The Fall River Redevelopment Authority convened on August 24, 2022. The meeting began with the approval of open session minutes from June 13th and August 1st, 2022, and the acceptance of a warrant totaling $31,566.93, both passing unanimously. The board then authorized the chair, John Erickson, to execute a contract for the renewal of the executive errors and omissions insurance, which also passed unanimously. Sarah Page, Executive Director, announced the hiring of Rachelle Avila as the new administrative assistant, with Julie Warden, the temporary assistant, providing training support. A significant portion of the meeting was dedicated to the City Pier at 600 Duvall Street. Discussions covered trash management, with the city agreeing to handle pickup, and a debate on using solar compactors versus regular trash cans. Signage for the pier was also a key topic, with Johnny (John Erickson) providing the sign and pedestal, and George Mattius's company handling the steel structure. The board discussed the content of the sign, including "Senator Norton City Pier" and "Fall River Redevelopment Authority," and considered a separate plaque to thank contributors, acknowledging concerns about including the mayor's name due to funding sources. A dedication ceremony for the pier was tentatively scheduled for Saturday, October 1st, to be a public "rain or shine" event. An update on the Chapter 91 license and dock installation for the City Pier indicated that a contractor is expected to be on board by the end of October. Finally, the board discussed and voted to execute a contract with Robley Historic Preservation for $10,395 to serve as a historic district consultant. Andrew Robley, the consultant, was highly recommended, and the contract amount was significantly lower than the anticipated $50,000. The meeting concluded with a unanimous roll call vote to enter executive session to discuss litigation and real estate transactions, including properties on Innovation Way, Anawan Street, Bank Street, and Commerce Drive, with no return to open session.
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all right i'd like to uh call to order the meeting of the fall river redevelopment authority august 24th uh pursuant to the open meeting law any person may make an audio or video recording in this public meeting or may transmit the meeting through any medium attendees are therefore advised that such recording or transmission are being made whether perceived or unperceived by those present and are deemed
0:28acknowledged and permissible um i'd like to start with the roll call for attendance uh members of the board john john erickson present joan medeiros present lewis congo's president joe marshall president and keen president okay and also with us is sarah page want to acknowledge yourself sarah page executive director okay john coughlin john and ken faiola our administrative services consultant thank you ken
1:01uh first item on the agenda is the approval of open session minutes from june 13th uh and august 1st 2022. joe do you have to read that statement did i miss that did you do it already no i already did you missed it yes you would thank you um again i'm uh i'll entertain a motion to accept the minutes of the past two meetings i moved we approved 613 and eight was it
1:30eight one yeah one meeting meaning uh okay uh second to that motion second by john madirus all in favor signified by saying aye aye anyone approve uh opposed no okay you also received uh the warrant your package uh is there any discussion and if not i would entertain a motion to accept the warrant as presented i move we accept the warrant total thirty one thousand five hundred sixty six thousand ninety three cents
2:07okay um second exactly second buy in all in favor aye aye anyone opposed okay thank you um next item on the agenda is uh a vote we're looking into arizona missions insurance right now the renewal is september 28th i believe 21st 21st i meant yeah 21st and um so we're going through that right now but we don't want i think it'll be before the renewal should be in before our next
2:42meeting so i would entertain a vote to authorize me the chair to execute a contract for the renewal of executive and officers insurance wait a minute is it executives in offices or it's arizona missions it's arizona arizona it says executive but it's arizona missions insurance i read it but it's ever said it is arizona it's executive errors and omissions insurance okay because the actual application says directors
3:12and officers all different things dno yeah latino know it's the coverage we have now right and we're looking into renewing it with the same company or an additional quote that we should get to make sure it's everything's in line make sure the coverage is the same so um knowing that is there a motion to allow me to do that um i'll make a motion to allow the chair to execute renewal of the arizona missions
3:44insurance for them for another year okay uh second my second second by johnny uh all in favor aye aye aye anyone opposed okay so moved um update on hiring an administrative assistant well i want to bring us up today i want to first start and thank julie warden for being with us for a number of weeks and really um helping us continue to look for a permanent uh full-time person she had applied
4:21originally as a half-time person and um wants to stay in her present full-time job and um has just been invaluable as we and so she was working through a temp agency and we now have hired someone who starts on monday whose name is rachelle avila and i sent you all her resume and joan and i were very impressed with our interview i was impressed with the references and so i'm really
4:55very happy that she's starting and julie is going to do some overlapping and do a bit of training because she's gotten up to speed on lots of things and the other great thing about this is that julie would be willing to get pulled in to help with our dedication or you know she knows us and would be willing to help if we need extra help down the road thank you thank julie thank you julie
5:23thank you for the opportunity all right um any other questions relative to that we know starting uh date is monday um now we'll look forward to yeah meeting rochelle and you did already right i did all right good good it was a very good interview good uh next item on the agenda would be the city pierre 600 duval street and to discuss several items related to the city pier opening and operations you want to bring
5:56us up to yes so you can fill in great um so we have gotten a confirmation from the city that the city will pick up the trash at city pier and um we're still trying to decide exactly what trash containers that we are going to go with i've priced the solar compactors and it's about four thousand dollars because they come yes each because they come with a software package that tells
6:35you when they need to be emptied and the city has a couple of them from this same company and um charlie um said that he thinks we should not go with those and should just go with regular trash cans so i'm going to meet with him and talk about his reasoning how many trash cans he thinks we should have the other thing about the compactors are they have incredible numbers of orders
7:11they had supply chain issues so they're back ordered for four months so we would need to get a few trash cans to hold us over if we do want to go with that option that also would allow us to see if the trash cans work if they overflow if it's um really important to get trash compactors to make the trash less except that you know once we're really open in the summer and having
7:43events there will obviously be a lot more trash and that would then potentially argue for having the compactors and we need to figure out how many we need we figure we need things out at the ends of the piers so one potential option would be to put some cans out at the end and have one trash compactor um so i'm gonna do more research i'll bring it back to you but that's where we are let
8:12me uh let me ask you say we have two where are they located now we don't have any no i mean not us i meant the city oh the city has them on old second street so you can see one um i had to go searching for it but it's um where borden street goes around and it's right at the end there and it's kind of not very visible the thing i
8:38am uncertain about with the compactors is if you don't know what they are it's you may not know that that's where you're supposed to put your trash unless you have a sign on the side of it that says yeah the new ones from this company say something about trash and have a picture but the one that's on old second street it's very non-descript it's not obvious that that's where you put your trash and then
9:07there are lots of other trash cans that are really obvious we all know to look for a trash can so that's a well in your discussion with charlie if we weren't to go that way and we went with regular uh dcm pickup there'd have to be a schedule associated with that make sure that that's part of the discussion it would have to be with either but well yeah more so though with the city yes if we're
9:36counting on the city to do it well we would have the city empty the solar compactors too because they need to be empty um and he's used to them and i know he has opinions about what he thinks we should do so i'm going to talk okay about it good um what else and then we want to talk about this sign johnny is generously uh providing the sign the pedestal and everything is there and
10:10what sign are we talking about the sign for city pier okay yeah also miw he's doing the steel structure oh right a lot of scion works on base too so um so george mattius and his company uh is doing um the steel and so we need to have somebody do the graphic layout of what exactly we're saying um we think i just want to confirm what we're saying on the sign so we're going to say
10:46senator norton cdpr and with his full name and then say fall river redevelopment authority and it's going to be very simple then we want to thank the mayor the fall river redevelopment authority and um you know we may want to think about if there's anyone else to put on uh something but we're thinking of a plaque that would go on a stone somewhere prominent on the pier that would thank
11:20uh the mayor and the redevelopment authority because we don't think we can put all of that on the side how do people feel about that i think that's fine yeah good yeah individual names not on the sign but on the well on the plaque you'd have the board members the mayor uh we still need to think out details probably you'd put redevelopment authority you might put the city seal next to the mayor
11:56there are plaques that we can look at as good examples in city hall uh from when it was developed and that's where the idea kind of came from i would take a look at a couple of signs we have in city parks kennedy park immediately comes to mind kennedy park yep you come up to the approach i think it's nicely done maybe you would need to tweak it a little bit but i think that
12:24would be a good example of how we do signage and i think it's pretty similar to what we've got in other places are you saying for the big the big sign that we're talking about yeah the the thing about that that we've looked into and is a question is that the city signs have the the present mayor on them because it's city property and so you have to have a movable um
13:01attachment to the sign right the changes and so we weren't sure that we wanted to have the mayor on there and keep changing it i'm just suggesting it for the purposes of the layout sarah and then we fight accordingly okay fine i was afraid you meant no content no no no yes um well johnny has a great design with a picture of the bridge across the top oh nice and um
13:32so yes i will do that i don't have it with me but i said i don't have it with me to see if he wants his name i think we did we did it at the beginning he didn't no we're not but he's
13:53i'll say this about that right the city has not put any money into this correct project at all correct if you you know the money has come from the state and it's come from legislators in the state and they're not looking to have their names put anywhere but i'm just saying you just got to be careful when you start putting these things out there because people get like the police you know through the seaport
14:22council you got millions of dollars through dep you got millions of dollars and it's all these there's millions of dollars that have come from the state and they're not looking for any recognition of that so i'm just saying just you know i think you just got to think these things a little bit through in terms of how you go about it because signage is always a precarious thing as to who gets acknowledged who's not
14:45acknowledged who's left off and there's no need to build ill will if you can avoid it i'm just saying just well that's not the intent either i mean we could go back to the drawing board and add the seaport console and add a few other things to the the major sign if you wanted to i'm not saying i'm just saying but you know just just keep in mind with the money for these projects oh yeah right
15:10this is the development money land you know we've always redone authority historically has already said that they funded this either through themselves or through federal and state grants right and the more you make it look like city the more me it looks like city property and i don't think that's the way you want to get that to go so that's a good point that's good the other possibility is that we not do a plaque
15:38i mean the plaque has all those kinds of issues associated with it but i think we would like to do one so that's the other option is that we just have our cd peer sign that says redevelopment authority on it and leave it at that yeah because if we do a plaque i would lean toward what kenny's saying you know uh thanks to the cooperation and whatever uh for these agencies listening to three
16:05or four something with the date as well yeah so the plaque i think is up in the air i think the sign is easy enough to accept right uh but the plaque we can tweak that okay so why don't i send you options about the plaque yeah yes not too many talk about it at the next meeting not too many because i could always go after right it could do that in the spring or something yeah
16:34you don't have to do at the same time but close because that's the next question are we still committed to having a dedication in september and you know probably related to that is we are working on how we're going to get the grass redone and either you know we have various strategies and we're just going to get it reseeded in the next couple of weeks yeah so i think that puts you out to october
17:16can't go much further than that no not weather-wise right and you know it's possible that you would have the dedication with it looking like you just receded and saying you know it was a tough summer we reseeded our grass and it should be beautiful in the spring and you know because i don't think it's going to um truly be beautiful by october it will have still just been reseeded and you'll have more grass but
17:53um at least the puddle you know the the depressions will be filled and it will look as though it's on its way so you're suggesting not even in october no i'm saying you could do it in september it will be receded we will tell people they can't walk on it we'll make sure we have the dedication somewhere so on the site so that people are not walking on the grass we can put flags and
18:24you know little fences the fabrication time huh this is the cyan fabrication oh yeah that's the other piece we can do that in a couple of weeks all right two weeks ago we met we measured the piers the other day for the for the base plates so given the extra time maybe the first week in october not too much further than that right and i talked with patrick he thinks we
18:51should do it on a saturday morning what do people think about that i hadn't thought about it um i was surprised usually you do them during the week but i think he felt that people would be off of work and that it would be a celebratory thing to do on a saturday morning i'm fine with that it doesn't matter to me i think it all depends on how big we want it
19:17right how big do we want that well i think we're going to make it really public i think you know we're going to let the well this is a question for you the board but uh i forgot who was talking about you should really just invite the community maybe patrick said that no you have to you have to invite the stakeholders too right i have to invite them you know
19:43there will be as we did with the groundbreaking a vip list of people who have been really important in making this happen people who are are collaborators in the city and uh the community and then you know let the public know they can come saturday morning probably is a good time in terms of parking down there as well true that's a good point yeah but but again the stakeholders if you
20:20have level lewis brought it up if you um you know people from boston are they going to come down on saturday morning or or they're all professionals like they might want that time with their family if we're going to invite the people that had the input on making this thing happen it probably should be during the week if it if the important part is to have them like you said they help make this project happen
20:45if they're gonna if we're requesting their time it should be their time probably during the week as opposed to a saturday with their families except that most of the people who've really made it happen are public officials right and you know the lieutenant governor might be just as happy to be down here on a saturday that's a good point give them the option and base it off of who we feel most important they need to
21:15be there probably not that many people that will be traveling right to it right i mean i'm just thinking so let's have a governor came down first time around and i know that it's one of the important projects to her so she'd make herself available probably a strong possibility that she would come down delegation to come down oh yeah but uh i don't know i'd still stay with saturday morning the first week in october
21:45once we can iron out all the other issues probably not that's probably not the three-day weekend though where are we with calendar should we base it around her schedule no no no no no because there's yes we'll check there's october 1st and then which is a saturday and then the next week the eighth is part of the long weekend right so so then you're getting to the 15th which
22:14would be the middle one it has to be the first then if you're going to do it yeah it's an easy date to remember october 1st yes it is all right
22:31of course we'll need a rain date i think i mean we're going to get a much bigger tent this time
22:46last time yeah we had a tent and it was super sunny and so we were oh yeah should it be the rain day be that the following wednesday or sunday i don't know what do we want to do about a rain date i don't know about sunday that might be we wouldn't move it inside would we no no there is no inside well why wouldn't we consider the sunday the second
23:17yeah the rain date situation in jeopardy and shine i know but a lot of people are not going to come if it's utterly boring well depends how important it is to them right i i would agree that if you've got the tent if you got the tent it won't rain anyway right so maybe that's what i don't know i've had an event look tense that blew away it was so crazy we
23:57don't want to get that kind of tent no i don't think we need a rain date i think okay personally i don't think so unless others do rain or shine do you think they need to think about a time though because i don't know that we're going to meet again to really you need to get some of this going before our next meeting we talked about having a committee which i'm hoping rochelle can help me
24:22pull together and organize so we will have a committee patrick agreed he'd serve it well then you have to stop working on that right away right away yes absolutely that's good though um a rain or shine day so i think we need it is hurricane season so we need to also have a if it's you know well if you want to put a little note at the end if there's a hurricane
24:54forget about it will we we'll see in the spring i don't think we have to look at every contingency i think getting a date with a tent uh which are the two important things i think uh might be enough i mean as we get closer we can look at the weather yeah yeah i think if we were at the point of a hurricane that that's a it would but i think that would be an obvious one
25:19yeah yeah we can't cover them all so okay let's go with that yep what else on the pier um i think that's it chapter 91 oh and then chapter 91 that's the well that's the next item next item right those are the things i had do people have any questions on the pier no anyone else no no all right then we should go to city pf baseball next item so updates we're in the
25:53process of getting the chapter 91 license it's been applied we've we've sent in the application to mass dep they're reviewing it uh we still need to um get the um army corps of engineers on board ken's been working on that so we think that we'll have them as dep license in a few weeks we know they're backed up but we're pretty confident that we'll get that and the timing of that is fine because um
26:35we'll get the design for the docks and the piers sometime in mid-september so we think the two will come around the same time are you as optimistic i think we're probably going to hopefully get the chapter 91 license in two or three weeks yeah okay you're optimistic yeah and then we put the design bill uh the package off a bid for the installation in mid-september hopefully yeah so by the end of october we have a
27:05contractor on board and then depending on the year of time of year um restrictions restrictions we should be able to drive the pilots either before the end of the year or january depending on which type of restriction we have okay were you saying out to bid in october is that what you just said um late october 30 process yeah i think that's it yeah that'll that'll button everything up i hope by that time
27:46yeah all right next item is the historic district consultant uh discussion and potential vote to execute a contract with robly historic preservation in the amount of ten thousand three hundred and ninety five dollars what what details can you offer on that well i think we mentioned at the last meeting that we were disappointed that we didn't get more applicants correct we had been told
28:18by the mass historic um you know the state uh preservation office that uh lots of historic consultants are very busy with other projects and aren't necessarily proposing on simple district nominations so um so we looked at um andrew robley we talked with him uh ken and i interviewed him i then followed up and talked with him some more which gave me more confidence i talked with two of
28:59his references and really at length and i wrote it up for kennen and giving them the highlights but it gave me complete confidence that he'd be a really good consultant he for example has he did a historic district nomination for binghamton new york under the firm that he worked for so he's just gone out on his own okay in his own firm and his references both said that was a really logical choice for him because he
29:35wanted to really do the work he really wanted to do which is this kind of project as opposed to the solar farm projects that he was doing with the other company and um so both of them said one said he's excellent the other one said he's great the person at the city of binghamton said that he's worked with many historic consultants and he would go with andy any day and he just has lots of
30:10confidence in him the other thing about their project which we are anticipating as a possibility is that they um they had a curve ball with their nomination of their district where the state historic preservation office had said that they could include two blocks that a new historic preservation officer who replaced the other one said no they could not include those blocks and so he had to creatively adjust
30:50and work through that and so when he said to us you know we told him that we're not sure we're going to be able to just expand our existing historic district we might have to create another one and he said i really think we can work through it to just have one historic district and we have our own fall river folks totally behind that kristin of the historic commission said that's ridiculous you should
31:19absolutely be able to extend this one and some other folks have said the same so i think that you know that's what he's assuming we can do if in case we had to do a whole separate historic district for south main street then we would have to do an amendment to his contract because his contract is based on the assumption that we're going to get it through right his scope will work okay
31:48have you worked with him before no you just met him for the first time we had i think originally budgeted 50 000 for this well that's what we assumed it might be yeah so it's coming in much much less great job you know so that's either a good thing or bad wow that's why so but you had strong recommendations yes and we were really worried about that and i was i was um
32:15relieved of some of my concern because binghamton's came in at 10 000.
32:20and the person at the city said it really should have been 17 000 but they did it for ten they stuck with that bid and both of his references said yeah he's probably under bidding because he really wants to do this kind of project he loves to travel and loves this kind of city and he wants to build a reputation in massachusetts and ken is happy about the fact that he's done
32:49a number of tax credit applications and he totally believes that you should be creating districts so that developers can get tax credits and you can redevelop the district so i think we've got a good match good okay that's great all right thank you uh at this point um well wait no i think she's looking to have us execute a contract right oh yes yes you're right you're right so
33:21so i i would entertain a vote to have me execute of the chair execute a contract with rob lee historic preservation in the amount of ten thousand of three ninety five thank you i move we execute the contract with um
33:47the next item would be a request to go into executive session uh i make a finding that an open session would have a detrimental effect to the on the negotiating position of the public body um i'd like to have a role called that you got a second finding too there should be two on there uh the chair makes a finding do you not have that second one i do it looked like the same one i'm sorry
34:15john slightly the chair makes the finding that an open session would have a detrimental effect on the litigating of the public body also so that in mind i'd like to entertain a roll call vote to enter into executive session to approve the june 13th and the august 1st executive session minutes and to discuss strategy with respect to the litigation in the bristol county superior court docket number 2273-cv 00535 and
34:51with respect to potential litigation regarding the city peer project and for real estate transactions on the agenda including innovation way 45 anawan street and 72 bank street and 191 commerce drive in fall river so again i'd like to entertain a roll call vote to enter into executive session starting with uh and not going not to return oh and not to return yes and actually we won't return after
35:24we've right we've completed our business mm-hmm so erickson yes joan medeiros yes those gonzales yes joe marshall yes thank you