The first regular Board of Selectmen’s meeting of 2020 was among the most brief in memory, clocking in at under 12 minutes. But it did include conversation that might prompt a future Charter change involving how officials handle the administration of nominal and routine grants.

According to Town Finance Director Robert Tait, each grant typically amounts to a few hundred to as much as several thousand dollars in revenue — and some have been awarded annually for years, if not decades, including one on the selectmen’s agenda January 6.

First Selectman Dan Rosenthal discussed the criteria of these dozen or so grants as he and Selectmen Maureen Crick Owen and Jeff Capeci unanimously accepted $7,500 Historic Document Preservation grant that underwrites one of the many functions of the Town Clerk’s Office.

The state initiative is part of PA 00-146 (AAC Real Estate Filings and the Preservation of Historic Documents), which requires town clerks to collect a $3 fee in addition to those fees the law already requires them to collect for recording land documents.

The clerk keeps $1 of the $3 and sends the remainder to the state treasurer by the 15th of the following month for deposit in a historic document preservation account that the act established.

The act requires the public records administrator to annually allocate 70 percent ($1.40) of the funds in the account for grants to towns — and each town’s chief executive officer can direct its clerk to apply for a grant.

Towns and the State Library can use the funds to:

1. Restore and conserve land records, land record indexes, maps, or other records;

2. Microfilm these documents;

3. Manage and track historic documents using information technology;

4. Assess or upgrade facilities where records are retained;

5. Recover documents after a disaster; and

6. Train staff to maintain and track historic documents.

In addition to, or instead of, these activities, towns can use their share of the fee-generated revenue for any activities to preserve and manage historic documents.

Three-Step Process

In Newtown, the process to accept what amounts to a pro forma intra-governmental financial transaction is surprisingly involved — demanding the participation of nearly two dozen town officials who must convene with their respective boards and formally accept such routine grant funds.

Depending on the timing of the grant awards and when the various boards can meet and execute approvals, the process could take as long as two months.

Under queries from Ms Crick Owen and Mr Capeci, the first selectman explained that these routine grants typically require no matching taxpayer monies and little or no further municipal resources or staffing requirements.

“I think maybe at the next Charter Revision we should qualify what grants apply, or some dollar value,” Mr Rosenthal said. “The positive is, everybody knows what’s going on — that we’re getting these grants — but these things can become a timing challenge having to go through [approval by] the Board of Selectmen, the Board of Finance, and the Council.”

Mr Rosenthal later told The Newtown Bee, “There’s a bunch of grants that are sort of on auto-renew every year, and if you go with the spirit of the Charter, every grant needs to get approved.

“But there are timing issues around this,” he said, referring to the required order of meetings in relation to various deadlines to complete approvals. “The process is good, but I think the Charter and the intent is to require this level of approval if we’re going to have to hire someone or provide matching funds.

“In certain cases we have to bring thousand dollar grants through an approval process,” the first selectman added. “In a town the size of Newtown with a $100-million-plus budget, and with a lot of employees asking, ‘Hey, can we take this $500 grant?’ — it seems like minutia versus approving large grants that compel us to dedicate town resource or matching money out of the budget. All those make complete sense for full vetting — but the Police Department getting a drone?”

Fiscal Sign-Off

Mr Rosenthal questioned why that particular acquisition needed to “go through three meetings and having 20 people say yes over a month-and-a-half period before you can even accept it? These are management functions,” Mr Rosenthal said, “while other, larger grants should require fiscal sign-off [by other boards].”

The first selectman illustrated saying if the town received a grant to get a bus, there would be other implications that could involve significant future cost to run and maintain the vehicle.

“But some of these are just cemetery grants or things like that records retention grant we did — some of this stuff we should look at in a future charter revision,” he said. “Should we be required to put every one on three agendas and vote on them? I’m not sold on that.”

In other business January 6, selectmen:

*Released a $13,800 road work acceptance bond to Grassy Hill Builders LLC for an Ox Hill Road project;

*Released a $1,000 driveway bond for S.J. Greenwood Co Inc;

*Approved a $5,792.07 tax refund;

*Reappointed Jeffrey Robinson to the Economic Development Commission and Patrick Barczak to the Parks & Recreation Commission; and

*Appointed Megan Thorne to the Inland Wetlands Commission and Legislative Council Representative Cathy Reiss to the municipal Public Safety Committee — where she will serve as a liaison to the Garner Correctional facility.

Selectmen also agreed to permit Public Building & Site Commissioner Thomas Catalina to shift from a full seat to an alternate, with alternate Gordon Johnson shifting into the full seat. Both new terms expire January 6, 2021.

Ethics Commission alternate Maria Zanfini was also authorized to take a full seat on that appointed panel.

Mr Rosenthal closed the meeting reminding selectmen that the next public information sessions regarding Fairfield Hills Master Plan recommendations are set for February 18, and March 16 at Newtown High School. These meetings convene at 7 pm, and will be held in the lecture hall, not the auditorium.