. Not the type of public hearing that's necessary when you have this kind of. [17:31] Speaker E (unidentified): We're just doing it for informational purposes. We don't have to do it. Excuse me? We're just doing it for informational, for us, for us ourselves. [17:40] Speaker G (unidentified): We did not understand the difference, and so that's why we got, well, we'll hear some of the information. [17:50] Speaker E (unidentified): Appreciate you guys coming in a second time and getting this done for us tonight. [17:54] Speaker G (unidentified): Everybody came in that was not an issue, and we were glad to do it. You're welcome. [18:03] Chair/Presiding Officer: Okay, we actually voted on this last week, didn't we? [18:07] Speaker C (unidentified): You did. You voted on the RR. Your recommendations are already on there. [18:09] Chair/Presiding Officer: Motion to sign. Okay, so we're going to make a motion, John, we [18:17] Speaker A (unidentified): did that last week, we made a motion. [18:19] Speaker C (unidentified): We made a recommendation on each article, now it's all typed up and pretty, so the motion is that let's [18:24] Speaker F (unidentified): because of the out of the morning now I'll make a motion to sign a town special town meeting warrant article one two and three has amended it right [18:38] Chair/Presiding Officer: Do we hear a second? I'll second that. Move and seconded to sign the special town meeting for any discussion. Call for a vote. All in favor? All in favor? [18:49] Speaker C (unidentified): Is it informational and special? I think [19:23] Chair/Presiding Officer: I'm still wrong. I was going to ask. A new business appointment. [19:31] Speaker C (unidentified): All right. So we have several appointments. The first one, David, we'll talk a little bit about. This is Town Road Committee to fill the resignation of Bill W so this is normally an elected position so this person is appointed to the remainder of [19:45] Speaker E (unidentified): The original term, yep. So I typically I bring in the individual, but I know Denise, so I call her. And you know what, over everything, you know why she wanted to be honest and that. So any good, I think it was a little bit of miscommunication. I think, I think, I thought I told her to call Jen to get her on, she thought I was doing it. I went by, she called, oops, sorry. So now we're doing it. So I like to make a motion to Denise Anders on the road committee and make her a road committee member until where? That's it here, 6 30 2029. [20:33] Chair/Presiding Officer: Second that. Move the second to appoint Denise D'Angelis for the road committee in discussion for a vote on paper. Does that mean we have a resignation or is that? [20:45] Speaker A (unidentified): So Bill W resigned. Yeah, I didn't know if that he did act if he actually he did. [20:51] Speaker C (unidentified): He did read something. He did resign and he was something in writing. He did. Yeah. How many in favor of Denise on the road committee? Of who? Denise DeAngelis on the road committee. Oh sure. That David recommended. [21:02] Chair/Presiding Officer: Sorry, I'm trying to wait to keep him back. [21:04] Speaker B (unidentified): I thought you loved us, dude. I thought you loved us. [21:08] Speaker E (unidentified): He's got a pen. He has a pen. Do you believe that's it? Oh, you wish a white pen was leaking? [21:13] Speaker B (unidentified): Well, there's a pen here. I don't know if you just left it there so it talks. Did he leak on me or what? So, I don't know. So this is to appoint. [21:23] Chair/Presiding Officer: Yeah, it's all done. Just good sight. Great. Okay. Do you have other appointments? [21:29] Speaker C (unidentified): Yes, I do. November 1st, our fire chief and his deputy fire chiefs come due. So I met with the fire chief and decided to go ahead and put them on there between the special time meeting and taxes and elections. We didn't want it to be an oversight. So it is for the fire chief and his two deputy chiefs. [21:56] Speaker B (unidentified): So, the first motion is to appoint Wayne Hamm as the fire chief for a term ending 11-1-2027. [22:05] Chair/Presiding Officer: Okay. We can probably do them all at the same time. Okay. [22:08] Speaker B (unidentified): And Richard Smith as the deputy chief for a term ending 11-1-27. And then Adam Small as the deputy fire chief. So, two of those. [22:24] Chair/Presiding Officer: Move the seconded to appoint as written or as read for the fire chief and deputy chiefs in discussion. All for vote, all in favor? All opposed? Can you run the report? Okay. [23:28] Speaker C (unidentified): Pending. All right. So policies and mass gathering ordinance, we are going to get right back to them probably following the November election. So we will revisit those then. I want to make sure it's the board's understanding to have or plan to have this mass gathering written to put on the April town meeting right next April. So those will go together. We'll start them after the election also after the election. Whatever the board decides, we would like to review it. So we're probably about halfway done with it based on what we've already done. I understand it's just [24:04] Speaker B (unidentified): Given the specifics of that and how difficult it can be in terms of interaction with other witnesses, who did you have in mind? I had no one in mind. Okay. Just I think really bringing [24:19] Speaker E (unidentified): somebody else in i don't know who we bring in but i think what we should be doing is we get all we 've got all the masculine ordinances from the around the sermon area we really go sit down have [24:29] Speaker C (unidentified): a workshop where we clear opinion that if they have a plan board conditions and mass gathering, these are separate issues. So you know that now that we know the planning board has to make a motion to authorize x amount of mass gathering, well yeah, but that's, that's besides the point. [24:45] Speaker E (unidentified): The mass gathering itself has to be, you know, for you know everybody's right for the mass gathering, whether or not it goes on to a conditional use permit is another thing, you know what I'm saying? We've got to look at the mass gathering right now as we've been doing it. Right. [25:04] Speaker C (unidentified): I'm just trying to put a time in the planet border, North Star. [25:08] Speaker E (unidentified): No, I don't believe we have to do that at all. I mean, the mass gathering is on us. [25:13] Speaker C (unidentified): No, I know. Somebody mentioned North Star. I thought it was you. You said… Well, no. He was asking… Oh, okay. Okay. [25:20] Speaker B (unidentified): That's what I'm saying. I haven't thought about who to do it with. Okay. It just seems to me that… Given the experience we had earlier this year, it's a very particular part of the law that I, to be honest with you, I think probably requires some expertise. So it's beyond mine anyways. Not many others feel they have that. [25:49] Speaker F (unidentified): Maybe it's not us that really needs it. I mean, we can write any mass gatherer we want. It's how the planning board, if they're going to implement that as a conditional use. [26:01] Speaker E (unidentified): Well, the thing about it is we can't be concerned about the planning board. The planning board has got to wait for us to make our mass gathering. Then after we get our mass gathering, then they can say, okay, well, we can implement that. Because of what we know now, when we do our mask out, we should be able to avoid those other issues that we were having. This is the time to do that. [26:27] Speaker B (unidentified): Let's go through. I'll withdraw on that. Let's go through our review. And if we feel it needs some outside look at that point, we can do it. Fair enough? [26:34] Speaker E (unidentified): And we'll probably get our legal... That's what I was thinking. I think when we're all done, do what we do, come up with a general draft, send it, and then get legal involved. [26:49] Speaker C (unidentified): And then we can compare it, look at the other towns, see if there's anything we missed that might work. [26:54] Speaker E (unidentified): I think we should be doing that as we make it. That's why we have a workshop. We sit right down and we just go boom,, boom,. [27:03] Speaker C (unidentified): So would you rather it come off the agenda and just make a workshop one of these weeks? [27:08] Speaker F (unidentified): That's not a bad idea. Instead of us trying to rush it through in a meeting. [27:14] Speaker B (unidentified): No, we're not going to do it in a meeting. [27:16] Speaker C (unidentified): Well, that's why we've only been doing a couple paragraphs at a time. And that's why we've only been doing a couple paragraphs at a time. But a workshop, I'm not going to get into it. [27:23] Speaker E (unidentified): But you can probably do a couple paragraphs at a time by the time we get back to it. I'm kind of like out of my rhythm. I don't know what to get into. [27:30] Speaker C (unidentified): Alright, I'll schedule a workshop. Which brings us to the next workshop. Capital Plan Workshop. We're tentatively scheduled for November 18th, which is a Wednesday. We've been trying to do them before, so you don't have to come in. What time would that be? I mean, depending on how much time you guys think, 4.30. Maybe think of an hour. Because you have everything put in there. [27:55] Speaker B (unidentified): Is Matt going to be joining us for that? [27:57] Speaker C (unidentified): Well, if you'd like him to. [28:00] Speaker B (unidentified): Well, there's a bit of a model there, an Excel model. Right. Do we need his assistance to do that? [28:05] Speaker C (unidentified): No, you guys, we changed it from 0 to 5, to 10, so he's done all the work that you've asked him to. Really, and we've updated the numbers, you guys wanted to speak to a couple of department heads. So really it's just deciding what you're going to incorporate into the budget. I see. We're pretty close to the end of it. Alright. Good. You wanted to invite the Finance Committee to that as well. Yeah. Next, the H-Road Land Appraisal. This is the H-Road down here, not the possible purchase. Some of you may be familiar with the Howgate family. They do land appraisals around here. Highly recommend it. It's about $600. They're going to do an appraisal on the property down there, and they'll give you a bottom line number for a minimum bid if you decide to sell it. So they're working on that. The transportation superintendent handyman position has been posted. The boat on Municibid is running until October 20th, so hopefully we have some. [29:11] Speaker E (unidentified): So if that Municibid, and nobody buys the thing, we could have a plan here what we're going to do with the boat. The boat's not wrapped or anything at this point. [29:20] Chair/Presiding Officer: No, it hasn't been put in the water, I don't believe, since last time we've had a wrap. [29:27] Speaker E (unidentified): Should we try to at least line something up just in case? [29:31] Chair/Presiding Officer: Oh, we should. My neighbor does waterman marine. [29:36] Speaker E (unidentified): Adam does it too. Adam does it too. I mean, I hate to see the things that don't all run along. [29:42] Chair/Presiding Officer: No, we'd have to wrap it again if it doesn't sell. [29:45] Speaker E (unidentified): I don't know if we're going to bathe down in the garage. I'm just thinking in case we had to. [29:52] Chair/Presiding Officer: I think push come to shove we probably could I would think. I don't know what they've got down there. [29:57] Speaker B (unidentified): Well if you conspired in there then you don't have to wrap it. [30:00] Speaker E (unidentified): Yeah. So what's the... [30:01] Speaker B (unidentified): To wrap it is probably 25 bucks a foot. [30:05] Chair/Presiding Officer: Yeah, it's probably what, 400 bucks to wrap it? Yeah. That's about what I pay to have mine wrapped. [30:12] Speaker E (unidentified): Just food for thought. I need to see it settled over. [30:15] Speaker C (unidentified): Yeah, no it's definitely going to go somewhere. So my finding out from the road commissioner or the public safety building if there's room in either place. [30:23] Speaker E (unidentified): I highly doubt there's any room over there. [30:26] Speaker C (unidentified): We'll ask the commissioner if there's room. [30:28] Speaker E (unidentified): If there's room down there, 's a blue shed down there. If not, then we'll have to figure something else out. [30:33] Speaker C (unidentified): Then we'll wrap it and put it somewhere. Informational public hearing, we've got advertised for next Wednesday at 6 o'clock. So it'll be your first agenda item to go over the warrant articles. Then the following week, we have the special town meeting on the 28th. Mr. Nass did stop in, and if chosen, he's happy to be the moderator for that meeting. And then the pending projects, the town hall parking lots and memorial, we're waiting for Sebago. And then we have the rec parking lot. Okay. [31:12] Chair/Presiding Officer: Very good. Now to public comment. Anyone from the public? Anybody? Going once, going twice. Okay. Do you want to hear a motion to adjourn? [31:23] Speaker F (unidentified): There's a motion to adjourn. [31:24] Chair/Presiding Officer: Second. Move to second and to adjourn. All in favor? All opposed? Thank you, everyone.