Poland Select Board approves Camp Connor payback cut, library shelving RFP

[1:58] Chair: Thank you for joining us on our Select Board, of Select Persons meeting tonight. It's Tuesday, October 6, 2026. We are live in hybrid at Zoom. Our agenda tonight will be manager's report, our financial reports. The new business will be the CEDC BHA funding, the Camp Connor payback, library furniture and bookshelves, and then any other business we may have at the end of the meeting. And right now, I'd like to rise for our National Pledge of Allegiance. I don't want to sing the National Anthem. I 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. All right. We'll go to our Manager's Report on page 2. [3:01] Town Manager: Manager report for 6 October. For the library, we hosted the USDA main director. Gave a tour. USDA is the federal agency that oversees the grant that we got, and they've been extremely helpful at all levels. Gave update brief and tour the library. All the concretes poured now. The external walls are up. The elevator shaft is complete. The exterior walkway roof is up, waiting for trusses to go over the new area and the expanded lobby. But that's moving along. On the park, we received an extension on the grant until next September, and that was no problem there. The airport, we gave a tour and airport briefing to the Lewiston-Auburn Chamber of Commerce CEO and chair of the Lewiston-Auburn Economic Growth Committee. The reason that's important is those folks deal with economic development. And even though the airport is in Auburn-Lewiston, the airport director, Jonathan Labonte, he does a great job. But it's not just the airport, the airport owns land that's adjacent to it, and Auburn owns property that's adjacent to the airport land. There's the propane area there, the CMP has their telephone poles, there's all kinds of other stuff. there 's the Lewiston Auburn Railroad Corporation they have a short line that comes down there and goes right into Lewiston so it's a lot more than just the airport and it was really instructive to see how Jonathan Labonte ties out all together I attended the main Municipal Association legislative policy committee reviewed current positions in a number of areas and the But the main things that we were looking at were property tax relief and getting that through additional revenue from the state. So there were a number of things that were being floated, and I supported all of them, from increased revenue sharing, more share of the state park fees, a higher school subsidy, all that stuff. I don't think all of those things are gonna make it through, it's just too many of them, but I think that we'll send the message to the legislature that there's got to be more coming to various towns and cities in Maine. The other thing that I think folks should realize, just because state says they're going to give us this money, A, they have to give it to us, but B, it comes from somewhere, something else is not going to be done. Either the state has to generate a different additional revenue, or they cut their budget in another area, but there a lot of people are thinking about how we might address property tax relief, and subject to questions, that's the manager report, that's good you brought that to the forefront. Financial report for this week, we're just under 27% through the year. Doing pretty good. Motor vehicle excise, the largest variable revenue, is just slightly above a glide slope of 28.5%. We see on the expense report just the summary page there. We're doing fine. The financial services area is a lot higher at 40%. Why? Because we paid an RSU 16 bill, we transferred money to the CIPs, and we paid our county tax in full. But that's not detrimental. That's normal. Elsewhere in the budget, we're on track, and I'm happy with where we are at this point. So if there are any questions, that's the financial report. [6:53] Speaker C (unidentified): Okay. I move to accept the financial report as read. Second that. Mark. Aye. [7:01] Town Manager: Jim. Yes. John. Yes. Lisa. Yes. Jackson. Yes. I wrote a 5-0, you've approved the financial report, move [7:12] Chair: on to page 21 for [7:14] Town Manager: the CEDC BHA funding, yep, so this is their business after hours receipt, and understand was a great event held at Agassiz village, they're asking for the authorization to spend one thousand one hundred and seventy dollars, their limits on a thousand, and I recommend we approve it, 's a great event, they work hard to make them a success, yeah, I'll make a motion to approve, a second, mark, yeah, Jim, yes, John, yes, Lisa, yes, Jackson, yes, I voted 5 to 0, you have approved the CDC BH b8h funding request, the amount of one thousand one hundred and seventy dollars, Camp Connor payback, Scott Siegel and I talked about this, I'm sure you're all where the town bought Camp Connor down off of Conner Lane about 10 years ago, and it's been a big success. That is an absolutely huge thing for not just kids but parents in the summertime. Over the course of that time we bought it for $210,000 and we paid back about half of it. We've been doing that in an annual payment of $14,000. Earlier in the payback scheme we asked to miss a year and that was during COVID and we just didn't have the campers to pay that. We're asking for the board to authorize us to pay $8,000 instead of $14,000 this year. The reason is we've had some higher than expected costs and we want to end up at the beginning of next year with a large enough corpus of funds to pay for minor repairs. Scott's done some hard work thinking what is he going to do to fix that problem. He's going to look for more donations to scholarships to support families to attend versus having those funds come directly out of the budget. That's a big hit to his budget but it's a very good thing that we do that because there's a lot of families, particularly if you have more than one kid, you can't get your kid off to that summer camp. So we'll take a look at how we might do that. Increase the registration fee. We talked about that last year in advance of this year, but we're trying to keep that down so that we don't exacerbate the problem of families not being able to send kids to the camp. Camp, and we're going to find some cost savings in our activity and field trip budget. We think might be on maybe the transportation or just not do as many off-site field trips, but I'm happy to answer you answer any questions. But we do need a vote to authorize the payment to be eight thousand points fourteen thousand dollars. What is the registration fee? Gosh, is it 110 or 135 a week? Something like that. [10:19] Chair: So what would we, so which I like the fact that he didn't leave it at that, you guys didn't leave it at that, and you have options. So how much of an increase would you have with that route? [10:32] Town Manager: Did you know? I don't know yet, and that's something Scott and I will have to sit down and have a talk about, because while we're trying to generate more revenue, we don't want to make it harder for people to go to camp so just so you know you know I've been down there you know a couple of times every summer to see how things are going and it's a real shot in the arm you see here all these kids are all playing there's a theme every week they have a wonderful time and I had a chance to talk some of the Parents who were picking these kids up, and you know, so they're, they're talking about one auntie who's picking her niece up, and who was doing canoeing for the first time ever, you know, they do, they're doing, it's not just they sit around and you know tell stories, it's real neat stuff that they're doing, and they're getting the experience of a lifetime, and nobody's on their tablet all day. And the other part of this, I don't think a lot of people may be fully cognizant of, but if you're working the camp opens up early enough where you can drop your child off and they go to camp and you can pick them up after work, and that's a big deal this, because in inner Scotland County two parent households, I think it's 75 percent, yeah, both parents work, yeah, you know, and they need to do that, so that's a big [12:00] Chair: deal, it's a lot cheaper than daycare too, yeah, 107 bucks a week, yeah, but so there's no like [12:08] Speaker D (unidentified): interest ramifications, this is just a debt that's the rec owes to the town. [12:12] Town Manager: That's right, so the town paid for the purchase of the camp, $210,000 out of the unassigned fund balance, we didn't take it alone to do that, the deal was we would pay this back over time, okay, so that you know eventually the entire amount [12:27] Speaker D (unidentified): but it's interest-free, yeah, and they're not doing a terrible job of paying it back considering the amount of time involved, I mean they just got it in 2017 so [12:39] Town Manager: we need a motion either to approve or not approve the eight thousand dollar payback. [12:46] Speaker D (unidentified): I'd make a motion to approve the eight thousand dollar payback, this is worth, this is worth [12:52] Town Manager: it in the time, I'll second that, John yes, oh yes, Mark, Jim yes, Lisa yes, Jackson yes, by vote of five to zero you approve the eight thousand dollar payback for Camp Connor, thank you for that. [13:10] Chair: All right, we'll move on to the library furniture and bookshelf RFA so [13:18] Town Manager: we want to buy some bookshelves and this RFP is going to get us down that road, the, and I asked the board to approve that, I've reached out to a number of companies and we've received some positive feedback so far, the interesting, we have asked the main state prison if they would come down and take a look, and they did, they do that kind of stuff, it took some measurements, we'll see how all that works, we're looking at how we might do this, the goal is to have bookshelves that are actually going to work for the next, you know, 40 years or so. The stuff we had in there, some of it we were able to save, some of the larger ones. The other stuff, particularly the smaller wooden ones, were just, they couldn't be saved. The ones that were against the wall were dented and in many cases the bottoms of them were rusted out. So this will be a big, a big deal to get that going. We're trying to figure out how that's going to work. And we've got, there is some interest in firms participating in that bidding process. The layout looks great. Yeah, that's the recommend, like a swag. So we'll see how it goes. The idea is that we're going to have some of these things that are in the middle of the room on casters so that we can move around say we want to have an event upstairs in the library that we could move them and that'll also mean that you know going forward if we need to change the layout we can do that without totally messing things [15:06] Chair: up supposed to be a combination wood metal shelving type thing right yeah i would i want to [15:11] Town Manager: all wood I want to go durable yeah that we can afford that's that's the thing it's so let's say we pick a company and we're not going to be able to buy all the bookshelves that we want well we're not going to buy all the bookshelves that we want we'll buy the ones that we can afford and then over time they're They're not going to be like a bazillion dollars, but we may not have enough at this point in time to do it. We'll look at putting some more money in our budget and buying additional bookshelves. But my goal here when we do this is they've all got to look the same or pretty doggone close to the same. They've got to be durable. And when you walk in there, you've got to go, okay, this is a library that I'm proud of. It's gonna look good and it will look good, but we just gotta Keep our eyes keep focused on quality [16:20] Chair: Yeah, so how yeah, so maybe tough so [16:24] Speaker C (unidentified): Yeah, I was gonna say I can tell you from personal experience that the Quality of work from the present is amazing good. My family has furniture probably 60 years old from them and it's just the prison Yeah, they do amazing, work and it's really cool. That's wonderful. The craftsmanship is really good too. [16:45] Town Manager: They were the first people to raise their hand and come down. So we'll see how we go here, but we need to start this now because we want to get these things, whoever we end up going with, on order so we can get them here and put in the library by the March timeframe. [17:03] Chair: frame. So we want everything to match though. Is that only a kind of a sticking point thing? If we can't do it all at once, how are you supposed to kind of [17:12] Town Manager: match it up down the road? Well, if it's a main state prism, they'll have the drawings at their wood shop. If it's another vendor and we go with, say, a metal shelving system, you know, we could go with even a slightly different style as long as it's fairly close in color. You don't have to be completely exact, but I think we want things to look uniform. Yeah, exactly. We don't want them too tall, so some of our elderly patrons can't reach the top shelves of the larger bookshelves we have. You know, just make it easy for folks to enjoy the library. [17:50] Speaker C (unidentified): Boy, the sum of wooden shelves in a library. Nice, isn't it? Yeah, we'll see. Sorry. [17:55] Town Manager: Yeah. Yeah, but this one I need to get a vote on to get that out. So what do you need Matt? To approve the library furniture and bookshelves RFP. Hold on just one second. Yeah. This has its own budget now right? Bookshelves itself? The money that we have set aside for the library is where we're gonna get. [18:21] Chair: And what's that up to? [18:24] Town Manager: I don't know the exact amount yet because we have a new paper request that we're processing so that will that will change the amount we have but so I can't give you an exact answer right now and I don't know what they're going to charge us for the bookshelves okay so yeah do you think that what we have in budget is going to get roughly what we need for bookshelves maybe and I'm not trying to be flippant I think when we started this it's going to be tight and you know I think you know we're going to build the building the bookshelves we're going to get some bookshelves like they're going to be every single one that we want I hope so if it's not it's not the end of the world because there's a way to way to get out of that and I think folks would understand that instead of compromising and getting something that we do not want we're just going to stay focused and get the quality stuff that's gonna last for the next 40 years or so. [19:30] Chair: Well, I see you have a plan as far as trying to recoup some of the funds. I think we briefly might have done maybe some fundraisers, some donations. [19:38] Town Manager: We raised 62, almost 63,000 over the course of the summer. So, because they'd never get an amount of money. But, you know, we have a production meeting Friday and we'll talk about, you know, where we are with funding and all that. So, you know, I'm not giving you a very good answer how much money we have because I just, I don't have an up-to-date, yeah, accounting that's going to be and it's going to change based on this meeting on Friday. When are you hoping to get bids in? Get what done? Get your bids in? This will come in and you'll see them on November 17th. [20:24] Speaker C (unidentified): So they have about a month to get everything in? [20:26] Town Manager: Yeah, so the process is, and I've talked about six or seven companies, is that they've got the RFP, we're going to get on a Teams or a Zoom meeting so we can talk about specific requirements, and they'll send some photos if they need that, and then they can send us, here's what we can do for you. And either it's make the stuff or here's the list of stuff you can buy from us and then we can, you know, have a think about what we want to do and make a recommendation to the board. [21:04] Chair: Yeah, hey Mark, we [21:11] Speaker D (unidentified): need to get started on it, right? I mean, it's this is a, it should be an easy one. So, yeah, I have a motion to approve the request for proposals. Do we have any other questions or [21:22] Speaker C (unidentified): or anything. Jim, anything? Well, let's second it first. Okay, second. And now, discussion. [21:31] Town Manager: Yes. Jim. Yes. John. Yes. Lisa. Yes. Jackson, by vote of 5-0, you approve the library furniture and book sales. Thank you. RFP. [21:44] Chair: Alright, and then we'll go over to our page 28. Move [21:54] Speaker C (unidentified): that we authorize cast disbursements. I'm going to get that word out before next June. Disbursements for the fiscal year 2027 totaling five hundred and twenty five thousand two hundred and eighteen dollars and sixty three cents. Mark, yes. Jim, yes. John, yes. [22:12] Town Manager: Lisa, yes. I believe you prove those tables all [22:19] Chair: right, the [22:25] Speaker D (unidentified): other business market anything well it when I go saying about my field trip I went with the historic society to the Hagee mine which was fascinating people in Poland don't know about this mine it's totally worth knowing about Jeff Morrison was an excellent tour guide and there are some really exciting stuff coming out of that mine so people should be proud that it's right local a lot of his tourmaline gets sold right through Cross Jewelers and it really is a fantastic walk around and he's Really somebody that's worth listening to, and if you have any kind of interest or your kids have any kind of interest in geology, you should really arrange some sort of a tour with them. Yeah, no, it was a good time, and by all means get out there and hang out with the historic society, because they're a wild bunch. [23:23] Chair: Okay, nothing from me, thank you. All right, a motion to adjourn. [23:30] Town Manager: I'll make a motion to adjourn. I second. Mark? Yes. Jim? Yes. John? Yes. Lisa? Yes. Jackson? Yes. 5-0. Meeting's adjourned.