Board of Selectmen Meeting December 11, 2017

Board of Selectmen Meeting December 11, 2017

The transition to a Town Manager on December 4, has been chaotic and dysfunctional since the newly selected professional Town Manager will not assume her position until February 1, 2017. Sean Kimball is in training for a Town Manager position during the transition, leaving his post as interim Finance Director without a full time director.

Without a full time Finance Director, staff has been reduced without control over payments with no oversight, leaving the town with an immeasurable risk.

Payments are made without oversight and making transfers into hundreds of accounts leaving no controls in place for accuracy. Revenues could be appropriated to the wrong account. Payments may not be paid on time accruing late fees. The two fulltime employees are assuming all the risks on monitoring a $90 million budget.

Although these employees have taken over many of the tasks from the absent Finance Director they are not having their salaries increased as are all the non-union employees in transition.

The town hired BlumShapiro at $14,900 in 2013 to perform an Independent Accountants’ Report on financial controls.

The conclusions were that Simsbury does not have controls in place to provide the appropriate checks and balances on the expenditures and revenues.

BlumShapir concluded that additional staff is required for adequate checks and balances. The advice given has been ignored placing the town at risk.

I recently received an email from the Performing Arts asking for money stating, “Won’t you be our friend.” I will give you several reasons for not being their friend and not donating anything to their organization.

Stating that the SPAC receives no money from the Town is contrary to the $15,000 in the town budget for a golf cart/utility vehicle. They had their payment to the town reduced from $10,000 to $2,500 for the lease to the land where they should be paying a going rate of $60,000 for the 6 months they use our fields. The taxpayers lost $7,500 in revenue. The SPAC uses an office and a garage on the site rent free. The SPAC was given $15,342.29 in seed money from the Town’s Special Revenue Fund when they became a 501 c (3). The SPAC arbitrarily sets fees for use to promoters that cannot be appealed. The SPAC uses town employees to maintain their equipment, paint lines and other requests on demand during working hours.

Septemberfest that started as a non-alcoholic family fun day with no entry fees had turned into alcohol on demand with cash entry fees without controls and a cash cow for the SPAC. The SPAC allows illegal pot smoking at concerts, a trailer park on site and tailgating at concerts that interfere with business and traffic and diminishes the revenue generated from the vendor’s sale of food.

The SPAC generates excessive noise and has become a public nuisance. The SPAC will not receive any money from me and should have their contract terminated with the Town

I am asking the Board of Selectmen to deny the application for a 2018 Iron Horse Half Marathon, 10 K and 5K. The attachment states that parking is available at the Commuter Parking Lot.

The State has restrictions on using their parking lot for other than commuter parking.

The race has caused an impact on businesses, using private parking lots for the race. The residents on the path of the race are impacted since their road is closed. The race has become too big for Simsbury to absorb and should be eliminated as a public nuisance.

The State has recently required Ensign Bickford/Dyno Dobel as a requirement for the transfer of property to perform an Environmental Impact Study. The Ensign Bickford site on Hopmeadow Street is a Super Fund site.

EHS Support, LLC. on behalf of Dyno/Nobel has submitted to the State a Remedial Action Plan.. This report is approximately 150 pages and is available in the Town Clerks Office for review. The State will continue to study the environmental impact to all sites now owned by Dyno/Nobel including the storage units and manufacture of the explosives sites.

The Solar project is moving forward at the Siting Council as presented. There was too much political pressure to counteract the demands of the residents. Fighting Pullman & Comley, agent for Deepwater is an insurmountable task.

The International Skating Center (ISCC) of Simsbury has introduced curling. There are “learn to skate” classes in association with the Hartford Curling Club. I will post the flyer on my website posting.

At the present time everyone is positioning themselves to run for Governor. I would like to suggest that Mark Bertolini, CEO of Aetna, would be a perfect candidate for Governor of Connecticut.