Leverett Town Seal

Massachusetts

Leverett

Town of Leverett
9 Montague Road
Leverett, MA 01054
Town Clerk: (413) 548-9150
Tax Collector: (413) 548-9666
Assessor: (413) 548-4945
Town Hall Fax: (413) 548-1035
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Select Board

Tuesday, October 29, 2019, 7:00 pm until 9:00 pm
Town Hall, 9 Montague Rd
A meeting of the Selectboard

Meeting of Selectboard

Members: (Quorum)

  • Present: Peter d'Errico, Chair, at 7:00 PM
  • Present: Tom Hankinson, at 7:00 PM
  • Present: Julie Shively, at 7:00 PM

Also Present:

  • Julie S.
  • Peter D.
  • Tom H. and Margie M. and Rob from the Montague Reporter

See original Agenda Final Minutes

Meeting opened: 7:00 PM

Meeting closed: 9:40 PM

  1. Meeting Preliminaries

    • Meeting Opened / Attendance Taken (see above).

    • No minutes to approve.

  2. Appointments

    • 7:00: IT Policy

      General Discussion...
      IT Policy and Decisions
      Tim Haas, Jeoff Pooser and George Drake attended to report that the IT back-up project has come to the need for 4 decisions:
      1. Wifi at the town buildings for staff and board/committee members can be made unified at all buildings, which means that once someone has logged in at one building, they will stay active at any building. The PSC and North Leverett Fire Station are complete. To get the Library and Town Hall set up the current access points (routers) need to be upgraded. Estimated cost is $1,500.
      2. To regulate guest/public wifi at town buildings with an authentication bypass process which will generate a MAC address for each user's device so if someone does something illegal, it can be tracked to a device that can be banned from the system; the cost would be about $1,000 in labor to set up. The NAS installed for the backup system can also save a few months’ worth of login data so that use can be tracked for that duration if needed. This would cost about $500 in labor to set up. Tim will send some options regarding this.
      3. The town still has a few machines running windows 7, which will lose support in January. Some old machines can be upgraded and some will need to be replaced with windows 10. Each machine needs to be evaluated and cleaned up, then have the backup server software installed. Users need to be prepared for these changes. Agreed to start with Town Clerk/Selectboard office machine since she has a new PC waiting to be installed, then go to Margie’s, the Treasurer/Collector, and then the Highway Superintendent’s. No estimated cost for this is available since time per machine is unknown at this point. Funds are available for this under the back-up system special article passed last year.
      4. The back-up system has been designed and NAS has been installed in one of the POP buildings. All local machines will be backed-up to the NAS daily and the NAS will back-up hourly to cloud servers. We have 4 hard drives in a RAID array for redundancy. Costs for this set up also can be covered under the special article and some funds left in the 2017 Community Compact grant. Cost for cloud back-up subscription via Synology is $80 per year.

      End point security will be addressed in a next stage.

      IT was discussed again. Selectboard wants all department heads to know that access for changes to the firewall settings should go through Margie, not directly to Tim or Jeoff, to regularize the process for managing the firewall.

    • 7:30: Matt Boucher, Highway Update

      General Discussion...
      Matt Boucher, new Superintendent, met with the Board to give them an update. Chapter 90 paperwork was signed. He found an old cell phone that the department has been paying for the past several years that no one has used. Agreed to terminate the contract for that phone. Matt uses his personal phone. Agreed to provide a stipend for the cost of that phone. He also asked why the water bubbler does not have any water in it. Matt will go look at Broad Hill Road; bills for tree work there go to the MLP. The uniform contract has been canceled and Matt is working on collecting the uniforms that had been at employees’ houses to get them back to the vendor. The gauge on the gas tank is broken. Matt listed work that they have been doing to get ready for winter: grading, cleaning catch basins, getting machines serviced and repaired as they have not received regular service in the past few years, a hole in the bucket on the loader has been repaired, holes in roads are being patched. Matt does not plan to use liquid ice melter this winter but to go back to the sand/salt mixture. Shutesbury road will soon be repaved and Old Coke Kiln Bridge is getting repaired.

      Highway bottled water was discussed again. Margie will ask why tap water is not being used; it is the same water used by the school.

      MOTION, moved by Tom Hankinson, seconded by Julie Shively: : Motion made to appoint temporary employees for the winter based on the following rates: $30/hour for a CDL driver who uses large town trucks; $25.00/hour for a non-CDL driver who uses the small town trucks. Second motion made to allow the following contractor rates this winter as needed: $100.00/hour for an operator with a large plow truck, and $85.00/hour for an operator with pick-up truck. Voted: 3-0 in favor of all rates.

      Pass: Aye: Tom Hankinson, Julie Shively, Peter d'Errico.

      These drivers should not be paid overtime if it can be avoided. Anyone who is going to drive town trucks needs to complete an application and be appointed by the Selectboard as a temporary employee. Folks with their own trucks are contractors not employees. Rates are temporary.

    • 7:45: Teawaddle Water

      General Discussion...
      Virginia Goodale, Steve Nagy and Pat Duffy attended and presented Peter with a proposed list of stipulations for the deep well work to be done at Virginia’s house next week. Peter requested that copies of the list be made for everyone and then he read though the items and requested changes as he went through it. Virginia agreed to the changes and the agreement of stipulations was signed. Tom read through the revised schedule of work and will try to be present during the major activities.

  3. New Business

    • Medical Marijuana Policy for Police

      General Discussion...
      Medical Marijuana policy for police was passed over until a subsequent meeting.

    • MLP ring protection update

      General Discussion...

      Margie gave an update on the MLP ring protection progress. Now that Shutesbury has built their fiber system and has a separate connection to the Internet though Crown Castle, the two towns can connect and provide back-up protection for both towns. A draft agreement is being reviewed that both Selectboards and MLPs need to sign. Some issues remain, such as the agreement’s term, so a meeting of the two towns and MLPs is being set up.

    • Sign Cultural Council Grant

      General Discussion...
      Signed.

    • Sign DEP Grant Agreement

      General Discussion...
      Signed.

    • Sign MOA with FRCOG for radio communication and towers

      General Discussion...
      Signed.

    • Sign revised Agriculture license agreement

      General Discussion...
      Signed.

    • Newer business

      General Discussion...
      The Leverett Coop is struggling and trying to find ways to generate revenue. The idea of a town meeting was brought to a Selectboard member. It was agreed that the town is not officially involved.

      Margie informed the board that she has been contacted by a marijuana growing cooperative that wants to have a growing facility in town. She asked them for an email overview of the project for the Board to read.

      Margie also passed on the information that Tom Wolff told her Senator Comerford plans to include a study of the tax cap and its effect on rural towns in the upcoming budget.

      Margie also asked for guidance on the next full-time police officer appointment. Meghan Gallo was the only in-house applicant for the position, but she has not completed the PT academy yet. Scott would like to proceed with hiring her. She has offered to pay the FT academy fee upfront and be reimbursed a third of the cost for every year she works for the town after completion. Selectboard agreed that that was a good plan.


  4. Mail

    • CDBG response letter

    • Community Compact Congratulations

    • DEP Recylcing Program/MRF

    • Historical Commission Workshops

  5. Meeting Wrap-up

The listing of matters is those reasonably anticipated by the Chair which may be discussed at the meeting. Not all items listed may in fact be discussed and other items not listed may also be brought up for discussion to the extent permitted by law.

Minutes approved on Thursday, Dec 5, 2019