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Date: 3/29/2021
GRANBY – The Granby Selectboard met for their regularly scheduled meeting on the evening of March 22 where they discussed a variety of topics.
The meeting began with an update from Town Administrator Christopher Martin. He began by stating that planning had begun for the upcoming annual town meeting. A tentative date for the meeting, he said, was June 5 and would start at 8 a.m. “We’re going to do it the same way we did last year, we’re going to have a tent with the microphone system,” he said.
Martin said he was unsure if the Board of Health would allow for an indoor meeting, and he wanted to “play it safe” with an outdoor meeting. After a brief discussion the board decided that the town meeting would, in fact, take place on June 5 at 8 a.m., and would follow the same format as the previous year.
Martin then went on to discuss demand fees that the town’s collector charges on late payments on motor vehicle excise taxes and personal property taxes. He said there was no bylaw in the town that allowed for the collector to keep the demand fees in addition to the position’s salary being set by the town meeting as they were an elected official. Martin said when the budget was set by the town, the collector’s salary was also so.
“So what we do is when we set the budget, we have a collector’s salary of say $45,000. That individual then collects an additional $14,000 in demand fees. As it stands right now, they keep those demand fees, so they’re not making $49,000 a year, they’re making $59,000 a year,” he said.
Martin said as the current collector was not running for reelection he wanted to change the way demand fees were collected. He proposed that the town keep half of the demand fees moving forward and the collector would keep the other half of the fees. This, he said, “would be added to their salary line item in the budget for the collector’s office.” He explained that this would allow for the town to truly budget for the collector’s salary within the department.
When asked how this practice came to be, Martin said he wasn’t sure and it was a practice that was adopted prior to his being hired. He added that he hadn’t wanted to penalize the current tax collector, but thought this should be rectified moving forward. He said to calculate the salary moving forward he thought they should take the three year average of demand fees from the previous years, divide it in half and add it to the collector’s current salary. Ultimately, the board decided that was the process they would take to determine the collector’s salary.
The board also spent a significant amount of time discussing a resident’s request for his sewer tax be abated. This, he explained, was because a while ago a building he owned located at 39 West State St. had a tenant that wanted to install a new bathroom. The owner said he paid $14,000 to connect the building to city sewer for this update, but after the tenant realized the cost of the upgrade they decided not to pursue it further. This resulted in the city sewer lines being capped and his continuing to use a septic tank system.
The owner said he felt as though he shouldn’t have to pay a sewer fee as he didn’t actually use the sewer system, the lines were simply on his property. However, Chair of the Board, Glen Sexton, said he felt as though the building was still connected to the sewer system because the pipes were there even though the pipes were capped off because the caps for the pipes could be removed and pipes could be installed to finish the plumbing.
Board Clerk Jennifer Silva agreed saying “The system is hooked up to the building, that becomes a user in my eyes.” No decision was made regarding the abatement during the meeting, and the board said they would take the information before them and make a decision at their next meeting.
The board also approved two spring yard collection waste days on May 22 and on June 12. Lastly, the board approved an addendum to the Police Chief, Alan Wishart’s, contract that would keep the chief in the position until July 2. After that date, he would retire from the position.