 we're gonna call this meeting to order at 6.15, February 28th, 2022. And the to conform with open meeting law, the agenda has been posted in three places on the website and has been emailed to individuals on the list. We would like to ask people with comments, your presenter, but people with comments too, keep those comments to five minutes, please. Excuse me, Patty, I can't hear you very well. I'm sorry to interrupt you. I'm gonna move closer. I don't know, let's get that on the side. There should be a volume up or down. Right there. Kristen, you're nice and loud, but I couldn't hear Patty much. I'm sorry. I apologize for interrupting. Is that better? Not really. You're gonna come over here? How's that? Oh, that's much better. Thank you so much. Sorry about you. Okay, so people wanting to make comments are limited to five minutes. We're going to look at the minutes from the prior meeting, which was February 14th, 2022. That's correct. I didn't see anything wrong with that. I have also read them, so I moved. This is for February 14th, 2022. Second it. All in favor? All right. And that's what we have for the meeting minute. And so let's turn it over to our guest speaker and the first item on our new business, Chris Matrick. Let's talk about the West Hill Bridge update. Yeah. I want to turn it a little bit so everybody can see. I can see everybody. Can you hear me, Joan? I can't hear you too well. Sorry. You might have to come up. Help me. How about now? That's a little better. I'm sorry. I wonder where the speaker, like the intake is. That little thing is a speaker. Yeah, well, like where's the microphone? I wonder though. That's what I think it is. I can hear you loud and clear. Martha, maybe you can turn up your volume. I did. I turned it all the way up and it makes you guys nice, really loud, but for some reason. Okay, it's fine. Don't worry about it. I'll figure it out. I'm sorry. Okay. Thank you. Sorry to interrupt you most of the time. So thanks for having me tonight. I like to come periodically. It's been a while since I've been to the Rochester Select Board just to give you a quick update on things that are going on in town on the Green Mountain National Forest and some things maybe on the horizon. So the first thing I'd just like to touch on is we've had it. If you haven't noticed, we've had a bunch of timber management going on in Rochester. We have one, two, three, four. Four different timber sales going on in Rochester or affiliated with Rochester. Some of them are like a lot of soup house on the Chittenden Brook Road is actually in Chittenden, but it's accessed via Rochester. So I just want to give you a quick update on those. So we'll start out with soup house, which is the one that's the road right next to the Chittenden Brook Road. They're done in there. They've completed that portion of that sale. They have some closeout work to do in the spring, but all the logs have been cut and all the logs have been hauled. And I think all their equipment is out of there as well. So once they come back in the spring and they put their water bars in place and do their closeout work, they'll be out of that section right there. The other piece of soup house is the one that's up by the Brandon Gap backcountry ski area, right by the V-Trans pullout there. That's been a slow operation there. There's two units in there and the operators a chainsaw and a cable skitter. So he's a one man show. So he's been moving along pretty slowly, but he did say that he thought he would be out of there if the weather holds, he'll be out of there within about a week and a half. And then there'll be some remediation work that we need to do to the bottom of the slope there where the ski lines come down. That'll be a combination of us, a little bit of the logger and then Ridgeline also helping out with that. There was a little impact to the Chittendenbrook ski trail system from the operation by the Chittendenbrook Road because we were doing some harvesting within that system. We heard from some folks concerns about condition of the trail and you couldn't find the trail anymore. But that trail has been redesignated, reflagged, reblazed and we'll be doing some slash remediation on that this upcoming summer. Kind of get the slash a little lower than it is. The Swans Mill timber sale didn't really operate much this winter. That's up off Maple Hill and Wing Farm Road. There wasn't much operation up there. They had a little bit of activity early on in the season, but then they focused all their same purchaser as a soup house. So they focused all their attention on soup house. The garage timber sale, which is up via an access via Liberty Hill Road. It was originally gonna be accessed via State Garage Road, but the purchaser had some concerns about that access and subsequently accessing it off Liberty Hill. He's operating a couple of units, couple three units up there and continues to do so and he'll close out at the end of the season. We probably have three weeks left in the timber management season before the roads and the units will start to get too soft to operate in. It all depends on the weather. And then the last one is Camp Five. That's the one up off Forest Road 62, Thresher Hill out to Bingo. They're in full swing out there. That's a new purchaser for us, Matt McAllister and he has big modern equipment and a pretty solid crew and they've been running fast and furious out there. They took that Norway Spruce plantation out. If you haven't been out there, there's beautiful vista out there now. You wouldn't believe that you could see anything from Bingo before, but wow, what a view now. It'll be there temporarily. And then he's working on a couple other units, a little close down by campsite five. Okay, I know where that is. He'll wrap up at the same time, the garage timber sale probably wraps up. And I know he's been talking with the town to get the, it's been plowed down to the four corners area, which is historically not been done. So appreciate that. Is that gonna go on for another year or so now? That's been going on. Yeah, he has three to five years to finish it, but he's been moving fast. I would guess he'll have another year, maybe two in there. It's a big sale area. And then, excuse me, following that, the next sale in Rochester that would get offered would be the monastery timber sale, which is all the way out at the end of the Bingo road past the four corners on the uphill side. But we have a timber sale down at Pittsfield. It's gonna come out first, the Mayo timber sale. So that'll be in front of monastery. So I wouldn't anticipate monastery being offered until probably the end of FY23 for us. Most of that sale's in Hancock, the monastery. Yeah, all of it's in Hancock, but it would be accessed via the Bingo road, sorry. How far over towards the ski area will that sale go? It won't go that far because we have wilderness in between us and the ski area. So monastery peak is actually in the wilderness. We just named it that because it was a landscape feature that we could identify. Right. So that's it from timber management perspective right now. This summer, we're gonna see more segments of the Velomont trail, that end-to-end mountain bike trail that the Velomont and Vermont huts are striving to put in. We have some funding and Ridgeline has some funding to construct segments in Rochester right now. They worked up Rochester Tunnel over to Hancock Tunnel this past year, and they also worked a little bit kind of down Off Wing Farm Road, making connections there and they have more funding. So Tom LaPesca, Rochester resident, will be continuing to peck away at construction of the Velomont trail, which is very exciting. Is there any plan involved with adding more parking on those ski area side up there? At the Brandon Gap? Yeah. Yeah, so that's actually next on my list. Oh, sorry. No, that's okay. We have a plan. It's running through the environmental analysis process right now to reopen the old Bear Brook picnic ground parking area as a winter only parking area to try to get the backcountry ski traffic out of that pullout and avoid the spillover that we see on very busy days. And then we've got a couple of, we've got some requests for funding in to construct it too. It won't take much construction, but we do have to replace that culvert at the entrance right there where you go from the pull-off to the old parking area. So that will hopefully alleviate the on Route 73 parking that we see on those busy days of at Brandon Gap. Okay, good. And we've also given Ridgeline the go-ahead for a phased approach to constructing some additional backcountry ski lines that were approved as part of Robinson. These lines are up behind the Chittendenbrook hut. So they're way and they're behind there. They'd be south of the campground on that slope up there. And associated, sort of associated with that also, we have a plan to expand that parking lot at the end of the Chittendenbrook road a little bit. It's not really a parking lot. It's kind of an entrance with some parking spaces. To make that look a little bit more like a true parking lot, we'd reconfigure the entrance to have one entrance as opposed to the U that's there right now or the Y that's there right now. We'd have one entrance and then parking on either side at that point. So that would hopefully accommodate a little bit better. There was some congestion there with the log trucks for the soup house sale and then recreation is there on various days over the past few years. And we want to make it a little bigger. So if we put those back country ski lines and when we put them in, they'll be able to accommodate the additional parking down there. So that new road they put in, is that going to be, something they're gonna, I'm looking to correct you. Yeah. So that was there. I'm thinking about taking some team up in there to give people out probably. Yeah. Yeah, you'd need to go up there. We'll be plating the Chittendenbrook road, Terry, or the, You're the one of them. That's not, you know, where we can get in to get to. So the Chittendenbrook road would never be plowed all the way in, but you'd be able to get up there on a snow machine or a tracked vehicle in the winter. And that the road next to it, Forest Road 38 that they use for the timber sale, that got improved to what we call maintenance level one road. A lot of work got done to it, but they'll end up pulling the culverts out. Right. And putting the ditches in, but it would see, all the gravel will remain in there. So you just have to navigate the ditches where the culverts are, if you had to get up in there, but it would be open. It's not open to the public, but I'm sure there's going to be gate. There's a gate at the end of that road. So would we be... You guys already have the key, I think. It's our standard, it's the snowmobile key, that 3381 key that the club has. The snowmobile won't have anything to do with it. No, no, no, I know. But I think the town also has the fire department has keys. I don't believe it, but I'll get you some if you don't have any. Okay. Come down the office and I'll get you both of our keys that we use. How far in does that road go anyway? Goes pretty far back. Is it go almost to the Beaver Ponds where they're? They, um... I mean, they're up above them. Yeah, it's on the other side of the river, but yeah. Yeah, they're up above them, I know, but... Yeah, it goes way back in there. Bruce, I went in about a mile and a half. That can be a little bit more than that. Yeah. That can get you back in there in ways that... Yeah, if you had to carry somebody out. Right, exactly. Yeah, so I don't know what they would be doing over there. I guess they could be doing anything over there, really hunting or skiing or whatever, but we did talk about, at one point, talk about considering that maybe, like, connecting that to the Chittendenbrook ski trails and having that be another trail on the way out, but when you pull the culverts out and everything, it's just not worth it. Right. So... So that's kind of all the updates on that. The only other update that I know is an agenda item that you have, I think, and that's on the West Hill Bridge project. So we've got a little bit of delay due to various reasons on the West Hill Bridge. The money's there, it's not going anywhere, but our temp bridge is tied up with another project awaiting not the same type of funding, but a similar pot of funding coming from Eastern Federal Lands, our Eastern Federal Lands Department. And we don't have the money for that project yet. We're getting it this year, but it's a timing issue. So we can't start and finish our project till we get the funding for it, and that bridge is tied up down on the south half of the forest until we finish that project. So we had talked with Joan about delaying, you know, going out for bid on that project till either later this fall or next year. If the town had money that had a timeline on it that had to be obligated within a certain amount of time, we had the suggestion that like, you could put it out to bid, only put it out to bid as a no construction until FY23, you know, next in 2023. Yeah, so that's... I don't think we have that issue right now. Yeah. I'm not aware of it anyway. I think Joan could probably answer better to that, but I think we're good with that. Joan, do you know if there... Yeah. Yeah, typically it structures grant and typically they give us a year, but when there's extenuating circumstances, they, you know, will extend it. So I think we're all right there. Okay, thank you. Yeah, so we would be, you'd have the bridge, you'd be done with our project on the South Pass this year, you'd get the bridge moved up, you're going to be put in place, so we'll discuss this next year. Most of the folks who come to do the whole shoot live on a West Coast road, anxious to get that bridge in place, but it's been that way for so long, hopefully the one year delay is just a little too much on the road, just to ask. New owners out there are quite a bit of problems. Yeah. So the holdup is obtaining the financing and obtaining a temporary bridge. Yeah. Which one is the bigger of the two? They're about people. Even if the town were to be able to come up with its own somewhere to get a temporary bridge, we feel that it's got to go through the project that's going to be the new process that you can send the land that the design may have to sign off on everything and their backdrop. So we're not even sure that we would, the fear would be that you would go out to get on something that you wouldn't have to approval for Eastern Federal land, but it's up to time to be able to have it constructed in this season anyway. So the thought was that the safety approach was to, and Joe, if I'm speaking, if I'm putting a ramble and say things, if I'm entirely accurate, based on our conversation, we get to roughly, so the safety approach would be just post-colonial years. So we wouldn't consider going out to contractors that can provide their own temporary bridge. You could, but it was going to be the cost of the project. I think that the project is budgeted under the assumption that our bridge is going to be new. All right. I think you're right on that. And that's the amount of money that's going to be put in, especially if you have that in mind. So if you did, you'd be satisfied with that. I think that's all right. I don't know how much. Okay. I don't think that's a good thing to say. What is the, what is the good thing to do when it's off? The only good thing that you can do is run into the other robots, at least in several ways, that's proving that you can do that. So, you can go up again, but if they don't sign off on that. Right. When you can have fun at your stuff, too. So, if that's a good thing to do. That would be too big a risk. You're right. I think you're absolutely right. If the funding comes through, then maybe we could get creative for the bridge. Yeah. Yeah, if that were to get signed off on tomorrow or whenever we get enough time to be able to pull it off, then we could find a way. Yeah. Okay. And that's all I have. Unless folks have questions for me, I'm always happy to answer any questions about core terms or what we're up to here or elsewhere. The timber that's coming out of these jobs, are they, is that timber still going into Canada? It's going everywhere. It's not all going into Canada like this, but from the soup house, you know, that's what they do, and so most of that's going to their mill up in Bristol. But, you know, the pulp wood, it depends on the kind of wood that's going to firewood, some of that's going to pellet trees, some of that's going to wood to energy. It's really hard. We don't specify if that's what purchase is like, and they don't have to impose like what they're doing with the wood. But, you know, we know that the saw logs going to durable goods, you know, they're pretty sure whatever kind of pulp that's going to be firing wood or pellets or wood to energy. And we did have, you know, we did have recently some information that there was going to be a process out of the soup house on 73, and branding out, or it could have been a soup house too, but it never materialized into anything, but we are aware of the threat, but not the right word, really, of the possibility of having some folks come and process timber management. So we'll, you know, as we get that information and assess the risk of that, along with the folks who built the soup house on the town that we felt there was like a significant risk to a lot of people coming into town to disrupt. So taking into account the entire project, if there's supposed to be a real project? The timber sales, if there are three to five years typically. Is the soup house always 60% done, 40% done? Well, soup house is 100% done. So the project, the overall Robinson project will have probably 10 different timber sales come out of it. Not all of them are in Rochester, but there are quite a number, especially out of the Bingo Road, that are an opposite of the Bocca, although those sales likely to be in Timber, but coming out this way. So each one of those timber sales could last, have a lifespan of three to five years, typically. So if they're stacked back to back, you could be talking about, you know, 10, 15, 20 years of timber management activity going on. They typically, the contractor, the person typically don't take the whole time to do them because it's in their best interest to capitalize on a good market, and the market is good right now, so that's why they're moving pretty quickly through. They like to be in and out so that they can move on to their next job. Oh, I know that there's one thing, houses and places to stay and meeting out, so they're independent from business into a reality. They're independent from business into a town. Thank you. Anybody else? Everybody's good on Zoom, I believe. All right. Thank you, Chris. Thank you very much. It was good to be up in the open place. Yes, absolutely. So do you have another West Coast bridge that doesn't cover it? No, just a bridge update. No, okay. All right, where are you going, Jim? I'm here. Have a good evening. You too. Thanks for coming. Next on our list of wonderful things to do tonight is improving our liquor license for the Skip Park. We're reviewing for one year, and I move that we do renew the liquor license for the Skip Park. All right, second that. All in favor? All right. No, the first one, right? I don't think so. The first one. No, I don't think so. Yeah, I think it's on the other side. I don't think so. On Sunday. Sunday, I don't hope that they'll renew it. I think there's two of them. We'll be there. I think they're separate. I don't think so. This is just one signature. Let's move on to. We find ourselves with a vacant seat for the justice of peace. I guess before we proceed any further, I certainly would like to thank Joan Hubbard for decades of service to this position. Thank you, Joan, Java. But it's time for her to move on and time for us to move on and nominate someone new for the position. We do have a recommendation and someone allowed us to nominate them. So we would like to nominate a net should be west to fill the vacancy and that vacancy will go until February of 2023. February 1st. Yeah. We are nominating a net to recommend her to the governor because the actual claims comes from the office of the governor. So I move that is there any discussion? I move that we accept a net as our recommendation to the governor to be appointed to fill a seat. I second that. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Any questions? Yes. Does that make it effective right now, even though the governor has not made I have to send a letter up to the governor. Okay. So we won't nominate into the county report. I know he's not going to deny the recommendation. But if I can get it in the county report, would you like it? I would think you could put it in pending. I would say. Right. He's not going to do anything but accept it. Yeah. That's a good idea. Yeah. And if for some reason he doesn't make it known. No. Yeah. I don't get it officially in the minutes and all. Okay. And then moving on to the last item. In new business. I believe this one is being removed from the agenda as was determined that we need to. Change the language on the agenda. So we're going to table the approval for financing on the firehouse loan until the 14th of March. It just, it just needs to be presented in a little bit of a different way. I think we're going to be looking for Joan to be on back. Joan, are you here? I'm here, but I don't have much to. I don't have much in the way of updates at the moment, sort of in between things. The design work is moving along on town line road on the covert replacement there. And so I've been planning to put in an application for a structures grant to be trans in April. And cooters been in touch with cricket with comments on the draft plans. And otherwise, I'm helping Frank where I can on figuring out what to do with the bids we've received for the backup generator. And otherwise, waiting to hear from the FEMA folks. Okay, I was going to ask for an update on that. It's all in their hands at this point. It's been in their hands for the last couple of months and all we can do is wait. Unfortunately. I've reminded them how long we have been waiting. 2019. Well, good for you. Keep reminding them. Okay. Okay. Well, thank you very much. Okay. We do not have a representative here from the library. Nor do we have a representative from the highway department. Thank you, Terry for stepping in. Helping out on that last storm. And that leaves you up to that for utilities operators. Anything good to tell us there. Guys coming up great our mission stuff. That because of 3g is no longer. So number of mission stuff's going to work. So he's putting in the new stuff for the five. And that's the monitoring system for the set the sewer for all sorts. And at one time you said that you were scheduled and going to a class about security. Yeah, but it wasn't. I think it contains more than, you know, a bigger system or we said system that has hours in ground, but it's not a lot you can do to upset it. So in our water, you know, basically, they're saying that most of problems are in town. They're fired and get faster. Savapage is what 90% of the problem. We also could note that there is. We have alerts going on for security on a few different fronts. And our utilities is one of them. Office data is another one. So, we're taking that all very seriously. Hopefully, we get serious for no reason at all. All right. Good evening. I don't have, I don't have a lot to report. I did reach out to green mountain power. I advised them that we had received the grant award to purchase install an LP gas emergency generator from town office. We asked if with a working resiliency zone, whether that would be redundant and if not, could we serve the same functions with battery storage. So we're looking at what the estimated range or coverage time that the resiliency look zone could provide emergency power to the village and the town clerk's office. And he has asked one of our representatives with them Freeman Corey to look at the town office energy use and help us identify what size emergency backup battery power we might need. At this point in time. There's still too early for them to definitely comment on the estimated range of the resiliency zone so we probably get information from Freeman Corey first about sizing and cost of doing the emergency generator function. With the battery electric system. Before we know fully what kind of time the resiliency zone buys us. Also trying to keep things moving on the fast charger and little to charger front. I ask really for, you know, where is, where is GMP's responsibility stop and Rochester's responsibility kick in. These responses that they will take care of all necessary costs for interconnection, including primary and secondary side work for the installation. The town will only need to be on the hook for any civil site work to land the charger, ie fire station upgrades, the old fire station for parking lot improvements at the park and ride. And they pointed out that Frank Frank's been working with Zach there. Apparently, both like the park and ride option. You know I'm still not myself personally understanding what the difference between the interconnection including the primary and secondary side work. Well, I'll hone that down so that we can begin to look at a cost estimate for that on the downside. Okay. Yeah, and I will be working continuing to work with Council on World Development. The primary thing we're going to be looking at with that whether we two things one is helping us locally manage the task forces that were set up. And the other is looking for grants. Good. Okay, thank you springs around the corner so maybe we can get some action done on that this year. That'd be sweet. Thank you. Okay, we can move on to see we have no old business do we have any public comment out there. Everybody's quiet on zoom. Okay, so Frank and I are going to approve some bills. And so I move that we return meeting. I second that. All in favor. All right. Thank you so much everyone for coming forward to seeing you on zoom in a couple weeks. Thank you for all your hard work. Everybody. Have a good night. Yep. Yeah. Wait, should I not end this yet? Hey, I do have one question you guys is town meeting to be zoomed or is town meeting not zoom. No zoom. Okay. We'll see everybody there tomorrow. Thank you. It's not tomorrow. When is it? That's a long time away. Okay. All right, guys. Before the meeting. Take care.