Coordinator Report March 18, 2010 In support of the proposed thirty town western MA fiber to home Broadband system, the Town of Colrain is proposing, as lead town, a project feasibility study to be supported by a technical assistance grant funded and conducted by FRCOG. I have submitted a letter in support. I'd like a vote to ratify my action. Note that this is the same grant funded service under which Warwick got technical assistance on our Open Space and Recreation Plan The next proposed motion is a no-brainer. We get the Commonwealth to pay our share of the WCS debt with their money. The school will vote this on the 24th provided we vote to instruct them. $42k per year comes off the annual tax levy. I sent a letter 3/19 at the district's request. We need only ratify this action. Julie Hubbard has agreed to be our alternate representative to the solid waste district. This is a great fit for in her work life she is Erving Paper's environmental compliance officer. Kevin Alden was appointed to the Finance Committee by the moderator. Gunnar Lambert has retired from his day job. As fire chief he recently completed the equivalent of ICS 300 and 400 training with a number of other area chiefs. We are going to meet with our EMD and see if we can get some agreement on who needs what certification to finally get the town qualified for homeland security grants. He reports that the next step on the old school demolition is moving the water and electrical service. This will happen this spring. Ed Matthews and Brian Peters are leading this effort. We need to open the Town Meeting warrant and set a date to close it to articles by petition. I advise that we review the warrant and identify any items on the draft that we will require inclusion only by petition. The Finance Committee will be meeting in the next week to make recommendations on articles and sources of funding. Rosa needs to confer with Chief Peters before we appoint ACO (animal control) Gerald Whitney is field driver and is interested in the farm animal portion of the job. Peters feels if we go this route that the Dog Officer compensation should remain at its current level as that is a job at which Rosa excels. There is not total satisfaction with the job done on loose livestock. I was notified by MEMA that we don't have a current flood plan. Lacking one we won't be able to tap emergency money if ever needed. Tim is going to attend the MEMA meeting as our representative. One of our highway workers is out for the foreseeable future injured. We consulted Town Counsel and then set in motion paperwork to invoke the Family Medical Leave Act and as well, made a worker compensation report. This individual's sick time and vacation time run out in early April. At that point Tim will be looking for a temporary employee until the injured worker returns. I attended a Warwick Community School Counsel meeting last week at their request. The school building was the topic and Mr. Toth attended on behalf of the BEC. I acknowledged there being some confusion about responsibility for the building and that the town is the landlord and responsible for capital items. We are waiting for the performance contracting investment grade audit to begin to address the heating and ventilation systems. We have begun to study the temperature problem in the building by deploying data collection devices. Regarding the sprinkler system, I need to set a date for the contractor walk-through coordinated with the architect. Bid packages are available beginning March 24th and proposals are due April 26 so a date in very early April is anticipated. This is a design / build request for proposals. Answers to it are sealed and it is both a bid and proposal. Responses are two parts, each are sealed. Price proposals are not considered as part of the selection, but opened after the award. The winning bidder will do the design and construct the sprinkler system. Ergo design / build. Anyone qualified to answer this RFP will understand. I am still developing the selection criteria and though it is not required that we telegraph this I hope to. On the other hand we might not and I may continue to work on the tool until the opening. I usually post a whole bid package on the town web site but not in this case. I want to require respondents to register their interest so any changes or updates or answers to a question go to everybody who wants to bid. Legal notice has run in newspaper and legal posting has occurred. MA Central Register notification runs 3/24. Town meeting is May 3. An article to appropriate a sum of money for this is on the warrant. The appraisal for the beach purchase came in at $13k which considerably lower than the seller hoped and half what we assessed the property for three years running. The seller is listing the property anew to test the waters. I suggested to Mary Williamson that she explore raising some privately contributed funds to augment any funds voted by the town. Best case would be to have a buy sell agreement contingent upon availability of funds. We could make an appropriation at Town Meeting contingent upon reaching an agreed price by a certain date. MA Cultural Council reports we are late on reports and they are holding our money. And a few performers are looking for payment. Tracey Weed reports she is catching up on paperwork. I sent a letter to HRA expressing our desire to have the Housing Authority's assistance with the FY11 grant application. I will set a pole hearing date for a Verizon request. I am reviewing our elevator contract which we signed for five years but isn't legally permissible. I'll get us on the FRCOG procurement. The fuel bids are due in April and I'm working with departments. One town employee has requested that we look at the personnel policy and establish a "time limit" on our progressive disciplinary procedure. Currently something ten years old stays in the employee's file. We have had a few town hall rentals, I haven't been charging for use by the transition communities meetings and have them operating under the auspices of BEC. I am working on upgrading the feed on cell tower so more bandwidth will be available. This can be done under the current budget. We had one new install in the past thirty days and addressed three trouble tickets. One was related to cordless phone, the other two got special antennas with narrower bean width. I anticipate some calls when the leaves come out as that changes the environment. We have several orders waiting until leaves are out. We are supporting 80 connections. I'll be advertising a transfer station vacancy. I need to get a copy of the fees for transfer station and BOH inspections Any town officials who want an official Town email account can have one for the asking. Most have a forwarder set up to another email account. Leaving town emails in the "cloud" is an easy way to satisfy the requirement that such records be retained.