Coordinator report

October 22, 2015

No ethics exemptions are anticipated.

 Please note that this meeting is at the Library because of other town
hall use and dissatisfaction expressed with sharing the building due to
distracting sounds. At 8 pm at town hall Elan Sicroff will hold a piano
recital of music by Thomas de Hartmann. Admission is by donation. Since
I can't be sure the board likes de Hartmann any better than Zumba music
the venue is changed to the Library.
 
The Community Newsletter is troubled by the length of Selectboard
meeting minutes for publication. I've invited Andrea Woods, in her
capacity as newsletter editor, to appear and discuss this with the
board.

Elizabeth Copeland, general counsel and Eric Nakajima, executive
director of MBI (Mass Broadband Institute) will meet with the board to
discuss last mile Internet, MBI funding, data and more. Their purpose is
to make sure each community's leadership understands the process and
options available; and to answer questions. Tom Wyatt developed
questions prefaced by statements. I tried to reduce and summarize his
work and added my own. Both documents are provided the board and MBI.
Tom's contains the date in the file name.

Tom asked that the agenda include a letter of support to a MA legislator
to sponsor special legislation like what was passed in 2008 for another
community which allows serial short term borrowing rather than long term
bonding. In this marketplace this reduces the cost of money and Warwick
has been doing this for school and highway equipment debt with State
House Notes. However the limit is four or five years. I recommend the
board discuss this and take it under advisement and act at the next
meeting. If a decision is pushed for now I recommend you decline to
pursue this. The Treasurer agrees.  In general financing should mirror
the amortization term. I feel that the bigger the dollar amount and
longer the term, the more this is true. Others will argue that it
increases our options. We should avoid becoming Detroit with trees.

My recent illness delayed the LTE trial plus the permission getting for
radio spectrum use has been slower than we hoped. I've included my notes
from the kick-off meeting for the LTE trial and will do my best to
answer questions. If this solution fails without leaf cover we'll know
to abandon it. If it succeeds we will retest in the spring when leaf
cover is again present.

At 7:15 the "tax classification" hearing will occur. We have so little
property that is other than residential that anything other than a
single tax rate for all classes of property has always been adopted. 

On Wed Oct 28 there will be the continuation of the Northfield Rd tree
hearing at 4:30 pm and then at Northfield Elementary School there will
be two meetings related to the pipeline at 6 pm. One meeting is hosted
by the Northfield Selectboard in the school cafeteria and one by KM/TGP
in the auditorium.