 For a 13 2023 select board meeting, it is 615 and to conform with the open meeting law, we have posted the agenda for this meeting in three separate places on our website and also have emailed the agenda and meeting invite to an extensive list of people that are interested in the town. Tonight we will restrict as we often do discussions by individuals to three minutes unless we deem that they could have more time or we could go on to another person and come back to you. So we will continue on to any new additions to the agenda. Oh Meaning me? Yeah, just here. So I don't have a big presentation. I have a brief These are figures from the engineers report for the high school buildings actual costs as they determined. This is I'd like to give you guys and have you This is my Yep. Well, no, you don't have to sit down. I didn't on you or hit the recording in progress. Should I start again? Yeah, I'm sorry. My bad. It was painless up until this point. Okay. So this is a list of specific costs to fix the high school building as prepared by the Black River's engineer report from 2019. It's very specific. Here's how much the heating costs. Here's the roof. Okay. I think it's very important that we're just putting you on the agenda right now. Oh, so you're bringing discussion about the high school. Yeah, but I don't need a big discussion. I just want to give you that and ask you to talk about it at a later time. I don't I'm not I know it's a busy night on the agenda. Okay, we'll be right back. Martha, is there something that you need to say? It's just that I couldn't hear Robert and I have had I have trouble hearing people sometimes. So if everybody could speak up, that would be really nice. And thank you. Okay. In the beginning of the meeting was muted. I do apologize. That was my error. So Pat is going to start from the beginning. You didn't miss it. Okay. Thank you. I was going to say I didn't hear anything at the beginning. I'm sorry. That's why I was waving my hand. Good evening. It is now 617. Welcome to the select board meeting town of Rochester, February 13th. We are this meeting has been conformed does conform to the open meeting law because it the agenda has been posted in three places on the town website and it has been emailed to the list of all interested parties tonight. We're going to ask that discussions and we often do this are kept to a three minute time limit. We could come back to you if you have more to add or if we agree that you can continue we can, but we do ask that you respect the three minute time limit. Rob Gardner has an addition to the agenda that he wants to submit some information about the high school building. Can we put you at the end? You can do whatever you want on that. It might be a minute. You are now on the agenda. We have reviewed prior meeting minutes the select board meeting that was that took place on January 23rd 2023. I have read over the meeting minutes and I propose that we accept the minutes. I second that. All in favor. All right. And we also have emergency meeting minutes which was budget related on January 25th 2023. I have read those very short minutes and have approved it. I second that. I have too. All in favor. All right. First item on our agenda is correction to article four on the town warning. That is a minor type of adjustment due to I'm going to say a spreadsheet for you. In our meeting minutes that we approved we had said the voters would authorize a budget of $1,313,277 of which 920, 967 would be raised by taxes. Those numbers replace $1,314,749 of which $923,439 were to be raised by taxes. So the adjustment was done. I move that we approve the adjustment to article four on our town report. Second. All in favor. All right. Just save some money. Doon didn't join in, did he? No. He said he might. He's heading to the hills. Yeah, I don't blame him. He sent me a message. Number three, we have on our agenda a shelter team discussion. Hi, Jan. Hi. What would you like to discuss tonight? Just shelter opening. We are community. I've been talking to Martha. I'm sorry. Okay, Martha. We'll try it. We're sorry. So we want to talk about when to open the shelter and a warming shelter as well. We also need to talk about the updated MOU we have with the Gifford hospital to use the clinic space in an emergency. Ben, I just had a generator question for to find out if it was serviced and if it's on a schedule for filling. We can answer that question. Yes, it was. We just paid that bill. It was over $600 for a good a good servicing. We also just had the fuel tank filled too. And it's on a schedule in the future too. We made sure it's put on going forward. What do you propose for criteria for opening the shelter? Do you want it to have something in writing? Currently we have a select board or is it justice of the peace meeting? It's the select board of civil authority. The town gets called a select board. You decide if you want to open it and then you call me and Leslie. Right. And I believe we I believe we go to the board of civil authority for that for that. You don't have to ask them for that. No, okay. No, it's just not about that. Yeah. But the last time this last called SNAP a lot of places had no power for extended period. So they wanted if you were listening to the radio and watching online a lot of towns opened an emergency warming shelter just you know for the day people come get warm charge their devices have a place to be warm. I wanted to have that automatic depending on whether in other situations if there's a call if there's a call to open the shelter we'll do it but I wouldn't like to be able to just open a shelter for warming if the power outages over 24 hours. Okay. Well, we were monitoring that situation. All three of us select board members were in town and we were all up on our toes. We did not have any power outages in Rochester. Is that correct? Well, we did that one weekend. We did that one weekend but not for the cold snap but the first week we had the miserable weather we had quite a few power outages and we were on the cusp of whether or not we should open it. I wasn't contact with Green Mountain Power as I used to work there so I know some people there and talked to them and they were on the job and said they would have services available by certain amount of time and they pretty much held that to the T so we kind of knew which places were going to come on and when they were going to get on so it pretty much put the emergency repeater on for you guys on the fire department. I know they did that the same day they they did a lot of others so we we were on top of that we just no protocol really for us to open it up and and we did talk amongst ourselves about whether or not we should do that so we we are handling that but we do I think in the future we do need to have a way forward with that to make sure we're addressing the issues. Go ahead Leslie. I'm on the shelter team as well. I think what we're probably going to propose and ask you at some point to vote on is that that a warming shelter open up given the power is out 24 hours and the temperature is 10 degrees I mean some number like a 10 degree parameter and then people can come get warm charge their cell phones get a hot drink maybe a hot suit and then you know we don't have to set up beds until we say okay well now we need a shelter so it would just be a warming center right now we and that would be an automatic um knowing that we have a you know a formula to we had a a call in with I called in with Lynn Lindy the the principal down here and we were trying to figure out how we needed to work it with school being in session and that was an issue that we had to address at that point too and so we had given her a heads up on whether or not we were going to do that and if we were thinking that we should and so she was aware of it also and and that's one thing with the emergency shelter it does affect if there's school kids and all that so we have to be concerned there another thing that we do have though is this building sorry well because of the school kids well just if you have a bunch of people running around it kind of interrupts what they're trying to do down there as teaching running around sorry but no but I mean the kids you know they with the kids being there it's in school time there's a whole different thing but we do have this building that has an emergency generator also and we can bring this building into play if we need to this this section here we do have so that that is available so perhaps uh defining uh a level one or a level two type of shelter opening like you said you know the beds don't have to come out but we want to provide warm and and charging stations so that that could be defined that way and this building could supply that if needed right that's too many people down there in schools in session I mean chances are if it's bad enough that the powers out that people are looking for a place to stay the kids aren't going to be in school that's true but at this point they really open while the kids school is in session kids can get their lunch and go to the rooms and eat it or something like that I don't foresee it as a huge issue so you have to coordinate that with the school right and Lindy told me that that doesn't seem to be an issue so we have Lindy on zoom and she's just unmuted do you have something to add yeah I was just gonna say um I think probably three years ago pre-covid that would be a harder switch than it is right now we have figured out how to do lunch in classrooms and some other things so like Frank said he and I were in touch that weekend and so we're happy to support and open up we just need a little bit of notice uh usually about the night before and we can pretty much we're pretty good at adapting at this point in time to make sure it serves all it just really would um and that can also include coning off part of the space if we need to to divide the two and making it work if we were to get in that spot I will also share that our superintendent is big on going to school in inclement weather so that first storm you know Friday was really bad but had it been a Thursday and roads were cleared on Friday we probably would have come to school at least for a part of a day so um but like I said we're willing to be able to support everybody in that situation right I can't in the mood yes I can't hear anything is anybody else having trouble hearing out there like I am I feel like you can hear everything we're not getting I don't know if one person like if Leslie or Jim one person is further away from the mics than the other but it kind of goes in and out depending on which one of you is speaking it's a little I have to keep adjusting the volume okay so it may be good for Google in the audience if you could stand up I'll come up front and speak loud please sorry that's okay pre-covid shelter team had an MOU with Giffer hospital to have access to the clinic space if we have a huge emergency and the town is closed off again like it was before we can access the clinic space and do triage or see people over there instead of at the school so that's what the MOU is about so we're resurrecting that again just so we have that communication with them and that that okay so the VP vice president of O'Berry Rebecca O'Berry is going to rework the old MOU and when I get that I'll give it to the select board okay great yeah it just it just says that in times of emergency we have access and I'm hooked up with Jessica Springer the nurse the clinic so we'll have keys and access okay and for those that wonder what an MOU is it's a memorandum of understanding thank you Jan number four on our list is we view a January treasurer's report um I did earlier this afternoon and I saw Frank do it too so we have reviewed it um I think that we're right on target um all in all we're about 57 percent through our year and uh we look to be right pretty much on target I saw no major anomalies there no red flags yet yeah so that is approved we have a farmers market park use application this is for May 26th through October 6th on Friday afternoon between three and six o'clock um Rochester Fire Farmers Market is a community event bringing together local farmers producers and supportive consumers this is a volunteer run event purpose local agriculture community building for the benefit of the Rochester community um there also is a certificate of insurance to prove that they have the liability um is there any discussion about the farmers market I guess I'd like to just throw one thing it seems perhaps a little early to apply but the reason for that is that the planning process is already underway getting musicians getting the vendors together and the vendors also have to make a decision whether they'll vend it the market and uh or if it'll be available to vend that it uh for some people it's a fair chunk of their uh of their income and that's why it's being applied for now rather than right before the event we are in the beginning stages of rewriting the park ordinance it hasn't been revised since 1995 and so Nancy and I've started the process of doing that with some rule changes um and we're not sure what those are going to be at this time but we will keep that in mind when with this and we'll go from there but we just started doing that a week ago and we haven't really you have any idea what these real changes uh not at this point we really don't we're just revising it because it hasn't been done in so long and it's so vague and and uh we think down the road it needs to change so we're we're in a process of looking what other towns do and how they look at their parks and and those types of things there may be some usage fees involved we're not sure but we're looking into that do Rochester residents have a say in we will post uh um if we decide to do a revision of that we will it'll be changed and there'll be public comment yes mark i have something on zoom you're muted can you hear me now yes okay i'm sorry frank i the reason i i wanted to ask something was um i'm uh the producer for the players of our harvest fair that we have on the park every year we've had 30 some ideas there um i'm not hearing that you're going to be making changes like we wouldn't be allowed to do things like that are you no no no no they're just revising the rules on use that's all okay and also um we need to look at those i'm sorry i organized the course of july parade and usually there's a barbecue you know right after the parade that kind of stuff that kind of stuff is probably still going to be okay right it sounds like it oh yeah okay yeah sorry i just wanted to to check because it sounded like you were going to make some changes and that's fine but um i just wanted to make sure that those two two um events in particular are things that are kind of a tradition in town every year and yeah town town sponsors events aren't going to change much at all martha we're just trying to revise the usage of of the park by outside people and influence and we need to make some certain rules to going forward in the future that there is some rules that need to be corrected okay thank you yep you're welcome i apologize if you send us already do you have a time frame on when you're going to have the review done no we don't really have schedules kind of whenever we can get back to kevin's point i mean people are trying to plan there and the longer we wait you plan your event i mean we're not going to say you can't use it we're not doing that we just need to revise how what types of usage we're going to have and whether or not we should be permitting fees for the usage or not those type of things alcohol and drugs and you know there's no rules on those yes go ahead so and it's also going to apply to the other parks that we have in open spaces that we have in town the ball fields park up here and because our ordinance doesn't include all the parks we have so we're just trying to revise it and catch it up to date and so it will be a something that the public can look at it before we even adopt it but and it'll be put out there plus we've had some experts checking out the health of our park and the trees and the health of the the sod and all that and we're getting into a grant on replacing some of the trees on the park so we're involved in an ongoing analysis of the health of our park as well so it all is going to just run together so are we approving this application sure i i do need i do need to note that it's not signed so we will get that signature unfortunately i picked that up for aja and she's very sick at the moment so yeah i will so we will approve it when she picks it up she can sign it yes i want her to know that oh thank you appreciate it yep it's a great thing so many people have made it wonderful try to move through these quick things here number six on our agenda is cai technology tax map contract this is an annual contract for updating our tax maps which is utilized electronically and on paper it's a reference for many people looking at their property it's a reference for realtors it's reference for a lot of from peep surveyors so um it is a requirement for us to do it every year and this year the cost is one thousand nine hundred and seventy five dollars plus twenty dollars for every building added or changed so it probably come in less than twenty five hundred dollars a year for this for this process so i move that we approve the contract for a tax map maintenance proposal second all in favor right hi we will have new tax maps so on the next piece of business we have on our agenda is approved tobacco and second class liquor license for what we know as the skip mark um there are new owners and they are applying for both tobacco and second class license which is not a liquor liquor license it's beer wine um the business entity is cahalsa market um out of albany new york and so i move that we approve that they can get themselves in business for tobacco and beer wine i second that all in favor right and again i don't see where they want us to sign it it's all done officially i just wanted to just see it i've been upon this permit here i did speak with with peter about the snow issue that they have there in the wintertime um i don't know as if we can really force a change on that but i do think that um and i asked him he's going to be in charge of that for spring cleanup this year um but we'll need to address it down the road for cleanup and make sure they're aware that if they put their snow over there they got to be responsible for cleaning that up so as it would become a factor in the health of our park right exactly but they don't have a place to put the snow and and it's going to be more of a hazard if if we just have them pile it up in the yard i think and uh have it all the way every storm would seem a little hard to hard to deal with without hiring somebody to do it so on number eight on our list is science certification for compliance for v trans fiscal year 24 town highway grant um this is another annual thing that we do and we certify that we still have the same amount of roads and that we understand pretty much the orange book um town road and bridge standards and that um the standards that were adopted on july 8th 2019 we further certify our adopted standards do meet or exceed the minimum requirements included in june the 2019 state approved templates um we do have an up-to-date highway network inventory which includes location size deficiency condition of roads bridges causeways culverts and highway related retaining walls on all our class one two and three town highways which we do have um somebody does go around take an inventory of that thank you john champion um so we're going to sign this and send it off to the state so that we get support grant money for our roads i think okay number nine on our agenda is preliminary discussion of district thing redistricting first responder services um for our valley um i have some things that i could be reading here um and then we can have discussion about where we're going to go from this point forward i'm going to start by referencing that uh wrva is worva the white river valley ambulance service which is a full ambulance rescue service gfr is grandville first responders volunteers at different levels of training to provide immediate service while rava is on route i also want to note that due to HIPAA requirements and no names will be mentioned in this statement so i'm going to start with a timeline back december of 2021 a year and a month two months ago a rochester resident lodge to complain with the select board that their 911 call for assistance went unanswered by gfr due to the severity of the medical emergency coupled with the severity of the weather at that time this resident was further traumatized by the event and the lack of assistance because gfr did not respond as a member of the select board and a rochester resident that has a scanner at home i inserted myself as the point person to look into the complaint during january of 2022 through september of 2022 i paid special attention to emergency calls and the gfr activities and attendance to calls during my monitoring i did notice several calls for assistance going unanswered by gfr through dispatch while also noting werever providing perfect response rate in october and november of 2022 i had conversations with some g rf gfr members looking for further insight in the health of this organization the rochester budget and finance committee requested the annual meeting with the gfr director resulting in two cancellations by the director the gfr budget was submitted but no opportunity was provided for our questions to be posed in november and december i spoke with other valley select board members about rochester's concerns and they shared their own opinions on the level of service their own residents had commented upon in december of 2022 i requested from werva the facts of the response rates for gfr during 2022 and received a spreadsheet shortly thereafter noting that 44 percent of the calls in rochester were not responded to by gfr it was noted by werva that perhaps some of those listed as not responded could have been an error by werva a werva member filling out the paperwork since the budget and finance committee was unable to connect with the gfr director for this annual meeting it was incorporated into a rochester select board meeting so that the director could then attend as he works outside the valley and is unable to attend meetings between 5 a.m. and 5 p.m. weekdays at that meeting discussion with the director about response rate as well as werva spreadsheet concerns and questions were discussed his rebuttal was offered verbally and in a summary letter with no facts to substantiate his responses in january of 2023 budget and finance committee recommended to the select board a reduction in funding and the select board agreed and decided to reduce funding by 50 percent of the gfr request for the upcoming budget werva budget finance budget funding request for 23 24 was accepted in full including a seven thousand dollar plus increase their services are not in jeopardy a letter in mid january was sent to gfr noting our desire to see improvements in response rate by way of additional membership during day times and correction to technical issues that have been ongoing for over a year rochester select board has an open door to gfr will always be ready to revisit funding along with their progress and resolution of issues that they themselves have admitted to there was never any concern for quality of care albeit limited and never any criticizing of personnel that volunteer that is completely uncompensated as stipends previously paid have been revoked in the past years the decision that the rochester select board may cannot be reversed at this this time but it can be adjusted at town meeting i have an employee at my hardware store that is a member of gfr and i recently allowed my employee to leave work to respond to emergency calls in rochester i strongly urge all valley employers to look at their employees and if they are responders allow them to lend assistance to calls when possible and encourage any employees that have interests to enlist and empower them to receive training and become a trained medical person having a trained medical person nearby no matter what level of training it may be as an asset to our entire valley front porch forum chatter has solicited donations to bridge the gap and i can say that my husband i have already sent our donation if you support gfr you can do so too going forward into the future it seems every so many years rescue services in our valley are reassessed at this time there are discussions started and pending regarding the status of the first response of medical services throughout our valley including research into ways to make the service more efficient both financially and productively our valley demographic has also evolved into a need for recreational and back country services that must be incorporated into future requirements of this field coordination of efforts perhaps as a district or a satellite of worva can bring forward a stronger alliance that as a result could provide a higher level of service to all perhaps the result of our research will reveal we are at the best level of service but we will not know without taking a step back and looking at all aspects and options there's also two rivers um out of quiche regional commission is looking into something called shared services um they are looking about joining resources for for surrounding towns currently they're looking at stock bridge pittsfield and rochester but um as a district forming districts instead of individual towns this is something that we could be looking forward to the state is encouraging us to do so um those discussions will be taking place in early march there's also a meeting with worva this coming week um about the services and if there was anything that they can lend to improve the service hey leslie a district of what a new ambulance service or a fast squad fast squad probably um we're just all years at this point so whatever concept makes this just to penalize the group and their office responders just penalize them financially that's the first decision i i think a couple things need to be understood here we started this process in september and we go through putting the budget together your husband was involved with this he knows how all this works and i'm sure you do too but for the public we start out by having every department head bring in their budgets and we were the girls put them in the proper spaces and we process the budgets through the budget finance group and the select board and we discussed with the department heads what they're addressing in their budgets and the way it worked here with grandvils not having responded to a lot of calls we have no way of fixing that that's up to grandville to fix that and when we talk this out with budget and finance it was discussed that if we have an issue with money and we address it that way we'll get some chatter on this so people will come forward and we can address it publicly if we just funded it straight up then no one's going to talk about this and the service maybe there or not and one of the questions that came up in the budget finance is if we're paying for emergency service and they don't show up is it still an emergency service so we had to address that and that's we did it this way it the the uh as far as i'm concerned the town budget can be amended at town meeting that's not a problem but this brings it to the public in front so that we know that there's an issue here and if grandville can't respond to an emergency then and we're paying for an emergency service and it's not being addressed then what are we paying for we don't have any way to fix what the issues are it's grandville's responsibility to do that now whether they can or not that's remains to be seen but as a select board we wouldn't be doing justice to what we're supposed to do if we didn't bring it to the attention and the only way we could do that was to cut some funding so it would be addressed through social media or wherever because people get all wound up when you know for whatever reason and things are said that are not accurate on social media and we're just trying to address the issue and that's all it is go ahead terry you gotta forget you guys are forgetting this is a hundred percent volunteer oh we understand all these guys work other jobs no different fire departments i get it and you can't say that somebody's going to be able to go drop what they're doing and be there i know but the emergency service gave up on valley rescue so you gave up on having somebody on call 24 7 so you can't expect that same service from a volunteer department i'm just addressing the issue and that's the way the budget finance come people looked at it that's the way the board looked at it maybe we have one gone we have to address starting volunteering for to drop what they're doing and go to a call whenever yeah that could be true but and maybe they'd see the other life that's the way we are addressing it so let's talk about it go ahead jan i have two questions the first one is the budget finance committee they make recommendations but they can go it you can go ahead and adopt those without any input from the town from the residents we we put it on the agenda we look at it and then we go and it's not a how do it how do you say oh we put it in our town budget we approve the budget we present it to the town at town meeting right but not during you have you have the right to tell me before that yeah it's all in the process and those meetings are open to the public right right i understand so can i ask a question of Dan yeah how much does it cost how many hours of training does a responder have to have so to become an EMT it's 200 hours of training that can take well over a year to complete these courses are about 1200 to actually get enrolled in you know the the money that you cut out of our budget that was critical to us training additional members to our team critical it was also critical for us to have that money so that we can actually supply the members of our team if we're going to equip our EMTs with an AED and a medical bag and all the supplies to fill it you're looking at well over two grand to make that happen Dan how much does the test cost the test just the written test is $60 to sit for the test right plus the time and what about your certificate recurring certifications yeah it's 24 hours of training every every research period so it's 40 for EMTs 40 for EMTs for EMTs first responders 24 for for myself at an EMR level yeah so all that upfront money plus the time plus paying for the continuing education courses too right okay okay so that's a lot so we cut $3200 from the budget if i may and and we did it for the reason just this right here to talk it out to figure out where to go from here you know frank i think there's a major objection to the manner in which this was uh presented this process was not transparent in any way the budget and finance minutes do not reflect any discussion of slashing the first response budget or any of the concerns that you may have had with the service that you were receiving the first step would have been to contact me directly and ask me direct questions about what's going on that would have been step one step two take a look at our MOU and that MOU states that there is a board position for Rochester and Hancock a voting board position and you have never appointed somebody to that board that would be your direct link to us to know exactly what is going on so we did invite you to come speak to the board the budget and finance as we do every year in September, October, November there was nothing to indicate that this was anything other than the normal every year how to do here's our budget even if it was just a normal visit and we we did not get the opportunity to speak with you at all until into December and i presented you with a call information and i told you the problem that we were having you were talking to the board yes to the board yes the issue that we were having was a dispatch issue that was nothing that we could control there was an issue there is an issue but slashing our budget is not going to change the dispatching issue that we were facing a coordination yeah yeah okay and it is a downsize yeah okay our dispatching centers are we're so undermanned they were not able to properly dispatch the agencies that were necessary to respond to calls they would send an ambulance and forget about first response because they had to take another call it was that simple and if you had asked me directly you would have received that answer it's all be made this there's no adjustment to it until we go to town meeting so right the budget is lodged so that that town meeting somebody stands up and makes a motion and yeah yeah your books are when you vote on the budget that's where you could do it okay and it's not it's not a major pile of money but it was brought up that the services weren't being met so you know how do we look at that as a town we don't have any way to adjust anything else if we receive complaints from our residents we have to look into it and that's why it came up question yes i just a quick question i understood from the front porch forum mary mcgrath thank you okay um is the grandville fire department changing their dispatch there was some mention that it was going to middlebury i understand that they have again changed their mind and is staying with the dispatch they currently have out of rilton we are currently staying with rockingham dispatch because they have made changes in their dispatching procedure and updated their software and in the last in the last two months the dispatching errors have been minimal and minor we believe that the dispatching service we're receiving now is capable of suiting our needs thank you that's good to hear kevin if the budget is amended from the floor in town meeting the site board is not required to put that money toward rescue uh what you're feeling would would that money be put toward rescue if somebody stood up and wanted to add it back on if that was the desire of vote yes okay but you're not required to do that but you're feeling with the information you have now which is good to open up this dialogue right that that could that could happen yeah and and we encourage it to happen if the voters want that to see that happen i mean we're we're just bringing attention to the fact that we weren't getting the service and we needed to find out why and we had a miscommunication we were under the gun as far as getting the the town reports out so we needed to come to an agreement on what we should do and we couldn't just fund it with the complaints that we were getting and those were just from voters from people that didn't get service they were from our own people in in the fire department that were complaining about this so the only way we could address it was financially because we can't fix the way grandville operates we don't do that you know we have to accept their budget and also a couple years ago we took grandville and werva out of the appropriations so they could go into the regular budget under the general side of it so that put them in the category to to have an annual meeting with the budget finance committee to explain their budgets and we did that because their first responders and we felt it wasn't fair to them to have to get signatures to be on the warning for town meeting in the appropriation side of the the equation like the library does like any any change in the budget that's you know you have to get a signatures just to alter whatever you do like any of the appropriation services like the the fast garbage out here they have to if their budget changes they have to get signatures by some a percentage of the voters in order to get on the warning to raise money right i understand that okay i guess i'm just a little disappointed that it that it came to this well it's good it did it's actually it's good it did too but you have to think as terry said these are all volunteers and which means they're people and it it kills morale i can think of it how firefighters would feel the fire budget was cut for because for any any reason and it just it hurts morale a lot which is very important well the fire department budgets a little different they come in and we go through the budget with the fire chief and we sit down and do that through appropriations and in this case that didn't happen white river valley the ambulance came in and we spent an entire session with them and they went through their budget piece by piece and we offered this up to grandville and it got cancelled two or three times and it got down to the wire where we had to make a decision and we made a decision and obviously people you know this is a good decision because we got to talk this out and that's the best way forward so we now we know what's going on so that's good i'm also going to object to that statement that the meeting was canceled with myself multiple times i was offered a date and it was the wrong date and i didn't show up to that is that correct christin yeah yeah it was something like i said Tuesday the 13th and it was really Tuesday the 12th or something like that so immediately after that i offered two other dates where i could be present in person to address your issues which i gave to the select board the only indication the select board of the budget finance the only indication that you had any issues with the service it was presented to me on right around christmas eve i spent my christmas day and christmas eve going through call logs and conducting a call analysis so that i could present you with the information on the 26th during your select board meeting does the does the first responders when there's a call after there's a call do you send a survey out to ask opinions or ask if the needs are met or ask for satisfaction or do you do any after call stuff like that uh no we have not conducted any surveys like that the that's a good way to find out if your people are satisfied yeah i do know that oftentimes we do see see donations and thank you cards sent to us soon after we respond to a call when you attend the werver meetings because you are a board member for werver um are you at that point reviewing call logs that they have to see whether your attendance was checked off the list or not at that level they are not looking at that okay no perhaps you should if you think that you're you're not being current currently i am receiving calls for white river valley ambulance so i can directly compare notes we have not missed a call no not since december 20th i've had an update to the spreadsheet i thank you for that yep white river valley is keeping track of their information much better now yes that's good did you have something to say nancy you had your hand up no i was just going to say it is a line item in the budget and that's how it would get discussed and amended okay yep i thank stan and all the volunteers deserve our gratitude for the work they do and they've never any doubt of that can so it seems to me if you guys if there was a member on their board there would have been an avenue for communication for all this true in the first place because this is this is pretty awkward i understand what you're talking about i see a volunteer well maybe that's another discussion but it seems like it's a big communication to me if you had somebody on on their board it would bring it to them and then it would be much more it it should it's probably something we should put into our appointments and that's another thing that we need to discuss but right now it's pretty hard to find anybody to be on any appointment and that's a that's an issue too but i think it is something that we need to add into our town report as an appointed position to represent that and that's a good that's a good deal which happens in about a month yep so we can address that that might be a good thing to do robert thanks so through this whole stuff i've heard that rochester is interested in going with middlebury ambulance so i don't know anything about that no i haven't heard anything all right i'll just well we love you now the response in the and the carry that comes from one of us is top notch and very timely we do have that parish on zoom if anybody has anything directed to our 10 questions just so you know i'll set thank you all never up um yeah let's do rock then there's a thing for small grants that was a new item as well rock so uh i've been concerned about what to me is a lack of financial detail clarifying the the real costs and risks in the high school project i think there's a lot of information about vision but the actual information of the condition of that building and what it would cost to fix it is available and it's available in that uh engineers report but it's all mixed in with all three buildings so the document i gave you is pulling the high school costs out putting them in a list because the black river report was for both buildings was all three buildings all three buildings yeah so thank you yeah and uh so i it's information i think should be publicly discussed and publicly available uh and and i would hope you guys maybe at another meeting you can look at that and see if it's how you could how you could make it public or have a discussion about it um to me this is such so so largely a matter of money the cost is so great uh that an understanding of the money the costs and the and the liabilities is very important and i hope in the same way that if you're going to buy a house and you're to have a building inspector house inspector go through for termite damage and they give you a report this that's exactly what this is on a large scale for the high school building so um that's what i gave you i gave you six six copies up in case you want to share it with your mom or whatever so rob the figures that you were using go back to nineteen twenty eighteen and twenty nineteen it was released so there would be high so now they're they're four years five years old so you can add 30 to 40 percent i think the uh the feasibility study bumped them from two million two to three million so everything's gone up and i'm not i'm not advocating one way or another i'm just saying i think everybody really ought to know just how big a barrel they're stepping into or not all right and uh that's why i gave you that i hope you can and i'll be happy to come back and talk about it at if an item although i'm no expert on how to engineer right there's still a lot of hurdles to jump before we even get to that point and hurdles keep popping up um going through the the brella process which is a brownstone investigation and they have uncovered a couple more hurdles during their phase one which was just a paperwork investigation um of um at one time the uh skip mart had an underground fuel tank leak which is always on the record and never goes away so there's some concern about investigating the soils down at the high school because of the close proximity to the gas station on whether or not there's leaking fuel under there um it was also discovered that what most of us know that before it was a high school long before that there was also a railroad and a mill underneath that ground and so there's some concern about that too so in addition to the underground oil tank there's some some underground issues that might need to be monitored before we would be able to qualify to apply for any federal funding um the latest hurdle is the possibility um of having to go through act 250 if it transfers and is no longer a school so it was suggested that we approach the act 250 agency natural resources board and ask for something called a jurisdictional review um where they would look at it to determine whether or not we would need to go through act 250 in order to proceed with the state so um the hurdles keep popping up and um we're just we're just going to keep on going until um it it seems as though the hurdles are going to drop down or they're just going to continue to pile up but we are still doing that due diligence in in going as far forward as we can to see if we can make just get to the point of getting any funding for the building in any way shape or form so um that's where that stands right now well thanks i i mean my only point is that all of this should be as public as possible everybody should know the risks i mean i'm not surprised that that this kind of thing will continue to be just go on and take more time but it still has to be heated they're still you know um and i just in me it may be a bug i have but i just don't get the feeling that people in town are really getting the full picture of what the liabilities are what the time frame is i mean i'm way back in 2019 that the school board kind of thought this was going to be a get out for a buck um the the the process is it's all government red tape bureaucracy handouts when you're when you're looking for free money it's a long road to get there um so the good news is that the high school made it through the recent cold snap without a problem so i was down there just last week it's she's she's cooking along she's probably using some oil but she's cooking along good well thanks that was my point so point taken just have a really cool question i'm jamie i um just this might have been discussed before but what would happen if all these red tapes piled up and you couldn't do anything what would happen with that building the school system would retain the building as part of this part of the school campus and then they could do whatever they decide to do with it from that point forward Kevin they actually own it yeah still though yeah they own it i realized the school owns that as nancy just said is the idea of a private sale to an outside buyer been considered at all i don't know if the suckboard would be privy to that information it was considered initially and it was actually the school the school board at that time that school board confronted several realtors um commercial realtors and could not get a realtor that wanted to take the listing how many could sell it for two dollars i know we could buy it for a dollar sell it for two double that money at that time Kevin and the realtors were swamped with enough work that right that they had they weren't interested in that as i recall they were contacting commercial realtors so i don't think the commercial was going through the frenzy of sales that residential was during the pandemic um vick on zoom has something to add vick yeah just uh i just didn't respond also to kevin's question uh what one of the things we've learned in this process is that until all this environmental stuff gets cleared up and officially resolve um you know whether it's the flood way and the flood plain and the as materials all that no developer or real estate agent is going to want to touch the building so part of this process is to get the building ready for sale to someone whether it's the town or developer or where the case may be but until those issues get resolved nobody's going to want to touch the building Jeff get part uh yeah initially i um did uh check uh uh with a commercial realtor out of ruttland about uh and you know taking it uh they would not be listing that kind of a building on the mls they would have to market it differently he said it would take at least a ten thousand dollar retainer for him to start looking at the sale and he really wasn't interested in it because there are too many other towns that are in the same boat with municipal properties we're not the only one um like this um and frankly before even the realtor would become involved uh we would need an appraisal on the structure and that's about three grand for or three thousand square foot building is what i was told at least thanks martha martha you're up it's not as a report this is a as a voter i just have an opinion on the building i would really really like to see the town take over the building that's just my opinion simply because to me that building is an asset to the town in that it's the only place we have that's really good for public meetings obviously the auditorium and also the white work rally players um um it's or an asset to the valley and that auditorium is part of you know their um their place to perform etc etc there's lots of lots of reasons why i would love to be able to see that we could keep that building but that's that's just my opinion because to me it's a it's a um an asset to the town it's a public building but that that's just me saying that okay well until we could get some grant money to bring that three million dollar price tag of repairs to someone else's checkbook um i'm not sure the tax payers really want to load up that kind of debt so i understand i understand that but i i'm all for you guys going into um getting this these funds this funding is at all possible to you know i'd just would love to see the building kept as a town building if it's at all possible to get the funding to to make those repairs etc make a few calls martha i don't know anybody to call man i wish i did hey if i could write you a check i would trust me but it's okay i hope you do it if you win the lottery yeah right thank you anybody else on this subject why was he an active 50 permanent if it's less than 10 acres any of zoning codes it was what was suggested by the feds oh it's already a commercial well but you but you have less than 10 acres so active 50 doesn't get involved since you're doing that's why we're asking for what did i say a jurisdiction opinion yeah it's a complicated so it was a gentleman from the agency of natural resources that strongly suggested we do we get this now in case it rears its ugly head later that we should have oh that's crazy thank you okay we move on to the library no i've got one more thing here yeah it is in addition to that it has to do with the small grants for smart growth program um they visited us uh in january probably deb mathews oh yeah and um they're they're looking for some grant money to start something that would welcome new residents into the area provide services provide information to new residents and residents and um it turns out when they were doing their investigation into this grant that they really don't need to have us back them up to get the grant they can get the grant all by themselves they just need to designate the town of rochester as their fiscal agent in other words we would handle the money so all we have to do is vote yes we would be willing to be their fiscal agent um so that they can proceed with the grant yeah julie's all right with that okay you handle the money it's up to julie and chrisen go ahead with it yeah you second i second all in favor all right so so noted to them that we would be their fiscal agent do we have to sign anything no i don't think so we just needed to put it on record okay not yet yeah there may be something that until we have someone from the library no we do not let's move on to the highway department highway like saw john this morning they're still doing road stuff as far as winter he's getting ready to post the roads he probably should have done it this week but he hated to start too early he has been in touch with all the loggers about you know back and down being being careful early in the morning yeah and we have a meeting set up with cricket over at the riverbrook drive there's a little snafu with that that we're addressing this week i meet Wednesday with them uh to see and i've also been in touch with cricket about the wall out here and she's going to be revising that paperwork so we can put that out out the bit and get that started because we need to address that and that's about it okay we do have the frosties yeah we're here you're plenty right on time yep terry utility operator yeah everything good so we like to hear so you made it through the big freeze without any problems yep don't spoil it what's the next holiday isn't that what i'm uh i believe the energy coordinator is next jeff are you ready to give us a report is jeff go ahead yep um well i'm doing a lot on the library basically trying to figure out what it's going to cost us to stop the water intrusion on the north the east and the southern side of the building um we've got a building with a lot of lead paint on it so we're going to have a need really for a staged kind of contract we'll have to have a contractor that's certified in what abatement take the cloud off of the building we're going to have some repair through the framing of the building which we can see a little bit of it on the outside of the water behind us i am pricing materials to put the building back in a condition where it will hold up for a long term pouring through the energy audits that were done on that building in the past to identify which things were done and which things have not been done yet it's a very uh i'm learning more and more about that building and it's pretty funky we've got a sewer line right that's really outside of the building envelope at this point um we know we've got some roof leaks and it's a heck of a roof to get people up on through i'm gonna try to find out what it would take to get a lift there so that we can get up on that roof it's four years old galvalume doesn't last according to the manufacturer much more than that and hopefully and jimmy harvey's been up in the attic of that it says that he identified where the leak was but i don't think we can fix that leak from underneath but in any case i am i'm looking at that and working with two rivers out of creche to get a scope of work together pricing analyzed and then there's some murp grants the largest one is up to five hundred thousand dollars and i think we're going to need two maybe three different grants we will really we will need a little bit of architectural review make sure that the scope of work work fits within a construction um a normal bid process so i will have the scope of work to the select board from another week or two okay we look forward to that anything else that's good enough for you thank you you got a lot of work in the hands christin do we have any grant updates um yeah we've had a couple um we did receive we were awarded um for the part three grants so that all went through great um we're good to go right we can start whenever we're ready um and let's see on january 30th um the security cameras um for the fire department that grant um those cameras were installed everything was completed so i have sent the reimbursement request for that so we're waiting for thirty one hundred dollars um back on that and you took my other one who monitors the cameras is it just internally um yeah right we um by the way i didn't ask you um we have a meeting with the tech guy on Wednesday night at five to go over that and how that will all work and to answer some questions that we have those to you okay forgot to tell you that so noted thank you so the it's got a looping tape yeah it can have like i asked a couple of general questions the other day it can have audio and or video one or the other doesn't have to whatever it will store um for some period of time he's not sure it just it depends on like the activity um and it doesn't go to anyone's phone yeah yeah we're not going for that where we'll have like a login um to a website or somebody will but i'll be able to answer more of that after wednesday and it sees two three sides of the building it goes to it points on the two entrance doors going into the firehouse okay good to know thank you yes could i point something out okay vermont is a single one person consent state with audio recording which means that if you're going to record somebody's audio if i want to record any of you and not tell you i can legally do that but if i want to record two of you talking and i'm not part of that conversation that is actually in the state sounds like a little violation of open meeting law well just any any two people so you should really keep that in mind i wouldn't say we'd be coordinating i don't think there's any reason for the audio or the audio you notice for the pictures are basically like a game camera more or less could be a concern basically basically and that that refers to uh private and public property like somebody that has a ring on their house if two people are talking in front of their their their ring thing that that's a violation that would be a violation interesting what if you have signage isn't there signage you could do it i don't really know i think there is dives into the law of that fire i think there is something that says that there needs to be like visible signage and that's why i printed those out does that sound very i don't yeah um but yeah that's why i made those signs right but you see it not every album you see a yeah but i don't have any signs at my house i guess i'm under violation because i've got quite a few good recordings i'm not sure if it applies yep huh interesting no you can record somebody talking to you on the phone without telling them not very nice but you didn't do it or even if you're outside having a conversation you can record it but you can't stand there and record two people and neither one has any idea we are recording this meeting we know that by the way and that's completely thank god oh dear double recording okay so where do we stand now folks we're good any any other public comment okay oh martha hands up she's unmuting let's say you just a quick question you were talking before about the town reports coming out and everything do you have a ETA for that when those will be issued will be arriving in our mailboxes um i dare say maybe you could look at in your mailbox on Friday please ignore frank no they're being they're being labeled and sorted right now okay so probably by the end of the week yes okay thank you very much for all your hard work everybody and thank you everybody for coming to our meeting we enjoyed it we love having a lot of attendance so come anytime you'd like thanks for listening we're gonna pay some bills meeting adjourned set that there are you too all right second