 Well, we can open the meeting go for it. Yeah. And so let me just check the time. It's 631 so I'm going to open a meeting call the meeting to order. Are there any additions to agenda. There are. For the purchase of the Dodger amp. Yep. When would be a good time to put that in because that's we probably needs the time. Probably right after the resilient roads committee. Okay. Because country will be here for that. Okay. I'll write that in. Okay. Let's review the minutes from January 10. Just out of curiosity, Judith and Carl, are they are they coming to the meeting? Carl is here. He's setting himself up in the, in the middle room. I don't know about Judith. I assume he's coming. Okay. Carl's here. What's that? Oh, okay. All right. So have anybody has anybody reviewed the minutes. Amy did. John did. John did. You have any edits. No, I thought they looked great as is. As is. Yep. And Carl. Can't hear him. He said they look great. Okay. So I'm looking for a motion. I guess to approve the minutes. Amy is making a motion. John seconding all those in favor. Of approving the January 10th meetings pre-sale. I guys have it. Three eyes. And I guess Carl's abstaining. No, he said, I, you just didn't hear him. I didn't hear him. Okay. Okay. That's no problem. Public comment. I see public here. Do we have any public comment? Nope. Okay. Item B. Discussion with a resilient roads committee. Jeffrey Cueto's here. Okay. Is sitting down, I think. So which one of you gentlemen want to fill us in on. What's happening with resilient roads. I guess I could kick things off. If that's okay, Paul. Yep. There are a couple of things that we're going to talk about. The first one was the shade tree preservation plan. And the second thing that we wanted to talk about was the ash tree removal. Project in the North street area. As you recall, East Montpelier is one of the. Pilot towns for. Drafting a shade tree preservation plan. With the urban and community forestry program. Joanne garden. And we had meeting last week, we've been working on this for several months. There was a bit of a hiatus this summer. But we've kind of fleshed things out a little bit. We have a deadline. For the town of the end of March for the contract that we have. With the state. And so we need to wrap up things in terms of at least having a hearing. On a draft shade tree preservation plan. By the end of March. So that's why tentatively. We set March 7th. As a hearing date. And we were going to come back before. We had a meeting. We had a meeting. We had a meeting with the select board. To kind of plan things out on February 14th. The hearing is a joint hearing between the select board. And the tree warden. And. If you recall, the shade tree preservation plan. Is a response to the changes in state law. That. I think it was a year ago. November, I believe it was. And basically. Removing the jurisdiction that the tree warden had. Over trees that are within the road right away. And under state law. The only trees that are protected in town. As designated quote unquote shade trees. Are ones that are planted by the town. So in order to get jurisdiction back over the trees. Within the right away. We have to adopt the shade tree preservation plan. And one part of the plan is designating. Which trees. On town property. Or within the right away. The tree warden will be considered as shade trees. And subject to. The tree warden's. Jurisdiction in terms of. The public can't remove those trees unless they have. Right off from the tree warden. And. Basically. What the, what the shade tree preservation plan designated trees. Is. Put this back to where we were before we had the changes. In the. State law. And what we're going to be proposing. To the slick board. In February would be to basically. Designate. Any of the six inch. Diameter trees that are within the road right away. As shade trees. So those would be the ones that fall back into the tree warden's jurisdiction. And. Except for buckthorn. And the continuing removal of ash trees. Any of the other trees would need to have. Approval of the. Tree warden to remove them. And then. We're also listing out any trees that we can identify that were planted by the town. Preason cemetery would be included. As shade trees. And the current proposal. And. We. Look forward to doing after the adoption of shade tree in the area. And then we'll move on to the next one. I just want to clear your center. With the. Removal of. Trees selectively in order to improve hedge rows. And. Those areas like that was like a thousand feet. From bliss road. Going down the center road. That would be designated as a zone. So that not only the six inch trees. But other selected smaller trees. Would also be designated. Shade trees and protected. Under the shade tree preservation plan. The trees that we planted. Individually within the center. The ones that fell within the right of way. But also be. Listed as. Shade trees, quote unquote. Even though they're smaller than six inches. So. That's sort of it in a nutshell. We would. So we'd have an appendix. That would be subject to updating periodically. Perhaps. Annually as we do work on hedge rows. Include those as zones. For protection of the smaller trees. And we'd have a separate appendix. To include any of the sections of road. To include any of the sections of the trees. Where we don't see a whole lot of cultural value. Wildlife value. Water quality value. The trees. If they're in that zone. So those would be zones that don't have the same protection. So. That's sort of quick, quick summary. Paul, did you want to ask this? I just wondered what Paul. Want to say. I will respond to questions. But why don't we. Go there if that's where you want to go. Okay. I got one quick question. So. What the, what the designation will do to the shade tree is it protects the tree from the landowner. Cutting the tree down. Even though. Cause I think with a new law. Gives the landowner some rights to those trees. In the town right away. Is that correct? Yeah, I mean, right, right now it's sort of a free fire zone. So the town or the landowners can go out. And remove trees. Without getting permission. From the tree warden. In the town right away. Within the town right away. Correct. And once you give the shade tree designation to a tree that's protected by the tree warden and the blah, blah. Right. So the tree warden would go out, look at the proposal. Yeah. If it made sense to him, then he would permit. Removal of the tree. And then that would be. Potentially subject to appeal, which would go to the select board. But they wouldn't. You know, previously you'd have to have a hearing. Technically, which we've been doing with the ash tree. Removal. You're supposed to have a hearing before you no longer have to have a hearing. Unless there's an appeal. Yeah. Okay. So yeah, well, thank you for clarifying that. I was just curious about that. Because I know once in a while we've had to cut a tree within the town right away. God forbid. But just saying that. On the, in the farm for various reasons, but it looks like at this point we're within our rights to cut those trees, especially if they're dead. I've got two or three dead maples within the town right away. I couldn't ask the town, but it sounds like I'm within my rights to cut those trees also. Right now. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Any more questions for Jeffrey and Paul. Oh, Carl's got one. Yes. So is this a process that we're going through to give the tree warden jurisdiction over certain trees again. Is that the ordinance process? Or is that something different? That would be under. We could adopt the ordinance. But it's not necessary. Once we adopt a shade tree preservation plan. And designate which trees are going to be. Consider shade trees. Then they'll be protected under state law. So. And the process for adopting that plan involves one public hearing. And then what after that? That's it. There's only the requirement for one public hearing. And then the select board takes a vote. The support adopted. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Now the basis for. You know, having. Larger areas, you know, and the road right of ways and stuff like this. And, you know, under the jurisdiction of. You know, the tree warden is. Essentially because. What we're. Hoping to do is in. In the future actually spend. Some time. Promoting the trees. Not, not just. Not taking down trees that are in going to fall on the road or. Or. Something like that, but actually planning. Down stretches of roadside. To see. What trees are there that may be. Worth while. To grow. The larger sizes. And. So that you have. A more controlled. Situation with regard to. Trees. Health and stuff like this in Europe. Ideally you. As time goes on, have. Less problems with trees falling in the road. And a longer. Life for this particular trees that. Are chosen to. To stay in your right of way. And. You know, that would be. For our town anyway, one of the advantages I feel. To having. Jurisdiction over. Over those trees that. And that we had before instead of just whatever trees, the town has planted. Which is pretty few in terms of. All the trees along our roadsides. Okay. Any more questions for. Jeffrey or Paul. What about issues. With the. North street. And. Sparrow farm road. Yeah, I'm reading that right now. Okay. What's the, the issue is some of the trees. I can't read the whole thing, but, um, there's no. Potential options to remediate the potential hazards created by removing the trees. So it's. What would be the. Remediation. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I just thought on that. Taking the trees out there. Well, something similar to that. Yes. The first thing you got to know is that. You know, the road sides vary quite a lot in terms of. How many ash trees there are in any one particular area. And most places in town. There's a. General mix of. Trees. Species. Well. It happens as a. At least one. Very significant place and. Possibly. Another. On those roads. Where. The great majority, if not. Almost all. Are. Ash trees. And in this case. There's a. Right down where. Jacob's road meets Sparrow farm road. Right across the way there. There is. I was set behind a. Almost a solid row of. Ash trees. And that's. There's very few others there. So. We're dealing with it the way we would in other parts of town. Where we might. You know, we would certainly be. Looking for trees. Worth growing. On that site that are already going there. Is sort of. A big problem on this, on this particular property. And safety issue. And when Jeff and I were over there marking. And looking at the tree crowns and the positions related to the. Road and everything we. Realized that there were. Almost a solid wall of ash trees. Between. Where Jacob's road empties right out down onto. On the Sparrow farm road. And what we didn't take into account, we, I sort of noticed some places where trees had been damaged. At the bottom and it looked different to me than what I would normally expect. And. But it didn't. Occurred me right off what was happening until I spoke with a landowner. The landowner said that. You know, you know, You know, You know, You know, I regularly have people come down. Jacob's road and run right across, you know, can't stop or turn. Go right across the road. And they hit them. Those trees. And I said, Oh yeah. Okay. Maybe that's what it is. So. Anyway. It seems to me that we have more than just. A roadside tree. And, you know, it's, it's a, it's a much greater issue. And we thought we'd have you folks know about it. As probably something does need to happen. And. You know, I was actually asked by the landowner, well, If, if you're going to take those trees down. You know, can you leave the stumps eight foot high. So the cars don't come down on. They come on and hit our house. And. And I said, well, I suppose that's a possibility, but. But I, I now understand what. What you see as a, as the major problem there. And we. You know, they're basically the trees that are left in that. The trees that are left over the road. Roll right along the site of sparrow farm road there. Are at that particular property. The ones that are not held over the road. Or lean in the other way over their house. And so, you know, if those trees. They're going to die like most of them are. Then they're going to have a problem with that also. It's not exactly a town issue, but it certainly is for a landowner. They're sort of looking, looking like a double whammy situation. And so whether there's. You know, a guardrail. Put in there. And. Something worked out. So that. When basically all that stuff ends up having to go. You know. Should. Some trees be planted back further from the guardrail. You know, not a lot of them, but, you know, just. So in the future there's, there's something there. It isn't. You know, just a slash job and, and. You know, are we just covering. With a, with a. Guard rail. So. I'm interested in what you folks. Think about it. And, and, you know, when next time you're driving out that way, just take a look. See how many of those trees. Are blue spotted right there. Or lean over the house. Ash trees. You know, with a house. Okay. So. The trees that are in the town right away. We are going to remove. Is that correct? Well, yes, we were planning to do just like, you know, in other places along the road where. They're. Potential to the. The traveling public is. Is great. So. I mean, the other option, I suppose is the. Land owner. Wanted to pay to. Treat all those trees. Which, you know, I think probably isn't realistic in that situation. So there are two landowners involved. Can I just clarify that as Paul. Had noted some of the trees were leaning away from the road. So we marked only the trees that look like. They're a road safety issue. And the ones that were lean, like lean towards the house. We were just suggesting that they get in touch. With a selected contractor. To potentially remove those trees. Those. Sort of make sense to do that. So the sort of mix of. Some were coming out as part of our project. And some were staying, but hopefully. Being removed by the landowner. So there are two landowners involved here. And you've talked about one of them. I'm the other one. For me, the trees. At the bottom of Jacob's road there serve to. Keep people from plunging over a precipice and into my field there. I'd prefer them not to do that, but it's, it's not the same sort of danger is having my house crashed into. But by them as it is for the other landowner. So what, what's been your discussion about that section of the road. This is just, just a little ways back from your property line. Right. So as you come down Jacob's road, you know, you go to the left and it's, it's my property. You go to the right. It's the other landowners. Okay. Well, as you will note. On your property running all the way down from the barn. There are a number of ash trees there some of them pretty good size. That we felt we needed to deal with from a road safety standpoint. There's also ones out the other side. That, you know, are probably going to end up down in your meadow. It's not really our jurisdiction. You know, and we're not in the business of doing everybody's work. That's not pertinent to the right of way. I'm just asking about the trees that are at the bottom of Jacob's road. That are analogous to the ones that you've just been discussing that get crashed into with some regularity by people coming, coming down. Where those not marked. I haven't noticed whether they're marked or not. But this is the exact same issue that you've been talking about with the other landowner. And so I'm wondering how you've been thinking about it. Well, I don't remember how many there are stretch. So it seems to me that it was more spaced out up there. And I'm sure that Jeff and I marked them if we thought they were significant possibility of ending up in the road. But otherwise we didn't. And but I, I don't know in terms of guardrail and stuff like that, whether, you know, that would be up to you folks, obviously, to figure out whether that is something that needs to happen there also. But I don't recall off the top of my head exactly which trees are leaning in the road. But I'd be happy to look at it with you if you want. Yeah. Okay. Well, it sounds to me like you should go ahead and cut the trees are leaning in the road. And then we can see what's there and deal with it from that point on, because I don't really know. I mean, I know generally the area, but I haven't seen it. And no one else has either really this on the select board. So they don't, we don't really know. I guess Judith maybe has, but it's hard to propose a solution when you don't know what the problem is. So I'm getting a general idea that the trees are protecting people from going over the bank. But the number one thing that we're committed to is getting the ashes trees removed that present a danger to falling in the road. So I think we need to move ahead with that. Since I don't know there's any other option for those ash trees. The only other option would be leave the trees there and keep them away from people from going over the bank. But as you've already discussed, when the trees die, they're going to fall in the road. So first let's get the trees removed and then see what the situation looks like and go from there. All right. Well, this was, I was hoping the landowner would get here, but, but that was my fault, I guess. So, you know, to speak from their point of view, but yeah, I think we need to do that, but I just wanted to bring it before you folks so that you realize that we're up against a different situation here than we are in, in a lot of the other places that we've worked. And this would entail something beyond what, what our committee jurisdiction is. So, but that's the reason we're just brought it to you folks at this point, but we'd be happy to, you know, have a field trip when you want to, if you want to come out and look at it and we can go over all the pluses and minuses and probably have the landowner there too, if we're lucky and give us a better idea of, of where we need to, need to go. And things like before we put this out to bed, we would want to have, want to know whether we were going to be putting in some kind of a guardrail there or whether we were leaving tree stumps eight foot tall, which I don't know is that's the best idea, but it's, it certainly held back the traffic for years and years. I think, I think Paul just in my mind at least, I mean, you could leave like maybe as an intermediate step, maybe leave a, you know, a 42 inch stump so that basically there is something there that would continue to function the same purpose that trees are right now, heading some kind of permanent solution. You know, even possibly they could be incorporated into the design of the guardrail if somebody wanted to do something with a, you know, timber guardrail with just planks there between the stumps instead of the normal galvanized guardrail probably a lot cheaper. I think it'd be worth having a discussion out on the site before the arborist started working. Yeah, absolutely. Hey, I have a quick question about if you left the stumps there, wouldn't there still be those bugs in it? Yes, there would. Okay. Only while they're alive. I mean, once the stump dies, they aren't going to be in there. Is the stump going to die? I mean, ash sprout back pretty well, don't they? Yes, but in general, trees put out growing healthiest sprouts when they're young. And as trees get larger, they sprout less and less because their prime purpose in life is to regenerate their species. And so let's say when a tree gets up to a foot or 14 inches in diameter and you cut it off, you will probably get some minor sprouting, but nothing like the practically inch thick sprouts that you sometimes get off from six inch trees when you cut them. That's just a characteristic of where the tree is in its life and how critical it is that it put up new growth to put out seed. What's the timeline for taking those trees out? Well, we're trying to schedule it so that the contractor can be done in there by the end of May, before the adult beetles start flying and potentially spreading insects further afield. So basically we try and not do a whole lot of harvesting between the end of May and, you know, first of, or certainly into September, good ways, close to October 1st. But critically, through June and July and early August, the pupas will be hatching into adults and they'll be out and flying. And, you know, particularly at this point in the infestations where they haven't gotten everywhere yet and we're just trying to slow them down and give us all some room to get this work done. We're, you know, trying to keep the infestation in place as much as possible, not spread all over. So how many trees potentially are going to be cut down and how many trees would you leave the stumps high, like 42 inches, as Jeffrey was sort of suggesting, because I was just thinking you could just leave this, put the proposal out to bid, leave the stumps at 42 inches, if there's 10 trees, leave them at 42 inches. And then if we want to cut them off later, it's not a huge job just to cut them off. I don't know how many trees you're talking about, that's all. Oh, well, we're talking along that stretch probably, what do you say, Jeff, there's probably 25. I mean, the ones that are right in front of the house, maybe 10, 10 trees. Oh no, there's more than that. Yeah, there is. Okay. Yeah, I'm thinking in terms of, I mean, it looked like maybe half of we're leaning away from the road and half towards the road. I'm just relative to the ones that we were cutting. Well, that's an easy question to answer, you know, by looking at that. It's in our inventory. Now, now what you, yeah, sure. Okay. But what you can do, Seth, the insects lay their eggs in the inner bark between the inner bark and the wood. Yep. And that's where most of their life cycle is. Yep. And so you can literally peel the bark off a tree. Right. And have some, you know, say you left the stumps 42 inches and then you peel the bark off. Right. And in sap season, you know, in the spring. Right. And you would essentially have ash post stand in there. Right. Well, that's not a bad solution. Well, in the short term, certainly. Right. And if we don't like it, we just cut them off. That's not hard to do. And I also would buy you some time if you. Right. Wanted to put a guardrail in there. Exactly. So I think, I mean, you want to put this out to bid fairly soon. If you're talking about getting it done before May. We do. Right. So that's my thought is put it out to bid, leaving the stumps at 42 inches where you think it would be protection from people going over the bank. And then if, and then at some date. You know, to be determined later, we could just cut them off. If it, if we so chose. Because that's pretty simple. And that way you can move along with the bidding process. You know, as soon as possible, whatever you want to, without waiting for us to come up with some solution when none of us have really seen it. We don't really know what we're going to do anyway. We can look at Carl's property there too. I think that's a good idea. I think that's a good idea. I think that's a good idea. Yeah. Or it might make sense to the same thing. Okay, Judith. What did you want to say? I wonder if we can have the road foreman or someone who has. Engineering expertise regarding. Stopping distances and whether having. The stumps up at 42 inches is appropriate. Because it's one thing to have a natural barrier. It's one thing to have a natural barrier. It's one thing to have a natural barrier. Or the town to basically be. Replacing that natural barrier with a designed. Wooden barrier. So I, I, I'm just wondering if we want to make sure that. What we're proposing to leave behind. Isn't creating a hazard. Or exacerbating a hazard. So I can fill in on that in a couple of spots. I think we can do that. There will be a safe bet of almost 34 inches at the top of the beam. So 42 would be a safe bet in my opinion. Just in case somebody decided to tip up, they wouldn't have something coming through their window. That would obviously take a quite a strike. But all in all putting guardrails there. I don't see that being feasible at all. behind the post to be legal when you install new rail, even if it's temporary. So by the time we either put them out in the road, the front of the rail would be over two feet from the shoulder of the road right now. All of a sudden, that wouldn't even hardly be one lane down through in front of this house. And you've brought, how may feet from the stump would you be at that point? You would have, their closing distance or the stopping distance would have been shortened by at least three or four feet from the trees. So to me, you're multiplying the problem instead of fixing it more. But if you leave the stomps, you're multiplying the problem, is that what you're saying? No, if you had to put a rail in there, if you actually put in a temporary rail, you're bringing your solid structure that you're hitting closer to the road. Yeah, no, I wasn't, thank you. I wasn't proposing putting a guardrail. I was interested in what, how the natural, excuse me, the modified stump would be after it's cut down, how that would be from a safety perspective. And you kind of answered that in the first part of your response. That, like I say, as far as height-wise, 42 would definitely be safest. In my opinion, it would be the correct height I would be comfortable with. 34 is a regular guardrail and that's new as of two years ago, I think. And that's, to me, you're not changing the hazard necessarily. It's a living tree to be no different. The tree broke off 42 inches up, so. Are you feeling comfortable, Guthrie, with that solution to the perceived problem? I think that's the quickest answer is leave them 42 inches. You didn't change the dimensions anywhere, didn't really change anything at all. Right. So that's just my thought on trying to move forward with the bid is to bid it with those dumps left at that height. Because as I said, if you're actually gonna put rail in, obviously that's a summertime project. It wouldn't be anything you could do pre-May. Right. And you would have to backfill behind them and be packed in. Yeah. It takes up a lot more room than you think it does. Oh, yeah. All right, so. So those stumps would be fine for a period of years, but eventually they are gonna rot. And so you'd probably end up having to do something at some point anyway, right? I would recommend the landowner plant something back that they want in between them. Between the trees that are. If they want maple in there, then plant maple in between the stumps. Right. That's what I was thinking too. Second, try to put a tree back in. You're going to need a backhoe to do that. The town has a backhoe. Yeah. And a backhoe. Yeah. And there's various farmers that have machinery too that the town could hire them. Yeah. Like I say, the dig in the holes isn't the hard part anywhere near for me, but as long as you tell me I can mechanically do it, I'm fine with that. I was just. I was worried about damaging the roots of trees that are cut off at 42 inches up. So. I was just thinking of, you know, maybe those trees ought to be back down over that little bank to start with. That I would put them behind the stumps that are there. Yeah. I'd put them in the back of it right away. Yeah. Yeah. That's what I was suggesting to start with. In which case, you know, you dig up whatever you needed to to put in a guardrail. You know, because most of those trees are ash trees. And so, and other ones you could just cut off down the ground level and, you know, they would be behind and you'd have just your guardrail here and the old trees here and put some new ones down just inside that few feet a little lower down. You know. And then it comes back to how far do we go to rebuilding something on somebody else's property once you get outside of the right way. Well, that's right. You know, that's why I was suggesting that, you know, we meet with landowners and look at what the possibilities are and what the restrictions would be and figure out how to do it. And, you know, I wouldn't even bring it up except that I haven't seen this particular situation. We haven't come across this yet. Yep. Here it is. Oh, I'd like to. Oh, I'm sorry. You want something else to say, Paul? Well, I just, I was just saying, we just felt that we needed to have you folks in on that. Right. Okay, so just because we need to move forward and we're running a little late on this issue, I think that in my opinion, just bid it out with the 42 inch stumps and then we'll come up with a solution later that's long-term. Is that got work for you guys? Yeah. Okay. And then we can revisit it later on, trees get caught, look the situation over, come up with a solution that'll be longer than the stumps. Longer term than stumps. Is there anything else you want to say on these tree issues, Jeffrey and Paul? I think we're done and appreciate your time. Yeah. Well, thank you. Thank you for all your time. All right. Okay. Thank you. All right. So the next item is the addition, which is the Dodge truck and Guthrie's here to talk to us about it. You've got the floor Guthrie. All right. Well, after doing some investigating, doing some shopping around a little bit, pretty much getting told how long it's going to be being one of the main factors to actually get a truck in our possession. John had mentioned mid-state and I was kind of shocked. They actually were the shortest term that I came across. So they're thinking possibly two to three months they could have the truck that I built there. I don't know if you see that or not. You can go on to buildoram.com and then copy the link and the salesman will spec it out just the way it was that you spec it out on the website. So I went through and did the snowplow package and all of the stuff that comes along with that, lower gear ratio and all that for more torque. The 2500 has the same towing capacity as the 3500. It comes down to the single wheel stuff. So the 10,000 pound towing capacity. They seem to have good luck with their 6.4 Hemi engine that they offer in a gas. No major complaints that I've heard from that. So long story short, I suppose the best price they could come up with was the 48,000. Can't remember the last three off top of my head. This is to replace the town pickup. So everyone knows that. Correct. Yep. And that also has a plow on it that we'll have to put on. It's going to be in a range of 10,000 on top of the 48,000. But as we've talked about, he doesn't have to get the snow plow yet because by the time he gets a truck, there won't be any snow on the ground. So we'll have to do that sometime in the summer or fall. We could absorb that. That's not a really bad price, really. For something you expect out of its heavy duty. That's, yeah, so at the end of the build the truck, they say, oh, you can locate these trucks close to you. And so one of the, the one I built, I think it said maybe there were seven or nine trucks near you that were like that. And they were priced significantly higher than the build. A couple of them are all the way up into the 71, 72,000. But those were a little bit higher. There were better truck as far as all the features in the cab, mainly. But even finding one that was pretty much a cut down, stripped down truck, they were still right up there at the 60, 62 mark, which was pretty mind boggling to me to think that it was going to be at least 15,000 over ordering on. So. Yeah, I didn't think it was bad. I mean, all the prices are bad, but that's not as bad as some, like you said, some, as it could be. Right. It sounds to me like the best idea was to order the truck. I agree. Yeah. So any other comments from the other members of the select board or the public that seemed to be here. So do we probably need a motion? Or do we? So the one other thing that I wanted to throw in there, they do need a deposit in order to put your name on it when they order it. So if it does get approved, I think just to be specific, it would have to have that broken half. So it'd be that amount, but in two payments, the only reason the price would change would be if there were incentives the month that it showed up, but they don't know what those incentives are until that month. So they want half down. Nope. They didn't say half that $500 should do it. They did not give me a number on that. So. I don't have to sit down 500. I know I just, I just ordered a truck that was 500 bucks. So it's like, I just bought a vehicle was 500 bucks. Yeah. It wasn't any big deal. Okay. So, um, we can make a motion to. Order the truck. So I don't know if you need the motion. It's usually just to spend it and spend the money. Or do we make a motion to expend the money for the deposit? I would suggest making the motion to agree to utilize the capital reserve fund for the purchase. Still moved. We have a second. Okay. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. And what about the deposit? Do you need a separate motion for that? No, because if we do it by check, we'll have to. Bring it to the warrant. And if we don't do it by check. You've already approved the entire costs. So. Right. Doing 500 by credit card is no biggie. Okay. Sounds good. All right. I think we're done with that item. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Guthrie. So the next item, a little behind. Is the planning commission. Report or whatever it is from Zach. So you're up Zach. This is item C on our agenda. Thank you. Thank you. So we have, we have two big things that we've been working on for the, with the planning commission over the past one for the past year, one for the past several years, really just on one. We are, we're coming to the end of working on our updates to the zoning as well as. An amendment to the town plan to deal with cell towers. My intention here tonight was really to, to spend the time talking about the zoning piece because that was the first thing that we were going to do. We were going to implement the village master plan. We were going to implement the village master plan. We were going to implement the village master plan first. You should have the, I apologize as a background noise for my kids. The. You know, these, the zoning was. It's doing a few, a few different things. The bit, the really big piece of that is to. Implement the village master plan. There was, you know, when we wrote. The last town plan, the last town plan was to implement the village master plan. And then we put it in the way of. Implementing that plan or where it didn't. You know, where the two didn't align. And so for that, we are adding three new. You know, we were proposing to add three new zones to the village. A mixed use area in the. You know, along, along route two, really in this, in the designated village center and then out along. Route 14 South, which is designated as the upper village. In the town plan, these are actually. The area has been. In a way, a lot of places that we've, a lot of places that we've. Envisioned as two sort of separate areas. But they, you know, when we looked at the zoning piece, realized that there really wasn't. There weren't enough differences between them from that, from that point of view to have two different zones. And we decided that it would be. Right. Easier for folks less confusing to have it be want. To have fewer different zones and different sets of uses. And so that is, you know. half an acre. The intent is to concentrate growth within the village. Clearly there still are some issues with water and wastewater in that area, and so we didn't think that realistically we're going to get any smaller than half an acre. I think it's still a half an acre. There's real challenges with water and wastewater, but at least if those problems were to be solved, at least then the zoning would not be standing in the way of development. Around that there are two residential districts. The inner area is also zoned at half an acre, but the uses are really primarily residential. The idea is to try to concentrate commercial use within that mixed-use area, and then beyond that it expands out to to a second residential area that's zoned at one acre, and that area goes out as far as the elementary school, as well as surrounding the real core. A couple other pieces in that where you've reduced the minimum parking requirements to hopefully make things a little centric gave a higher density bonus for plan unit developments, and just cleaned up some issues with plan development to address statutory changes. There's no longer separate plan unit developments and plan residential developments, and the density bonus is hopefully to allow again to encourage growth in that area with the thinking being that with, especially with the wastewater challenges, a plan unit development might be better able to take advantage of a shared septic system than single houses. You also made it easier to build for current mobile home parks in the area, not in the mixed-use area, but outside of it, and made it not a permanent use in the inner district. That's the area that includes sandy pines, and then made it made them conditional uses in a significant number of other parts of town. The thinking there was that mobile homes are one of the few forms of more affordable housing in town, and looking at some of the real challenges we have with affordable housing and with and with the fact that town plans specifically calls for working on affordable housing, which we have not really done, that that that was potentially an area I'll address that. It also reduced the minimum acre from mobile home parks, so that could potentially be a smaller scale thing. In addition, that there are a few other, there are also some areas that are more almost more sort of clean up. There were statutory changes around accessory dwelling units, and so we addressed those. The statute increases the amount of size you have to allow for accessory dwellings, and we actually went a little bit above that. Again, that was also something that we looked at for more affordable housing, because that is one of the areas where we are seeing some growth. We made some changes to the references to required out of ultra practices. No substantive changes there in terms of what we're regulating. It's just a response to the fact that what was actually in statute had changed, so brought the zoning up to to meet that. And then there were also just a number of issues with how zoning was being implemented. We had heard from the DRB that there were lots of issues with setbacks and that they were spending a significant amount of time on setback waivers, to the point that it suggested that the setbacks were really too large, and they were done with a lot of things with side and rear setbacks that were not affecting primary housing, but affecting things like sheds. We did some updates to the waivers. As we were doing the town plan work on cell towers, you realize that what was in the town plan, some of the distances called out of the town plan around scenic views were not the same as the distances in the zoning. So we brought those into alignment. And then we did away with certificates of compliance in most of the town, largely because it was a form of regulation that just wasn't being used, wasn't having any sort of impact, essentially was just creating paperwork from what we were hearing from Bruce. We did leave those in the flood, did leave that requirement for the flood hazard area. The reason for that is that if we start making substantive changes to our flood hazard area zoning, the current approved plan that we have with the state would then have to go back to them and there is some concern about whether that would be approved again if we would be required to make really significant changes. And so we decided to not touch that for the time being. And then there were errors where there were typos, et cetera. And so we fixed a bunch of that sort of stuff. The next step for us, we will be holding a hearing at our second meeting in February. So it's coming up fairly quickly. We've gone back and forth a few times about when we were actually going to try to hold hearings and how we were going to be allowed to hold hearings with COVID. But we will be holding a hearing before Tom meeting. We will then take the feedback we get, potentially make changes, depending on that feedback. And then once we have approved the amendments, that will go to you. And then you would need to hold a hearing and choose whether to adopt, you could adopt just based on a vote of the select board, or you could also put that to a town vote if you so chose. Sorry. I realize I have been talking a lot, so I will open up for questions. Julie Potter, who did the lion's share of the work on this, is also with us. So I should have introduced her at the beginning. I'm sorry for that, Julie. But I am aware that we are running a little over time, so I will open it up to you. No question. Well, that's a lot of work, and I know you've been working on this many years. So thank you for that. I look forward to reviewing it in more detail, seeing what the issues are raised at the hearing. And when's the hearing you said? Oh, your second meeting? Yeah, it'll be February 17th. I should also add in terms of what I forgot. It's been long enough. I forgot this. This is sort of the second pass through this. You may remember we had initially worked on the zoning with a consultant who had proposed some really quite sweeping changes. We had brought that to a number of public forums, got quite a bit of feedback that people were not comfortable with the level of changes. And so really went back to the drawing board and tried to strip this down to focus on the areas that seemed really, really to need the work. And I think particularly the village, the area, the changes for the village were the pieces that I think were at those, at those public forums, were areas that I think people were certainly understood that this makes sense, that it made sense in terms of what the master plan called for. And it was a lot of the changes that were proposed to the rest of town that made people a lot less comfortable. So my hope certainly is that given that first pass and given what we've chosen to focus on here, that it will be understandable to people. So you're going to work in phases then? You're going to work from the village out? Yeah. So I think that with, so I don't know how soon we are going to come back in with more proposed zoning changes. I think this will be the end for a while. There were a number of things in the town plan that required, that really did call for zoning changes and we have hit most of those with this. Julie, I don't know if you have anything to add on that. So I don't think that the, I think we were hitting the things that were in the Village Master Plan, were in the recommendations from the DRB as being things that were problematic with our zoning and were hitting the issues that had changed in statute. But we're not, our intent was to try and stay really focused on those things and not sort of wander off into other areas that weren't immediately called for in the town plan. Okay. Does anybody have any questions? Because we're right about almost ready to move to the next item, I think. I have one little one. So are you going to post something on the website like a map of the changes that you're going to be implementing? Are you thinking about implementing so people can look at it before the meeting? Yes, we absolutely will and actually we're required to. So we'll be posting the full zoning. There is a memo that Julie put together that explains what the changes are so that it's not just so that we're not expecting people to just read through the entire thing and intuit what changed. And that, that does include, yeah, that will include maps. Thanks. And I'm assuming that's a meeting by Zoom. I guess we don't have much choice. Yes. It's, it's very uncertain at this point. I'm, I am not going to try to prognosticate and say that we will be fine to, to be in person. And so we're going to go with a Zoom meeting. Yeah, I get that. And that's the seven o'clock meeting or hearing? Yeah, yes, that will be our, it'll be on our normal seven o'clock meeting. Okay, sounds good. Okay. I think we're good. Unless anyone has any other questions for Zach or Julie. Sounds good to me. And I thank you for your time, Zach, and going over all that. I'm looking forward to hearing myself. We're good. Thank you. Yeah. Okay, so we're done with that. I'd like to move on to D, consideration of 2022 annual certificate of highway mileage. This is generally a rubber stamp issue. Unless I hear otherwise. Am I hearing otherwise or not? I would say it's a rubber stamp issue and I would make a motion that we do what with it, approve it and sign off on it and have the town administrator implement whatever he has to implement in regards to that. So John's making a motion. Do we have a second? Oh, Amy seconded it. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. The ayes appear to have it. They do have it. So, Seth, just a quick one. Amy, you really need to come in and sign both the certificate and the warning signature page. Okay, thank you for the reminder. I will do that. Seth, you'll need to sign the certificate. John and Judith have already signed both. And Carl is here tonight so he can sign them while he's here. Yeah, I'll sign. I'll be home on Wednesday or Thursday whenever it's the coldest. Yeah. Okay, so we're done with that. Item E, finalization of FY 2023 budget. So my print off doesn't have anything highlighted on it. Absolutely. Nothing has changed from when you saw it last. It's just all the highlighting has been taken out. Yeah. Do we have any reservations? No one really had reservations, right, with it? Let's see. I'm just trying to think about the questions we had last time. The trails, okay. So last time you discussed a little bit the Washington County estimate, which is just, it is what it is. The fact that the signpost is coming in higher than in the past while they're trying to build up their reserves a little bit. You made the decision to go with the capital reserve plans, capital planning, budgets plan to have an increase this year in the line item. That was really what you talked about last time the most. Right. Yeah. I guess we're not going to change from that. I mean, I guess the capital reserve, I had a little bit of a question about last time, but you know, I guess you got to move up with the increase in expenses that we're certainly looking at. We've got to keep our contributions in line with that. Anybody else have any questions on all these items? The municipal employee line is just a guess, but I don't think there's any other way we can deal with that. Are you thinking that guess that we're making on that? I don't have the line in front of me. Is that taking into account the maybe five? Is it five full-time? Are we talking four and a half? No. When we did it, we did five base full-time. So 30 hour, 32 hour for the three slots that are not the clerk and the assistant clerk. Yes. And that's the number that came up on that spreadsheet we did a couple months ago. About 30 or 32 hours. For each job and you would shuffle it around based on how it all played out. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I guess that's what we got to do is kind of shoot for the middle. Okay. Anybody have any other questions on these figures? Okay. Don't see it. So do we need to make a motion to finalize that budget, Bruce? Usually do. Yes. Yeah. That's my thought. So we're looking for a motion to finalize FY 2023 budget. So moved. Carl. Now we need a second. Amy. Oh, Amy got her hand up first. So we have a second. Any further discussion? All those in favor? Please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. The ayes appear to have or they do have it. So the budget is done. The next item F, finalization of 2022 town meeting warning. So this is something I just want to say quickly to you is last time we decided that perhaps we weren't going to put the two items on the ballot that were concerning the two positions, two, let's see, it was article 10 talk about so the town in accordance with blah, blah. So we tend to decide not to put those on. And I just had a quick question for the rest of psych board members in my thought process was it was a good opportunity to put these articles in front of the town at large, which means all the voters. So I was just curious to hear the rest of psych board members reasons for not putting these questions in front of the whole town. Because the town meeting you we only had 159 people the last town meeting. And we'd be putting in front of about 2300 voters if we did by Australian ballot. So I'm just curious to know what the other members think about that. This is Judith. We we voted on this last time. And I think the reasoning was that we have volunteers who are able and willing and capable of performing these jobs now. And while we're still fortunate enough as a community to have that, we don't need to go out to seek professional input or a professional resource at this time. So I haven't heard a reason why we need to change what we already have. So I think that we have volunteers and we're fortunate to have volunteers who can do this job. Okay. Thank you, Judith. Thank you. So the question I'm putting in front of you, and I'll just deal with item number the first article, which is about the town auditors, is what's the reason for not putting this in front of all the voters. Judith said we decided that we had volunteers and that was good enough. She was talking about the list of positions. I was actually talking about both. Okay. Thank you. So my position on the auditor thing, and this is what I've been told time and time again by other people in the office and also by other towns around us that the auditor position is obsolete. In a matter of housekeeping, they voted not to have the position anymore. So because we hire the audit done, what's the reason for keeping the auditors and why can't we put this question in front of all the voters in town to say just a few that go to town meeting, which is 160, 159 versus 2300. So I'm willing to listen and it's not, I want everyone to know that this is kind of, I'm just playing a devil's advocate on this. So what do you think, Amy, or John, say John, because you've spoken on this issue before. Well, you know what, frankly, to tell you the truth, I think the auditor's position isn't necessary. Most of the towns around us, including the town where I worked for eight years, eliminated the position because we pay $18,000 a year for auditing company to come in and audit. And if we hire a treasurer, I would hope this time when we hire a treasurer, we'll hire one of them in accounting background. And if we have fraud protection measures in place and you're using the NEMRIC system, which is an accounting system and accounting software that doesn't allow you to put inappropriate things in there for any long period of time because it comes back and you've got to do journal entries to make it right. And the auditors are spot the journal entries and they're going to ask why these are in there and they're going to make you crack things you're doing wrong. I don't think you need an auditor. Personally, I think as a waste of money and the auditors that are there now, essentially all we're doing is giving them making giving them work to do that doesn't really necessarily fall into place in regard to statute for what they're supposed to be doing. Okay, so the only reason we're voting on this I think is because we have people who potentially might be in those positions and we don't want to hurt anybody's feelings or cause anybody a problem. But I do feel very strongly and everybody can shake their heads and look at me, but that's my opinion. Okay, so John, are you comfortable putting this in front of the whole town? I would on Australian ballot, especially on this one. I definitely prefer to do that. Okay. Okay. Okay. Thank you, John. So Carl, your hands up. Yeah, I agree with Judith. It's not broken. We don't need to fix it. As for what John is saying, yes, we have professional auditors that we hire to do and we have townspeople who are fulfilling the statutory role of preparing an annual report. That's that's what the auditors are to do. And, you know, they're doing a great job at that and have for many years and let's keep those positions and have them keep doing that. It's just one person that does the town report and you could hire them to do it. Excuse me. You asked for my reasons. No, no, thank you. By statute that they're supposed to put together an annual report. They're doing that. The system works and it's not broken. So we aren't even to the point of getting to the question of should we discuss this at town meeting or by Australian ballot? We've got a system that works. We shouldn't be discussing it at all. Okay. So I've heard from Judith. Amy, I haven't heard from, no, I see your hand up, but I wanted to hear from the Slack board members first. That's fine. Yeah. So Amy, I think the only one I haven't heard from. I think that I'm kind of coming around to where you are, Sather, where you're speaking and where John's speaking from. I think that it's important to have sort of a fungibility in town governments and it sounds like that's sort of where it's headed right now. And you're right. I mean, the voting takes place on an Australian ballot. It could if we put it on in the morning. But that's where you're going to get most of the weighing in of people. That's where I'm coming from. Okay. So we have three Slack board members sort of in favor of this. We've got Ed's hand up. What did you want to say, Ed? Okay. So Ed, what did you want to say? So I was a U32 auditor. And one of the first, I went in there after the first couple of, first year, I lobbied for them to get rid of the auditor function because it was not doing anything. It was an old thing that was set up on the original U32 was set up. And eventually they did get rid of it. So I'm not against being practical. But I'm also one of the town auditors. And you're not going to hurt my feelings by eliminating the position. But the reality is what Carl is saying is that has some truth to it, which is if it isn't broken, don't fix it. You know, they do, we are putting it together. It's not just Deb that does it. I'm working on this report now and proofing everything. Deb does a heck of a good job on this. It really dots the eyes and courses to tease and follows the state statutory guidelines for the position. The bigger problem that you have with those set is that you part of your internal control that you have now is linked to the auditor function. It was sent out in the thing. And we attest to the fact that the that the reconciliations are reviewed by the auditors, which I've been doing. And there's an attestation to that effect that goes to the auditor. I don't know who signs it for somebody is saying that the auditors are doing this. And it's a weakness. It's a material weakness that they point out in your system. So I'm all for fixing it and talking about it. But when we when we did this with other functions set, I think we did more due diligence than just coming up and throwing it on a ballot in the middle of a pandemic. You know, I was also on the charter committee, which, you know, moved to redo quite a bit of this stuff. So I'm all for updating systems. You know, you look at the state auditor, we should not be electing it as the state auditor. And in a way, you know, you're electing town auditors that were not really auditors. I mean, I've been for 35 years, but you know, generally, they're not we're having an outside audit. But there is a function that's being done. And then part of the function is being done by the audit is is part of the internal control that you have in your system. Now, so I don't think it's a simple thing to get. Okay, so you're saying that you're serving a function in that you're doing the internal controls. I'm doing a part of the internal controls. And I'm not saying that there's not a way to do, you know, that the future is not going to head to that. Like I said, with the U 32, when I was, I didn't run for that, I got appointed to the order over there, because no one ran. Yeah, ongoing problem in the thing. And I went in and said, get rid of it, and they eventually got rid of it. Right. That was a useless position. This position, and I've done it for a few years, actually, I think is beneficial to the town. And, you know, yeah, so I'm hesitant. And I also think from my experience dealing with other aspects of the town, I think we did more due diligence when we were revamping the treasure and all those positions. And so I think maybe we should do a little bit more due diligence. Let's look at the pros and cons and have a committee look at it. And I hate, you know, recommending that, you know, I hate recommending bureaucracy. But in this case, I think, but I do like to do due diligence. I think you want to do due diligence. I got you some considerations out there that you're going to have issues with. Yeah, you know, well, I was looking at the point. You're not going to hurt my feelings. No, no, I'm, I'm, I don't know, I know we're not going to hurt your feelings. I mean, you've made that pretty clear. I was looking at as a good chance to get it out in front of everybody. But I do understand what you're saying about, you know, doing more due diligence as far as exploring the role that the town artists play. I was looking at it as it's a time to do some good housekeeping as far as clearing up some positions in the town that seemed to be, they were becoming obsolete. And I still think that way. But it probably would be wiser to not put these articles on the warning without more diligence. I mean, I'm accepting what Ed is saying as wisdom. And I sense this resistance from part of the slack board. So I'm not, you know, I hate to put something out there before everyone's ready for it. So I think that I'm going to have to move on and drop the thought of putting the articles on there unless the other slack board members want to put those on there. But I already know Carl and Judith don't want to. Amy is thinking about it as I am. And so is John. But what do you, what do you think, John? I didn't stay up already. Was that? Well, you say already. But I'm just taking what Ed took into consideration since he's kind of in the middle of it. I'm a little hesitant to push forward with the article when we've got an auditor who's expressed, you know, support, but also some reservations. Can I speak? Can you tell that I'm here? This is Deb. Can you hear me? Yeah. Oh, hi. Hi. Yeah, hi. I'm using my phone and I haven't done it before on my phone. I don't know how it works. It's probably a longer conversation. But the short thing I'd like to say is that I think we're doing more than you recognize it. I mean, I've heard you say that town auditors are redundant with the external auditors. But you can, you know, Ed can tell you how much time he and I have spent trying to make the cemetery page lay down the way it's supposed to. We don't just take stuff from the external audit and slap it down on the page in the town audit because that stuff is expressed in a way more esoteric way in the TPA's version of things. And we're trying to make it user friendly so the people in town can see all of the cemetery categories and what it was spent on on one page, the cemetery page, not broken up by different funds and, you know, the perpetual care fund gets on page 12 and, you know, the other part of the fund gets someplace else. And we do pages that don't exist anywhere in the external audit, like breaking down the payroll, which is something that we promise to do when the select board consolidated all of the town office staff into one line. And there were people that objected at town meeting and I stood up and said, well, don't worry, we'll still do page, you know, 30 or whatever page it's on, the breakdown of the town salaries for the year. And this, I don't know, just today I asked Bruce to send the trial balance for FY22 because Ed and I were trying to find a number we couldn't find. We realized it was part of the general journal entry that was made after June 30th that was going to show up more clearly for us to see what would actually happen if we had the trial balance in front of us. I mean, we are actually looking at numbers, trying to reconcile things. If we don't tie out to the external audit, we try to get to the bottom of it and figure out why not. And so we don't, there's two pages in the entire 128 page town report that we actually pick up from the external audit and that's the balance sheet and the capital depreciation because God help us if we had to do that ourselves. But the rest of it, we are going at it the way we always have basically arriving at the numbers ourselves and making sure that it's, you know, logical, clear and user friendly, sort of, you know, if you can balance your own checkbook, you can read the town report. I don't know if everybody can read the audit, the external audit, I mean. So I think you're underestimating what we do. We're not just, I mean, we're not just taking those eight and a half by 11 pages and squeezing them down into a six by nine book, which would be unreadable, which some towns do be. And I think that's too bad for the people that are trying to make some sense out of it. Okay. Well, you know, I'm not feeling warm and fuzzy about putting these articles on the warning, though I think they should be. But on the other hand, I can't fuck everybody and put them on there. You know, that's not my role, really. My role is trying to flesh out what the desire is of the town or the interested parties in this question and recommend that we put them on the warning. And I'm not feeling that confident that I should recommend it. And I don't have that much support for this life, but though I have some. So I guess at this point, we'll have to pass. And I mean, the nice thing about this year's town meeting is it's unfairly invalid. So we could put the question to the general public, which is where I think it should be. But that's an opportunity that we have right now, that's not going to be in the future, because statutorily, you have to vote in a town meeting. And unfortunately, very few people go to town meeting, which was kind of my point in the beginning, is I wanted to put it out to all the voters, not to just a select few. Anyway, I see Rachel, you got your hand up. Yeah, I just wanted to echo what Ed said about just waiting and looking at it a little bit more. You could put it on the ballot, this town meeting, but I wouldn't know how to vote on it. And so I think there's a lot of value in waiting a year and doing a committee or however, and then it gets talked about on front porch, and you get minutes of all of that. So yeah, I mean, I get that. I just was, as I said before, it was just an opportunity for all the town's people to weigh on it. But like you said, most town people, I can know how to vote. So until we flesh it out a little bit more, I guess we'll just pass. Yes, Ed? Again, I was on the charter committee, but this is not my area. But Bruce may be able to answer this. Why wouldn't this be a charter type change? Wouldn't that go to Australian ballot in the subsequent year? I thought we put, I thought we put everything on the Australian ballot when we changed the charter. You want me to talk to you, Seth? I don't care. No, go ahead, Bruce. Go for it. So the way the charter members, the committee came back to us was that if it was something that could be done at the town level without involving the charter change and hence the legislature, it should be done at the town level. This particular change, the change for a list or the change for the constable, those are things that can be done at the town level alone. You don't have to involve a charter, don't have to involve the legislature. So that was how the charter committee came back to us on these exact questions. You didn't take it up because it was something the town could do itself. Okay. I remember though we did discuss this at the charter committee. We decided we changed enough at one shot. But wouldn't this go on Australian ballot or wouldn't that be an option to put it on Australian ballot? No, not unless you change the way we handle public questions. It is designed to go, the auditors in Lister question are designed to go to a floor vote by paper ballot. So it's one of those convoluted votes. Yeah. And that's what I was looking to avoid and to gain the general vote where all the townspeople had a chance to weigh in on it. And that's where I'm coming from. And that's, you know, it's unfortunate that we don't have that option. Yes, Renee? Yeah, I just wanted to bring back a couple of things that came up in the earlier discussion that haven't come up today, which is the difference between, I mean, I think Ed and Deb both pointed out in a little bit of detail the distinction between an internal audit and an external audit. And I'm really glad to hear that the select board is going to discuss it further so it becomes more clear. But the other distinction is that right now, auditors are elected by the townspeople to do the job for their town. And as residents in the town, they're answerable to their neighbors who also live in the town. And I think both that and being elected is really an important distinction between, and now I could be talking about either the auditors internal and external or the listers internal or contracting out to a private company. And I think the same thing applies in both cases. And I think what Rachel had said about, you know, like if you put it on the ballot, people wouldn't know how to vote. And it's very rare that people get to a ballot something on the Australian ballot and say, Oh, I don't know the answer to this. So I'm just not going to vote. They're going to do what they think is popular without really understanding it. And I can tell you for one, I can definitely balance my checkbook. I can definitely read large budgets. But what Deb said really hits the nail on the head. I need the interpretation that our auditors do and the way they organize all of the business of the town. I can understand the town report. I don't think I could accurately read and analyze an external audit. And I think that's a very important distinction. And I think after at least two discussions that the select board has now had, that's becoming more clear. We've teased out a few of the distinctions. And I think all of the members of the town, whether they show up at town meeting or they talk with their neighbors or do it on front porch forum or sit in on zoom committee meetings, I think everyone deserves to understand better rather than just haphazardly wanting everybody to say yes or no without understanding. So thank you for giving me space and and giving it due consideration. So actually, Renee, thank you because it actually jogged my memory along a little bit. So it doesn't look like we have any clear consensus on the auditing position. But actually, I'm going to talk about the list of position because this is important. So I spent some time talking to various people in town about the list of position before I came down here to Florida. And it was pretty interesting to hear their comments. Everybody to a T to the last person asked about the role of the listeners. And the difference between having professional people come in or having townspeople do the valuations of the property and to a man, they to a woman or a man, everyone wanted to move to having professionals come in and do the valuations in. And I was surprised, but I wasn't really because as you said, Renee, and also Ross, it takes years and years to learn how to evaluate properties. And so when Ross said it takes five years, and then you said after three years, you had sort of learned it but not all of it. Then I realized that this is really, really important that we move to something different. It's a progressive move to move to having professional people evaluate properties in the town. Now, I don't know if the town is ready to do that, but I did realize how progressive that is. And I'm not talking about the auditor position because I think there's a lot of confusion about that. The list of position actually is a lot clearer, much clearer. When you have neighbors assessing neighbors properties at this point in time, it's a progressive move to move away from that. And I know that's the fact. I'm going to disagree with you that it's a fact. And as I said in the past, I actually was a Lister for four years. And some other people, I see we have at least one Lister on, so maybe they can speak to it. I don't know if Ross is in the office or not. As the head Lister, he could certainly speak to it. And perhaps Deb Villian can also speak to this, but from my own experience, I think you're mischaracterizing what I said. You have in three Listers, you have some depths of experience. Ross has been a Lister for almost 20 years, and he certainly knows the job. I was only there for four years. And within the first year, as I characterized it, I think at the January 10th meeting, I came in with enough skills from every other areas in my life to be very helpful and very functional. And even though I was learning certain details about the job, there's a lot of training that happens at the state level, both from PVR and also from the software company from NEMRIC. So I hear, Seth, that you want to privatize these positions in our town that have always been elected positions. And that's what I'm bristling about, because when Vermont statutes were put together and defined these different positions as being elected from the town, that's a component of local democratic governance. And when you shift to hire a contracted private company, you get a different product. And again, you could have a committee, other people might want to speak to it. But I have very strong feelings about wanting to retain as much of our democratic governance process at the local level as we can retain. And I have told you anecdotally something which has affected you as a property owner and affected Carl as a property owner, that as a lister in the town, not having been trained as a lister, but having been on non-profit NGOs, they would be called internationally about land conservation, particularly around agriculture. I had skills and knowledge about the sales or retention of development rights, conservation easements. And the contracted appraiser, reappraiser who did the statewide reappraisal, which is why I was appointed to help with that process, they knew a lot about appraising property values over the state, but they didn't necessarily understand the property values of our distinctive town. And he definitely did not understand how to accurately value agricultural and conservation lands when the property owner had sold the development rights. And had I not been a lister at the time, every single property owner in the town of East Montpelier, I seem to recall there were 24 or 25 heavily conserved properties, you would have been in grieving your values, because they would not have been accurately valued taking into an account that you had sold your development rights. And another little detail, there was another property in town, not owned by either of you two, but owned by another important agricultural business. And they had a third conservation overlay on top of their agriculture, and I forget what the third thing was. So it made it even that more level, I think in addition to having sold the development rights, they could only sell their property to another farmer, which I don't think is true for either your property or Carl's. So it is complicated, it is sophisticated. And that and that's part of why you have three people in there who can work together. And it's why you want to have depth in town to train the residents in town to be ready to take civic responsibility and personal leadership, so that we can retain democratic governance in the town. So thanks for listening, thanks for raising the discussion. And I would really invite, if there's another lister or debfilian, if you have anything you want to add, I have my particular perspective, and they have additional things to add, if you feel like you need to better understand how the process of listing takes place based on the traditional model as it's defined in statute. Thank you, Renee. Carl? Yes, Seth, I think this is where Ed's comments about the auditors and due diligence also come into play. If anyone read the minutes from last meeting or was present at last meeting, watched the video, they would have come away with the impression that it was off the table to bring these questions before the town this year. And I think we've heard some important issues that people have raised about it. I don't feel prepared to have a comprehensive discussion within the select board and the people who are assembled here tonight about the merits of this issue. I think if we want as a town to move forward in that direction, we could get a committee together. We could get the charter committee backed together, even if it's not something that we want to present as a charter change. The charter committee is a living committee. It still exists. And we could ask for their advice on this change in town government. And they would have the time to explore the questions in depth. But we could just give it a look and a promise tonight. Anybody else have anything to say? I have a quick comment. You have room for it? Yeah. It's Deb speaking. It's been a while since I used the CAMA program. That's the computer assisted mass appraisal program that was put in place during the last town-wide reappraisal. But I think some people may think that the Listers are operating the way that Rosie used to where they take a pencil and they write on a minile folder kind of card. And it's all kind of off the top of his head. But everything's computerized now. So if you key in that somebody's got a metal roof instead of an asphalt shingle roof, a lot of the wishy washy judgment aspect of some guy standing around with a pencil and scratching his head is gone. There's a certain kind of accepted value for the community that we're in that it will apply to the value of the house. And so there's a certain amount of the stuff that because of the database that's been built up and because it's this widely used software program, there's some of that guesswork has been taken out, I think. And so it's probably less guesswork and I'm sure there's still plenty of judgment involved and I don't underestimate that, but an experience is important. But maybe people need to understand a little bit more about what the process is before they can judge whether or not it's being done well right now. All right. Well, I think that the issue is, yeah, we're not going to solve it tonight. I won't push to try to get the articles on there. I don't have enough support. You know, as Carl said, we can work on it one way or another. And I'm, you know, to me, it looks like it would be a progressive move, but I'm just one person. And I think we need to move off this issue and approve the rest of the warning. So are there any other controversial articles on a warning? I don't think there are. Those are the only two articles that we already took them off. I don't have the warning in front of me, but just going by memory. Is there anything else we need to talk about on this? So there are two things that Deb brought up that were practical proposals, nothing to do with any substantive issue, but just they are part of the warning. You'd need to recognize that they're in play at the moment. Article 15, the funding request article, Deb flagged the fact that we still have in that or what other amounts as a tagline to that particular article, shall the town raise the amounts listed below is recommended by the town's funding request committee. She's absolutely right that there is no or what other amounts when you're voting by Australian ballots. So there's absolutely no reason to have that clause in there. That's right. And then the other thing she suggested, it has even less substantive aspect is just to on the agenda that we put out that's also a part of the warning for the town forum to call the thing throughout the document, the public hearing and informational meeting and not shorthand it. Okay. So it's just two changes from the last time you saw it, but they're they're both practical, not substantive. Right. Yeah. Okay. So I think we're ready to finalize that town report. Is that what I'm getting? And we need to do it now. That was the town warning that he was talking about. Town warning. Yeah. So town meeting warning. Do we need a motion or? Yes, I think we do. Yeah. I would move that we approve the town warning with the two changes. Bruce just reviewed that Deb outlined. It needs to say the town meeting warning, I believe. Is that correct? So the warning will say it right. Don't worry about it. Yeah, right. Okay. Do we have a motion? Do as made the motion? We have a second. Amy seconded. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. The ayes have it. So before you run off this item, Rosie had done some work on how this is all going to play and I wrote up a little bit of it in the memo and she might like to brief you on it. The one issue that you could make a decision on is including postage or not including postage on the return envelope for the basically for sending it out to everybody. That'd be over 2000 envelopes. We got reimbursed for that last year. We would not this year, at least not completely. We could get some of it back from the school district. So that topic is up for your decision and I'll let Rosie take it from here. Thank you, Bruce. I only brought it up because it happened last year and since we're doing Australian ballot again this year, I wanted to address it. Frankly, it's not my recommendation. I think that people are well used to using absentee ballots, putting a stamp on their ballot and getting it getting it to the post office or dropping it off at the office or the drop box. That'd be better, right? So you're saying don't put the postage on? Right. I'll also say that of all the communities that are using the same printer we are, of which there are over 40, there's only one other town who is providing postage and don't forget it's not just postage one way, it's postage both ways. Right. Because we're paying the postures, of course, to get it there. Right. Judith? Yeah. How much does it weigh and is it one postage stamp or would it be two? We have determined that it will stay under the one ounce. Okay. And could we highlight maybe in the informational meeting or elsewhere that folks have to put the stamp on because last year we didn't put the stamp on. So people might think that I don't need to do it, you know, some way. I'm sorry. It's actually pretty obvious there's a place stamp here. Yes. Right on the envelope. I'd be happy to remind people I have put that information or I can put that information both in the town report. I can put it in the signpost. I can put it on a front porch forum. My only concern, you know, signpost in the town reports, they don't get to people before people start mailing them back. But the information would be there. Yeah. I think it's fine to leave off the postures because the thing is you're going to mail out 2,300 of them. And if you get 1,000 back, that's a lot of stamps you're throwing away. Yeah. Yeah. That happened last year. The state ate a lot of postage because people dropped them off. Right. A lot of people just dropped them off anyway. Right. Yeah. I'd say we don't put the postures on. Just it's enough postures just to send it to them, which I completely support. And that's the expense that we need to absorb because I think that's important that people get the ballots, you know, mail the ballots to them. That's great. But beyond that, I think they should be responsible for mailing back in or bring them to the drop-off box. So that sounds, I don't know what everyone else thinks. What do we, as a select board, our position should be leave off the stamps or not? Leave off the stamps. I think you should get your own stamps. Yes. Like what you said. There we go. Okay. Because people have the option of dropping them off. It's not a full tax. So I'm in favor of it. You could also bring it to the polls if you want to. You could. You got three different ways to get it to us. I think we're doing a due diligence just by mailing it to them. Okay. So that answers that question. Anything else before we move to the next item? Okay. Let's move on to finalization of select board report for 2021 town reports. Let me see if I can get that because I haven't read it yet. Fascinating reading. That's quite cool of what we didn't find. Do you want us to provide comments or, you know, typo type things or how should we go about that? I just had a smaller, the small items. Basically, we just read through it and then as we go through it just as we do the minutes, people make suggestions and we decide whether we should change that particular sentence or punctuation or whatever. So just start off with the beginning. Is Judith offering to go through it and make a bunch of changes? Well, we're all going through it as a select board. Oh, together. Together. Okay. I like that. I like that. So what's the first editorial change someone wants to make starting at the beginning? It's very small, but the ellipses, it's space dot, space dot, space dot. You need a space between the dots. It's very small. Where is that? And the first sentence? Oh, the first sentence? Yeah. This editor disagrees and so does Microsoft Word when you, I believe, when you type three spaces, they get a little bit collapsed. I mean, three dots, they get a little bit collapsed. Whatever you can do. I'm not going to fall on my sword. Whatever. And if no one has anything in the next sentence, I'm just wondering, I appreciate the sentiment, but I'm wondering if we want to be as kind of candid or I don't know that I'm not sure if I feel comfortable saying political compromise, balance, sanity remains elusive. Doesn't it? Between us, I don't know if I feel comfortable putting that in the town report. I appreciate the comment, but I'm just wondering if, whether we should put that there. They don't mind it. What's everyone else think? I'm fine taking it out. I'm fine leaving it in. I'm fine either way. I understand the point you're making, Judith, absolutely. It didn't occur to me when I saw that, but I get it. I'm okay either way. John, what are you thinking? I don't think it looks that professional when we stick something like that in there. I mean, we all know that everybody has their own opinion, and we all know we come from different backgrounds and everything, and we're probably not going to agree on everything, but it doesn't bother me being in here, but I don't think it's necessary. I think it's more a national concern than it is an East Montpelier concern. Okay. I will only defend it for one second, and as I've always told you, I don't care what you end up choosing to do. The whole point of that sentence was to point out the errors in last year's first paragraph, and that was part of that paragraph. Maybe just make progress on a variety of pressing social challenges, and we continue to deal with a pandemic that has more lives than Garfields. Kind of just getting rid of that whole clause and keeping your humor with the rest of it is fine. Okay. So we're taking out the political to elusive and the comma and leaving the rest, correct? They might take out political all the way to less we forget, right? Oh, we're getting rid of weird, it's ugly head also. I believe that's what they want to do. Yeah, they don't want to talk about inflation. I think that's where I get out of it. No, we can talk. Well, yeah. You do talk a little bit about inflation though later on. I mean indirectly. I know that space is precious in the town report, and I would rather strike the reference to inflation and leave us room to spell out central Vermont home health and hospice. Okay. So they want to put in variety of pressing social challenges. I guess unless we forget we're still dealing or you want to say we're and we're still dealing with a pandemic. And yeah, and yeah, so leave it unless we forget. Okay. Well, heck, then you take all the fun humor out of it. That's what I thought. Okay. So so are we okay with the rest of it? Or you want to spell out C V H central Vermont home and health and hospice? That's what you want to do? I'd like to spell it out. Yeah. Okay. Okay. It's not completely obvious what it means. I don't want to speak in jargon to townspeople. All right. The next, yeah, the next sentence. I think it is, although the use of the funds is restricted to, I would add a set of US Treasury approved categories. Do we need Yeah, it looks like a typo. Yeah, just a left off something. Yeah. Yeah, to a, yeah. And then opportunity to accomplish a wish list of public good projects. Did you get? Yeah. Okay. No, is that sound right to accomplish a wish list? Wish? Yeah. Okay. No, you're right. It isn't the AI didn't need to be there. If you put it in, you got to put in of to accomplish wish list public good. That doesn't sound right. That doesn't make any sense. It doesn't make any sense. You need both the a and the of. Yeah, the wish list became an adjective in that method. But yeah. Oh, okay. So if you're going to put it in after wish list, you put it in the nose. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Um, should the board, the be be capitalized? Or the spell it out the select board? I'll let Carl handle that one because he goes the opposite direction I do on this topic. Where are we looking at? He's looking at the last sentence. The board is committed to extensive engagement with the public to ensure the town. It shouldn't be capitalized. It should not be capitalized. No, right. That was very strong. It was very strong. Okay. I think it should be capitalized because it's otherwise it's not clear what board it is that we're talking about. But I'm not going to follow my sword for this one. Okay. So next paragraph. I just wonder if we need heavy duty action in the after two years of is it can we just say after two years of successfully navigating the myriad school district boats, blah, blah, blah. Um, I think I, I think I get the heavy duty just to stress how either Byzantine or complicated that might be. I could go one way or another. That's I think it's a good idea to dig it out. And two years of action, you want to say two years of successfully navigating. Oh, okay. Is the Resilient Roads Committee doing its own report in the town plan? I mean, in the town report, rather? So we had that same discussion last year, Carl. And yes, they are. In fact, Deb's got a lot going on for the Resilient Roads Committee this year. Okay. When we talked about it last year, we wanted to emphasize it in the Select Board report too, because it's an example of a committee that's doing such a great job. And they need a pat on the back. Or we need to ref, bask in their reflective glory. That too. Whichever way you want to take it. Okay, I vaguely remember that discussion now that you mentioned it. Okay. So we go with that paragraph? Sure. Okay. Okay. I have been holding myself back from suggesting a bunch of commas that I think need to be put in here, but I'm not going to do it anymore on this one. The second page, the third line, 2022 should have a comma after it. Is that after is now the big project for 2022? Correct. Okay. Because I'm now looking at a document that's been altered. So when you say third sentence, I'm not seeing the third sentence or third line. And I think also I need to speak up for southern to middle section of County Road Comma. Okay. So everyone's good with that paragraph and Doug Newton paragraph. Okay. Yep. I really hope you guys understand how huge a loss that is to both us and to so many of the other rural towns around here. He was one in a million. Here's a dumb thing about that. It could just be me. I mean, I know that Doug died, but is that a parent in this paragraph? It kind of looks like maybe he quit. But I, you know, I think people could probably deduce that. It's just me. Yeah. I think if you didn't know, you wouldn't know by that paragraph. Yeah. So maybe recast it to say in early 20, 22, Doug Newton passed away. He was a retired agency. Okay. We could do that. Not only can you do it, it's done. Well, that's a good explanation on the budget, I think. I think so too. Yeah. I like it quite well actually. Pretty clear. Just, I'm sorry. I have a comma issue. Apologies. In the discussion of Doug, Doug had an unparalleled ability to work effectively with the trans other regulatory agencies, local boards, contractors. I think we need a comma before and towns people. I am with you in supporting the Oxford comma in general. However, it's all, it's disputed and consistency is better than one way or another. And our drafter has chosen not to use the Oxford comma. So rather than asking him to change it throughout, I'd rather just leave it consistent in the way it is. Does that mean you don't want to add the comma? I do not want to add the comma there because it would be inconsistent with the style and the rest of the document. But if by rest of the document, you mean the entire town report. I have a tendency to put in the serial comma and I'm talking about the rest of the select board report. Okay. And once we hand it over to you, Deb, we know that it's in your hands. That's what I was going to say once it goes to Deb. I won't put the commas in if you don't want them. For the last paragraph, that's an excellent discussion of the many contributions, the multitudinous contributions that Don Welch has made to the town. And since it's queued up by talking about the significant changing of the guard at the town office, the other one that we're confident of is Denise leaving. And she has been with us for quite some time. So I'd like to mention her as well. Has she announced? Well, she's told me. Yeah, she's kind of announced. She has a target. She is a little bit wishy-washy on it. It's obviously up to you guys. I didn't know Rosie was going to say something in her report. Now, if there's doubt about it, then we shouldn't force her hand. But, you know, when I talked to her, it sounded like she had this very specific date in mind. She does. She's got a date and August said she's targeting. You're absolutely right. Yeah, it's almost like next year. And since we're talking about the town office and thanking Don, I think we should thank her as well. We should say she's thinking of retiring. I'm not sure how you'd word it. No, she's planning to retire. Okay, so that's set in stone then. The reason I put it in with Don, because I thought the same thing, Carl, is that Don has, Denise has only ever been an employee. And we tend to thank people who give outside of that. And Don has done so much. And the treasurer part was just a crowning of the, or I'm going to screw up the metaphor. So we'll let that one go. There was just, I don't want to minimize Denise's work, but she is just an employee. Don has never been just an employee. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. Maybe we should say something. I don't know. Okay, so let me argue against myself then just to see how it sounds. And then if we do put in Denise in there, we wouldn't be mentioning as much about her as about Don. And it would seem like insulting her with faint praise, perhaps. Yeah, but I don't know, but maybe a one liner or Did. Yes, Rosie. Rosie has her hand up, I think. Yeah. Or you're just waving goodbye. Not quite, but it's soon enough. I'm not comfortable putting anything about Denise's retirement in my own report, because I've changed all the time. She may retire earlier. She may retire later. I don't want to push her. That's good advice. Okay. I think that's good advice. Now, I want to go back to the next to last paragraph. No one mentioned it. Does anybody have any comments about the East Montpere fire department? I actually like this paragraph a lot. I think Bruce has gone out of his way to make it favorable and favorable to East Montpere fire department, which I'm in support of. Does anybody have any comments on that paragraph? That was my impression as well, Seth. Yeah. Okay, so that's good, because I like it. And it's gonna say that. Great. So on the question, Denise, I think we should probably take a pass on Rosie's advice. I don't want to neglect or slight Denise, but maybe we're just doing what we need to do as far as not getting into that subject at the moment. Somebody raised, did you raise your hand? I did, but not on this subject. I agree with you, Seth. Okay. So does anybody have any more comments on the nicely written strike board report that Bruce put in? Put out? Yes, Judith? The next paragraph. It's on Don. It says we'll leave with a legacy. I think you'll leave a legacy, not with the legacy. Oh, no, you can leave with a legacy. He can leave a legacy. He will leave with a legacy. I'll leave a legacy. Can you leave out the with, you're saying? Yep. Yep. And the other thing is vice chairperson, you need an N at the end of it. It's the last word in the paragraph. Oh, where's that? Vice chairperson after Carl's name? It has an N at the end. Mine doesn't have an N. You got the version without the N. You got the version without the N. I don't have an N. Okay. I don't know where the legacy or leave. I'm not sure how to go. He's not taking the exceptional service to community with him. He's leaving it with us. So he will leave a legacy of exceptional service to the community. And hard shoes to fill. Big shoes to fill. Okay. You don't have to put the shoes to fill in there. Because when you finish off the sentence, he's leaving with a legacy and we should aspire. But I guess if he's leaving a legacy there, we should aspire to it too. So either way will work. But we can take it out. I like leaving it in because he is leaving us our town service with his own legacy. He's taking his legacy with him and we should all aspire to have a similar legacy when we leave town service. Right. Yeah. I like with it. I like it too. Okay. We're going to leave. Anybody else have any more comments? Okay. Okay. We're good. Do we need a motion on that? I don't think we do, do we? Nope. Sounds good to me. Thank you for writing that once again. Thank you, Bruce. You always do. You did a fantastic job. I saw it. I thought Seth wrote that. You did a fantastic job for me. Okay. So the next one is discussion on town management in light of COVID-19. Anybody have any comments? I mean, the perception is we're doing something. I think we need to continue that perception. It's probably not effective, but whatever. I disagree. I think it is effective. Okay. Show me the statistics and go in the stores and tell me what you think. So has everybody seen that email from Guy Page? Yeah. I didn't see that actually. I saw it, but I didn't read it. What did it say? Basically, they would like to add a houses of worship or exempt clause. I'm opposed to that because he doesn't give any good reasons for it in my opinion. He says, yeah, we're trying to do a good job and nobody comes here anyway. But yeah, that's fine. That's true for a lot of places that they're trying to do a good job and they have fewer people coming than usual, but we aren't exempting them. Yeah. I would agree with Carl. He doesn't provide any reason as to why he wants the exemption or what or whether or how the mandates impairing or impacting their religious services or deterring anyone from coming. So I would, I would, I think we should keep the mask mandate as it is and not include an exemption, exception. Yeah. I don't know why he asked for that, but you already said that. I actually know somebody that got COVID at church too. Did they have a mask on or not? No, they did not. Okay. I don't think people did. So it doesn't seem like there's any reason to change it at this point. So you've got the same issue as last time. If you don't change it and you want to keep it going, you'd need to do another 30 day extension because of the way our meetings keep falling. Yep. That's fine. Do we need a motion of that? Yeah. I move to do so. Got a second? Second. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Okay. We extended for 30 days. Now, we do have a personnel matter or we have to go in potential executive session of that, but we could do the rest of the stuff like we did before. Yeah, we'll do that. Yes. So we don't have much left. We've got the warrants. I'm not there signing them, but Carl is. So we need to designate Carl to sign them. I make a motion to designate Carl to sign the current warrants as the January 24th, 2022 regular expense warrants weren't as written. Okay. We have a second. Second. We have a second from Judith, we'll say. I went through them. They're pretty simple. There's not much there. It's all just oil and grease and truck stuff, pretty much. And one very, very, very, very, very late culvert. Okay. Yeah, it seems late to be buying culverts, but it arrived in two deliveries Tuesday and Wednesday. This is the big one. That's the north of Barnes culvert that we had hoped to have by July. Right. The other the earlier July. Right. Okay. So all those in favor of Carl signing the warrant, please say aye. Aye. Aye. The ayes have it. And we already did have the business, and I guess that's it. Except for personnel matter. Okay. Let's go. No, I want to do this out loud first. Okay. Yes. Nope. I was all I was saying, let's go to the personnel matter. I wasn't saying exact section. Thank you. Okay. Yes. So I am retiring or resigning whatever way you want to phrase it targeting an end date of June 30th, 2022. If if we can't pull it off by that point, if the transition process is is impossible to complete by that date, I'm not going anywhere. I don't want to leave the town in the lurch. So we can consider that June 30th theta a tentative one subject to subsequent events as they play out. Well, thanks, Bruce. Yes. Thank you, Bruce. Thank you, Bruce. So at this point, I think we should go into executive session to discuss the personnel matter. That means everyone's got moved. Yep. Is there a second? Is there a second? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any action? Um, no. Cool. Thanks. Yep. Thank you. Thanks, David. So Carl, since you're here, yes, I am going to get myself out, but we can I'll put myself back in the waiting room and you can just yell at me when I say that I don't have my power cord here. And I need I'm down to the last little bit of juice. So you want to come sit here and I'll go elsewhere. Yes, please. Okay. Okay. Ciao. And Orca, please leave. Bruce, you might want to just kick Orca off. I don't know if there's a human watching. I'm in the waiting room. Coming out of executive session, no action taken. I move we adjourn. Very good. We have a second. Any further discussion? I was talking about it for about an hour now. Yeah, I think I do. Yeah, it's a better fact. Hold on. Anyway, all those in favor, all those in favor, please say aye. Thank you. Thank you, folks.