 OK, welcome, everyone. Happy Valentine's Day, everybody. Thank you. How sweet of you to join us. I'd like to confirm that we posted the agenda in three public places in town and on the website and emailed to interested parties. So we're legally ready to go forward with this meeting. And we will take public comment after we've gone through the agenda with limiting it to five minutes per person, per topic. And we'll start off with the prior meeting minutes from January 24th, the regular select board meeting. Do you need to have any changes or corrections on those? No, sir. They're pretty thorough to me, so I'd move to approve those. Second. All in favor? Aye. And then we also have the meetings from the special select board meeting of January 11th. Short and sweet. Short and sweet. Proof goes. I second. All in favor? Aye. And also the special select board meeting on January 19th. These are all around trying to figure out when and how we're going to have the town meeting. And the agenda here. And I'd move to approve those. I second. All in favor? Aye. All right. Thank you. OK. We have at the top of the list, we have a guest, Asia. Arshad, hi. Arshad. Thank you for having me. Yeah. What's up, too? What do you want to talk about? Farmers' market? Yes. Today, my hat today is the Farmers' Market Manager hat. All right. OK. I'm here to officially request permission to use the park for the Farmers' Market of 2022, which runs from Memorial Day weekend through Columbus', well, Indigenous Peoples' Day weekend. Every Friday from 3 to 6 PM. I'm happy that you guys do that. I know we have, because of COVID, we asked you to spread out and also that also was spreading out the wear on the park. We stayed away from that main strip along Route 100 last year, and it seemed like it did help it out. So I'm now Frank's been doing a lot of work with getting lime on the lawn to get it done. Trying to bring it back. Trying to bring it back, yeah. How do you feel about the new format of the flow? So it's been actually really nice. It allows us to use more of the park, and so actually it brings people more into the heart of the park. So people tend to kind of spread out more. People then kind of wander over to the gazebo. They get food from the market. They wander to the gazebo. So rather than just kind of sitting on that one area, they do tend to actually spread out. We've had some families then start playing Frisbee back towards the Huntington House and while they listen to the music. So it really has started to move using kind of the whole park. And in fact, that front area, no one really goes on it because it's really shady. It is really shady. I think that's a lot of why the grass wouldn't recover so quickly there. And I made sure to stagger the booths. I mean, the booths were never in the same spot every single week, even because I would use the monument as my marker and move them. So I mean, people love the new layout, and vendors are happy. I know that you have concerns if you were further back away from the road. Less visibility might mean less participation, but it is safer to have people further away off route 100. So I'm fine with that. I would only suggest that if it starts showing a lot of wear there, because if you have a continual use in the same spot all the time, whether you stagger them or not, you still get all the traffic. If it starts to wear, possibly move it to maybe even further back of the monument, maybe for a year or two, and then switch it around a little, you might have to do that just so the grass tries to stay. We've mowed it longer this last summer. It was raw this summer. It was like a hayfield. But that's because of the traffic, and I was trying to keep the grass better by mowing it high. I know it doesn't look as nice, but with the kind of use it gets, it's harder on the ground. I was more worried about the elderly people who kept tripping over the grass. Yeah, well. And actually, the length of it actually kind of became an issue for safety in terms of the peak. Because we had people from the parkhouse coming with their walkers and everything, and it actually was tripping people up, which was actually kind of tricky on my end, because technically, I hate to say it like this, but if someone tricks and falls during the market, I get sued, not the town. So, I mean, I understand obviously not mowing it down to pigeon, but it was, it was a, my farmer husband was eyeing it a little too enthusiastically. I'm wondering whether you could have him change the day that he mows the lawn. Well, we talked about that, and I did speak with him to try to mow it on like a Tuesday, and a lot of times he didn't get to it at that time, and the weather didn't cooperate where it could do it, so it's kind of a crapshoot really. So it's nice to try to keep it as good as we can. That's all I wonder, and possibly just police it a little better, you know, I had to pick up garbage a few times, and I wasn't happy about that. You know, that's okay. Just pick up, you know, trash that was left after your gatherings, and that's fine. I mean, I don't mind, but just be nice if it was a little bit better cared for. So I have to pick up garbage every morning, Friday, and immediately after the market. So I'm not sure when you come through, maybe it's Friday evening or Saturday after people have visited, but I actually end up picking up at least one or two bags of garbage in the morning as my service to the town. Oh, yes. Before the market. It's usually Suzuki week, that's a tricky week. So I end up picking up a full bag of garbage in the morning when I'm setting up on Friday, and then immediately after the market, and the vendors help, they clean up everything. So if there's garbage, it must be the late night, Friday riots, I don't know. It would very well be. We pick up garbage when we get there. Yeah. You know, two o'clock in the afternoon, and we check again for relief in our general area. All right, well, I've moved to approve their use. Are you going to do a formal application for your park use? Oh, yeah, I can tell you that. Yeah, yeah. I did that last year, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Sorry, I should have requested that. And I should have thought to send it to you knowing this was out there. But yeah, I've seen no problems, and we're happy that you all do it. It's people, people really love it. And they actually, if you look at the Airbnbs that are near the center of town, they all use pictures of the market in their advertising. So even if they themselves don't come to the market, it is a draw. It is a draw. Yeah. And thank you, Kevin and Paula, for making sure there's produce at the market. It's nice to have a farmer's market have real farmers there. Yeah. All right, now I'll move on to the first item. I just pushed you ahead since you're on the guest list here. We've got the bids for the emergency generator for this building here, which is our command center. Command center. We've got three bids, one from Vermont Power Technologies doing business as Brookfield Services. And they gave us two bids, one for a 12 kilowatt hour model for $8,257, and one for a 14 kilowatt for $8,836. We also got a bid from Central Vermont Electrical Contractors. And their price for the 14 kilowatt, and they specified no propane installation of $12,375. So it's not clear whether Brookfield bid includes or doesn't include propane. They also put a bid in with propane installation for $16,300. And then a third bid from BC Johnson and Company. They have it broken up even differently than the others. They have the bid for the 14 kilowatt generator for $8,493. The propane installation of $6,874. And then the electrical upgrade for $16,675 for a grand total of $32,042. So obviously, we're not going to award this bid right now because we have to make sure we've got apples and oranges separated and right. But at least we got three people bid. We do. This will happen. Yeah. So we'll award this in the future. But we'll work on digesting that information. Thank you for those two bids. We've got the tax maintenance contract for CAI. What does that stand for? I had to ask. I had to ask. Sorry. CAI, oh, technologies. OK, it just says CAI. Anyway. Oh, cartographic associations, that makes sense. And it's just their maintenance. Yeah, their maintenance contract for $17.50. Not $17.50 at $1,750. That's for the whole year. All right, so I'd move to approve the contract. Second. All in favor? All right. Thank you. All right. Moving right along, we've got a liquor license for Sandy's books in bakery. And I'd move to approve. I can second that. Yeah. All in favor? Yep. All right. OK. All right. Thank you, Sandy, for running that place. All right, now I get to the exciting part of the fiscal year 23 budget. That's what you're all here for. We see how much your taxes are going to be next year. I'd like to preface this with thanking the Budget and Finance Committee for we didn't keep track of how many hours. But we did it pretty good this year. We did have a few extra meetings at the end to kind of wind it up. But maybe one worked really hard and very thankful for the volunteers that did that. So the amount to be raised by taxes is this is for the town portion, not the school portion, of course, $966,359. And the, no, wait a minute. That's the amount to be raised by taxes. And then when you add in the other funding and grant sources, we come to a total budget of $1,397 and $1,397,011, which will bring us to the fiscal year 22 tax rate or the increase of it, 2.13%. We really, I think, at one point, we had an 18% increase. And we were like, no, more meetings. Can't do that. They whittled their down some. So we have the final legal warning to sign our lawyers fine-tuning that. So we'll take care of that later on these weeks. But that's the information that y'all are waiting on there. Thank you for that. Martha? I'm doing. Just am I correct that you're going to be approving this at some date soon in the future? We've just approved it. We're going to sign the warning, the official warning. OK, signed. Excuse me. Right. I want to make sure you're OK. But no, this is that. No more discussion. No more meetings about this one. Yeah. So that's coming up the warning for the annual town meeting that was coming to come. And we have a request to appoint Dorian Jones to fill the vacancy for a library trustee. I think that's great that she's interested in the willing to do that. So I'd move to appoint Dorian Jones to fill who's which vacancy? Who is she? Oh, library, my mom. Yeah, library. Library trustee. You? My mom. Oh, your mom. All right, she's gone. All right, so. Yes, I can that. On favor? All right. OK. And thank you, Yola, that she's not here. But Nancy? So you know that Dorian will just, you're appointing her from now until the 28th of March. Right, just to fill this point. And then she runs for the remaining one year of Yola's term. And then if she wants to stay on, she runs for a five-year term next year. Yeah. All right, well, thank her for us unless she's out there in Zoomland watching. No, she's not. Something wrong with my face. All right. OK, that's our list of new business. Joan, are you online? You've got some more updates for us? Yes, I'm here. OK, so the first item is I had a sudden meeting with a couple of folks from Green Mountain National Forest, Chris Matric, and Brian Austin, who we've been working with on the West Tilbury. And we think we're ready to go out to bed now. We have all of our easements lined up. That was the last task we needed. But there are still more steps that have to be taken on Brian's end. It's basically bureaucratic things that need to go through the system further up the chain at the Forest Service. And there are a couple of problems out of arisen, which may mean that the construction has to be postponed for a year. Soon to say yet, we wanted to let us know that it was a possibility. The reasons are that the Eastern Federal Lands Group that Chris and Brian report to have been just very slow for the past two years in reviewing documents that need to be approved before things can move ahead. Not really clear what the issue has been. It's been going on for a while. So a whole bunch of documents have been submitted recently to them for their review and approval. And Brian apparently found out just recently that they can't say how long it's going to take to approve those documents. It could be too long a delay, which ends up, we can't move forward without those approvals in hand. And as a result, we may not be able to go out to bed until sometime like May or June, which would be too late, push everything back too far for us to be able to do the construction project this year. The second part of the problem with Eastern Federal Lands is funding. Apparently, Green Mountain National Forest has been waiting for a long time for funding to come through. They know it's approved, but they have to go through a number of steps. And it's not clear that Eastern Federal Lands itself, which is the regional umbrella of the Green Mountain National Forest, whether they've gotten any money from folks in DC. So funding is the second issue, which eventually will come. But they can't say whether it will come soon enough for us to be able to move ahead with construction. So they are going to keep us posted. And both Chris and Brian have offered to come to a next meeting or one after that and give us an update and explain things further. Otherwise, we're all ready to go. The documents are prepared, and we were planning to have enough meeting sometime soon to just launch all of that. But we're fairly at least on hold with that. Excuse me, Joan. Could I just ask a quick question? This was about the West Branch. We have a fuzzy connection there for a minute. This is about the West Branch project, you said. West Hill Bridge. West Hill. West Hill Bridge. Bridge. OK, thank you. I'm sorry. You're laying with her a while. OK, that's what I thought. But I just couldn't hear you for a minute. I'm sorry. Thank you. OK, well, that is what it is. So I forgot to mention. The issue also is it's not clear whether there's going to be a temporary bridge available by the time we need it. Our service does not have a bridge that's large enough for that crossing. And it's something we asked a month ago. We asked V-Trends whether they might have a bridge. And what I recall from that was that all of their temporary bridges were going to already be in use for other projects. I knew we shouldn't have sold that train car. But all right. Well, yeah, it's who's surprised? The government's moving slow. Stay tuned. Hopefully we'll have some good news. But I want to bear for something less than that. Another item I just need to run by you. We've got a town garage stormwater project. It's got bid for the fifth time. And we're hoping the fifth time will be a charm. Bids are due on March 7. And the question is, is there going to be a design phase, which is way back in, I think, 2020, if you remember that? We agreed to provide a match for the cost of the design. It was matching a matching grant of 10% of the cost. And the amount was $3,535. And I was reminded of that because WRP sort of lost track of it back in 2020 when things were sort of going haywire with the pandemic and folks working from home and stuff. They forgot about it. And so did we. So we still owe them that amount. And I went back and my records just to verify that we did agree to it. And I do have records that we did. And at one point, probably more than a year ago, I did submit a partial match, which included my time on the project, Cudor's time. And then we also contributed about $1,200 worth of work that was done by a contractor to take the test holes. If you remember, when those were done back, we were looking for the location to place the defender. So that leaves us with a match still owing to WRP of about $2,300. And talking with Cudor about it, we agreed that one way that he felt a good way to match and WRP likes the idea is that we need to provide or someone needs to provide some fill for the project. And the estimate for that is going to be one load of a dump load will cost approximately that amount. Now it's going to be the right amount to fill that the engineer estimates it's going to be needed. So I'm proposing that we provide that amount of gravel for the project when the time comes, and then we will have match requirements. And WRP likes the idea, Cudor likes the idea, so I'm hoping he will too. All right, that's great. Thanks for figuring that out. So we'll see if we get any bids. Yeah. Well, they're going bad in a different way. They got some recommendations from the engineer for larger size contractors who would A, have the equipment, and also have the experience in installing defenders. So other than trying to keep the work local, which is always something that WRP tries to do, it just wasn't working, obviously. So we're hopeful that we'll get some of these bigger contractors who have the wherewithal to do a project like this. Because we're realizing that it's more complicated than it appeared on paper as well. What else you got for us? I'm just working on the annual B-trans acquired financial stuff, which I can't do much on the actual financial statement or the financial plan until it is passed. But there's some other paperwork, if you remember, that happens annually. Like updating the standards and procedures for road work. So I'll have that ready for you at the next select board meeting. All right. Great. Thank you. Joan, will there be some time where we can sit down and go over these bids for the generator? Yeah, we need to do that. Yeah, it's kind of complicated. OK, so I'll be in touch with you and we can meet and go through them. That'd be good. All right, thank you. Great. All right, that's it. Great. Thank you, Joan. Yes, yes, OK. Anybody here to speak on behalf of the library or on Zoom? I have nobody on Zoom. No, no, all right. And the highway is running pretty good. I got a phone call about 9.30 last Saturday night and it was a dollar general truck off the road on Northview Drive. The hollows. Yeah, and I asked if we could help and treat the road because the record's on the way. And I said, well, that's the dirt road. I don't think we're going to do any. We don't even have a dollar general here. No, anyway, I went and looked. I couldn't see where it went in the ditch, but it serves them right for taking a truck on the back roads. Anyway, that's my report from the highway road. The GPS, I guess. Yeah, that's the GPS. Terry, you got anything holding up in the cold weather? Yeah, everything's. Yeah, did you get that alert this afternoon about to be on your guard in case Russia decides to cyberattack our sewer system? Actually, I have a class on that on Thursday. So hopefully you don't attack before Thursday. Right. Let's see if they get the memo to wait. Have them hold back a little bit. I think we're a little bit off the radar, I hope. But we're going to have our air compressor for a fire department this week. Oh, good. Great. Cool. And the price will be $15,000, $750,000. That's the one you had your eye on there. Awesome, that's a good avenue. But I'm joking aside, what in our water or sewer system is critically connected with the internet? Well, all my readings go through that. But our water is not. We don't have any monitoring on the water that goes through the internet or anything. So, but all my sewers do. Yeah, but it's just the reading. The system would still function. Yeah, we'd still get water that just can't flush. I'd sew it. It just can't flush. You know, I don't think they could make it happen to anything. But I'll tell you better after. After the meeting. OK. Yeah. No, it was just funny that came through just for the meeting. Yeah, because I just signed up for it a couple weeks ago. Yeah. So. All right. Thank you. Is Jeff out there as the energy coordinator? You got anything to report, Jeff? Yeah, hi. I submitted a draft report from the energy coordinator for the town report. Yep. If you're welcome. It's all about the initiative of its life. I had a conversation with Norwich Technologies. They're going to be the contractor for GMP's Resiliency Zone. What they will be putting in is called Agrable PayX. These will be PV panels on a very tall rack in the old gravel pit because they'll be enabling grazing to occur underneath them. Norwich Technologies is going to take a look at whether there's extra space for additional PV panels there and also whether public service or public utility commission might change a little bit in their definition of projects that could, if there was land and with PUC modification, could potentially provide a location for community solar in the town. That would be nice. So we'll continue following up on that. Yeah. Rochester Climate Initiative at the end of the year had to say goodbye to John Pobans. John has moved on. He just moved on to the old spokes for home in the Burlington area. Alyssa Johnson is taking over the support responsibilities for us under the RACI project. And we've started setting up a Google Docs. And Isaacson's going to set that up so the three task forces involved will be able to share information and people update each other's work without worrying about whether we're working on the right copy or not. EV charging, I have a call in to Green Mountain Power. What I'd like to do is find out where the right line is in each of the proposed spots where GOP stops paying. And they would expect Rochester to fund the improvements necessary for the charging station that they propose. I hope to hear back from them tomorrow. The Jen, forget her last name. Jen was not in the office today. That's the school. All right. Thank you. Yeah. Cool. Yeah, much appreciated, Jeff. So moving on to. Welcome. Yeah. Moving on to the old business. We have some legal trial discussion. We have some folks, I think, in the house that have some want to talk more on that. Is that why you're here, Laurie? Or are you just looking for a warm place to get out of the cold? Exactly. No, I just saw it on the agenda. I didn't know if you were taking any further action. No, we haven't taken any action. And as far as I understand, we haven't been approached with any proposal or petition or request from the people that were investigating that as an option. I know they did actually contact Chris Bump about the process for applying for a driveway off of Route 100, too. So I guess they're just exploring all their options and haven't heard anything back. Been a lot of footprints going up the side of that hill off of Route 100. From Route 100? Good for them. OK. Yeah, so nothing really to report on that. And the Green Mountain Power location of charging stations, I guess that was kind of touch up. We had touch on with Jeff there. So that is really it that leads us to public comment. Is anyone out there that has anything they'd like to contribute to tonight's romantic meeting? Well, going once, going twice. Thank you all for joining us. And we're going to pay some bills and go home to our loved ones. Happy Valentine's Day. Thank you all. Happy Valentine's Day. Thank you.