Speaker numbers apply only to this recording.
The Sewer Commissioners (acting as the Select Board) met to review sewer rate projections, discuss a warrant article for a $20.7 million wastewater treatment plant upgrade, and consider applying for a new state nitrogen reduction grant. The board voted unanimously to place the full project on the October 19, 2026 special town meeting warrant and gave consensus to pursue the grant.
Okay, pursuant to MGL 7C30A 20F. After notifying the chair of a public body, any person may make a video or audio recording of an open session of a meeting of a public body. Or may transmit the meeting through any medium. The beginning of the meeting, the sh chair shall inform other attendees of any such recordings. So this is being recorded by CTSB, Berkshire Edge, and the town of Great Barrington. Any member of the public wishing to speak at the meeting must receive permission of the chair. The listing of agenda items of those reasonably anticipated by the chair, which may be discussed at the meeting. Not all items listed may be discussed, and other items not listed may be brought up to the extent permitted by law. So we're calling to order tonight as sewer commissioners, and we will do a roll call vote. Phil here. Benfield. Eric here. And Steve present. And Liz, I'll turn it over. Well, it does say commissioner's announcements or statements, so we'll go back and do that. Phil, do you have anything? Nothing. Thank you. Ben, nothing for me. Garfield? Nothing. Eric. No. No, I'll turn it over to the town manager. Thank you. Thank you, everyone, for your patience as well as uh getting into this room and getting the meeting started a little late tonight. Um, with me is Paula Eli, the sewer, um, the wastewater um superintendent. And we also have on the call Alice and Crespo, our town accountant. We have um our consultants, our engineers, Justin Skelly and Dave Prickett from DPC, who is here to talk about. We have three items on your agenda for the sewer commissioners. We are going to ask your last meeting that we discussed the actual capital project and um the reason for our request to consider um a grant that is available to us in October or November. They are allowing us to the state is allowing us to have a little flexibility to call a special town meeting for a grant that is 350,000 of a project that is around 3.9 million dollar project. However, this sets us up for a broader discussion for a larger project that is about to come online and needing town meeting vote. That is a 20.7 million dollar project, which makes us eligible for much larger grants, obviously, and the SRF loans, which we will know about those rates if we are entered into that program around February or March. So tonight's discussion from our your last meeting is about the fees and making sure that the fee schedule that you have in anticipation for whichever project that we're going to go, whether it be the 3.9 now or the 20.7 now million dollar project or the 3.9 now and the remainder of it that totals 20.7 in the special the annual town meeting in May. And so those fees are something that you would the rates you those are what you wanted to us to look at. Justin and Paula have pulled that together with Dave as well, and that's what they were here tonight to talk about, then go into the actual article and the project scope of what you feel comfortable with presenting to town meeting voters in on October 19th. And then there is a new grant that Justin had mentioned at the previous um at the previous meeting. It is now available. So Justin's going to talk about that, and we're going to ask for guidance if you uh want us to pursue that grant because there is a bunch of filing to do, and we just want to make sure that we have the board's review and um authorization to move forward. So that's it in a nutshell, and I will turn it over to Justin now. Thank you.