Kennebunk Select Board approves election plans, general assistance administrators

[0:51] Select Board Chair (presiding officer): Good evening and welcome to the Kennebunk select board meeting of Tuesday, September 22nd. Please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance now. Set. Alright, we will start with our consent agenda, and these are items considered routine by the town manager, and they may be approved, adopted, accepted, etcetera, by one motion of the select board unless a board member specifically requests that an item be considered separately. Do I have any requests? No, okay. So our items are: A, approve the following minutes, regular meeting of September 8th. Be approved the following items for the November 3rd 2026 state candidate and local referendum election. One, approve the town clerk's appointment of Merton Brown as warden. Two, approve the location and hours for voting, the location being the Edward C. Winston Town Hall Auditorium, and the hours will be between 6 a.m. and 8 p.m. Three, approve additional hours for voter registration and absentee balloting, and those extra hours are Saturday, October 24th, 10 to 4, Sunday, October 25th, 10 to 4, and Thursday, October 29th, 4 to 7.30 p.m. And lastly, to designate a voting delegate for the Maine Municipal Association annual business meeting and authorize the town manager to sign the document. The MMA requests towns designate a voting delegate to vote on their behalf, on behalf of the town, at the MMA annual convention on October 7th, 2026 at the Augusta Civic Center. The town manager is requesting that the finance director serve in this capacity. [3:39] Select Board member: That's it. I will move to approve the consent agenda as presented. [3:47] Speaker C (unidentified): I'll second. [3:50] Select Board Chair (presiding officer): Okay, so we have Ellie online, so we're going to vote individually. Ellie, can you hear us? [Speaker D (unidentified): I vote yay.] Okay, thank you. Lisa? Yes. Courtney? Yes. Mike? Yes. Leslie? Yes. Karen? Yes. And myself, yes. So we have 7-0. Item three, our items to be signed, which we have already taken care of. And for public hearings, we have one. So the municipal officers of the town of Kennebunk will hold a public hearing to hear public comment on the following. So I will open this public hearing to hear new Maine Municipal Association General Assistance Ordinance, September 2026 edition, which includes proposed amendments to appendices A through H and recovery residence minimum maximums. And the materials are attached to the agenda. The town manager's note is that each year the municipal officers accept and approve changes to the MMA general assistance ordinance and accompanying documents effective 10-1-26 through 9-30-27. Do we have any questions on this? No? Okay. [Tax Collector / Town official: Okay, and] I will close the hearing so that we can make a motion. [5:23] Select Board member: I'll move to accept the MMA General Assistance Ordinance September 2026 edition with proposed appendices A through H and Recovery Residence Maximum, excuse me. [5:37] Select Board Chair (presiding officer): I'll second. Okay, Ellie, how do you vote? Yes. Okay, Lisa? Yes. Courtney? Yes. Mike? Yes. Leslie? Yes. Karen? Yes. And myself, yes. Item five, our public comments. I don't think we have anyone in the audience tonight, unless Ted has nothing to say tonight. Anyone online? Quiet night. Okay. Item six, our acknowledgments and announcements, and we have none. Item seven, our time-sensitive business and staff presentations. So, A is to confirm the town manager's appointment of general assistance administrators. As the administration of general assistance transitions to the police department, the following behavioral health liaisons need to be appointed as general assistance administrators and they are Catherine Fisher and Amy Green. So, per the town charter, the select board confirms the town manager's nominations or appointments. You have any questions on that one? I just have a comment which [6:54] Select Board member: is I'm thrilled that this is going to go into this department and that we have you know social workers actually working with it with people. This is where people are gonna show up and need the help so I think this is a [7:14] Select Board Chair (presiding officer): really good place to put them. Yep, and it's also where people who need help might be spotted if they don't come forward themselves. Okay, we have a motion. [7:26] Select Board member: I will move to confirm the town manager's appointment of Catherine Fisher and Amy Green as general assistance administrators for a term expiring June 30th of 2027. Second. [7:41] Select Board Chair (presiding officer): Ellie? Yes. Okay, Lisa? Yes. Courtney? Yes. Mike? Yes. Leslie? Yes. Karen? Yes. And myself, yes. Thank you, 7-0. Next we have two department overviews tonight and we will hear starting with Merton Brown, fellow clerk. Good [8:13] Town Clerk: evening. Tonight I'm gonna start talking about the election and absentee balloting coming up. So the absentee balloting will begin in person on the fifth day of October. We will be conducting it to on the third floor of the building as the auditorium is going to be used for some other recreation programs. So the best advice I can give to an absentee voter is to come to town hall, get your ballot, vote it, and cast it in the ballot box provided. That way it never leaves the town hall and the United States Postal Service is not involved in handling the ballot. You could also come to town hall, get your ballot, take it home, and return it to the absentee ballot drop box just outside of time town hall on the side entrance. You could also call us at 6 0 4 13 26 and we'll mail you a ballot. After completing it can be returned to the drop box or you can return it to the town clerk's office. Please note that all absentee ballots as I mentioned will be take place on the third floor and not the auditorium. Election day balloting will take place in the auditorium as usual. Another option is getting a ballot for a family member. You may request it, sign the application for it, and return it to the clerk's office or return it to the Dropbox. On Saturday October 24th and Sunday October 25th Town Hall will be open for voter registration and absentee ballots and that will be from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m. We'll also be open on Thursday evening October 29th till 730 for voter registration and absentee voting. We will be setting up polling places at Atria, Huntington, Bradford, River Ridge and Kennebec Nursing Home for voter registration. The schedule has not been completed but the dates will be October 21, 22 and 23. We'll also be conducting a voter registration drive during Oktoberfest and will be set up at the Waterhouse Center on October 17th from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. You may register to vote and or fill out an application for an absentee ballot. Actual voting is not allowed at the event by state statute. Do we have any questions about that voting process? Seeing none I'll give a sort of a department overview and I passed out a sheet saying some of the things that we do mostly this would be counter work so certified copies these would be certified copies of births deaths and marriages. So far this year through September 21st we've did in 1496 and that numbers will certainly pick up in the next three months. Hunting and fishing licenses are 137, a lot of those are purchased for next year for Christmas gifts so that number will bounce up. Dog licenses are at 460 but that number will probably increase pretty close to the 2025 figure of 1267 because dog licenses start October 15th and are due December 31st. Boat registrations, numbers are pretty much the same for last year and this year. That's 342 this year, 353 last year. Snow machine registrations are you almost have to wait for it to snow before those get active. So far in last year, I mean this year is 43. ATV registrations same plan they all run out but one of this one of the things that happened this year to us is that the state either did not order or did not get the stickers for ATV machines so people had to do it online. So we missed out on probably about 60 people who did it online versus doing in our office and we do get five dollars for each one of those transactions to the town. Beach stickers, 6,789, that would be just the town clerk's office. It's a little bit lower than last year, which really kind of surprised me, because I want to tell you it did not feel that way. Garden plots, 31 so far, but most of it will be happening in October, November, and December for the next year. Short-term rentals, 130. 130 and those cross over two years and as a matter of fact, we have people coming in now wanting to do it for marriage licenses 117 last year hundred and I mean 72. I mean 72 this year. It seemed like there were not a lot of May and June went June weddings. They've been more late August and September. Business registrations, this would be new businesses that open up in town. Street opening permits, up one. Special amusement, eight. Lodging license is 21. Liquor license is 25. And vitriol license is 84. So in addition to that, this was all counter work, but we also do lobby postings, committee meetings, agendas, and public hearings. We do the committee appointments we process the applications schedule the appointments we do welcome packets oaths FOIA training certifications we have to do and we have oaths for 125 people who are appointed to various committees elected and appointed we do genealogy work for folks but not to the extreme that used to be 20 years ago because of ancestry comm has made a huge difference in that. Notary and debtor miss work we figured that we have anywheres from three a day or sometimes in a day we. Might even have five for the debt of this work is mostly just swearing in a future before they can take the oath we do a lot of triage in our office because of where we are and people coming off the elevator you know who need to go to other places we accept applications for ZBA bar Board of Assessment review and special exception applications we do the elections which I want to say we figure that eight of the twelve months there's some election activity in eight of the twelve months and that's. Going with if we have two regular and maybe one special, we're currently working with a brand new CVR system, central voter registration system, that's going well, and we also have new tabulators. They just arrived. I've ten new ones downstairs. They're not incredibly different from the other ones. They kind of work like the grocery store tabulator when you just run it under the, it's a scanner. We have to maintain our manually our voter registration card system. That's a card file system that has 10,000 Over 10,000, almost 11,000 voter reg cards. So we have to go into those cards each time if there's a change of enrollment or an address change or any new. We do the voter guide. Matter of fact, our town managers just do, we get first review with the one for the upcoming election. It's kind of long, 50 pages, but it's got all the information anybody would need to have. We scheduled 35 to 40 election workers for early processing and Election Day balloting. The interesting thing I found when I was looking up these numbers today, I went back to 2016 to see how many absentee ballots were issued for that election, and there were 302. In our election in 2024, we had 5,854. So it went from 3% in 2016 to 70% in 2024, which is an amazing fact. So following the election, we have to go through this process of VPH, which is voter participation history, and we have to take the incoming voting lists that are at the polling place where you announce your name and get those. We have to enter all those into the system, and those that number has to match the tape total on the tabulation machine, and that is not an easy task to do. Sometimes that can take, we figure every day kind of in between the other things we have to do, for almost a month it takes to try to get that to balance. So as you can see, we're not an office that's looking for work, but if we get it, we do it. So any questions on all that? I [18:05] Speaker C (unidentified): said I'm tired. Yes, and Merton, you should mention that you train your new [18:11] Town Clerk: election. Yes, we do trade our new workers, and the other thing I want to mention to a lot of people who I don't know, some people here I know, Brian said he got one, or there's a company out of, or a group out of Augusta that's sending out these very kind of long, and included in this long document is an application pronounced T-ballot. What's happening is they're sending just random. They don't know that these people already have applied for an ongoing ballot application where we automatically mail. We've had maybe a half a dozen people who have filled out an ongoing. Sent in the mailing that they got, and called to get a ballot. So that takes some careful monitoring on occasion. So that's the way it is. My favorite part of the job, and bring it on. [19:08] Speaker D (unidentified): Keep up the good work. [19:12] Select Board Chair (presiding officer): Yes, we're very lucky to have you. Okay. Next up, we've got Chris Sosterreiter, Director of Community Development. [19:32] Speaker C (unidentified): How much time do I have? I was just going to ask how many pages you got there. [19:36] Department head (Public Works): I can not use pages. We can just go right to questions. I like to talk a lot. I like to tell you whatever you want to know so I can get comfortable. First off, I like to talk about, like, who the department is. Budgetarily, we're funded with seven and a half FTEs. Jim is one of my favorite. He's the half. You guys see Jim all the time. In the last year, a lot of what you see, Jim, is what we do. Okay, we provide a lot of support to boards and committees, which is a fantastic way to directly interact with the citizens. We work with citizens directly in that regard, and indirectly with a lot of the other things we do. Some of the things we do within the department sort of arch would be planning, which one is at the start of the development review process. We deal with things in terms of the land use and enforcement, building inspection, building permit review, those types of things we deal with. Things on the engineering side in terms of infrastructure management, we spend a lot of money in that area, which so that sometimes that work sometimes it doesn't, but we're tending to be busy all year. We see there's never really a time that we aren't active, because while the summer time tends to be busy in terms of the building side, the winter time tends to be busy in the planning side. Land use enforcement is an area that we're always responsive to. In fact, most of what we do is very responsive. We don't get to predict what comes to us, so it's a little different difficult for us to continually say we're achieving these metrics this certain way. We staff ourselves looking at historical activity. We know what we can produce for permit review inspection time. We're constantly trying to prioritize how we're delivering our service. One way that we do that is twice a week we have what we call office hours. It's a constant struggle to think about how to make that effective, but it's an opportunity for The public to come and ask questions, supposed to be relatively short questions, but they get a chance to talk to the code officer. Lots of times people are saying either what's happening here, what can do with my property, and the idea is to try to get them on the right track in the beginning, not try to give them the answers at the end. It tends to be a lot of everything, but it is very purposeful. I think that gives us a sense of what the issues are for people out there. If you've seen much of the town change the last ten years, we've probably had some hand in it, not maybe because we caused it, but we were led to say the review process. Our department supports several boards and committees. You're a board we kind of associate with, but I don't know that we support you. Sometimes we do through our activities, but we staff the planning board, which planning board really handles a lot of the subdivision review and ordinance amendment activity. It's the site plan review board which really handles non-residential projects, so we will provide technical support in terms of ordinance compliance, administration of the process, and also review and oversight of the activity post construction, so or during construction as well, so we make sure people build what happens. We will work with a historic preservation Commission. We're what's called a certified local government, which is a rather nice distinction. It does enable us to get funding through the state, albeit relatively small, but it's important and what it does is it provides resources for us in terms of best practices, as well as something thing that's mandated or run through our ordinance process. And sometimes it feels to people like it's not always a fun process, but when it works, it keeps things working in a way that feels like they make sense. We do provide more indirect support. We don't staff that at meetings, but we provide application administration. We all assist with findings of facts because that is a legal process, all of the things that I just mentioned with those boards, when they go through review process, there's an appeal process with that if it isn't. If there's a flaw in the process or something that's done, individuals who have standing have a right to appeal that. And in some instances, those projects have been sent back to the board for, I'd say, a little more homework. We try not to do that. I think we've been continuing to refine our process to try to mitigate that, but there's only so much we can do with it. One thing I think that we've done the last five years that's been somewhat successful, but it's taken so long to get there, a number of years ago there had been a discussion about moving toward online permitting. And we thought that was a great idea. When COVID happened, we were sort of already hit the button and we did. The funny part is, when you've done something a certain way and you have file cabinets full of paper and you transition to something different, it made sense to us, but it doesn't always make sense to the public. We see it on the backside, but the majority of what we do today is all online. We started out with the building permit process. It's relatively easy. I think I wish it was for everybody else But we strive to make it that way so that people aren't submitting any more paper to us What we can do with that process is they can track their application other people can look it up that same way So there's an ability for people to be informed with that 's a good thing in terms of our record-keeping as well just this past year, we've Expanded that capacity to do that for some of our community development, which would be the planning process. So now applicants are submitting the information online, which is, again, pretty good. There's some kinks in it. In the end, we still require people to submit paper copies for the board, so we haven't kind of thought that one through completely, but still, that's important. So there are some operational efficiencies that happen with that, but they don't always work the way we want. One thing that we don't do is online scheduling. We've looked at that. We've explored it. It. What we have done, and I think something that is very good, is our code officers all have construction backgrounds. They have worked in the building industry prior to working for us, and they have a lot of awareness of how things go. Oftentimes, people will be doing the activities that sort of come at the last minute. When people replace a septic system, that's not a multi-week process. It's relatively short, and sometimes they call for an inspection like the next day. So we try to prioritize that and keep that open. We have an administrative assistant. Every time we've had one, they all are good, because you have to be to do that job. And they're very strategically understanding demands of the contractors and how do we put our people in the right place at the right time. So you're not out at the beach and then ten minutes later trying to be out in Clearbrook crossing. It doesn't work that way. So that's something that online perm, online scheduling hasn't done for us. In the end there may be some efficiencies to get there, but we have to provide more gaps between that. So we're exploring that, but we haven't got there. So, departmentally, I think we've all worked together. I think there's a cycle for us. We're a little bit like a, well, I like to think of it like a butterfly. But we start off one place and end up at the other. What's really good is the code officer has a lot of importance, because they interpret the ordinance. We all use the ordinance. That's sort of our rule book. So, within our office, by having everybody working together, We really understand when something is being proposed or conceptually thought about what it means to take it through the entire process and then adhere to it. That's sort of the behind-the-scenes stuff. I mentioned we handle planning code enforcement. The last thing I talked about was engineering. That's sort of my love language. Anybody say it was theirs, but That's I think one opportunity that really helps us make improvements. Engineering projects are very similar to planning projects. The big ones you sort of think out and they take a lot of time to deliver it. I've said this before about a lot of major capital projects we do, there's about a three-year cycle between when we come up, we talk about the budget process, and then we finally finish. It through construction. Some of it's a function of the nature construction, the seasons of it. Other times it's just a matter of we ask for money in say January, we don't get it till July, and then it takes another year to plan, then another year to build it. So that's pretty typical of what you see. One thing that we do is we do a lot of the planning in terms of payment management, which is always a tricky thing, because I don't like to, it's very similar to what we do, we can show people the condition. Of the road and we can tell them what it might mean in order to fix it, but the timetable to do that was a function of how much money you want to spend. So it's not like there's this magic list that says where am I at on the list. I can tell you where you'd be out on the list if you gave me all the money to fix it in one year, otherwise I can't tell you where it fits. Because what we do, if you try to prioritize things in terms of where the projects go, if you look at some of the work that's happened This year it looks like there's been a lot of paving going on there. Has the good news is we haven't been doing it, the state has, right. If you look at Route 9, all of that's been paid for or done by the state. If you look at what happened on Katmalsam Road, that's something that's really neat and it's a good, a good thing for the town. Something that we're involved in is in regional planning. We work a lot with SMPDC, that's Southern Maine Planning Development Commission, and just like I talked about With COVID in around 2020 in the census, the town became part of what's called a metropolitan planning organization, that's a regional transportation planning commission. And now because we've seen some changes in our population in terms of density, we've gotten roped into that. So once a month we meet and we talk about what regional transportation projects happen. What it also does is it gets us into a pipeline with discussions with the state about where they may put their money. A lot of the roads In town that we have are what are wouldn't necessarily be the highest priority state roads, okay. They're not like Route 111 where you move in a lot of goods and traffic, so they don't always rate the highest on the list for them to put their improvements to. By us participating this process, it's allowed us to essentially say hey, we'll do some match funding. So on Cat Mouse Some Road, that's a road but it feels like it needs been paid for about ten years and it got paid this year because we said hey We'll put in our match, we put in 20%, they put in the percent and they did everything. One of the things that happens when we do some of that upfront planning on a more intense level is we actually have incorporated a couple crosswalks they're going to go in that road. So when we've had some of the historical developments that happened, we looked at it and we're going to put a new crosswalk in from Arbor Crossing across and from Quail Run across, so it connects to that sidewalk network there. We have worked with the state through SMPDC to get an active transportation grant that will allow us to put in some of the rectangular rapid flashing beacons. That's what you see out by the high school. So when you get to higher speeds and you actuate that, the cars actually know you're there and they tend to slow down. Tend to. They don't always do. So we're always looking at these things and try to think about what our project is, how we fund it, how we implement it, and then how we actually use it at the end. That's something that I think is the most rewarding rather than we just go in and we build it and hope it works. We have done a lot this past year. I will say that a couple years ago we had found ourselves focusing on an area that was overdue for attention, and that would be the Rosewood Glenwood Longwood neighborhood. It's a neighborhood that probably if it were being planned today would see more restrictions because of its proximity to wetlands and those types of things, but when it was built in that era that wasn't the highest level of concern, and over a period of time those roads have kind of deteriorated and it required a higher level investment. That's what we don't want to do. That was a project that right now we're at the phase where all we have to do is get it paved. That should happen probably the last week or so of October and we would be complete with that. That's a project that we've had, fortunately, the same contractor do that work. They did excellent work. We've been very fortunate to have contractors do good work in town. That project, I say today, because we still have to get it paved, right now is on budget, which that's been difficult to do for a couple reasons. Prices don't change once we build a project. Contractors are obligated to hold their project, but what does change as a scope of work when we get into a neighborhood that's built in a way that maybe we maybe haven't thought, we find ourselves removing a lot more trees and doing other type of thing and spending more money, but in the end we're looking at it as an investment, a 20 30 year investment that we don't want to come back and wish we did something. I think we've done that pretty successfully and I think we'll be done disrupting the neighbors, so hopefully they'll be happy as well. You can tell when the project works well because a lot of for sale signs go up. It's usually what happens, so that's a little bit of like what's It's been wrapping up. What we do have ongoing, if anybody hasn't noticed, about two weeks ago, we've kind of started the project down at the beach by the Narragansett. That's a project that if you go down there today or if you go down there for the next couple weeks, it's going to wonder what they're doing because what we've done is we've sort of separated the project into sort of three parts. There's the active work zone that's sort of along the beach. We've introduced temporary traffic signals, so we did keep the road open. I will say we had some discussions and considerations about whether we could close it and make it safer that turned out to be a wise decision not to just because what we found is there's an amazing number of tour buses that still want to go through there and trying to reroute those would have created a problem somewhere else. Local traffic people are extremely smart. They figured it out. Sometimes people will say look I'd like to take a ride there and see stuff. If they don't they just don't. But those other things that we think we do or don't understand just don't happen that way. I was down there this morning and looking at it, and I was amazed that I followed two buses to get there and I had to wait behind them. So I was like, oh, okay, probably already going to the job site. The other thing that we did, though, and it's still very surprising, is we also created like a pedestrian zone. We've learned, we've tried to do these projects off-season, sometimes during the middle of winter. Because of the nature of that type of construction, it's involving a lot of concrete construction, that the optimal temperature for that isn't in January. It's a little bit more in these warmer climates. There's provisions we can take to deal with that, but ultimately that's a project that's gonna the town itself will put in a 10% funding petition portion of that the state will put in 15% FEMA will put in the remaining 75% we do a monthly meeting with FEMA to cost track and tell them where we're at from a project perspective so that's gone very well at least on that side of it on the construction phase some might be surprised if I told you that roads sitting on Pete you wouldn't know it But if you went down there, it's very unusual. On those larger-scale projects, one of the things I mentioned when I talk about why they take a long time, we also do a lot of upfront work. We don't just conduct a survey. We'll do a lot of subsurface exploration because if you go down and look at it, you see a lot of ledge there against it. But if you go 100 feet back and go down about 15 feet, there's all kinds of peat. That's okay. It's fine. You wouldn't know it unless I told you, I guess. But unfortunately, when we go through and do that type of construction,, sometimes that involves us doing more. We'll be down excavating it out and removing it. So what I'm kind of saying is if somebody goes by that project, you'll look at it and say, what the heck are they doing? Because you can't tell. We sort of let the public see it, but you can't do that. You have to sort of get Oceanside to see it, which we don't want people to do. But what you are going to see is probably over the next month and a half it's going to take shape. When it's all said and done, it's going to look like it just did before, which is a little bit kind of troublesome, but a bit of a reality the state and a lot of times when we do all these projects they're all regulated with us through our local ordinances or state or federal laws the activity that occurs at the beach because of its proximity to the resource we can't just arbitrarily go any further host to the ocean we can't just raise the wall up we are allowed to put back what's there and what's called a public works exemption so dimensionally things are gonna match where they are what we are doing is we're trying to design it so that and we know that we can't stop the ocean we'd have to build that wall probably 15 feet high if we ever thought we're gonna stop it and it's just gonna go over somewhere else what we're doing is we're trying to introduce and change the profile the road introduce more drainage features so when that road does flood it's built a little bit more resilient and it allows that water to kind of draw down more uniformly if you were ever to show you some photos of why the walls failed It isn't because the ocean and the waves have hit it why the wall has failed is because of some of the scour Okay, when that wave hits it in that water pulls back out And if you ever see all those rocks that used to end up on the open the road It's doing the same thing. The wave is changing kind of the dynamics of what happens that area. The way that we've designed this is we are actually going to have a small stove revetment in front of it. We're going to drive steel sheet pile that will stay in place and provide like a protection to that. So that should minimize a lot of that. What it's not going to do is change the wave action that over time is going to go over and do that. But what it will do is it should manage it better. That project today is right now. So at the beginning of the project, so I'll tell you what the cost of it is. That's what we think it's going to cost. In June, I'll tell you what it really costs. But the good news is these things don't change very much. That's about a million and a half dollar project. It's sort of a difficult thing to say because we're only doing about 140 feet of wall. And it doesn't, on a small, let's say, cost-per-foot basis, it doesn't make sense. But unfortunately, all the elements we have to deal with, it's not an efficient process because we're working the tides, winter conditions, maintaining traffic in public and those types of things. But in the end, what will happen is we're going to put back what's there. It's going to by not trying to pretend like we're gonna outrun the ocean it's gonna give the time to think about how do we continue to reinvest in this. It's unlikely in the future we're gonna see that same type of cost participation where the town is getting something for ten cents in the dollar. If the town we're trying to carry this at a hundred percent load we would really be having some more difficult conversations about how we do that. It's unlikely that you're gonna see all the wall wash away at once it's going to continue to nibble at it and if it does wash away at once then maybe it's an easy decision but it's not and I think it's something that we support boards and committees that's an area of focus that's going to be in the conversation the next couple years. So I kind of took you in this very maze that's our department does we're kind of all over the place we serve a lot of things. I think we like to do that we enjoy working with the public. I think we're very open to feedback and questions so I'm gonna kind of stop usually when I do a good job there's no questions, either because you fell asleep or I answered the question before you asked. But I have a feeling I didn't do a good job because I hear a question coming. [37:56] Speaker D (unidentified): Oh, no, two comments, no questions. I just wanted to say that the Rosewood project, Rosewood, Longwood, Merrifield, all that. Keep going. I know, the whole neighborhood. [38:06] Department head (Public Works): Sounds like a good comment. Looks great. [38:10] Speaker D (unidentified): Does need to be finished, and I'm sick of having the construction sign in front of my house. But I'd say come look at it, but I don't want any more people in my neighborhood. Either, but no, it looks really great. And the other thing that you did not include is that the Longwood sidewalk was completed, which has really created a great pedestrian walkway from Shoppers Village all the way through town, so it [38:36] Department head (Public Works): is a real advantage. So I want to say something, and first off, thank you for that comment and pointing to it. That is something for me is very rewarding, because in the budget cycle when we first came, I think was around 2014 or 15, and we first rebuilt Woodhaven Drive that never had a sidewalk on it. We incorporated a sidewalk. It made sense. You approximate to a school, why wouldn't you do it? Probably should have been built with the sidewalk a number of years ago. When we had to redo a Merrifield Drive we recognized that same type of thing. And the goal was just that, we'd try to have a pedestrian network that would sort of allow you to get from two major points of activity and serve those adjacent neighborhoods. We didn't put a sidewalk on all the side streets. There's not one on Rosewood. There's not one on the sort of the loop of Longwood. But what we did try to do is try to say, okay, where are the people using it and where would they go and how do we get them there? The Longwood sidewalk, I didn't really mention that because I'm kind of trying to figure out how I feel about it. It does need a little tweak. Sometimes what happens when you do a project afterwards, it's hard to make it do what you think you want it to do. That's a very flat stretch of road. Chances are we're probably going to do an overlay to try to make that water run. Sometimes there's puddles that happen there. All in all, it turned out pretty well, but there's some things that, you know, we see it, we don't like it, so we don't talk about it and hope no one else notices. But I think in the end, a purpose it serves is really good. So I'm glad you noticed that. I do this when I leave on a night like this. It's going to be dark when I leave tonight. It's amazing to me how people use that. [40:14] Speaker D (unidentified): That's what I was going to say. We have a very walking neighborhood. Everybody, people from other parts of town come and walk in our neighborhood. [40:21] Department head (Public Works): And so it's definitely used. And that's how I feel like people talk back to us. They don't have to say, hey, I like it. They just use it and expect it. And I don't need them to tell us that. I think that's sort of us seeing that thing. So those are some things that, you know, if you think about the time and the evolution of that, we're kind of talking about 10 years to sort of have made that whole thing happen. But I would say it's the commitment between this board and the budget board and the voters that have supported the funding for that. And that's something I didn't mention it very briefly. We are working on an active transportation grant, and that will really be looking at sort of the downtown area and lower village. And it's going to inventory and also look at opportunities to improve mobility non-vehicular activity and those are things that happen I think what we haven't always done is it's not as evident to us so there'll be some public feedback with that ultimately what it should do is provide a roadmap for gaps and then we can think about how we might strategize to get funding for it so the things always it's like when you do something on one spot it exposes something you should pay attention to the other and I think that's something that we're very fortunate about and I think that the makeup of our department really works well because we often get that same type of feedback. In the planning phase, we're thinking about things, but those who are seeing it in the construction say, hey, here's what we feel on the other side. So those two kind of work very well together. One thing that we do have coming up, and I want to talk about this. Sorry, I said I want to do something. I should have said I think this is important to mention, is there is a lot of mandates that have come down from the state in a number of years. A lot of it involves housing. And because of that, it's going to involve us to modify a lot of our ordinances. Specifically, they have sort of reduced our whole home rule, which is sort of our ability to make rules and administer it, and said you now have to do this. They did that a number of years ago with some legislation. It was called LD 2003, and what they did is they basically said you have to require certain types of densities for affordable housing, and you have to allow accessory dwelling units, and it was thoughtful. It made sense. They've kind of carried on with that, and we have some more stuff that's coming from them, and we have an implementation date of July 1 of 2027. So over the course of the next several months, the planning board is going to be getting sort of an inventory of information and saying here's what this may mean. This way the town has seen a lot of growth. There's a lot of active projects in the planning phase. What this will do is it is going to invite more, I would say, not the volume of growth, but probably more denser scale growth. The activities you see would be more consistent with like in this downtown area. That's what they're really trying to promote is higher densities on lots. You're not going to see, I don't believe when I say that, I don't think you're going to see five times the amount of growth that you saw just because you can see five times the density with It doesn't really work that way, but what we are doing and recognizing that is we're actually paying attention and we've talked to having a consulting firm look at our impacts growth in the town because it's not just saying, okay, how many people is it? It's where do those people go, how do they service the industries, what are the impacts of that, and then truthing some of that out. When we did a housing needs plan a number of years ago, they talked about making some recommendations for housing and their perception of what there is or isn't impacts to the school system, so we're trying to recognize what could that mean, and it will help us target some stuff because ultimately if we don't want this type of growth, there's a need for us to go back and amend our comprehensive plan and change our growth area. What the state has said is you have a growth area, here's how you should grow within it. So there's, I went way off on a tangent there. Oh boy, we're in trouble. So I think what you know I could do it could probably keep talking another, I have a question time. What I would say is [44:20] Speaker C (unidentified): Please ask a question. You had touched on the, you know, the permitting, building permits. I'm just curious at right now, how long is it taking from application to permit? That's like a trick question, is it? Well, it is, maybe it's a trick. [44:40] Department head (Public Works): Answer. So let me say this, and then I'll ask you to be more specific in your question. We issued 24 different types of permits, everything from electrical permit to plumbing permit to a change of use to a brand new construction. What we do is we, these permits come in on a daily basis. We're looking at them to determine completeness, and then we're sort of prioritizing. We're not going to make somebody wait three weeks to get a little sandwich board signed. As a practical matter, I like to set a target of about a two-week turnaround for permits. Unfortunately, I think I talked about this a couple years ago, and we added a position during the budget. What I can't control is how many permits come in at once. Our online permitting, it's amazing that we find six permits come in from one project that's the same style house. The good news is it doesn't take that amount of time, because when you look at the same house, there's kind of an efficiency that happens. But the smaller permits tend to be much quicker. So some of them are same-day permits. Electrical permits are pretty much kind of they get submitted, they get approved. Plumbing, very similar. Septic permits are shorter-duration permits. So what tends to happen is the shorter amount of time it takes for the project to be constructed, the quicker the turnaround time. We will, on occasion, look at some projects, and there's one other thing that happens to answer your question. The larger projects have a longer turnaround time, mainly because there's more planning and awareness of what happens with it. Those people kind of understand that. The very first thing we do when a permit comes in and review it for completeness, maybe ones they have a staff meeting, I talk about how many permits we have, and the first question I get is how many are incomplete, and it's amazing how many things are incomplete, these small details. But what I will say is we have to have all the details in order to review something. If you were to say to me, you know, I want to file a permit for a shed, how long will it take? I would generally say you should see that in a week, a week and a half. If you said I'm going to do an addition, you know, that can be two weeks. Sometimes it's a function of what's ahead of it and where we go. We have a little formula. I love formulas. And we have sort of an allocated review time for each permit. We have an amount of hours we spend per week, and we can kind of do the math and say, okay, here's my type of permits. Here's what I've got. Here's what I can see from forecasts for a turnaround. And then all of a sudden something happens, and the code officer has to run out and look at something different. So as a practical matter, we like to be in that two- to three-week window. If we start getting outside of that, we will reallocate our resources. We sort of share between inspections and permitting and balance that out. Well, we have built our scheduling on what I call a four-day work week. We work five. And Friday is a day that allows us to sort of be flexible in what we do. If we have a backlog on permits, we'll put our resources on permit review. If we're seeing a demand or a lag on some of our enforcement activity, we'll put our emphasis there. So when I talk about that turnaround time, the fly doesn't like me, we sort of base it off of that, And it's what it helps us look at these things when you have these holiday weeks, but that 's usually what's good I would say there was a period of time number years ago. We were like six weeks out and Some of it was just I think what happened is we get so Overwhelmed with it that we couldn't figure out how to take a you know window replacement and move that little closer to the front of the line [48:09] Select Board member: Thank you. You're welcome. I have a question you were talking about the consultants. Yes, and Excuse me, and would that also include? traffic patterning [48:21] Department head (Public Works): So it depends. Yes. So what we typically do when we work as part of CACS is we're part of the policy planning committee. If we're going to look at certain things, we may actually go through just like we did with the active transportation grant. We might do a corridor study, and we might focus on that and retain certain consultants specific to do that type of thing. It's a function of what the specific issue would be, but lots of times we might leverage it and go in that direction with it. But I have a lot of skills, but not all my skills are my expertise. So I'm familiar and aware of some things, but I'll be aware of it and say, okay, where do we do that? But we would look to outsource some of that stuff. And that would be the conduit that we'd typically do it. We'd leverage it and go through that. Just like the active transportation grant we got, the firm that's doing it had done it for several other communities. It's a very easy thing to kind of say, okay, let's go that direction. [49:12] Select Board member: Yeah, and one of the questions that I was kind of thinking about is when are we going to need different roads from Route 1 and, you know, the five major roads in town? [49:27] Department head (Public Works): Okay, so that actually is a really good question. And one of the challenges with that is we have a, what we have today is a lot of because that's what we said we're okay with. When the town did its comprehensive plan back in 1991, it was sort of that first time we had to do it. When you sort of look at the three-village model that we have, Lower Village, Downtown, and West Kennebunk, that's sort of historically how we've grown and how we've continued to plan around that. For a number of years, we've had a provision in the comprehensive plan that says the town is willing to accept a lower level of service from a traffic standpoint to maintain that village-like character. Oftentimes, where DOT is going to focus their improvements is along their corridors that carry the majority of the traffic. If you look at Portland Road, they had actually, as it was explained to me a number of years ago, had a specific number of design improvements they wanted to do, and the town didn't necessarily accept that, and they kind of ended up with something different. What we can do, and lots of times will happen, is if we feel that we are deficient in certain areas, we will actually conduct a study, look at that, and then make some improvements along those lines that's a lot of sometimes it happens as function of development activities the one that caught him what do I do I'm squeeze him and drop them I forgot we're on TV yeah I know happens all right we cut the tape so the what so what happens and this is actually interesting the development that went Through review at the corner of Ross and Fletcher Street. Because of the scale of development, that triggered what's called a traffic movement permit, and that involves them needing to go in front of the state and do extensive amount of traffic counts and then conduct a traffic impact study. And that's a lot of times when you start to see where we're feeling the impacts, it usually falls within their study area as well. That's what happens that way, but I think in the end, if the community is feeling some of these things, we can actually look at and do say a specific quarter study and make some you know more refined improvements along that way. [51:38] Select Board member: Yeah, I mean I'm talking about you know not just enhancing the major roads that we have but providing alternatives to them. Okay, so I think we should be thinking about that. [51:54] Department head (Public Works): So that is a really great comment far into the future, but still yep. Well, perhaps the improvements might be for in the future, but they need to study it and identify that. I mean, what you're sort of keying in on is the influence of traffic in the community is being felt more frequently. I was surprised. Typically, I thought after Labor Day, things quieted down, and they didn't. I'm seeing it. So you're correct. That's probably something that on a more regional basis we've got to be looking at. I think as we've fallen into CACs and we're in the service area, it's going to reveal that as well. [52:31] Select Board member: I was just going to say, to that point, I think with the update of Waze and Google Maps, too, being so live now, like Ross Road and behind the high school, tourists never really knew about. That was like the local cut-through. But now Waze will send you down Woodhaven on your phone. So those little sneak routes have just started to clog up, too. But I had a question. Do you want me to go? Yeah. Okay. Okay. You mentioned briefly the beach and maybe that being a discussion at some point. What do you think the steps are going to be, you know, for us to be involved in that discussion of kind of where this goes? Like, yes, this is going to happen. And I agree with you. If it all fell, it's an easy decision. It's inevitable that it's going to continue. So what is the starting point of the discussion of what options would possibly look like even in a very broad big scale. Okay fantastic question. [53:33] Department head (Public Works): Because right now we've always been more responsive than predictive, and in a way we're taking planning and you have to go backwards if this is a priority that we've identified, just in terms of it. At one point we had talked with SMP DC about maybe nine months ago about working on a coastal zone management plan. From an infrastructure perspective, I've sort of looked at it and I've inventoried our infrastructure and said, what is the value of our infrastructure? You've got the cost of what our infrastructure is, both to replace it as an asset. You've got the valuation of those properties out there, and then the balancing between the two. And then we can look at the vulnerabilities. There's a lot of stuff that we can see and we understand the dynamics, Mexico, where areas are most vulnerable, at the corner of Boothby and Beach Ave, right? That is a target. We see it. It constantly gets that splash over. If you ever look at the tideway down and you can see the bathymetry and the nature of it, there's nothing that's impeding that wave action. So what we could do, and we could go down this road, is sort of create – it's going to have to be a combination of things. You can't just have a plan because it's a policy. But what we can do is start to show their vulnerabilities. The state has a lot of mapping that does that, and you can identify – it's not like you – I don't think you're going to say all of Beach Avenue is going to disappear. I don't think that's going to happen because what we see, and unfortunately, is FEMA requires us to adopt a floodplain management ordinance. The state does that. We do that through them. That's how we're able to participate and help people get flood insurance. If you look at the activity that's happening down the beach, people continue to redevelop and build their properties and elevate them. Ultimately, if there is a desire to do something, that town has to think about what they continue to encourage, say that is, if that, if there's a feeling, then perhaps rezoning that stuff and not having that ability for people to do that. No, I say that you want to be thoughtful about what that means, or you'll find out the hard way. But if we continue down this road, people are going to continue to do that. If we have damaged infrastructure, FEMA right now, by law, is obligated, if there's a declaration, to be careful about saying they have to do this. But in general, best practices in the Stafford Act is they fund and they're the replacement of it. Sometimes they've done a good job allowing us to improve that. If the town basically said, we don't want to try to build a way out of this, that's practical. The way to have that conversation is for us to go back and say, here's what the cost would be. If I told you all the walls we had along there are two feet too low, and I can tell you what the cost is to raise them two feet, it's probably more than that, you start to have something to work off of. So I think a lot of it is about the data and the impacts of it, and that would be important. I think people understand visual information. We would probably allocate some resources to spend some time talking about that, and then also change some of our land use that occurs with that is there a way [56:42] Select Board member: to like you know you just said that we probably wouldn't continue to do that you know I'm not putting words in your mouth but like in general we probably wouldn't choose to or want to continue to do 1.4 million dollar fixes if that did continue and waiting several years for them right which is the process so is there like what would we be discussing what you're saying in kind of a threshold meaning like okay if there's three more major events like that or x amount of dollars that are going to be spent that you know strategy a goes into place for the road as a whole yeah you know and if this threshold gets hit strategy b goes into place and it's kind of like a 30-year plan for the town not just you know us because i kind of look at the beach as like should sort of be part of the capital improvement plan right and not improvement necessarily in the actual infrastructure but an improvement with the process of what we have and how we're utilizing it and if that means that in 35 years it's just foot traffic you know what is the threshold that has to be hit for us to finally make that decision or one-way traffic or you know and granted those are all like shots in the dark but when do you really sit down and like really say this threshold gets hit we're not spending another million for so I [58:02] Department head (Public Works): Can't answer that question. I have some thoughts on it, but I won't answer that question. Yeah. I think what it can do, and this is something we spent some time, we've had a summer intern the past couple years, and we've done a lot of taking the resource mapping that the state has shown with different sea level rise projections. One thing that we've done, and I think this makes it a lot more real, I don't know if anybody remembers, but I want to say it was around 2020, S&PDC did a study that was called Tide Taxes and New Tactics. [58:32] Select Board member: Yeah, they presented it to us our first year. Okay, good. [58:35] Department head (Public Works): You do remember, thank you, this is great. So what if graders helped them or something, remember, they like presented, oh okay, I thought I said the seventh graders helped him, I said well smart seventh graders out there, I'm impressed. What that did at the time is it started to expose the vulnerabilities of properties. What unfortunately didn't do, and we kind of leverage this, is if you look at our GIS data and you click on a parcel, you kind of get all the data at once, right, you're clicking, it's going to give you the building data and the land value, but you can't really distinguish the two. We have gone in and spent some time trying to segregate that where we get actual buildings and we separated that and we attached valuations to buildings and land to land so that we actually see if there was a sea level rise event, is the building underwater, is just the land touching water, and I think what I'm saying is our, in our trying to be aware of where our vulnerabilities are and seeing stuff, probably what that means is we have to start to bring that information forward for the individuals to start to look at your policies and say okay, what is this going to mean, and how do we go about that, but that's a rather large undertaking. Well, I am intrigued by it and like to do it. I also know there's not quite enough, only have two hands, but folks like SMPDC who've done that, they've been a fantastic partner to us. That's something that I think we can start to talk about and show that, and then the board can say okay, if this is an area of emphasis, how do we move forward with that. There's a budgetary element to that. So I'm hearing that we can, Chris, yep, just kind of [1:00:06] Select Board Chair (presiding officer): Adding to that, and also you mentioned that there are certain areas of the beach that, you know, are the most vulnerable. And I've read quite a bit about techniques that are being used elsewhere to, some of them are like building a man-made submerged reef. Sometimes they're made out of shells. Sometimes they're made out of trees bound together. But the point of them, I'm sure you know all about this, is to influence the wave action before it does the damage. So is that something? I mean, it seems to me that if we're looking ahead and planning that, would be something that we might want to incorporate. [1:00:49] Department head (Public Works): So I would love there to be a giant shipwreck right out there. And allow that to naturally happen in some ways. One of the things that has sort of happened is we've kind of hardened our way up to a point. And in order to do that, we can only move back. We can't move forward. When you look at, like, Middle Beach, and I've had a few people send me photos. I think I have a photograph from 1975 that shows the sand beach. And probably after the storm of 78, when there's so much destruction, we sort of took this approach and did that. That. Unfortunately, what we did is we sort of drew this line with it. If we were going to do something along those lines, unfortunately, I think what you got to do is take that edge and look inward and convert that area to be what's going to be something because you can't go outward. I would be amazed when we did the revetment project in 2021, and we had funding from FEMA. The Army Corps of Engineers wanted, they actually very rigidly made sure that we weren't expanding the toe of that revetment. And even though we looked at the whole thing. So basically anything that's below low tide, that's a no-no in conventional activity. So we'd have to go through and be aware of what that would mean. Not to mention the actual cost of construction to do it. Somewhere along, I guess I'd say this. You're asking some really good questions. Everything that we consider is going to have to have a cost benefit. It's going to become an either-or, right? What we've historically done is we've had solutions. The solutions aren't really responsive to the problem. Fixing the wall out there because FEMA gave us all that money isn't focusing on the problem. It's right. I mean, I'm going to say this very candidly, not that I'm feeling great. It took us so long to get to it, but that wall has been a state of disrepair now since that storm happened in 24. Still been open to traffic right there. There are certain things that are going to happen and how we do it. I think we're gonna have to start to look at and say okay. What can we reasonably expect? How do we make some of those choices and that's gonna be difficult and the only way to do this continually expose people to that when FEMA updated the maps that was a process took them multiple number of years we had sent a mailing to every single person that was likely going to be within the hundred year floodplain and a lot of them looked at it some decided they didn't agree with it and I think a lot of them don't necessarily dispute it they have a sense of okay that's vulnerable I think a lot of that outreach and education is going to be very important as we go through and do this because during the storm it's undeniable what's going to start to happen is the areas when you see the marsh migration out back behind bayberry and marsh view when that area starts creeping in and you don't feel that it's going to be more different but probably what would be easy for us to do would be to start to identify areas of influence talk about that make that part of those conversations and be aware of what the impacts that are locally funding it i don't see that is an easy solution not saying we can't do it just it's very difficult but that is an area that is gonna need more attention in the future you [1:04:12] Speaker D (unidentified): know Chris I have a lot to say about this and I wasn't going to bring it up but since Courtney did and I know this is a conversation for another time but I just want people I guess to know that you know a lot of it's not just like I it's totally cost-benefit analysis but it's also the environmental impacts that we have to consider and you know Marsh you know migration and wetlands and saltwater wetlands and you know like there's more to it than just the infrastructure in the town which is important to make more resilient, but you know, also looking at, you know, the actual environment and climate change, and I think that is an important conversation, or to another point, to add to the conversation moving forward. And then to answer Courtney's question, I think we need to start having these conversations now. We need to let people know that we can't keep fixing the road, you know, and the Stafford Act allows for FEMA to keep funding things, but that's tax dollars, you know, so taxpayers are still paying for it even though they think, you know, FEMA is paying for it. And so I think that's an important conversation that, you know, it's all wrapped up, and it's not just the beach, it's, you know, drought in the West K, and, you know, all these different things, and, you know, like I keep going on. First I want to say thank you because [1:05:40] Department head (Public Works): what you did is you expose that one thing. Sometimes I forget, in my head I've got all these answers, but every cost-benefit has to include the do nothing alternative, yeah. And you know that ultimately it's not just what do we do, sometimes that other part is that, and I think that's the part that's not, I'm not saying we shouldn't do anything, but you're right, I wasn't communicating well to recognize that we can't, I can't pretend there's a solution that we can [1:06:04] Speaker D (unidentified): build our way out of, and I know the other thing I just wanted to say, please read the climate action plan, but yeah, I can help you with that, by the way, to make it easy for everyone, it's very readable. But you know the other thing as far as land use ordinance changes, it has to be brought forward by the Planning Board. Staff can't tell them to do it, we can't tell them to do it, they have to bring that forward and ask to have that done. And so I think it's really important to get community buy-in and community education and community outreach and let the community know what's going on, and then have the community let the planning board know that these are changes that need to be done, like [1:06:52] Department head (Public Works): well you got to have a question, come on, I have a call, I [1:06:57] Select Board member (Finance Subcommittee): appreciate your passion for it all, okay, I'll [1:07:06] Department head (Public Works): pick that fly up if I have to, Chris [1:07:08] Select Board member: Chris is thrilled to have you at the table, well I just say thanks for the [1:07:15] Department head (Public Works): Opportunity to go through this stuff. I try to think about what we do and how it impacts and supports the community. And while we might think we're doing a good job, I think the feedback you give us and the things you wonder about is telling us that same way. So I want to say thank you for that and appreciate the opportunity to out talk Merton. [1:07:37] Select Board Chair (presiding officer): We will let that one slide. Thank you very much. Okay, let's see, where are we. Item 8, old business, we have none. Item 9, new business. We have none. So now we are to select board comments. Do we have subcommittee, reports? [1:08:09] Select Board member (Finance Subcommittee): Go for it Mike. Awesome, so the finance subcommittee met last Friday and we discussed the disposition of some of the town's assets. I think there's eight total, five were vehicles and two are mostly just parts. And we're also using a new auction site, Auctions International, which has, they provide a better service to us where they'll come manage the pitchers which really saves some time for our employees, so that's positive. [1:08:43] Select Board Chair (presiding officer): No other subcommittees, Liaisons, I will start with the Kennebunk River committee who met last week and they are, they have set a very ambitious plan for the year. They are starting with updating the river ordinance and also updating the interlocal agreement and which I will mention that is obviously since Kennebunk and Kennebunk Port both manage the river together, they started comparing the agreements, the ordinances, and they often don't match. So they are working on that to bring those into alignment. And looks like they and they have new members from Kennebunk port. And a liaison for the first time from Kennebunk port. So things are hopping over there. West Kennebunk village committee started already working on Thanksgiving planning and they're waiting on some decisions on their permissions to do various things on that and they also are, we spent some time talking about the unveiling of the new historic plaque out in West Kennebunk, which had to be postponed, but stay tuned for when that will occur. [1:10:24] Select Board member: The Conservation Commission has had two work days in the last week. One at Rotary Park, which is around the gazebo, has been completely planted with new, yeah, a completely new garden around there that's all native flowers. So that's something that people can come and take a look at. And hopefully, and I was just, somebody was saying that planting in the fall, it should have a jump of a whole year for establishing of the plantings over the next two years. So within, and within two years instead of three, and they should be very well established. And then there was a cleanup at Rogers Pond again. They went over it and tried to hit the knotweed and a lot of the other invasives again, and they got, I don't know, a truck and a half full. So that was a good day of work there, too. So we thank everybody that participated, and stay tuned for more. [1:11:55] Speaker C (unidentified): Community Garden meets again tomorrow, but at their last meeting, they established their closing dates for the gardens this year. Park Street is going to be closing on October 10th, and the West K Garden is going to be closing on October 17th. [1:12:18] Select Board member: Oh, I was just going to say, sorry, I just blacked out. The Neighborhood Housing Trust is having our, like, one big fundraiser of the year. I think I sent it out to all you guys, but it's next Thursday, October 1st at 630 at the River Club. For anyone in the public that doesn't know, Neighborhood Housing Trust works to create and preserve housing for the people who live and work in Kennebunk,, Portner, Rundle. This is our one big fundraiser of the year. So if you're interested, you can just Google Neighborhood Housing Trust fundraiser, and the ticket site will pop right up and would love to have you. [1:12:57] Speaker D (unidentified): All right. Let's see. Where do I want to start? So I'll start with the planning board. To Karen's point and Chris's point, there is a lot going on in the planning board, as I've continually said, and a lot of it's happening in West K, and I worry about the traffic. There is a 56-unit development being proposed off of Alfred Road and a essentially 20-unit development being proposed off Thompson Road, and there's some other things going on. So I recommend you pay attention to the planning board, and then the other thing is Eco Main met for the first time in this fiscal year, and I'm going to try to simplify this for everyone. It's an EPR update, so long story short, EPR was supposed to go into effect in 2026. It has been delayed. It took a long time for the Main DEP to get the RFP out for the organization that's going to run the program, and so there has not been an organization chosen yet, so organizations like Eco Maine are pushing the DEP to get another RFP out to get an organization selected by the end of the year. For multiple reasons, one of it is to have funding from 2026 be applied if we get it started in 2026. The other one is that there are some opponents, mostly packaging companies, opponents to the new law. And so if it does not get implemented in 2026, their proposals could, you know, potentially be voted on in the state legislature, and the whole program could go away. And just to remind people, EPR is essentially, I saw I heard a really good example, and so I'm going to see if I can say this again. But it's essentially like kids cleaning their own rooms. If you clean up their rooms, they're going to make a bigger mess. But if they have to clean their own room, then there's less mess. And so it's essentially the packagers, the people who make the packaging, will make less mess. And we, the parents or the municipality, will benefit by receiving funding refunds. So, EcoMain and some other organizations are asking people to email mainpackaging at dep.com to spur the DEP on to get the RFP out, another RFP. The first RFP had no applications to get a more streamlined RFP out before the end of the year. Anyone can email them and let them know. The other thing they're asking is for you to reach out to your state legislators and have them know that they want this law, that you want this law to go into effect like it was supposed to in 2026. So, regardless of what happens, everything's going to be pushed back, and so the municipalities, town of Kennebunk probably won't start seeing actual funds until 2028, unfortunately, but tracking will begin as soon as an organization is chosen to run the program. So, hopefully, I didn't confuse people, but long story short, it's been delayed, and outreach is really important to let the DEP, your state legislators, and the governor know that you want this law to be put into effect as soon as possible. [1:16:57] Select Board Chair (presiding officer): And that is all. Is Ellie still online? [1:17:04] Speaker D (unidentified): I am online, and I do not have an announcement. [1:17:07] Select Board Chair (presiding officer): You've got something for us, Ellie? [1:17:09] Speaker D (unidentified): Go for it. No, she's not. [1:17:11] Select Board Chair (presiding officer): oh she doesn't okay I'm sorry all right okay what's that yes so now we are moving to individual select board comments we have any tonight and I look [1:17:30] Speaker C (unidentified): I'll mention one go ahead. We had a select board outreach morning on this past Saturday and nobody showed up, so I'm gonna take that to mean that we're We're doing something right. So hopefully, you know, the next one we'll have some attendance or not. Maybe we're doing something right. But I was fortunate that the, or I thought it was fortunate that there were people at the fire department and they were just getting ready to have their breakfast, so we brought the donuts there. [1:18:05] Speaker D (unidentified): Anybody else? I just wanted to say one thing. I've always recommended the Coffee and Climate Zoom meetings that are one Friday a month. And the most recent one was about winter weatherization, and I thought that was very applicable. And so if you go to oneclimatefuture.org and click on the Events tab, you can see all the past meetings. There's ones about implementing solar in your home, weatherization, things like that. And so I think it's worth people checking out. If you can't attend, you can definitely watch the old recordings anytime. That's great. [1:18:44] Select Board member: Anyone else? I wanted to thank the presenters today. You did a great job. It was really interesting to hear all the things that you're doing. Save it for next year. It's fine. Next year. Another time. Another time. but thank you very much for your presentations that were it was very and fine anyone [1:19:20] Tax Collector / Town official: else nope okay tax bill due dates the first installment is due on Friday October 2nd 2026 and the second installment is due Friday April 2nd 2027 interest accrues immediately after each due date if you are paying in full, after the due date, please call the Tax Collector's Office for the most current payment information. Telephone number there is 985-2102, extension 1606. So that's extension 1606. Saturday, October 10th, is the Fire Prevention Annual Open House from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., and that is at the West Kennebunk Fire Station. Also on Saturday, October 10th, is the residential household hazardous waste drop-off from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m., and that is going to be taking place down at 36 C Road. Please do not mind the appearance, because that is still under construction, but the Public Works Department will make sure that works for us. Monday, October 12th, is Indigenous Peoples Day holiday. Municipal office and transfer station are closed. There are no changes to trash and recycling collection. Those will be picked up as usual. and Saturday, October 17th is Harvest Fest from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. along Main Street. [1:20:39] Select Board Chair (presiding officer): Question. I assume that the flyer for Residential Hazardous Waste Day is posted online so people know what they can and cannot bring? Yes, it is. Yes, okay. And a question for you. When is the treasure chest reopening? Opening I went all the way over there the other day and it was cool it was not [1:21:06] Tax Collector / Town official: open likely in the springtime. So we have to wrap up building a so the big new building so the fire alarm is all fed through that building into those other buildings across the way. So once that's wrapped up we could open but they typically close at this point in the year anyway so likely the spring. Thank [1:21:28] Select Board Chair (presiding officer): you go [1:21:31] Town Clerk: ahead Burton. I totally forgot to mention that you know this town clerk's office isn't a one-man operation so I want to particularly thank the two people that work in my office. I am so fortunate to have such talented and wonderful people. I also want to shout out to the I have over 80 people on a list who want to work at the polls where a lot of towns are just begging for people to work so I want to thank each and every one of those people for who are wanting to participate and thank those that do participate. I also want to thank the board, I always feel very supported by you and I want to thank the manager for the same vein. I feel very supported and I appreciate that. [1:22:14] Select Board member: No. Motion to adjourn. I'll throw some kisses, you'll be fine. [1:22:24] Tax Collector / Town official: I want to make a motion. [1:22:27] Select Board Chair (presiding officer): Courtney, you're making a motion. [1:22:30] Select Board member: Yes, is that? [1:22:31] Speaker C (unidentified): I'll second, okay. [1:22:32] Select Board Chair (presiding officer): All right, so we still have to vote manually? Yes. You ready to adjourn, Ellie? [Town Clerk: I am, yes.] Okay, Lisa? Yes. Courtney? Yes. Mike? Yes. Leslie? Yes. Karen? Yes. And I am as well. Good night. Good night, everyone.