Prudential Committee – Oct 26 2015 – meeting minutes

Cotuit Fire District

Prudential Committee

26 October 2015

5:00pm

Ms. Parks: I’m going to call the October 26, 2015 Prudential Committee meeting to order. Is there any public comment? No public comment.

I’m going to ask the water commissioners to please update us on the water tower project.

Mr. Barnicle: Thank You, no problem I had to ask Russ Kleecamp from GHD to come in so that you could ask any questions you need, and we wouldn’t be fumbling around. I would like to ask him to step forward. This is Russ Kleecamp from GHD.

Ms. Parks: That’s great. Thank you.

Russ Kleecamp: Hi, good evening. I’m Russ Kleecamp. I’m the project manager from the engineering firm GHD. Would you like just a general overview on the project today? Or did you have specific questions on it?

Ms. Parks: No. I just think we wanted a general overview of the progress and where we’re at.

Russ Kleecamp: Sure. Well the project, it is underway. We’ve opened up bids on August 6th I believe. We have signed the notice of award and also have issued the notice to proceed to the contractor. We expect them to break ground in November, starting with some installation of the water pipes and valves down at the West Street tank site. Then probably not much happening over the winter. After that, we’ll try to do the demolition of the West Street tank this year as well. Then the spring time of next year, we’ll be looking to construct the new tank at the site. Then when that’s on line, we’ll take down the other tank at the Main Street site. The project is underway, it’s moving forward. Just no physical construction to date has happened.

Ms. Parks: I just had a question. If you could explain about the problem with the cell phone towers or antennas.

Russ Kleecamp: Sure. Sure. Well one of the Main Street tanks now has the three carriers on them. I believe it is Sprint, AT&T, and T-Mobile. The way the cell phone companies work is they install their antennas in a certain location and there’s not a whole lot of flexibility. There’s only a couple hundred feet they can deviate from that, but given the tank’s structural condition, it obviously have to come down. We have been in contact with the cell phone companies. Some of them have temporary antennas they’ve put up. Sometimes they seek alternate locations or we can enter into discussions on if it’s prudent to put up a new cell phone tower there.

Ms. Parks: When I attended your last meeting, you discussed antennas for the sheriff’s department and the Barnstable Police, they aren’t on the Main Street?

Russ Kleecamp: Chris are they on?

Chris Wiseman: Yes they are on the Main Street tank.

Ms. Parks: They are. Okay. The new tank, we won’t be putting antennas on? Is that correct?

Russ Kleecamp: No, we’re not. We’re putting previsions there. Conduits and penetrations through the foundation in the tank wall, so if things ever go there in the future, it’ll be relatively easy to do but, there is no schedule. Other than the antennas used to communicate with the water department, there is no purposed cell phone antennas on the new tank.

Ms. Parks: Okay. Any other questions from the committee? Ms. Hadley? Any questions.

Ms. Hadley: No I had no questions.

Ms. Parks: None. Okay thank you.

Russ Kleecamp: Thank you.

Ms. Parks: Thank you Russ. Thank you. Okay, Fire Commissioners. If we can have an update on the truck.

Mr. Hadley: I will defer to the chief, if that’s possible.

Ms. Parks: That’s fine. Thank you.

Christopher: Good evening, folks. Fire chief, Christopher Olsen. 26 Trudy Lane. The fire truck has been ordered. The engineer plans are in the process of being completed. We had completed one set of engineer plans and realized that, at least the engineer realized, that there were too many things on top of the truck for the truck to be able to accurately fit into the building. They reconfigured the top of the truck and it looks great. They just moved things around, but the truck has been ordered. It’s underway. The build out is going to start once the plans are finished, the engineer plans, with our final approval. We’re just waiting for those final approval now of the engineer plans. We’re expecting them this week, next week. Hopefully, by the end of the month. From that point, once we approve them, they assure us it’s about eight or nine months for a build-out and we’ll have a nice saber-pierced manufactured truck. Thank you.

Ms. Parks: Can you talk about the cost savings that you’ve arranged for it?

Christopher: Yes, we did fill out all the paperwork. We do have a $6,000 cost savings right now to go through a firm that’s out of Texas for a purchasing agent. That worked out really. There may be another, if we pay it off, soon as they build the Chasity, if we pay half of the money forward it might be a possible $4,000, they were saying. That’s a $10,000 savings, $10,000 plus savings on the truck. It works out really well and we thank you very much for filling out the paper work, appreciate that.

Ms. Parks: Any questions about the truck? None? Thank you.

Christopher: All right. Thank you so much.

Ms. Parks: The next order of business is the District Insurance of Property Casualty Accident and Sickness. I understand that the Board of Water Commissioners have already voted to increase the deductibles for property to $2,500 and changed some of the deductibles on your equipment. Is that correct?

I understand that the Fire Commissioners are going to be voting on this topic at your next meeting on the 10th of November. Is that correct Mr. Hadley?

Mr. Hadley: Yes

Ms. Parks: Yes, okay. Thank you. Any questions about the liability Ms. Hadley. No?

Ms. Parks: Next item is Freedom Hall. When I was here last week for the Water Commissioner’s meeting, the nice lady from the Boy Scouts came upstairs and asked me if I knew if there was water in the basement. I contacted Mr. Kerr. He came in and vacuumed it out. Part of the problem is the gutters. Part of the problem is that the land over on the north side of the building, it’s the one window that’s on the north side in the main part of the basement, where it leaks. I don’t know where it’s coming from. What we need to do is probably gets some window covers. Those plastic window covers. Unfortunately, these are extra-large sized-

Stan: We’re going to eliminate the window?

Ms. Parks: No, I don’t think we’re going to do that. These are extra-large sized windows, so they’re going to be fairly expensive. Mr. Kerr is looking at a price for that. The other place it comes in is on the parking lot side. That’s probably where the worst part of the leak came from. We’ll just have to look at changing the gutters, I think, or rearranging the gutters.

The other thing I wanted to mention is the new Storm windows are on. All the windows in Freedom Hall actually have Storm windows. Not just the ones in this room.

Stan: Do the gutters need to be cleaned?

Ms. Parks: Yes, the gutter’s need to be cleaned. The other problem is if you look the gutters there’s, for these huge roofs, there’s a down-spouts on the front and then on the rear, there’s just a pipe that comes out of them that’s this big around. It’s just not large enough to handle the water. That’s part of the problem. That’s it for Freedom Hall.

The High Street property. Mr. Grassetti, kindly went over to High Street to look over the building and give me his opinion on the feasibility of restoring it. Which isn’t probably a realistic expectation. He thinks it will be extremely expensive. We do need an assessment of the building and that would cost, in the neighborhood, he thinks of $3,000-$5,000. We probably should put that on the warrant for next year. He did suggest to me that we might want to consider a plan where we put aside X amount of dollars for, say, five years. For it to, either rehab that building or build a new building for that area. Any other thoughts about?

Mrs. Hadley: Well, we have just gone through a very small remodeling in a very old house. You just run into so many things that you don’t anticipate. I think we have to keep an open mind about tearing it down.

Ms. Parks: Yes. I do too. Ms. Hadley, I understand there was a policy advisory committee meeting.

Ms. Hadley: Yes, we had our first meeting. We elected Eric Schaeffer, the chairman and I’m stuck with the minutes. Mr. Campbell is our water department representative and Dr. Pisano is representing the fire department. We’re having our next meeting on the 5th of November. We have a copy of the enabling act and we have a copy of the study that was done by FFA in 1999. With those 2 documents I think we’ll have a little bit more to talk about in the next meeting.

Ms. Parks: Good.

Stan: I have nothing to report on the by-law committee at this time. We’ll get active when I get back.

Ms. Parks: All right. Did you … I didn’t put it on the agenda. Hopefully nobody will object, but did you review the minutes from September?

Ms. Hadley: Yes I did. I didn’t see anything.

Ms. Parks: Can I have a motion to accept the minutes from September?

Ms. Hadley: I make a motion to accept the minutes of the September meeting.

Stan: Second.

Ms. Parks: All those in favor. So moved

That’s the end of the agenda.

Ms. Hadley: Is Jackie here?

Ms. Parks: Oh, I’m sorry. Jackie Barton, would you like to-

Jackie Barton: I was actually here hoping to hear what the status of the funding was, so that I could then understand what I need to do in order to get the Lowell project done.

Michael: No change as we were unless you heard today.

Chris Wiseman: No I didn’t

Michael: Right, so we haven’t heard today yet.

Ms. Parks: We haven’t heard from the bank.

Michael: It’s actually from the USDA.

Ms. Parks: USDA. Okay.

Michael: As to whether we qualify for their loan program or not. We’re waiting to hear. Once we know we’re in, we’ll go that route. If we know we’re not in, we’ll go a different route, but we’re sitting waiting.

Ms. Parks: Thank you.

Jackie Barton: Do you have a sense, Michael, of once you go out for that public bonding, what the timing on that process typically it?

Michael: We’re not bonding, we’re doing notes.

Jackie Barton: Okay.

Michael: The next board meeting is November 16th. Is that correct? We would shoot for that to sign papers which would give us 2 to 3 weeks before we had custody of funds for disbursement. Probably sometime in December, we can cut a check on a warrant.

Jackie Barton: Just to bring everyone up to speed, I believe then, where we are is that BLT will have to go out and borrow funds and do a two-part closing. What that means is that we’ll close with the Lowell family, we’ll acquire the property based on the promise, if you will, of the district. Which means that we’re going to have to have a Purchase and Sales agreement, which we don’t currently have right now with you. We’ll close $450,000 of borrowed funds from us because we have to both cover the fire district and the town of Barnstable because you’re purchasing half of the conservation restrictions. We’re prepared to do that. I’m not pushing you. It’s just the longer we have to wait for your funds, the more it’s going to cost us. Thank you.

Ms. Parks: Can I have a motion to adjourn?

Ms. Hadley: So moved.

Stan: Second.

Speaker 1: All in favor I. We are adjourned.

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