Board of Selectmen Meeting, April 1, 2024

Watercross, well poisoning, overtime pay, unannounced Recycling Center closure.

Chairman Morin was absent. Vice Chairman Dabrieo presided.

Overtime Policy

At last week’s budget workshop, the board had discussed that the town had been paying 3 hours of overtime per week to firefighters on 48-hour workweeks. By federal law, municipalities may have such workweeks for firefighters without paying overtime, but the town’s personnel policy stipulates overtime after 45 hours. It has been argued that the personnel policy was supposed to have been changed when the board and the voters accepted the proposal for 24/7 coverage using 24-hour shifts. In February 2023 this oversight was identified. By law, the firefighters had to be paid overtime in conformance with the personnel policy. At that time the board declined to change the policy, continuing to pay overtime. 

At the budget workshop, the board said this needed to change as the overtime cost was unaffordable within the constraints of the default budget. 

The Fire Department subsequently reported to the board that it will eliminate the costly overtime pay by shifting to 42-hour workweeks, making changing the personnel policy unnecessary. 

The impact of this on 24/7 coverage was not made clear, as it reduces the workweek of the 6 full-time staff by 36 hours per week. 

Selectman Decker remarked that he was not convinced that no change to the overtime policy was needed, and that he wanted further research on the matter. 

Well Poisoning

The citizen who had presented to the board on four prior occasions about how the Town had poisoned his well with road salt presented again. 

Despite the signs the Highway Department installed last year designating his road to be a low-salt zone, the petitioner claimed that on March 10, in the middle of the night, in pouring rain, that a quarter-inch deep layer of salt was applied to his road. 

The petitioner has received from the Town a statement from the town’s salt provider, Morton Salt, about what is in the road salt. Morton says there is cyanide in the salt. Because of this, he’s going to have his well tested for cyanide in addition to salt. 

The petitioner made several other claims:

• The salting equipment is throwing salt as much as 10ft away from the edge of the road. 

• The state pays to replace salt-poisoned wells, why doesn’t Nottingham do so?

• All wells on his road are now contaminated with salt, as is a nearby pond. 

• The town uses 1600 tons per year of salt. Lee uses 600 tons. Sandwich uses 30 tons. (The Town Administrator later said that the town has an option to buy up to 1600 tons per year. The town bought 517 tons.)

• The town spent $100k on salt for last winter.

The petitioner is now trying to get the insurance company of the contractors who applied the salt to pay for the damages. He encouraged the town to join in this effort. He says that if this fails he will have to sue the town for the damages. 

The Town Administrator said that the Highway Department is working down its salt supply so that it can do maintenance on its storage shed over the summer. 

She also noted that the petitioner’s road is short and without a turnaround. The salt truck must drive in and back up, then back in and drive out in order to apply salt to the road. Selectman Decker asked why salt could not just be applied to the middle in a single pass. 

Selectman Shirland questioned the validity of the measurements of salt contamination provided by the petitioner of the affected wells and pond as the petitioner had gathered the water samples himself to be sent off to a lab for testing. Shirland thought that a third party was needed to collect the samples. He went on to ask the Town Administrator to research how other towns have dealt with situations like this. 

Watercross Event Application

The board had previously received an application from the sponsors for the watercross events and had asked the sponsors to make changes and clarifications, and to meet with the board about their application, which they did in this meeting. The board was satisfied with the changes and accepted the application. This is a preliminary to approving the events. 

The sponsors noted that this is not a big money-making venture. Although it is costly to operate, they do it because they love the sport. They said attendance has been steady - not growing. There have been no traffic jams at the entrance due to the events. They have only two food vendors. 

Two members of the public spoke in opposition to the event. They live near the event. It is so noisy that they find it impossible to stay in their own home during the event. It is unfair to impose upon them lodging costs for three weekends and the lack of use of their own home. Their children cannot nap. Worse, this year, because of a June delivery date, they cannot be far from their obstetrician. 

Community Newsletter Budget Shortfall

A volunteer for the Community Newsletter advised that only $4k had been budgeted for the newsletter this year. Spending to date is already $2.3k. Advertisers will need to receive refunds because the newsletter cannot be mailed. Bulk mailing rates to all residents are half of that for addressed mailing costs. It is not economical to mail the newsletter selectively. There’s no infrastructure for sending it to everyone electronically or for paid subscriptions.

Unannounced Temporary Closure of the Recycling Center

A citizen complained that the Recycling Center was closed last week during its hours of operation, due to a power outage. Could the town find some way to notify citizens of unplanned closures? 

Budget Committee Vacancy

Due to John Decker’s election to the Board of Selectmen, his seat on the Budget Committee is now vacant. On Thursday, April 18, at 7:00 pm, the Budget Committee will meet to select a volunteer to serve on the committee. If you wish to volunteer, contact Michael Kelly at mzpfarms@gmail.com.

Position Appointments

The board made several appointments to positions. A couple of these were long overdue. It appointed Fire Chief Matt Curry to the position of Fire Warden - overdue since the termination of the prior Fire Chief. The board also re-appointed Kristen Lamb to a 3-year position on the Conservation Commission - an appointment it had overlooked last year while she continued to serve.

Tax Collector Mailing Address

The board approved a request to abate a few dollars in late fees for a tax payment that was mailed on time but not delivered on time due to misdelivery. This sparked a discussion of why the town is paying an annual fee for a post office box for the tax collector and couldn’t there be a locked delivery box at Town Hall instead? The Town Administrator will investigate. 

Questions from the Public

The Town Administrator said that the board’s new policy of asking the public to send in questions by the Wednesday before the board meeting had produced a lot of questions coming to her, many of which she was able to answer. She presented the remaining questions for the board. 

Q: Why don’t the members of the Budget Committee and Planning Board have town email addresses? Why does the town website list a non-town email address for the Fire Chief? Why do town officials use their personal email addresses for town business? If an official is using a personal email address for town business, is it appropriate to redact that address?

A: There’s some cost to providing a nottingham-nh.gov email address to individuals. The town cannot force people to use those addresses. Many people find it difficult or confusing to have multiple email addresses. In the case of the board, the board may only use email for informational purposes. All deliberation and decision-making must take place in public meetings. 

Q: The timeline published by the Board of Selectmen regarding the termination of the town’s former Fire Chief appears to have discrepancies from subsequently published facts. What is the town going to do about it?

A: As none of the selectmen present were on the board when some of the events took place, none of them felt that they could answer the question. Selectman Decker, however, said that it seemed to him, though, that some things did not line up. 

Due to technical issues, the meeting was not broadcast on cable television. It was live-streamed on YouTube instead. Then there were additional difficulties. There’s one version of the meeting with all of the audio, but not the video,

and another with all of the video, but not the audio for the first 47 minutes