WATERTOWN TOWN COUNCIL REGULAR MEETING › filestorage › 10290 › 4029 › 13443 › 081709_T… · Watertown Town Council Regular Meeting August 17, 2009 Page 5 Nick Biello, 235

MINUTES

WATERTOWN TOWN COUNCIL REGULAR MEETING

SWIFT MIDDLE SCHOOL

MEDIA CENTER MONDAY, AUGUST 17, 2009, 7:30 P.M.

PRESENT: Elaine Adams, Chairman Gary Bernier Mr. Demirs Richard Fusco Carl Mancini Raymond Primini, Vice Chairman Paul Rinaldi Thomas Winn

ABSENT: Richard DiFederico

OTHERS PRESENT: Charles Berger, Town Engineer Dominick Calabrese, Probate Judge Chuck Frigon, Town Manager Paul Jessell, Town Attorney Carolyn Nadeau, Tax Assessor Frank Nardelli, Assistant Town Manager/Finance Director

OTHERS ABSENT: Audio Technician

1. Call Meeting To Order

Ms. Adams, Chairman, Called the Regular Meeting to Order at 7:30 p.m.

2. Roll Call

Ms. LaForme, Board Clerk, executed the Roll Call.

Watertown Town Council Regular Meeting August 17, 2009 Page 2 3. Pledge of Allegiance Ms. Adams, Chairman, led the Pledge of Allegiance.

4. Proclamation – Leukemia, Lymphoma and Myeloma Awareness Month Ms. Adams, Chairman, read aloud the following Proclamation:

PROCLAMATION

Recognizing September as Leukemia, Lymphoma and Myeloma Awareness Month

WHEREAS, blood cancers currently afflict more than 912,938 Americans with an estimated 139,860 new cases diagnosed each year, and

WHEREAS, leukemia, lymphoma and myeloma will kill an estimated 53,240 people in the United States this year, and

WHEREAS, The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, through voluntary contributions, is dedicated to finding cures for these diseases through research efforts and the support for those that suffer from them, and

WHEREAS, The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society maintains offices in Fairfield County and Meriden, Connecticut to support patients with these diseases and their family members in the Town of Watertown, and

WHEREAS, the Town of Watertown is similarly committed to the eradication of these diseases and supports the treatment of its citizens that suffer from them, and

WHEREAS, the Town of Watertown encourages private efforts to enhance research funding and education programs that address these diseases,

NOW THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, that the Town of Watertown joins with the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society in designating the month of September 2009 as Leukemia, Lymphoma & Myeloma Awareness Month to enhance the understanding of blood related cancers and to encourage participation in voluntary activities to support education programs and the funding of research programs to find a cure for them. Dated at Watertown, Connecticut, this 17th day of August, 2009.

_________________________________

Elaine H. Adams, Chairman Watertown Town Council

Watertown Town Council Regular Meeting August 17, 2009 Page 3 5. Public Participation

Brian Croal, 1005 Bunker Hill Road, Watertown, CT 06795

Mr. Croal: I’ve been here in town for 16 years. I’m going to talk about the revaluation. When I received the letter in the mail saying that my taxes were going to be increased, I was appalled. Being the economy what it is, I thought to myself here’s an opportunity for the Town to stick it to the folks here in Watertown. (Inaudible.) In regards to the economy, I paid my taxes and I paid the increase that was due. But to quote a line from an old movie “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore”. I usually don’t show up to these Town Council meetings, but I’m here tonight because I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore. The Governor has given us a respite to defer revaluation until 2011 and I think we should take the lead (inaudible) no matter what we may have paid for the revaluation take a look at it again and take another look. Maybe my taxes haven’t gone up as much as other people’s and let me ask the panel here, does anybody else like paying more taxes in this bad economy year? If anybody here says yes, they probably disagree with everybody who is behind me. So I just ask the panel to take a hard look at rolling back the revaluation to the previous year evaluation.

Leslie Pienczkykowski, 48 Camp Street, Oakville, CT 06779 Jane, Semeraro 17 Fume Street, Oakville, CT 06779

Ms. Pienczkykowski: I’m representing Pat Pienczkykowski the owner of 48 Camp Street.

Ms. Semeraro: This is in reference to the blight issue on 78 Camp Street. We have a neighbor who refused to mow his grass. The town has to come and cut like 3 feet sections, the grass is about 3 feet high. Her mother is inundated with rats. I live right next door. I’m in a panic thinking that now they’re going to infiltrate my property and I would like to see something, anything be done to rectify this problem.

Ms. Pienczkykowski: We actually have 3 properties in the neighborhood that are offenders. This is 36 Camp Street owned by Robert and Bernice Cronk, 22 Fuime Street owned by Ralph Stopper and Deborah Ross and 26 Garibaldi Street owned by Stephen Dagata. We are kind of representing most of the neighborhood here because what is going on is they border a wetlands. The property that is growing the grass at this point some of the weeds are actually taller than I am, I just walked by the property today. They border a wetlands. Unfortunately that wetlands also has snakes and rats in it. What’s happened since all the rain we’ve had this past Summer rats have gone to higher ground to avoid getting inundated by all this water and moisture, they’ve come and burrowed in my parent’s house. We’ve got 12 holes that were observed by the Zoning Commission and also by the Health Department. At this point because there is no blight ordinance we can’t do anything about the properties and all the garbage that’s all over the properties. They also own part of the wetlands and instead of taking care of that property they’ve also been completely overgrown, people are dumping garbage in there and the people that own the property are not taking care of it. Unfortunately the rats seem to have nowhere else to go so they’re coming to our property.

Watertown Town Council Regular Meeting August 17, 2009 Page 4 12 Fiume Street is also getting snakes and grass they can’t even walk across the grass half the

time without coming across something. At 48 Camp we’ve killed 7 rats, found 1 rat dead and 1 rat skull. 45 Camp Street has found 4 dead rats and the neighbor behind us has rat burrows as well, he’s got one about the size of a basketball. He tried measuring down about 1.5 feet and the tunnel curved and he couldn’t measure any further as far as where it goes. The property behind 38 Camp Street has a little girl 5 years old, she can’t go out in the yard without risking health issues or getting bit by something. We all feel that we can’t even access our properties anymore, it’s disgusting it’s a health issue but unfortunately the health department couldn’t find any health code violations to do anything about this. We are asking that the blight ordinance be passed so at least they can maintain their properties by law that they should be required to maintain these properties so it at least eliminates some of the possibility of them coming out of further ground and having other nestings. They’ve got tons of stuff to nest in and obviously they’ve done such.

Ms. Adams: We do have a letter in our pocket from Pat Pienzykowski and I will read that into the record when the times comes, but I will ask the Town Manager to look into this and get back to Pat.

Ms. Pienczkykowski: And they’ve also taken pictures I’m not sure if Zoning has sent you any photos, but they have pictures of the property and the garbage that liters all 3 of these properties, and it’s just becoming a real big problem health-wise and it’s just disgusting to look at.

Mr. Fusco: Have you talked to our Town Manager?

Ms. Pienczkykowski: I know my mother sent a letter to the Town Manager, I don;’ know if they have spoken directly, but we have had Zoning and the Health Department. They were going to carbon copy everyone with letters and he sent something to Sean Williams to see if something can be done there as well and so far they keep coming up empty. They keep saying because there is no blight ordinance, because there is no . . . .

Mr. Fusco: Somebody is playing games with you because I know if you get in touch with our Town Manager, who is the boss, he’ll have something done.

Mr. Frigon: There is a letter attached to her letter in your packet that I have.

Mr. Mancini: Didn’t we talk about this a couple of months ago? We said we were going to send it back to the Ordinance Committee and they were going to come back and they talked about instituting a blight ordinance in town and they said it was too expensive and they were going to wait for the State. Why do we have to wait for the State to do anything? Why can’t we institute a blight ordinance for our Town? I know resources are kind of limited, but we have to do something. This is not the first time these people are coming up here.

Ms. Adams: I think it’s a good point Carl, and Chuck will look into it (inaudible) in 2 weeks, I know he may be off the rest of this week but as soon as possible.

Watertown Town Council Regular Meeting August 17, 2009 Page 5

Nick Biello, 235 Buckingham Street, Oakville, CT 06779

Mr. Biello: This is pertaining to the assessment, revaluation. A soon as I started the petition, I talked to a lot of taxpayers in town and not one has said to me that their tax bill went down or stayed the same, they all have increases. If that’s the case, where is the decreased tax bills to compensate for the increase? If we have a 0 increase budget, what’s wrong with paying the same taxes last year? Last month we talked about you cannot implement the old assessment because the records are gone and the computers are not up to date on the old records, you could go to the Assessor’s office right now, tomorrow, you could ask for a copy of the old assessment. Here’s the house with the new assessment, here’s the house with the old assessment. It was printed out in a matter of seconds so I don’t know why it was said that the records are gone. I understand that we have a legal opinion on the petition. Could we make comments after we hear the legal?

Ms. Adams: There is a second public participation later in the meeting.

Mr. Mancini: Nick asked a question and I think Nick needs to know the reason why zero is

not zero. I mean I think he did ask the question, why can’t we give him an answer? I think Mr. Nardelli has the information of why zero isn’t zero, why you need more money than last year.

Mr. Nardelli: Of course when we talk about zero, the Town is at zero, the Board is at zero, but the bonding costs are at $1,400,000 so you have a $1,400,000 increase for bonding for the 3 new schools. So you have $1,400,000 on the expenditure side increase to pay for the new schools. Now on the revenue side we’re down about $900,000. We have less conveyance fees, less building permits, less interest on investment, so now you’re up to about $2,300,000 that we have to make up. So even though it’s zero on the Town and the Board, so there is still increases for the expenditures for the bond and the decrease in revenues we have to make up.

Mr. Biello: Isn’t the bonding part of the budget?

Ms. Adams: The Town actually is zero increase for operations plus $1,400,000. In essence the Town has all of the bonding on our side of the budget for the schools, say bonding costs go on our side, so we don't have any increase in spending in our operations but we still have $1,400,000 we need to pay for the new bonding, and that’s new money we need for the school bonding.

Joe Perugini, 162 Tarbell Avenue, Oakville, CT 06779

Mr. Perugini: I would like an explanation as to what’s going on with Polk School. I go by there every day and I see all this excavation. Can you tell me what’s going on with this excavation, they’re pushing dirt here and there? The field is the same, that’s been there for who knows how long, I’ve been in this country for 60 years, it’s been like that all the time, so now I see they’re pushing dirt, then they push it back, what is it, special grass they have to seed. What’s going on?


Ms. Adams: I can sympathize with you, I came home from vacation and I saw the fence all around Polk. What that is, we were just talking about the additional bonding for the school renovation, Polk is the third school that will be renovated, that’s what they are doing, renovating it.

Mr. Perugini: Are they renovating the outside? Is it necessary to renovate that? That’s why we pay a lot of taxes. They come and say we need more taxes, we have to go up on taxes. The playground there has been there for years, the kids have been playing there, they get their exercise, they always talk about well vote yes, think about the children, vote yes think about the children. Now they are taking sidewalks out and there is a slab of concrete everywhere. There was nothing wrong with the sidewalks there. I’m familiar with Polk School, I don’t know about the other schools but Polk School I’m familiar because my kids and grandkids went there, I live nearby, I walk around all the time. Another thing at Trumbull School, this year we had a lot of rain, I see there are puddles of water on the field and there are kids running around so you know when it’s wet you’re going to tear all the grass up so people don’t understand that where it’s wet you can’t bring the kids there and tear all the grass up and then all of a sudden they say we need new grass. That’s why the taxes are going up all the time because somebody has to get after these people. Whoever is in charge have to tell them listen, use common sense, when the field is filled with water you don’t bring your kids there. That’s why the taxes keep going up all the time.

Mary Vitkauskas, 69 Buckingham Street, Oakville, CT 06779 Ms. Vitkauskas: I’ve been in the Town for 30 years. I’m not in agreement with the tax

increase. My property taxes went up, my job has been cut as far as hours, we’re in a recession. Jody Rell just passed a law here July 1st about holding off on the reassessment and increase on tax dollars for the people to help them out and give us a credit towards the January, 2009 taxes. I did get a lot of my neighbors to sign a petition and they’re all in agreement as well as I am. I think that the Town is robbing the homeowners here. I’m robbing my piggybank, I don’t have money left, pretty soon it will come to where I’ll be putting up a for sale sign on my property, and I’ve been here for 30 years. As far as schools, my boys are already raised up and everything and the people that are going to these schools are a lot of out of towners. Nobody is checking on this. I don’t know what the double-check is on the people going to the schools. Not many people are having kids now a days because of the recession. Everything just keeps going u as far as the school situation. I don’t see any cutbacks for any of the people in these offices or counselors or anything where everybody else has to cut back. Unpaid tax bills, the collection there, I don’t know how much money is there to be collected but that should be looked at. I think we need a Mayor here to oversee where our money is going to, cause I don’t know where my money is going to. Cell phones paid by taxpayers, I don’t go for that either. Those are my points of problems here in Watertown. I have no answers as far as checking into these schoolchildren going to our schools here. Anybody can go just because the grandmother lives in Watertown and the mother brings them to the grandmother’s house so they can go to our schools, cause they’re better schools, and we’re paying for it.

Ms. Adams: That would be the Board of Education.


Mr. Bernier: If you know of anybody, as a past member of the Board of Education, as is Elaine, that is indeed a situation that the Board of Education does struggle with. To the best of our knowledge (inaudible) if you know of anybody certainly it is very expensive to provide an education for children. We as the Town have a commitment to our children. I certainly agree that if we have anybody in our school system that is from outside the district and are not paying tuition, we certainly need to know about it, so (inaudible)., And again, it’s the Board of Education you need to contact.

Barbara Leandri, 36 Lancaster Street, Oakville, CT 06779

Ms. Leandri: I’ve been a happy resident of Watertown for 28 years until recently, again having to do with the revaluation. My house went way, way up in its assessment and I can’t do it anymore, it’s totally ridiculous. My house is literally falling apart, my taxes went way up and I don’t even have a street light on my street. They’re sending bills and notices to some of my neighbors that they have to pay extra every month to have a street light and I don’t see how they can justify that with all the increases in taxes. It’s a little dead end street and it’s pretty darn scary at night, to go outside with no lights and many single woman like myself, living alone and I just don’t feel safe anymore. There are a lot of issues going on on Lancaster Street. That’s it, I hope things can be done about our taxes, the reval and the street lights and then I’ll be happy again.

Jackie O’Brien, 195 Bryant Road, Watertown, CT 06795

Ms. O’Brien: I’m curious this $1,400,000 bonding, who gave the Town the right to decide that this is the money we’re going to use to do all this work on the schools? I don’t even know how to explain it cause I feel like you guys are charging on a charge card like I used to do. I used to charge on a charge card and I used to say okay, you know what, I don’t have the money but my husband will pay for it. This is how I’m getting it, you guys went ahead and decided to do something.

Ms. Adams: No, 3.5 years ago the Board of Education approached the Town Council asking for renovations for the 3 schools. The Town Council voted to put it to a referendum to the Townspeople to vote whether or not they wanted to spend the money to renovate the High School,, Judson, and Polk. Now mind you we had just finished Swift and prior to that we had built John Trumbull. The voters said yes. Last year we were going through, mind you I can remember Ray’s Letter to the Editor, we projected, our concerns were we had reval coming, we had tax increases, we didn’t even know what was going happen to the economy, it was like the perfect storm, last year the Council asked for a little bit of slowdown, we put a moratorium on the project, and the public outcry was such that we just went ahead with it. This is what the Board of Education and everybody wanted to do. Our concerns then and my concerns still are to this day is that we are going to end up with additional 3 schools, all of our schools will be all set and we’re not going to be able to afford the teachers to be able to put in them so (inaudible).


Ms. O’Brien: I think the confusion came in where the vote of the people, we were under the impression that, not only that, but we were under the impression that the bonding, the State as going to take care of it. We never had an idea that we were going to be taxed extra.

Ms. Adams: I agree there was a lot of confusion.

Ms. O’Brien: Miscommunication and I think that’s why that vote was yes, otherwise I think it would have been no. Because I am just, as I stated last month when I was at this meeting, I lost my job in February. We are a one income family, 2 kids in college, the taxes, I can’t even imagine anyone, my parent’s taxes, they’re (inaudible). They have a fixed income, they have no way of paying that money. My husband, myself and my brother had to pay for those taxes. Where did we have it? Whatever I had in my savings I had to pay that. I had to pay my taxes because otherwise I’m going to get thrown out of my house I’m sure, but I don’t have anything else to give. And this is why Mr. Bernier, as you said last month, this is why we’re losing businesses, this is why people are moving out, we can’t afford it anymore. We’re not Woodbury, we’re not Litchfield. We are not a rich town and most of our people here are elderly, they don’t have it, and most of us are on a fixed income. You just heard another lady who just lost her job, she’s going to lose her house, or she’s going to have to put a foreclosure on her home. You know we need help here. It’s time to listen to us, please, instead of . . . . .

Mr. Bernier: We all understand and agree. As far as the bonding money, the $1,400,000 just to back up what Elaine had said, this is a decision that we made as a town, the taxpayers of this town about 3.5 years ago. Because of the economics being the way they are and the difficulties we were having last year with the bonding, with actually getting a budget, we certainly questioned the Town and we publicized basically equating continuing at the pace we’re on with the schools to passing the budget and it was an overwhelming yes to continue. Now personally I’m a little concerned, we haven’t finished paying the bonding for the first Polk and we’re into a second, but as a public official of this Town we do what the taxpayers wish. When you vote yes in a referendum, then you, as a majority, if the majority of the people vote eyes, then it is up to us to uphold that. We questioned last year how we wanted to proceed with the schools and once again the majority was to go ahead. These are not decisions we are making, these are not decisions this Council is making. These decisions have been made a couple of Councils ago.

Lea Hudak, 79 Evelyn Street, Oakville, CT 06779

Ms. Hudak: I’ve lived in Oakville most of my life. My question to you, you were saying that was last year, Polk, they’re just starting on it now, couldn’t you have had a referendum again to make sure, because the economy is in such a bad state, even worse than last year, so many people are without a job. I myself have two jobs. My first job my pay cut has been cut 20%. Has anybody who works for the Town of Watertown taken a pay cut? Have they considered taking a pay cut? I mean it’s happening all around. 10%, 20%, people are working 3 days, why can’t they sacrifice too, rather than let the taxpayers have to take the increase. That’s all I have to say.


Nancy McCleary, 895 Park Road, Watertown, CT 06795 Ms. McCleary: I’ve been hearing everyone’s stories and everyone is having a hard time

paying their taxes, yet the Recreation Department is pushing forward on their $2,000,000 recreation building up on Park Road. How can we even consider building that thing at this time? Or any time? We do not need that building. It is a luxury and we do not need it. I think the buck should stop here with you. You gave the okay for money. We do not need that building. Thank you.

Roger Otto, 62 Warner Avenue, Watertown, CT 06795

Mr. Otto: I really think the revaluation needs to be rolled back. I spent about 4 hours yesterday going up and down my street. 5 of the people on my street are unemployed, myself included. Quite a few members on my street are on fixed incomes, retired. With this revaluation people don’t realize about this revaluation. A lot of people didn’t realize that even though the budget may be at 0%, in spite of the bonding issue, okay that the revaluation you’re going to see your taxes go up. Mine went up $700.00. I looked at my taxes for the 5 previous years, it went up $375.00 over the 5 previous years, that’s about $75.00 a year, this year it’s gone up $700, almost 10 times what we’ve been getting almost yearly for the last 5 years. Now the Governor and our Legislature saw fit to put through postponing this revaluation for 2 years. I don’t understand why our Town can’t go ahead and do that. I realize that a company ahs already been paid, I found out this afternoon it was about $168,000 to do this reassessment, but that was done in 2007 when the housing market was at its height. The housing market is down, we’re in a recession. I really think the Council needs to look at the suspending this current revaluation, postponing it for 2 years, okay so that people can get through these times. Like all these people are saying, and people are laid off, people are taking cuts, but nobody in the Town is taking a cut, I don’t see anybody in the Town taking a cut, yet our taxes are going up, and it wasn’t until I talked to (Tape #1, Side A ended – may have missed some) and I really think something needs to be done, and I think the Town Council needs to look at this and listen to the people. Okay a lot of us are out there going around with petitions (inaudible) go out I got time every street I can in this Town to get them to sign this petition to send this to referendum if need be to get it rolled back. I really think that you need to listen to the people here. This revaluation needs to be suspended here for the 2 years, that’s why the Governor signed it and put it through to give the people some relief here. Thank you.

Mr. Fusco: Maybe we should explain to these poor people that the legal opinion is, you understand, we’ve gotten a legal opinion and I’m going to tell them if you don’t.

Ms. Adams: Go ahead.

Mr. Fusco: The legal opinion from what I understand is . . . .

Mr. Rinaldi: It’s on the agenda.


Mr. Fusco: It’s on the agenda, but these people are coming up and telling us that they would like to have this petition done, but your petition is illegal, that’s what they’re telling us. I don’t want to bust your bubble but that’s what’s happening.

Unidentified Person from the Audience: How is it illegal?

Mr. Fusco: You’re going to hear this and I don’t want you to be surprised when it comes out. We have a legal opinion in front of us.

Unidentified Person from the Audience: Who gave you the legal opinions?

Mr. Fusco: Our Town Attorney. Now we do, as the Council, and I am with you, I agree with what you’re saying, my taxes have gone up, I’m retired, I don’t like what’s happening, I believe that the company that did this revaluation did a terrible job and I think we should throw them out and get a new company in, that’s my feeling. I don’t know what the rest of you are. This is what I feel.

Unidentified Person from the Audience: How is it illegal?

Ken Margelot, 135 Vail Road, Watertown, CT 06795

Mr. Margelot:: I’ve been going out and getting signatures too, and maybe they are illegal, but maybe you people ought to start going door to door like I’ve been and hear what I’m hearing. All right? Not one single person has not wanted to sign that. Legal, or illegal. Everybody without exception said thank God somebody is doing something, come on in. Now what if, if both of us sign would that help. It’s incredible, the feeling. Not one person has said to me I’m not going to sign that, I think everything is okay. They don’t think everything is okay, not at all. And another thing I was amazed at, the major thing that every one of them talks about, the second thing is the street lights. Why did they take then out of here? Why do we have to live in a dungeon now? Why do I have to carry a flashlight to take my dog out at night? Why do I have to be scared to back out of my driveway for fear I’ll run somebody down? Vail Road, if Mr. Vail was alive I’m telling you he’d be in orbit. He must be turning over in his grave when he sees what Vail Road looks like now. It was a beautiful street; when the sun goes down and it gets dark, it is a dungeon. So thank you for who came up with that bright idea. Okay, and the third thing is, that’s the first two things that come out of people, the third is finally the teachers get to, you know I got a feeling that everybody thinks the problem is the Board of Education, it isn’t just the Board of Ed, there’s these other problems. I don’t care whether it’s legal or illegal, the fact of the matter is that’s what most of the Townspeople want. What do you care about a petition? Can’t you people vote tonight and say you’re going to roll it back?

Mr. Fusco: Yes.


Mr. Margelot: All right, then why don’t you do it? What are you waiting for? Cause if you don’t what I’m prepared to do and most of the rest of them here, is we’re going to vote no, no on the next referendum about the taxes, okay, about so be prepared for that, and I’m asking every one of you that’s (inaudible) to call everybody you talk to and remind them that they vote no, no on that referendum. So we’ll keep doing that until you decide you’re going to take a vote and roll back the assessments. Thanks you very much.

Mr. Bernier: Earlier Mr. Nardelli had discussed the reason why the taxes have gone up. $1,400,000 in bonding that we are, that is not an option, that has already been dictated from a vote a couple of years ago and the loss of a considerable amount of revenue, almost $900,000. The tax increase has nothing to do with the revaluation, it has to do, the revaluation redistributes it. But ladies and gentlemen, with or without a revaluation, your taxes have gone up and there’s nothing that I or you can do about that. If we want to roll back our taxes, if we vote no, no, we’ll turn off more lights, because we have to save money. I don’t know what those answers are, but at the end of the day, your taxes have gone up because there is a deficit between revenues and expenditures and the revaluation is not the cause of the taxes, it’s going to redistribute it, but understand one way or another your taxes are going up.

Annette Derouin, 317 Riverside Street, Oakville, CT 06779

Ms. Derouin: Why can’t the people that work in Town take a cut in pay? Why can’t they pay more on their medical? When I was working before I retired, we paid medical, we took a cut in pay, we took no raise. What’s wrong with this Town? All you’re doing is hurting the people here. And then Gina Calabrese tells people, you can’t afford it, move out of Town. Oh isn’t that wonderful. I’m so happy to live here with people who care.

Stanley Everitt, 1 Everitt Lane, Oakville, CT 06779

Mr. Everitt: I’d like to thank Mr. Fusco for the information about the petition being illegal. At the same time I’d like to ask the Council who hired this Vision that does such a poor job, they have no idea what anybody’s house is worth, and as far as the Town Attorney, how can they defend themselves when these prices have been so fabricated that some of these houses, I know mine has been appraised for at least 3/4 times more than it’s worth, then you go through all the Council, you show them pictures, you show them why your house isn’t worth so much, and then they drop it down a little bit, and then you go to another hearing, Appeals Board, and they listen to you , I don’t even know who these people are, they probably don’t know nothing about building or the inside of your house except what you tell them, and then they maybe drop again, and then Vision on their next day, they start right at the top again, nothing’s been done on the house, and they come out right at the top, how can a lawyer, Town Attorney, defend these prices when we know they are completely wrong. Even the Town Assessor, Mrs. Nadeau who came in my house, and when she finished a walk about I believe I have the (inaudible) after getting spending $300 for an appraisal, (inaudible) attorney to go to one of the hearings, they dropped it down from $136 down to $88 I believe but the assessment, the private assessor assessed it at $72,000 but I kind of let that go and again this year I’m doing the same thing and now you say these things are no good, when people are sticking up for their property.

Watertown Town Council Regular Meeting August 17, 2009 Page 12 How can they get away with it? How can the Town Attorney get away with a bunch of

crooks? I held my wallet up before and I asked anybody in this place, tell me how much money is in here. That’s what Vision does, they sit in front of your house and they say it’s worth so much because according to some article I read written by Mrs. Nadeau, there are 3 companies, if you use their old records it costs you so much, if you use the town’s records it will cost so much and that’s all they’re going by is computers, they know they care nothing about the house, so (inaudible) go on the computer, it will tell you half the story, they don’t tell you the property, they don’t tell you there might be a swamp behind the house, they don’t tell you nothing because they don’t know nothing. I have the same assessor in Bethlehem that (inaudible) 1/8 of an acre of land off 100% because it’s on the waterfront, 1/8 of an acre. (Inaudible.) Can’t fight this, well maybe we need somebody that’s going to fight him.

Robert Gignac, 287 Hamilton Avenue, Watertown, CT 06795

Mr. Gignac: I know Gary was saying our taxes will go up, but will they go up with our revaluation next year? I mean we overpaid $100, $110 it went up this year, this year it went up $700 to $800, and then next year you guys are telling us it’s going to go up another $500 or $600 more. We are going to go bankrupt, and it’s going to be very quickly so you guys got to start thinking too. I mean we have to go back to the old revaluation. I’m not the only one. I don’t go out and get signed, I get hit every store I go into, what do you think of this, what do you thin of this? My taxes are up $1,800. I can’t afford to live here anymore and then going back to what Gina said, you can’t tell people you can’t, if you can’t afford it to move out. You have people who are low class, middle class and upper class in town. But I want to know how much our taxes will go up just without the revaluation? They won’t go up as much I don’t think.

Mr. Bernier: In all candor I couldn’t answer that.

Mr. Gignac: Could Frank answer that?

Mr. Bernier: My concern was and I have talked about why I felt we should not roll back the reval, we won’t rehash that. I’m not debating whether it’s the right or the wrong thing. I certainly want to make sure people understand it’s not the reval that’s raising taxes, the taxes will be raised. How that redistributes, I’m not sure, and I don’t know if Frank could . . . .

Mr. Gignac: Who would know? That’s what everybody is asking. I’m standing her and I’m listening, if our taxes were going to go up about what they were last year, I think people could live with it and get along a little bit with the economy the way it its. I hear people who’s taxes went up $1,800, $900, $700, $400, $500 I mean there’s no set . . . .

Mr. Bernier: That is one of the things, from my understanding, with reval.

Mr. Gignac: If the reval went back and we went, I don’t think the taxes are going to go, I think people could get along better with the way, you know what I’m trying to say? You’re not going to go up $400, $500, $600 this year and you guys are saying next year it’s going to go back up another $400, $500, $600. Where are these people going to get the money?


Mr. Bernier: We are part of those people by the way.

Mr. Gignac: I know you guys are with the taxes, but I’m just saying . . . . I feel like people want to go back because they won’t have to go up as much.

Mr. Bernier: I do see it and I believe everybody at this table also sees it, but . . . .

Mr. Gignac: A lot of people can’t sell their house (inaudible).

Mr. Bernier: Indeed, we are hearing stories and I mean (inaudible) many of the people around this table can share, we are not immune from what has occurred. I personally have taken a 28% cut in pay this year. People who are sitting here have lost their jobs. I don’t know a single person that has any kind of money in a 401k that hasn’t lost 40% of it or better, no matter who you are. The economy is terrible, there’s no doubt about it. My concern with the reval has to do with dollars and cents, the money that we spent, the money that we’re going to need to spend to put it back and more importantly the delay in gathering money which would cause us to have to borrow money, at least short term, (inaudible). I can’t debate, or will I debate, if it’s right or wrong the Governor made this offer, and God Bless her soul. Unfortunately it’s too little too late, and the idea was to save this Town from having to incur this expense. We have already incurred that expense. I mean that’s my editorial. That’s the way I see it. It’s nice that she did this, but there’s not a single municipality that’s taken her up on this.

Mr. Gignac: Torrington has.

Mr. Bernier: Not for this reason. They are questioning the reval company in which they . . .

Mr. Gignac: So are we, so is everybody, they’re asking the exact same thing. Even if we did go back and we got another revaluation in 2 years, to me we’re looking at nickels and dimes for $175,000, we spend that to just heat the schools, that’s what I’ trying to tell the townspeople, you can heat the school for a week, and if you have to do it again in 2 years, it’s going to be $175,000, it’s not $1,000,000, it’s not $2,000,000.

Mr. Bernier: We are trying to be fiscally responsible. I can only speak for myself. There would be an increase, I cannot tell you what it can be, (inaudible) I don’t think anybody can. I looked at Frank and he basically shook his head no.

Mr. Gignac: (Inaudible) figure it out, right?

Mr. Bernier: And it would be different for everybody, because of reval.

Mr. Gignac: I think people would like to see that. I get it just from walking around town. Thank you.


Rosalie Loughran, 319 Thomaston Road, Watertown, CT 06795

Ms. Loughran: I’m taking a break from reval here. I’m here as a Parks and Recreation Commissioner. A statement was just made by Mrs. McCleary about the building that we’re putting up. The building was donated to us . . . .

Ms. McCleary: Oh here we go.

Ms. Adams: Rosalie has the floor please.

Ms. Loughran: I didn’t say anything when you had the floor. The building was donated to us. Our State Representative got us a $600,000 grant to put it up. We are not spending taxpayer money, not one dollar, it will go up within the $600,000 grant that we have. It is for the kids. It is an alternative for recreation when there’s foul weather. It will not be open after the park’s regular hours. We have moved it because of the people’s complaints about not wanting to have it inside the park, to out on Park Road to another piece of property that we have, and as I said, it’s for the kids. It will not cost the town to put up the building and it is not $2,00,000, it is $600,000 grant. If we turn it town and it goes back to the State, it may go to Bridgeport or New Haven. It’s just a case that the people in that neighborhood don’t want it in their neighborhood. And with the kids losing 9 teachers I think it’s nice for Park and Rec to do something special for them.

Mary D’Averso, 1108 Main Street, Watertown, CT 06795

Ms. D’Averso: I’m sick and tired (inaudible) the people. Got to educate the kids, got to educate the kids. I don’t think the kids (inaudible). They stay home with a TV, remote control. The mother says something to the kids, they never get up, they don’t hear nothing. Before when I came over here, the kids used to shovel the driveway to have a little money. Now nothing no more. These kids you got to teach them to work (inaudible) no play games. They look like a dog when they play (inaudible) this is what I see myself. These kids in school we have to teach them the way they have to work (inaudible) spend money too. You give $20, they don’t even look at $20, they want $100. We don’t have nothing. My grandma, if we didn’t work, we go to bed at night with no food. We had to work during the day to eat at night. My grandma said if you don’t work today you don’t have anything to eat. I wish we went back old fashioned a little bit. Another thing we can’t (inaudible) if they want to build a Town Hall because the Town Hall in Watertown is (inaudible). If you go over there maybe the bricks will fall on your head, no place for the cars, people have to park far away to go there, wait for another person to move before you get in. (Inaudible.) We need something new. Schools, schools, schools, how may schools bigger here bigger there, it costs more money to heat, I don’t know. I wish I could manage the town. I’d find a lot of problems. Thank you.


Ron Semeraro, 12 Fume Street, Watertown, CT 06779

Mr. Semeraro: After listening to everybody here, pretty much the public opinion and the board here, pretty much decided that where we are is where we are, you’re not going to cut taxes, you’re not going to change anything, it’s pretty well encased in stone. The question I ask here is we have all these extra little funds here, I heard a Sidewalk Fund, $200,000 who gives a damn about sidewalks in these economic times. Why can’t we just steal the money from that fund and put it towards something else here. It’s sitting there.

Ms. Adams: We can’t.

Mr. Semeraro: Is it illegal? I mean you have money you’re going to spend on a sidewalk

and you’re going to get rid of teachers? While I’m into that mode here, we also have a Board of Education who likes to hire people from out of town. What’s the matter with the people we have in our own town? Are we that stupid? I know of the fact that we’ve got teachers here who are qualified to be principals, vice principals and yet we pass them over and we go out and buy these big dollar people from out of Hartford, New Haven. What’s the story? Can’t we even promote from within? Use our own people? I mean I know people that went to school here, that were educated here and are working here and they can’t even walk up the ladder, they got knocked out from underneath, by someone from out of town. That’s all I have to say.

Mr. Mancini: I agree with you sir, but the only thing is you should be preaching to the Board of Education about that. We can’t do anything about who they hire. I wish we could.

Mr. Demirs: Cause if we did we wouldn’t have.

Ms. Adams: I think one of the difficult lessons you learn on the Town Council is that the only say that you have over the Board of Ed and what they do is the bottom line dollar spending. We give them a number and that is everything (inaudible) expenditures are up to the Board of Education not us and we learn that very quickly when you’re on the Town Council. Another 10 minutes of public participation and then we’ll take a recess, and pick it up again if we need to.

Nick Biello, Buckingham Street, Oakville, CT 06779

Mr. Biello: The Board of Education, every time they come up to the Town Council they want this, they want that, isn’t it the Town Council’s job to see if it has any merit to it before it goes out to referendum? (Inaudible) rehabbing these schools, why can’t you take a tour and see if the sidewalk is broken or not?

Ms. Adams: You mean at Polk?

Mr. Biello: Any school. When the Board of Education asks for $7,000,000 to do the school

project . . . . whatever it is, isn’t it up to the Town Council to take a field trip to see how bad the conditions of the schools are?


Ms. Adams: I know some of us did, I know I did take a look at the schools and everything and the Council voted to let the people decide what they wanted to do. That’s what it came down to.

Mr. Demirs: (Inaudible) referendum (inaudible) repair the schools.

Mr. Biello: Back on the assessment, there is a town in Rhode Island that’s called Barrington, they had the same company to do their revaluation as Watertown did. Right now it’s in a lawsuit. I wish this Council would reconsider about this reval. Next question to Mr. Winn, did your assessment go up?

Ms. Adams: You don’t have to answer, it’s up to you Tom.

Mr. Winn: I can’t answer that question; I never looked it up.

Mr. Biello: Well for the record his went down.

Ken Margelot, 135 Vail Road, Watertown, CT 06795 Mr. Margelot: A couple of things, one of them is when they were talking about the

schools, it was stated we were expecting some new business in town, some new development. Now those tax dollars didn’t materialize. Now as managers, did you ever the old saying that you don’t count your chickens before they hatch, why were we out there doing something when we didn't have the money at hand? Couldn’t the schools have waited another year until these companies or whatever it was we were waiting for developed and we knew we had it and it was in our packet before we went out and spent it. And now we didn’t know about the economy going south, but even the farmers know you don’t count your chickens until they hatch. The other thing is like we can’t do anything about this. What are businesses doing? They are cutting back. And I hear, I read in the paper how happy we are that we got a zero balance, and we didn’t have to eliminate anybody. We should be eliminating people. Just like businesses are eliminating, we should be cutting back. And I know it starts at the Federal level, we should be cutting back there, and at the State level and also at the local level and that’s where we can do something about it. We should be cutting the wages that we’re paying people. What with manufacturing, they’d all be bankrupt if they worked the way you people work. Like well we just go right on and my taxes just went up by $750 but nobody seems to care. We’re still paying everybody and as soon as we get through with this budget, we’ll be passing increases out and we’ll be paying people more money. That is wrong. Why don’t you do what companies do, just take a look at how many people do we have where their title is assistant. They would be the first ones to go. Whoever their boss is should be doing it, never mind assistants. The Board of Education, she has two assistants. For God’s sakes, the woman must not do anything.

Watertown Town Council Regular Meeting August 17, 2009 Page 17 Roger Otto, 62 Warner Avenue, Watertown, CT 06795

Mr. Otto: I just want to take exception to what was said here a little bit ago about the revaluation not being the biggest portion of the tax, I think it is. I called the tax assessor’s office this afternoon, 2007 my 988 sq. ft. house was valued at $92,800. It came out $131,000 now in 2008 with the new revaluation. The total 100% value, I choked when I was told that today, $187,143 is what they’re valuing my 988 square foot house. I laughed at that. I couldn’t get that for my house, I’d be lucky if I got the $131,000 right now. This revaluation is the biggest tax increase. I realize with the bonding increase there’s going to be some increase, but nowhere near what we’re getting now with the $700 increase that I’m going to be paying because of the revaluation. This company, apparently from what I was told, did a drive by or whatever. They didn’t get out, they didn’t come, they didn’t look they didn’t do anything. The last full revaluation was in 1999. This is by the tax assessor.

Ms. Adams: 2003 was a full reval. This one was (inaudible).

Mr. Otto: No, the tax assessor told me 1999. 2003 was when it was supposed to have been done at the 4 years, because our legislature changed it to 4 years, but then they felt it was too much, so she said they switched it to 5 years, and that’s why it came up for 2008 and the reassessment was done in 2007. Okay so she said nothing was done in 2003, it was 1999 when the last full reassessment was done and this was because of all the legislature changes in 2003. But I mean you really have to look at this. Everybody has been saying it tonight. And like this gentleman said here, you go to people’s houses, I haven’t had a person who has refused to sign this. I came across about 10 who said they’d already signed it and wished they could sign it again. I mean the Town Council has to sit up and listen here, they really do. Thank you.

Ms. Adams, Chairman, called a 10 Minute Recess at 8:35 p.m.

Ms. Adams, Chairman, Reconvened the Regular Meting at 8:47 p.m.

Jackie O’Brien, 195 Bryant Road Watertown, CT 06795

Ms. O’Brien: I have a question for Rosalie.

Ms. Adams: No, you can address at the Park and Rec Commission, or you can pull her aside

and talk to her, but we don’t have anything like that here.

Ms. O’Brien: Can I make a statement.

Ms. Adams: Yes, but I would not let her answer it.

Watertown Town Council Regular Meeting August 17, 2009 Page 18 Ms. O’Brien: She is saying that it’s going to cost $600,000 and it’s not coming out of our

pocket. My question is how are we going to maintain that? You’re going to need lights, it needs to be heated, it needs to be cooled, where is that money coming from? If we aren’t paying the $600,000 out of pocket that’s great, but how is the upkeep on this building going to be done and where it the money coming from? It’s going to come out of our pockets, once again. That’s what I want to know.

Nancy McCleary, 895 Park Road, Watertown, CT 06795

Ms. McCleary: This is not a building. We were not given a building. We were given steel girders; it has no roof, no sides, no floor. They said we were going to have to put in a 118 car parking lot, a detention pond because it’s being built on wetlands, and the building is 20,000 square feet which is like an airplane hangar. This is all going to be done for $600,000? That’s amazing to me. We were told at one time it was going to be open until 10:00 p.m., that means lighting and it’s going to be heated, somehow it’s going to be heated. This is a waste of money, especially now. I don’t see how anyone can even consider putting a building of this type up. No other town in the State of Connecticut has a building like this funded by its taxpayers. This is the only town that can afford such a building. Thank you.

Nick Biello, Buckingham Street, Oakville, CT 06779

Mr. Biello: Since the town Attorney’s clock is running, can we hear his legal opinion.

Ms. Adams: He’s on the agenda, yes, thank you Nick.

Ms. Adams, Chairman, closed Public Participation at 8:50 p.m.

6. Minutes A. Regular Meeting – July 20, 2009

MOTION: (Mr. Fusco, sec. Mr. Demirs) to Approve the Regular Meeting Minutes dated July 20, 2009 as presented.

Discussion: None MOTION PASSED UNANIMOUSLY B. Special Meeting – July 24, 2009

MOTION: (Mr. Fusco, sec. Mr. Demirs) to Approve the Special Meeting Minutes dated July 24, 2009 as presented.

Discussion: None MOTION PASSED UNANIMOUSLY

Watertown Town Council Regular Meeting August 17, 2009 Page 19 C. Special Meeting – August 4, 2009

MOTION: (Mr. Fusco, sec. Mr. Demirs) to Approve the Special Meeting Minutes dated August 4, 2009 as presented.


7. Chairman’s Report A. Correspondence 1. Government Finance Officer’s Association Certificate of Excellence in

Financial Reporting presented to Frank J. Nardelli, Jr., Finance Director. Ms. Adams read aloud the following letter: “July 19, 2009 Dear Mr. Frigon: We are pleased to notify you that your comprehensive annual financial report

for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2008 qualifies for a Certificate of Achievement for Excellence in Financial Reporting. The Certificate of Achievement is the highest form of recognition to governmental accounting and financial reporting, and its attainment represents a significant accomplishment by a government and its management.

The Certificate of Achievement plaque will be shipped to: Frank J. Nardelli, Jr. Finance Director Under separate cover in about eight weeks. We hope that you will arrange

for a formal presentation of the Certificate and Award of Financial Reporting Achievement, and that appropriate publicity will be given to this notable achievement. A sample news release is enclosed to assist with this effort. In addition, details of recent recipients of the Certificate of Achievement and other information about Certificate Program results are available in the “Awards Program” area of our website, www.gfoa.org.

We hope that your example will encourage other government officials in their

efforts to achieve and maintain an appropriate standard of excellence in financial reporting.

Sincerely, Government Finance Officers Association Stephen J. Gauthier, Director Technical Services Center”


Ms. Adams: Frank, I think this is 14 in a row?

Mr. Nardelli: Thank you, I appreciate that. Thank you.

Ms. Adams: Again we’re looking at what? 14 consecutive ones. I just want to thank you, not only for myself as Chairman of the Council but also as Elaine Adams, taxpayer. I have no concerns here in what you tell us and what you do brings us to the point of where we are awarded you are awarded and your staff a certificate of accomplishment very year and definitely when it comes in we’re going to do it in Council formally to recognize your efforts and that of your staff.

Mr. Nardelli: Thank you, I appreciate that, thank you. 2. Letter from Patricia Pienczkykowski, Re: Blight Issues at 38 Camp Street,

dated August 3, 2009. Ms. Adams read aloud the following letter: “Dear Mr. Rafey: As per our conversation, enclosed please find a petition regarding the

problem with the wetland and property at 38 Camp Street, in the name of Cronk.

Enclosed, also, is a letter we wrote on 21 April 2007, regarding the blight and

snake problems that we were having. Here it is over two (2) years later and still nothing has been done. The only thing that has been remedied is that the son of the owner of 52

Camp Street has purchased the house from his parents and is cleaning it up. When Sean Williams secretary contacted the Town Manager’s office, she was

told that the Town Manager has never been notified of a problem concerning our neighborhood.

There has to be some sort of solution to this matter!! When I spoke to Rob Rubbo from the Health Department he said he would

like to get you and the Town Manger together and maybe the three of you could come up with a solution.

Please let me know how we can go about resolving this dilemma!!!! Patricia J. Pienczykowski 48 Camp Street”

Watertown Town Council Regular Meeting August 17, 2009 Page 21 Ms. Adams: Chuck is going to be looking into this.

Mr. Frigon: Yes, I have the letter attached to the appropriate departments asking each of them to report back to my office as to why this condition has been allowed to exist over the last decade or so. So they will be looking into that and getting back to me.

3. Letter to Honorable Vickie Nardello from Representative Sean Williams,

dated July 20, 2009. Ms. Adams read aloud the following letter: “Dear Representative Nardello: I write today to correct the record regarding the July 7, 2009 Waterbury

Republican American article (“Politics complicates funding for power plant”).

First and foremost, you state that you chose House Bill 6636 as the bill to

place your amendment to end retail electric competition for residential and small business customers because “Republicans use procedural tactics to prevent a bill on consumer choice to go forward on its own”. This statement is utterly false. The fact of the matter, as you well know, is that our joint rules give the House and Senate Co-chairs the exclusive power to place items on committee agendas. You are also aware the senate Co-Chair of the Energy and Technology Committee would not agree to place your “consumer choice” bill (which, incidentally, would end consumer choice) on our committee agenda because he, like I, fundamentally oppose the concept. This was not, as you claimed in the article, due to “procedural tactics”, by Republicans, but because of a fundamental philosophical difference between you and Senator Fonfara.

Secondly, I disagree with your statement that your proposal idea enjoys broad

based support throughout the legislature. It is fairly common knowledge in the Capital that most of not all members of the Senate Democratic caucus, Senate Republican caucus, and House Republican caucus are opposed to your proposal to end retail competition. To assert that your proposal enjoys support from the majority of ;legislators, at best, a fantasy.

Watertown Town Council Regular Meeting August 17, 2009 Page 22 Lastly, and for the record, in the waning hours of the 0209 legislative session,

I and other members of the house, from both side of the aisle, made several attempts to broker a deal with you that would allow some bills that you supported to be acted favorably upon in the House in return for your support in passing HB 6636 without your controversial amendment to end consumer choice. To the dismay of several House Democrats who desperately needed some of these bills in order to help groups in their respective districts, you rejected each of these attempts, citing your strained relationship with Senator Fonfara. You explicitly told me and some of our colleagues that your fear was that, if we voted our bills out of the House, Senator Fonfara would e inclined to act favorably on our bills but not on yours. Essentially this came down to you saying that if you couldn’t have what you wanted, no one could have what they wanted.

It is my fear that if your policy going forward is going to be one of “If I don’t

get what I want, no one gets what they want,” that we will continue to be seen as the most dysfunctional committee in the General Assembly for a second straight year.

I hope and trust that you are having a relaxing summer before the start of

another busy legislative session in February. Sincerely, Sean Williams”

Ms. Adams: This is in reference to the Tamarack project and how we hoped the legislature would pass (inaudible) bill to relieve our taxes here in town.

4. Correspondence from Ed Undercuffler regarding Revaluation, dated August

3, 2009. Ms. Adams read aloud the following letter: “Elaine: After reading comments from people who want to delay the new valuation, I

thought I’d pass along a few thoughts. As has been pointed out, a delay would mean added future expense in having

to do a new valuation. Perhaps more importantly, however, a delay would mean that tax inequities that a revaluation is intended to resolve would also be delayed. The revaluation does not increase the overall tax burden, as the vocal minority seem to claim. It merely adjusts it more fairly. Perhaps those who claim big increases in their tax bills have been getting a break up until now.

Watertown Town Council Regular Meeting August 17, 2009 Page 23 I urge you to hold your ground and not delay the revaluation. Ed Undercuffler” 4. Municipal Agent Reappointment

Ms. Adams: I have an appointment to make, by the Chief Elected Official,

Darryle Willenbrock to the position of Municipal Agent. My understanding is that is part of her job and this is just a formality for her to continue on in it.

5. Budget Referendum

Ms. Adams: We have a budget referendum a week from tomorrow, August 25th. It’s important to note the Polk School vetoing district since we have the fence up all around Polk now will not be used as a polling place. Polk School voters will voter here at Swift along with Swift, Heminway will continue at Heminway Park School that district there, and voters who normally vote at Judson will still vote at the church. So that’s important to note.

8. Subcommittee Reports A. Public Buildings Subcommittee – David Demirs

Mr. Demirs: I am glad to report that Judson School will be open for the school year on the 31st. It’s almost complete. It’s about 90% complete. There are a few areas that aren’t complete, the stage in the gymnasium and the gymnasium, but they are moving in and it is moving along, they will be open for August 31st. As you know Polk is under construction right now and the school will be moved to Heminway so all the classes at Polk. The High School construction is ongoing. They will open for business as usual. They’ve done a tremendous amount of work, we have a walk through Wednesday night, I haven’t been in there probably for about a month and a half but I will have more to report.

B. Public Works Subcommittee – Raymond Primini

Mr. Primini: Chuck Berger is here tonight to speak about everything we discussed at the last meeting so in an attempt to help move this meeting along, (inaudible) defer everything when Chuck Berger speaks.

9. Town Manager’s Report Mr. Frigon: Debt Refunding I’m sure you were all as surprised as I was to learn the results of our refunding of our debt.

$834,000.56 over the next 14 years, $656,000.00 this year. Frank, if you want to report on the actual sale itself.


Mr. Nardelli: On Wednesday July 22, 2009 Barry Bernabe, our Webster Bank Financial Advisor advised us that there could be a possible bonding refinancing we could save about $500,000. We contacted the Town Council and had a special meeting on Friday night which actually helped to move this along as fast as we could to get to the market. We prepared the Town’s official statement, we went in front of Moody’s for a rating review, we had a due diligence call with the bonding attorneys and we hit the market on Monday, August 10th, first thing in the morning. There were other issues going on, the State of Connecticut was going to the bond market that week, so was Waterbury. Luckily the way the market turned out we were able to save $834,000 in bonding costs of which $756,000 could be utilized in 2009/2010 and that’s net of all the issuance costs, attorney’s fees, Moody’s reports and bond counsel, so we ended up issuing $18,760,000 of bonds over 14 years at 7% and what we did was we refunded, well we’re going to call bonds that were paying 4.5% on so again there are two issues to this. One was we got the low interest rate on bonding. The second is we take this money and put it into an escrow account and the treasury notes went up, so as that money sits in escrow we’re earning more for the treasury notes and we would get a low rate on these bonds so it’s a complicated issue but again I want to thank Barry Bernabe for bringing this to our attention and thanking the Council for moving so quickly so we were able to get to the market, cause we actually, we hit it right, we went from $500,000 to $834,000.

Ms. Adams: One of the questions I had is with that money, now we have a budget that is all set to go to referendum, now I know it’s a complicated decision, how could that possibly be used if the Council decides to do it, to offset taxes this year, how would we implement that?

Mr. Nardelli: Well the Council has a lot of different options. The $756,000 that we saved for this year, if you strictly just took that, you could reduce the mill rate by like .2 of a mill, a little under half a mill to reduce the mill rate for the 09/10 year. You could stretch it out over other years, it could go into fund balance, we could set up debt service fund, there’s a lot of other options you could research if you don’t want to take it all in one year. When I say all the $756,000 within one year, the $834,000 is scheduled to come in over other years, yea the balance of that, but you could use that to reduce the mill rate this year. We’re going to be paying $756,000 less this year in bond costs, our interest and principal which is about say $7,000,000, well that’s going to drop to like $6,300,000.

Ms. Adams: So it comes down to it doesn’t affect our budget whether we do then (inaudible) once the budget passes set a lower mill rate if the Council chose to use that money for this budget year.

Mr. Nardelli: That’s correct.

Ms. Adams: Does anybody have any questions? Frank, thank Barry from us for being on the ball. Thank the Council members for coming out on a Friday night. (Inaudible.)

Mr. Frigon: I’ll continue my report.

Watertown Town Council Regular Meeting August 17, 2009 Page 25 Geese Ordinance At the last meeting it was requested that my office move the Geese Ordinance along. I have

forwarded a letter off to our Town Attorney making some suggested changes to our Code of Ordinances. The Town Attorney will comment on those, incorporate them into an ordinance and get them off to the next Ordinance Subcommittee meeting.

Mr. Fusco: There was a gentleman that spoke last week and he made a lot of sense. We have Deland Field. When the geese fly by, they look and they see this fenced in area, with a sign that says no trespassing. But if we open up the doors and let people walk in there the geese would fly away.

Mr. Frigon: People can walk in there.

Mr. Fusco: There are no trespassing signs, no dog walking, I mean there are a lot of signs there.

Mr. Bernier: Well we don’t want to walk dogs.

Mr. Fusco: Well one dog does a poop, 100 geese do it, which one do you want to have?

Mr. Frigon: There are individuals in Town and I am one of them that does take my dog down to the field. Certainly no one has ever complained. I believe that the Parks and Rec have sanctioned a group of people with dogs individually to go down there as I do during the day, the geese go away, we’re there for 1.5 to 2 minutes, and all of those efforts are implemented now, but they don’t work as well as . . . ..

Mr. Fusco: The reason I bring that up, you take Taft School, they let people walk their dogs there (inaudible) but there are no geese there. You’re putting an ordinance to say to the geese don’t come into our town. They’re not going to listen.

Mr. Rinaldi: Since I’m not working anymore I have a lot of time to drive around town and I just want to add to what Richie just said, I agree with him. If you go down to Oakville these days, probably once in a morning and once in the afternoon, they cross the street, they hold up traffic, is it illegal to run them over? I’m serious. They are getting to be a real problem, not just in Watertown, you drive down Route 8, the corridor and you’ll see them everywhere Naugatuck, Ansonia, they are all over everything you can possibly think of.

Mr. Bernier: For lack of a better word, are we utilizing an air gun, a sound type of mechanism?

Mr. Frigon: No.

Mr. Bernier: Somebody is. I happened to be at Watertown Transmission the other morning and I heard this god awful sound, and when I looked out somebody had a pickup truck and (inaudible).


Mr. Frigon: Were there any other activities because the pitching machine is a pneumatic machine and it has a God awful air sound.

Mr. Bernier: It very well might have been. It was a pick up truck. I did not notice if there was a (inaudible) pickup truck or not.

Mr. Rinaldi: Sure it wasn’t a (inaudible).

Mr. Bernier: No, it certainly was an air sound. There was no gun powder or anything.

Mr. Mancini: Chuck, I applaud you for taking care of the geese, but you heard the lady here tonight talking abut rats in her yard.

Mr. Frigon: I’ve taken care of that as well and I’ve reported on that.

Mr. Mancini: Make sure we get something done with that because I know it might cost money to take care of but I think we have to address it. We can’t just let people off the hook because we don’t have the money to address it, so we really have to figure out a way of (inaudible).

Watertown Renewable Stan Everitt did stop by to speak at the last meeting as well regarding Watertown Renewable.

I did call Mark Mirabito from Watertown Renewable, he did in fact speak with Mr. Everett and it appears from the memo that I received, the answers have been given to him and I would hope the answers were sufficient.

Watertown Food Bank I want to go on record and thank Maurice Fabiani of the Oakville Pin Ship, he has donated

some space in Building 8, the first building on the left as you go down the hill towards Waterbury. It is a first floor space and he is donating the space to the Watertown Food Bank at no cost, other than we will be responsible for the insurance and the utilities. We are working out the details of that now, but I want to thank him for standing to the plate and working with the Food Bank.

Ms. Adams: I think it’s important also for many, many years the church on the green housed the food bank, took it over several years ago. I think we should thank them and recognize them for their contribution to the citizens of the town. I guess the congregation is at that church, they are no longer able to do this for us. I’d like to do this at the next Council meeting.

Skilton Road Bridge Chuck Berger is here to report on that tonight.


Mr. Berger: I apologize for handing things out at the meeting. There are two different things there. The first 3 pages are sort of a project summary that I’ll go through briefly. I’m not going to read it, I’ll hit some of the high points and check out the projects you are most interested in. The second bunch is a status report, update on the Greenway and a map, a condensed version.

To being with, I’ll start with the Skilton Road Bridge, cause Mr. Frigon mentioned that. One

bid came in on August 6th which was significantly over budget, so we did not accept that. We worked through the Public Works Subcommittee and Haested Engineers from Waterbury has been hired to do a design report fro us and come up with a cost estimate. I spoke with Don Smith from Haestad this afternoon and we expect to have that report ready for us in about 3 to 4 weeks and he is actively working on that and will come up with some ideas and a better cost estimate for us to make decisions as to how to move forward on it.

Going back up to the top of the list, French Street Milling & Paving – there is an item on

tonight’s agenda for a resolution to support that project. That is our shovel ready project. We have to do 2 design submissions to D.O.T., our final design has to be in by December 15th and the funds have to be obligated by March, 2010. D.O.T. is concerned that the project funds have been capped at $730,000, their estimate is a little bit higher than that at this point. Worst case D.O.T. is saying based on their very preliminary estimates that the Town’s share might be as high as $144,334. In Roy’s memo which is in the packet, he indicates we’ll have to monitor that estimate. For example the estimate for D.O.T. is usually for a paving number. Based on last year’s paving numbers, which were very high, in paving alone today we’re seeing a reduction of about $420.00 a ton, we’re seeing about $80.00 a ton, the D.O.T. estimate carries $100 a ton, so right there is about $74,000 that we feel the D.O.T. is high on.

Mr. Primini: That was because of the type of asphalt that they usually recommend for like the highway, we use different grades, it’s a higher grade.

Mr. Berger: I think that’s an important project to keep moving forward and we again hope to mill and pave the whole thing next Spring and Summer.

Ms. Adams: That’s the stimulus money.

Mr. Berger: That is the stimulus money, that is no local matching as long as we stay under the cap which we hope we will be able to do. Worst case, depending on what the LOCIP, and local road program does we may have to tap into some of that if we do go over what the cap is, or maybe other towns won’t be as on the ball as we are and lose some of the money cause we will be ready there’s no doubt about this one.

Merriam Lane, the bids were opened on June 2, 2009, gas line relocation is underway. The

construction firm is waiting in the wings to get out there and take that hump out of the road. We hope to see that happening within the next couple of weeks, the actual construction company other there.

Watertown Town Council Regular Meeting August 17, 2009 Page 28 Bunker Hill/Barnes Road – that has also been out to bid and awarded. Preconstruction and

utility meetings have been held and we’re waiting for the utilities to be moved out of the way so Cocchiola can get in and do that site line improvement and minor drainage work.

Guernseytown Road – Phase 2 – is full speed into construction. The majority of the drainage

work is in on Guernseytown Road, a substantial part of it is in on Charter Oak as well. They are actually now beginning the road reconstruction, digging up and placing the gravel that’s supposed to be in there. We have allowed a temporary closure of Guernseytown Road between Crestveiew Drive and Platt Road to allow for that large fill section to go in by the wetlands that routinely floods the road. Not only will it provide an easier way to construct it, but it also provides a safer traffic flow to get the traffic out of there while we’re filling the road 5 feet in that area. They will also have the paving in that section by the 28th of this month, the road will be reopened for school bus traffic by the first day of school. They are ahead of schedule, they are planning at a minimum to get the base course of pavement down for the entire street of Guernseytown Road before the snow flies this year and I can’t say the weather has cooperated, but if we get a good Fall, their goal is to get the top course down but they won’t commit to that at this point.

Sunnyside Avenue – final design submission was made a couple of weeks ago. The D.O.T.

has begun the permitting process. The current schedule for D.O.T. calls for our final design to be completed in March, 2010. What funds are available at that point will be obligated. Because of the large estimated construction cost, it will have to be funded over 2 years. The project will be advertised in December, 2010 with the remaining funds obligated right after bid opening and construction is scheduled to begin in the Spring of 2011. Our semi final design cost estimate $3,525,000 of which that will be paid for by D.O.T. and inspected by D.O.T.

Ms. Adams: We’ve already taken our obligation, the Town has already done the in kind work for this.

Mr. Berger: And we are continuing to complete the design, it’s been a while since we’ve made a design submission on that, this has been an ongoing project that sort of, we wanted to get the Guernseytown Road project completed, now this one is back on the front burner so to speak, we will be following through in the design efforts to get this out to construction, although somewhat waiting for the D.O.T. money to get into place.

Turkey Book Flooding/Maintenance Complaints – that we’ve had over the past month.

Depending on which record you use, Albany Broke Record, Hartford was just under the all time record for rainfall amounts, we are about 3 times over what we normally get in July so we had a number of drainage complaints, although not really the number I would have expected having 3 times as much rainfall as what we normally have. We did have a number that we responded to.

Watertown Town Council Regular Meeting August 17, 2009 Page 29 One of the ones that I’d like to comment on was the Turkey Brook flooding complaint.

There are a couple of things to remember about Turkey Book. Turkey Brook is a drainage improvement project. We called it that because we couldn’t meet the State standards for a flood control project. The project has done a real good job of providing protection for the more frequent storm events, but in the area between Sunnyside Avenue and Falls Avenue, that area we will not really get the full benefits of the Turkey Brook drainage project until we remove and replace the Sunnyside Avenue culverts. That stretch between Sunnyside Avenue and the Senior Center is still a backwater area. The flooding is caused by the inadequate culverts under Sunnyside Avenue, so although we’ve made some minor improvements in that area, those people will really see the full benefits of what we originally designed and built after Sunnyside Avenue is done. There has been some concerns about the lack of maintenance on the brook channel since it was reconstructed. Maintenance in that particular section of brook, as long as the culverts don’t clog, really aren’t going to make a different until the culvert is replaced. The flooding is caused by the culverts backing up water on the property and whether or not we clear cut the area now or not really wouldn’t make that much of a difference in flooding until those culverts are re[laced. Recognizing the need to maintain the project we are working on an operations maintenance plan and it’s not as simple as just going in and clear cutting (Tape #2, Side A ended – may have missed some) significant planting plan in place and it’s going to be somewhat of a labor intensive and very selective maintenance program because there are plants that are in there that were planted on purpose and brush out of there with a big mower on a boom so that is one thing that we are looking into and will follow through on.

Greenway/Walkway – I guess the big update on that is we received official State designation

in June of this year and we are now shown on the official State greenway map, the conceptual route study has been completed using that $5,000 grant that we got from D.E.P. the Small Greenways Grant. We have a pending STEAP Grant application at OPM for design and construction of the lower and middle section. We’ve begun to assemble sample easement documents for use in further negotiation with the property owners. And the second part of your packet is sort of the most recent update that I’ve been using to hand out to people to tell then where we’re at and what our vision is for that.

Indoor Recreational Facility – As was talked about earlier tonight, this is a STEAP grant

from January, 2008. We had developed a detailed site plan for a site within the park area, getting access off the loop road. Based on concerns from a number of individuals in town and request from the Inland/Wetlands Commission during the permit process, we did a detailed investigation of alternatives. The alternative location off of Park Road looks to be feasible. We have withdrawn the Wetlands applications and we’ll be preparing a detailed site plan this fall for the alternative location.

Steele Brooks/Heninway Pond Damn – The watershed base study for the Steele Brook

Watershed has been completed, it was completed in June of this year. That watershed base study was really the first part the D.E.P. and E.P.A. made us go through in order to continue to seek funds for further activities, such as the Heminway Pond damn removal. We did convince them to make the feasibility study part of the watershed plan which again has been completed using E.P.A. funds from the State D.E.P.

Watertown Town Council Regular Meeting August 17, 2009 Page 30 They reserved the second phase of this if you will, they reserved funding for us, however the

Natural Resource Conservation Service who worked with us on the first phase, recently told us their work load is such that they can’t assist us in moving forward with the design phase. We are working with D.E.P. we are continuing to express our interest in seeing the project move forward and we are willing to take the administrative lead and if necessary instead of using a federal agency to do the work, use the grant money to hire a consultant tog et the grant removal design done.

Fox Crossings/Hidden Oaks – this is not really a Town project, but it’s something we’ve

been spending some time on recently. That is the extension of Kimberly Lane and Lovely Drive. We’ve been working closely with the developer, as well as the Planning and Zoning Commission to assure the completion and acceptance of the subdivision this year before the Winter. Although there are many items on the punch list, we are really focusing on the road reconstruction and paving efforts out there as many of you may be aware or heard, the road is a major issue, we are working closely with the developer and he has indicated he will be rehabilitating and repaving the week of August 24th and we intend to hold him to those dates.

Free Document Shredding - at the Fall Festival, sponsored by the Council of Governments.

Ms. Adams: The free document shredding, I know that’s huge for people, especially in these days of people pirating your identity. I’d like to do some publicity on that, I don’t know if there are any limits to what they can shred or how it’s going to work, so just so people are informed, that would be great.

Mr. Berger: We can certainly do a press release and we’ve also used the Town website for notices a well so we’ll do both.

Mr. Frigon: We have a number of other projects that we are working on as well, smaller but nonetheless significant, Bunker Hill paving, when the State finally arrives on a budget and our money is released to us we’ll commence with that as well as Section VIII completion and Section IXZ paving. I also want to point out that it was said earlier that the Town should also realize layoffs as the private sector does. You’ve just heard an awful lot of work laid out for you, there is a tremendous amount of effort that goes into all of this and in fact it is the Engineering Department that a body was laid off from, so we did have layoffs, we are trying to work as efficiently as we can and I want to applaud Chuck Berger and his department because this is an awful lot of work and I want to thank you Chuck, great job.

10. New Business A. Updates on Probate Court Merger – Judge Calabrese

Ms. Adams: Judge Calabrese had asked that he be put on the agenda so he could explain what is going on with the merger of the court. We do have a letter in our packet from Paul Knierim, Probate Court Administrator.


Judge Calabrese: I just have a couple of handouts if I could pass them out. What you’re getting are two things. One is a color map of the proposed probate district mergers and the other is the probate assembly 50 court proposal and that list, what the new districts are going to be configured as, the population that they’re going to serve and (inaudible) just for the purposes of the public who is here, the probate system in Connecticut is being reformed, we are going from 117 probate courts to 50 probate courts in an effort to save money. There are 4 steps to this process. The first step is completed, and that was for all probate judges to get together and put together a 50 court plan which you see before you. The next step is going to be the redistricting commission which has been put into place and is having a public hearing on Thursday at the State Capitol, and then from the redistricting commission it’s going to a special session of the legislature in October and if the legislature approves the plan at that point it goes to the governor for her signature, and if the Governor signs it, this plan goes into place effective January, 2011.

In terms of what it means for us here in Watertown, as you know back in 2002

Watertown merged with Woodbury and Bethlehem to form what is known as the Woodbury probate district and we serve a population of about 35,400, however that configuration was not large enough to stand alone in this new process and while I had hoped to avoid a scenario where we would merge with Southbury, because there were 50 courts and not 51 courts, we are at a scenario right now where it’s likely although not definite that the probate district that Watertown and Oakville will be a part of, will consist of the existing district plus the towns of Washington, Roxbury, and Southbury. And that will comprise the district of about 61,000 people, it’s likely that the location of the court for that district is going to be in Southbury and the reason for that is that Southbury really has excellent facilities, they’re oversized, very modern. The Woodbury facility, while that is equipped for our purposes, at least the current administration in Woodbury is not willing to give us ore space, however my feeling is that the Woodbury location would be better for the people in the district because Woodbury borders every single town in this proposed district. I think the location is still up in the air, I think more than likely it will be Southbury rather than Woodbury, but I’m still hoping that there might be a possibility that the court can remain located in Woodbury. There is also an outside chance that the district lines that you’re looking at can be changed either by the commission or perhaps in the legislature but at this point I think the outcome is a little more certain than when I addressed the Town Council back in June.

In terms of the cost to the Town, as many of you probably know, the probate system

is a self sustaining system so the expenses for the system for the employee wages and benefits and so forth come from the user fees that are generated by the probate court and the only thing that the Town pays for is office space, microfilming, utilities, copy machine, things of that nature. I think in Watertown it’s about $7,000 a year is what it costs us. I was actually able to lower that budget by about 11% for the coming fiscal year.

Watertown Town Council Regular Meeting August 17, 2009 Page 32 In terms of how it’s going to affect the service of the public, as long as I’m the

probate judge I’m going to work as hard as I can to maintain the informal nature of the probate system. Obviously it’s going to be a much larger court, regardless of the configuration than we’re currently using right now, although if you look around the State, you can see there are some districts particularly in the northeast and northeast corners where there are 6 or 8 or 10 towns in a district, so I think we’re in better shape than those areas and I think in terms of the cost to the Town, there’s not going to be an extra cost to the Town because existing facility should be adequate and there’s not going to be a need to contract them. Some people had proposed an idea of creating a district which would be Watertown, Litchfield, Thomaston, Harwinton, but the problem with a configuration like that even though it maybe geographically closer for those of us in Watertown, I don’t believe the facilities that exist in Litchfield would be adequate to serve such a district and that would require an expansion of facilities, and based on what I’ve seen, the Town is going to have to pick up some portion of that cost. So I think as I see the process moving forward, I don’t foresee an added cost to the Town of Watertown at this point. There are going to be other towns that are going to be participating and they’re going to be contributing to the expenses of the court. If there are any questions, I’d be happy to address them at this point.

Mr. Fusco: What do we do with all the probate judges? Do they all serve a certain district or somebody disappears?

Judge Calabrese: Exactly, we are going from 117 judges to 50 judges.

Mr. Fusco: So we elect the judge, right?

Judge Calabrese: That’s right, we elect the judges.

Mr. Fusco: So how would that go about? We would work with all of these towns and elect?

Judge Calabrese: That’s exactly right. So the vote for example, if the plan you see before you is the plan that the Governor signs, then for our district, the towns that would be voting for the election of probate judge in November of next year would be the towns of Watertown, Bethlehem, Washington, Roxbury, Woodbury and Southbury.

Mr. Fusco: And we would have how many judges in that district?

Judge Calabrese: One.

Ms. Adams: Wow.

Judge Calabrese: It’s a drastic reduction.


Ms. Adams: I think the thing that amazes me is when people come before your court, it’s not in, it’s (inaudible), they’ve lost a loved one, they need custody or guardianship of a child and it sounds to me that what the State is doing, cause I understand you self support, there is no problem with your district with everything that you needed to pay for you got form the fees, there weren’t any issues that you were losing money like some of these other courts.

Judge Calabrese: We sent money back to West Hartford because we sent a lot of money back to West Hartford.

Ms. Adams: And the thing that I find troubling is now, there’s no way you’re going to be looking at a waiting list, and you can have things that are going to be put off because there are only so many hours in a day. I mean where is the benefit to us? Where we were able to generate enough, we were sending some back, it just doesn’t seem right.

Judge Calabrese: Yea, I think Chairman Adams, the issues that gave rise to this whole consolidation process is the fact that there were some expense that the system was incurring that have grown substantially in the last few years and they’ve grown to the point where the system can no longer sustain them, and there’s really two items, one is indigency fees. In any court system if someone appears before the court and they can’t afford an attorney and they can’t afford the entry fees, those fees are waived and the system has to absorb them. And those fees have more than doubled in the last 7 years, it’s almost $5,000,000 a year now and the other expense is the cost of medical benefits for employees, retirees. The probate system in Connecticut is the only department in the State government where the benefits of the employees who are retired come out of the system and not out of the general fund so part of what is going to happen here is that the State will now be kicking in money from the general fund to support this system to the degree that it may need money which it hasn’t needed so far.

Mr. Fusco: Going back to the election again, we’ve got all of these towns. Say you wanted to run, you would have to go to each town and campaign?

Judge Calabrese: Exactly.

Mr. Fusco: And there are other people doing the same thing?

Judge Calabrese: Exactly, right now there are 4 probate judges within the district that looks like Watertown will be a part of. One of them is the judge in Roxbury who said that she is going to retire. The Washington judge I don’t believe is going to be running again. One of the other reforms that this process gave rise to is the fact that probate judges now must be members of the bar of the State of Connecticut. Up to this point lay people could serve as probate judges; beginning with next year’s election only sitting lay probate judges would be eligible to run, otherwise one would have to be an attorney, admitted to the Bar of the State of Connecticut to be eligible to run and serve as a probate judge in the State of Connecticut.


Mr. Primini: As you know I lost both of my parents in the past year, I’ve been dealing with the Waterbury probate judge for over a year now. I can’t imagine with the influx of new towns how they can possibly keep up with this. I’ve been going well over a year now and I still have no results, I’ve got everything, I didn’t realize what I was getting into, but everything is just tied up.

Judge Calabrese: Sure. No one ever said probate is a fast process. I can tell you that right now. And in terms of what I believe I can do in moving things along as a probate judge, you are dealing now with only 50 courts where before there were 117 so the courts are going to be a lot larger now, and while I think most of the judges would say as I’ve said, that we’re going to do everything we can to make sure this doesn’t result in additional delay, I think it’s almost inevitable that there will be some additional delay because you’re going you have fewer people doing the same work that was done by many more people before.

Ms. Adams: It’s too bad because I know 2002 when Carey Gaghan retired he was instrumental in starting this whole process with the merger with Bethlehem and Woodbury in hoping that we could avoid this. Unfortunately . . . . .

Judge Calabrese: Yea, the cut was just too big. If it were 60 courts we wouldn’t be in this situation but it is 50 courts, and it is what we have to deal with. I think the people of Watertown have already done their part in dealing with a merged court, in dealing with the court that’s not located in Watertown anymore and I wasn’t about to sit by and let that be divided up again to the detriment of our town, especially given what I heard earlier today about finances and so forth. I didn’t want the town to be on the hook to build a new facility somewhere or to greatly improve another one. Again the Southbury, their facility is fine as it is and even Woodbury I think there would just be a minimal expansion needed at a minimal cost if that was necessary. Obviously there are two more steps involved. The redistricting commission has to make their decision and then it has to go to the legislature so as those things develop I will be sure to let you know how things move forward but obviously the consolidation process itself is underway and there’s no turning back from this.

B. Consider the Reappointment of Lisa Carew to the Northwest Regional Tourist

District Representative for a Term to Expire July 31, 2011 MOTION: (Mr. Primini, sec. Mr. Mancini) I move to reappoint Lisa Carew as

the Town of Watertown representative to the Northwest Regional Tourist District for a term to expire July 31, 2011.


Watertown Town Council Regular Meeting August 17, 2009 Page 35 C. Consider the Disposition of the Petition and Proposed Ordinance regarding the

Reinstatement of the Old Property Assessments

Ms. Adams: We have here tonight Paul Jessell our Town Attorney and Carolyn Nadeau, our Assessor. I know we’ve had a lot of questions about this, we asked Paul to determine the validity of the petition so he is here for questions.

Atty. Jessell: If you’d like me to just explain briefly what the legal opinion says, the legal opinion is limited to the specific issue of whether or not the questions presented on the petition are appropriate subjects for an imitative and referendum under our Town Charter. There are two aspects to that. One is the strictly procedural aspects, and that is the make up of the petition itself and quite frankly the petition is lacking in that regard in several salient respects, one it’s supposed to state an ordinance in terms of an ordinance, in other words be enacted that, and tell exactly way the ordinance should say. Secondly there is supposed to be a certification that each person who is signing the petition is certifying that they are electors of the Town of Watertown, residing at the addresses opposite of their names and they haven’t signed more than one petition. Now I know these seem to be technical rules, but that’s exactly the language from the Charter, and in order for us to follow that Charter, we need to follow the language. So from a procedural standpoint, from a technical standpoint the petitions really don’t qualify under Section 308. Assuming that the petitions qualified under those procedural guidelines, it’s an inappropriate subject for a petition under 308 by its terms. Power of Initiative – the electors shall have the power to propose to the Council any ordinance or other measure except an ordinance or resolution authorizing a levy of taxes for the fixing of the tax rate. This petition tries to do exactly that. All 3 sections of the petition, the petition requests, the reinstatement of the old property assessments, setting the mill rate based on the old assessment, and regarding the issue of tax bills due July 1, 2009 any difference in the amount we are requesting a rebate check or credit towards the January, 2010. All 3 of those items have applicability to the setting of tax, so again the limited issue is whether this petition qualifies for an initiative and referendum under the Charter. And the answer clearly is no.

Mr. Fusco: Not paying attention to this petition, but as a Council, and with the State telling us that we can move this revaluation back, that can be done just with a motion and vote, am I correct?

Atty. Jessell: That’s correct.

Mr. Fusco: Okay, so if this is illegal in your opinion, and I respect your opinion, you’re our Town Attorney and you’re good at it, but if we wanted to turn this back and say this was a flawed revaluation, we can do that as a Council?

Atty. Jessell: Yes, you can elect not to, yes.


Ms. Adams: Can we also, no, sir, at this point it’s the Council, there is no public at this point. There will be public at the end of our agenda. The other question I know that was raised tonight too was what costs, what are we looking at as far as rolling back the reval? I know one of the things that I had asked Chuck, you know people spoke about their taxes going up all this money, I know that some of their taxes went down and if the reval was to be rolled back, the taxes would go up. I think we need to know as a Council what are looking for to do this over, what kind of implications, what are other towns doing? We heard discussion tonight on that. Carolyn is here, can you just give us an overview on that respect?

Mr. Frigon: I can start while Carolyn comes. We’ve looked into this considerably. To present, I’m not sure in which order you want these questions answered, but the information that I received today and correct me if I’m wrong, Carolyn, is that other than Monroe and Torrington, no other town of the 45 towns that are implementing an October 1, 2008 revaluation have proceeded to not put that, or to implement that revaluation. There are 45 towns that qualified, 2 did postpone it, but those 2 postponed under a separate ordinance. They didn’t take advantage of the ordinance that the Governor has made available to us. There is one town however that has chosen to phase in and I’m not sure exactly what that means, but to phase in their implementation. And again of those 45 that’s it. There are some costs involved and it’s very difficult at least in my mind to create or recreate without actually reconstructing the Grand List what the mill rate might be if we were to pass a budget at $60,000,000. To answer the question that came up earlier with the 0% why are we paying more the 0% is the increase in spending and a very early on in the meeting Mr. Nardelli had explained that the Town had voted in the affirmative to proceed with the reconstruction of the school. (Inaudible) decision that we make here, that’s a decision that the public has made and that we’re committed or obligated to proceed with that with the loss of some of our investments, we realized about a $2,300,000 or $2,400,000 increase overall in the budget. So we are at 0% at the Board of Education, we are at 0% with the Town and we have $1,400,000 with the increased debt service that we’re taking on and overall with the investments, the loss on interest income we’re about $2,300,000 in additional spending. So that $2,300,000 is now part of our proposed budget and what we’re looking at, and it’s a very cold, hard fact and something that I don’t like to say, but it’s a $60,000,000 burden that we have. Regardless of who pays it, $60,000,000 is going to be collected if this budget passes. It will be through this revaluation or we will not implement this one or we will go back to the other one, I don’t really have a horse in this race, those are the cold, hard facts. If we stay with the, if we don’t implement this one and we revert back to the old 2007 Grand List or 2008 Grand List 2007, that would mean that we’d have to change the mill rate to something different than what you see today, so what you paid in taxes a year ago, would not be what you pay in taxes if the revaluation is not implemented. It will be something different. Now if I were to just work with, and there are so many scenarios, it’s really a shell game because we’re still collecting $60,000,000 regardless, some will pay more, some will pay less, just as in the scenario we are in today. (Inaudible) to just look at, this is a seat of the pants evaluation, just the residential properties only, rolling back the assessments to where they were a year ago, we’re looking at about a 2 mill increase in our mill rate.


Ms. Adams: Based on the 24 we were at with taxes.

Mr. Frigon: That’s correct, so you would go up to somewhere close to 26. Now that 26, keeping in mind that’s on everything residential, that’s also on your motor vehicle, where that particularly hurts is with our industries, those are of course the people who employ all of us. Their mill rates, the adjusted mill rates, whatever that would be, would affect them more because as we all know, industry has had less of a burden on this revaluation than residential has so that’s one of the disparities that residential is feeling that’s very difficult. Industry would be paying more. Industry would also be paying more on motor vehicles. For instance, UPS trucks are worth maybe $100,000, I don’t know, I haven’t looked, they’re paying a new mill rate on that. They have I don’t know how many of those trucks, but an awful lot of them. Same with Crystal Rock, Dayton Construction, Cocchiola Paving, all of that type of industry are going to end up paying more on their motor vehicles.

Ms. Adams: As are we.

Mr. Frigon: As are we, all of us. As a matter of fact 100% of everyone in town would end up paying more on their motor vehicles and there are some that are paying more on their real estate and some that are not. We are just going to shift that burden. There are going to be, for every 100 people that say that don’t want to implement, there’s probably maybe 40 that would be impacted by that by paying more tax. This is very difficult. The other thing that we’ve analyzed as we look at this is the cost of reconstructing the Grand List which Carolyn is here and will speak to, and we’ve looked at, and none of us have a crystal ball, but if we delay this, we delay it to next year or the year after, this year’s budget that’s at a 0% increase in spending, we’re going to have to add something to that to fund a contractor to come in here and start another revaluation, so we’ll have to add to our budget immediately. So there are pros for some and there are cons for some. It affects an awful lot of people. And with that said, let me ask Carolyn to explain the costs of what it would take to reconstruct the Grand List.

Ms. Nadeau: I’ve spoken 3 or 4 times to the contractor who did the revaluation to begin with. What it would entail would be taking a copy of the static database that I maintain up to October 1st of last year, taking the data that I’ve created from October 1st til now, ownership changes, data changes, and going through every single relational database and writing reports to compare them. That would be step one. Then I would have to take those same two databases and make them correspond for ownership changes, because everything that we do in the Town Hall happens on a daily basis. They quoted me figures for that anywhere between $12,000 and $16,000, they’ve never done it before, they’d have to take a very in-depth look at exactly what would need to be done before they could quote us a price.

Watertown Town Council Regular Meeting August 17, 2009 Page 38 In addition to that once we change values for people we have to notify them of what

their values have been changed to, so we would have to send a new notification to every property owner in town and the exempt property owners, that would cost, they’d have to do it because it’s all generated through their system, about $.50 per account, we have $9,300 accounts plus postage, so somewhere in the vicinity of $1.00 per account for postage, so between that and the database exchanges, we’d probably be looking at somewhere around $20,000. From there we would have to do the rest of it internally. We’d have to take the Town’s administrative program, eliminate the 08 Grand List that had been created and completed and recreate the Grand List. That would involve redoing the elderly benefits, redoing the veteran’s benefits (Tape #2, Side B ended – may have missed some) work on one Grand List at a time so I would have to stop the 09 Grand List which would be motor vehicle, personal property, and real estate, and recreate the real estate Grand List for 08 for as long as it took to get the job done.

Ms. Adams: And what about a new reval?

Ms. Nadeau: Yea, I spoke to the company, because we just did the 08 reval, its probably too late to get one done for 09, cause they need to be done by October 1st, so it’s too late for that, they projected probably about $135,000 if we went to 2010 but they wouldn’t suggest for 2011 because they still don’t know how many people may or may not postpone to 2011 from the other towns, so they wouldn’t project a number for that. We’d have to go out to bid.

Mr. Mancini: Are you talking about the same company that just did it?

Ms. Nadeau: Well they would have to be the ones to reverse the current revaluation because it’s their software, yea. If the Town decides not to implement what we have now and wants to do another one in 2010 or 2011 we could go back out to bid.

Mr. Mancini: As far as the company that everybody is complaining about, are we the only town they did this year?

Ms. Nadeau: No, of the 45 they probably did more than half. It’s important to note that revaluation companies have to be certified by the State of Connecticut before they can even put a sign up that says they can do business in Connecticut. There are only maybe 8 or 9 companies that do it, and of those 8 or 9 companies, there are a few of them that just target very small towns. There’s probably 3 major players, one of them is (inaudible) of Trumbull that actually did the 1999 reval in Watertown, the other one is Vision, the third one is the town that did Monroe and Torrington and they’re not implementing their revaluation because of issues with timing and things like that. There are no big ball players in that field anymore, it’s a good business if somebody wants to get into it.

Mr. Mancini: The appeals, how many appeals did we have this Year?


Ms. Nadeau: We had 2/3 less than we had in the 03 reval. I think we had 64% less. Now we have about, off the top of my head I don’t recall. I don’t want to misspeak. We have 12 court cases.

Mr. Mancini: It bothers me because all of a sudden we told the people that taxes are going up because of the schools and everything else, projects that are going to be done, and then they didn’t appeal and now they’re here complaining that it wasn’t done properly.

Ms. Nadeau: I understand. We sent out 3 different notifications. We sent out a data mailer some time in late Summer last year telling people that revaluation was going on, to please review the information about their property, we took that information and incorporated it into the record and sent out preliminary notices to people, this is our initial value, if you don’t agree with it you go to an informal hearing. Then they got a final notice, and all of those notices all along the way informed them of their right to appeal, how to do it and how to go about it.

Mr. Mancini: Do you know how many people actually are contesting their appeal process and going to take us to court?

Ms. Nadeau: We have 10 commercial cases, and 2 residential cases.

Mr. Mancini: Filed?

Ms. Nadeau: Filed to take us to court. One of them has 2 vacant lots and a house and one of them is (inaudible), we have it as a residential property but it’s sort of a mixed use property and the rest of them are industrial.

Mr. Fusco: As you know we got a large list of people who are not happy with this assessment. Whether they appealed it or not, it’s to the point where we don’t really know what to do. If you appeal it and they don’t do anything, and I know quite a few people who did try to appeal it, and they figured well why should I do it, it’s not going to change anything. These people are hurting. They don’t like what’s happening. Following Chuck’s recommendations, he’s saying that some people are going to pay more and some people are going to pay less. What I’m seeing is it’s going to be a little more clearer if we go back to the original assessment, so there’s not a small little group of people paying a large amount of money. I mean they’re telling me they’re getting bills for $1,800, $900 extra a year. They can’t afford it. They wouldn’t be here, they wouldn’t want to leave their house. I mean there are programs on TV they would be happy to see. I really believe that this was not done correctly. I think that they did this on the computer form and they just said this is what we want for this house, this area, Zone 10, we’re just going to raise these so many. There was no real visit to every house. It was just done on a record.

Watertown Town Council Regular Meeting August 17, 2009 Page 40 Now most of this record is on electronic disc, it’s done electronically, and you say it’s

going to take a lot of work to change this. And I’m not picking on you, I’m just bringing some points up that I have in my head. I don’t see that this is going to be a lot of work. I mean everything is done on computers today. This can be done 2 or 3 months. If we are not happy with this company all these people are out here, maybe we should be suing them and getting money back and hire another company. They’re not happy.

Ms. Adams: Carolyn can you explain the difference between a full reval and what’s called a statistical reval?

Ms. Nadeau: Several years ago the State made some changes when they went to the 5 year cycle, and it’s been made explicitly clear to every town, city assessor, a reval, is a reval, is a reval. Whether you do a full inspection or whether you don’t do a full inspection, the exact same statistical methods are used from one reval to the next, the same testing is done, the same procedures and processes. The law now says that the property must be viewed physically viewed once in 10 years, and they interpreted once in 10 years viewing to include our data mailers, so we are technically off the hook from doing a full physical reval if we choose not to ever do one again, but we have the right (inaudible) the cost is times two. It’s about $50.00 a parcel or more. And we have 9,300 right now. The trouble with doing an interior inspection on every property if we have a data set right now, is actually very good. I mean we’ve got square footages, we’ve got bathroom counts, we’ve got everything, you send a group of people out there knocking on doors you might end up with more trouble (inaudible) you’re better off to stay with what you have and keep it moving forward. And again once you do, whether we knock on every door or we do a drive by or we do a data (inaudible) or any combination, you still by law, and everything that the Town of Watertown does is prescribed by State Statutes, has to be done to the statistical methods that are prescribed by the State of Connecticut and approved by the State of Connecticut. So Watertown doesn’t have an awful lot of say as far as, and if you wanted to sue the town, you’d have to prove that they didn’t meet their obligation and we didn’t meet the statistical testing, and we met them or exceeded them.

Mr. Fusco: My understanding is they are having problems up in Hartford right now in the Senate and the House, they are talking about this 10 years, they are planning on moving this ahead because there is so much concern and so much confusion.

Ms. Nadeau: Every year the reval is (inaudible).

Mr. Fusco: They are having problems with it.

Ms. Nadeau: Every single year it comes up, they discuss it and sometimes they move it forward. They went from 10 to 4 and 5 and now (inaudible).

Mr. Fusco: My understanding is they’re going to move it ahead again some more.


Ms. Nadeau: I have no way of (inaudible) the legislature.

Ms. Adams: (Inaudible) vote on the Tamarack building (inaudible) so you don’t know until the votes are taken.

Mr. Mancini: We’ve heard reports that people’s taxes have gone up $1,800. I mean have those figures been substantiated, has anybody looked at those figures?

Ms. Nadeau: The $1,800 number, the specifics haven’t been brought to my attention. One house, multi-property, I don’t know what it is, I don’t know the specifics.

Mr. Mancini: I’m assuming, and I don’t know, if it’s 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 pieces of property, when a woman gets up and says my taxes went up $1,800, I thought she meant on the piece of property that she pays taxes on.

Ms. Adams: It could be the assessment went up $1,800.

Mr. Mancini: Well I can see the assessment going up $1,800, but taxes going up $1,800, that’s an awful lot.

Ms. Nadeau: I’d have to look at it., I’d be glad to look at it, rather than be called a lair. Someone called me a lair in the back and I’d be glad to look at it.

Mr. Mancini: Did you look to see if anybody went up $1,800?

Ms. Nadeau: Again, I haven’t looked at every single one of the 9,300. No.

Ms. Adams: For the motion we had 32 days to deal with the petition. We are within that timeframe.

MOTION: (Mr. Primini, sec. Mr. Bernier) I move to reject and take no further

action on a citizen petition requesting reinstatement of the old property assessments.

Discussion: Mr. Fusco: I don’t like the idea of take no further action. I mean we’re saying that’s it, these people go home, there’s nothing we’re going to do for them. I don’t agree with that. I think after this motion, even if this passes I would still like to make a motion because we are still on the same subject.

Watertown Town Council Regular Meeting August 17, 2009 Page 42 In Favor: Ms. Adams, Mr. Bernier, Mr. Demirs, Mr. Mancini, Mr. Primini, Mr.

Rinaldi, Mr. Winn Opposed: Mr. Fusco Abstained: None MOTION CARRIED (7-1-0)

Mr. Fusco: I’d like to make a motion that we reject . . . .

Ms. Adams: You need to amend the agenda.

Mr. Fusco: No, we are on . . . .

Ms. Adams: You can amend the agenda, we need a 2/3 vote, you need 6 to do this.

Mr. Fusco: No, we are on the subject of revaluation and I’m taking the revaluation section and I’m only using that . Revaluation, it doesn’t say you’ve got one motion, we’re still discussing that. I’m making a motion . . . .

Ms. Adams: No, actually I think it’s done, Rich. You’re going to have to amend the agenda. We dealt with that item, we voted on it, so it would be an amendment to the agenda, Rich.

Mr. Fusco: No, this is under the same thing. Many people talking at once (inaudible).

Ms. Adams: We discussed it, we did it.

Mr. Mancini: It states “Consider the disposition of the petition and proposed ordinance regarding the reinstatement of the old property assessments”.

Ms. Adams: And to discuss anything else we need to amend the agenda, Rich.

Mr. Fusco: We can make two motions under the same . . . .

Ms. Adams: No, you can’t, we’ve done it. All right, you know what, we have the attorney here, I’ll call a 10 minute recess and talk to him.

Ms. Adams, Chairman, called a Recess at 10:05 p.m. Ms. Adams, Chairman, Reconvened the Regular Meeting at 10:14 p.m.

Watertown Town Council Regular Meeting August 17, 2009 Page 43 D. Consider a Resolution authorizing the Support of the Proposed Pavement

Rehabilitation of French Street, from Main Street to Buckingham Street

RESOLUTION Pavement Rehabilitation of French Street, Main Street to Buckingham Street WHEREAS, the Town of Watertown has published a press release and mailed a news

release to a number of officials and agencies, announcing a public informational meeting on the proposed Transportation project known as Pavement Rehabilitation of French Street; and

WHEREAS, at a regularly scheduled Town Council meeting held on August 17,

2009, the Town Council presented to the public the proposed project; and WHEREAS, the Town of Watertown and the Central Naugatuck Valley Council of

Governments has selected this project as a regional priority and to utilize federal funds for right-of-way, preliminary engineering and construction activities; and

WHEREAS, the Town of Watertown has considered the concerns of the residents

from the public informational meeting and finds that the proposed Reconstruction of French Street is in the best interests of the Town of Watertown and will promote the health, safety and general welfare of its residents and provide for convenience and safety of the motoring public.

WHEREAS, the Watertown Town Council, based on the above information and by

virtue of this resolution, hereby fully supports the proposed project. Dated at Watertown, Connecticut, this 17th day of August, 2009. Elaine H. Adams, Chairman Watertown Town Council MOTION: (Mr. Primini, sec. Mr. Bernier) I move to approve the Resolution

authorizing the support of the proposed pavement rehabilitation of French Street, from Main Street to Buckingham Street.

Discussion: Mr. Mancini: What about the extra money? Didn’t Chuck say it might start $170,000 more? Are we going to pay somebody (inaudible)?


Mr. Primini: This came up at the last meeting. The D.O.T. asked that the Town Council support, just a resolution showing the Town Council supports the rehab project. What they’re talking about in pavement is there’s two types of pavement. There’s the type of pavement that they use on the highway, it’s a heavier grade than we normally use, so what happens is that pavement is about $100 a ton versus $71 a ton for the pavement that we use. So we use that $71, that’s where that figure is coming from. There is a proposed trend, I don’t know if you want to call it a trend, try to convert to just using one type of pavement, which will be the more expensive kind. It makes sense for the highways, but it doesn’t make sense to use it on our roads, so that’s where the $140,000 discrepancy is. That’s why Public Works feels that we will stick to that figure.

Mr. Mancini: But by approving this here, does that just

automatically say yes, we’re approving that (inaudible)?

Mr. Primini: No. It’s a resolution that we’re supporting the project.

Mr. Mancini: We’re supporting the project, but we’re not

supporting all of the additional money for that project?

Mr. Primini: No.

Mr. Mancini: As long as that is what it means.

Ms. Adams: We don’t have any additional money, Carl.

Mr. Mancini: I know that. We passed so much money for French

Street and that’s what it is supposed to be. We are talking about $134,000 more that we’re approving, I’m not approving $134,000 more.

Mr. Primini: No, that’s where the difference is, there are two types

of asphalt.

Mr. Mancini: What I’m trying to say is we’re approving the amount

of money, I would like to know what the dollar amount is before I approve any type of money, any more money.

Mr. Primini: Obviously we want to move on this because the

figures, to buy asphalt right now is $71.00 a ton. You have the companies, like Tilcon who actually put down the asphalt is about $78.00 a ton, so that’s why we explained we need to have Public Works (inaudible) people it’s cheaper, they have the equipment to put it down for us like that.


Ms. Adams: This is also what we were using this stimulus package money to do was to do French Street. We can’t go over that amount, we know it.

Mr. Mancini: That’s what I am trying to say. By approving this we

are not approving any additional money than what was originally approved.

Ms. Adams: No, there’s no dollar amount in this resolution.

Mr. Primini: No but that’s where the discrepancy is in the figures,

they use that (inaudible) highway.

MOTION PASSED UNANIMOUSLY E. Consider a Resolution adopting Lakeview Drive into the Watertown Road System

RESOLUTION WHEREAS, the Watertown Planning and Zoning Commission voted to recommend

to the Town Council the acceptance of the following streets into the Town of Watertown’s road system as described:

Lake View Drive – from the intersection with Echo Lake Road, a distance of

approximately 1,050 feet (0.199 miles) to a permanent cul-de-sac, being a 50 foot right-of-way as shown on a subdivision map entitled “Lake View Drive Assessor’s Map 112, Block 43, Lots 7 & 7C Watertown, Connecticut” dated May 20, 2008 prepared by Stuart Somers, Co., LLC and on file in the Watertown Town Clerk’s Office as Map #3374.

NOW THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, that the Watertown Town Council accepts

the recommendation of the Planning and Zoning Commission that the above-described streets be incorporated into the Town of Watertown road system.

Dated at Watertown, Connecticut, this 17th day of August, 2009. Elaine H. Adams, Chairman Watertown Town Council MOTION: (Mr. Primini, sec. Mr. Mancini) I move to approve the resolution

adopting Lake View Drive into the Watertown Road System. Discussion: None MOTION PASSED UNANIMOUSLY

Watertown Town Council Regular Meeting August 17, 2009 Page 46 F. Consider an Appropriation from the General Fund in the amount of $20,084 for

Communication Equipment and a Bid Waiver to Audio Video Solutions of Watertown for a Critical Incident Command Center. Funds will be reimbursed through a grant awarded by the United States Department of Justice

MOTION: (Mr. Primini, sec. Mr. Bernier) I move to approve an appropriation

from the General Fund in the amount of $20,084 for communication equipment and a bid waiver to Audio Video Solutions of Watertown for a critical incident command center. Funds will be reimbursed through a grant awarded by the United States Department of Justice.

Discussion: Mr. Bernier: I just want to make sure everyone understands, this isn’t costing us a dime.

Mr. Primini: We are using a local contractor too.

Ms. Adams: Yes (inaudible).

MOTION PASSED UNANIMOUSLY G. Consider an Appropriation from the General Fund in the amount of $5,000 and a Bid

Waiver to Battle Ridge Kennels of West Virginia for the purchase of a Police Canine. Funds have been deposited into the General Fund from a reimbursement of a prior purchase of a police canine.

MOTION: (Mr. Primini, sec. Mr. Bernier) I move to approve an appropriation in

the amount of $5,000 from the General Fund and a Bid Waiver to Battle Ridge Kennels of West Virginia for the purchase of a Police Canine. Funds have been deposited into the General Fund from a Reimbursement of a prior purchase of a police canine.

Discussion: Ms. Adams: Chuck, do you want to give an overview on this? My understanding, this is money that was donated to the Town through Adam’s?

Mr. Frigon: That is correct. The Watertown Police Department had applied for and received a $5,000 grant about a year ago to purchase a canine for the Watertown Police Department. That first dog that we had, and I’m sorry, I wrote their names down but I forgot them, the first dog that we had was a dog that we thought we might save some money on, that looked like it would pass muster, if you will, and it’s a dog that we had in our own pound. That dog did flunk out of school and we couldn’t use him. The second dog that we did purchase for $5,000 flunked as well so we were refunded by the people that we bought the animal from, the full amount of $45,500.

Watertown Town Council Regular Meeting August 17, 2009 Page 47 This is our third dog now. This dog is about 22 months old, this dog

has already passed much of its training and again comes with the same guarantees that we have had in the past, by that if it does not pass then we will get a full refund, however we are very confident in this particular case that the dog will pass. We’ve met with the dog, we’ve looked at the dog’s credentials, his pedigree, and so we’re giving it another shot, we’re committed to a canine outfit here in Town, it would benefit the Police Department’s activities in their work, it’s also a great PR tool with the children and citizens as well. We’re giving it another shot. The dog is paid for by grant money.

MOTION PASSED UNANIMOUSLY H. Consider authorizing the Town Council Chairperson, Elaine Adams, to enter into and

execute a $30,000 grant application offered through the Connecticut Office of Policy and Management to purchase new Mobile Data Terminals and Server for Patrol Cars

MOTION: (Mr. Primini, sec. Mr. Bernier) I move to authorize the Town Council

Chairperson, Elaine Adams, to enter into and execute a $30,000 grant application offered through the Connecticut Office of Policy and Management to purchase new mobile data terminals and server for patrol cars.

Discussion: Ms. Adams: Chuck, explain this please. Usually it’s the Town Manager, but I guess there’s something here where it has to be the chief elected official.

Mr. Frigon: Yes, it has to be the chief elected official. The grant calls and specifies the chief elected official. We did call and confirm that. There are obvious challenges that we are going to face if a year down the road the makeup of the Council changes, then what do I do. We talked about that, but they said it has to be the chief elected official so be it, that’s what we are going to do.

Ms. Adams: To make the Council aware of . . . .

Mr. Frigon: I’m not understanding the logic either, however that’s

what the grant calls for. Our MDT terminals are getting very old, they are used, they require a lot of maintenance at this point, so it’s a great opportunity.

Ms. Adams: This is the one that allows them to have instant data if

they pull somebody over?

Mr. Frigon: Yes.

MOTION PASSED UNANIMOUSLY


I. Consider the Transfer of Funds between Line Items for Fiscal Year 2008/2009

RESOLUTION WHEREAS, expenses in the 2008-09 fiscal year require the transfer of funds: NOW THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, by vote of the Watertown Town Council,

that the following actions are taken relative to the transfer of funds:

WAGE & SALARY ADJUSTMENTS FOR FY 2008-2009

GENERAL FUND NO: 1 FROM: 010-50110-009-0016 Town Clerk $63,952 010-50125-010-0040 Election Clerk $2,428 010-50125-010-0065 Election Workers $12,273 010-50110-011-0042 Planning & Zoning Secretary I $1,533 010-50120-011-0043 Planning & Zoning Minutes Secretary $1,815 010-50130-011-0000 Planning & Zoning Overtime $1,955 010-50130-011-0013 Planning & Zoning Town Engineer $2,738 010-50130-012-0000 Zoning Board of Appeals Overtime $1,568 010-50130-013-0000 Conservation Commission Overtime $2,084 010-50120-016-1929 Deputy Fire Chief $2,599 010-50120-017-0069 Volunteer Firefighters $24,470 010-50120-019-0072 Police Dept./School Guards $3,086 010-50110-020-0055 Police Patrol Sergeant $25,836 010-50110-020-0056 Police Detectives $36,393 010-50110-020-1822 Police Lieutenant $2,516 010-50130-020-0000 Police Overtime $6,928 010-50155-020-0000 Police Holiday Pay $3,856 010-50110-023-0074 Assistant Animal Control Officer $1,050 010-50130-023-0000 Animal Control Overtime $1,144 010-50145-025-0000 Communication Longevity $2,250 010-50125-030-0041 Engineering/Secretary II $1,035 010-50130-030-0000 Engineering/Overtime $2,660 010-50220-042-0000 Employee Retirement $35,325 010-50130-032-0000 Snow Overtime $7,209 010-50125-036-0000 Parks – Temporary Salaries $2,327 010-50125-037-0000 Recreation Temporary Salaries $12,729 010-50125-037-0000 Recreation – Supervisor & Instructors $1,439 010-50110-045-0091 Wage & Benefit Adjustment $191,771 010-50225-042-0000 Employee Benefits/Severance Sick-Vacation $14,308


TO: 010-50110-002-0001 Town Manager $3,430 010-50110-002-0041 Secretary II $3,321 010-50110-002-0047 Executive Secretary $2,557 010-50120-002-0043 Minutes Secretary $1,405 010-50110-004-0009 Data Processing Coordinator $3,509 010-50110-004-0012 Purchasing Agent $2,747 010-50110-004-0038 Bookkeeper I $5,415 010-50110-004-0126 Bookkeeper III $4,747 010-50110-004-0144 Assistant Finance Director $2,771 010-50120-004-2155 Part Time Data Processing Assistant $4,207 010-50110-005-0017 Treasurer $4,745 010-50110-006-0015 Tax Collector $4,652 010-50110-006-0021 Assistant Tax Collector $4,100 010-50110-006-0038 Bookkeeper I $3,542 010-50110-007-0002 Assessor $3,366 010-50110-007-0042 Secretary I – Assessor $2,753 010-50110-007-0487 Assessing Technician $4,305 010-50110-009-0041 Town Clerk Secretary II $12,526 010-50110-009-0123 Assistant Town Clerk $26,971 010-50120-009-0000 Town Clerk/Part Time Salaries $28,475 010-50110-011-0019 Zoning Enforcement Officer $3,436 010-50110-011-0041 Planning & Zoning Secretary II $3,817 010-50110-011-0177 Assistant Zoning Officer $11,274 010-50120-014-0000 Public Buildings Part Time Salaries $1,404 010-50110-015-0005 Building Official $2,527 010-50110-015-0023 Assistant Building Official $5,440 010-50110-015-0041 Building Department Secretary II $3,722 010-50110-016-2110 Fire Department Administrative Assistant $3,542 010-50110-016-2298 Fire Department Deputy Fire Marshall $1,841 010-50110-004-0009 Assistant Town Manager/Finance Director $6,788 010-50110-019-0006 Chief of Police $7,540 010-50110-019-0041 Police Department/Secretary II $3,553 010-50110-019-0042 Police Department/Secretary I $12,576 010-50110-019-0176 Police Department/Deputy Chief $6,273 010-50110-020-0057 Police Department/Patrol Officer $3,752 010-50130-023-0000 Animal Control Overtime $2,147 010-50110-025-0007 Communications Full Time Salaries $28,573 010-50120-025-0000 Communications Part Tine Salaries $25,908 010-50130-025-0000 Communications Overtime $6,318 010-50155-025-0000 Communications Holiday Pay $2,662 010-50110-030-0011 Director of Public Works $6,863 010-50110-030-0013 Town Engineer $4,033 010-50110-030-0033 Engineering Technician II $13,275 010-50110-030-0034 Engineering Technician I $4,836 010-50110-030-0122 Assistant Town Engineer $10,101 010-50125-030-0000 Temporary Salaries $3,680

Watertown Town Council Regular Meeting August 17, 2009 Page 50 010-50110-031-0024 Highway Superintendent $23,237 010-50130-031-0000 Highway/Overtime $2,880 010-50110-036-1766 Parks/Director of Parks $1,614 010-50110-037-0020 Recreation/Assistant Director of Recreation $3,726 010-50110-037-0041 Recreation/Secretary II $3,583 010-50110-037-1768 Director of Recreation $5,308 010-50110-039-0014 Senior Center Director $5,515 010-50125-039-0110 Senior Center Dispatcher $2,076 010-50110-040-2395 Data Processing Assistant $6,205 010-50160-043-0000 Police Special duty – Non Town $59,104 010-50161-043-0000 Police Special Duty Town $36,752

GENERAL FUND – TOWN CLERK AMOUNT: $2,181 NO: 2 FROM: 010-50336-011-0000 – Advertising TO: 010-50331-009-0000 – Photographic Services REASON: Additional Funds Required.

GENERAL FUND – ELECTIONS AMOUNT: $3,279 NO: 3 FROM: $ 567 - 010-50332-009-0000 – Maintenance Agreements $1,605 - 010-50465-010-0000 – Food $1,107 - 010-50329-010-0000 – Training Meetings w/o Travel TO: 010-50330-010-0000 – Printing and Binding REASON: Additional Funds Required.

GENERAL FUND – PUBLIC BUILDINGS AMOUNT: $27,058 NO: 4 FROM: $ 9,586 - 010-50419-032-0000 – Sand and Salt $17,472 - 010-50325-014-0000 – Utilities – Fuel Oil & Gas TO: 010-50323-014-0000 – Utilities - Electric REASON: Additional Funds Required.

GENERAL FUND – PUBLIC BUILDINGS AMOUNT: $4,124 NO: 5 FROM: $1,808 - 010-50419-032-0000 – Sand and Salt $2,316 - 010-50410-014-0000 – Building Maintenance Supplies TO: 010-50324-014-0000 – Utilities - Water REASON: Additional Funds Required.


GENERAL FUND – PUBLIC BUILDINGS AMOUNT: $4,965 NO: 6 FROM: 010-50360-033-0000 – Solid Waste Fees TO: 010-50326-014-0000 – Telephone REASON: Additional Funds Required.

GENERAL FUND – FIRE MAINTENANCE & SUPPORT AMOUNT: $1,042 NO: 7 FROM: 010-50319-018-0000 – Vehicle Maintenance TO: 010-50326-018-0000 – Telephone REASON: Additional Funds Required.

GENERAL FUND – POLICE ADMINISTRATION AMOUNT: $3,297 NO: 8 FROM: $1,443 - 010-50418-021-0000 – Oil and Lubrications $1,854 - 010-50320-021-0000 – Communication Equip. Maint. TO: 010-50326-019-0000 – Telephone REASON: Additional Funds Required.

GENERAL FUND – COMMUNICATIONS AMOUNT: $1,772 NO: 9 FROM: $ 629 - 010-50125-029-0000 – Temporary Salaries $1,143 - 010-50326-021-0000 - Telephone TO: 010-50329-025-0000 – Training Meetings w/o Travel REASON: Additional Funds Required.

GENERAL FUND – PUBLIC WORKS ENGINEERING AMOUNT: $5,800 NO: 10 FROM: 010-50360-033-0000 – Solid Waste Fees TO: 010-50310-030-0342 – Design/Inspection Fees REASON: Additional Funds Required.

GENERAL FUND – PUBLIC WORKS SOLID WASTE AMOUNT: $1,714 NO: 11 FROM: 010-50310-033-2320 – Replace Existing Walls TO: 010-50558-033-1620 – Compactor REASON: Additional Funds Required.


GENERAL FUND – PUBLIC WORKS STREET LIGHTING AMOUNT: $6,334 NO: 12 FROM: $1,106 - 010-50323-034-2393 – Street Lighting Fire District $5,228 - 010-50323-022-0000 – Utilities Electric TO: 010-50323-034-0000 – Utilities - Electric REASON: Additional Funds Required.

GENERAL FUND – MISCELLANEOUS CENTRAL AMOUNT: $1,791 NO: 13 FROM: 010-50333-040-0000 – Medical Services TO: 010-50327-040-0000 – Postage REASON: Additional Funds Required.

GENERAL FUND – MISCELLANEOUS CENTRAL AMOUNT: $1,896 NO: 14 FROM: 010-50340-040-1360 – Insurance Auto TO: 010-50340-040-1361 – Insurance Liability REASON: Additional Funds Required.

GENERAL FUND – MISCELLANEOUS CENTRAL AMOUNT: $10,684 NO: 15 FROM: 010-50340-040-1360 – Insurance Auto TO: 010-50340-040-1362 – Insurance Umbrella REASON: Additional Funds Required.

GENERAL FUND – MISCELLANEOUS CENTRAL AMOUNT: $1,668 NO: 16 FROM: 010-50560-040-0560 – Annex Copier TO: 010-50402-040-0000 – Archive Paperwork REASON: Additional Funds Required.

GENERAL FUND – EMPLOYEE BENEFITS AMOUNT: $6,482 NO: 17 FROM: 010-50210-042-0270 – Medicare TO: 010-50232-042-0000 – Life Insurance REASON: Additional Funds Required.


GENERAL FUND – EMPLOYEE BENEFITS AMOUNT: $10,061 NO: 18 FROM: 010-50225-042-0000 – Severance TO: 010-50242-042-0000– Unemployment Compensation REASON: Additional Funds Required.

GENERAL FUND – MISCELLANEOUS NON-TOWN AMOUNT: $1,088 NO: 19 FROM: 010-50720-043-0535 – Town Clerk to State TO: 010-50720-043-2035 – Building Inspection Fee Remit REASON: Additional Funds Required. Dated at Watertown, Connecticut this 17th day of August, 2009.

________________________ Elaine H. Adams, Chairman Watertown Town Council MOTION: (Mr. Primini, sec. Mr. Bernier) I move to approve a Resolution

authorizing the Transfer of Funds between line items, for fiscal year 2008/2009.

Discussion: Mr. Fusco: We have 5 pages of transfers? Mr. Frigon: Every year at this time, yea. Mr. Nardelli: Yea, this is to close out the end of the fiscal year

which we’re closing out books on the year. The first few pages you’ll see are for wages and salary adjustments. You have to remember now there were 3 contracts that were signed, White Collar, there were two years worth of pay that had to paid out for that because the White Collar contract, as you know, didn’t settle within the first year. The Supervisor’s contract and Communications contract was all settled and paid out. Then we had Police Special Duty, you’ll see there is quite a bit of money there between town and non town and you look at the revenue side of the budget and you’ll see that we get reimbursed from that, that’s like CL&P and what not. We did have some retirees last year, especially the Highway Superintendent (inaudible) paid out, we had to cover that. So those are the transfers, basically the contract settlements and those other items I mentioned.

Mr. Fusco: This comes out of the General Fund? Mr. Nardelli: It doesn’t really come out, it just transferring within

the General Fund.


Mr. Fusco: Okay, now if you were to add this all up, I’m not asking you that, we’re talking a few hundred thousand dollars there, am I correct?

Mr. Nardelli: Well for instance if you look at the first one, the Town

Clerk we’re transferring $63,000, as you know we’re not paying anything out of that particular line item, so we take that Town Clerk funds and we transfer it to the Assistant Town Clerk, the Secretary, and the other position that we have there, so we’re just moving funds around because we’re not paying everybody out of the Town Clerk line item but it all gets transferred within the Town Clerk’s budget to pay the other people.

Mr. Fusco: What I was getting at, if you add this all up, it would be

maybe $300,000 or $400,000. We don’t have to go to a Public Hearing?

Mr. Nardelli: No, in other words when we put the budget together,

we put money like in Wage and Benefits Adjustment, so we put money in there for the contracts that are being negotiated, and once they are negotiated at the end of the year we transfer that money out of Wage and Benefits into all of the particular line items that were affected by that.

Mr. Fusco: It doesn’t have to go to public? Mr. Nardelli: No, it’s all within the budget. Mr. Bernier: This was in that budget, all we’re doing is moving it

around, there is no additional money, any additional money coming out of the General Fund. It’s what was budgeted, just fine tuning it.

MOTION PASSED UNANIMOUSLY J. Consider a Resolution authorizing Tax Refunds

RESOLUTION

WHEREAS, Taxpayers have made application for the Property Tax Refunds in accordance with Section 12-129 Refund of Excess Payment; and WHEREAS, the Tax Collector recommends that the Refunds be made in accordance with the provisions of Section 12-129; NOW THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, that the Town Council approves the following Tax Refunds:


2842 Gladu, Richard J. Amount of Refund: $43.35 130 Kaynor Drive A4 Type M Waterbury, CT 06708-0000

Reason for Refund: Per Assessor, Account Deleted

2843 Piazzaroli, Carla M. Amount of Refund: $94.10 78 Saunders Avenue Type M Oakville, CT 06779-0000

Reason for Refund: Per Assessor, Account Deleted

2845 Nissan Infiniti Refund Dept. Amount of Refund: $127.16 P.O. Box 254648 Type S Sacramento, CA 95865-4648

Reason for Refund: Per Assessor, Account Prorated

2846 Perugini, Joseph & Lina Amount of Refund: $499.33 162 Tarbell Avenue Type R Oakville, CT 06779-0000

Reason for Refund: Per Court Stipulation









Total for All Refunds $2,929.53 Dated at Watertown, CT this 17th day of August, 2009.

_____________________


Watertown Town Council Regular Meeting August 17, 2009 Page 56 MOTION: (Mr. Primini, sec. Mr. Bernier) I move to approve a Resolution

authorizing Tax Refunds.

Discussion: None

MOTION PASSED UNANIMOUSLY

11. Public Participation Nick Biello, 335 Buckingham Street, Oakville, CT 06779 Mr. Biello: Is the Town attorney still here?

Ms. Adams: No. Mr. Biello: I requested that when he gave the legal opinion that I could ask him some questions, and you told me yes. Ms. Adams: Sorry, I don’t remember that. If you have any questions we can get you answers, Nick. Mr. Biello: Well on this petition, nowhere on this petition do we ask the Town Council to levy any taxes or fix a tax break. The only thing we asked for was to reinstate the old property assessment as set for by Governor Rell. That’s all we ask. I wish he was here. I’d like to get an answer from him.

Stanley Everett, 1 Everett Lane, Oakville, CT 06779 Mr. Everett: I’d like to thank Chuck and Joe on this power plant thing. They had Mark call

me and answer a bunch of questions which I could never get the answers to, like how much wood is this thing going to burn, it’s over 300,000 tons per year. It’s 100,000 tons a day. How much water is it going to use? About $500,000 gallons per day. Where does the waste go? Down the city sewer for whatever reason, and I think there are supposed to be 50 trucks, and all I ever heard was Route 8 and Echo Lake Road. Well this, wherever they’re getting wood from is 50 miles radius brings in almost every town in Connecticut, which means these trucks full of wood chips or whatever they are are coming down Plymouth Hill, 63 into Watertown from Woodbury, all over the place they’re coming. From what I understand, even after all this, the D.E.P., the environmental whatever with the trees said there are plenty of trees, and the Citing Commission said it’s all right, and from what I understood from Joe, this was really kind of a done deal. The only thing that really brought a question was before Mark left there, I didn’t get to talk to him when he was here, he said all he needed was Watertown’s support, and I didn’t know what he meant by that if it’s a done deal?

Mr. Frigon: What he was referring to is the financing required to build the plant. As far as all of the permitting goes from the State Citing Council, D.E.P. that’s complete, they can start construction tomorrow without any further permitting.


Mr. Everett: They’re talking $2,000,000 and 2 years (inaudible) to do it, which we could use the tax money, but this is how long of a job? 300,000 tons of wood per year for how many years?

Mr. Frigon: Again, the sustainability of the plant is not something that I can . . . .

Mr. Everett: We can say anything about.

Mr. Frigon: It’s not so much that we can’t say anything, I doubt as much as you do, I

certainly question as much as you do where the hell are all 50 trucks of wood going to come from every single day for the near foreseeable future? In my mind’s eye I don’t see it, but that’s not for me, that’s for them. They certainly had to convince an awful lot of people that the sustainability for that project this there. We can’t really mix that in the financing that he was here for last week. Those are two very separate and distinct issues.

Mr. Everett: I wanted to ask the Town Attorney but I couldn’t because it wasn’t my time to

talk, what was our repercussion, or what can we do with the thing getting turned down? Do we have to get a class action suit against Vision because this is not the first year they’ve done this? Mine has been knocked down since the last time and this time so much they obviously are not doing their job, they’re just fabricating a bunch of numbers. People I talked to asked what are you going to do, spend $300 to have it assessed and then another how much for a lawyer, to save $700 a year? Where is our next step with this? Because as far as I can see a fabricated price on anybody’s property, anybody’s things, and our Town Assessor that should know and Building Inspector that should know what’s going on on your own house because you have to have a permit, that’s kind of fraud to me. Double the price and say that’s it, buddy, too bad, you’re going to have to . . . . most people don’t know the difference between the assessment and the what’s the other one?

Ms. Adams: Mill rate?

Mr. Everett: No.

Mr. Frigon: The market value is 100%.

Mr. Everett: (Inaudible) like $163,000, they think that’s what their house is worth, but it’s

not, that’s only 70% of what Vision says it’s worth. Try to sell it. You can see houses being on the market for a year or longer trying to get those prices. They are not getting them. That’s our biggest complaint about the revaluation. As far as the tax money goes, the schools got to go, the street department needs their money, I expect to pay more money because prices have gone up, but don’t tell me I’m driving a Lamborghini when I’m driving a Corvair and charging me for it.

Ms. Adams: During the break Frank had pointed out that 3 years ago our bond payments

totaled $3,500,000; now we’re up to $7,000,000 and we’re not doe yet.

Watertown Town Council Regular Meeting August 17, 2009 Page 58 Mr. Everett: Well it takes money to run the town and I expect that and I expect to pay

higher taxes but not to fabricated appraisals from Vision that is not even a Connecticut company. Do we have to get a class action suit? Where do we go from here?

Ms. Adams: Chuck, do you want to ask Paul and then get back to Mr. Everett?

Mr. Frigon: Sure.

Ms. Adams: Chuck is good at getting answers.

Mr. Everett: Yea, Chuck has always helped me. Thanks a lot.

Ms. Adams, Chairman, Closed Public Participation at 10:34 p.m.

12. Adjournment MOTION: (Mr. Demirs, sec. Mr. Bernier) to Adjourn the Regular Meeting at 10:35 p.m. Discussion: None MOTION PASSED UNANIMOUSLY Regular Meeting Adjourned at 10:35 p.m.

Respectfully submitted,


Approved: _______________________________

Lynn M. LaForme, Clerk

Documents

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