 board meeting of July 25, 2022 to order. I am Mark Mahaly. I'm vice chair of the select board. Sharon Nguyen, who is chair, is on the phone right there, which of course means that we're all going to have to speak up when you talk because of course the technology is terrible naturally. People who talk will come here. I did read somewhere sort of someone saying why why isn't Denise chair and I just want to explain that every March right after town meeting we have an obligation under state law to elect officers and Denise nominated Sharon and she was chosen in March and I was chosen as vice chair. So here I am because Sharon's participating electronically. I know many of you are here for the item which is which is a personnel report which deals with the treasurer and with the proposed department of public works director and I'm delighted you're here and welcome you. Unfortunately that item is scheduled for 8.50 p.m. so you're going to have to be patient 8.50 p.m. so you're going to have to be patient if anyone wants to go out and have some fresh air and come back that's fine whatever you want to do. Thanks a lot. I do want to start by saying that we were an executive session for personnel matters. We came out of executive session at 7.05 and have no no action was taken. I also the first item on the agenda is public comment. Let me explain it's just public comment for items not on the agenda that is something that we didn't warn and isn't going to be discussed otherwise it's just a chance for someone who wants to talk briefly because we don't want to keep everybody to let us know or talk to us. So is there anyone who has public comment for an item not on the agenda. If everybody could please sign the sign-in sheet that's going around so we have an accurate record for the attendance that would be really helpful. So yeah please if you do yeah hi i'm jenny sacksman jenny do you want to yes do you want to address us about something that's not on the agenda well come up and sit down okay so much the better so hi everybody i just wanted to say to clarify you said that you'd read somewhere like maybe on front porch forum wondering why denise wasn't chairing anymore i had posted that but that wasn't actually the question in the question was as far as i knew it hadn't been announced publicly i'd never seen it publicly announced that was the question walk that and and things continue to show up seeming to come from denise in the same role as other times but i don't think many of us knew of that change well thank you very much the thank you jenny um yeah it was it was a the election was in public session you're right there's no there's no way to know about it if nobody came to the meeting and nobody read the minutes well and it's it's on the website the board members yeah and it's likely was video recorded yeah is there any you want to address us on a matter now please come up yes i'm margaret obler i was at the meeting where uh sharon was elected um and also the question is just two weeks earlier you guys had already done the election once and there were different officers are elected uh denise was elected chair and sharon was elected vice chair and you changed it two weeks later and that's that's the question i have because i was at the meeting where it got changed with no explanation as to why you were changing it from the vote two weeks prior we actually did explain it no i was there okay it was so was i and um so we did not have a proper forum because a because mark was not duly sworn in and you have to be a sworn in member of the board in order to be able to vote so marks i was not present at the first meeting so they were short one person and they were short mark denise then abstained from voting for her own position so that's three votes out two votes is not enough we need three people to make a forum so that vote did not count so too with um who was the vice chair sharon yeah um however the second vote one it was the same set of circumstances so anyway i appreciate that there may have been confusing i apologize for that and that's why i'm explaining it now so here i am i'm vice chair and i'm presiding so is there any other public comment or additions members of the board addition changes to the agenda um and we're going to move on to the hearing none um yeah okay the warrants are circulating for board signatures okay great uh we're going to move on to the consent agenda just for a year for the audience the consent agenda are generally items which are fairly routine and so you don't discuss them individually and you save a lot of time by just saying someone can just say i move the consent agenda and then we vote on everything at once however any member of the board if they think oh there really is something i want to talk about more than a quick question we can move it off the consent agenda and then it just we talk about it next so yes i'd like to move um the minutes they're on the consent agenda to our August 8th meeting is there um any objection to that by members of the board Sharon any objection to moving the minutes of June 13th June 27th and June 28th to our next regular meeting no i'm fine with that okay done okay do i hear a motion to approve the consent agenda second discussion there should consent you don't need discussion is that all all those in favor please say aye and we need to do a roll we need to do a roll call vote because one of our members is on my phone right John Braden I Mark and Holly I needs to be on our eye Richard Keeney thank you um the next item on our agenda is to meet with Lewis Porter who is general manager of the Washington Electric Club Lewis thank you uh welcome thank you and if i could i'd invite Steve Norton and Bill Powell from Washington Electric to join me please i understand uh pull up another chair yeah the only thing i ask you to do is speak up because well that's rarely a problem for me uh but uh but uh again hear me let me know let me know I thank you so much for taking a few minutes to to uh give us the chance to introduce ourselves very grateful for that opportunity and uh i have uh become general manager of Washington Electric Co-op as of November and one of my goals is to go and meet with the select boards of our of the towns that uh have members of the co-op and just really introduce myself and introduce the co-op briefly i have with me Steve Norton uh chair of the board and Bill Powell uh the energy coach uh for Washington Electric who who most of the people in this room have probably gotten some help from at one point or another um i know that you have uh a number of people here who are interested in other items on the agenda and you all have plenty of things to go through so i'll be very brief um and just say uh that i'm i'm very pleased and proud to be a callous uh callous native and a callous resident and uh that makes my opportunity to to work with Washington Electric Co-op particularly special to me uh my family i grew up on Washington Electric Co-op lines and in fact uh maybe fittingly one of the more difficult lines uh for Washington Electric Co-op that actually went across a beaver pond uh and when i came into this job uh some of the line line crew were telling me how they had to take a row boat out in the middle of the pond get from that onto the pole climb to the top of the pole service the wires fix the wires and then climb back down and get into the boat uh Washington Electric has since moved that line um but uh but i think it's fitting that that i would be uh somebody who benefited from the huge investment by members in creating and establishing that line to my parents and that that would be my background with the co-op um Washington Electric Co-op serves about 11,000 uh households uh in this part of the world uh about 41 towns have have our members within them uh and it's an extremely uh you know the former the former general manager patty richards referred to it as the most rugged or electrical territory in the northeast which which i like because it makes it sound like a good thing uh what it really means is there's only about nine or eight or nine members per mile uh to pay for all the services that go into keeping an electric grid running into keeping utility running um and we exist because uh market providers of electricity uh couldn't make any money uh providing electricity in this territory and so the co-op was formed to provide electricity in those places where people essentially had to band together and provide electricity themselves 83 years ago and and there's great old photos of a stringing line by kind horses pulling the wire with horses so um that's our that's our history i think it remains relevant to the members today uh one of the consequences of that history and of our of the fact that our co-operative provides 100 renewable and low carbon electricity is you know i won't shy away from it our rates are high compared with uh some of those utilities have served more more densely populated uh areas of the state and we hear from members from that about that my office opens off the lobby and so i hear people come in to pay their bills and for some people in our territory uh it's a struggle it's difficult to do it's hard to make ends meet and so that that's sort of the um i would say that the twin uh missions of the wash and electric co-op are to provide electricity at the lowest reasonable cost we can recognize in those facts that constrain that possibility and also to provide renewable and low carbon electricity to our to our territory the vast majority of the electricity we provide comes from the coventry landfill plant which is owned by most of the people in this room and the other 41 40 towns that we serve um and and it's it's an amazing organization 35 or 36 people um keep power on for a big part of the state geographically even if not a big part of it by population 41 total yeah yeah so i will stop there unless uh bill or or steve would like to add anything to that introduction i mostly just want you all to know uh who you can reach out to if there's an issue and if there's a problem um and uh thanks thank you steve would you like to say anything uh i'll just introduce myself i'm steve nullton since uh june last year i'm the new president of the board uh replacing barry bernstein i presume most of you know here who served as board president for over 20 years so i've often thought to myself you know you don't you can't feel uh i can't feel his shoes and so i just have to wear my own shoes trying to bring the co-op forward one thing i've learned in the number of years i've been on the board of the co-op is that it's here to serve its members i'm a member uh i presume most of the uh other people the rest of the people in the room are also members that means they're owners of the co-op and when i sit in board meetings and if authority issue comes up i always have to say is this going to be good for the members or you know all it's all 11 000 plus obviously each member has a different uh story and tale to tell nonetheless that's that's our job is a public power utility uh a not-for-profit utility owned by and serving its its members um and i want to add another thing to what louis said about our rates um we not only jumped the gun in providing uh 100 percent renewable power to our members but about 15 years ago uh i'll just back up a little bit i noticed whenever i read in the newspaper about this time of year notices published by remount power or from our electric co-op notifying people of there'll be spraying toxic herbicides in right of ways and i think wek you'll never see one of those from wek wek since about the mid 2000s no longer uses toxic herbicides of course i i don't know the exact figures it probably raises the cost of keeping the right of ways clear so our outages are reduced but nonetheless i think that's what a public power utility should do is a good environmental steward uh for its its members uh residential and commercial areas as well as providing uh as cleaner uh renewable power as we can do so it's good to be transparent about who we are what we what our values are and of course with those values come come costs that we have to pay but i think my own feeling is that's the direction that all of us would be moving in more often thank you and i assume you are breaking the 20-year callus monopoly on the chair ship where's my brother my my piliate my piliate he's my piliate mm-hmm thank you i hope i'm not assassinated as a result we're all separate towns but i don't think it's that bad well just to bring the kingship back to it bring the king of the realm back down right i guess i'm in first believes bill do you want to say anything you're welcome thank you are there any questions of these folks by members of the board of john um and this may be a bigger question than you're prepared to answer or able to answer the time frame we got but you mentioned that we're 100 renewable um yet you're looking at the annoying power pool prices with this heat surge as well as conscious as we all are the energy prices for oil and gas a lot of the grid runs on gas and oil um what is the interplay between wet rates you know being 100 percent renewable i know we sell credits and all that um are we less impacted by the severe increases we're seeing on the grid and the increases in energy costs overall because we're renewable or are we seeing similar effects so we do see the effects from that in particular this year because of work at the landfill production at the coventry plant's been down so we do see effects of that we do buy some power on the market to fill in the gaps uh when we're not having enough production from our normal contract sources and we buy the wrecks the the renewable energy credits along with those i i think there's a there's a big um and important discussion going on not just in bramont but around lingland about whether wrecks are legitimate forms of renewable energy or not i would say they're necessary to make the system work and to make the ability for washing electric for example to buy power along with direct credits along with green credits to fill in those places where coventry is not producing as much where the other sources of all the renewable power we have are not producing as much wrecks renewable energy credits that is why i have this leasing head bug when when do you expect coventry back well so they have expanded the coventry landfill and as part of that they went into dug into the part of the landfill that we were getting landfill gas from um we had actually expected production to come back in the early part of this year and it still hasn't it's about 20 down this year from last year over the next six months to a year we should start to see production from the additional portion of the landfill they're they're filling now so i would say over the next course of the next year we'll see production come back but to john's point uh in the meantime we are subject to the market much more than i want to be 20 percent or no it's it's not a direct one for one but coventry is down about 20 percent this production you're any of go ahead yeah i do a few things i want to ask what the projected life is in that coventry and do you have a you know a kind of a plan beyond that and then i also want to just thank you but you're always there when we need you why should you be like right now we really wish that you're a lot of sharing in case could you hear that question thanks the question was what is the expected life of the landfill go ahead and what and then is there a future plan beyond that short so my understanding from kasella which we obviously work with quite closely up there is that they'll be filling that landfill that camera fits 15 years or a little more than that they'll be putting trash into that into that new expanded part of landfill of course the landfill continues producing gas for a number of years after the the trash gets put in there so it's you know i would say 15 25 years of additional gas production from the one there the expansion they're doing now uh whether there might be some additional expansion beyond that in the future you don't know um in the in that time well let me just back up and say i think it's going to be essential for the renewable energy to to the renewable solar energy in particular but renewable energy in general to fulfill its promise it'll be essential that we develop an ability to store that energy and so hopefully in that meantime in that period of time the ability to store and manage that renewable energy that's produced mostly during the day from solar um uh will be developed and be at a scale where it can help even out those places where where there isn't i mean i'll just say that if vermont and the country at large is to reach our renewable energy goals for combating climate change uh we're going to have to develop that story because it's not baseload power right now anything you want to correct or help oh that's a that's a good point you know there's technology evolving the market has to change in the doubt the technology is faster than the rules always but storage is the uh the whole of the route that that takes the commodity puts it into a phase change that because of the ability to manage the dispatch and that that that storage may be in all this distributed in all the batteries of our electric cars it's very very well very likely will be yeah well any other questions well bill and steve and louis thank you so much for taking the time to come yeah it feels good to start my tour of towns and in my own town so thank you good thank you thank you for having us yes it's a pleasure to meet you our next item is to set the fiscal year 23 tax rate uh and this is an action item where we have the assistance of nem rick which by the way is the nem rick is the new england municipal resource center which is a center that provides financial assistance to towns in new england and we have as you will hear later we've always had some assistance from nem rick but we have a lot more right now in the absence of a full-time treasure which is something we'll discuss later for during the item that you guys are here for um yes um sharon did you can you call wendy sharon are you there oh man sharon is disconnected should we uh what do we do with sharon are you there wendy sharon hello if it can go wrong it will technology um it's like the slide shows remember the slide show the slide machine always broke um i think what i'd like yeah okay i think i'm going to for the moment oops you would like to make a call wait for me to try again you need help hang up you want to dial sharon no she has to dial up you can't dial her we really disconnect the line now hit the same button hello hey it's me okay i'm trying to reach wendy and i didn't get her unfortunately um when i'm hanging up from my attempt to reach her i lose everything so how far ahead of the agenda are we about 12 minutes um we can postpone this item till later uh we can substitute you for her or we could put her on a cell phone i mean she said you want to just use it i think the trick is just to call her but she doesn't expect to be here for much okay i got i got your voice down okay all right so uh should what's the pleasure of the board here we want to set the tax rate we have a memo with the information do we want what do you want to do denise well i think what i heard sharon says i mean she would try calling wendy again closer to quarter of eight we do only five okay that i have a right okay we can do shutters yeah let's do okay so i'm going to suspend or hold the 745 nemerick action and i'm we're going to move on to installation of shutters on top town hall this is a discussion item who's going to handle this for the board well there was a request an email that um john mccullough and andy police reinstalled the shutters on the outside of the building um the shutters were part of the permit application that the drb approved um i didn't learn the decisions with me but they are original to the building right and so um they just john mccullough and andy wanted official confirmation that um they reinstalled and that they be approved to perform the right reinstallation yes now these whenever we went ahead with the design we approved a design which included shutters the drb and we so they just want clarification and permission to move forward with installing the shutters right so it's two thousand said it was only discussion because we could have taken it well i don't know no need that they need permission from us um if it was part of the original plan what they need is a sense of the board right that we are willing to move ahead so i'd like to know what is the board's pleasure i think they should go ahead and reinstall shutters very great and again i don't think it like i said mark they don't need an official vote it's part of the building plan is part of the original building facade they belong on there we spent huge money by the way restoring not only the windows but those shutters they were all clean you know taken down and restored so we did that for a reason right and it was part as i said before it was part of the original application of the town files the drb so i think that in itself is the permission so john i think what you have is in fact john why don't you just come up here and sit down for a minute just so that this is official i have asked john mccullough to come and sit down john what you have is a sense of the board uh Sharon i think you have john me rick denise Sharon are you okay with uh a sense of the board that they just go ahead install the shutters are you asking me yeah i am uh yeah i am i i'm fine with that i'm one yeah okay all right so john is that sufficient for you okay thank you very much thank you john thank you we'll make sure that's recorded in the minutes all right so what i'm going to do because we're moving right along is i want to move to the 815 item unless um we probably didn't do that one before yeah well uh rick is this your item yes okay rick let me ask you a question do you anticipate testimony no okay okay i just don't want to i don't want to accelerate an item and then have people walk in afterwards and say hey you know what am i talking about is there what's the item yeah go ahead let's go ahead and a temporary basis we've got we've got speed issues like on we've got speed issues and right now we have a speed sign that's kind of this place it's down at the bottom of the hill our plan is to actually move that up well above the brow and then temporarily put actually just a steep up as an experience up at the top of the hill maybe one right at near the bottom to really ensure people are slowing down it's part of a bigger plan to work lightning rage we're trying to purchase some more speed signs and then work on the right calming for lightning rage room and then hopefully expand out into these other roads around town for a running problem but that's what these speed bumps are for they'd only be short duration they would not be there in the winter uh they would be and they made you know they this is an experiment to see how it is actually impacting traffic the speed signs that we're going to be purchasing actually have and we're going to try to use one as they count the speed of vehicles coming through the time stamp it so ideally we want to see if it's really impacting speed of vehicles so we can measure that from the bottom of the hill we don't have those yet but we'd like to go in order these and they're inexpensive it will be a temporary you know a temporary experiment but i think a problem will give some relief over there okay rick you have thank you very much we have someone who would like to testify jenny do you want to come up not testify well tell us what you think say that i just want to ask you this is jenny sassama it's as um you know i live right boom in the middle of that uh and so you're talking about the speed bumps to the coming from because of course there's also the other direction there is the same problem so but we're dealing with this side first and then we're going to have to you have to use you can't really use speed bumps like that on gravel road so we have to that's a whole iteration right and we this is not this is one little piece of what we'll be trying there's a reason people drive fast on these roads we're going to try to dress that first the coordinates we're going to try to assign to the place that was that was all i was looking for that clarification i i do want to add that rick has been on this problem for a year and we've had a lot of comment from an input from people on county road and north county road about this problem as well as lightning rage road and we're i think that we're really interested to see the results of this experiment uh and see what we can do the problem we face and correct me if i'm wrong is that most not all most people who speed are doing so unconsciously they just are driving at a rate they feel comfortable with on the road and so we need to change that it's not just like a bunch of scott laws it's normal people who are just you know zoning out and driving at the rate they do so we're going to see what we can do is there any other public comment on this item yes please come up well stand up and tell us your name it's morning acid here i i had the petition in before cold to get the category will change so i'm just kind of concerned that you know mine's being put back and we're doing the speed buff in the traffic calm on lightning rage road and people corners and we're just forgetting about the category now this is where they passed right right so it's done seven right well we just would you well first of all is that i don't want to interrupt you go ahead that's that's it i just i just want it to move a little faster than i asked it marine that yeah we have to forgot about you know that's actually part of this conversation there rules around changing speed limits and we've got to work within that it's been scheduled so i've got a lot of years he's not clearly done i know they changed their several times but then the last two i get it and i do get that and i know it's not good they have speed limits going from 40 to 50 to 25 so we're trying to get an apprehensive fix on this we have to got about this at all we're trying to Doug you want to come on up sure tell us your name no we've talked about the speeding forever and just don't go away and one of the reasons is we make our roads too wide our dirt roads and i've been in this town for a hundred years from ranch and i know i see the roads get wider we make our ditches way too deep we got our ditch up on jack jack now you know what's coming down jack kill without having a big ditch so we got a big ditch here now and they make it wide and what's going to happen is they're going to grade it and they're going to push that dirt over into that ditch and they will i watch it and they'll make it they'll make it wider so now they can go faster that's what's happening we've got to stop that and select what's going to happen because make sure the town is not wide in these roads this is country you know and we're going to stop that stuff i don't care where you are they're going to just be on my farm the corner they're widening that road took a big ditch they're widening i'm telling you they're going to widen that corner so now they can really see down by my farm and really get to rolling and you know i suggest i can help you i put my own speed bump in for you when it's gets here you know i'm crushing it on i think it's illegal i like to i tell you what i really love them one down here and one down there and i can fix it so they won't be doing that but is that legal to have speed bumps i see it all over speed bumps are there and you know but you know they're they're you got to be careful where you use them i feel like i don't like they're not good to have on downhill you don't want to have a car that's going to high speed go out of control what ultimately what we do like on something like county where we'll get payment it's actually better to automatically use group payment because those you can plow over and they they don't become i have now we can do this in a temporary way especially if we slow people down coming into a hill i like when the gravel road is tricky you can't even you can't even you can't you well it's also on the radio see you're talking about i mean generally you know what will what we have to do that is really be more adherent to the standards because there are 35-foot radiuses and things like that they do travel i mean middle corner like school is not the only club go up by number 10 pawn it was Those people are crazy. They fly up through there, none of them are there. And again, you wait to get the paddle in the water. And they're dead. It's crazy. You know? And this is the lesson on the road to wickedness. Oh, yeah. The only swimmers come up from canoes and paddle boats and they've got to get that water. You know? We've got to slow them down. How are we going to do it? Make the roads down. And actually build a little curvature at home, too. Do something there. Straight line. And we say it and we wind up. It speaks to us. That's what they do. And you know what? You do have a speed bump. You don't really know it. You do have it. You've got it right down to the east canal of the elementary. Right where they come off the dirt road to the back. Right. It always is. They've got good one right there. I love it. And then they've got pahos on the inside. You've got it. And one more thing. When they plow a road, the water's done. The first one. You know, it's maybe four or five inches. They'll get that wind down. And they take a curve at that. A curved shoulder belt. And they flop over the back. Right? Yeah, they do. And I see it all the time. And they flop over the back. So there's snow in it. There's dirt in it. There's leaves in it. And the average Joe don't know what's going on. I do not. I work for a company at one time. Du Bois. I do not. Okay. Thank you very much. Is there. So. Do I. The action item here. You want to move the action item? Yeah, I would. I would. I would like to move the weeds. I think the new brawler I would say was $1,500. It's just. Purchase two of these. And then. I think. $1,500 max. Is that $1,500 per speed? No, no. That's a total. It's about $500. But I want to make sure I got enough in there. I'll make that motion. That we allocate $1,500. The purchase. And authorize the purchase of. Two. Temporary speed bumps that can be moved around. And their first application. We understand beyond. In the maple corn. Or vicinity. Do I have a second. That's second. All right. I'm going to do a roll call vote starting with you, Sharon. The motion is. That. The. 15 item that we authorize the purchase of. Removable speed bumps in an amount to not exceed. $1,500 to be used on county road. How do you. Vote. Others. John Ray. Mark. My Holly. Hi. Rick. Thank you. Now, Sharon. I think what we want to do is return. To the. 745. Nemerick action item to set. The tax rate. If you can reach. Wendy Wilkin from. Yes. Yes. So. Let me. Let me try to pass. Wendy. And if I. You know. I don't know if you want that before. But remember. I. Don't. Reachers. And I have to make up. Call back. Yes. And if it. If enough time goes by. I'll just move on. To the. 745. Nemerick. Action item. To set. The tax rate. If you can reach. Wendy Wilkin from. 745. Nemerick. Action item. To set. The tax rate. If enough time goes by. I'll just move on. To the road standards. Okay. Yeah. All right. From a report. I'll get back. I can. I. Try. Recording. Did you think about texting her? It sounds like a cell phone number. It is. Just. Disconnect. We have to. Turn it off. So. Can we adopt this without. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. I would know that. We. Readopt. Current. Calendar. Standard. This is the. 820. Item. Readopting the current. The callous road standards. Second that. It's a formality. And. We have. Emotion on the floor. Seconded. It's been. Seconded. Hi. Okay. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Why not. Yeah. Here we go. Why not. Here. I'm here. Okay. Wendy, hold on just a moment. This finishes. Yes, we have a motion on the floor. To read out the callous road standards. And. Second, and I would like to just boat. On that. It's pretty much a opinion. John. Hi. John votes, I mark, who died in the n所. Pick. Okay, so we are now back at the 745 this set the fiscal 23 tax rate Wendy Wilton welcome to the select board meeting the speakerphone Wendy is from Nemerick the New England Municipal Resource Center thank you with the suggested tax rate I did have a question do you know are the veterans exemptions included in the list of all your calculations we have about $40,000 worth of veteran tax exemptions did you see that when you were doing your calculations? Yes, the veterans exemptions under $10,000 are included under state law it's the veterans exemptions over $10,000 that need to be raised in the local recruitment rate and so there's two items that are being raised in the local recruitment rate one is grandfathers non-screwed parcels so that there's a list of those on the list of all your exemptions. The second stage is a 4-1-1. The parcels that the town needs to be made non-tactable for the state bill to help you bear that burden and any of the veterans exemptions that the town has agreed to pay over $10,000 in value is also a burden for the town. Is that the 9-4-1 form? Federal form? Is that what you're referring to? No, 4-1-1. Did I say 9-4-1? No, I'm looking at a 9-4-1 form. I'm sorry. No, no, no. 4-1-1 is your town's house grand list that the veterans have just finished up with approved and established. We're just here and the total unit for grand list is $2,054,659. Could you repeat that number, Wendy? Right here, Mark. We got it. Oh yeah, I see it. Okay, thank you. Yes, okay. Okay, that's your municipal grand list, okay? And the amount you need to raise for your longer-term parcels for the municipal parcels is $1,567,082. At that point, for the municipal parcels of $0.726, I'm going to let that last physically be offered because I think Cynthia may have calculated it using the tool in grand list. How does that compare with the number that you have in the municipal parcels? And how many for me on that? I'm not sure what your question is, Wendy. Okay, Cynthia, would it forward if it's something too beneath? No, I didn't get anything. I don't know if that's the one you have beneath. I'm looking at the one that you sent us. And it shows the municipal as 0.7626. Yeah, 0.7626 is the municipal rate to raise that non-linear. You want to make sure we're on the same page and look at the same guy? Right, yes, yes. Okay, great. Great, we've got that problem. So then you need to raise an additional amount of money for the other two items. One is the grandfather's non-approved parcels. The other is the burden that the group has agreed to make, non-factible. So what you've got to do is raise the education factor. They don't put that bill, right? Right. And in Vermont, veterans' exemptions that are over 10,000, the grandmothers value their 300,000 for those properties. We've got to raise the 10-dip education factor for those properties. So those two items, the grandmothers value for the grandfather's non-approved is $588,200. And in Vermont, veterans' exemptions over 10,000, which the town's agreed to do, is $300,000. So the education rates for both non-hosted, which is the grandfather's non-proof, and the Vermont veterans' exemptions, which will be honed in, education factor eight. I've got the amount to raise there for each one of those categories, if you have that in front of you. Yes. And that total is $15,080.7. Everybody see that? Yeah, yes. Yes, thank you. Okay. But when we divide that number, that $15,000 is changed. If I divide your municipal grant list about the real estate, we get a tax rate through the local agreement rate of 0.0073. Everybody there with me? Correct. Yeah, correct. Okay. And that's through your municipal tax rate, which is the tax rate you need to raise your budget. Okay? Mm-hmm. And when you add this together, your total municipal rate now becomes 0.7700. And those numbers are pretty close to what we folks estimated in your town report. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So, the increase from last year to this year is 0.08, correct? Um, I've pulled off the new list from last year, and I can't get through what you said. Last year, the local agreement rate was 0.0064. Right. So, it went up a little bit, and the total municipal tax of the municipal tax before the local agreement rate last year was 0.735. Yeah. Last year's tax rate was 0.7420. So, as an increase. Yeah. If you add the local agreement rate in your town tax on the one that I sent to me, that's what you would come up with. Yeah. Okay. Any other board members have a question? I do not. All right. Done. Can you clarify the valid exception? Because the state has an amount, and at the time of Calis is voted. I think we're... Yeah. Increase that amount. Um, you might want to come up. Maybe Wendy can say it again. She did say it before that the state allows... Isn't the state $20,000? I think she said $20,000. Can you say again about the veterans' exemption? Did you say $10,000? Yeah. The state pays for veterans' exemptions for $10,000 in value and under, and you have 10 of those without a... Not a waste of $100,000 that the state is hoping you pick up the tab on that. Okay. But the state said, hey, if you want to get veterans' exemptions, it's greater than that, greater than the $10,000 limit that we have set. And the count chose to do the $30,000. Okay? And you have 10 of those properties, it's a burden of $300,000, and that's why it's indicated in Calis under the local... I thought we were doing $40,000. Yeah, that's what I thought, too. Well, 40 total... 30 plus. Okay. That's the count generally. Okay, thank you. Thanks, Don. All right. Any other questions from the board? Do we have a second? Do we have a motion on the floor? Not yet. I would make a motion that we set the town tax rate for FY23 at .770. I'll second that. Are we ready to vote? John? Yes. Rick? Rick King. Yes. Denise? Yes. Mark? Yes. Sharon? Yeah. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you so much, Monday. Okay. Thanks a lot. Good to hear your voice. The next item is a road report, which is a discussion item. And Alfie, you want to come up? For the benefit of all of you, this is a fairly frequent item. We have a lot of meetings that we can have in our meetings. A report. Almost every meeting from Alfie. Because there are just enough road issues that he always has something to tell us. What do you got to tell us tonight? Flagging the weather a bit. I know there's a bunch of grading that is needed. And hopefully this week I can do that. Then focus on roadside mowing. There's some ditching around different areas waiting for grants to materialize. Right. Those should get that kicked into the wire first, right? We can start on projects now after July 1. So we're hoping to be doing that soon. One of them is a fairly large one is in Moscow Woods. And we're going to have to close it to do that work. We're going to have to detour? We'll have to detour them. And then because of the bridge? No. No. The bridges totally separate. Right. It's sticking out. Clay boils. Which is... How far up in Moscow Woods? It's by the intersection of Jack Hill Park. There's one right by Jack Hill intersection. There's one further up. And then there's two below Ledger Road. So there's sporadic down there. There are stakes with pink ribbon on it. And how long will the pleasure be about the event? Well, it depends on... I mean, we can do it in sections. So I'm hoping to kind of break it up. So, you know, we can probably do 100 feet in a week. So there's 500 feet to do. And I'm not saying that I'm going to close it five different times. It's a matter of how I can schedule that and get material there. I'm trying to secure a place to store material ahead of time. So it's on site. And I don't have to wait that time for the trucking. You went back and forth to the town garage, right? No. Bring the material from the pit. Okay. Which would be from Marshfield. It's just... That's where a lot of time is in the trucking material. So if I can have the new material on site or close to the site, I'll just reload it onto our trucks and run them. So, Alton, when you're ready to get... When you have a date, certain on that, when you're quite... Let me know. I'll post on a public form. We'll get on the road report on the website. So that people have an idea. Yeah. I mean, there's only four or five houses on that road. Yeah, we'll just... And that will be affected. So, I don't know. Most people will just have to travel Pecanbrook or someone will have to go Fosterville. We'll just want to make sure we've done them now. Yeah. So, Moscow Woods is a highly traveled road across the town. Will we give individual... Will there be signs at the bottom or something that will let travelers who aren't individually noticed? Right. Usually we get a sign made up that gives the dates when it's going to be done. It's going to be a little bit challenging to do that only because of the various spots that we're going to do and the timing. We can specify that better on the front porch form. I mean, we don't want to make sign, you know, ten signs for the different timing intervals. Do you know why the effect is... Like, you're going to be right by somebody's driving. Do you want somebody to be left out? Yeah, absolutely. Like, the folks up on ledger, right? Yeah. Again, there's two... There's three houses out there. There's two full-time houses. Year-round houses in one summertime house. And I know them all quite well, so it'll be nothing to make them aware. So, we're still waiting on the grant for the Moscow Wood Fridge. And I'm also working on an engineer to design... Is that a grant? That was your landmine grant? Yeah. Well, we're still waiting on the confirmation letter. So, once we get that, then we can move forward. In the meantime, I am working with the engineer to get us a design for the temporary fix, because that's what the monies will allow. So, that's in the process. Heck Hill Road is another grant. It's a grant to aid. It's ditching. I am receiving some pushback about ditching on that road. And I don't know, Rick, if you have... I haven't been able to connect with him yet, but we've got him with Eric Swanson. We kind of have to do that to the... Whatever... You know, the general permit requirements are. That's right. So, we don't really have a choice over that. Right. But it stayed long. And I've had a short conversation with Eric about that. But he still was, you know, interested in holding off. It's very challenging to try to plan this work when you've got somebody saying, hell, we don't want that. Well, I will try to talk to Eric. And we'll try to... We have to do the work, so... Yeah. I mean, most of these grants are, you know, they're for one year. Right. And they don't come due until July, all your construction season's not over in July. So, I feel like we really need to act on these projects, you know, quickly. Anything else? I don't think so. Are you welcome any questions? Sure. Just a comment, maybe sort of a question. You know, it seems like when we have really dry weather like this, everything turns to dust, despite your best efforts. And it seems like this year that's not happening. And I just... Did you do something differently when you chloride it? I don't... I mean, we're still getting dust, but it's been so much more pronounced than just the last summer. It's been dry. Yeah. We did put chloride on. And the thing with chloride, you've got to put it on after you grade it. Yeah. You can't just put it on hard hand road because it'll just wash off that it's not effective. Right. So, every time we grade a road, we put chloride on it. And yes, there are some places that still dust up, but it's a waste of a very expensive product to put it on. No, I'm not suggesting I'm saying it seems better this year. Yeah. And it seems just as dry. It's not drier this year, so I don't understand. Yeah. Well, it's better. I put a lot of chloride on this year. Okay. That might be the difference. Yeah. Just for that. And it's not... Chloride is not just dust control. It's also... It tax it together. It binds the gravels together. So that's why you get that flat shine on the roads. And then when the water rain comes, it sheds off. Right. It's not penetrating in. Yep. So that's the beauty of chloride. And that's why I'm a fan of it. We've put more of it on this year than... That must be the difference. It's noticeable. Anything else? Thank you. All right. Thank you. Thank you. The next item involves... I've got a question. Oh, go ahead. I noticed from Tucker Road to the Clark River Road, we have a night... Where? From Tucker Road, on Lightaway Road from Tucker Road to the Clark River Road, we had 19 maple trees died. And that is because of chloride. We told them, told them, told them we don't use chloride. We can use water to cut down the dust. We can be ready. But if you guys want all your maple trees dead on one side of the road, use water. That's good. They will cut it. Would you like to address this issue? Yes. We get to pop up and down now. Sharon Nguyen invented... She recalibred them. We walked the roads down that road. Sharon Nguyen and I did. She can tell you that's the truth. So in the past, you've come to me and insisted that I was using salt. That's right. On the dirt road. Which chloride? Chloride is chloride. Chloride is a type of salt. It's a type of salt. Okay. So let's not just beat around the bush. Okay. You better make a decision. Do you want dust? No. I want water. It's a very short term affection. It's a very short term. In these hot days, you put water on it. We have no dust around it. We don't have it for an hour. Dust or water. You guys need to not interrupt me, please. You might. Yeah. Go ahead. Let me talk. We can't hear both of you at the same time. Okay. Let me go. You have to make a decision. It's either put chloride on or have dust. I don't want my phone ringing because there's dust. I get it. People need to. They don't want their house covered in dust. They don't want dust going inside their house. I get calls every time I grab it about dust. So I don't send a grader out without chloride chalk. Okay. Can I talk? Yeah. Yeah. I hear what you have to say. So when you send a grader out to grader out, you send a water truck. Just like you send a chloride truck. Water down the road to keep the dust down. And so we're not killing. I make no trees. We're killing them. So Sharon went and is she on there right now? Yeah. I'm not sure she heard all this, but I'll summarize in a minute. And also she counted with me. We drove down the road. We counted 19 trees. Oh, and also the young trees that I planted are five inches through. They're dying. They're all dead. Right. Now do you want all your roads dead and make the trees a lot better? I don't know. I'll tell you what. I want to ask Sharon a question, but you'd like to say something. Would you come up and identify yourself? I'm Sharon Fincher. You guys can all hear me. I work in the construction business. We water the roads all the time. Days like this, 50 minutes dust. Water doesn't, it just evaporates and it doesn't chloride tax. I mean, you can water it until you do the face, but you're still going to have dust. So will you do the pouring on the answer or the water's not either? Still going to dust. Thank you. Sharon, do you want to comment on this issue? Were you able to hear the testimony that just was presented about the concern is that chloride, some testimony from Alfie has been and others has been that chloride is the only solution. Water doesn't work. Doug Lilly prefers water and says chloride is killing maple trees. Do you have anything you want to add to this? I remember the, yeah, Doug and I looked at trees together. It was early COVID. I remember, so that would have been 2020 and our conversation and looking at trees together, I am beyond out of science, which Doug has heard me say a million times, but I contacted Stephanie and figured that this is this is an around the concentration commission and we, oh, I think that resulted in, we're going back to a couple years that you're telling me here, but I think we talked again about can we get the road community to get back together. It's really, what it becomes to be brief is a challenge that we have and we talked about it before in integrating our environmental stewardship values and goals with responsible road maintenance providers that all, you know, all the effective, knowledgeable parties sit down and learn from each other and come up with solutions that will either be good compromises or at least we understand that we have a conversation and perhaps physically premature or we just can't agree but we're going to move on as to that our policy could be whatever it is, but I feel like that's an opportunity to still out there. Is the conservation, is the matter before the conservation commission or not? I would guess not actively although there, if you talk to Stephanie, she'd say we have worked, we have, you know, they're aware of it. It's a question of having that conversation I mentioned in a way that's productive and everybody can hear what everyone else is saying. Well, I'm just looking for a way to move this forward. Is the best way to do it for someone on the board to contact the conservation commission and ask that they address this issue? Is that the way to do it? What's the best way to do it? Yeah, I can talk to Senator Chair and Vice Chair and email about this discussion. Okay. I think that on a hearing is that this is an issue that we're resolving it one way which has certain downsides and that we'd like to see if we can get a little more, some sort of a forum for discussing this and a little more carefully. Jenny, did you want to? Yeah, I just want to add a different perspective here. I know I want to kill me equal trees. But I live in a place that gets very dusty. Nowhere near as dusty this year. Sometimes I put my laundry out to dry and my laundry is dirty when I bring it back in. All right, that's minor. But what I really worry about and what I feel like is a really important piece of the conversation is I think it's bad for our health. I'm really worried about all the dust that we are inhaling so that it's not just killing the chloride microchillin and I don't want that. But I think the dust is extremely detrimental to people's health. So whatever can live in the dust I think is a matter of not just aesthetics or inconvenience but it's actually a matter of well being. Thank you. And I think what we'll try to do is to have the Conservation Commission address this issue. Obviously it would be great if we could find a surfactant that we could afford that didn't kill maple trees. And I don't know if there is such one thing. There could be one thing in that. There may be and that is they have the altruists from one of the treated salts that are catalogued and when it's generally been found they use the lead extract or they use it mixed with the brine solutions and when it ties up the ions in the sun even apparently it doesn't really affect grass then maybe a lot less effective on the trees and it's highly effective for ice formation lower it's more expensive to buy than your standard chlorides but also that may be a possibility I could research that a little bit. What's it called again? Well they're treated they're magnesium chlorides they're a whole series on them but they're so I'm thinking of our magic salt is kind of We tried that on the Kelly River. Well these it turns it into kind of a non-chlorine sort of form it actually lowers the freezing point to minus 30 on the roads which is far better than regular chlorides but the plus effect that I know the researchers being done for was that it wasn't really affecting grasses and things like granite if you go into the state house wherever they threw any kind of chloride on that granite you can see it's all chewed up you know it stops that so let me reach out that may be Can you coordinate with Denise and make sure that when the matter is taken up by the commission I'll reach out and be transferred to the Thank you Thank you That's what I was sort of Denise said regarding the health implications of that dust that dust is silica dust it causes an element known as silicosis it's what our friends and folks family members suffered from and maybe still do from the quarries in Barry it's deadly, it's like emphysema will kill your killed blood batch elder so it's a serious thing put your cars on recirculated you got a dusty vehicle or a dust producing vehicle in front of you it's bad news so it's absolutely true Find me a better solution and I'll be welcome because I'll be happy to use it Thank you Right now that's what I've got Got it Thank you very much and thank you those who testified on this The next item is involves the Curtis Pond Dam and it's just an item to sign a permit application with the DEC I have to recuse myself or I've elected to recuse myself from all matters involving Curtis Pond Dam just because I have a small camp on Curtis Pond and I'm a member of the Curtis Pond Association so I'm going to ask Eugenice to lead this part of the meeting and I'm going to get off and I'm going to go sit over there so that I can testify Okay, why don't you do that Thank you John, Graven and I are the designated team to work with the Curtis Pond Association and the committee and we are at the point now of filing an application with the Department of Environmental Conservation this will grandfather in hopefully the dam should something happen during between now and construction by filing the application my understanding is that it will be grandfathered there is a thousand dollar permit fee that goes with this application the town has in its possession about $55,000 that's earmarked for the Curtis Pond Dam so this is a two part item in that authorizing myself or John or both of us to sign the permit application and to request a check for $1,000 to send in with the application Do you want to elaborate on where the fund money came from these? Yeah, that was money collected by the Curtis Pond Committee Association It was money collected by them and given to the town for these types of expenses It's being underwritten not that you're taxed a home Right, it's not taxpayer money Can I break in for a second? Go ahead, Sharon If you said this by a comment but I think it's important to note that we're still on a stage where the town is not making any kind of filing commitment Am I correct about that? Correct That's correct So I'm Mark Mahaly and I'm a member of the Curtis Pond Association and as you know we have a memorandum of understanding of the town which is simply no one's committed to this but we are committed to seeing if we can move it forward As mentioned the great advantage of if we file with the EEC for a dam safety permit it's one of the permits that we will need and we have previously entered into a contract with an engineering firm the engineering firm of Des Moines King to develop the plans necessary to submit this to DEC It will take about six months for DEC to process the permit the permit if we get it is good for two years and can be renewed after that As Denise said the terrific advantage of applying for the permit is this we've always been worried that if an event like Irene comes in and overtops the dam the dam is so old that it would collapse and we would lose a lot of assessed value and that because of wetland regulations it's conceivable that we would not be allowed to rebuild the dam we would simply lose we would lose the swimming area the state would lose the foot in et cetera and so by filing a permit application we are beginning to acquire vested rights so that the dam is considered sort of in it would make it much, much more difficult to say oh no you can't rebuild it if some sort of storm event happens so that's the situation the Curtis Point Association has a goal of raising $100,000 this year this summer and they so far have 80,000 and as you indicated they transferred a significant chunk of it to the town for use for this right and just to be clear there is a separate line item in the budget specifically for those funds so you can see it in the budget so when this $1,000 comes out of it it'll show so just so people understand how the budget process works so in sum this is simply moving this forward without at this point committing to anything I mean if we theoretically I hope this never happens we could end up with plans a permit, no money and then we don't do it but I hope we never get there thank you that completes my question alright thank you thank you Mark so I guess we need two motions one to approve and authorize myself and John to sign a permit application so moved is there a second? second okay we'll do a real call vote Sharon can you vote please hi okay me some and I John hi Rick hi okay next we need to approve the release of funds from the Curse Fund BAM Fund which I just told you about this is a separate line item that's been created in the budget in the amount of $1,000 payable to stay Vermont so moved is there a second? second okay roll call Sharon do you want to vote? hi John hi I'm an I Rick hi okay thank you thank you Mark is back Sharon hi Mark hello okay so now we're at the next item which is a personnel report discussion and action items this is the item which I think many of you will get for and first question I want to ask is do we need a break? should we take a 5 minute break? do people need bathroom breaks or whatever or should we just move on? we have two bathrooms what would people like? move on move on? that's what I would vote okay people can always individually okay so just a couple of initial comments I am really delighted to see as many of you as here as you are I know that might sound disingenuous in light of all the criticism that's been made you know the front porch forum's post but the truth is it's really important that we have an open public discussion about this we really it's been it's something that we've been looking forward to and want to see and really want to hear from you tonight now ordinarily the order of things would be I would ask anyone who wants to testify to testify and then we would bring the matter up to the board for discussion you've seen this in other items tonight it's just the way we do business but tonight what's happened is I'm certainly very aware of the concerns that people have because they've been publicly expressed and so what I'd like to do I'm going to interrupt myself it's been approved oh do I need to sign in? no okay I guess I think yeah she's the treasure of the Curtis Pond association so what we what I really feel is we've heard concerns and I'd like to ask the board members of the board to briefly summarize factual just to give you guys the facts as we see them to help you in your testimony so that you know kind of generally what's happening we clarify some things for you and then people can come up one at a time and testify to us uh no no I don't want to read the document I'd like to I'd like the board to I'm happy to start on the conversation because I've been reading the forum I've spoken to some of you um those that have reached out to me directly um again I'm John Graven I'm your select board members um there have been statements and concerns raised regarding the treasured position and are not being our select board not being timely in the hiring of that position am I speaking loud enough? yeah I can speak louder just to let you know thank you um and I just want to without revealing names of folks of applicants let me first say we advertise it back in April Denise? yeah and I think it's after May but before then might have been before then so we made sure we had a job description that was up to date we met with Sandra Fervor who was our still our our treasure that was in place um and she helped us fine tune the job description to make sure it was on point with the duty she was actually performing and many years she worked for us we put the ad out we had some responses not a lot like you're hearing for everything now if we can tell you about the highway we can't get people to do anything um but we did get some applicants and we had in the first effort at least one qualified applicant and we interviewed that applicant the applicant said essentially yes I'm interested and we then needed to figure out this is back in May folks well it was before May before May but you know as it was early spring it was early spring it was a long time we asked two members of the board to sort of I think it was Sharon and me that was you that was Mark and I the applicant several times and met his terms that he requested so the applicant he agreed to the job and we were figuring out the finer points you know hours start dates compensation benefits um level of coverage on benefits like you do with any applicant and we got to that point where the final language was arrived at he was sent that he had already or the person had already agreed to the position highly qualified individual loss of experience and then we didn't hear back and Denise reached out and reached out and reached out and finally we heard there was a change of heart and the person decided not to take the job we lost all of that time we then had a second very qualified what we think would have been a very qualified applicant and we were only at the early stages of setting up the interview and we were excited about this the second applicant and then we were notified and it was quick um and but they notified us that they too had a change of heart and they were pursuing a different set of ventures which were very different by the way then not another accounting uh treasure job so and so we're in this predicament right now and it's not out of delay we have executive sessions because these are personal matters you might if any of you were to apply for a position and you had an existing job you would not want us to say you know Jenny Jones is applying for the treasure job she works at you know the law firm in Burlington well that wouldn't be great if Jenny Jones decided you couldn't reach a chord on benefits and salary and had to go back to that law firm in Burlington and everybody knew about it they watched the narco so there's a there's an expectation that we will keep certain things private for their in their interest and actually it protects our interests as well it's not to hide anything from you folks it's not to cover up our incompetence it's the way it's done we do it for every applicant Alfred does it for highway crew applicants we go into executive session good so um during this ongoing issue um we started thinking about the position of treasurer and we checked in with other towns and discovered that a lot of towns have part-time treasurer and the treasurer other part of the time assisted the select board with various duties so um we took this as an opportunity to rethink how our town government functions with staff and um how can I better use our resources by taking um the treasurer duties and really looking at them one of the one of the duties is that time is spent weekly doing payroll that takes up some substantial amount of time which is a data entry type position and that function we looked at ways to streamline the process we checked with other towns to find out what type of staffing they had do they have a full-time treasurer do they have a full-time bookkeeper do they have select board assistants you know is a clerk full-time we learned that a lot of times a clerk is part-time and then does select board administrative type duties so what we learned also is that there are many towns in Vermont that use a payroll service company it's a very specific task that can be done by another group to take that time being spent by the treasurer to do a function that is repetitive it's pretty much the same thing every week people enter their hours into this payroll data system um and would allow the treasurer to focus on more essential duties and responsibilities and also we could look at changing some of what that treasurer function was and incorporate it with some type of a business manager select board assistant they would do human resources management and make the position maybe more inviting to applicants so that you know maybe somebody likes to do money things because they also want to do some other stuff so this gives presented an opportunity to regroup the position and make it maybe more appealing to applicants because as we all know Dallas is not unique to hiring issues nationwide we hear about it almost every day on the news we can't find this person or that person um so that's where we are that's where we're at NEMRIC as you heard tonight has been assisting with supporting the board in the financial aspects of the treasurer job they are not I'll be really clear they are not serving as treasurer they are performing some of the duties and they do this on a regular basis under contract for a lot of times on an ongoing basis they do a lot of treasurer functions um so we did we had am I right we did interview payroll firms right we did interview a payroll company and we have entered have we entered into a kind of not because we still have questions yeah right um that Sharon and I are working on we want to be really really careful about doing this and make sure it is in the best interest of the town um because that's our ultimate goal always what's in the best interest of the town and that's what we're investigating right now just let me add to be frank I am sort of I'm kind of one of the advocates of using a payroll company I have in my past uh used payroll companies and they this is all they do you know they just they're so good at it if you get the right one and the company we're looking at is is a Vermont has a Vermont base um and as many of you know I mean just looking at politics in the federal and state level there has been so many changes in the demands of state, federal reporting, human resources requirements I mean everything has gotten way bigger and way more complicated and complex in years um so the combining treasurer select board assistant whatever we call it business manager is taking from funds that are currently in the budget it is not new funds it is current funding to perform those very functions that we had in different positions we're also looking at efficiency improvements too like why we think they roll instead of weekly things like there's a standard that's a huge amount of time in administrative costs you know just it's just wasted so we're trying to we're looking to better we're looking to try to really encourage somebody to want to come to Calis to work as a treasurer business manager you know put the weekly or bi-newly task of payroll with a company or somebody that specializes and this is all they do you don't do anything else you just do payroll so we've been talking just giving you information about the treasurer and Sharon is there anything else you would like to add or any other board member on the treasurer I don't have anything I think it's covered go ahead I have one thing I want to really underscore and um it's a combination of Denise's points and John's points we spent a good chunk of time working on filling the treasurer position and we reached a point where we realized we could be without a treasurer for a while and we could not go without the treasurer function being fulfilled because as you know there are a lot of other things demanding our attention so we put in place the solution that Denise described having members help us out with fulfilling treasurer duties so that we could do some of the other things that we're pressing while and with taking a little bit of having a sense honestly of relief that if we don't have somebody and this situation goes on for a while we have something in place I just want to make sure that we work with that a lot yeah I wanted to add as well too well one thing we were really interested in having the treasurer already placed a significant role in grant management we have a lot of grants we rely on that to survive and the restrictions around those are significant are pretty significant and they're chronic all the time so we really want part of our strategic plan and this is to really integrate more in that control and make sure that we're dotting our eyes crossing our keys on the grant side so that we don't find out later in some audit that we haven't violated some rule and then cause us to actually get a reimbursement of these things so that's a significant part of this talk eliminating some of the drudgery work get focused on the issues that we really need some critical thought on and that's working we have a lot in roadway a lot of grant management there so this is a great place many of our committees have grants so we have keep an eye on how these get managed and we're all as you know every person that participates in time we're all working jobs and we don't know a lot of these laws well so it helps if we've got somebody to make sure we're doing basic things correctly you know in that processing so we don't get a bit lighter because we didn't meet some guidelines would you one of you one item is the temporary treasure do you want to comment on that at all that's not ready for time okay we're not doing that so the second set of issues the large set of issues are around DPW Director of Public Works and I'm just offering I'm going to go around and ask people to talk about it I'll just say it and start we did more in a specific discussion about this for many a second I'm not saying that to say gotcha or anything like that but the reality is I remember that meeting we discussed it and there was nobody here it was on video and there was nobody here and I'm sorry I think it somehow did not get recorded it didn't get recorded no but it was on video it was on zoom that's what I meant it was on zoom so anyway I just want to say yeah I was born but so what now we're here and this is what we want and that's why I'm really happy you're here and we did approve the job description we asked the committee of us to draft the job description and we did approve the job description and the posting of it and as a courtesy which I thought was an important courtesy personally we asked Alfie and Toby to come in so before we posted it and showed it to them et cetera and I will say that we tried to rate a meeting so that Toby could be there and he couldn't be there for several of the times that we mentioned and so we went ahead and met with Alfie and Toby was not called and I apologize for that I really do that's not the way to treat people so I apologize that that happened but anyway I'm not saying that I don't want you to know that as a point of information I think that whatever people want to say about this position they should say it tonight to us but I want to again go around and just ask quickly let's not take too much time so that people can talk to us I've heard and read some different slants I guess I'll say our memories of the history in terms of how we got here or didn't or inappropriately and I just want to remind folks who were there or folks who aren't aware it was some years ago where we and we still have it this way where we have liaisons from the select board meeting with different enemies Curtis Pondam group was one we had two liaisons assigned we've always had a liaison from the board or two assigned to the highway department it used to be when we had Psy Lambertin for those who know Psy he was a member of the select board and he had a real particular interest in roads and highway stuff and so he was always our emissary to the highway and what Psy would do in addition to checking in and boarding back along with Alfred and Don Singleton he would take on a grant application maybe too but there are many many more great opportunities out there which is free money coming this way and not money coming out of your pockets infrastructure here getting repaired, getting upgraded culverts folks who drive Singleton Road two culverts put on there and culverts elsewhere big work items big dollars paid for mostly by the state, 90% by the state in many cases we because we had a volunteer here doing that they can only do so much folks we can't do it in two to two hour meetings a month so it requires us to take time out of our lives we do it with families and lives and livelihoods and gardens, we'd like that be so weedy and better water and we have to take time out to chase horses to deal with this and we just don't have the time to pursue the grants at the level we think we need to we had a great select board member Toby Talbot we said hey, I'll pick up where Psy left off and Toby is a numbers guy and a spreadsheet guy and he took a real interest in this he found grant money where we never really existed he was the guy working with Alfred that found all this money that fund all these projects major dollar projects Toby did it first as a volunteer and I know I was one of the select board members saying he's putting such a level of effort in we need to start compensating him Toby decided not to run again but offered in the interim to continue this without a better approach his interim's been going on a decade and he's been gracious enough not complaining diligent enough and bringing the money in getting the projects done working with Alfred and but we had always anticipated it was going to be a temporary effort that we needed a full time set of eyes dealing with this by the way, personnel we come in two hours a month twice a month all of the personnel and hiring annual evaluations developing evaluations budgeting insurance it's bottomless and so this is all volunteer time we do outside of meetings which is not out there in public we're doing it we all do our things and our predecessors have so it's gotten to the point where the requirements we have a state law Alfred knows it very well and her grants attach to it but if you don't apply for them if you don't pursue them, spend the time to pursue them you don't get the money they don't show up and give you a pot of money you have to request it you have to represent how you're going to perform these things there's a law that requires it's called a municipal storm order permit it requires Mr. Powers to meet certain standards we could be taken to court it's against the law and under a certain level however there's grant monies out there it's character stick but you have to have someone dealing with this it's a huge effort Toby can tell you that we need somebody to do with this officially full time that can come back to the select board instead of select board members having to do this on our time frankly so that's how we've got to this moment those are some of the key parts we also have buildings this one Gail worked on this with their committee getting this restored there was all this data somewhere again the select board members Denise and Cliff and everyone else lots of time, again volunteer time out of these people's lives where it's time that when there's a leaky roof from the clerk's office we have a public works person who can take the call and climb on the roof with Andy Felicia or whoever deal with the town hall and future projects this kind of stuff so that's what this is all about it's a broader deal with the swimmer if you have the upgrade we're going to wind up owning that dam if and when the voters approve if and when our percentage allocation however we work that out among you all actually in terms of funding that dam but we will wind up owning that dam and having to bear the burden of whatever oversight is responsible so I just wanted to put that down I mean you can but both of you could you guys keep it short I'm going to keep it short and I would like people to be able to say please I know but I'm just saying I see you know the issues that they go on before I was on the board but I agree completely with I mean I look you know we're asking Alfred and the crew to do things that you know they it's not only out of their realm it's not in the experience but we're also losing a lot of really productive their talent and their skill is in building the road that's where it needs to go we need to keep that focus and this person doing a lot of that they'll actually be working making sure say the road standards are getting applied properly where we can apply because in that general permit in places when we take grants we also have to meet certain requirements so we have to make sure we're doing that but they would deal with a lot of these things they may be able to do things like quarter things that would keep the crew away from the road and then keep them on what they're good at even things like truck registration I'm arranging for maintenance and then critically you know interest to me and if something you know a very few times do but at a great loss over time is the long range asset management plan I will work with them whoever this DPW is and how to do this with them to really develop that so the tenant can really look we know what our lifeblood is a long time and it's this plan ahead much farther ahead so we're not blindsided by massive bonds because of more poor infrastructure and they're out there I mean the road systems aren't very expensive they just age slowly but most of the bridges we're right now at the same time yesterday there is very expensive even just there I mean a lot of it is paid by the federal government 10% is paid by the state but we have to come up with even 10% of all the bridges at one time it's a hit as Rose will probably tell you so we need to be tracking in advance so we are really planning dispersing those in a way that is really more affordable and then this person will as John said not just because of the road but it's the building management so we're planning here we are doing the right maintenance at the right time we're not deferring it and then causing damage it causes us trouble with this building the town office the town garage working down the property they will be kind of responsible for kind of managing that that's what we really have in mind with this thank you okay the only thing I will add is that it's my understanding because Denise and Sharon worked on it this whole set of rearrangements have been very careful will not add to the town budget this position is also funded within the existing budget as approved by the voters so we're just not adding an extra position we moved everything around and we have savings so who would like to talk to us none well I guess I'm going to call on you first oh you didn't I'm sorry would you like to testify yeah the reason I'm sorry I'm not doing that to put you on the spot but first of all tell us your name Mayor Olin, Bush, no relation and also try to speak up just that way okay can everybody hear me can y'all hear me back there you can't hear me well let me all of you hear me okay anyway I understand that there used to be oversight what what I don't understand is why is why can't we just have a town administrator who would do all this in my opinion having worked the state government as a business manager there's far too much for that one person because they don't do treasurer work minister, staff I'm not talking about treasurer work talking about that well that's what this essentially is that's all of this our public works it's our public facilities our buildings that's all there is I heard I just I'm concerned that that we're only killing one bird and that there are other birds that you want to kill grants for roads, grants for what other things we've mentioned that's all part of this and so my thought was that an administrator could write grants an administrator could oversee the distribution of grants and an administrator could also make sure that everybody is doing their job thank you I hear what I'm hearing you say is that we should consider instead of a director of public works we should consider a time administrator a time administrator okay who else please come up state your name for the wreck thank you so thank you for the overview of both the treasurer and director of public works I'd like to fill in some of the gaps that were not explained I want to be sure that everybody knows that Sandra Ferber our previous treasurer gave her notice in January she gave four months notice the interviews that you started with interview number one did not take place until almost almost April which was quite a bit later after Sandra's resignation she gave four months notice but after her letter of resignation when you guys got to a yes from him and then he didn't get right back to you after you did all your final negotiating it drove on for three weeks and I feel like that's kind of on you guys to manage that it went on and on and on for three weeks and then we got a no so that's why the time was wasted the second interview we were talking about we got her application April the 19th you got it April the 19th and you were meeting a few days later the select board was meeting the following Monday we got it at the end of the week you had a scheduled meeting within days it was before you had warned the meeting so you could have interviewed her a few days later she was very qualified as you said John and you guys waited and waited and didn't contact her and I actually just called Denise and said why aren't you getting her in there because she's so qualified if you wait you're going to lose her she's going to take another job and that's what happened you waited so long you waited three weeks and she took another job and that was very very frustrating we love Nimrin we are so grateful for Nimrin for the fact that you guys have been explaining to our visitors here that Nimrin has been helping us what you haven't told them is that we're paying them $115 an hour to cover the treasurer duties in the absence of a treasurer and it has now been three months since that last interview fell through and you've been saying for three months we need to write a new job description it's been three months and it seems to me that you could go ahead and at least be recruiting people meeting with them and saying we're looking to change the job description we need these skills and qualifications this was the job description that our previous treasurer was doing if you come on board we'll work with you to change the job description it doesn't have to bring it to a screeching halt for three months regarding the director public works that meeting was on May the 2nd that you referred to for tonight and first of all your minutes that I've been posting for the last three months say that Orca was there Orca was not there I contacted them because I couldn't find the Orca video so I contacted Orca and they got back to me and said it was never on our production schedule to be at your meeting but your minutes that have been posted to the website for three months now reflect that Orca was there which is needed to correct those notes yeah that's an error yeah that's an error that's certainly been the sake and then also when you say that this director public works position is funded through the budget that was approved to town meeting yeah maybe the funds were that were approved to town meeting but they were approved for other purposes as I'm quoting Sharon that this director public works position is being funded by being cobbled together from drawing money from other line items that's what was the functions are cobbled together too these are the same functions but we cobble together them into one position rather than divergent areas like Covey over here like the select board assistant that we haven't added in a number of years that was part of that person's duties so we've taken those various pieces and put them together into one those were all represented at town meeting as functions we needed attended to all the same functions different shape they have an impossible line item for a grants investor in the budget so just a fuller explanation would be helpful because when you don't provide the information then it's hard to understand the full story thank you Barbara who else would like please come up yes, Tina you know her name now I know her name everybody knows me and I just want to say thank you each of you I'm so glad I came today if we saw my friend Port Form put a lot of blame on myself for not coming, not being aware not knowing what was going on and really I know each of you I know you're smart caring hardworking people and the job load of the select boards he was pretty overwhelming for me I loved politics and I would never want your job because it was too much work it shouldn't be political I mean political in a good way you know and so it feels like some of the things just fall through the cracks and you know I saw the front porch forum posting from the constable who talked about how he wanted to get this training and wanted to get this training and it just never got approved and I have concerns about Jamie Morby who is also a good friend and working as webmaster and I don't recall that that was a job that was posted at all and it seems like things like that should be put out there but I imagine with your workload you're just trying to get stuff done which brings me back to what Marilyn suggested and it seems like perhaps the idea of a town administrator might help you know it might help with things like getting that training approved for the constable making sure the ads get out there for the treasurer you know more like February than March and all that sort of thing but it seems like you have enough to do that it might just help fill the gaps can I add something to respond a little bit to that and part of this is it's actually a theory you can take towns like Bristol that have this right and it's not just one person they end up having a staff that is at one place and can't handle all this we're small enough and we've been focused for all these are really time consuming things that we see constantly are trainwrecks for us I mean it's difficult for me to liaise on to the road commissioner I'm working a full time job I have time for work but during business hours I take a significant amount and I either take vacation time or I work late I don't mind doing that on account so that's where we have to we're trying to consolidate these pieces that we can that we think are manageable by one person and based on the scale of our town we're not a Bristol we don't have a wreck department so we're using the best that we've got in a sense this DBW is a town of ministry but they're more than public works your heart infrastructure well we don't have a water most water sits down so that's where we're kind of doing where you're sitting some of the functions so a town administrator would catch some of the functions that are going to be attached to the treasure we just think that's a better fit we're trying to have more of the you know I think you should know and Marilyn we hear you and I really appreciate the idea and we'll think about this and I think there's a real power in words and somehow a director of public works sounds sort of to me at any rate kind of la-di-da whereas and it might play out that way to other people in town whereas like a town administrator sounds more down to earth and just makes more sense because we were struggling for the title let's I've made it it's a very interesting idea thank you who else would like to talk to us please come up tell us what you think Pat what's your name Pat Finney couple of things I'm a friend of Barbara for bringing up the that point her announcing on January that she was going to be getting done in March right April 30 thank you next the town public works director position now every march we vote on a position on sending $27, $28,000 now to the other library old folks recreations whatever you folks don't think that it's appropriate when a position is created and probably I don't need to know how much is it going to if you decided how much you're going to pay if you walked out last week you didn't know you but to be safe to assume over $100,000 what would it be but I think go on and make your point my point is this should have been put before the people to vote on town meeting day you folks should not be making that decision yourselves we should be making that thank you I did I'm just telling you the functions were in other positions we're merging the positions into one name we call it another name you didn't give us a chance to even talk on it the select board works for us we should be able to have a voice on what we want to be paid I'm just saying back in the new office something you should have been voted on I think you did vote on it you did vote on it thank you Pat, thank you Sherry who else Donna Donna Ditch past town working pleasure so responding to Maryland and to Jimmy in 2017 the select board did come up with a job description and we called it select board administrator because a town administrator and a town manager is defining the statute and that is somewhat linked to it probably John and Denise we never went through this and in fact there was a committee that came up with this job description I think Gay hold on maybe we have select board members we have citizens toward the end of time we came up with this job description a select board administrator for various reasons it never came to fruition but I too think that that might be a good solution and I still have the job description which I can send to people and in that job description was dealing with grants not necessarily working on roads but there was some there would have been some support for the road crew and you remember Jonathan we had working for his administrative assistant what year did he leave do you remember well in 2018 because he was supposed to carve a lot of his functions and we struggled getting those because I think that's the position he took actually what happened was the select board even though we have this diversity of people that came up with this job description and what we did was we analyzed the work of the select board and in the town office and then when it came before the entire select board the select board decided to call a select board assistant which kind of lowered the level of expectation for the skills of this person would have so when I first became town clerk and treasurer I looked into a payroll service and I thought it was too expensive and so I had I put everybody on payroll for every two weeks I think even the road crew who did not want to be paid every two weeks did you want to go on for two weeks it was a two-issue direct deposit and then every two weeks we did go direct deposit but most people were paid every two weeks and then our accountant did all the tax recordings so the treasurer didn't have to do all the tax recordings I didn't find that on nurse you know doing payroll so and one more point point is regarding the you know you know you know you know regarding the director of public works so as you folks said you talked about it on May 2nd and on that same at that same meeting you came out of an executive session and you said the board reported that it intends to move forward with the action steps as discussed in executive session but you don't say what the action steps were no that was May 2nd that may have been about the horses yeah because we had we warned it, we discussed it it wasn't an executive session well I don't know why these minutes say the board reported that it intends to move forward that was a different issue we went to court for both we don't know and we confiscated one, two, three, four horses and we're still dealing with that but the point is the point I'm trying to make is the board came out and reported it to take the action steps but what were the action steps anyway it's not the best so then on to the hang on, hang on, hang on before we move on I think you guys have said it a couple of times but I'm still hearing that it isn't clear to people that the action steps had nothing to do with the public work director position at that time were entirely related to something else and that specific language that we wrote to take from actions consistent with things discussed in the executive session is something that we are have been advised to do by our attorneys when there are actions that sometimes it's not an executive session it's not an executive session action you're taking is appropriate for the public sometimes it's not an executive session and you're taking an action but it still isn't something that is appropriate to be public so at that night the actions were not appropriate which I use to know because of that language and it had nothing to do with the public work director we've had an attorney international meeting with us you know fine I've never seen that before where you come out and you basically don't say we have a new attorney too so on June 13th you interviewed somebody for a position with the town I think everybody knows why that person was interviewing who it is and then on the 27th of June is when the job description for the public works job that person that individual that individual applied for the treasurer we have not formally interviewed somebody I know you have not formally interviewed them okay those are just the points that I want to get what did you just say the individual that apparently everyone knows about it's initially applied for the treasurer position applied for the treasurer position applied for the treasurer position okay but I want to did you did you come up gal come on up gal you hear from gal I'll just stand okay I have many trouble understanding I think that's the key to being sad but one of my major questions right now Did you say that the meeting when you were discussing the job description was warned? Yes. Because, I haven't talked to anybody that saw that it was warned. Right. I can go back. The best thing is creating a great deal of this misunderstanding. Okay. Gail, Donna has it right there to show you. So this is the agenda. Discuss creation of director of public works position. And then these are the minutes where it appears they didn't discuss it very long. But you know what, I'm going to ask. So what? In other words, you warned it. We don't want to play gotcha. There's lots of times when we have meetings where something's warned and no one shows up. We most of the time meet alone. No one shows up. Well, when I wasn't on the select board, I didn't come to the select board meetings. So we're not blaming anybody. We want to have the discussion. What I'm hearing now is I've heard. Think about a different kind of position. I hear that things are falling through the cracks. Yeah. And maybe a town administrator would be an answer. I'm hearing something like this should be put to a vote at the town and town meeting. And Donna added a point that she's a little worried that payroll tax is too expensive. Donna also added a point that we evaluated town administrator. And that's statutorily defined position. And it constrains us to make the correct functions they can cover. What I want to do is, first of all, I want to ask, is there anyone who would like to make another point? So please come up. I'm Rachel Bliss. My question is, so when this is all said and done, is Toby still going to be working for the town? And hire someone who's going to do grants. Toby said right from the start, he only wanted to do this temporarily in the interim. And I'm surprised he still is doing it. You know, he wants to go and have one in the final, right? So we really respect and appreciate the amount of money that Toby had brought in for grants. It's like he said before, it's something that we didn't have before. So he's kind of put a standard in a bar to meet with the grants. And he wants to know. Yeah, he's going to be strong. Oh, that's not okay. He wants to find a job that would be great. I'm not speaking for him, but I know he didn't want to do what he's doing alone. He'd be qualified. He would be. He wants it. I also want to say something that hasn't been mentioned, which is working on the East Calis store. What I've realized is we've tended to focus our grants on transportation issues. There is so much out there that we can get that we are not getting in the way of affordable housing. You name it. Historic preservation. There's just so much. And what I see is, it's a real problem. It's not just our problem. It's the world for a month. Is cities like Burlington or even Barrier, they have people, they have staffs who are working away on these grants. And I just think that we're missing out. So whatever it's called, however it's done, I just hope that if we tell someone, your job is grants, includes grants, that we're going to get more money into this town. I think there were some other hands up in the back. Yes. It's actually what you were up. I'm Jim O'Rearon. And I was curious, is this position hopefully will involve grant writing, which you've got to jump on it, is the East Calus Spring and the whole water structure at East Calus? Because that is millions of dollars. I mean, that's a huge deal. And right now you can get grants. You make a really good point. I mean, that's a full-time job itself. So that's why I'm for this job. Well, and then East Calus Fire District is an entity all in its own municipality. They have applied for some, they've put in a request for some of the other money that we'll be looking at. Exactly, yeah. And I think you're right. I think they're probably grants that we could help. But it's going to go away quick because adults, you know, and I think... Right. So this person, this individual could assist them, even though actually they were like another state law, as Denise said, they were a separate municipal entity. But we don't know them. But they're in our town. It's a legal semantic. And, you know, this person, because now they're on staff, can work on that. Right. Otherwise, our volunteers just show up. Right. So, you know, East Calus Fire District, we had a person doing these kinds of things. They could come to this left board and say, could we seek assistance using the DPW or whatever we call this position to help us get some money to improve our water system. And we could make some kind of an arrangement. There's also affordable housing that's needed. There's a lot of buildings that are historic in town. Most of them, everybody knows where they are, who they are. But they're upkeep to making sure those buildings are kept up to the standards that we would expect. Like the town hall. We spent a lot of money thankfully to Donna. And John. Taking the charge. Donna and John. And David Chase. Chasing the money. Chasing the money. Making sure the work got done. We don't want to let the building then suddenly not be taken care of by not having somebody to come and check on what regular maintenance so that we don't have a big expense 10 years from now. This is something that position would do as part of a capital plan or a capital maintenance plan for the upkeep of buildings. There's work that should be done at the town office. You know, to somehow maybe make it so that there's more usable space. Office space. You know, we can sit around and talk about it. But this position can actually look and take the lead on seeing can we make this happen? And if we can, how do we do it? Just do it. Is there, is there, I would like, I don't want this to go on forever. I would like to know if there's other people who have points that they haven't made before I bring it up to the board for whatever appropriate motions and comments that we want to make. Is there anybody? Yes. Please. I'm a former member of the callus. And. And Lisa's job. Yeah. I want to thank you for all your hard work that you do. I've been in your shoes and I know exactly what you are doing and up against. I want to say that I'm in favor of the position of a DPW or callus administrator or whatever term you want to put. We've been talking about this for years. And so I'm in favor of that. There's just so much work to do. So much more out there and it really will just be a benefit to the town. The other thing I want to just briefly touch on is the treasurer's position. I feel really bad that that position did not get filled and that Sandra was not there to train the next person. That was our call. Yeah. I mean, I could say you guys dropped the ball, but again, it, you know, you can't do everything. You know, that's that's like one of the main reasons I came tonight was because, you know, it's just so important. It's like running a business and you don't have a business manager and wait this long. So so I do feel bad. I feel really bad that we don't have a town treasurer. And so I just encourage you to, you know, work as hard as you possibly can to get that position filled because it is really important. And I kind of share a little bit of Donna's concern about the payroll company. But I understand that they are the experts and, you know, but I just don't know how much it's costing. But I'm sure NEMREC is costing too. But you need someone to do that job. Right. So right now we're spending less. Just so you know, in this interim, we're not spending double what the treasurer's salary was per week. We're spending much less. And a lot of it's due to volunteer effort by Denise and, you know. But it's not a good situation. But it's only a bridge approach. It's really not a good situation. Sharon and Denise are covering that. Thank you, Rose. I, yes, in the back. I can't see you. Please come up. This is, you know what it is. Who's that man? And the Andrew. And the Andrew. I just want to thank you guys. And now that I know more about what the position is, I think it's a great idea. And I just want to also point out that there's other grand opportunities. Stormwater. We haven't even talked about stormwater. That's my old habit. We haven't even talked about stormwater tonight, right? But anyway. So there's those opportunities. And then there's the municipal roads general permit, which John brought up, which has been a huge ask of the road cruise. So it's not like this. And that that's coming down from A&R. And that's not just something that road crews have been asked to do all along. This is something new. And there's a timeline for it as well. And reporting. Yeah. And reporting and tracking and maintaining and making sure it's all maintained. So I just wanted to add that. Then it's not just, it's not, it's not something that Alfie and Toby have been doing all along. This is something that's come down from A&R to help clean up our waterways. And eventually, you know, we all float elation things. So that's that part. So I'm just going to thank you for my waterfall. Thanks very much. You've done it. So yeah, because it's not, it's not just that they've been doing this all along. They haven't. This is a new ask. And it, they really need the help. And the, where I used to work as a planning commission, they can only help so much there. And they're spread thin over all the towns that they serve. So they can help communities write grants. But that no matter what grant the community gets, they're still, the town still has to do some administration and reporting to get that money. And to show that they've spent that money correctly. Like I bought this culvert. Here's the, here's the receipt. Here's this. So there's all these reporting things. And I've been in the shoes of the government side that requires us for the town. So just want to thank you. Dan told us a lot in the past. Yeah, she's a CVRPC. Can I make a comment? One last. It's going to be very quick. It's important though. We also know in this job, I mean, this is something that can drown somebody. You can hear all the suggestions that come in here tonight. And then we plan on just staging this in an organized way. So we don't just come in and quit. So we're trying to be strategic and get this to the point that capacity and we'll figure it out from there. We need more of the hips. We're in time to blend that. But we're going to try to keep this cost center control and really keep it what we're doing for a clear time of highest value to the town. It's part of our plan. I would like to bring this back up to the board. And I guess I just want to start with one motion if I might, which I'll put on the floor here. Regardless of our own feelings about it, I think there's a perception clearly that we have been a little deletory with respect to the treasure and filling the treasure position. And yeah, you know, I was involved and I could say, but I'm not going to. I think that we have to get ourselves in gear on it. So I would like to move that Denise and Sharon be authorized to develop a revised job description, post-hace, and to frankly, I would say, post it. I know. I wanted to come back. I want select board approval. I wanted to see if they could send me that document that you said you had. I think I have it, but I want to be sure it's the same one. I want to see what that encompasses. Post it and not post it. Right now it needs to be developed and trapped. Which is a select board to review and approve. And we have a new practice of signing. Right. So I'm putting that on the floor because I think that we could do that next meeting, right? Right. I think, yeah. So you have a job description from February of 2020. Right. I thought about the one that you said you had for the select board, whatever it was. Assistant. 2017. 2017. Yeah. We can still advertise for a treasure business manager. And then by the time we get the interview together, we'll have the job description. And what if somebody says, okay, I'm interested. Can I see the job description? We can say this is a large segment. We know the treasure functions are part of it. And we can say we have a fine tune, but we have a business management element that has yet to develop. Do I have a second? I'll second. Okay. Now I'm going to talk about it. Guys, we hear you. I am worried. I confess to being worried. You're worried. This is a, I am really impressed by how hard it is to get people to apply and find people in this environment. I am not saying that as an excuse. We will pursue, we will, everybody we can, we will advertise, we will do everything we can. It's been, other towns are having the same problem. That takes them months and months and months to fill anything. It's like, you know, did you guys see the post office was closed for three days? That was just because they wouldn't, they couldn't find anyone. The post office, the post mistress went on vacation because her kid was sick or something and they couldn't find anyone. So all I'm saying is that, so I would like to call for a vote on this. Okay, so the motion is again? Yeah. The motion is to authorize Denise and Sharon to create a job description and bring it back to us in our next regular meeting, which is the 8th. The 8th. And can we advertise? Can we do that motion? Okay. Okay. So that motion. This is a trend in our business manager jobs. Yes. Yes. Yes. How do you vote? Yeah. John. Yes. Mark. Yes. Denise. Yes. Rick. Yes. Madam, how are you voting? Yes. Okay. All right. Now you wanted to raise the issue. Should we post the meeting? I would ask that. Can I make a comment about working weekly? Yeah. Yes. Part of what we, part of, you know, for those who follow along closely, part of what we do is let you know with complete transparency when we're going to be actually taking an action on items. And we did not warn a motion to do a motion. And I think we would overall be starting down the bad road if we started taking actions at meetings that we had to warn. That's part of what people are, you know, taking issue with is the idea that we're doing that. All right. Point taken. Okay. All right. All right. I also, I also want to authorize Sharon. We have a complaint to the attorney general's office about an open meeting while in violation. I don't want to say anything more about it than others who exist. Yeah. No, I think, I think we actually do need to say more about it. So the complaint was that we, that we are in violation of the open meeting law around the creation of this position. And so Mark, do you want to, I think you have the facts, why don't you continue on that? I think it's a, okay, first of all, I'll tell you what, I will do that, but I'm just going to move that we authorized Sharon to represent the board in connection with our council to address the complaint. That's simply that. Sharon, I know what you're getting in. I'll get to that in a minute. I'm uncomfortable with the order of the motion. I don't know what I'm talking about. Okay. Well, then we have a second. Okay. We have some on the floor. I don't have to throw it. No, I don't have to throw it. It's on the floor, but now are you referring to the technical problem that we think that approving the job description and announcing our plan to post was tantamount to approving the position? That is correct. And however, go on, Mark. So now we're in a duly warned meeting and we can correct that if we want to through a motion that just says, authorize the, we can correct, if there was a technical violation, which we don't think there was, we can approve the creation of the Public Works Director position in the town of Calis, ratifying the June 27th approval of the job description. And I'll put that motion on the floor, but I want to talk about it for a minute. I'll second that motion. Okay. I guess my feeling is, we've heard some really interesting testimony. I do think it's a good thing to continue to work on the development of a DPW job description, but I also think that people who are working on it should take into account what we heard tonight. We heard some really interesting stuff today. I think that we should consider the issues that were raised tonight. And, you know, so anyway, that's all I'm saying. I'm not saying that I would change the wording of the motion. Well, and I am concerned, and maybe we can rearrange the pieces. And like I've said, all these pieces are necessary to the function of this town. And they're being performed either by volunteers or this and that. And all the ones that have been budgeted for have been discussed. All those functional elements. And we assembled them in a different style position. So now we've decided that arrangement doesn't necessarily work. As things continue to evolve, as Pam has explained just minutes ago. And so we're trying to keep up and trying to address everything and bring more money into this town and be functionally better at delivering services for you and make Alfred's job a lot easier. He's scrambling. And, you know, Tobi's covering him. And, you know, Tobi would be totally with us in his rights tomorrow to say, hey guys, I volunteered ten years ago to cover this for a month or two months or a year. But, you know what? Ten years is long enough. And if he were to leave with one to no notice or two weeks notice, we'd be in the same position again where we're not ready and we'd have a meeting very similar to this where we can't find what we need to be prepared and get ahead of this monster that we're all settled with. And so that's what we're trying to do. And I think the ultimate goal is how can we best serve Cal's residents? What are the efficiencies we can gain and we can learn after years and years of experience? There's efficiencies that can be achieved. You know, I think my goal as a select board member has always been to volunteer, to serve the town, to be best in my ability. Do we make mistakes? Of course. I'm the first one to say it. I'm not perfect. I will make mistakes. That's just life. But I always strive to do my best to serve the town and the residents. Sharon, go ahead please. Yeah, I agree with everything everybody's saying. And we've already said there's nothing past and still about the title. It's a title. The title was the title we picked once. The real the importance of being able to have that position. How about that? I guess, ironically, if there's any cast that's still around the title being able to respond fully to the Attorney General's office we can endorse as Mark said, we don't think there is a public meeting violation. But in case if, you know, we think that approving the job description and announcing our strategy post can amount to approving the position, but somebody said we didn't approve the position at an open meeting. So we can do that tonight so that we have any potential for somebody to state the violation of the law. And that doesn't mean that we can come up with a new job description and make some tinkering with the position in an open and public process as we have been doing. But I do feel strongly that we need to, for that reason, pass the motion to create the public work director's position so that that is on the record in an open meeting as a form. That's on the table. Okay, so we have two motions. We have two motions on the table. We have one. No, there's two. That's where I got confused. No, you made two. The first one was that Mark moved to appoint Sharon to represent the board and respond to the complaint. It went into the motion to create the public works. Okay, so those are the two motions. I'd like to move for a vote on the first one or the second one which is the correction if it's necessary. Can we do the first one first, please? You mean appointing you? No. No, I'm sorry. I'd like to do the job position. Yeah, that's what I said. Okay, I'm sorry. John votes yes. How do you vote? Denise votes yes. Mark votes yes. How about you, Sharon? Yes, I vote yes. Now appointing Sharon to represent the board. John votes yes. Mark votes yes. Denise votes yes. And Sharon. Okay, I do want to emphasize once again that this is kind of awkward that in correcting in augmenting or reconfirming that we are not saying that we didn't hear what you said tonight and that we will not really think hard about how to structure this and what to call it. Your comments are very much appreciated. Thank you for taking time out of your evening. It's really, really appreciative. Okay, and now I think we're pretty much going to have more around Robin on this whole business. We're done. Can I ask, I'm sorry. So you voted to create the position. Right. But you didn't vote to create the job description. We already had done that. Yeah, we've already No, it's a technical thing. It's a technical thing. Okay. And I think we don't need an executive session. No. I just want to say one thing in just a minute. I really want to you guys I really thank you for spending an entire evening with us. Half of which was listening to us trying to say other business and so thank you really from the bottom of my heart. Thank you. My name is Steven Mills. I live in McConnor. I just wanted to say I came to support so I have worked with you in the past most times I was I've seen an incredible amount of effort at the local level on the monetary to support various projects or causes and what next callous special the way that it is I was just a little concerned to see some of the social media stuff about what was discussed tonight and I want to try and urge people not to lash out sometimes with incorrect information about something that they feel strong about just to all come together and work it out and talk it out and work it out I can't hear he's basically saying supporting our efforts and he's saying thank you and people should try to talk to us directly and not lash out and social media and talk to each other and talk to each other I agree you make a really good point that sometimes we say things and social media is handy and not have all the facts and then later learn additional information so you make a really really good point thank you very much also I promise you that in the next meetings as this involves like you know when we have a job description and all of this we will make sure so that you guys know about it et cetera yeah Jeremy, Mike, Tom, Clark just a couple of things I very much appreciate the conversation every all the minutes involved intimately in what's going on in town having a meaningful conversation about creating new new jobs new departments is important I think that's the feedback that we're getting we need to hear about what's going on in terms of information on social media people in a vacuum people will create or try to find out what's happening and along those same lines I would encourage you this is a job that's cobbled together with different varied finance please let people know what the finance items are because if we voted on those for town meeting and we understand that there's a reason for the need for increased transparency it doesn't hurt to tell people what exactly the line items are how much it is and what it's going to be down the road because I'm assuming eventually it's going to be one line item so I think that that would be really helpful I also appreciate hearing of an increased understanding of the importance of the treasure this has created a lot of stress for both the town office for people seeking information there's invoices and things sitting in the treasures email that's no one's following it's stressful and it's been going on for months and months and it needs to stop if the continuing is going to continue with the job fine I encourage you all start looking for applicants each month they are found in the town administrator the town treasurer in the matter of a couple of months I think we can do better and I encourage you to start as soon as possible the office is here to help you guys with that in whatever way that we can but it's tax bills are going out in weeks and it's going to get really real for me and for my staff because we're the ones that are fielding about why is my tax bill wrong not understanding things it's just really got to get dealt with soon and I urge you to actually look at that treasure position and give that the importance over other things I'm not carrying that we're missing a lot of grants not really seeing that the roads are in disarray but we have a really really serious issue coming up with the tax bills going on it's going to be very stressful very effective very so I have a couple of questions about the use of executive sessions so I don't understand why the discussion of the creation of a new position was an executive session you call it personnel it wasn't okay but why were these discussions in executive session exactly May 2nd they weren't I had a public discussion about the director about the works where it was warned that's when we had it I'd have to go back and look at you as a board now as you know we have people assigned Sharon wants to speak yeah that is the only time that we warned it but it has come up in numerous we meet with Alfred and somebody said earlier this week I think Mark was playing we have mentioned the idea and had discussions in other meetings not as a warned item but it has been a such a theme how do we close some gaps over a period of time we've been talking about something like this for a long long time but you're not going to find it as a warned item but it isn't a new idea but it wasn't an executive session it was not an executive session it would be organically when we're talking with Alfred about how do we do better when Alfred's raised issues and we've said we need somebody to oversee some of these functions that's how it has come up in other I think another question a lot of people ask is and you guys have acknowledged how hard it is to find good quality people and it can take a long time to get some why was the job posting open for only one week it was open for one week and had a closed date of a week later after you posted it if you guys acknowledge how hard it is to recruit someone why was the job application only open for one week and what is the status of the one applicant that you have we have not interviewed the one applicant that we had we could have and probably shouldn't have posted it and it's likely that we'll be reposting it again based on discussions here tonight I saw Travis's email yesterday about the constable patrol officer what he did mention in this email was that he resigned more than two weeks two months ago so those two positions had been emptied two months and we also had all those calls at the talent office so what is the plan we're getting a new constable and a new constable patrol officer I want to say something about that as we have discussed or not discussed but there are appropriately very important and appropriate same executive session for excellent reasons and that can come up with multiple kinds of content I just want people to remember that things happen in executive sessions we are really careful in our town about executive session and whether and either is appropriately in executive session and I've not lost my train of thought but I guess the other so sometimes you hear part of the story and not the whole thing and the slide board is awkward because we have a position to particularly well defend ourselves as we are sensitive to issues that are executive session kinds of issues so that is something to always bear in mind the other thing is we've already said and I don't know if I said it maybe not me tonight but we have so many irons in the fire it is really impossible no matter how important the issue is it is impossible right now for us to be managing and treating every single one of them as a top priority and that's what I was going to respond to Barbara who is having it now do you advertise for constable animal control officer well I've said that we had posted it just a few months earlier we tried to supply so we have a current posting that's ready to go you know I this like Sharon said personnel matters I'm going to underscore that our executive session matters if you were an employee you wouldn't want us discussing our perspective on how you do your job well or well maybe well is fine but we may there are certain things that are not public matters so we go with executive session all the time we deal with personnel so if you folks don't like it I mean get used to it we got employees and we're going to have more employees and that's going to be to protect our employees and to protect taxpayers against lawsuits you don't discuss personnel matters that's number one number two can I finish Barbara can I finish you know please I know you're out tonight I that posting by Travis he and I worked on the horse issue and I'm not going to get in too deep with that but there were some inaccuracies in his posting in terms of the timing I will say that he talked about three applications apparently people have read that so I'm going to just go into that briefly the first time I was not involved directly as a point person and we had a different attorney and we had a disagreement with our attorney on certain matters in executive session legal matters and it involved our constable brought our constable in and we sorted it out and we wound up not to get into any more detail we ended up with a new attorney the new attorney has a very different approach our new attorney and so I was assigned as the point person and one of the and Travis I wish you were here one of the responsibilities Travis was seeking law enforcement officer stature it's a credential it's not your standard assignment under statute when we appoint the constable it's a higher level credential you're a cop and all the responsibilities and all the liabilities go along with that make a decision whether arrest somebody at gunpoint or taser point and handcuff and restrain and retain big liability issues and so it's something we had to sort through and but we said to the constable if you want to pursue this get the application forms you do your due diligence we don't have time this is something you're pursuing it's not necessary to fulfill your duties as constable as we see it he convinced us that there's a higher level assignment that he could perform because he had some experience and a town needed so he went and got Travis went and got the forms that he believed were necessary he spoke with people he believed he wanted to speak with we got the form we filled them all out he submitted them to the authorities that he said were appropriate authority he did and then bounced back and said he's not to write forms that's not my fault as a point person so now that's time number two time number three he got the right forms he submitted them they said oh where is your lie detector test was the other name polygraph test and first I know about it first he knew about it before you can go to the state police academy and basically go through the same classes as state trooper does what the sheriff does you need to have a background you need to have the lie detector test done so that's what I was told so I started beating the bushes so did Travis we found two outfits that on short notice because his class had to be signed up for by the following Monday by days end and so I find out Tuesday before I called this guy in New Hampshire numerous times never got a call back I called this guy and we found another person he said I can do it I can squeeze you in but I can't perform a polygraph test but that would be first having a criminal background check so now this is Thursday I'm on the bench on my porch trying to go down my supper folks and you know so I'm getting angry about this you know this is how we deal this is my life at dinner time so I dealt with the guy we arranged it Travis is going to show up on Monday the guy told me he was a former state trooper who runs a polygraph business and he said just call the state police they'll do a criminal background check it takes 30 seconds and they'll give you a report back have them email you to report and I said to him I used to deal with criminal enforcement and civil enforcement when I worked for the state I said you know I tried to get these background checks in my in licensing actually waste haulers in dealing with these cases and I couldn't get them I had a fellow a bunch of forms and I had this debate with the polygraph guy and he guys like no no no so okay called Monday morning Travis is in route Travis is like you call him call him I get the administrative person and she says oh no you got to fill out all these forms for five weeks and I'm like no no no I need to talk to your boss she got really angry but Travis now in Willis in her cell for only 10 waiting for that email and I talked to the head of the criminal investigations the guy he said don't know where you got this information from don't know why you would tell you that not possible so that was strike three I need delay on my part I did everything I was told to do and everything I understood I need to do some of this was very last minute and I will say you know Travis I consider him a friend I'm disappointed in the characterization of what happened I'm telling you how it happened and I will tell you Travis worked his tail off helping us gather those horses that were running all about town since 2017 and we finally did it I took a week and a half off from work all the whole time I had to get clearance from my boss to take off from work to do this as a volunteer and Travis got paid I did not so I'm not looking to get paid but I'm just telling you this is what your select pour does this lady and Sharon and Rick everybody mark two you know we put in so many hours it's exhausting and we're not complaining we just want you to understand that horse issue I just got an invoice it's like I don't know $2700 and the meter is spinning we're boarding four horses and we're in negotiations trying to figure this all out because the owner has some struggles going on where they cannot reach an agreement on a court and so the court is trying to work this is so complicated so common deer taking someone's property which are their horses and it's not someone's dog Jeremy take care of the dog feed them with your dog these are horses and then horses that were not vaccinated that were not properly cared for so we had to get a vet to come out and vaccinate them and treat them and test them for all these diseases there are four horses I kept the stallion running around jumping on their mares serious stuff they can injure them they can injure the person all these horses were out of control we were fortunate to find a stable for three of them and we were so fortunate I kept the stallion at my place with my cattle and I dealt with them and I dealt with these horses twice before I took them out of my place and just trying to solve a problem as best I could but I couldn't take them anymore because it was such a struggle we finally found someone to take the stallion and that's an ongoing issue so I just want to tell you these things are so deep they're bottomless you know I would like can I I wanted to underscore what's going on it is statutorily one of the kinds of items that is appropriately discussed in executive sessions some of you are probably wondering where is this under the hall of reason it's not there it's inappropriate to be talking about a level of sensitivity that Don is talking about while it's happening it's a legal matter if you place the people under the banner and statutorily protected as appropriate executive sessions so you so people who wonder what we do in executive sessions from every point it's kind of fine but executive sessions it's not appropriate for us to share it's I really we have heard from everybody that number one you really care about moving ahead with the treasurer position and we should move heaven and earth to try to fill it as soon as we can and we hear you and that you weren't satisfied with the way we did it before we hear you we've heard from you that we should really seriously think we've heard some support and for the DPW position and some feeling like we should really rethink it a little bit we've heard so I just want to say we've heard and I would like to close the hearing and close this meeting out if it's okay thank you very much is this a new matter no, I just have one thing to add just a request John, thank you for all your work first of all because that's been kind of an ongoing content thing call you every day it's a big deal and speaking with the father I guess the one request that I would have in terms of the board's continuing use of executive session would just to be could we please be a little more clear about under which prom of the statute we're actually using one BSA 313 is fairly broad I'm assuming you all aren't talking about student disciplinary measures or many other things that are in there I think it's important as a practice if it's going to be continued to be used for an hour on either end of the meetings that it's very clear that this is personnel that this is something that's very specific because you know it's it is a narrowly tailored piece of legislation that allows boards to necessarily meet and not have to take notes out of the public view and when you're talking about matters that are concerning spending money creating new positions, things of that nature I think what people are concerned about is that some of these things are happening behind doors they're not personnel they're not something else and that's all I'm requesting and I think what we're hearing from folks is that we just want to know that the things that are happening are appropriate and that are lawyer matters and the things that are very clearly appropriate behind closed doors and that the other things are not happening when we go into executive session Denise has those examples from open reading law printed out and she reads them the appropriate ones they were written by council actually the previous council and we've been advised you don't say you know Rose Peltchuck sitting in the audience she's the only one in our empty select board meetings we're going into executive session about personnel and there's Rose sitting there oh it's about Rose and then we get on flood board forum oh I was Rose in there did she do something wrong? she sped as my Alice maybe that was it you know you cannot be saying that stuff you've got to be really nuanced we've been warned against that we have to discreet we can do it for personnel reasons but we don't go out and say we're going in because we need to have a talk with Rose we have to do that one more hand up in the back there and I'm going to use my discretion to say this is the last one I want to know if our train to be able to carry a firearm that's a concern I hear you we hear you yeah that's something that should be imposed to somebody just getting that crown believe me we hear you it was a really big concern by the select we're just saying we'll just say how Wilson Hughes was trained at that level we never do I hear a motion to turn it that's fine do I hear the second was that specifically part of this animal control if you show us if we train at a higher level because it gives them extra tools and then actually if you're trained at that level there's some positives there's some concerns but we had struggles let's just say with law enforcement being responsive if they hear you're a train law enforcement officer oh okay then so you can hold those horses legally because he is a and he's not going to get the state police in trouble or get tangled up in a mess of our creation or it's less likely of course of course it's so complicated but there's a lot to it and Travis brought up and we again we find out when we explore and it came up I forget who brought it up but law enforcement officer contacted us said so I see that you're doing this and you should know that the league has a different rate insurance rate if you're going to have someone no I don't think we ever told the league about Wilson but now that we know that we need to let them know and I didn't check on you further because nothing happened we have a motion to adjourn on the floor is there a second how do you vote yes how do you vote yes thank you Sharon we're adjourned