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The Raynham Channel
Sewer Commission 3/13/2025
(Episode Description is AI generated and may be errors in accuracy)
Behind the Sewer Commission lies a surprising window into community development, infrastructure challenges, and the unseen systems that keep our towns functioning.
The superintendent's report reveals fascinating details about the technical work maintaining modern sewer systems. From specialized pump training to a promising opportunity testing cutting-edge equipment designed to prevent recurring blockages at aging stations, the commissioners balance innovation with fiscal responsibility. Most intriguing is the report of an air release valve repeatedly getting clogged at the West Street Station—a reminder of how individual actions impact community infrastructure.
Economic development threads throughout the discussion with exciting news about previously vacant commercial spaces potentially finding new life. A car dealership exploring the former Stop & Shop location, an Ollie's discount store replacing Big Lots, and even a steakhouse considering the vacant Party City space signal renewed business interest in the area. Meanwhile, construction updates on the Route 44 pump control project, Route 138 gas main relocation, and the West Pine Estates development showcase ongoing infrastructure investments.
Perhaps most telling is the budget discussion revealing how municipal infrastructure costs have skyrocketed—a department truck that cost $50,000 just a few years ago now requires a budget allocation due to price increases and potential tariffs. This stark financial reality underscores the growing challenges facing communities maintaining aging systems while adapting to economic pressures.
Want to understand what makes your community tick? Sometimes the most revealing conversations happen in the least glamorous meetings. Share your thoughts on infrastructure funding challenges or what new businesses you'd like to see in your community!
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Okay, I'd like to call a meeting to our of our monthly meeting of the Board of Sewer Commissioners. As usual, the very first item that we take action on is approval of the minutes from our meeting of 2-13. Have you, my fellow commissioners, had an opportunity to browse through the minutes, see if there's anything that needs to be changed? That's good to me, no abnormalities no corrections needed.
Speaker 1:All right, do I have a motion so moved? Seconded, moved by Mr Bickle, seconded by mr Kelleher. All those in favor, aye, aye, it's unanimous. We approve the minutes correspondence. Please send some correspondence to Rob. He's getting lonesome, not getting any mail.
Speaker 2:Superintendents report okay, superintendents report for march 13 2025. Under department operations, we have had just one connection to the sewer system since our last meeting. It's slowed down a little bit. Gomerup, along with Hayes Pump, did an in-house training seminar for us here in the back garage. That was a nice refresher for our guys, as well as our newest employee being Chris, the electrician, who hasn't been involved in that yet. In May, both Chris and Sean are scheduled to attend a trip to the Gorman Rupp plant in Ohio. Gorman Rupp has an extensive training room there where they will get more in depth in the inner workings of the pumps and controls. They also tour the plant where the pumps and packaged pump stations are produced. They actually forge their own pump casings and everything there, so it's a pretty interesting plant.
Speaker 2:I have also been offered an opportunity to be a recipient of the latest and greatest pump from Boomer Up which, if granted, we will be installing at the West Street Pumping Station, where we have occasional problems with the air release plugging up, and so this pump is in testing phase right now and it's supposed to eliminate those problems with the air release system. It's a new design of the air release system, so we're going to be able to try one out for free. They'll help us put it in and if all goes well, we'd probably purchase one of those. We'd have two side by side and we'd get a discount price on the second one. So the White Street Station is one of the oldest stations it was built in 97, so even though the pumps are in good shape, we do have occasional problems over there, and the problem is related to some sort of a medical device that somebody is flushing down the toilet over there and that air release valve is basically an inch-round pipe and this thing just fits right in there, gets stuck and starts backing up racks behind it and so if the pump loses prime it can't release the air out to prime back up. So we're interested to see if this will help alleviate that by annual billing. Everyone on the Rainland Sewer System should have now received their sewer bill, and this bill has a due date of March 31st, I believe.
Speaker 2:Also one other thing I attended a department meeting today and of interest, there may be a car dealership that's actually interested in the stop and shop building. So we did a little bit of a what dealership? I don't know the dealership's name, I just know there was a possibility that maybe a dealership interested in that building and it's possible that Ollie's which is like a building 19, may be interested in going into big lots. So a lot of these vacant buildings that haven't been opened for the very one sounds like they may have some interest. For them, that's good, and the possibility of maybe even a steakhouse over at party city. So what, going on, that kind of?
Speaker 1:behind the scenes. Yeah, but we don't have Popeyes in yet. No, Popeyes.
Speaker 2:Yet there is some movement on that. They actually reached out to me this week. They get it. One of the things I asked them to do was TV their service line over there. That service line goes across Route 44 through an easement into the side of McDonald's and it hasn't been used in such a long time. I've asked them to TV it before they tie back into it. There is some movement on that. We probably should. We'll be seeing something later in the spring. Tying bond projects. The Route 44 pump control project has now been advertised for bid as of yesterday. A pre-bid meeting will be held on March 20th over at the Route 44 station and for those bidders interested, the bid opening is scheduled for 2 pm on April 3rd and I will hopefully have a recommendation to award for you guys on April 10th and the signing of the contracts or approval to sign the contracts at least that same night at the Sewer Commission meeting.
Speaker 2:Route 138 construction the gas dumping continues with its work on relocating their gas main. They are now in front of the Rainham Animal Clinic, making their way northerly towards Tata Street. That's one crew and the second crew is working on the north side of 495, currently in the general vicinity of Elm Street East intersection and making their way southerly towards the 495 intersection On the Sondercast building. The pumps are now installed and operational. They are aiming for a final inspection from the building department sometime next week and I believe we'll be requesting a temporary occupancy off of that so we may see some action out of that as well. Was there yesterday. Was there, yeah, how's it looking today? It's good. Yeah, I heard that West Pine Estates being Layla. The newly installed sewer system has been scheduled for pipeline pressure testing and manhole vacuum testing starting on March, on the 17th being Monday. Next Monday. Mandrel testing comes at a later date. They have to do a 90-day wait period before they do a mandrill test.
Speaker 2:Easement clearing the guys got an early jump on easement work the clearing of some downed trees. That was a few weeks back. The most recent windstorms had taken down a couple trees which needed to be removed and that was in the South Street East easement. It seems we've lost quite a few trees in the past couple of years. The guys also repaired the fence over the South Street East pumping station which was damaged from a storm we had back in December.
Speaker 2:Manhole repair the guys also had a repaired manhole that the sewer frame and cover was apparently knocked off during a snow event by a plow. This manhole was located at the end of the counter sack but off the pavement, so it was just off the pavement and we believe probably what happened was the plow was pushing the snow back off the road and caught the frame and cover. So this actually happened yesterday. You can see that top left picture that's what we came up on and see that that frame was pretty much yeah, it was off and luckily somebody found it before anybody fell in there. Right picture was the guy who was lifting it up out of there the frame and cover up out of there, and then somebody picked a short straw and had to go down and clean the manhole of all the dirt that was in that manhole.
Speaker 2:One lucky thing about that particular manhole was what we call the termination manhole, so there was nothing flowing through it. It was basically at the end of the line. If we had to clean something out, we'd go into that and open it, so there was no sewer flowing through there. I guess it wasn't Brian that went down. It was not Brian. He did not have the short straw that day. Junior man or smallest guy, that's the way that happens. The smallest guy gets it. He always gets it too. And you can see on the bottom right that was the final repair.
Speaker 2:It's a paid auto generator project All seven generators are now installed, tested and functional. The installation on the exhaust system still needs to be completed and that will be for the two indoor units being Market Basket and Mill Street stations. That work is scheduled to start on the 17th, again next Monday. Hopefully that work will wrap up in a week, at which point we will develop a punch list if needed and then wrap the project up. So I would think by our next meeting we should be pretty much wrapped up with that project.
Speaker 2:The generators that were removed are all lined up out back here. The guys have been cleaning them up to make them a little more presentable for the auction and I'll be working with the town administrator to get them auctioned off. So we have five outdoor generators, as you see in the picture there, and then two indoor, and that's on the bottom left. You'll see one on the forefront, one in the back, then the indoor units. They don't have any protection, any any cover over them to be mounted outdoors. We also have the transfer switches from the stations that go along with generators, so it's nice to get that worked up.
Speaker 1:Another thing I got for you is would let's say that they've got some life left in them If somebody wanted to do subdivision and needed a pump station. This would be an easy access for them to get some of the equipment they would need, wouldn't it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, they could use these again. I think they had maybe three and a half, maybe 400 hours on them. I mean, I think they had maybe three and a half, maybe $400 on them. You know, we just didn't have a lot of luck with the general racks. That was one of the reasons we were getting rid of them. We were having a lot of nuisance calls out of these, so to us they weren't reliable.
Speaker 1:Well, maybe what you ought to do is make a list of people that we could give them to for Christmas.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they're funny so that we could give them to for Christmas. Yeah, so another thing I-.
Speaker 2:That was a joke by the way, that was a joke. That was a joke. They're being auctioned. One thing I kind of touched on last month when we were talking about budget is I was gonna be putting in for a new truck during the May annual town meeting. I think I mentioned to you it cost me $95,000. I'm going to bump that up to $100,000 only because of the new tariffs that we may possibly see with them. So I spoke with the dealer. He couldn't tell me how much a tariff was going to be. If there was going to be a tariff. The hopes is, if we get this approved in May, we may be able to buy something off the lot rather than have to wait for 26, which we've rarely certainly seen the tariffs.
Speaker 1:I was gonna recommend to you to do what they do on all the other tariffs capital through, Throw a big number in and what we don't need we send back to Retain Journeys so that you don't at the last minute, even with a hundred thousand and you need another fifteen type of thing, what was the best price you could get if we bought today what this one here was estimated at was $95,000.
Speaker 2:$95,000. Outfitted, outfitted right, no lettering. Plow or frame, Plow frame.
Speaker 1:The whole thing Block, stock and barrel Finished. We just turn the key and drive off.
Speaker 2:I put the lettering in order, so we don't buy the letter and the guys put it on there and they said 95 000, 94 348.
Speaker 1:Uh, is there anything in there for a possible tariff? Not in this.
Speaker 2:This was before the tariff thing went on. Okay, okay, I did call the dealer to find out, carry $125,000.
Speaker 1:Okay, good, we'll do that. Do you, gentlemen, agree? That's a 25% tariff, it's just a complete unforeseen Might as well.
Speaker 1:And if we don't spend it, it's our money. It goes back to the kitty. I suspect it will come in way less than that. Well, hopefully the dealer inventory is through the roof. It's like anything that you have to go out to buy and you're asking the finance committee or you're asking us to give you some money and because of the way it's restricted in the article, you can't exceed this. It's better to say I want, give me $125,000, and what I don't spend we put back into the bucket, and if it comes in at $119,000, so we get six packs.
Speaker 2:The kicker on this is when I first started in this seat, I bought that same truck for roughly $50,000. $55,000.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:And now all of a sudden.
Speaker 1:The next time we did one, it was like $78,000 and then $85,000. It's gone up like $15,000 and $20,000 every other year, the fact that the money goes back into our coffers, as Joe mentioned, is important. But the outfitting is obviously part of that, but the base truck is just under 50 grand, so 25% of 50 grand if we wanted to do it that way, because the outfitting is not being tariffed, is it?
Speaker 2:We don't know where the parts are coming from. Yeah, I don't know where the parts are coming from. Yeah, I don't know where the time is until the body gets put on the plow, everything and all that gets put on it with gate. You know, that's fine I like that.
Speaker 1:Okay, well, just change your package to 125 000. That's, that's good. All right, any new business? There's no new business, no old business, no emergency business. Any commission report None. No public forum and no press time. All right, we shall entertain a motion for the purpose of adjourning and just doing administrative duties, taking no further action so moved by mr Bickle, seconded by mr Killeher, all in favor. Aye, we have adjourned at 615.