Board of Selectmen Meeting, May 6, 2024
Highway Department severely over budget. Complaints against Highway Department. Complaint filed against Selectman Shirland. Overtime policy changed. National Night Out canceled.
Highway Department Concerns
It was a rough night for Highway Director Steve Rollins. The Board of Selectmen asked him to come to the meeting to answer their questions. This was the first item on the board’s agenda. Later in the meeting, the board dealt with complaints from the public about the Highway Department which had come in the mail and which were presented during public comment.
The board’s primary concern was about the department’s budget. The department spent 57% of its 2024 budget in just the first third of the year, with two budget lines for the department already over what had been budgeted for the year: snowplowing and hired equipment. The Town Administrator has since forbidden the department from hiring any more equipment for the remainder of the year.
At this time all the Town’s other departments are near budget. Selectman Morin said he doesn’t want to see another department head come in saying that they’re down to 43% on May 6.
The Highway Director discussed the spring roadwork so far. The department started with removing trees and branches knocked down by the late-seanson snowstorm. When that was finished the department began focusing on ditching.
It has also begun grading the dirt roads, some of which have already been graded twice. Roads that have been graded include Ledge Farm, Berry, Gile, Stevens Hill, Priest, and Mitchell. No grading has been done on any of the lake roads. The department is still doing ditch work on those, as the grading done over the years has filled in the ditches.
Selectman Morin asked if there would be a grading schedule. The Highway Director said there would not be a schedule. Grading will be done where he thinks it is needed.
The Highway director gave an update on the unfinished work budgeted for in 2023. He believes it is no longer possible to complete the paving work on Deerfield Road with the remaining budget to extend the paving repairs to the intersection with Flutter Street. Because of the severe delamination of the surface, the road must be milled before being repaved. At this point, he anticipates that the remaining 2023 funds will permit the road to be repaved only to about Stevens Hill Road.
The board heard complaints about the Highway Department that had come in from both correspondence and public comment. The complaints were:
About the department’s failures to fix potholes despite repeated requests to do so.
The Director’s chronically ambiguous and non-commital responses to concerns and questions.
One citizen said that the potholes on his road were so bad this year that it broke a suspension coil, a set of shocks, and damaged an airdam. In previous years they’ve never had such damage.
The department’s abuse of private property, involving tree removal and cutting away and removing large amounts of soil from private property, all done without warning or consultation with the landowners and residents.
To investigate the claim about abuse of private property, I went out and took photos from the neigborhood the complaints came from: Seaman’s Point Road and Shore Drive. The residents are upset. Note that the signs here are from residents other than those whose complaints were discussed with the board.
Overtime Pay Policy and Complaint Against Selectman Shirland
The long saga of the town’s overtime pay policy may finally be over, with the board unanimously approving the Town Administrator’s proposal that the threshold for overtime should be increased from 45 hours per week to 48.
The issue arose when the town’s former Fire Chief, Jaye Vilchock, proposed in a 2022 warrant article to provide 24/7 staffing of the Fire Station by increasing the full-time staff to 6 employees performing two 24-hour shifts per week. The town, however, failed to change its overtime policy to address this even though, Vilchock claims, the Board of Selectmen and the Town Administrator were all aware of the expectation that this would be done.
In February 2023, former Interim Town Administrator John Scruton discovered that the Fire Department was operating contrary to the Town’s overtime policy. He blamed this on the Chief and overturned the department’s overtime practice. This caused the department to overrun its budget.
With the voters’ rejection of the 2024 proposed operating budget, the board determined that it could no longer afford the extra overtime. However, the Fire Department claimed that they could devise a schedule to avoid the extra overtime. This claim was subsequently contested by Jaye Vilchock at the April 15 board meeting in which Selectman Shirland denied Vilchock’s claims.
Following the April 15 meeting, Vilchock filed a formal complaint with the Town against Selectman Shirland, claiming that Shirland gave intentionally deceptive answers to Vilchock’s questions at that meeting. He requested that Chairman Morin conduct an investigation. Morin declined to provide a response to the complaint.
The interaction between Vilchock and Shirland that caused Vilchock to file his complaint is worth watching.
Town Beach Road Issues
A large number of fallen trees are blocking Town Beach Road. Clearing the road is anticipated to cost in excess of $20k and require specialized equipment. The state is expected to eventually clear part of the road, to Drown’s Dam, but not to the beach, and possibly not until well after the planned Memorial Day weekend opening of Town Beach. The state also wants to clear some trees that are considered hazardous to the dam. The owners say they will do nothing to clear the road.
The Town does not have budget to clear the trees. Besides, the Town Administrator said that the town is not allowed to spend money on private property.
[Commentary: The Town says it has a seasonal easement for public use of Town Beach Road. (Albeit that this is not documented.) This is a public easement. As such, maintaining that public easement would not be spending public money on private property. This is the same sort of error that got the Town sued in 2020.]
During public comment, two citizens spoke about the easement. They claimed that the public has had year-round pedestrian access to that road since 1964 and that this access has been heavily and routinely used until the owner’s recent efforts to prevent access. NH case law allows the Town to claim a prescriptive public easement because of this long use. They wanted to know if the Town Attorney was pursuing such a claim. The Town Administrator said the attorney was not doing this. Instead, the Town was negotiating a draft of a seasonal easement with the landowners.
National Night Out Cancelled
Although Nottingham’s first National Night Out - an event aimed at enhancing the relationship between neighbors and law enforcement, held nationally on the first Tuesday in August - was considered to be a huge success, it will not be held this summer due to lack of budget. The main budgetary constraint is payroll for the employees of the Police Department and the Recreation Department.
Other News
A request to unseal the minutes of the board’s March 23, 2023 non-public session was unanimously declined.
The Recreation Department is recruiting for a lifeguard.
The Town will need to issue refunds to the advertisers who have supported the Nottingham Community Newsletter due to the Town’s ending of the printing and distribution of the newsletter.
The Recycling Center requested to keep the center on winter hours the entire year. The Town Administrator allowed this for the first week of May. Selectman Welch says he spoke with the staff after this request was made and that the staff had changed their minds based on feedback from the users. The board directed the Recycling Center to keep the summer hours.
The Town’s newest police officer has resigned. There are now two full-time positions open in the Police Department
Watch the video: