Coordinator Report

June 10, 2010

SGrinnell made another site visit to the school. They lowered their
price bid to $192,000 with much reluctance as they felt they were
already bare-bone with their original pricing. We will spend another
$1500 to $2000 for the carpentry repairs. A letter from the fire chief
is in the board packet where he stresses the need for repairing this
system citing the order and an "imminent danger" to property and life.

I recommend the board take a look at changing the town's long standing
policy about who gets the roadside wood the highway department or
utilities cut. Practice has been that it belongs to the abutter if they
want it and otherwise it is available on a first come first serve basis.
It is Town property. It has had value added by the town cutting it down
and limbing and bucking it. I recommend that we have all merchantable
firewood removed from the roadside by the highway department and stacked
at the highway facility or transfer station. I like to see the town vote
to make it property of the Poor Fund under direction of the Selectboard.
Short of that we could sell it and deposit the money in the general
fund.

The Women's Guild has offered to undertake repainting the dining hall at
the town hall. I told them we are grateful for their offer and
authorized them to proceed. I have applied for summer youth employees
and I am developing a list of appropriate projects. Give me your ideas
please. This will happen only if the program is funded.

The unused town hall chimney has been taken down and the carpentry work
to fill the void is underway.  Next step is the get the two chimneys we
use re-pointed and flashed. Then we will be ready to advertise the
roofing bid. Once that is done we will be ready for the solar
installation already procured.

The two sheds were listed on eBay and sold for a dollar to a local
resident. The site should be cleared within a month.

Cost for a single-phase electric powered paper compactor at the transfer
station on a lease to purchase is $350 per month. At the end of two
years we will own it.  We have to rent a container for $125 per month. 
I calculate that during the two years we won't save any money. But we
will ship only 1/3 to 1/2 as many loads which cost $288 per haul.  After
the two years we will save several hundred dollars per month. As an
added benefit we won't be causing so much diesel to be burned. Once the
BOH authorizes this we will need to extend the concrete pad and get this
wired.

I am meeting with a representative in the next week of so to investigate
our potential to site a Solar Farm at our capped landfill. They may
require more land so I am involving the Forest Committee. MA has
favorable tax treatment so is attracting this sort of project. Their
business model is to sign up commercial and industrial customers. I hope
to aggregate enough residential demand. While this is a long-shot it is
worth investigating.

Broadband system now serves 67 town residents, six town buildings, and
14 out of town customers for which we are paid $280 / month. When the
fiscal year ends in June I expect we will show $16,000 in net income
from gross revenues of about $57,000.  In the next month we are
substantially increasing our bandwidth buy to serve the system.  We will
need about 15 new customers to absorb this added cost.  Lately we have
had a number of failed attempts to install.

Remember the N Quabbin regional planning effort we haven't been
participating in because it seems redundant to what our counsel of
governments already does?  We were contacted regarding participating in
cooperative purchasing. Here is my response:

We meet the bulk purchasing objective through our participation in the
FRCOG procurement system. Via this mechanism we buy our road-sand,
gravel, road-salt, asphalt, culverts, fuel oil, diesel, and will in the
future our elevator maintenance and monitoring our closed landfill.

Other items we get thru state-bids such as recently purchased trucks,
bodies, and a sweeper.

One item that the FRCOG hasn't yet addressed is the landfill monitoring
so that represents a possible need. We currently pay about $3k annually.

Our town-wide budget for office supplies is $2k and we have only spent
$800 ytd. We sometimes get recycled copy paper from the solid waste
district.

We do business with Cooperative Copies for outsourced copies and the
County Jail for printing. We are part of the Hampshire COG's electrical
supply program, get a good price and get a yearly rebate. We get our
phones at the state bid price that no competitor has been able to beat.
We operate our own wireless Internet service and provide T-1 equivalent
connectivity to each of our six town buildings for less than 10% of the
cost of any competitor.

The historical society has a total of $15,000 which they carefully
husband.  They have engaged someone to fix the squirrel damaged trim.
They are trapping the varmints. I will get a price to air seal and
insulate the building as a next step. And I will make inquiries about
the state of the heating "system" which given the age should be upgraded
for efficiency sake.

Tim was appointed to the Tri County Superintendent's executive
committee.  I told him we would let him extend a couple of days of
vacation that he needs to take or lose past the July 1 deadline.  The
Hockanum Road crumb rubber job was accomplished this week.