Town of Mount Hope Town Board Meeting May 4, 2020
The town board meeting of the Town of Mount Hope was held at the Mount Hope Town Hall on May 4, 2020 at 7:30pm with the following present: Supervisor Chad Volpe, Councilman Matt Howell, Councilman Brian Carey Councilman Jim Jennings, Councilman Chris Furman and Town Clerk Kathleen Myers.
OFFICIALS PRESENT: Police Chief Paul Rickard, Planning Board Clerk Linda Franck, Assessor Dennis Ketcham & Attorney David Bavoso.
Following the Pledge of Allegiance, Supervisor Volpe called the meeting to order at 7:30pm.
MOTION TO ACCEPT PRIOR MEETING MINUTES:
MOTION offered Councilman Furman 2nd Councilman Carey that the minutes of the April 6, 2020 meeting are accepted as submitted. All in favor: Howell, Volpe, Jennings, Carey, Furman; carried.
CORRESPONDENCE:
1. Highway budget modification
2. Supervisor’s report March 2020
3. Mortgage tax receipts from Orange County for Jan, Feb, Mar 2020
4. Building Inspector’s report Feb. 2020
5. Highway Spring Trash report
6. April 2020 Impound report from Palmer’s Ark
COMMITTEE REPORTS:
Supervisor Volpe: Dean just texted me; he will not be at tonight’s meeting.
Councilman Jennings: I wanted to thank all the essential and frontline workers for their continuing dedication during this time. April 11th was our Easter parade. I wanted to thank the Mount Hope police department, Howells fire, Otisville fire & some of the members of the town hall participated. It was a great event planned in 2 days. A lot of residents were out there supporting us. I saw the signs. People cheering us on. Lots of smiles by the kids. The purpose was to put a smile on the residents faces. I think by the comments I saw on our facebook, we accomplished that. I wanted to thank everybody for that.
Councilman Furman: I’m gonna elaborate a little on what Jim said. There’s a lot of people that were involved in that especially the Lions Club, the Rotary, Otisville fire, Howells Fire & Mount Hope police dept. It was something that got put together quickly so by the looks of it everybody enjoyed it. I know we did. I rode with Chad. We had a lot of fun. It was good to see people with smiles on their faces. It’s nice to be in a community that you know that something like that can happen. I really appreciate everybody that’s in the field of nursing. I believe on Wednesday, May 6th, at Stewart’s, I was there tonight, if you’re a nurse or in the medical field, they’re giving away free coffee to you. Stop in and get a free cup of coffee. It’s also National Corrections Officer’s Week. Most of my family worked for the department of corrections. That is a very difficult job and even more difficult now. A lot of people in this community that are in this field. If you see somebody this week, tell them thank you. You have no idea what they go through & I can tell you that it’s even worse than when my father was in 20 years ago. It’s very difficult.
Councilman Carey: Summer rec – you just handed us some information out, which I’ll talk to you about. I’ll get it posted so people can read about it. I’ll let you elaborate more. The youth center looks good. A lot more work has been done obviously since we have a little more time than what our plan was to open it. Maybe at one point we can get together and do that walk-through list that we didn’t quite get to. Wifi is working beautifully. I definitely want to get with Rose to make sure she can test her chrome books out and make sure they’re working to do what she asked us to do. She asked us to block certain sites kinda like what the schools do. Little league – May 11th – is when they’re looking to potentially start depending on if it’s determined to be safe. That came from little league national. Next meeting we’ll find out a little more if that happens. Had a little bit of an issue on facebook. I kinda added some stuff to our facebook page and for a week I was kicked out – I was put in facebook jail. It’s all fixed now. The name…please..I can’t tell you how many messages I answered. I do know how to spell. It was an issue with myself and facebook. That’s fixed. We’re at about 1498 followers. May happens to be National Military Appreciation month. Department of Health released, I believe today, an innovative mobile app that you can download free of charge. It gives you updates as far as COVID-19 goes. It also gives you emergency health department issues. The census; some people are getting phone calls, some people did it. We just came out of a weekend that they’re calling the digital activation weekend. They were trying to get more people to do this so they don’t have to hound you to get your information. Chad, Dean & Paul did a facebook live update on facebook as far as for COVID-19 to let the residents know. There was tremendous feedback on it. When I was up at Mick’s, people made comments. I think it was great. Every day, the County Exec does an update on COVID-19 as far as the #’s and stuff and that’s been going on a couple months. Thank you.
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Councilman Howell: A couple other items to cover. I want to thank all the essential workers and the 1st responders that are out making sure things are still moving; the businesses that can; our 1st responders for keeping everybody safe at this time. Dean is not here. I did speak with him this morning. We do have our trash reports he provided to us over the weekend. He said everything went good with the trash pick-ups. They had 32 senior citizen pick-ups. Everything went good with that. That was all finished up last week. Seems to be from what they can get with the count so far – they had more intake than previous years. I spoke with some of the guys from the highway department when I had some of my own items here, that excavator they purchased a couple months ago was a real big hit. They got a lot of work done with it. It made junk days a lot more productive for them in terms of what they can get done in a day. A little update coming up with the summer rec program kinda all is gonna weigh on what happens with the CDC & the Governor’s restrictions/requirements on what we can do; hopefully we can have the summer camp for the kids this summer.
Supervisor Volpe: I want to update everybody on a few things. As of last Friday, only 48% of the people in NY has filled out for the census. I did get an email from a resident over the weekend and I promised I would bring it up during our meeting. I think there’s so many things out there with scams and everything else – maybe people are a little leery about filling things out online. It is very important. Our funding and stuff comes from the census. If you do get something from the census, verify it’s what it is and fill it out and send it in. Councilman Carey added: the official site is: 2020census.gov.
Supervisor Volpe: As Brian mentioned, I do try to give everyone an update everyday as to what’s going on in the county and especially as we go to re-open things. As of right now May 15 is our target date. If we fall in the right region as of right now, Orange County is in with Rockland County and Westchester. We have not had 14 consecutive days of our numbers going down. Therefore, we are grouped in with the south region. If this continues to happen, we will not be opening anything on the 15th. If we do have the 14 days and we’re able to move into one of the northeast regions, it will be a soft opening on the 15th. Some of the things this will cover: retail stores will have approx. 25% availability. Hypothetically, if you went to Kohl’s – whatever their occupancy is – 25% of it will be allowed in the store. You’re gonna see one-ways. You’re gonna see people making sure you have a mask before you go in. We don’t have all of the details nor do we know if we’re gonna fall into that 1st part of it. The only thing we know for sure is that construction is going to be the 1st thing that’s going to go back. They feel that with construction, social distancing is very important however it can be very easily done on construction jobs. Locally, what does that mean for us? We have a few things at the planning board level. And a few things, after talking to Wayne, that seems kind of close. That being said, on Friday I purchased a ‘Zoom’ meeting capability and I also reached out to Wayne because in fact, if they cannot have the meeting here, I would like to do a Zoom meeting. Prior to reaching out to Wayne, I reached out to Glen & Jason, they are already doing Zoom meetings in other municipalities. I spoke with Wayne. We are going to get together & probably do a mock meeting to see how long it takes to log on & how the links work. I’ll work with Linda on it and I know a lot of the CDC regulations, if you’re immune compromised…our planning board are volunteers and a few are immune compromised. We may not be able to do a public hearing, however, things that are up in the air and close to being finalized, at least they can progress forward with those items. I will be working with Wayne in the coming week. I will work with Linda and we will do what we have to do. The planning board, again, if some people feel confident enough to come here with the closed doors, that’s fine. If some people want to stay in the comfort of their own living room and attend the zoom meeting – member wise, they’ll have the capability of doing that. I want to say it was $150/year and we’ll have up to 1,000 meetings. It’s well worth it. With the ban potentially being lifted on the 15th, the planning board meeting being the 20th, I really didn’t want to miss the May meeting and have people wait until June. I’ll keep everyone posted. A call that trickled down from the comptroller’s office to the county executive’s office, which then trickled down to us – according to the comptroller’s office, our aim funding, which is all of our roads that we get money for every year, we will not be seeing that this year. There were some of the officials from the county that were on the phone call from the county saying that they don’t see how they can do that because we’ve already budgeted for it. Traditionally, Dean has everything on a rotating cycle. He does a certain amount of roads a year and that’s what we use that money for. You guys will see that at budget time – it’s the same amount that comes in as goes out. We have always counted on that money. I’m keeping everyone forewarned as things come down to me. I handed out the thing for summer rec. I talked to Brian about it. I talked to Matt right before the meeting. The reason we decided to go with a virtual sign up is because we can’t have people in the building. I have reservations about it. My reservations are this: primarily it’s our residents we are signing up for summer camp. It’s also our resident’s children we are employing for this summer camp. Depending on how slow the state/county are in getting to us- I just don’t wanna have it where there’s so many residents that feel like they have child care for the summer. And there’s so many teenagers/college kids that think they have a job for the summer and then we tell them all no. I understand this is something none od us has been through before but there are several municipalities that have already cancelled programs for the summer. However, we’re not really gonna give people ample time to find other jobs or placement for their kids if we wait ‘til the last minute to cancel. I’d love ideas from the board. Do you want me to continue going forward with this virtual sign-up? Do you want me to see how things are 2 weeks from now? Do we want to have a meeting in 2 weeks? The reason I did a virtual thing is because you know once payments are made to the town, in order for us to give the money back, we have to do a voucher.
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Supervisor Volpe continued: We also accept credit cards and there’s fees. There’s a lot of other things that play into it. I wanted to get feedback from you guys. Councilman Jennings: it’s a tough call on this one. I understand your point. There’s a lot of pros/cons to this. What’s the latest we can make a determination on this? I don’t think 2 weeks is enough time to get a…Councilman Carey: we’re usually into already interviewing counselors. Jennings: at this point, doesn’t seem feasible to be able to hold this. Supervisor: on the town’s end, there’s a packet probably 100 pages of paperwork. We’ve already filled everything out, Angie & I. We overnighted it. It doesn’t cost us anything. We are exempt from paying the fee. At the very least I sent it into the board of health in time, we can’t do it. The Town of Mount Hope can always be more stringent than the state. The state can’t say we can’t have summer camp and we say- yes, we can. But, we can most certainly cancel it; we can be more stringent than the state. Jennings: I just don’t see how it’s feasible at this point without knowing if we can or not have it. Plus, what’s the guidelines gonna be? Supervisor: right, Brian & I have talked about – Otisville school has been great to us. However, through June 25th New York is not allowed to have school but 1 week later they’re gonna say it’s ok to have 150 kids in for camp? We have the youth center to use as an alternate site. Jennings: the #’s aren’t going down so I don’t see them opening things up anytime soon. People really need to know by June. Carey: don’t forget, summer camp usually starts up the week after July 4th. We’re talking from today – 2 months. Jennings: I’m on the fair committee and a lot of the fairs are closing. NY state fair was cancelled. Saratoga is postponed ‘til next year. Howell: I think we could wait til the 15th to see what the Governor says in terms of the openings – if we fall into what region of the state. I think that would be a good indicator as to where we’re gonna be. If it’s 2 weeks from now and we’re on the NY pause or more stringent situation than the soft opening he’s proposing, I don’t see that’s time enough for us to open. If we get opened on the 15th, and can start this phase in of opening businesses, I think it may be possible at a reduced #. The flip side of that we can’t have 3 kids here and not be able to cover the cost. Supervisor: the very least we would hear something will be the 15th. We have deliberately asked the question of summer camp which falls in to summer bungalows and there’s been zero guidance from the state other than -if your stuff is due – send it in. Howell: is there any input from the county? Will they entertain any of this in terms of their preparation? Supervisor: on the county level which then they file with the state, they told us to go ahead and send it in. Dr. Gelman has said that some stringent regulations have been trickling down but we don’t know the guidelines. One rumor was that they will cut down the number of campers we’re allowed to have; they’d have to stay with their group the entire day – they couldn’t interchange at all. We have nothing in writing. This could impact our cost. Furman: this would be that people could register but we’re no taking any payment? Supervisor: correct – this is virtual. Furman: I think we should do that – really, it’s gonna be up to what the Governor says. I don’t think he’s gonna open things up. Chief Rickard: if he opens it up on the 15th, it’s just construction sites. If you figure it out, according to him today, it’s gonna be 56 days before little league can play – from the 15th, not from today. He said sporting events with 10 or more children would be the 4th phase. So, you have to add 14 times 4 – that’s 56 days. That’s if the numbers progress. Little league, the earliest they could start would be July 12th. Carey: People are home for almost 2 months now with their kids. I have to imagine that they would like to see some light at the end of the tunnel. I am a firm believer that we should push as hard as we can to have summer camp. I understand it has to come from the state down. Our paperwork is in order with the county as far as either location. Whether the school – which we’re probably not gonna get or the new youth center which hopefully we have our grand opening between now and July. I agree we see who we’re gonna get – maybe people don’t want to, maybe people are gonna be nervous to send their kids. I get that. I think even if we waited to our next board meeting on the 18th, even if we rushed it, and we have some sort of idea that we could do it…on our end, we could do interviews. We could do interviews very safely. We could explain to people this may or may not happen. We’re not gonna know up until the last minute. On the other aspect if July comes and almost everything is opened, I think some of these kids look forward to their summer jobs and parents look forward to sending their kids to summer camp. I am 100% there that we should follow every step we have in the past and hope for the best. Supervisor: is everyone in favor of trying to pilot this and by the 18th we make a determination? Board agreed. Supervisor: at that point it will only be..Atty Bavoso: if you decide to do virtual registration, which is that they’re reserving a spot and not paying a fee but if the camp happens, they just have to pay the fee to get in. Whatever you do, make sure there’s a statement that says ‘you are reserving a spot; we are not accepting a fee; under no circumstances at this point are we guaranteeing that this event is going to happen’. The only I would be concerned about is a parent planning something. Supervisor asked him to look at his sample. Howell: it will be good in this time period to see how many are interested & after that what comes from Albany. I think something we should put with this application is some type of box that they understand this could be cancelled due to higher government restrictions – something gout of our control. We should probably have a sort of date frame to take payment. Carey: June 15th – it’s on the bottom. Atty Bavoso: the only thing I would add, instead of making it specific to the NYS DOH – make it relevant to all state agencies. They’re telling you to submit the applications in the event you’re able to hold it but if NYS DOH says you’re good to go but the Governor says nobody’s good to go – it still kind of creates a gray area. Make it ‘All relevant NYS agencies and offices. Cary: since we’re talking summer camp, can we talk concert series? Supervisor: what’s everybody’s thoughts? Once I start signing a contract, somebody’s playing. Carey: I think we should do it. Furman: I do too. Even if we do that, people can still do the social distance; there’s plenty of room.
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Supervisor: a week ago Friday, I was on a north region recreation call, the concert seems like if you’re doing it in a park in an open space, a family of 5 comes, that’s in the same house, they don’t need to social distance from themselves. So many people bring their own lawn chairs & sit in their own group of people & I think it would give people a place to get out. If everyone is on board with that – I’ll continue. Chief: Chad, just double check, according to the guidance that we got today is again, you can’t do that until after if he extends it; if we’re not in our numbers, you can’t do an event until mid-July. That was what he put out today. It’s okay for people to individually social distance in the park but you can’t have an organized event. That was they sent out today about it. Supervisor will check on this. He noted that the town clean up was key. Not cancelling clean up was good.
POLICE DEPARTMENT:
Police Chief Rickard reported that Middletown Medical is going to supply antibody testing for all police officers. They got back to me tonight and they’ve assigned a PA on their side so all the officers will be tested. As you may or may not know we have 2 people in the department that have positive tests. I think there’s some angst/anxiety that the antibody testing – they will look forward to something like that. Next time we meet, we will have some results. It will be optional – we can’t force them. The Governor has said we should work on a 90-day supply of PPE. We’re trying to figure out what that would be. We have a pretty good head start. He’s saying 90 days to lock away in a closet and not touch. It’s like an emergency supply. We’re still dealing with disinfectant and disinfectant products. We’ve talked to a couple companies about systems where it’s more of a concentrate. You buy it from them. They maintain it. The one we’re looking at Mike did research on it – would produce 5 gallons a day. You can just spray it on hard and soft surfaces. You don’t have to wipe it down. Supervisor: that would be a good thing for the exercise equipment. Chief: the last thing is, we went to virtual arraignments. Right now, ‘til 5:00 arraignments are done by county court judges. We had an arraignment a few weeks ago. It was a judge from Westchester county – he made himself a Mount Hope town justice and did it for us. After 5:00, our justices will do the arraignments. Just John. I don’t know how the designation was made. From 7pm until midnight he’s available to do arraignments. The whole case has got to be done. Basically, if we make an arrest, after 9:00, the officer and that person, if it’s a qualifying offense, will have to sit in our squad room until 6:00am the next morning. I voiced my concerns with this and was basically told we have to suck it up. The good thing is we don’t have that many of them. It’s not their problem that we don’t have cells. Howell: some time ago, we had a discussion about an intermunicipal agreement to hold over a fugitive until this judge was available. Bavoso: you may be able to get that in under your intermunicipal agreement. Chief Rickard gave an example of someone who was suicidal a couple weeks ago. Carey: does mobile mental health have certain hours? Chief: They’ll come out but they don’t have a facility to hold them.
YOUTH CENTER:
Supervisor suggested June 19th for tentative grand opening date for youth center. Board agreed.
MOTION TO APPROVE HIGHWAY DEPARTMENT BUDGET MODIFICATION:
MOTION offered Councilman Howell 2nd Councilman Furman to approve the highway budget modification:
Increase B2130 Refuse/Garbage revenue by $1447.00 and Increase B8160.4 Refuse/garbage contr. By $1447.00. (2020 spring trash) All in favor: Howell, Volpe, Jennings, Carey, Furman; carried.
MAY 18, 2020 TOWN BOARD MEETING:
The town board members agreed to still have the 2nd meeting in May.
MOTION TO ACCEPT SUPERVISOR’S MARCH 2020 REPORT:
MOTION offered Councilman Howell 2nd Councilman Furman to accept the March 2020 supervisor’s report as presented. All in favor: Howell, Volpe, Jennings, Carey, Furman; carried.
AT THIS TIME, Supervisor Volpe mentioned that he had several residents reach out to him about the map that the county brought out which shows the number of cases for the different municipalities re: COVID. He asked the health department. The census is different and based off where the prisoners lived. Even though they have lived in the prison for 10 years it’s not where live – it’s where their residence is. But, COVID they have no way of doing that. The majority of cases that show for Mount Hope are actually from the 2 prisons. Out # is 140 +/- as of today.
MOTION TO AUDIT THE CLAIMS:
MOTION offered Councilman Carey 2nd Councilman Howell to approve the following bills (Abstract 15-abstract 18):
ABSTRACT 15:
GENERAL A: #225-249 $13,504.98
GENERAL B: #32-34 $ 6,637.41
HIGHWAY: #60-63 $ 5,670.52
SEWER: #30 $ 156.75
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ABSTRACT 16:
GENERAL A: #250-262 $51,360.20
GENERAL B: #35-37 $20,665.00
HIGHWAY: #64-65 $ 62.57
SEWER: #31-33 $ 1,386.85
ABSTRACT 17:
GENERAL A: #263-273 $17,655.73
GENERAL B: #38-39 $ 198.08
HIGHWAY: #66-67 $19,170.30
SEWER: #34 $ 2,380.00 AND
ABSTRACT 18:
GENERAL A: #274-284 $60,626.54
GENERAL B: #40-41 $27,427.25
HIGHWAY: #68-71 $ 3,912.59
SEWER: #35-37 $ 3,531.32.
All in favor: Howell, Volpe, Jennings, Carey, Furman; carried.
COMMENTS/QUESTIONS FROM FACEBOOK LIVE:
1. Town Clerk received a message from the facebook live video from Rose Phillips. She wanted to know if she could go into the resource room to install the security locks for the computers. Supervisor: yes, she has an access card. She can go in whenever she wants.
2. Councilman Carey read messages from facebook live video. Some people are thanking us for doing a wonderful job. A person asked about village clean-up which we know nothing about. They haven’t given a date out yet. There are 15 people watching.
Supervisor Volpe added that he is on the phone – if I don’t see Dean or Paul everyday – with trying to stockpile. Collectively we’ve tried keeping up with gloves, masks & cleaning supplies. It’s slowly becoming more available. We now have AMAZON government. They are a little slow getting stuff out. Part of the soft opening is having protocols in place. Highway is in place. This week town hall will be in place. If you work in town hall, taking your temperature & keeping track of who is in the building. When we are able to unlick the doors, it will be a small interview with the person. We need their name, address, phone #, take their temperature and the reason for their visit. This is part of the tracing system. Employees can do themselves. The protocol has already started in highway. This is not effective until May 18. Town Clerk asked: you’re saying that’s gonna happen after you open the doors; there’s people that come in and just go down the hall, who is stopping them? Supervisor: 1st person that sees them. It’s not fool proof. We’ll try to catch them as they come in. Catch them in between the doors. Councilman Carey: when that door goes off, the alarm beeps, same with this door. Maybe we can look into something to decipher which door people are coming in through. All 3 doors have the same bell. Supervisor: we have the double doors, like other buildings I go in, there’s a big stop sign & before I am able to enter the building, they have to take my temperature. It says, wait here, somebody comes with gloves to take my temperature, they have hand sanitizer. Town clerk asked for something like that to be placed by her office window. Supervisor: at the least, we’ll get signs.
MAY 2020 YOUTH CENTER & SENIOR CENTER RENTALS:
Town Clerk: what are we doing with rentals for June & July. Supervisor: I would imagine May is done. I don’t think anyone is gonna allow a mass gathering. June we’ll have to wait.
MOTION TO CANCEL MAY 2020 RENTALS FOR YOUTH CENTER & SENIOR CENTER:
MOTION offered Councilman Carey 2nd Councilman Furman to close down our rentals and return any deposits to any rentals for the month of May. All in favor: Howell, Carey, Volpe, Jennings, Furman; carried.
Councilman Howell updated the Route 211 project. The culvert replacement has started. The company has been working 7 days/week. This project will be completed as soon as possible. When it is applicable, the road will be opened for one lane traffic. Right now, you have to take the detour.
Councilman Jennings: The village meeting will be May 7 at 7pm – they will stream live on facebook. Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms. Right now, the state fair, Cuomo is looking to close. He heard a couple other fairs are closed until 2021. Supervisor: Mike Romano came in to get his check, & he said no one is booking anything for fireworks. No one seems to know what to do. We’ve talked about Night Out Against Crime. Are we gonna be able to give out cotton candy/popcorn? No one knows.
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GRIEVANCE DAY:
Assessor Dennis Ketcham: spoke re: Grievance day. It is still moving ahead on May 27th. His legal notice was in the paper last Friday, May1st. Tentative assessment roll is available on line only. He does have a paper copy in his office. It should be on our website by now. The legal notice was carefully constructed to leave it a little bit open-ended that the forum grievance day is gonna take – as we’ve all been saying for the last hour, we don’t know what’s gonna happen. Speaking to some of the BAR members, they’re inclined to actually have it an in person hearing on that date. His goal/hope, is that everybody who is going to be filing a grievance, will do it in writing and not request a personal appearance at which case, no harm no foul. I’m not gonna put the BAR in the same room. They can a phone conversation to say hi and that’s gonna be it until they come back in June for the deliberations. Supervisor will give them a ZOOM spot for that meeting to happen. Assessor: we are anticipating that as a back-up. The Governor’s executive emergency order 22 allowed grievance day to go digital – if need be. Anybody that is calling in, I’m getting all their contact info: phone #, email, etc. That way I can reach out to them before that date to let them know. I’m going to strongly encourage people to just do paperwork and not appear. There’s really no difference when the BAR comes back to do their deliberations whether they were here or if it was on paper. We sent out change notices. There was 110 change notices that went out May 1st; about $10.5 million which sounds really good but about ½ of that was solar facilities which got exempted. Supervisor: we have PILOT’s coming this year. Councilman Howell: the online viewing of the tentative tax roll, is that through the Orange County government website? Ketcham: assessment roll not tax roll. It should be on our website and it is on the county website now. Both. Both website addresses are in the legal notice.
Supervisor: Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms.
MOTION TO ADJOURN MEETING:
MOTION offered Councilman Howell 2nd Councilman Carey to adjourn the meeting at 8:32pm. All in favor: Howell, Carey, Volpe, Jennings, Furman; carried.
The next meeting is scheduled for Monday, May 18, 2020 at 7:30pm at Town Hall.
Respectfully submitted,
Kathleen A. Myers, RMC
Town Clerk