Present: First Selectman Woody Bliss; Selectman W. Glenn Major; Selectman Richard Miller; Town Administrator Tom Landry; Administrative Assistant Judy DeVito, Members of the Weston Parks Project, Members of the Police Department, Paul Friia and Residents.

Mr. Bliss called the meeting to order at 7:34pm.

Mr. Miller made a motion to appoint Ernest Albin, Helene A. Weatherill and Sandy O’Brien to the Commission on Aging for a term to expire December 31, 2008. Mr. Major seconded and the motion passed unanimously.

Mr. Miller made a motion to reappoint Nancy McCormick to the Commission for Children and Youth for a term to expire December 31, 2008. Mr. Major seconded and the motion passed unanimously.

Mr. Major made a motion to add to the agenda the reappointment of Robert A. Sisca to the Building Board of Appeals for a term to expire December 31, 2011. Mr. Miller seconded and the motion passed unanimously.

Mr. Major made a motion to reappoint Robert A. Sisca to the Building Board of Appeals for a term to expire December 31, 2011. Mr. Miller seconded and the motion passed unanimously

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Discussion/decision regarding Weston Park project presentation with a proposal for renovation of a portion of Bisceglie-Scribner Park. Samuel Parker gave an overview of the project. He said Cory Attra is on board to construct the project and he has signed of on the budget that they have.

Mr. Bliss asked where they were on the finances. Jenna Jacobs-Dick said that they have raised over $76,000 and they have been given a STEAP grant for $75,000. The Town has offered to contribute $25,000 and provided they raise another $25,000 they will have about $200,000 to spend. What they are proposing to do falls easily into that with a large margin for financial error.

Mr. Major asked if the $25,000 was already budgeted for. Mr. Landry said there was a Parks & Recreation fund which user fees go into. About 10 years ago that fund was sweep out and supplemented the general fund. He said around 2000 it did not generate enough money to support itself. The funds have slowly built themselves up and the Parks and Recreation has approved the use of those funds.

Ms. Jacobs-Dick said the equipment is to be delivered no later than April 15, and probably closer to April 1^{st. That will ensure that things will be done in time for the pond to be opened. They have had extensive discussions with Parks and Recreation and they expect to be involved in the process. Some of the work orders will be coming from the Town of Weston and not from the Weston Park Project. She said there has to be some sort of joint initiative for some of the purchase orders.}

Mr. Major made a motion to approve the plan submitted by the Weston Park Project for the Bisceglie/Scribner Park and move to accept the gift of the improvements to be made to that property subject to the Board of Finance review and approval. Mr. Miller seconded and the motion passed unanimously.

Mr. Major asked if it was amended to exclude dead end roads. Mr. Phillips said that that was correct. He said that they tried to make the language general enough so that if an on duty supervisor recognizes that it was not going to be a traffic issue then that person could make an on the spot recommendation to not have traffic flagged.

Mr. Bliss said he found the structure of the Redding regulation quite different from

the structure of their proposal. Mr. Phillips said as originally proposed they are almost identical but as amended they are different. He said they amended it to cover the issue on

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dead end streets. Mr. Bliss said the Redding regulations listed specific roads. Mr. Phillips said it would be more difficult to do that with Weston roads.

Mr. Major said that he was going through the roads in Weston and the number of roads that are either dead ends or roads that have such minimal traffic on them and his immediate reaction was that Redding’s system makes a lot better sense because you are not burdening a police officer with having to make a determination on a regular basis as to whether or not a road requires a flagman. He said someone from the police department could sit today with a list of roads and put together the list that do not apply. He said this would make better sense.

Mr. Phillips said based on the recommendation of the union they tried to use language that would give the on duty officer an on the spot case by case power to determine this. Mr. Major said Redding and Weston are fairly similar and that you would come out with the same number of roads.

Mr. Major said he felt that this left a lot of room for abuse. Every time you say yes you need a flagman someone just got an overtime job. He said it sets up the possibility of real abuse and for him to sign off on it comfortably he needs to understand what the criteria is going to be, as to how it is determine, to be able to ensure that when the determination is made that you are following the criteria. Mr. Phillips suggested rather than specific list of roads why not specific set of criteria. Mr. Major said one or the other but he felt they would have a hard time getting specific enough criteria. He said he thought that it would be easier to add a road or subtract a road if the need changed.

Sgt. Troxell said his experience has been a utility company comes into Town to work on poles or trees and they start in one location and then move the operation somewhere else and they are not in one place for 3 hours or more they move around. He said one of the things that they are trying to show is that they are sensitive to emergency situation which would be power outages at a residences house or ice storms where they have to come out very early in the morning. They are not referring to those incidents they are talking about utility companies that have been coming to town the last two or three months who they have had to investigate the accidents cause by flaggers who do not know what they are doing. They have had to deal with citizen complains constantly on a regular bases. He said they have had positive input from the people working on the poles and trees based on what they have had to deal with working with flaggers.

Mr. Major said if they are feeling safer then they should be doing it, we do not need to have an ordinance to make it happen. Mr. Troxell said that the problem has been the companies themselves have been trying to cut corners on cost. He said their basic concern is safety for people driving on the road and the safety of the people doing the work for the people in town. Mr. Major said he felt the merit of what they were requesting was there, it is the extent of it that he was concerned about.

Mr. Bliss said he liked the notion of specifying the roads and the 48 hr notice. He did not know what the right number was but he liked getting the notice ahead of time. Mr.

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Troxell said from his point of view it was a little bit of a selfish issue because he fills all the overtime so it is nice to have 48 hours but he did not think that that should be something chiseled in stone.

Mr. Major said he understood what they are really trying to address is the utility company. He said maybe we use the utility company as a specific and then you put in, in the event that other companies that you could have an additional provision that would say that if it were creating a hazard that one of three things would happen. They would have to move the vehicle, they would have to hire a police officer or provide adequate personnel to direct traffic. Mr. Troxell said he liked the suggestion.

Mr. Phillips said he was uncomfortable about trying to put together a list. He said he did not think whatever list they put together would be inclusive and the list could get huge and cumbersome. Mr. Bliss said that he thought in a very short period of time they could identify the roads. Also normally on ordinances there is some penalty associated with being in violation of the ordinance. Mr. Troxell said usually it is an infraction costing $60 to $75 up to $99 for a Town ordinance.

Mr. Major said he would like to do a little research with Redding to see how they enforce this. He said it is great to have it but are we being realistic about using it. Mr. Miller suggested that they have a list of roads that they know must have their presence. He said then the roads that are not listed you have the discretion for making a decision whether or not you need someone present. He said there must be roads that you know are a must situation and this puts the utility companies on notice immediately that when they work on those roads they must have a police officer.

Mr. Bliss said if you do not structure the ordinance correctly, it is a nightmare to try and enforce it. Mr. Major said he will check with Redding because he wants to understand how theirs works. Mr. Troxell said that they did have to come up with a list of streets that would be exempt in order to make theirs an ordinance beyond a road regulation. Mr. Major said the way the ordinance from Redding reads is if they not working on one of the roads listed then they do not need to have an officer.

Officer Chris Powers said it is a good practice to have the companies inform the senior officer on duty even if it is a road like Katydid Lane. The fact is that fire trucks are very large, ambulances are very wide, if they are not informed of those things and there were a call at the end of the road and a fire truck or the ambulance was unable to get by that vehicle the Town could take on a big liability by listing specific roads.

Mr. Miller suggested that they have a list of all the roads that you must have an officer then you also require that whoever is going to work on any road notify the police department and if the police department feels justified in requiring them to have an officer on a road which is not listed but meet certain criteria he has the right to do it. Officer Powers said by State Statue even on a smaller road that is not highly traveled, if there is not 150 feet line of sight we can shut them down and require them to move to a different location. Mr. Miller said he also suggested timely notification.

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Mr. Bliss asked how many companies did they deal with and how would they communicate the ordinance with those people. Sgt. Troxell said he will call the go to people that that are in the office branched form the different companies and let them know that this is what they are trying to achieve with this new regulation. He said they have already spread the word to these people and most of them have called them.

Mr. Major asked if this had already been enacted. Rick Phillips said it had been a road regulation since November 5th, 2006. They are asking for an official adoption as an ordinance. Mr. Landry said he would not recommend that they do that. It sounds like this might have some growing pains or trial and error. He said the process of amending an ordinance is very cumbersome.

The new software being a more comprehensive package was to expand our capabilities with regards to evaluation of the properties, time saving features as well as capabilities in the future having integration with the GIS system.

In September they received four bids from different companies. Since that time they have held reviews with three of the four companies and went through their demos. He researched each company with regards to there financial stability, staffing levels and he questioned other assessors, their performance and how they related to current evaluations that they were doing. The culmination of the research is what he will present.

The bids were as follows:

J.F. Ryan Associates, Inc. Option 1- $277,000 Option 2- $292,000

Tyler- CLT Option1- $287,500 Option 2- $313,700

Total Valuation Services Option1- $218,000 Option 2- $198,000

Vision Appraisal Option 1-N/A Option 2- $288,500

Option 1 is a full evaluation using our current software. Option 2 is using the bidder’s new software. Mr. Friia recommendation is that we use Vision Appraisal Technology to do the 2008 evaluation using Option 2. They did not bid on Option 1.

J.F. Ryan Associates, Inc. is a small company who did our last revaluation. We kept our old software and they performed the revaluation process. Overall they did a fairly good job. There were some inconsistencies that he is seeing now but overall it went pretty smoothly. The reason he did not choose them is because there are only three key people in the whole company. He said John Ryan is the key person and his fear was should

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anything happen to him during the revaluation. His bid was $292,000 which was competitive with the other companies.

Tyler-CLT- We are currently using their software. They are the largest company of all four with about 330 employees and about 40 towns in Connecticut. What was most surprising about Tyler was that they were the highest bidder and we already have there software. In addition he thought their new software was a little cumbersome. He believes that their staffing is good and they have experienced people for the cost he did not see a great advantage to go to them.

Total Valuation Services has about 25 employees and about 26 towns in Connecticut. They were the lowest in the bid process. Mr. Friia said when he estimated what the job would cost a year ago he had estimated about $300,000. He said if you review three out of the four bids they are within 5% of what he had originally estimated. Total’s bid came in about 30% less than the next lowest bid. He said this did not give him a lot of comfort. They are still developing new software which he saw when he went to their office. It is not yet in any towns. The GIS part of the software is not working. Mr. Friia said we do have a link with Total because we use their sister company on our Administrative side which is Quality Data. He said Quality Data is a great company.

Vision Appraisal has about 114 employees. They probably have the most exposure in Connecticut. They are in 160 Towns. He said he was comfortable with them because they have proved their reevaluation capabilities. They are doing Redding, Wilton and they did Westport. He said one of his duties in Shelton was to write the RFP and to get bids. He said he recommended Vision to them and they were not the lowest bid and they got the job and they completed a successful revaluation. He felt comfortable with them then and he feels comfortable with them now. He said this was one of the best integration between the field cards and there mapping system.

Overall looking at the bids they were the second lowest but there is a big disparity between the lowest bid and the other bids. In addition to the software they have the staff and the experience to do the job.

Mr. Miller asked why was Option 1 higher than Option 2 with Total’s bid. Mr. Friia said he thought it was the aggressive stance of wanting to get the software and get the Town.

Sharon Shattuck said that Vision’s presentation was excellent and all the questions that she asked they had the answers. She said when she asked Total they did not have answers to half the questions she asked.

Mr. Major made a motion to retain the services of Vision Appraisal to conduct the 2008 measure and list revaluation of the Town of Weston at the cost of $288,500 under Option 2. Mr. Miller seconded and the motion passed unanimously.

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Mr. Landry said the September Town Meeting authorized the Board of Selectmen to grant an easement for a power run for the cell tower at the transfer station. Town Attorney, Ken Bernhard, has looked at the easement. Attorney Bernhard said the Town Meeting had vested the authority to grant the easement with the Board of Selectmen.

Mr. Major made a motion to authorize the First Selectman to execute the Electrical Distribution Easements as presented. Mr. Miller seconded and the motion passed unanimously.

Respectfully submitted

Judy M. DeVito

Administrative Assistant

Approved 5/17/07