Board of Aldermen 07-13-2021 Page 6
These plans ultimately for the project were approved by the Planning Board. As we detailed in our petition
Madam President, Groton Road as we know it today was laid out by a realignment by the State in 1937. As a
result of the realignment and as shown on the plan that Hayner Swanson prepared which we submitted with
our petition, there’s a strip of land sort of narrow, a couple little triangular shape, long and thin along a portion
of this property's frontage on Groton Road.
After the realignment in 37 these portions of the old layout of Groton Road were no longer used. It is also an
old, old apparent layout of a section of Old Groton Road that Hayner Swanson simply couldn’t locate with any
definitiveness. Those two areas constitute the sections that we are seeking to be discontinued. It is clear that
these sections of road, whether laid out or not, are no longer in use. (Inaudible — Audio Interference) The
information that we submitted has a unanimous recommended approval from the Planning Board, the
Infrastructure Committee of this Board, also recommended approval of the petition. | believe the City Engineer
has indicated his recommendation of approval as well. So we would simply respectfully request the Board of
Aldermen grant and approve the petition this evening and also adopt Resolution R-21-147 to authorize the
conveyance of these discontinued portions of Old Groton Road to Etchstone Properties in connection with all
this process and following up on the Planning Board approval Etchstone will be granting the City a sidewalk
easement for two portions of sidewalk that Etchstone will be constructing along Groton Road part of the
sidewalks in the Groton Road (inaudible — audio interference) part is on the Terrel Farm Property. So sidewalk
easement will be granted as recommend by Deputy Corporation Counsel Celia Leonard.
Just in closing, Madam President, we’d like to thank Alderman Jette our initial soonsor and the co-sponsors for
R-21-147 and thank the Full Board for taking the time to consider the petition. And thank the Infrastructure
Committee and Planning Board for their favorable recommends; the time they spent on our request as well as
the City Engineer for his work and our heartfelt thanks to our City Clerk, Mrs. Lovering who helped me in the
initial processing of the petition as well as Attorney Bolton’s Office and Attorney Leonard for the guidance they
provided. If the Board finds it appropriate | am happy to answer any questions. Thank you very much.
President Wilshire
Thank you. Brian Rhodes?
Brian Rhodes, Fire Chief
Good Evening. Thank you. | just want to kind of bring some numbers to you for tonight’s vote. | do appreciate
the work the Mayor has done in trying to keep the taxes down; | am a taxpayer as well. | know that the vote
before you tonight is somewhat difficult. | understand. But | just want — some brief numbers for you — even
with the Mayor’s adjustments that he made, we are still $132,000.00 short of meeting the contractual obligation
that this Board passed in the most recent Firefighter's Contract. The operating increases that we requested
totaled $77,000.00 additional. Three of the items out of the four that we asked to increase — one is the HVAC
line that we maintain seven buildings that it breaks, stuff breaks; we try to maintain it. Our budget has not been
raised in years to maintain that. Our protective clothing line we are falling behind in that schedule just because
the price of protective clothing has raised. And that provides for the safety and health of our firefighters.
The technology line that we increased by $10,000.00 is a new line for us. That line is to account for when we
started to receive this CARES money for the reconstitution of the City we approached the City and said we
need a better way than training 20, 25 people in a room with this pandemic but it is also not efficient for our
operation when we have to take 2 or 3 fire trucks out of service you know for a temporary basis to train. This
new software program is proven, it has been out for well over 20 years, and the City approved us to buy, |
guess you would call it the hardware, the tablets to use so each member can log in individually. And what this
does is, this will give us accountability for each member that they can log in, they can know what they need to
keep up their certifications and training. We will be able to see what they are lacking on, we will be able to see
when we put out important directives, general orders, standard operating procedures and guidelines, we will be
able to say that no, you did see this. So it is going to bring much needed accountability to our organization.
But that money wasn’t included in the CARES money that we got. So we got the tablets, we got the Wi-Fi but
