 So I'll call the meeting to order 605 first on the agenda is to approve the agenda. Is there any additions or amendments to the agenda for this evening? Nope. Just to let you know that the Fran and Bruce will be on at seven. They did confirm today. Okay. Move to approve the agenda is written. Okay. Okay. All in favor. Hi. All right. And we'll open up to public comment. So if there's anything that anyone has. On their mind or would like to bring up that's not on the agenda. Now's the time to do it. Um, I would just like to say that the Bethel for all and the Bethel recreation committee, um, Valentine's event was a big success and thanks for everybody that came today. Thank you. It was wonderful. Good. It's good to hear. Yeah. Thank you so much for doing that, Ellie. That's great. I'm glad you had the time and the weather was okay for you guys, Ellie. Well, we had wonderful sunshine. Then we had rain. Then we had wind. Then we had sleety snow. We had all for my weather. It's all represented. Yeah. We had a lot of rain. People kept warm and the kids love making this some more. Did you have a good turnout? Yes, we had, I think over 50 people there. Nice. Oh, that's terrific. Oh, thank you so much. Yeah. People from Tombridge, Rochester, Hartford, South Royalton. And families. Lots of kids that love making this some more. Oh, good. Yeah. And one thing I had noticed, Ellie, on my travels this weekend is that. That Royalton also had a festival going on at the green. At the same time as yours. I wonder how often to look into next time to see, you know, may have attracted more people. I was wondering to see if any feedback on how there's went. Because because there's was a skating chili festival. And our, we didn't do any ice skating. It was all sledding and cross country skiing. So I don't know if their ice rink was available because ours wasn't. Yeah, it was pretty warm. Yeah. Yeah. So I would love just to hear how there's went. All right. Any, any other public comment? Okay. So we'll get right into the agenda. So like Teresa was talking about. This meeting as well as the meeting on the 28th, we'll be doing our budget. Public informational hearing on those. Tonight we're just going to go by the articles. That will be on the warning. Okay. I know we have a section there for public comment after the articles, but at this point, the articles are what they are. You know, so if anybody needs any more explaining, I guess we could do that as a board, but this time there's, there's there'll be no changes to the articles. Cause we were already going to print. Right. So articles one through seven are just. People running. Yeah. I'm not saying that was unopposed. Obviously we don't, someone could do a write in, but these are the ones that will show up on the Australian ballot. These are the ones that got the Pincena candidate form in, and so we're on the ballot. So. So Trees, just to clarify, a write in somebody wanted to do a write in thing. Does not have to show up paperwork with Pam. No. Put an article in the Harold or whatever. You know, okay. because the state, the legislature said they didn't have to do a petition. And then the consent of candidate is just to get on the ballot. So, yeah, somebody could still launch a write-in campaign. And then, see how it goes. But you're a letter in the Herald or however they wanna advertise. So, Chris, do you just want me to say who's running for these and then see if anybody has comment after? Sure, yeah. If you wanna, Therese, why don't you take the one through seven? Okay. So, article one is, Rick Benson is running again for moderator. Article two and three, a town clerk, town treasurer, Pam Brown is again running on a post. Four is Dave Eddy is running to fill Dave Eddy's seat. So, he's also running a post. Lindley Brainard also running a post. She's Lindley's running to fill Lindley's seat. Lister is Moe Brigham. He is running to, this will be this first three-year term. I think he came on as a portion of other terms. So, this will be his first three-year. And then the trustee of public funds is again, Rick Benson is running to fill Rick Benson's seat. So, that takes care of articles one through seven. All right. Anybody have any questions with articles one through seven at this time? All right. And then article eight is the budget itself. Which right now, right now is 2,418,146 dollars, which 1,983,678 dollars would be raised by taxes and 434,468 dollars comes from non-tax local revenues. And just to get a little bit, I'll just kind of go through an overview of the budget. If anybody has any questions, just put your hand up in the chat room and Theresa, myself will monitor that. So, our budget this year overall, if we're comparing it, the first part of the budget is the revenues. The revenues year over year are down about $5,000 from last year. The changes for the most part on those, and we talked about it at our meetings is a couple of years ago, because we had such a large list of delinquent taxes, collections, which came with penalties and interest, some of those revenues or a portion of those revenues had been built into future budgets. So, with Theresa and her administration doing a really good job of collecting those back taxes, we are now starting to see that the penalties and interest line on the revenue end of things is lower. So, we've started to make that adjustment so that ideally we'll get back down to zero, where we should be. Because everybody's paying their taxes, there's no penalties or interest or any delinquent taxes. So, we're slowly moving those numbers towards zero. So, majority of the revenue shift was shifting those towards zero. The overall costs in our budget are up about 37,000 year over year. The net of our budget is up $4,000. So, if you take the 5,000 less revenues and add the 37,000 increase in costs, we have a net increase of 42,000 on the taxpayers at Bethel. Or, if you wanna break that down by the cents on the tax rate, it's just over two cents. So, 2.1 cents on the tax rate. That's also based upon our current, that is also- Grand list. Yeah, I'm just trying to grab my sheet there. Based on the current grand list, we don't anticipate the grand list moving much this year. I know last year we had a similar budget where we were gonna be just under two cents. And the grand list moved actually considerably last year to the point that it brought us back down to zero. But we don't anticipate that this year. On the cost and the things, probably the biggest mover on the cost and the things with retirement. So, that's probably not a shock if you've listened in on the select board meetings here over the last three or four months, or probably, well, was it July when it changed? Is the retirement percentages increased in the state of Vermont? So, right now, we've had to include about $25,000 more in retirement funding for this budget over last year's budget. How much more was that number? I'm sorry, I'm trying to take- It's right about 25,000. Okay. Year over year. Yeah. We've also, I believe last year was the first year of our ditching program, Trice. That- I don't know. Wait, actually, I have the budget right here. No, I'm sorry, it'll tell me in that column. I hate to- We've had very good, one of the issues that we've had in the town and in our town roads is getting water properly off our roads into the ditch lines and keeping the ditch lines and the erosion under control of our roads. So, it'll be our third year. Third year? Yep. So, this is our third year. So, two years ago, we decided to put some money in our budget to contract out services, trying to figure out how many miles of road that would be, divided over the number of roads over a period of time that we think that every so many years, it should be ditched. So, I believe we started with 20,000. We are now up to, on this budget, 30,000. 30,000, yeah. Yes. And so, we've had a really good time of good bang for our buck on going out there, ditching our roads and getting potential erosion issues under control before we get some of the bigger storms that we've seen in the past. At the same time, we've been doing our culvert changes and items like that. We still are paying or have budgeted to finish paying our ERAF. So, in the spring of 2019, we had a flood event that happened in our area. We took care of all of our projects, 19 into the early 2020 season, except for we still have the bridge to finish. Yeah, so this, I don't know if this number, I mean, this does not take fully into consideration, Pinello, because we don't have the final engineering numbers, but this should, I'm thinking this will clear up everything, including Pevine. And then Pinello is just, we're still waiting for, hopefully I'll have this, maybe in the spring, we'll have a construction engineer's construction estimate for the cost of that bridge. And we're kind of redesigning. So, we were gonna do something a little different now. We're going back to put it in the same spot. So, that'll be more ERAF for another couple of years, which, and if anyone, the ERAF is the 12.5% that Bethel has to pay for FEMA work. Bethel's done a lot of work to drop that from 25% to 12.5%. So, you know, that's just so people know that's what we're budgeting for, so we can take care of that as we go along. And we had decided as a board back in 2019 that we would responsibly take care of our debt in advance rather than take loans out and borrow on interest. So, this will be the third budget now that we have included ERAF money in there to pay back our loans, which we've done a good job. Actually, in some cases, we've been ahead of the curve where we've set aside money and then we haven't quite finished the projects yet. So, we've done a really good job of retiring that debt. And some of the stuff now is we use our own capital fund money. Basically, we're borrowing money from ourselves because we have money in capital funds. So, we're able to say have a deficit in the FEMA fund 89 but yet we have money and other funds. So, instead of having to take out a loan and pay interest to Mascoma, we're kind of managing it, you know, in-house for as long as we can. So. Sure. And then, you know, at the beginning of our budget series, we had openly talked about the Constable and the Constables budget, which, you know, we, at that time, well, the struggle we're having in Bethel is historically, we've been able to find part-time Constables to help us out and share amongst our communities, our local communities. So, you know, Hancock, Rochester and Bethel combined to have a full-time Constable that we shared, years ago. Once that individual moved on, the next individual that we had come in, we shared between Killington's community and us on a full-time basis. And since that individual's left, it's becoming very challenging to find an accredited officer to fill the role on a part-time basis. All the law enforcement agencies are short help as well as Trees and I were talking today, you know, the going rate for an officer right now is $28 to $30 an hour, where we used to pay $18 to $20 an hour for the Constable. We were paying like $17 to $17.50. So it's, yeah. Rates have gone up. So what we've been challenged in our community is, you know, we have two individuals that put time in the community, but both of them are working full-time jobs with others. And one of those identities right now has a mandatory overtime period because they're short. So our service in our community right now, you know, we've, over the years, we have promised 20 hours a week of service in our community. And right now we're getting, you know, less than eight hours a week. So we're not gonna solve it in this budget, but it is definitely gonna have to be a piece that we're gonna have to talk about on how we service our community and attract an experienced, accredited individual that wants to come and work for us. But for this budget to get that conversation, some of the issues we continue to have is speed in around the village areas. We had purchased two speed signs last year to update two old ones. And we had decided as a stop gap that we would, that we would purchase two more speed signs that we could put up so that all four legs of the village area would have speed signs. So it's a start. So we had increased the cost of those budget by $8,000 to purchase those speed signs, which I believe are solar. Plus the portable speed car. Plus the portable ski, yeah. So that's kind of bridging the gap there. Obviously speed enforcement works best with both methods, speed car and some sort of enforcement. But right now we're gonna go with the speed car and try to figure out the enforcement piece here soon. And then it wasn't a lot, but we have talked about over the past couple of years on what we had saw at the town. It was just like our fee structure at the town is it was very outdated. So when we went through our fee structure a year and a half ago, we had fees that maybe we were charging someone $25 that it costs us $100 internal to process the paperwork. So we updated those fees. And this year in our budget, what we're starting to do is update some of the compensation for appointed individuals or elected individuals. And I wouldn't say that we are 100% where we'd like to be, but we're starting to shorten that gap. So you'll see it's not a lot of money, but we have increased some of the appointed positions on that. So it's not, again, I think it might have been only a difference of about $1,000, but it's starting to move that needle. Just trying to attract people that want to do this. It does take a lot of time or gas or everything else to do certain activities. Yeah, because we did add this year, we added the fire warden, the tree warden because they'll don't have a tree warden. And one of the things that, we definitely need to revisit as the health officer. I just really think that's such a too small of an amount of money. But that's where we are right now, but in our next budget iteration, that that's gonna have to go up. There's that's, you know, that's gonna have to be, I don't know, $2,500, $5,000. I mean, it's gonna have to go up. That's a lot of work to be the health officer. There's a lot of paperwork, a lot of responsibilities. So that's something we definitely have to revisit in our next budget cycle. So that's kind of the big overview on the budget. I mean, there's a lot of smaller things in the budget that we have in there to do as well. We want to do some repairing to the rock wall outside of the town hall. So there's numerous other identities in there that we have for this year. But those are kind of the biggest things. And when we had set the budget about a month ago, you know, the biggest things that we had agreed as a board is that we thought that we had a good responsible budget for now as well as continuing to look futuristic in the town. And at that point, I think we came up with about 1%. Jean, correct me if I'm wrong, we were at 1%. And we decided as a group that we would add another 1% worth of costing into there for futuristic programs. So we've built some extra money into the future on some projects that we have coming. Does at this point, does anybody have any questions in regards to the budget? Yeah, I do, Chris. Just to clarify a point on the page that says budget comparison report. I was looking at it today and under human services agencies, that number actually, and I'm assuming, Trish, you would know, our human services amount is only in the 26,000 kind of range. But I'm assuming that that number represents not only the human services agencies, but also the other ones like the library. Yes. So that's all combined into to get that number. Yes, it's listed. That's the way they've done it in the past. So it's a combination of those human services plus the other local appropriations. I think, so yes, that is a combination. Maybe down the road, we might want to add that part to the description. Okay. Yeah, it's the way they've done it. So I think we've just kind of carried it through, but maybe we need to separate them out. I mean, budget comparison report. Thank you. And for anybody that didn't know, we did have, the Bethel library had asked for an increase in funding last year as they had a lot of outdated electronic equipment to replace and kind of going through their budget. I think it kind of like some of the other ones is we have so many outdated appropriations out there of maybe monies that worked five or 10 years ago that aren't necessarily to the time. So we decided as a board to keep the funding to the library at the higher rate again this year. And I think we're gonna start looking at some of the other appropriations to make sure that their monies make sense with growth opportunities. So did we have any other questions in regards to the budget? Hi, Jean. Hi, Julie. Glad you guys could make it. Hi, Julie. I can't, you're muted, Julie, but so I have the minute through the budget if you wanna start at the next article. We've got the meeting started at 6.30. Oh, okay. Cause we had done it for two times in January. Yeah, so to accommodate Chris's schedule, then we went back to six. It's all right. I figured you were somewhere. I'm just glad you're okay. Yeah, we're fine. I'll start from when you're done with the budget. Yeah, perfect. Sorry, and I'll fill in the blanks later. So unless anybody has any other questions we're done discussing article eight. Did you want to, well, Paul, do you wanna go over article nine? Not to put you on the spot, but. Yeah, no, I get a quick overview. So the Human Services Committee consists of Carol Ketchum and Sandy Farrell and Stan Capron and myself. And this year we had one member of the public, Scott Potney joined us. And he had a lot of input. He's had a lot of exposure to several of these organizations and had some really good input on it. And I think I've talked him into joining onto the committee so you'll be seeing his letter of interest coming up when we do appointments after the town meeting. So we get together once a year. We send out letters in October and in November requesting that the various nonprofit organizations that we usually contribute to as a town submit paperwork to us that requests certain amounts of money that they would like to see us support. And we also ask for documentation concerning their financial positions so that we know that they are truly nonprofits and get a good idea of where their income is generated from. And we've also in the past couple of years really impressed on them that we need to know what they, how many local Bethel residents they actually impact in numbers, specific examples of how many Bethel residents that they actually interact with. So we met in early December and reviewed all the information that was sent in by the various groups. And we looked at the dollar figures that they were requesting and went down through each one, discussed each one thoroughly and came up with the list of numbers for funding. And we sent that along to the select board and it was approved and it appears as it is in the town report. If any of the, we also included this year we changed, we took out the picture. The picture was not very flattering but we put in instructions because there are a lot of local groups like the Cub Scouts maybe or other organizations like that that could possibly benefit from filing for appropriation. So we put in a little instruction manual on that page that describes the steps that they should take if they're interested in submitting an application for appropriations. It's always been part of the town of Bethel to support these organizations. Town has always taken advantage of the services and that's only increased during the pandemic times. So it's a good way for a small group to help get some support too. And so if anybody has any questions I'm more than happy to answer them. Thank you very much. I'm actually really happy that you put the instructions in there. I think that's great. I think that you're right. People don't think about it. And so I think it's very handy. So I'm really glad you guys did that. So thank you for thinking to do that. This is Judy from Safe Line. May I just enter the conversation to thank Bethel and the citizens of Bethel for your ongoing support. We greatly appreciate it. As you know during pre-COVID we always tried to have a representative at the town meetings but now there isn't really a place for us to connect with folks in the same way. But we very much appreciate your support. And if anybody has any questions I'd be glad to answer them. Oh, we're glad you could join us tonight, Judy. Thank you very much. So that takes care of Article 9. Article 10 is in regards to the White River Valley Ambulance. So the White River Valley Ambulance serves the citizens of the town of Bethel and our portion of that. I can't remember on the sheet in front of me but we make up what 45% of the pie. I don't even want to hazard a guess. I don't have their report in front of me. So I'm not sure. I imagine it's a larger portion just because of our population. But us in Randolph make up a majority of it. I would think. But Royalton has their own so it would make sense that we're the bigger. So our portion of it for this year is $127,080 which is up about $3,200 from last year. And I remember right last year's was a level. Let me put that from the previous year. We're pretty close to it. Let me look. Hang on, I have to look at the budget. So it really hasn't gone up much. Last year was OK. So we had our actual was in 2021 was 121,800. Then 2122 went to 123,830 and now we're up to 127,080. So I'm sure they're having a shortage and they're having to pay staff and things like that just because it's hard to find volunteers as we know. But obviously a great organization. Yep, so that's article 10. If anybody has any questions with any of these if I go through them a little fast just feel free to reach your hand. And even if we're out of order we'll definitely get your comments in there. Article 11 again is just the authorization for the payment for the taxes. So those dates are listed there. Yes, I checked. They are all the 15th. So it's always a question. We did go through and double check. And just as a reminder, your property taxes are due tomorrow. Well, thanks for throwing that out there. Hey, you know, just having a good day today. Trying to do my part. Squeezing us Teresa, squeezing. That's it. Yeah. So I mean, I think and feel free and any of the board members I, you know we spent a lot of time with the budget as we have the last couple of years to make not only a realistic budget that we feel we can afford as a community but also one that is futuristic in projects that we feel we need to accomplish. So if any of the board members have any comments in regards to it, feel free. Okay. So you did have a couple of people tune in later. I don't know if anyone else wants to add anything before you adjourn that public hearing or you've got Dick Kirk. So for anybody that tuned in late, you know overall the budget's going up between the revenue and the costs. It's a net increase of $42,000 over last year which equates to 2.1 cents on the tax rate and feel free. I mean, even after the meeting if somebody wants to reach out to me directly or any of the board members or trees would be more than happy to, you know talk through the numbers or answer any questions. I know that the books just got out Friday, trees. Oh yes, a town report, yep. Yeah, I think that they were mailed. We received some, people should have them hopefully some today. We had, we picked up some from the post office that the addresses weren't correct. So Kelly's luckily it was a handful this year we've really called that list and so she's getting those addressed again. And actually the postmaster, postmistress was very helpful. She took Pam's list and went through it and made any corrections. So we really only had a handful of reports that came back that we were tracking down better addresses for now. So yep. Mine was in the mail today. Excellent, yep. Hers was in the mail today. Perfect. So we'll do another obviously public hearing on the 24th, 28th, sorry, today's the 14th. Yeah, 28th, yep. Sorry. And then of course you'll vote at the school via Australian ballot. The ballots are prepared 20 days in advance so people can multiple ways you can get a ballot you can call town clerk's office and request one. You could call the town manager's office 24 seven and leave a message on the answering machine. You can go to the secretary of state's website because Pam has set up the election there and you can request one that way. You can stop by the office. So there's certainly plenty of ways for people to get their ballot. So, and also you can vote at the polls. All right. So at this time I'll just entertain a motion to adjourn the public hearing of the get and to enter into the normal schedules. Is that Paul? No, I'll, so moved. Yep. Oh, sorry. There was a weird echo somewhere. Paul moved it. Second. Lynn Lee second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. All right. So now we are at our normally select board meeting. We do have our, I'm looking here at the Brady Bunch screen here. I thought I saw someone pop in. They did. They just signed on or I saw them and then they popped off for a second. So maybe they're just having technical difficulties. We're a little, little ahead as well. So I guess what I was going to say is if we see them jump back on, we will get right to them. We do have an appointment Bruce Staples for seven o'clock. We do have 20 minutes. So if the, and I don't see them back on again. So if everybody, if the board's okay, I'd like to just move forward with the results of reappraisal RFPs. And then we can just take Bruce when we see him jump on. Is that okay by the board? Yeah. I'm just going to send them a quick email because they heard you adjourn. I wonder, I want to make sure they didn't think you adjourned the meeting, just the public hearing portion. Sure. So let me just quickly send them an email. I'm just saying, we just saw you sign on. So as, as the board, so we've been talking about, well, we've been talking about it for a little bit here now on the reappraisals for the town and what might be our timeframe and how much for that might cost. You know, so we started putting some money aside at the last budget and we've spent on and off this year on talking with the listeners in regards to, you know, getting some sort of pricing and some type of timeframe locked down to do the reappraisals. So as you saw in the, in the packet, through the RFPs that NEMRIC, NEMRIC came through at a lower rate than we had anticipated that we've been saving, which is good. And I believe that this would start the reappraisal process in July of 2023, which usually the reappraisal process is what? A little over the years, two years? Two years, yeah, it's a two year, this would be a two year roll. They used to be, Chris, back in the day, they were always a year. Now they do what they call two, sometimes a three year, depending on the size of your town, rolling reappraisal. So yeah, I put in there along with the RFP I gave you to let you know how much money was in the reappraisal fund currently. So obviously we have enough money right now to pay for the reappraisal. Some other costs that won't be covered in the NEMRIC reappraisal are, if say we need additional software or anything like that, the time for the printing of the postcards to be delivered in advance to let people know about when the reappraisal folks will be coming to your neck of the woods, the paper that gets generated at the end that lets everybody know all about the reappraisal. So there's certain expenses, any of Moe and Judy's time, Louise's, whoever's listeners that's over what their normal budget is, if they're putting a lot of time in, we'll take it out of there. So, but it's also good too, because as you remember, we did a drafted a capital fund plan for the reappraisal money. So we also, and that number actually is high because it's just what we thought at the time. So we'll be able to adjust that moving forward. So it helps us know, we need to get back on a schedule where we're doing reappraisals more regularly, waiting for over a decade to a decade and a half is not a good plan. So this will help us budget and plan for the future reappraisals as well. So if we were to continue putting aside what we have been, what would that provide sufficient funds for what? Five year, seven year? Well, if you have your town report, I don't have a copy of it here at my house. So there is a schedule in your town report of the capital plan for the reappraisal. I think I used the number of 171 instead of 121 because that's what we had, we were kind of making some assumptions, Mo and Judy and I. So we'll be able to dial it back a little bit for a future. So if you look at that page, I don't know what page it is right up top of my head, Jean. I'll look it up, yeah. Yeah, I'm sorry. I don't want to quote something and be wrong. So I apologize, I don't have it with me. I actually didn't get a copy yet. So I actually don't have a copy of the town report and I'm just kind of realizing that now that we're speaking, we'll make sure I get that tomorrow. But yeah, so we may be able to dial that number back, which would be great. So obviously. Let me throw something out there now. So we're looking at a two or three year process to go through. Do we have a plan for a backup for Mo and Judy to kind of go out into that the next three year period? I think it's good that we might want to think about how we're going to address that two, three years from now. Yep. I mean, we talked about it, Mo is obvious. Mo's comment to me was he was hoping too that they would find that he, I think that Mo is hoping to retire after the reappraisal is finished, but you just never know. And because they're elected positions, we don't have a plan. And that's why we had put in that before that $10,000 for the fact of possibly having an appraiser because people aren't applying or volunteer are running to be listeners right now. So hopefully that changes. That may be something that we need to tackle in the next budget iteration as well, Paul, is in the past, you know, this is not a highly paid position, but yet they generate one of the most important documents for the town and the state, frankly, for school tax. So it's, but right now, no, unfortunately I don't, we don't have a plan because they're elected. And there's also going to be a lot of pressure on the BCA when this, at the end of this, when, when the hearing time, when, you know, when folks get their new assessments, so it's going to be a lot of pressure on the BCA. So we've got to make sure that everybody's up to speed there too. Yeah. Well, hopefully not. I mean, you know, I've seen this done really well in the past and seen reappraisals go where you really don't have a lot of issues. I mean, the good thing is that NEMRIC will have to deal with, you know, some of the reappraisal stuff when people come in at the end of, you know, and they, and they do grievances, they're going to be part of it. But, you know, I've seen it done really well, Paul, where you actually have less grievances than you might normally. So it's going to be hard to tell right now how it's going to turn out, but hopefully with good communication between owners and staff and, but I will, you know, fingers crossed. But you're right. If things start going to the BCA, you're right. You'll have to do a training for the BCA just to kind of get everybody up to speed on what to look for and what the process will be. But. I'll move. We approve. James got a motion and Lindsay second this. All in favor? Aye. Okay. So that'll be something on the clipboard. I'll get out tomorrow for you guys to sign. And that's a come to the back door, right? You can come in the back. Yeah, tomorrow's tax day. I suggest if you come in tomorrow, come in the back door. I'll put it on a clipboard or because I have a meeting nine to 10 30 and then the tax sale at 12 30. So we'll be busy, but I'll try to get it out in the morning by 8 30. All right. Anything further in regards to the reappraisal? Any questions on that? Seeing none here and none. We'll just continue to move on till we see our appointment. So next up, Teresia wanted to talk about the tax sale. Beheld on the 15th of February. So we, I don't even remember how many we started with, but we're down to one, two, three. We're down to five. So that's good. I mean, I, when we, when I did a tax sale in 2019, I started with, it was a huge list. And I think when I started going to tax, I was at 40 some odd properties, got down to 11 and sold nine. And so this time we're down there. Detry has done an excellent job. No tax collection sticking with it. So I feel like at this point, I know of the one, two of the five that I have bidders on all, but oh, there's one in here. She's doesn't have. Oh yeah, no, she does. I think currently I believe that we'll have bidders on four of the five. One of them is a property that has been in someone's family for a long time. But what happened is many years ago, somebody left it like deeded, broke it up so that the land was in five different people's names. So over the years, those people have not carried it through in their own wills and they may be this relative can't find people. This gentleman's dad had paid the taxes for years. Then this gentleman paid the taxes for years and he was trying to work with his lawyer to get everybody to sign off and it didn't work. So he finally just said, I'm not paying the taxes and what he's gonna do is he'll bid on it at tax sale. If no one bids against him and he ends up with the property back, then in 12 months after the redemption period is over, he'll walk away with a tax collector's deed. So his plan was to clean it up that way. One of the properties was abandoned. I tried selling it in 2019, didn't have a bidder. I'm hoping that we'll have one this time. There is a piece of land for someone who was deceased and there was no estate and people and the family weren't interested in taking that piece of land. So there's leaves us one on one left that I'm not sure is going to go up for tech. That's on South Main Street. I'm not sure if they'll be a bidder or not. But what has recent, I spoke to the town attorney about it. He always discourages us from buying anything at tax sale. By the time you buy a property, perhaps this one, especially at tax sale and you go through the 12 months if you have to go through the eviction process, right now the lawyer's saying that the process is bit daunting and courts are not in favor of eviction. That's gonna cost us quite a bit of money than to clean it up. If you came random to something big, would you be demolishing? He's not sure we even would stand a chance of breaking even. But he did forward me today a couple new programs that are out for people that are delinquent in their taxes and water sewer. We've had that offered before and the homeowner just didn't apply, wouldn't apply. And so hopefully my plan is to try to set up a meeting with them in person, get them to come into the office and sit down with them and get them to fill in some paperwork. So even if this property doesn't sell at tax sale tomorrow, I'm hoping that we will be able to get them some aid to clean up their delinquent water sewer and taxes. At this point, property owes the town just over $17,000. You have abated some interest and penalty, which I appreciate. And they were making regular monthly payments of about $500. And I'm not sure if they still are. I think so, I'd have to go back. Yeah, I know they made one not long ago, but I feel like there's enough aid out there that there's an option for us other than buying this property at tax sale. I frankly agree with the town attorney that I just don't think we should pick this up at tax sale. I understand that eventually you wanna do something because you can't continue to keep tax-sailing properties and not have them sell. But at the same time, this is a process and the eviction alone could cost us $10 to $15,000 if it came, if we had to evict somebody. We certainly do not wanna become landlords. That's an even bigger nightmare. And I just, I'd like to see if we can't, despite getting them, for not getting them to apply for aid, maybe certainly trying to get them to apply for aid now so that we can at least get this down and they can get it manageable and can stay in their home. But that's my two cents. If you guys wanna buy it at tax sale, that's something else. See how the tax sale goes and... Yep, so it's tomorrow at 12.30. We did talk about you authorizing me to purchase any property at tax sale, but that would be the only one. And that's, I think it's gonna be a nightmare. I think that it's also gonna be staffing. We're gonna have to pay the attorney to do a lot of work because I don't have time to do it. And I just, I'm not sure it's the best option for us. I don't know. That's your call. I mean, there's pros and cons. But so what is the option if another year goes by and we don't, and they don't apply for relief? What's the option to not buying it? Is they stay there and we tax sale it in another year or two, depending when we do another tax sale. So either another year or two we tax sale and they're still owe and we tax sale them again, but we incur the fees, legal fees and stuff when we do that, whenever we tax sale. So it just adds to what they owe. There obviously is a lien on the property. So if they were to try to sell the property, the town would get, we would get paid obviously just because we have taxes and water sewer. So there's a lien on the property, but I guess one of the conversations we had last time at the last meeting was how long do you want a resident to continue to owe this much money at some point? It's unfair to the other residents. That's my question. Yeah, that was the conversation we had, I believe at the last meeting. Yeah, and I wasn't there. Right, yeah, exactly. So that's all, Jean, it's one of those situations. How many, is this the first time it's gone up? This will be the second time that I personally have put it up for tax sale. I don't know about prior times. We had gone, Jean, we had gone, well, in around when I got on the board, we had gone a period of time where we hadn't done any tax sales or heck, I don't even know if we had payment arrangements with individuals, we just kind of either collected taxes that people handed in or just put it on the balance sheet. So I know, and Trees can back me up on this one. Trees got here was a very long list of the link with tax, water and sewer bills. I think probably the best thing we can do is let's see how this, let's see how this tax seal goes and then have Trees report back to us on how successful it was. And then if we do have that same property that doesn't sell and there is no urgency to wanna help themselves, then the board probably should put together a plan for the next opportunity on what we wanna do with that piece. Because again, it's either tax sale it or buy it. I mean, there's basically there are only two options at this point. Right, exactly. We know what we went through with the one up on Sugar Hill there. Even if we go in there and do all that and clean it up and go through and spend all that money and then sell it, we still have to, we ended up writing a check. Well, in this case, I'm not sure you'd make that. This case you might not, yeah, maybe they'll look around. In this case, we'd be lucky to break even. I don't think there'd be a check going to anybody. By the time we pay off everything that's owed, delinquent taxes, water, sewer, paid any legal costs for eviction to manage it, to clean it to, oh boy, there's a chance that we would end up eating an amount of money. But if we put it off, we'd just end up eating more, right? Possibly unless we can get them to apply for some aid. Obviously with COVID money, there's a lot of money in the state this year. They would have been eligible for money before and I had reached out to them, called them, gave them a number to apply, offered to help and had heard back. So I guess I'm gonna have to make my request a little bit more urgent or demanding and see what we do. I mean, we could always, frankly, you could do another tax sale if you had to in six months and just tell them if they don't apply, we'll tax sale just their own property again in six months. Yeah, it just gets worse. So I think at some point, if the amount we would lose just gets worse. Yeah, it's true. So if we keep putting it off. So what you just suggest, we may want to put a tax sale of that property on a fast track if we don't get any cooperation. Yeah, I mean, as it goes up tomorrow, maybe somebody may be bidding on it tomorrow that I'm not aware of. You know, obviously if I sell your property at tax sale, it's, if I say to you, Gene, I'm gonna sell your property at tax sale. You're like, okay, if I say to you, Gene, I'm gonna sell your property at tax sale and I have a bidder, then that's a whole different motivational tool for you. So certainly we're trying, that's one of the things if we put it up, we're looking for bidders and there could be somebody out there that's coming to bid that I'm not aware of. I certainly have been trying to solicit bids from people to get people to come in and bid, but also Stitzel Page and Fletcher has a list of people that come to tax sales that they send out. Also it's been in the paper. So there could be somebody out there. So obviously we want the people to stay in their home that is a best case scenario. And so if we can get them to get some aid, then maybe the couple will be able to afford to do that. So that's obviously our wish for everyone. And we still, I mean, I think this property's last one from we'll call the original carryover issues, but we cut our own worst enemy here in some ways enabled certain individuals to get over their head, right? Cause we did spend a period of time there where we weren't really managing that portion of our business very well. So we did allow some people to get way over their head. Maybe if we were dealing with it on a yearly issue, maybe they wouldn't have gotten over their head and could have continued to afford what they were doing. Maybe not, but. Well, and they were, like I said, making $500 a month payments. And I know one came in recently because the amount of the tax sale dropped. So it's not like, for a while, there were no payments being made at all, but now there are, so. So they're making an effort. We just, so we could encourage them to make an effort and get some help. Yeah, well, we've been trying, but we'll make it a new focus. Thanks. Well, it sounds like what Teresa was asking the board was, do we want to give her any permission to buy any properties tomorrow or it sounds like the board for the most part isn't interested in that. Is that correct? Not at this point. Yeah, there is one. The other one is the one property on Hidden Glen Road. And that will be the other property that didn't sell. So the two properties that did not sell in 2019 are Hidden Glen Road and the one on South Main Street. And, but I had talked to a gentleman and I may, I'm feeling like there may be a bidder on the Hidden Glen Road. And that's one where the gentleman just walked away and lives in Royalton and just left, said, see ya. And his property is on at 26,865. So, and that person is paying nothing. There's no water sewer. That's just taxes. So that's a 1.96 acres of land in a mobile home or double wide. And I'm not sure obviously the condition of that mobile home, but so we may end up with the two again that didn't sell and we'll have to regroup and think about what to do. But I did speak with a gentleman who I think was going to was gonna bid on the Hidden Glen. So I'm fingers crossed he does. Otherwise, we got two and we're really gonna have to figure out what we're gonna do here. All right. Are we any further discussion regards to the tax sale or are we good to move on with our appointment? Move on. All right. So just want to welcome Fran and Bruce Staples. So if, Teresa, if you want, you could just maybe give us a little overview on this. So typically when we do any type of potential water or sewer abatements, what we do ask for is so that we can get a good picture and to be as consistent as possible with what we've done with others is to one, give us a picture of kind of the property, what you're using the property for now or in the future. And whatever your desire is, I'll make an example. I'm looking for abatement on my water and sewer for the next three months because I am completely gutting the apartment and I won't be receiving any income during that time. So it's gotta be kind of what exactly are you looking for, what the time period is so that we can make a decision on the matter easier. So I'll just turn it over to Teresa and then Bruce or Fran can speak on their behalf. All right. So Bruce and Fran wrote a very nice succinct letter here that says on October 31st, the property, their property located at 92 Pleasant Street. Their property is across the street from our entrance to the rec area and it was vacated by their tenant. It says this property will remain vacant until sold and please adjust the water sewer rate to a vacancy rate. So when I'm not sure what year 2019, I wanna say, you amended your water sewer ordinance so that if someone, if it was their home and it was a residential water sewer, then they could be moved to a vacancy rate if say they went to Florida and they shut their water off, they would be moved to a vacancy rate, the commercial property, as this is not Bruce and Fran's main home, you had said that they had to come in front of the water sewer commissioners, which is the slack board to determine, you know, to determine if you were gonna put them on a vacancy rate. So Bruce, just to clarify, this is one of your rental properties, correct? Yes, it is. Yeah, so anyways, so that's a deal. So obviously this is what you would term for your ordinance a commercial property. In the past, obviously you've done this for several properties who were, like you said, gutting, you just did it recently for the Merrill Baths on Main Street, you gave them a three months, I believe it was three months, reprieve on their water sewer bill because they're gonna be redoing that building, you know, inside and on the outside, so you'd given them a break on their water bill. I think it was three months, wasn't it a quarter? Yep. I'm gonna remember off the top of my head. So do you, is it still on the market, Bruce, your property? Yes, it is still on the market. Okay, great. So basically you're just asking the board to move you to a vacancy rate until you sell it. Exactly, we don't wanna get anybody to move in there because then they're just gonna have to move back out again so it makes no sense. So there you have it. So if you have any questions for Bruce, that's pretty straightforward. You know, that's his request obviously is to, they're not doing any improvements, but it's on the market. I'm surprised you haven't sold that thing. I figured there's such a shortage of properties on the market. I figured someone would snap that baby right up. I know, we can't believe it hasn't gone yet, so, but. Have you had a lot of showings? We've had a few showings, but nobody's made any offers on it, so. I'm surprised, we had a realtor in not long ago and she was like, there's like five houses on the market, you know, between Bethel and Randolph. So she was complaining about a shortage of inventory. And certainly we've talked about it a number of times here. They're saying there's about 4,000, you didn't, shortage about 4,000 housing units in Vermont by 2030. So I'm surprised that someone hasn't bought that already. No one's made an offer at all. I know quite a few people looked at it, but, I mean, and it was remodeled quite a few years ago, so when we first bought it, but. Yeah. Nothing. Bomber. With the, Terese, just wanted to be reminded on, so in the past when we've gone to vacancy rate, have we gone in and physically turned the water off or have we left that one on? No, it's just left it on. I mean, when they're showing it, I go in there and keep the pillow still going and, you know, every once in a while, I go in and do some mopping and stuff just to keep the house so it looks nice. Okay. So yeah, so with commercial properties, no, we don't tend, you don't, you haven't usually turned the water off. You didn't for baths, you didn't for, I think when you did Dylan's, when they remodeled dens more, I don't think that you, well, I think his was just off because he was remodeling dens more when they had done those apartments there. So I think he wasn't using water at the time. And then I think he did redid an apartment and then, you know, we turned it on. So for commercial, the couple that I can think of, you have had water on. I know one of the properties on Main Street is on a vacancy rate, some of it, but it does have access to water because it has something else in the building being utilized. So normally for residential, if someone goes to Florida and they drain their house down and we put them on vacancy rate, then we do try to shut the water off. A, if we can locate the curb stop and be if the curb stop works, but we know there's no one in there using water. So, and, but in this case, certainly for commercial, we don't normally make them turn the water. Was this like a one to EU? It's a single family house, right Bruce? Yes, it's a three-bedroom house. Yeah, so it is. So the, currently we're on the schedule that we, right now, well, the water bill will come out in this month and it bills for, it will cover January, February and March. So we always are billing for a month back, the month we're in and a month ahead. So we're on January, February, March is what we want it for then. Or is it too late for that? So, so how are you guys doing the pro rates? We have had it vacant since November and trying to figure out in the past, all we ever had to do in the past when we had the church street because it was a two-unit apartment. If one of them was vacant, we would just call you guys up, we'd write a letter and they would say, okay, how long has it been vacant for? Usually we try to wait a month because we're not going to do it just one month. But if it's been for a couple of months, what we would do is just tell you guys and they would say, okay, we'll pro rate it for the back because if it doesn't get rented for a few months. Now we're kind of like, I mean, what we're looking for, I guess, is to do, so you said for the three months would be January, February, March, correct? I'm just saying the next billing is this month would cover January, February, March. Yes. So we can at least get because the vacancy rate for January, February and March and then we'll revisit this again, that would be perfect. Okay. And then, and that way, I think that will keep better with the billing time. It will be kept better with, you know, so we're not like, okay, a little bit on this month, if we could just do it by that way, that would, I think that would be easier for billing as well as for, and just say, okay, let's revisit this because it's kind of hard when you're doing rentals and it's expensive for water that we're not, that we're paying for that we're not using. And that's how they did it in the past with the church tree apartment because that, that pleasantry department's been rented for the last, what, 14 years? Yeah, 14 years. At least 14 years, we haven't had a tenant in and out of that apartment for over 14 years. So. So the policy that you prefer to is no longer the policy. Right. That ordinance, they used to do that in the past and they gave people like a $25 vacancy rate, which wasn't even close to covering. No, it was more than that. Our vacancy rate was a lot more than $25. I wish it was, that would have been like, you know, that would have been great, but no, it was more than that. It was a percentage off for not using it. I can't, I can look in the past, but those apartments have been rented, but they gave us, we only had to pay a certain percentage of it of water and a certain percentage of the sewer. Was that prior to 2019? Yes, it was prior to 2019. So it all changed then because then what they started doing is sometimes they don't always grant the request for vacancy rates. So that's, so it has to come to the select board for vacancy rate commercial. So what's the rules for the select board then? What are your rules? So I know like what I can read, I mean, I can request all I want, but if you guys, I would like to know what your rules are. Like you're saying, well, this is what I want. Well, I can take, but what are the, what are the regulations that you guys have set for vacancy rates? What are the rules for it? And then I could say, okay, this is what we can do with that. Or I could say one thing, we can do nothing with it. And, you know, it sucks to be asked and we have to pay twice as much in arms. We have the church street apartment as well. And we're paying a ridiculous amount of money for a one, we're paying double that amount for a three unit for two bedrooms on one side and one bedroom on the other. And we're paying double the amount of everyone else that's got a full house of six, five bedrooms, four bedrooms. So really, I think we've paid our fair share in on this. And I think that should be taken into consideration that we're paying like a lot of money for our water and soar. And you and I met a little bit back. Yeah, yeah. This is one of the big things that we're not selling our apartments with, especially the two unit one, is cause no one wants to pay per unit. One bedroom costs just as much for the water and soar rate as a five bedroom. And that makes it a little, that's one of the things that's a tough thing to sell on our two unit apartment. It's a two unit, one bedroom, two bath. I mean, one bedroom and a two bedroom, we're paying more money just twice as much than for the rent house. And so with that said, like that's what we're like, we've been paying on all this this whole time minus when we didn't have it rented. So tell me what, I mean, if you guys could tell me what are the regulations that you guys set up so that way I could say, hey, we can meet that. Hey, we can't meet that. Cause if I decide you guys are really gonna offer me too much, then I'm gonna start renting this place and keeping it looking at, you know, on traveler's bits or something like that. Because so what are your, I mean, but if it's worth it to me to keep this thing vacant because I'm not paying this astronomical rental for our water bills almost as much as our mortgages. I mean, it's ridiculous. I mean, it's high. So what do I have to do to save you guys this is what we're gonna do? What are your regulations? What have you guys set for a standard, I guess is my question for having a vacancy rate. And Theresa can jump in at any time, but the issue we had in the town years ago was that we really didn't have a very formal system. There was many different combinations of vacancies or taking somebody off water or how many apartments and how many EUs we were charging certain people. So we dug through this two or three years ago to really say, well, two things. One, let's make sure we're making it fair for everybody. Two, we had some, like what Theresa was saying, we had some vacancy rates that didn't make any sense. Like we'll charge you a $25 vacancy rate, but it actually costs us like $75 to deliver the water to the house. So even if you don't use it, just a delivery system. And as you've seen with the Main Street waterline upgrade is we have a lot of old infrastructure that needs to get done. So the town of Bethel, we have an EU system. So based upon a different, when you're in the residential section, it is one EU per house. Where it starts to get tricky is when you get into the commercial setting or renting apartments, the EU system stays with the formula. So if you have a building that has two separate apartments in it, then that might be two EUs, one EU for each apartment. It's not that it might be, it is. Right. It is. It's not might be, it's not, well, we can consider that we're getting charged double. It's not by the bedroom. It's not by, which is, I mean, that's another issue in itself. What I'm trying to figure, I know all like what I'm trying to figure out is when someone's requesting a vacancy rate in the town of Bethel, what is the select board's rules and the town manager's rules on what to get a vacancy rate? What is that? There's gotta be some type of set rules. Or is it, if I can make a good case for it? Like that doesn't, and what makes a good case? Well, currently the ordinance that they adopted stated that residents could request a vacancy rate and that their water would be shut off and the amendment to the water sewer ordinance and stated that commercial properties were not eligible for a vacancy rate. So, but I believe that I'm just looking online for their next amendment. I think that what they ended up doing was amending it again to state that it was, I think that you had to come in and speak to the select board because that was one of the, that was their ordinance amendment was at one point was commercial properties weren't even eligible. They just assumed that if you had a vacancy people would have had to budget for it. But then I think that they reconsidered and I was just looking online to see the ordinance itself. And I feel like, didn't you guys amend it again, Lindley, to after that, because you did allow vacancy rates for commercial properties and I felt like maybe you amended it to say that it was on an individual basis and that people could apply because at first it was passed and then you felt it was harsh. So you guys went back and said it had to be done on a case by case basis. But the only, the ones that they've done so far are people that have come to the select board and requesting a three month or six month abatement while they did work to the property. We have one on Liberty stable that the gentleman was gonna put a bunch of money into the apartment. So he asked for a vacancy rate and they granted it to him for, I believe it was three months. Same thing on Densmore. The McCullis came to him, they came to the board, they were doing a bunch of work on their property. They granted them a three months and maybe ended up going into six months. Same thing with Bath Meryl on Main Street. So what they've done in the past has kind of had a precedent that the only time they granted a vacancy rate for commercial properties was if that property owner was putting money into the property itself to upgrade it. So the select board was trying to give them a little bit of a break while they, you know, worked on their property. So you guys made it as you went along. Like there's gotta be some type of regulations that are being set. There's gotta be some kind of standard. So I mean, it's not gonna be like who you know or can I give a good story. I can write just about anything you guys want me to write. I can speak and tell you exactly what you wanna hear. I'm trying to do this the right way. What I need from you guys as a select board is tell me what the regulations are. What it would adhere to the water sewer ordinance. And I'm just looking online to see if I can see their most recent amendment. And I don't see it online, right? That's my point. And so I don't think that it's fair that you guys are just gonna make this up as you go along. And I'm not mocking anybody. I'm just telling you the way it is. I need to know if I'm gonna be budgeting, if people are gonna be investing into this town and buying apartment buildings and you get someone like the page house that's got five units, four units in it and they're getting charged four times as much. And then if they have a rental that's out, I would have like right now, like I told you before trees, is that there's no way I would ever invest in the Bethel properties right now, the way it is. Because one of the big things that's really affecting our finances is that the water. I can't afford that much money when that apartment becomes vacant for a few months. It's expensive. Like I'm seeing it now, we have that two unit one and it's expensive. We've got our one unit one and it's expensive. We have to consider about it to our budget. And then people are like, why is it so expensive for your rent? And we're pretty cheap on a rent. If we've had these properties for so long. So I could, I would have this decision of what the rules are gonna be. Someone that's got a commercial property what you guys want from me. So that way we'll follow the rules. But until then, I guess, like I'm pleading with you guys saying please, like give me some guidance on what you, I don't want to hear we're doing it case by case. Cause that's not really fair. It should be interesting if you could show a rental and you say to me, like before I showed them the letter of the person leaving and they left and I gave it to you guys and said, okay, this is the renter that's in there. He's either A, getting evicted or B, he put in his stuff and it's gonna have to be somewhat of a, and then if they go back and they, someone else moves in, I ruin that for myself. There's not that many landlords in this town that if someone says, like if someone ruins it for you and we sign a contract saying when this, when this says to somebody that someone else moves in, we're gonna take this out, but let's start it right here. Someone gave me their notice of leaving, they're vacating, they're notice of vacating the apartment. I give it to you guys. When someone else moves in, that's what that goes at. So if I can jump in, Sure. You haven't given us an opportunity as a board to discuss the case you've put in front of us, but you're sort of accusing us of not making a decision or not giving you the grounds, but we haven't had a chance to discuss it and you're doing all the right things. You've taken the steps, we were giving you an opportunity to plead your case, which Therese gave us the groundwork, you've given us the next layer. And then the next step is, we as a board discuss it and make a decision. And so just give us an opportunity to do that. I hear what you're saying about the, what are the rules and ground, what's the framework that we're working with? And we actually as a board really tried to leave it not as hard and cut and dry because originally our policy was that for commercial properties, there is no vacancy rate. And so you as the owner of a commercial property would be on the hook for the full amount regardless of whether you had partial rental, full rental, no rental, you have it on the market and it's fully vacant. But we felt that that was too harsh and not fair to the folks like yourselves and many others that are investing in Bethel and are trying to make available housing that we want to work with both parties. We want to work with you as the investors, but we also have to uphold what our job is, which is run a functional financially viable system. And so as a board, we weigh those two things and we've intentionally and other board members please jump in if you feel I'm off base here, but we intentionally left it a little bit open-ended to give folks like you a chance to vocalize your needs and to meet you where your needs are. And so the next step in this is we will discuss can we meet those needs, what are your needs and can we as a board be both fiscally responsible to the town and the water sewer and help you meet your needs? So I hope that helps clarify it a little bit. I get that it feels wishy-washy, it feels like we're not making a solid set of rules, but some of that was actually to help folks like you in the position that you're in and understanding that our water sewer system is really expensive comparatively, but it's also, we're all stuck with it. We don't have an option that's different. And so we're working with what we've got just like you're working with what you've got. And so I think you just need to bear with us for the next few moments, let the board discuss it and then we'll see where we land. How does that sound? So I had a question of Therese. Did you say that when a resident leaves a property or and asks for, do you actually shut the water off? Yep, that was part of the ordinance that the select board adopted before you came on is if say, we have a couple of snowbirds and they go to Florida, then yeah, then we usually shut their water off because they can and then they go to vacancy rate. Right, but the staples I think said that they did not want the water shut off because they're showing the property and having it on is important. So I think that is a consideration. Having said that, I believe that what they are requesting is reasonable and reasonable is a legally a definable term. And I mean, I think it is a reasonable request in that sense to, so I would be open to what other board members believe feel. Yeah, I mean, I feel the same as Jean does. I think just to stick with the formality things. I guess the only thing I would like to see is that we stick with, so by the quarter like we have in the past. So put a date on it, I guess. So I guess what we're talking about right now would be January through March. So I guess what I would be looking to do would be to allow the vacancy rate, backdate it from January through March. But then if it goes beyond March, then we would have to take it back up again. Now, hopefully with the real estate, doing what it's doing that it'll sell and we'll have to do it again. But I know in the past that we've made certain dates to any of our emotions. So, you know, I would like to stick with that. So at least we have the formality there. Yeah, I agree with what Chris was saying. I think that it's completely reasonable. And the recent precedent that we've set has been sort of a quarterly check-in, which feels really reasonable to me. I would, and this is sort of a question for Terese is, if we make a motion, I would recommend that we do it in such a way that it states very clearly that this is strictly to the ownership of Fran and Bruce and that if the property sells, this does not, the vacancy rate does not carry with that, that it would reset to the standard rate. And then the new owners would be under the obligation if they need, because they wanna do renovations or whatever, that they come before the board again, but that, yeah, I agree with Chris to review quarterly, but I would vote to allow the vacancy rate for this quarter. Right, so you'd basically make the motion that the vacancy rate is granted from January 1st to March 30th, as long as Bruce and Fran are owners, if it sells before then, then we'll prorate it from that the sale date forward to the current rate. I would agree with that completely. I think it's totally reasonable to grant this part and keep it on a quarterly basis. You know, a lot of folks are frustrated with the water situation and that's all, but we're trying to be, as Lindley stated very well, trying to juggle both sides, trying to be fair to everybody, but also trying to maintain a system that's really starting to get better, but still needs quite a bit of work and it's fairly expensive to maintain. I see Dave Eddy has his hand up, Chris. Where are we going? No, I'm using my hands. Oh, okay, sorry, it just, it was a hand on my screen. I'm sorry, Dave, a little funky there. I think we should make it clear that we leave the water on. Yes, of course, yeah. We're not shutting it off, yeah, no, no. Right. Well, and Theresa, I think you stated this earlier, but we don't shut it off for commercial properties, just residential, so they technically wouldn't shut it off. And we've had those issues in the past, Lindley, because you may have one shut off to the building that has five apartments in it, you know what I mean? So it may not be physically possible to shut the water off. My recollection was we, as a board decided to make that a standard rule because you have some properties that can't be partially shut off. And so instead of doing it unit by unit, it was all commercial. Right. Yep. Of course, there were some of those areas at one point where we didn't even know where the shut off was. It's still true. Still not, so we found them all. So if somebody wants to make that motion, then Bruce and Fran could move on with their evening. Do you have language that we can pull from that you sort of stated something earlier, but I couldn't just read it. I think that you just need to make a motion to approve their vacancy request for 92 Pleasant Street from January 1st to March 30th. And if the property is sold during that time, then we'll prorate it to the full rate, but for until March 30th, spit it out, trees. March 30th, as long as it remains Bruce and Fran's name, that you'll leave it at the vacancy rate. So I mean, I can make a motion out of that. Go moved. Well, also put in there that it'll be reviewed again at the end of March. If necessary. If necessary. Yeah. Sure. Hopefully it'll be sold. Well, that's the thing too is that if it sells in the middle of a, or something happens that, I mean, just say like, something just so should happen in the middle of it all, like what would we all want it? Like how was, whatever regulations for that to say, like we sell it like in the middle of. Just email me. I'll just calculate, just email me and Fran and no problem, but I'll do is I'll take the vacancy rate for the 90 day or 91 day, how many of days are in the quarter and we'll divide it, the rate to come up with a per day rate and multiply it times that. Take me five minutes. So if you sell it, which I hope you sell it tomorrow. But if you do, we'll just let me know and I'll happy to prorate it for you. It's just, that takes a while nowadays to get the, cause we just sold our other two properties in Randolph pretty quickly, one of them sold in three days, or two days, I think it was, and sold quickly, but it took still over a month, almost two months. Three months to get rid of it. To get the, between and appraisal to get. Oh yeah. Yeah, it's three to four months once you find somebody that's going to buy it easily. Absolutely. Yeah, we'd heard that the delay in appraisals, lawyers being busy and I'm sure we'll just end up leaving it for you through March. I'm just saying personally, I hope that you sell it cause I know that's the whole. We do too. Thanks. Yeah, so just let us know and then if you still have it at the end of March, just send me an email and it will have the select board revisit the topic cause obviously you'd request another, I'm assuming you'd request another three months after that. So just send me an email and we'll take care of it. Excellent. I'll second the motion. Hey, all in favor? Hi. Hi. Can I just have it? All right. Thank you for your time this evening, Fran. Thank you. And before you leave, I think we have established precedent if it is reasonable request and for a period of 90 days, that does appear to be two things that the board, select board would be looking for. Appreciate it. Like I said, we just got to set some type of standard. Understand. I mean, that's the only thing I'm asking like, and we're getting out of real estate business. But the word reasonable gives us flexibility but it also permits you to, you know, to understand what we're going to do. Yeah. Absolutely. Okay. That's my two cents, but thank you. Thank you. All right. All right. And picking back up to our agenda, we had left off at the annual financial plan for town highways and town road and bridges standards. Yep. That's pretty, let me get to that standard as far as the standard, the standards. Yes, I was just going to say I don't make much sense of it. So yeah, we go through the annual financial plan. Obviously we do this every year. That's something that I have to submit to the state. I guess they want to make sure we're, you know, spending our class highway information. Kelly got together the information for obviously we have the whole, every lists everybody's phone numbers for the select board and the road commissioner, village clerk, all that. So it would be two separate motions. One to approve the annual financial plan for town highways would be first. And then second, you would make to make a motion to adopt the town road and bridge standards. Something we do every single year at this time. Terese, the only thing I see is that my mailing address is incorrect. Okay. Let me fix it right now. Hang on, Paul Valley. Okay, what is it, Paul? So it's P.O. Box 495. All right. Thank you. 24 reaches is the physical address. Okay, perfect. Thank you. I will get that fixed. Did anybody else have a address correction or anything? Okay. I will put, I just wrote it on there. Thanks, Paul. Sorry about that. We just need a motion to accept the annual financial plan for town highways. So move. Second. Move by Gene, second by Paul on favor. All right. Okay, I just have that. That I just need a motion, motion for the certification of compliance for the town road and bridge standards. So moved. Okay, we only moved that. Second. Okay, second by Paul on favor. All right. All right. Go there. And Trees, the last thing on our agenda there was a discussion regarding regards to snow removal. Yeah. So this came from the equipment committee actually. The, we had a meeting last week about, we have had a couple of meetings about what to do about snow removal as far as our tractor that we have is not in great shape. And, you know, it was one of those things. I don't think it was the right piece of equipment when it was bought at the time. It wasn't, you know, stored or maintained properly. All these things we've inherited. So, when they met a while ago, I had to think about this. They had talked about getting a skid steer and they were pricey and they talked about getting one used. And then Allen had an opportunity to bring in a used sidewalk machine that another town was selling in. And he brought it up to the, had it delivered to the town garage, you know, just have people look at it and obviously, and it wasn't what they wanted. It was too big, they didn't, they felt like they were gonna be in the same predicament, not the right piece of equipment to do the job. Then Allen specked out a John Deere tractor. And that was what we met about to talk about last week. And they, the guys on the equipment committee felt the same way. They just said, we don't feel like it's going to get us where we need to be because we don't have someone currently, or I say the word, we don't go out and plow the sidewalks for every two or three inches. So their fear was again, that this piece of equipment wasn't going to be the right piece of equipment. So we're back looking for a skid steer, probably about 30, you know, we've seen some for about 30,000 with a thousand hours and they wanna put like a heavier duty, maybe snow blower that'll chop up ice and deal with it that way. But one of the things that came up was, they said, look, do we even have to plow the sidewalks? And I said, well, actually there's a statute. So the select board could request, or you know, could have some town, there are a couple of towns where residents have to take care of the sidewalks that abut their property. Some towns I think maybe do it for just the downtown business owners. So this came from the equipment committee because they said, well, think of the money we'd save if we didn't have to deal with sidewalks and sidewalk plows and this and that. So I gave you the 24 BSA 2291, which says, you know, one of your enumeration of powers is that you can provide for the removal of snow and ice from sidewalks by owner, occupant or person, you know, having charge of the budding property. So I cannot tell you how many towns currently have an ordinance. I tried looking for it when I had, you know, 20 minutes one day and I only found Brattleboro, I think had an ordinance that I put in here that says that upon, you know, but it was specific streets. They had it laid out that certain streets that the property owner shall clear all snow and ice from these adjacent to their property within 48 hours. And of course you can see their streets listed there. So I'm not sure, you know, I feel like you currently have some business owners who clear the sidewalk in front of their property, but this is also residential. This is people who live a budding sidewalk. So I'm not really looking for you guys to make any decision tonight. I just want, I told the equipment committee, I would bring this to your attention and please for you guys to start thinking about about what you think about it. I was, I went to get pizza Saturday after the big snow. So it was 48 hours and none of the shops on the pizza side of the road were accessible. And it was, if a car parked in front of the walkway that had been pushed, that the owners had been pushed through the, to get to the street, you couldn't get into the place. And I think we are currently looking into how we make Bethel more accessible. I think making Bethel's businesses accessible is an appropriate thing for the town to continue to do. So I just, that's, I would fall off the side of the town committee continuing to provide that service to make, because it's an accessibility issue. Okay. Lindley you were starting to say something. I actually spent a lot of time thinking about this and not just this year or this past storm but for the last three or four years as a downtown business owner and I really deeply appreciate the assist from the town in snow removal. And I know that a few members of the board might even remember this part of the conversation. One of the really big things is because our streetway is so narrow, when the streets are plowed, it tends to get plowed up onto the sidewalks which then makes it extremely wet and heavy snow because it's had all the traffic running through it and it's denser and it's really difficult to move. And this past storm is a perfect example. We always clear in front of the Arnold block and we couldn't, we physically couldn't remove it. And so if there had been a policy in place we would have actually had to appeal to the town to come help because it was so dense and heavy and then it froze up so quickly. Humans couldn't do it. And obviously individual business owners can't all own this kind of equipment. And I think as a board we've also, we've sort of discussed the wanting to foster elements of the business district like Jean is saying and that this is one of those, here's what the town can give you. I don't think it needs to be a given all the time that the town do it. And I think, Therese, you kind of pinpointed a great example when it's a two or three inch storm your plow guy doesn't come plow your driveway. You're still responsible for clearing it. And if you don't, it ice is over and we all know the realities. And so I'm sort of wondering if there's a way to not create an ordinance necessarily but to communicate with the downtown business owners about if we choose to continue to do this service here's the service we're providing. Here's why we feel it's important and what we're willing to do. But we also need you to meet us part way in order to prevent us from having to create an ordinance or having to kind of put it back on you. And so I wonder if there can be a more direct communication of what the give and take should be. It doesn't address the residential properties. And I know this is an ongoing issue that there are spaces that just don't get cleared unless the town does it. And even if an ordinance was in place would they get cleared is sort of a big question mark in my mind. So I would still be in favor of the town continuing the service, but I also know it's a huge issue of what's the right equipment and how to do it effectively. I think too that, I think for the equipment committee they just were like, all right, look we're gonna spend $30,000 on a used skid steer possibly and then find the right equipment. I know when they're in last storm that we had it was tough. We'd had people out earlier and had prior storms so people went home and we ended up coming out and by then at some points it's coming down an inch or more an hour. We ended up bringing in Dave Bergeron to do the sidewalks because we were, our crew was just in the weeds trying to deal with it because it was coming so fast and it was heavy. So I think for the equipment committee they were just saying, okay look they're willing to continue to look into buying the right piece of equipment that they feel is necessary to do the job. They just want the select board to know like, hey, we're gonna be spending 30 grand on a use so don't be cutting our appropriation. If anything, they're probably gonna be looking for eventually each budget year, a little bit more money to deal with equipment. And so it was just something I told them that I would talk to you guys about and bring up and that we could have a brief discussion about, but I do think you're right. I understand that business owners are paying water sewer rates and if they're on main street they probably have apartments and more than one EU and tax implications, et cetera. So, but yeah, if it's just like an inch or so it would be nice for people to be out and dealing with that. I also am waiting for some stuff, information's gonna come from the Better Connections grant. We're gonna get a plan from Du Bois and King which is going to be helpful to us about sidewalks and accessibility and all sorts of ideas, snow removal, et cetera. So, I just was bringing up something that the Equipment Committee was talking about. It wasn't meant to stir anything up. It was really just a conversation and at this point they're looking into skid steers and they're moving forward. We're gonna have a meeting in the spring. They said no to the tractor and we're gonna have a meeting in the spring. Have them come back to the garage, go through all the equipment and have everybody come with some ideas and maybe stuff that they're seeing for sale or maybe some options and they'll go from there to make a recommendation eventually to select board to buy something. But for the winter we're gonna ease through with what we have. If frequency of use becomes a problem and especially with maintenance, is it possible to contract with someone outside rather than quote, doing it ourselves but to contract with somebody to do that? You know, it's difficult because to find someone with a right piece of equipment and what's the cost gonna be in the end at least when you're buying equipment you're making an investment into equipment. Whereas if you're contracting it out it's gonna be, you know it could be a little bit more difficult. So, and I'm not aware of anyone currently who does that not to say there's not somebody out there because I'm sure there is. But like I said, this wasn't for you to make any big decisions. It was just to have a conversation to see what the board was thinking and let you know what the equipment committee is thinking. And what crews were saying. Go ahead Dave, sorry. Who's gonna say who snow is who snow? I mean, I've gone through the town and see the street is clean. Guys come through the cloud, it ain't, sidewalk ain't clean anymore. So, the streets are so narrow. You can't, I feel bad for the business owners. They really can't clean their place because there's no place to put the snow. Because if you put the snow off the sidewalk there's no place for anybody to park to go to their business. And this last storm was so busy there was no place to park even in the town parking lot. I mean, you can get in there where the four wheel drive but a regular car wasn't gonna get into that parking lot. So we have no place to put the snow. So trying to get somebody outside that you're paying X dollars to clean the streets once he's not gonna come back after the plow comes back. And don't forget, it's not just Bethel the state comes through with plows. True. And they move snow also. That's right. And to jump off of what Dave was saying I wanna say it was maybe three to five years ago there was actually a bit of a fight between some downtown business owners where they were intentionally taking the snow that the plows plowed up onto the sidewalk and throwing it deeper into the street as sort of a pushback. And so some of this was trying to mitigate those issues that like Dave was saying there's just nowhere else to put it but putting it back in the middle of the street is really dysfunctional and harmful and unsafe. And so this was a bit of a how do we come to a common ground and find a way to all move forward because yeah, the snow is there and it's not going anywhere. I think that Alan they do a pretty good job now of coming back out at midnight a couple of days later and scraping down and hauling away which Doug and those guys did for years coming in and cleaning up. So it's always We live in a small state in rural America where I hate to say it this way but suck it up. I mean, this is the way it is. We get a 14 inch snowstorm. There are some things that are not going to be convenient. True. We'll do the best we can to take care of it. That's my opinion. Exactly. So all right, that's fine. Like I said, it was just the equipment committee. We talked about it. So I think you could just move on. I don't really think there's we need to beat the horse here. We know we have at least three people or more who are not interested. So that's fine. I got my answer. I think it's just like anything that we've done. I think it's a good opportunity with getting our accessibility drafts back. And I think it's a great time for us to look at both sides of it. But there may be a hybrid model too, right? Could be a make it up. If we get more than two inches of snow than the town doesn't, if it's less than two, then the business owners do it or something. Maybe there's something, but also I would, it's probably a good opportunity right now to see what our neighbors are doing. So what does Randolph do? What is their piece of equipment or South Royalton? Kind of a similar downtown kind of, you know? Yeah. How do they treat that? We know what Randolph does. We've been through that. So all right, that's fine. So good opportunity to look at all of it. And, you know, we're not going to do it for this year. So we got plenty of time. Figure it out for next year. Absolutely. Okay. Anything left, Teresa, on your town manager's report? Yeah, I didn't include one in the package this week. We're just too busy. About a single, the Sullivan Powers was there today to finish up our single audit, which we have to do if you spend over $750,000 in federal funds, which we would because of the $2.8 million water loan. So we may require a single audit again next year between the American Rescue Plan money, tail end of, there was a 324,000 invoice for the DWSRF and then anything for Pinello. So I'm not sure if we're going to need a single audit next year. Hopefully we'll be riding the rail, but it's 750,000 and then requires a single audit. Tomorrow morning from nine, nine, 10, 30, I believe I have a meeting, Rick Benson and I, who's the chair of the PC and the chair of the DRB with two rivers because we were given that grant to work on zoning bylaw amendments with the seven towns, you know, with us and six other towns. So that meeting is kickoff tomorrow along with the tax sale in the afternoon. I also want to let you know at our planning commission meeting last week, the planning commission is going to be moving forward with in their minds cutting all the zoning district requirements for minimum law size in half, except for core and village. So it would make a 20 acre, 10 acre, a four acre, two acre, et cetera. And we'll kind of solidify that more as we go through this grant process with two rivers, obviously other public hearings and all that, just like we did when we were making amendments to the zoning bylaws before. So just to let you know that's what the PC is currently thinking. We have a better connections grant meeting Wednesday evening and that's moving forward. That one will be focused, I believe on more community outreach and things of that nature. So those are just some highlights for this week and I already told you your taxes are due tomorrow. So we'll be busy, busy at the town office. All right, select board meeting minutes from the 24th of January. Anybody have any amendments or are they good to approve as written? I can motionally approve them as written. Second. Hey, all in favor? Aye. Aye. And also in our packet, we did have the budget status report as well as several committee reports that were in there. So make sure you have the opportunity to read through those. I also had in my packet a sheet that this headline compiled 2017 personnel policy employee concerns. Oh, yeah, that was meant for me, not you. Yeah, I had one. Okay. Thanks, no, it's funny. I didn't realize I had that in the packet. I'm working with Stitzel Page and Fletcher finally to update our personnel policy. And I talked to John Fletch the other day and then I found that and actually had printed out I must have picked it up off my desk when I grabbed the stuff to put in the packet. So right now there's obviously it's gonna be another month or so until the personnel policy comes in a draft form. I wanna get John's updates, go through my notes to make my updates that employees have brought to my attention in the past. And then I also wanna talk to the employees about it. I don't think it's right to just make a blanket policy change without their input but there's a lot of things that just need to be cleaned up in our personnel policy. And there's just some things that don't work in our personnel policy as well. So trying to clear that up but no, I'm sorry about that. I just snapped off my desk. It's not actually in my copy. So I don't see it. Just wanna say there was a chat here just to share with you from Lylee that she just wanted to say that we talked about sidewalks but so often the curb cuts to the crosswalks aren't plowed. And that's certainly an ongoing thing. We discussed it at Better Connections and hopefully with a better piece of equipment and trying to figure it out that it'll get better. We've talked about that and we have truncated domes which are little bulby things that you walk across for people if you're visually impaired that need to be replaced. We have sidewalks that we need to address. It's one of the great things that's gonna come out of the Better Connections. So thank you Lylee. I didn't want you to think we didn't see that. All right. Any other business to come before the board before we enter into executive session? Just a comment. We talked about the Better Connections grant but I think I would like to thank everybody who participated and thank the board for making it possible for us to have a bonfire last Friday here Saturday. I think it was a good time by all. Thank you. Thank you Lylee for all you did to help make it happen. Yeah. At the very beginning of the meeting I did. So Jean, I'm sorry that you missed it. I made a comment at the beginning because it was such a wonderful day and everybody had a wonderful time. So thanks again for bringing it up, Jean. All right. So at this time I just need a motion to enter executive session to discuss confidential contract negotiations with the town of Royalton due to the June 30th, 2022 termination of the interlocal agreement. All right. All in favor? Aye. All right. Well, we're moving people out to read something that throws wood in the fire here. Okay. All right guys. Thanks. See you later. Thank you. Thanks Lylee. Bye Doug. Bye. Bye everybody. Thank you. Thanks. See you guys later. Bye.