Orrington board awards boat landing contract to Sargent Corporation

[0:05] Alan Schnell: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I'd like to call the Monday, September 28th meeting of the Arlington Select Bulletin of Water, beginning with a roll call vote, beginning to my right. [0:18] Alan Elkin: Alan Elkin, here. [0:19] Mark Afflep: Mark Afflep, here. [Alan Schnell: Alan Schnell, here.] Chris Robinson, present. Michael Thurden, present. [0:25] Alan Schnell: I'd like to ask everyone to rise to the pledge of allegiance. I [0:34] Speaker D (unidentified): pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Are [0:57] Alan Schnell: there any adjustments to the agenda this evening? None. None. Public comments. Comments from the public at the beginning of the evening. Hearing none, public comments on the agenda. All clean up weekend is October 17th. Eagle Point Energy 29 Industrial Way. B, office closing memo. [1:24] Town Clerk/Administrative staff: Thursday, this week, we are closing at 2 p.m. to go through training. The town's switching to a web-based software, or upgrading our current software to web-based at the end of the month. But this will be our first training and we'll get into a play session so we'll be closing at 2 ish to the [1:58] Alan Schnell: city as a table we scheduled October 5th so on [2:08] Town Clerk/Administrative staff: Friday when we were preparing the agenda the ballots we hadn't received yet so there's a question, would we have the ballots in time? And so that was the question about when would absentee voting begin. We also counted the wrong way. It's 30 days before the election, which I believe is Sunday the 3rd. And so absentee voting can begin on October 4th, Monday. Do we have the ballots? And the ballots arrived today. We didn't have to go to Newburgh to pick them up. [2:59] Mark Afflep: Did they come with groceries? [3:05] Town Clerk/Administrative staff: I'll plead the fifth on that. [3:08] Speaker D (unidentified): And October 12th, Columbus Day, there won't be a select board. The board will be first and the 13th? [3:14] Town Clerk/Administrative staff: Is that what I asked? [3:17] Speaker F (unidentified): Yeah. I might work out my date. [3:19] Town Clerk/Administrative staff: The second one, yeah. [3:21] Alan Elkin: Yeah, 13th and 12th. [3:22] Speaker F (unidentified): Yeah. Let me get the 13th thing. [3:28] Alan Schnell: 13th, yeah, I got select board on October 13th. [3:32] Speaker F (unidentified): I will have to ask the excuse from that on my day shift that week, [3:35] Speaker G (unidentified): and I don't get out of work till seven o'clock, so. [3:39] Alan Schnell: All right, we'll keep it going. [3:41] Speaker F (unidentified): Perfect. You don't really need me to be short, I won't run my mouth. [3:49] Alan Schnell: Well, you can watch it at work and run your mouth. Nobody's going to hear it. Nobody's going to hear it. What's the point in that? All right, let's get through this one. All right. That's it for letter C. Thank you very much. Item 5, approved select board meeting minutes of meeting of September 14, 2026. Do I have a motion? So moved. Motion by Mike. Second. Second. Seconded. Seconded by Alan. Be a discussion. All those in favor? Five to zero. Item six approved Tom. Accounts payable owners they've gone around and have been approved. [4:36] Town Clerk/Administrative staff: The county tax bill was in this week. You probably noticed it was close to a million dollar warrant but the county tax bill is close to 900 of that. So we're a month early paying it.. [4:53] Speaker D (unidentified): Do we get a discount yeah statutorily [5:03] Town Clerk/Administrative staff: Is due in September 30th interest doesn't start so after October 30th so everybody pays in October even though it's due September 30th [5:16] Speaker D (unidentified): But as a former auditor you think it's certainly best to pay when it's due [5:21] Town Clerk/Administrative staff: It's you depends on the interest you're making on that money yeah but you pay it as you see fit yeah we can't argue item [5:43] Alan Schnell: Seven appointments and resignations I see none it is an old business none item nine old landing committee discussion on rfp P bids received in recommendation for authorization for notice of award NOA to Sargent Corporation. So moved. Seconded. Moved by Mike, seconded by Alan. No, Mark. Mark. Mark, I'm sorry. All those in favor? Any discussion? I [6:28] Town Clerk/Administrative staff: Turn it over to Keith but I think everybody agrees that Sargent was a competitive bid. They're a good company. We met with them last Tuesday and certainly feel confident with them. Appreciate the schedule they put together for us and their intent to get in here and out of there. So I think the landing committee wholeheartedly recommends telling Sargent the notice of award. [7:04] Speaker D (unidentified): Yeah, we met the Tuesday after the select board opened bids there on Monday night We had scheduled another potential meeting Friday of that week, but after a meeting and only having two bids, it was straightforward, and we all concurred that Sargent is excellent. Didn't receive a good bid from Maine Earth, but certainly Sargent has 100 years of reputation. [7:33] Mark Afflep: And they were lower bid. [7:35] Speaker D (unidentified): Lower bid, yes. [7:37] Alan Schnell: Lower bid by a couple hundred thousand, yeah. [7:41] Speaker D (unidentified): And we had a few questions for them when we met with two of their reps, and just on dust control and some other things, but they have good working relationships with homeowners in the area and good reputation, so very easy. Easy. I did hear Friday that Bucksport had put in back in April for their boat dock project on RFP and they didn't receive any. So the period ended in July and they resubmitted it after paying their engineer $10,000 to re-prepare the RFP and it went out this past That's Friday, so if any of you want to bid on that. So we are very fortunate that Sargent, you know, they like to keep their crews working in the fall, winter period, they don't lay them off, and our project just plugged in [8:49] Speaker F (unidentified): nicely there. What's their intent to start, Keith, you know? [8:54] Speaker D (unidentified): We do have the schedule here, and they have as a potential mobilization date of October 12th. Chris is going to mention something coming soon, a little bit after that. [9:12] Town Clerk/Administrative staff: Yeah, the Greenfield Trust people are coming back to town on the 21st of October but to have a drop-in session to talk about their pilot project that they did down in the picnic area. And so I asked them, I asked Sergeant, can we have a groundbreaking ceremony down there? And they're certainly in favor of that. So we're finalizing dates. They're going to be in town for most of the week, so we're going to finalize that. And the sergeant will have gold shovels and all the big scissors and all that, you know. [9:55] Speaker F (unidentified): Is Alan going to be able to be there? We're hoping. [9:59] Speaker D (unidentified): Certainly hope so. He came to the bidders review meeting on that Tuesday. [10:08] Alan Elkin: He had quite the smile on his face. I bet he did. We'll get him down now. [10:12] Speaker F (unidentified): I bet he did. It's been a long term goal for him. He's wanted it for a long time. [10:17] Town Clerk/Administrative staff: Now, the other thing I'd like to mention, which I mentioned in my email when I submitted the agenda to you guys, that Keith's worked hard on this for six years, so I put his name along with Chairman Snell to sign the notice of award. I think it's more than ceremonial that he be part of this process. Absolutely. Absolutely he was kind of digging into me for this letter this morning and I kind of ignored him because I wanted you to sign it so that is why so well deserved and you know that certainly the town appreciates what you've done not just the board, so. [11:05] Speaker F (unidentified): Now what are we gonna do to keep you busy after this? [11:07] Mark Afflep: We got another project for you. [11:09] Town Clerk/Administrative staff: I got one. I got one year, so. You don't trust me. [11:13] Alan Schnell: Another reason why I don't wanna move. [11:16] Speaker D (unidentified): Still have to build it, still have to have loading docks that are available, part of the future design. [11:23] Speaker F (unidentified): But you got work to do, that's true. Yeah. Cybermen. Sidewalks. [11:34] Alan Schnell: Any other questions or comments on item 9, item 10, discussion on Greenfield Park? [11:42] Alan Elkin: Did you approve that? You did? Yeah, we did. Before we talked about it. [11:47] Town Clerk/Administrative staff: Yeah. So there's two copies for you guys to sign. All right. Pete's going to have one and I'll send the other ones to Sarge. All right. You want to pitch him? Oh [12:07] Alan Schnell: geez. We're going to cut you, Mr. Bowden. Yeah. Pretend you're signing. [12:19] Town Clerk/Administrative staff: Hide your Brewer shirt, though. Yeah. [12:23] Speaker D (unidentified): No. I wouldn't have met my future wife if it wasn't for Brewer. [12:29] Town Clerk/Administrative staff: Grab his dorky shirt, then. Nice pose. You know, Keith and his team or these Greenfield people. They followed right along and, you know, cried with us when we ran into troubles with the same troubles they were running into. So, I certainly appreciate the support they've given us and the support we've given them. So, it's been a great partnership so far. They've extended the grant agreement to the end of next year so hopefully the project will get wrapped up and finalized and we're also in discussion to kind of expand the scope and you know do some more things that were outside of the original writing of the grant because the budgets are you know still within the grant agreement so yeah the landing committee is working feverishly to get plans drawn up and kind of back of the napkin figures so we can get to them so they can get you know scopes changed and you know deadlines extended but they're more than happy to extend that and they want us to do the whole project so yeah [15:12] Alan Schnell: Any other questions or comments? [15:15] Speaker G (unidentified): Bruce. Chris, do you know when Sajent will forward a contract to your office? [15:22] Town Clerk/Administrative staff: It would be within two weeks, I think is what we talked about. They're using a standard AIA. [15:32] Speaker G (unidentified): The only reason I'm asking is because they won't mobilize until contracts sign in hand end. That's pushing their start date right up against it, I mean. So I didn't know if you'd heard any more from them. [15:53] Speaker D (unidentified): Notice to proceed slash contract was, they allotted themselves 15 days. September 21st, start with October 9th is completion of the contract. So their mobilization is three days later. [16:09] Speaker G (unidentified): I only ask because these are the kinds of things that can slow things down that we do. I know they're anxious because the weather's not going to get better. No. Once they get there, they'll hit the ground running. You'd be surprised how much they can do in a few days. [16:29] Speaker F (unidentified): They are going to make a scene, and they do, but it's not a mess. The way they do things is... So dude, I mean, we've authorized you at this point to sign the contract, right? So yeah. [17:03] Alan Schnell: Item 11, purchase option agreement on East Orrington business, possible a possible map 009 lot 10c. Chris, second by Mike. Any discussion? [17:42] Speaker F (unidentified): It's [17:47] Town Clerk/Administrative staff: a four-year auction. The contract was in, it's the second time we've had this parcel under the contract or auction. The option price kind of ties in to taxes. The first year they'll pay $9,000 and $12,000 and $21,000 and then $27,000. At the end of the term, if they do purchase it, the purchase price would be $750,000. This is a 15 acre parcel over there kind of to the right when you drive in to the end. There's two 15-acre parcels. This is the one on the right, the first one you come to. We've dealt with this company before on the same project, and they got absorbed by a bigger company, and then they merged with someone else, and it ended up being in Black Rock, which is more military base concentration, so they let the option expire. Now they've been spun off and they just completed or got a contract down in Massachusetts for the same type of project, so they revisited us, talked to Dean and I for you know three or four different times. I kind of pushed it over to SEAC and you know got and some feedback with them and Jim Stoughton, you know, blessed the whole deal. Any [19:28] Alan Schnell: other questions or comments? For a vote, all those in favor? I'm sorry, yes. [19:36] Speaker D (unidentified): Chris, is there an existing road to that parcel number two? Yes. Where is it in relation to where the solar field is and the rocks that will be used for the coal mining project? [19:52] Town Clerk/Administrative staff: When you take a left to go up to the solar field, it's right on the right. That's the start of those two parcels. The road does not extend to parcel number two. I have VHB, BBHB, the people that did the slow for the solar array, they're working on an amendment for us to build a road to get to that parcel to get to the Brule and widen that road to be a two-way road, so they're in the process [20:32] Speaker D (unidentified): of doing that, so that battery storage lot is fairly close to the substation, which is a desirable location. Yeah, through the woods, it's a thousand feet, thousand feet. Yeah, makes sense that 15 acres is, yeah, prime real estate for that project. Mm-hmm, and that's, that's a seventy five or a hundred million dollar project if it gets built. I would say a hundred million, hundred million. Yeah, and that would be subject to the town tax rate for that value. Mm-hmm, could [21:20] Speaker F (unidentified): Be other questions would be helpful, would be helpful. Yeah, I remember. [21:28] Speaker D (unidentified): Per plant was considered be 11% of our tax base, so when we lost that in 2018, 2019, how we're concerned of the impact on the town, but there was never 11%, it was probably more in the five or six percent? Yeah. Okay. [21:49] Town Clerk/Administrative staff: Even a sub state, if you get over 10 percent, you have a beneficial end user or you have a, not a going concern, there's a term we use in the auto world, that you have such a big user that if they did have a problem or they did go out of business or they contested their tax bill, it would be a problem to the town and anything over ten percent of the valuation. There's this Disclosure we have to put in the notes, and I've never seen that disclosure. [22:33] Speaker G (unidentified): That's Bruce Chris, do they say they're responding? I think it was state of Maine RFP. Yeah, okay, because I. [22:44] Mark Afflep: Chased it as far as I wanted to bother. [22:47] Speaker G (unidentified): It looked like if this goes forward, this will chew up a lot of the megawatt capacity that the state IRFP is talking about. Yeah. I mean, the bulk of it. Half of it. So they're going to know. This option isn't going to, well, I presume if they don't get, if they're not successful, they'll probably you know just pay whatever they yeah the first year because they're gonna find out in several months. I suspect within six months certainly I. [23:22] Town Clerk/Administrative staff: Would say six to eight. Yes. [23:25] Mark Afflep: So they did say I was gonna move rather quickly, the training will bear it. Yeah, any other questions? [23:53] Town Clerk/Administrative staff: I had three things I wanted to touch on. One of them we've already talked about, the Thursday p.m. the office is closed. Wellman is in town doing the paving. They started last week. They're up on the mountain doing an overlay on Richardson, and they started the top half of Senate Drive, Kings Mountain Road. I doubt they were in town today to finish that,. And then they're coming down to do Hobbs and New Meadows, so they'll be in and out. And the only other thing I was asked, and I want to ask the institutional knowledge, the boat launch on Brewer Lake. Years and years ago there was discussion about dredging the boat, the ramp into it because what I understand, I'm not a boater, but you launch. [24:53] Mark Afflep: Your boat and then there's a deposit of sand there is, so yeah, if you're launching a pontoon boat that's further up, sometimes you have to get as far in the trailer as you can and yeah struggle to get dressed, well yeah it's pretty bad actually, trailer will come out of the water. [25:10] Town Clerk/Administrative staff: Really? Yeah, so did the town explore dredging that several years ago, ten years ago, or is that so? I might know before my time to 2014, can't believe I [25:25] Speaker F (unidentified): was lied to. Yeah, that's a place I'd like to see us, well, I talked about we were [25:39] Town Clerk/Administrative staff: We're talking about doing a dock. A dock. [25:43] Speaker F (unidentified): Exploring the dock. It would be really nice to have that. Yeah. All right. Be cleaned up and even if we put, you know, we can talk to the state. I don't know if we can put concrete road, you know, boat planks in there or whatever, right? [25:58] Speaker D (unidentified): Yeah, it should be fun doing the permitting for that. Just consider it straightforward. [26:04] Town Clerk/Administrative staff: But the state permitting. [26:07] Speaker F (unidentified): Yeah, that's a lot of the state stuff, that stuff. [26:12] Speaker D (unidentified): 76 is when they did the South Orrington boat ramp and we transferred ownership of the land for it to the South Orrington site, but I don't recall ever seeing or hearing anything about the Brewer Lake boat ramp. But Mark, you would certainly get feedback from boaters. [26:35] Mark Afflep: And I've been using that ramp for 20 years now and it's never been easy so [26:41] Speaker D (unidentified): I don't think it's ever been done you never got any boat business from props yeah plenty of that yeah are you sure you want to have it repaired no [26:51] Mark Afflep: I'd rather I'd rather than be out there using it feels bomb well that's that's [26:59] Speaker F (unidentified): Private that's owned by the that's owned by the argument yeah so they don't want that fixed up and anything like that they just assume they weren't boats down there they want you know news and kayaks and yeah you know which is fine I mean yes but it's [27:17] Town Clerk/Administrative staff: Chief asked me to look into it because they had it well it would be nice to be able to [27:23] Speaker F (unidentified): Launch our rescue boat in there yeah that would be you know it's a safety thing right [27:36] Town Clerk/Administrative staff: So that was it. I cycled through all my staff vacations so I think I'm fully staffed for the next two or three months. [27:55] Alan Schnell: Any questions or comments for the town manager report? Would [28:02] Speaker D (unidentified): Chris do you have any update as far as epic I haven't been over in a [28:13] Town Clerk/Administrative staff: While I know they were working on opening up the transfer station and the DEP had them redo some of their schematics and sketches and you know the way traffic would flow after they told us it was all right yeah and so that was I think Thursday was the meeting and I think Mike mains is the engineer [28:40] Alan Elkin: Understand submitted he submitted resubmitted yeah on Friday and I hadn't talked to him yeah so I don't know he Evan was going to check in but they're like that close to reopening transfer, which would be good. [28:56] Town Clerk/Administrative staff: But the electricians have been going through the controls and all of that. The fire department drained the cooling tower, so they pulled the motors or pumps out of that, or were planning on doing that to get them tested, rebuilt. So they're just, they're going through the systems, you know, as the process goes through the [29:26] Alan Elkin: The battery has been ordered. The batteries are here. The inverter would be along anytime, and that they have to have that backup when the control room is out, in case you have a black or something, then they can shut everything down. I thought it ran on battery. Well, the control room, no, they're there in case you lose the grid, and the batteries will come up almost instantly to keep the control room running. Yeah, and then they have that big 250 kilowatt generator down by fire protection that will come online, but the batteries are the first response to it. And I asked them about that, and they said, You've got to be able to, and PERT was operating without it, they didn't have the battery system. Which is like, okay, so what else is new? But what happens is if you don't have that battery system instantly come on, then you lose control of the turbine and the generator, and the generator would have come offline, and you've got all this steam and no place to go, and everything begins to spool up and parts begin to fly, like millions of dollars worth of parts. So that the battery system is critical, but it's, it's that I had no idea there's a thousand points of monitoring on those two boilers, a thousand different that [31:01] Speaker D (unidentified): Many, yeah, I think that's what they say is surprising to me. I don't know if it's [31:08] Alan Elkin: Five hundred and five hundred for the two boy, each of the two boil, I don't [31:12] Mark Afflep: Know, but it was a bunch. Yeah, there's about ten thousand wires, and if you can see, we were walking [31:18] Alan Elkin: Through, if you see the race, the trays up over the head, they're just right full [31:23] Speaker D (unidentified): And the goal is to be in a position in October to run it on oil for a little bit, dump power and the grid. Yeah, just to say we can do it, iso essentially we have to show [31:37] Alan Elkin: So yeah, we can make power, and they don't care if it's 15 minutes. We just have to show we can do it. [31:45] Speaker D (unidentified): So the target is October and they feel pretty good that 's due. [31:52] Town Clerk/Administrative staff: I think six dollars a gallon is gonna dip into that, you know. [31:59] Alan Elkin: We thought about waste oil. Because it takes a day or two to get it up to the... Yeah, you gotta bring things up slow. Yeah, we thought about using waste oil, which is oil, not waste oil from vehicles, but waste left over from the refining process, because it's quite reasonably priced. But the Babcox is you don't need anything that's got a chance, you know, you want to get it up and running, so it's like we've got to buy $6 [32:29] Town Clerk/Administrative staff: You're introducing a new variable. That's right. [32:31] Speaker D (unidentified): I can understand that. B and W. [32:36] Mark Afflep: Yeah. How many gallons an hour is that? [32:40] Alan Elkin: I don't know. I can't remember. It's not full capacity or anything like that. The oil was designed if you got a questionable load of trash that didn't burn well or was wet, you put the oil to it and you maintain a stability. But it's not, you know, it'll be at a much reduced capacity, but again, ISO doesn't care. We put a megawatt on the grid for a short period of time, they're happy. [33:12] Alan Schnell: Any other questions? All right. Thank you, folks. I'll manage the report and I'll board comment at the beginning of the afternoon. I'm good. [33:22] Alan Elkin: I was noticing Public Works working out on Snow's Corner Road. That was good. I've seen a lot of that stuff going on. It's good to see the guys out. And congratulations on the boat launch. That's outstanding. [33:41] Speaker D (unidentified): Well, we had a lot of good input from a lot of people. Bruce, well, he's been to the post-award [33:52] Alan Elkin: meetings. I'm good. All is well. [33:57] Mark Afflep: No, I'm good. Yeah, again, glad that we finally got through the boat landing project without too many [34:10] Speaker D (unidentified): too many or too much interference from the state. We still have one issue that is in the hands of the attorney general department so well it [34:25] Mark Afflep: wouldn't be state of Maine if we didn't have [34:32] Alan Schnell: I got nothing. I'm all set and I work my all. I'll just echo everybody else and I'm all set. Great to have the project underway and thanks again to Keith and all his work and all the other people who worked on it. I'll entertain a motion to adjourn so any comments from the public. I'm sorry. Hearing none, motion to adjourn. So moved. Motion by Mike, second. I'll second it. Second by Allen. All those in favor? 5-0. That's 7-0-5. 6-0-6. [35:19] Town Clerk/Administrative staff: Yep. So the ice cream man hasn't shown up.