Prudential Committee Cotuit Fire District
27 Oct 2014
Present Marge Wallace, Fran Parks
Fran Parks: It Is 5:00 and I’m going to open the October 27, 2014, Prudential committee meeting of the Cotuit Fire District. Could everybody introduce themselves please for the transcriptionist? I’m Fran Parks, the chairman.
Marge Wallace: Marge Wallace
Michael D.: Michael Daley, treasurer.
Fran Parks: Thank you. I’m going to move public comment up to the start. Is anyone recording?
Amy Kates, I’m recording.
Fran Parks: Public comment?
David: Hello there. My name is David Major and I’m the treasurer of Freedom Church just wanted to thank you for the use of the hall.
Fran Parks: Great. Thank you very much, David.
Amy Kates: Amy Kates. I know that at the end of the summer the new union negotiation committee was getting up to speed how many meeting have you had .
Fran Parks: Mr. Daley has notified us that we need to have a meeting for the setting of the tax rate with our November 27th meeting? The 24th.
Michael D.: Fourth Monday of the month.
Fran Parks: Fourth Monday of the month, so that’s going to need to be published. Also, hopefully we’ll have an exit interview with the accountants for the 13 audit.
Michael D.: Yes, ma’am.
Fran Parks: Yes. Do you have anything else?
Michael D.: No, everyone you’re up to date. I’ll answer any questions if you have any.
Fran Parks: Can we move to the signs?
Marge Wallace: Sure. I did talk to Rick Gallo today. He said 2 to 3 weeks initially to do the signs.
Fran Parks: Okay. Well I’ll wait. Do you want to make a motion for 4 signs?
Marge Wallace: Yes, I’d like to move that we fund 4 signs to be distributed around the village to remind people of voting and of meetings to see if we can increase participation that way.
Fran Parks: Can I make a slight amendment that we also include inserts for our 2 existing signs? I’ll second the motion. All in favor?
Marge Wallace: Aye.
Fran Parks: Aye.
Marge Wallace: Do you have the signs?
Fran Parks: Yes, I do.
Marge Wallace: Okay. I mentioned them to him and said I’d drop them off some time. He’s not there a lot
Fran Parks: As everybody can see the exterior of the hall is being painted. Mr. O’Byrne is doing a terrific job. The glazing has been repaired on the windows. We found one more cracked window pain, which David Kerr’s is going to repair. That’s the exterior painting. The interior painting I just can’t live with the unacceptable job that the painter did. You can go to the paint and just peel it off the woodwork. It was never sanded.
I had Mr. O’Byrne clarify or tell me as a professional painter what the problem was, it wasn’t sanded. I’ve asked Mr. Bodreau to write a letter to Demitrius informing him that we’re not happy with this job and that it needs to be redone.
We have new hardware on the front door. It’s a real handicapped accessible system that’s going to be a lot easier. The only difference from the previous system is that the handles have to be locked down every time in order to open it.
Marge Wallace: Is he going to plug the holes?
Fran Parks: David Kerr going to plug the holes for us. For anybody who’s a little chilly at the moment we don’t have any heat in the building. That’ll be taken care of tomorrow. Part of the contract is to make sure that we have heat in the building until the gas is installed.
We had 2 furnaces down there. One had a cracked fire box and that was the one that heated this room, and so that could not be repaired or used. They’ve removed that and they’re going to be doing some new duct work to ensure that we have heat up in this room. That’s going to be an add-on because the furnace is extremely filthy, even though it’s been cleaned. We’ll have to do a change order of about $500. It’ll be less than $500.
We probably need to vote on that. I’d like permission to do a change order for the cleaning of the furnace.
Marge Wallace: So Moved.
Fran Parks: Second. In favor?
Marge Wallace: Aye.
Fran Parks: Aye. The Lowell property. Mr. Bodreau ?
Mark Bodreau: Okay, by way of background at annual meeting based on a citizen’s petition there was a positive vote to raise the sum of $235,000 for the acquisition of a conservation restriction and it was voted at that time that it be done under the auspices of the water department. It was subsequently determined that this is allowed subject to DEP approval.
DEP has promulgated certain regulations and the property was much too small and outside of it’s own one, and they rejected the idea. I’m not sure how formal the rejection was, but I heard it orally and it appeared that the land trusted as well. We went back to the drawing board with the idea of presenting 2 motions.
One a motion to reconsider and correct what we voted to undo what we had voted. Then a second one to have the Cotuit Fire District actually take jurisdiction over the conservation restriction. Bond counsel returned an opinion back that are enabling legislation in their opinion made it questionable that we could do it.
I was forwarded the opinion about 10 days ago, and had a chance to do a little research, and they’re correct. It would be too tight and would not withstand any sort of a citizen litigation on this. I did have the opportunity to meet with the Barnstable Land Trust. What they would like to do, and obviously they’re just suggesting it, is to hold off to see if they can work with DEP to see if they can I suppose change their minds or carve out an exception.
That’s where we are right now. It’s somewhat on hold, but it doesn’t appear that the alternate route that we talked about last time is a good route to go down.
Fran Parks: Any questions?
Marge Wallace: I just have one.
Fran Parks: Sure.
Marge Wallace: Going forward, is it possible that this could have been done ahead of time so it doesn’t even get on the warrant so that we know the parameters of what we’re asking for, and what’s legal and what isn’t so that the article would never have got into a warrant
Fran Parks: High Street?
Mark Bodreau: Yes. Has the survey been done?
Fran Parks: I’m not sure that I want to do anything until the meeting. The district has spent your time, we’ve had done the inspection, we’ve had an appraisal done. Those 2 items were $1000. As I emailed you, I’m not interested in doing a survey or anything. After the meeting we’ll do a survey, but I don’t want to spend any more money. I don’t think having a survey is necessary for the voters to make a decision.
Fran Parks: Right, correct. I would just as soon hold off until after we have the district meeting. Has this been published?
Speaker 9: No.
Fran Parks: We’re probably not going to be looking at a meeting for this until December.
Marge Wallace: Anything after Thanksgiving is a tough time to have a meeting because of holidays and all. We can’t get it in before Thanksgiving, 30 days. We’re talking about …
Fran Parks: … January?
Marge Wallace: Yes. Will that make a huge difference?
Marge Wallace: Right. Well, we’ve been waiting too, but I just think between Thanksgiving and Christmas is a really tough thing to try to have a meeting. You run a risk of not having a forum.
Fran Parks: Okay. I have something that I was going to discuss under the setting of the district meeting, but the union negotiations are going to mediation so we’re going to need to fund those. The chairman of the Fire Commissioner’s suggestion was we put a warrant article on for $25,000 to pay for the mediation for the union negotiations.
Michael D.: you’re talking about in January?
Fran Parks: Yes.
Michael D.: Okay.
Fran Parks: Okay?
Michael D.: You’ll have to fund that out of an available fund. You won’t be able to raise set the tax rate for fiscal ’15 so free cash,
Fran Parks: Okay.
Marge Wallace: Is the reserve fund also an option?
Michael D.: Reserve fund is for extraordinary, unforeseen. This doesn’t sound unforeseen and extraordinary so I’d say no.
Michael D.: We knew in the spring they were negotiating. We could’ve put it in the budget.
Marge Wallace: Okay.
Michael D.: … I have no idea. I am an expert witness when it gets to joint labor management hearings, but a lot of that is attorney fees. That is not my area of expertise.
Fran Parks: Okay.
Michael D.: If you get a funding level in January and the process begins in earnest right after the first of the year you could add to it within the annual meeting and fund it to the next fiscal year. It seems like from the time they hire me until the time we have a hearing there’s a pretty extensive amount of time between …
Fran Parks: … Okay.
Fran Parks: Okay, great. Is there anything else? No. Gentlemen, any other comments or concerns? No. I’ll entertain the motion to adjourn?
Marge Wallace: Second.
Fran Parks: Second. All those in favor?
Marge Wallace: Aye.
Fran Parks: Aye. Thank you. Hold on for a second … I need to announce that we’re going into executive session for the purpose to discuss the Cotuit firefighters contract negotiations because discussing at open meeting will be detrimental to the bargaining position of the district and we will not return into public session. Fran Parks, aye. Marge Wallace?
Marge Wallace: Aye.
Fran Parks: Thank you …
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