 So we will call the meeting to order 602 first on the agenda is to approve the agenda. Does anybody have anything they'd like to add or amend or is the agenda good as written. I move we accept the agenda as written. Second. Okay, all in favor. All right. And then public comment inquiry. Now is the opportunity to bring up anything that is not on the written agenda for this evening. Looks like Adam Saffron has just popped on as well. Trees. So. Yep. Yeah. Is there anything anybody would like to bring up or add. Here comes Owen. Doesn't look like it. Of course, as I found out with these meetings, probably half the people are talking and they forget the unmute. I'm sorry. I always like to pause for a few minutes because people go on and they forget their meeting. So. If we don't hear any, then we will move on to the first item for the night. So the big topic for the night is we. Was our discussion in regards to which we've had. COVID-19 here for a few months now. And at our last meeting and feel free to jump in any of the board members. I think we've talked a lot about the impact to the downtown businesses. I know Jesse and Owen were on last time with us. So we, we started talking. Kind of about the, the, the down, the impact, the downtown on. You know, I guess currently the businesses are, you know, some businesses are doing very well. Some businesses are still not open. And some businesses are kind of in the middle of, you know, some businesses are still open and, and so we started talking about, you know, the current. Trying to keep up with the current. The bills, like their legislation that's coming from the federal government to the state and the things. And then kind of how things are looking on the state and the things. I know. Linley has done a really good job with our board as kind of being a liaison of getting information from the business end of things so that we understand that. But we started talking about, you know, what are the current offers, which I think we know most of what's out there currently, but what may be coming either what got passed in the most recent legislation that's heading to the state. And then as we started talking late was, you know, maybe there's an opportunity for some of our business, business owners. To talk to our local legislators to say, you know, this is what we really need. And so I think it's really awesome that we were able to get our, some of our representation on the line this evening. So Senator Cormack and representative Hass and Senator Clarkson. So I thank all of you for taking an hour out of your time this evening to be with us. I think I just kind of want to open it up to maybe, Linley, if you don't mind, you want to maybe open it up on the business end of kind of what we were talking about last time. And then, and then maybe we can get some input from the senators representatives on where we're at, where we're going. What can we expect? Yeah, I mean, I don't, I don't know if I have much more to add from what you've already said. Other than, yeah, we have sort of a mix of different businesses in different states of open and closed. And now that some can open and, you know, you know, last, last time we met with Jesse and Owen and talking about the bar and the honor block sort of in a similar boat of even the reopening doesn't mean that it actually is worthwhile to reopen and looking at some of those realities that 25% capacity doesn't always make sense to reopen at. And so businesses are doing that hard look. I think maybe just giving the, the senators and representatives of Florida kind of speak to us about where things are. And then shifting into questions make sense. Yeah, I. This the hour here really is going to be mostly Senator Clarkson. Oh, she sure. Well, she serves on the economic development committee. So she's our expert. But I wanted to just introduce, if you don't know Senator Clarkson and representative, you know, I'm going to introduce you to the committee. I'm Andy Haas, who represents our whole house district. I serve on a pro on the Senator. Knitka sensor regrets she had a conflict. That's one of the advantages of having three senators. I served with Senator Knitka on the appropriations committee. And so one of the things we're trying to figure out how to do is what to do with $1.2 billion. It's coming from the federal government. It's called the cares act. COVID aid and relief. Economic saves you or something. We just called the cares act. And it's a $1.2 billion. Those who are old enough will remember. Everett Dirksen. Republican US senator back in the 50s and 60s who said, a billion dollars here, a billion dollars there. It's a billion dollars here. Pretty soon you're talking real money. And it is amazing. How quickly you go through $1.2 billion. It's really not enough, but we're trying to allocate it. And there are a lot of strings attached. They're reasonable strings, but it's got to be COVID related expenses. Not paid for any other way. And, and that's the kind of. I want to talk very briefly about one bill we've got, which is $16 million for municipalities. $14,850,000 for towns, cities. Another $1 million for Gore unorganized goers. And the unorganized towns of Essex County. They actually get a special, but mainly that one million also goes to the counties because they're differently governed. And that has passed the Senate. And there is some problem there. The governor's advisors worry that it won't pass muster with the federal requirements. So, but we'll see what happens with that. We also have. Can I just ask a question? I don't think it has passed the house. I mean, it's waiting for the governor to sign it. Okay. I didn't realize it had passed. No, I'm asking you. No. Sandy. I think it has not passed the house. Is that right? Yes. Yes. Yes. I do not think it has. Okay. Yeah. Yes, we have no bananas. The, uh, The, we also have a bill in a similar situation, which the Senate, we have different advisors, economic advisors, the joint fiscal office thinks that, uh, a kind of heroes pay will pass muster with the feds. The governor's advisors think otherwise, which is that we have extra money for people who are on the front line. And, uh, uh, that again, that has passed the, uh, the Senate. And, uh, we'll see what happens with it. And again, I think since your main concern was business, uh, Senator Clarkson is our expert on that. And Sandy, I didn't ask you, you know, you do have, you want to speak for the report on the house at some point? Um, uh, I want to hear from Allison because my understanding is most of the action is there. We are just starting to put together our own little list. Yeah. No, Allison is our resident expert on a. I'm hardly an expert. Senator Clarkson. Good. Good evening, everybody. I can see that it's the, I can, I can see most of you. It's good to see you all. And, uh, I'm Allison Clarkson and along with Dick and Alice, uh, I have the honor of serving you as one of your senators. I serve you in two capacities, which are really in the, in the eye of the storm in our response. Uh, I serve as vice chair of Senate economic development, housing and general affairs. And in the afternoon, I serve, uh, on Senate government operations. So in terms of your wearing your municipal hat, uh, a lot of the response to it for public safety, for municipalities, for the open meeting, all those laws that we adjusted came through. One, uh, it's came through Senate government operations. Um, and some, and you know, we can chat about that at another point. Um, you're, you're clearly aware of the governors. So we have this bucket of $1.25 billion that is the, the, the Corona relief fund money that has come to the state by formula. So all the small states got the same amount. Um, and out of that, we have to, to do many, many things and the governor got the conversation rolling. And there's immediately 200 million that has been used for immediate response. There's roughly 300 million designed for healthcare, uh, and 400 million at the moment is being looked at in it, uh, economic development. And it was, as you know, broken down in, uh, several, several ways. There was a, a bucket of 250 million put aside for emergency action grants and loans, but the, uh, in their proposal to, to, for financial assistance to businesses, another 50 million for housing, uh, 5 million for technical assistance and 5 million for marketing, because we need to bring people back to the state as you're all well aware. Um, it's a huge amount of money to move and a huge amount of money with, and they, to their credit, I mean, it's all happening very fast. The governor's proposal came without much form and without much to, uh, without much policy attached or how to do it. And so we have decided after a week of discussing this, that really the best thing is to give this, uh, to give it back in, to the administration to just roll out the initial things that we thought were quickest and most able to be rolled out relatively fast. And their proposal was to do 50 million, uh, immediate grants because almost no business. I'm sure all your businesses in Bethel don't want to see another loan. So most of the work we're talking about now is grants and the loans are more complicated. The Vermont economic development authority, it, uh, it's complicated because the feds will not let the grant, the loan returns stay with the state. Everything has to go back to the feds. And, uh, so the loan work was bogging us down in terms of quick rolling out money. And we decided, you know what, we just want to get this money out as fast as we can. Uh, so the, the tax department has said, we can quickly roll out grants. We particularly for trust company, uh, companies that work in trust tax. So companies, businesses that deal with sales tax, sales tax, rooms and meals and alcohol. Easy for us to assess their viability. Easy for us to see what they, what they, uh, took in in revenue last year. Easy for us to figure out with a formula, what they're going to get an assistance in a grant. Easy to do, uh, uh, an application online. Tax department took this on because they're doing very little auditing right now. They, they have people who have time to do this work. So we said, why wait, let's get 50 million out the door to in some ways, some of our most vulnerable businesses, which are the businesses that have been completely shuttered, uh, our lodging, our restaurants, a lot of the most vulnerable businesses. And we said, you have to have lost 75% of your revenue between March and September. And if you meet that criteria and you're, if you're going to collect trust taxes, you're, you will be eligible for this. So that, that is, uh, the first piece. Then we did another 20 million. This just passed out of committee. It'll be on the floor tomorrow. If you're interested in watching its debate and discussion on the floor of the Senate tomorrow, uh, we did in another 20 million, same criteria, but for non-trust tax companies. Uh, and that could be profit, nonprofit. All of these can be profit or, uh, the nonprofits are challenging on the trust tax, although as you know, uh, we collect taxes on tickets. So if you're a, uh, a promoter like pentangle and Woodstock, you, you know, you collect trust tax. So you conceivably, or a kingdom County productions or, you know, whoever, uh, that would make you eligible. So the next 20 million is just again grants and the RDCs and the, uh, community action groups are going to be, uh, working with the most vulnerable, the smallest micro businesses, um, and businesses. And the RDCs are going to work with slightly bigger businesses. Uh, and they have two categories of under five and over five. Anyway, we tried to keep it very simple and we've given it to the agency of commerce and community development to actually figure out the form, how they want to roll that out. But we have given them the money and the, the direction of the, of the need. They wanted 50% loss. And we said, you know what, these are the most vulnerable. These are the ones that really need it right away. And, and so we're going to start with the people who've lost 75% of their revenue between March and September. And so that's sort of the big picture. And we really are, are rolling it out fast so that, so that hopefully it, um, they have mechanisms to make it happen relatively fast. So we're hoping that by beginning of July, people will see money. In conjunction with this bill. I'm happy that most of you who are staying on top of this know that the federal government relaxed their, uh, pay check, uh, protection program. And expanded the, uh, Elegy, you know, expanded the eligibility, you know, the first role of PPP went fast. And then all of a sudden realized people realized they couldn't comply with it. They couldn't spend it in the timeframe that the feds had, had decided. So the, this next one. Is great because instead of eight weeks where you had to, it was payroll protection for eight weeks only. This is payroll protection for 24 weeks. And it's, uh, it, uh, it improves because it's the expenditure requirement is now 60% instead of 75%. And so there are big improvements. And any business, uh, should be who's interested in those more, uh, expanded opportunities should be talking to their bankers right away or to the, uh, uh, Vermont small business development corp. Uh, the chap who's very, who deals with us in our neck of the woods, Ross hard. So, um, that was great news because I think that will be more money for, uh, small business, uh, faster. And that will be, uh, that is a forgivable loan. As you know, it's a, if you live up to the terms of the deal, uh, you, the loan is, it comes initially as a loan, but it gets forgiven if you fulfill the obligations of, and the criteria. So that is sort of the big picture on that. The other piece that we're working on is we're also doing a quick role. And so one of the challenges is this money has to be spent by December 30th. So it's the grants are not going to be a problem. I don't think that's a problem. But on the housing side, which is a huge piece of our economic development, the housing side, it is a challenge. So we are rolling out 20, our bill at the moment is $23 million out the door ASAP for capital projects that permanently, that solve permanent problems of, you know, as, uh, of primarily of the homeless and the, uh, and the, those who need the most affordable housing. So we, as you probably know, I mean, it's really Vermont as we have together done really well. I mean, and in the homeless area and Sandy knows this just as well as I do, we have done an exceptional job overnight practically in a week. We, we housed a 1600 families. Uh, it just amazing. And compared to Boston, we had not one COVID patient as a result of being able to get them in safe, healthy housing fast in all these motels that were empty. We, we kept the homeless population, uh, no COVID cases until I think last week, Boston, on the other hand, a third of its homeless population got COVID. So we, you know, we have many things to crow about, but that was one of them. And what we're seeing is that some of those motels and hotels in white river, we have a couple, um, that are very interested in being bought and rehabbed and, uh, that can be done quickly. But again, the guns to our head to spend some money has to be spent. It can't just be allocated. It has to be spent by December 30th. So that, uh, as Dick said earlier, that limits a lot of what we're able to do. Um, so then the other piece that, uh, so that is the second piece of our economic development rollout is the housing piece, which is 23 million of immediate money. So tier two is going to be the rest of all that money and it will be done by the end of June. So it's not that we're not doing it as fast as possible. We are, but we knew we had structures upon which to hang that first 70 million in economic development money. Um, and that coupled with the PPP expansion should, I hope, mean that small businesses, uh, have opportunities. They didn't have a week ago, which is right. Um, and, uh, what else? Before, um, not, you know, I'll take a breath. How about that? What's the tier two? Could you explain what you're just saying? Tier two is the rest of the money will be done by the end of the June. What's that tier two going to look like? Who's getting that money? That's what we need. That's all requiring more work. And that's why we decided to roll out the money that we knew could be expended past. So the governor, the governor's proposal that we're working with is 250 million in economic financial assistance to businesses. Uh, that includes, uh, 50 million to agriculture, which we probably won't spend because I'll tell you why in a sec, but that is 150 million to, to businesses, uh, plus 80 million to business, to loans and grants. So grants was going to be initial action grants. Initially 150 million, uh, loans and grants through Vita were going to be 80 and, uh, another loan program, uh, what's going to be 20. So that was, uh, and then agriculture, we were going to do, uh, 50. So immediately out of that 250, we're rolling out 70. So the rest of it's phase one, it's not tier one to do. It's phase one and phase two. And phase two is right behind it on its heels and we'll be the rest of it. And we're also, you know, the ed fund, as you know, has, is going to have a big gap. No, the legislature is not asking for any reduction in school budgets that were passed. We feel that stability right now is critically important for schools. And so what we're looking at though, is a gap in the ed fund. We need to save money until we get, we're hopeful that another big infusion, as you know, is going to come because that's going to be the key piece for the state and for municipalities. The 16 million divided between 251 towns is going to go fast. Seems like a lot of money, but as you would know better than I, that's going to go very fast. So we are very hopeful that in the second, uh, in the, Oh, I don't know, third or fourth, but what they're calling the heroes package or whatever it is, it's for states, municipalities that there'll be more money for education and that will be able to fill the ed fund gap. And if not, we're saving some money out of the 1.25 billion to pay for the gap in, uh, the general fund and the, um, and the ed fund. So it, we, anyway, does that answer to raise the, uh, it's the 70 million out of 250. Right. So. The rest. Yeah. I guess I just wanted before we got too far ahead was just give the, you know, if anybody, Jesse or Owen or Dave or anybody else, any of the business owners of, you know, based on the information that, that Senator Clarkson just, um, went through, was there, did you guys have any questions of, or need any more information or have any comments towards that? Jesse and Owen are of course a trust tax business. So, and they are the most challenge because they have a physical distancing challenge at a bar is brutal. So, um, everything about a bar is about being close to each other. Uh, even the physical makeup of our bar, um, we measured it and the distance that bartenders have in between ourselves, the physical bar and the customer is less than two feet. So, um, it's just, yeah, we, we, we feel like we cannot open for many reasons until. The virus is understood better. The pandemic is understood better. Um, we just feel really worried about keeping our customers safe. We feel worried about folks coming in from other states. There's one door handle that every person touches. Um, it's just like so, so many pieces of it just feel. It just feels, honestly, it feels kind of reckless to open. Um, without, and, and also at 25% capacity, we cannot make our margins. So the reality is that financially we can't open yet under, even under the governor's orders. Um, so I don't have any questions about what you said. I feel like we, we watched an ACCD video that explains some of these things, but it's really good. They're kind of what the, what the government's recommendations have morphed into on your end, because that's what we want to know. Right. Well, the governor proposes and we dispose. And so we have to do the appropriating and that's why we're a team and we're, hopefully what is also, I think a good thing is that we've been rowing together pretty successfully. Wouldn't you say Sandy and Dick? I mean, we, it's, it's happily not been divisive. And sadly, as we all know, spending money sometimes gets divisive between couples, between legislatures and their governor. I mean, you know, it's, that's where the, well, Robert hits the road, let's say that. So it's, uh, we're trying to, anyway. And we, Jesse, have you, can you just tell me, Jesse, no one, have you gotten, uh, uh, did you get, um, a vital loan or did you get a PPP grant? Yeah, we applied and we received a PPP. We bank with Mascoma. Um, it was a pretty smooth process. Um, at the first round of PPP, we have spent zero of it because we haven't been able to hire our staff back. Um, so we're kind of, we were, there was a period of waiting. It felt like at first it was, we'll be open in two weeks, then a month and three months, then we're just, we, we understand that it needs to be spent. Um, we don't know if we should pay our staff, even though they're not working. They're also on unemployment. We don't want to mess with their unemployment right now. So. We just haven't known what to do with the money. It's literally sitting in our savings account. Um, And I, I touch base with your banker and see if you can roll your, what you've done already into the next, this new expanded, uh, uh, rule that the feds have allowed for the PPP. Yeah. That is really helpful. And also, I didn't say that I meant to, but thank you so much for your leadership. We love, and appreciate you very much. Thank you. Well, thank you. Chris, can I ask a question? Sure. Was that Adam? Yeah, it's Adam Sopper and to our legislators. Um, have you guys put together a best practices document where you go out and sample all your respective towns and the five to seven businesses that are core to Vermont and figure out who's being clever and unique and coming up with interesting ways to operate interesting ways to work with their financials, interesting ways to deal with their employees. You know, that's a great idea. I mean, we have no staff to do. I mean, you know, we're just us, but a CCD, uh, and they've been flat out too, but you know, that's a great idea. And the task forces that the governor set up, that's a great idea for Ted Brady and, um, the restart task forces. Um, and in each sector, you know, we're getting a lot of emails saying, Oh, cheese needs 50 million and the arts need 50 million. And I mean, everybody, you know, we all need 50 million. I mean, we do not have enough money to make ourselves whole right now. It just is a fact. Uh, we can help and it's bandages, but we cannot, we do not have the money yet to make ourselves whole. And that's, that's hard. That's a hard reality. But you know, the best practices Adam is a great idea because in each sector, there got to be best practices. And I will give that if I may, if you email me your contact stuff, um, I'll send that to Ted Brady, but because I think that's a great idea. Yeah. The other thing that, you know, I'm marginally concerned about is that this whole episode, it's kind of exposing, you know, problems that we have with our local economy. And I know none of this new money can be channeled towards basically reshaping our economy, but there's certainly things that we need to deal with, you know, particularly some core businesses like agriculture from meat cold meat cultivation, which are just, uh, you know, systemically declining and how Vermont is going to deal with that moving forward. But I imagine that's a discussion for another day. One other quick question is the pension, which I think some of you know, as a pet peeve of mine, the defined benefit pension, how are we going to top that up this year? And then, and then I won't ask any more questions. I don't know the answer to that. So what we can find out, but I, I don't, I don't know what we're doing about that. So none of this money. I mean, COVID clearly is going to blow a hole in the tax receipts, which is going to leave the pension plan exposed. I don't know. I don't know. Oh, absolutely. But that's a finite. I mean, I know I hate to say this, but that's the, the finance committee and, and in some ways, govots obviously also. And I just, I don't, I don't know what we're, we're protecting ourselves as best we can. We have Cerberus at the gates of hell, protecting all our funds. And that is best peers. Our dogged treasure, who is, who is very protective of those funds. I mean, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know if I can get an update from her. I mean, I bet a few. Yeah, I just don't know the answer for you. What they're doing. I guess is they're being as best protected as possible. Okay. All right. Thank you. Yeah. Eileen, did you have a specific question? Eileen. You messaged the group, but I wasn't quite sure. So downtown Bethel is getting a double whammy. So it doesn't make sense for all the businesses to open. If their roads going to be torn up again to work on the water lines. And that will access funds. Which business is yours? We're dandelion acres. We're actually up there. Okay. Yep. But I know, babe, it would, it would affect babes bar. And everybody, the, the sandwich shop in town. Yeah. Nils hardware. Bethel. Everybody. Yes. And we have been working. Certainly we let everybody know. Obviously we had to do the upgrade in order to support Bethel businesses as well as, you know, the people that use the water system. So we are going to have one lane of traffic open and we have installed three web cams so people can see what traffic looks like. We, we so far knock on what we haven't had any big traffic backups. So we're trying to keep one lane of traffic open. And we have worked with businesses to have them. Allow them to do off-premise signage. We are, we just made it to the second round of a $7,500 grant to promote the businesses to do advertising. And so we're trying to do whatever we can on our end to let people know that Bethel is open for business due to the waterline project. But it was something that was long overdue that we could not avoid. No. So, but I'm sure some of the money that's coming is businesses are closed due to COVID, not because of the waterline project. Yeah, but this is like a nail in the coffin after last year. It was such a fiasco with having all of a sudden the paving crew show up while the power lines were being re-strong. Now we've got out the power lines. They had all sent us letters. Yeah. But paving crew, that was a surprise. And that really interrupted business for us and for downtown. And people close because of COVID. And the other part of the other piece of that is, is having to go through the grants and, you know, applying for the PPP and the items, all that stuff. You have to prove so many things. This is what you're using. And this is why it's happening. How are they going to prove now that they've got both of these things going on? Are those, are they going to get, I don't know, for lack of, because I'm tired and lack of any term, are they going to get screwed in the end? Because they can't prove it either way. What's happening? What's making their business? Well, I can tell you that last year, of course, that was a state of Vermont project, the town of Bethel. The paving wasn't a town of Bethel project. That was a state of Vermont project. So it's unfortunate that you weren't communicated to better about that. Power lines were, we kind of inherited that as well. That was a surprise to me. So while I think that people are going to be able to realize what is difference between COVID and what is different between the waterline is the fact that obviously, I mean, we're having Elena traffic open. So we're not saying that your business can't be open to the public. That's something obviously that's coming from the governor's order, but maybe that's a better question to be answered by Dick. Senator McCormick or Senator Clarkson. What she's saying is how is the business. When they go to fill out all this paperwork for the grants. Yes. Bethel is doing a $2.8 million water project. But how do people, how do they fill out the paperwork to differentiate what's COVID and what's water. Oh, in terms of what their potential loss is. Yes. Yes. And what the cause is. But this is COVID. Right. Not, but yeah. I would work with your bank. Or I would work with whoever I lean. Did you get a PPP grant? Yes. Yes, that was a lot of hoops. And the goal post. A lot of it. And sorry, what? And the goal post kept changing and still changing. And they just changed last week. Right. Right. Let me ask, was that problem with the feds or with. With our people who we can maybe bully. Yeah, it's hard to tell because our lenders were great. You know, the bank that we work with were absolutely great. And, um, but every time I said, Hey, you know, what does this mean? Or are we going to because our goal was not to have to pay it back because the last thing a business needs is to add to their debt load. So, um, she said, to be honest with you, I don't know. Because they're doling out the money without having the guidelines. Of. You know, and we were great. No, that, that's been a problem for all of this. I mean, the feds were very slow to do guidance and then they kept changing and it's still changing. I mean, thank God for this last change. I, I, I think that quite honestly. I'd get the advice of somebody who, who I would get some advice on that, but I would think that the, I would mostly hang your hat on COVID because the, you know, that, that is, that's where the, the, the financial support will be in terms of helping you through whatever loss you have. But are, are these programs going to make you prove that it's COVID versus, you know, because it's, it's a ditch in the ground. You're, you're going to have to do that at a station. And that is a double whammy. And that is partly why I'd ask for advice from either a lawyer or, or whoever you are applying. That is an interesting question. And one I can ask ACCD. I would think anyway, I don't have an answer for you on that. Well, I would think, I mean, I, I just, I would think that, you know, the COVID one would be much easier because you know exactly what your, you know, business financials are versus how your impact has been with COVID either up until this point or going forward, you know, the online projects between unknown businesses might stay the same, some might be a little better than some might be worse. So, you know, I think you, you know, again, you probably need to get some legal advice, but I would think that a majority of it at this point, you can, you know, the businesses that have been impacted are due to COVID did not, not anything to do with the waterline project. I would, I would just add first, first of all, I don't plan to be qualified to answer that question, but it strikes me. It strikes me at this point. How do you prove that it's COVID and not the, the, the ditch in the highway? One thing is that we've had ditches in the highway before. And the question is how much of your business did you lose them? And how much are you losing now? Generally, the ditches and the road slow, slow up the traffic flow and they hurt business, but then I'll close you down. And COVID has closed some people down completely. And anyone who's, who's still open is probably not being hurt even more than they would be just by highway construction. That's just off the top of my head being hit with the question just now that occurs to me. Now, I guess one question I had, you know, we will be, you know, it seems like it's far away, but it'll be here soon, but September when we start putting together our municipal budgets for the next year. And is there anything on the municipality and that we need to be aware of when setting our budgets either on. Highway or anything like that, that may have some implications for us. Yeah. The, I mentioned the earlier, the, the bill we have for grants to municipalities. And there are a lot of, of. The, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the conditions for getting that money. Part of what the bill does is it allocates money to the regional planning commissions. To act as consultants to municipalities. On how to apply. It's the agency of administration. It's the secretary of administration or designate. Who actually controls this. We'll be making the decisions, but your. Be with the appropriations committee saying stressing his availability for that. People may remember back during Irene. How the, the RPCs were very helpful. So I would suggest, if talk to the RPC for. Hold your hand while dealing with the secretary of administration. And. Yeah. No, I spoke with Peter Gregory today and he wasn't he's saying, They're hoping they want to help administer the money, but he hadn't heard anything yet. So, but you do think it's gonna end up with them? Oh yeah, if it passes, and I'm hopeful it will. No guarantee at this point, but I'm hopeful that that's, and also hopefully, as Allison mentioned, there are phases of money here. Hopefully we're gonna be, we're looking for hopefully to the feds for yet more. Because I don't think that the 16 million we appropriated is really all that much when you start looking at the need. 251 times disappear fast. Yeah, it's a start. What's the 14.8 million for cities and towns to be used for? What is any idea? Yes, again, there are a lot of federal guidelines, the more the guidelines, their federal requirements. It's gotta be COVID related. They will not pay for any existing expense that's not to help pay off debt or anything like that. And also the money's gotta be spent, as Allison mentioned, money's gotta be spent before the end of the year. And they're ahead of us in terms of schemes to get around that. When I first heard that, I thought well, okay, you can allocate the money to a fund and then you hit the fund next to no. It's gotta be spent on COVID related stuff this year. But I don't think that's too hard to do, frankly. I heard a rumor that there might be money available either the 14.8 or out of the care act for us to use for advertising for local businesses to try to bring people back to Bethel, is that true? That's part of the economic development package. That's the five million for marketing. And I don't know how Heather is going to the commissioner of tourism and marketing. I believe that that's where she's going to be heavily marketing the state. And so that's, I don't know if they're gonna be done individually, but my guess is that it will be regional disbursement for regional marketing. Yep. And Allison, if they do that, will that go to also to two rivers or would they also disburse that sort of money? No, that's a good question. I don't think for that. My guess is that'll be more the chambers, but I don't know the answer to that. Okay. Patrice, to give you a more specific answer, the wording of the bill. The money can be spent for the minute by the municipalities. Expenses have incurred on before December 30th, 2020, including hazard pay, supplies and equipment, sanitation, facility alterations, overtime, redirection of staff for first response needs and any other eligible COVID-19 expenses. Right. Okay. It's to try and make up some of your revenue, some of your costs that have been incurred because of COVID. Okay. Sandy, you also have, you have a package of funding too that you're rolling out in this phase. We are, we have been asked to go committee by committee and make recommendations to appropriations, but it's the same part of money that you have designs on that the governor has designs on. And as far as I can tell, people have mentally spent it about three times. So I'm, I'm, I'm nervous about that. For everyone's information, I said on human services. So I don't do economic development except for micro business. And so we're looking at things like childcare and getting, getting, continuing the lunch program through the summer for hungry children and hungry families. Those are the kinds of things we're working on. And those are big things. And Allison talked about our committee is not doing the heavy lifting on, on the homeless problem. But that's, that is huge. And that is something that that's actually one of the, one of the few kind of opportunities that's been presented by this crisis that we got, we got all those people off the street. They not only, not only did they not get sick, but they didn't make any of us sick because that actually was a very huge risk. And so there's an opportunity now to try to find some kind of much more permanent housing solution for this. So I'm looking forward to seeing if it can make that work a little bit. That will of course involve jobs in terms of, of construction and rehab, rehabbing buildings and such like that. So there's, there's, there's work for Vermonters in there. Oh, a lot. But, but basically the governor put a package on the table. The Senate has started on it. We're going to put our package on the table. And I guess then everybody's going to sit, sit down together and argue. Well, actually happily not on this phase one, phase one, we've been working with the house, both in, in house general and in, in commerce. So we're ready, it's greased, as they say. The wheels are greased for this one. And hopefully that, those bunnies are, are, are will be out the door, or at least on the way to the governor's desk to sign by the end of this week, hopefully. Dave Sanborn, I, do you have any specific questions that you want answered or concerns you have, Dave? No, right now, right now, you know, feeling, it's been a tough two, two and a half months, you know, surviving, I don't know what the future is going to bring going into this coming, you know, especially once they started digging up Main Street, you know, I'm concerned about it. I, you know, I understand the need for it, but at the same time, I may not survive it. I don't know. I'm hoping I can, you know, the, the payroll protection thing, the SBA loans, it was very confusing. Matter of fact, I talked to the SBA after they just dumped money into my account. They didn't even know what I can use it for. I mean, that's what's, things are just a little crazy with that. That sounds, that sounds odd, Dave. Did you work with- Hey, I called the SBA and he said, just don't spend it on payroll. Right. I said, well, isn't it going to be a loan? Is it a grant? And he couldn't tell me, but I honestly don't know. Well, that's very strange. That's what I thought too. Did you get a PPP grant too? I did get that. Yes, and I was able to bring back a couple of my employees, hoping that I'll meet the guidelines in order for it to be forgiven because I really don't need another loan. Right. You know, but I don't know. I'm going to be able to. One of the problems that we ran it when I'm running into is, well, now with takeout food, don't kit employees. So my tipped employees, which were making a lot more money, are not making any more. And, you know, I've up there, I've actually given everybody a $2 an hour raise, but I still don't know if I'm in the end of the day when this thing's over in two more weeks, three weeks for me, whether or not I'm going to be able to do it. So those are concerns I have. Those are concerns I have. And then trying to open up for customers is going to be, it's difficult. Right now I could have eight people in my restaurant. You know, is it worth it? Is it worth the safety issues? I know, I want to just, you talked about that. I don't know. I'm right now, I'm letting people come in an order, but I'm keeping the dining room closed. You know, I'm just like, you know. And Dave, Dave, how has the takeout business been? If, thank God for the folks at Cockadoodle and working with them, we were able to, you know, I took on lunch. They took on dinner. It helped even out the plane a little bit because it wasn't that much available. You know, again, I don't know what's going to happen in the next couple of weeks with them, you know, coming back, if they're going to come back a lot, I haven't had a chance to talk to them. So I don't know. Do you know what you got? I assume Cockadoodle's been doing reasonably well on takeout. Well, they're, for pizza, yes. For pizza, it has been. But, you know, I did away with breakfast because there's not the worst in cold eggs and pancakes. You know, I mean, no matter what you do, after you be a bank company, they sit there while people come to get them. It just, it didn't work. So, and a coffee is out of the question completely. The first week I threw pot to coffee away and said, this is crazy, I'm not doing anything. I think that's kind of, that's what we've been talking about here at the last couple of meetings is, you know, this cold COVID-19 experience is very unique because it doesn't hit all the businesses the same. So all the businesses are drastically different. You know, we have people, you know, we'll go from the extreme of babes bar, you know, still not opening because it doesn't make sense to open with the capacity limits that they have. You have individuals like Dave and Cockadoodle and some of them that, you know, now are relying on takeout food. So they're only getting revenue from one part of their business. Right. And then you have, and then you may have some, and then you may have some like, you know, the hardware store that's actually doing well because a lot of people are staying home and buying local. So it's, you know, the map of the need. Right. Well, you've got GW plastics and Bethel Mills and those are also different. I mean, it's, you have a very, I mean, like every town in a way, there's a big range. And then, and then not to leave out, and I know when we talk businesses, we think of the downtown, but there are a lot of businesses, you know, one person businesses that might be a roofing contractor or a logger or whatever that, you know, that they couldn't collect unemployment. You know, they haven't been able to collect a lot of these grants that are out there. You know, I don't see many of them on the phone call tonight, but you know, you know, they don't have a storefront, but they've been impacted. Oh, sure. I know, absolutely. But hopefully many of them have applied and gotten the pandemic unemployment assistance for sole proprietors and stuff. We should come and talk about that because that has been a problem. I know several local contractors who've applied who've been denied and people getting put through the ringer with unemployment as far as calling and calling and calling and getting denied. And I just keep telling people, call back, challenge your denial. And I know of at least two people who have just said they were just so frustrated they're finally going back to work and they just said, you know, basically to hell with it. So, and that's not right because they've been out of work. So it's been, as you know, it's been a disaster. I mean, finally things are slowly getting better, but I'm still dealing with, you know, a mother of three, single mother of three who's been 11 weeks waiting. And a lot of the weight for the people who are waiting, it's often because they have issues that need clearing. And the issues mean it keeps getting bumped up the chain for somebody who can actually make a decision. And that has just been brutal. Sandy, you can talk about the house members who've gone actually to help and have volunteered their time to work and provide intelligent thoughtful answers to these people who, because a lot of the people there don't know answers to give people who are calling which has been additionally frustrating. Yeah, that program was a few weeks ago. There were a whole team of house members who just handled phone calls. And actually they worked on the PUA specifically because the labor department, they needed labor specialists for the regular unemployment rent. PUA, it's, you haven't done your tax return and you don't know how much you made. And people haven't done their tax returns because they're not due yet. So it's been very complicated. Under the best of circumstances, systems usually are too narrowly defined. You think, the people setting up a system think they've anticipated every situation. And then invariably people show up who are not envisioned by this system. That is a constant problem in government. It is especially a problem now because we're in unprecedented circumstances. And I would say as a legislator getting the phone calls and emails from troubled citizens, please help me with this or that problem. But that's almost always the kind of the case is I'm not who they're talking about. I can't answer the question on the application because it's not about me. And that happens all the time. And usually as a politician, I can get through to the administrator and maybe have a crack at straightening it out. Now, you understand your legislators are being on hold or getting busy signals and leaving voicemails just like citizens. I do think it's getting a little better than it was. I'm actually able to solve some problems these days and going forward, hopefully we will be more flexible and responsive. But of the lessons learned, I mean, we're working on lessons learned out of this pandemic. And one of them is that we have to stay on top of our IT upgrades. The DOL, since the recession in 2007, they're functioning with three year old mainframe. They were up due for this upgrade for so forever. And what this pandemic really shows us is that we can't be this behind. I mean, we have to just bite the bullet on a lot of these upgrades because look what happened, the unexpected and we were unprepared. I mean, the IT capability of Department of Labor was incapable of dealing with 100,000 people out of work. I think Babes has a comment. Yeah, sorry, Jeff. Hey, y'all. I just wanted to echo a little bit of what Dave Dambore was talking about. And it's a question more to y'all. I think what Dave is highlighting specifically around the fact that tips are how people in this industry make their money, period. And people who are in the restaurant and bar industry do not have, often do not have employer sponsored health insurance. They do not have retirement packages. They do not have all sorts of things that we kind of at this point have acknowledged are necessary things for human beings who are workers. But our industry still does not invest in our workers in that way. And our workers are almost exclusively, you know, low-income folks, poor people. It's not like rich people are working bus and tables. You know, most of the workers are people of color. Our young people are older people. I mean, there's like so much in our industry that I think needs to be exposed. And so I'm wondering if there's any thought on the part of the legislature to think about this money instead of reinvesting in systems that weren't working already for our workers, if there's a way that we can use this money to invest in things like a statewide healthcare program for restaurant and bar workers or hospitality workers, if there's a way we can invest in a statewide retirement program that is for these type of workers who aren't making enough money to save money. Because I think I would hate to see us miss the opportunity of this pandemic, the crisis, the silver lining of that, like Dave said, the systems were not working already. So let's not just make them stronger. Let's think about new systems and center the people who have the least security as we think about what those systems need to look like. And I think the restaurant industry is one of those industries where workers spend their entire life working in restaurants and have zero retirement. And that's a problem. And we love restaurants, we love them, we need them. That's part of our life, it's part of our culture, but how can we invest in those workers as we would in state workers, government workers, folks fix in our streets, all the other types of work that we also need? That's my question. It's a great question. And actually there is going to be a proposal. I think it's going to start in the house. I'm trying to find it, because I printed it out, but the workers caucus is encouraging us to embed in all these changes. And sadly, I just don't think it's going to work with the federal criteria, but you don't get this unless you do blah, blah, blah. And I have it, I can't find it easily, but we can get it to you. It's, anyway, yes, there is discussion about that. And sadly, a lot of it is an extra layer that I'm not sure the feds, again, to go to, you have to comply with all these federal criteria. And I sadly think a bunch of the federal criteria just doesn't let us invest in ways that would make permanent change. It does in housing, for example, hopefully to make permanent change, but I'd love to be able to see permanent change in lots of the areas you've just so eloquently described. Lynn Lynn, did you have something? I saw your hand up there a little while ago. Yeah, thanks Chris. A lot of this really is kind of going back to what we were talking about just before Owen's comment. But really, like Chris said, a lot of, and I should probably state, so this is me wearing my Arnold block hat, not select board. So as one of the local business owners, what we're seeing is every single business is so different and in such a small space, each business is affected differently. And the Arnold block is one of those businesses we've just fallen through the cracks for every potential government option out there. We just don't meet the criteria. And I actually really appreciate that you have Senator Clarkson, what you were saying about the two different tier, not tiers, but the two different types of loans, one that will be from the trust taxes and then one that won't and it will be for-profits, non-profits, because that to me was the first sort of glimmer of hope that there might even be some funding options out there for us. And Lynn Lynn, I would encourage you to call Bob Haines tomorrow, because the RDCs are gonna be the crowd that is gonna be working, I believe in partnership with ACCD, rolling that 20 million out. So I would be in touch with Bob Haines tomorrow and say we wanna be in line, first in line on this. Yeah, and I guess my, in addition to sort of thanking you for thinking beyond that, I think I would also say, I appreciate that there has been consideration to flexibility up to now and that maybe even, and I get that you have to have criteria, you have to have means of deciding who gets money and how it happens, because like you said, it's not actually that much money. And when you start to look at it going out the door, it's gonna go very quickly, but allowing the business owners to have some flexibility to determine how it's spent to the best of their needs and not just you can only do X, Y or Z and maybe that's not their biggest need. Maybe that was covered somehow. And so just keeping that flexibility in mind would benefit the business owners on the back end of this. Absolutely. I thank you guys for everything you're doing. Well, and everything you guys are doing, you're keeping the ships floating. Just to go back to Jesse and Owen's question, there is a proposal, it's called the Fair Jobs Recovery Plan. And it's, you know, I just, I don't know what's gonna happen to what it is being proposed, but it has a whole range of requests that we can get to you. So it's everything from gender equity to accommodating flexible and reliable schedules to just cause retirement for termination, to practicing neutrality with regards to union organizing, to equitable CEO worker pay ratios, which we need to work on statewide, growing income inequality is one of the biggest things that keeps us up at night. And one of the, I think one of you, and maybe it was Adam talked about the fragility of our economy and how this pandemic has just torn the scab off that. I mean, it's so clear, you know, we know intellectually or before the pandemic, we knew intellectually that most Vermonters, a significant percent of Vermonters did not have $1,000 in their savings accounts. And we're seeing, you know, we've seen that sadly roll out in a heartbeat that people didn't, you know, how many of us are living paycheck to paycheck? It's just, and that is not healthy. I mean, that is not, when you go back to systemic change discussion, that systemically has to change for us to have a sustainable economy here. And boy, yes, I have nothing. Thank you, thank you. That's really awesome to learn that that is happening. Thank you, I want to know more about it. Well, we'll see what happens. We're, you know, that's also stuff we have to continue working on. And we work on it with raising the minimum wage and fighting for paid family leave. And for all the fights that we're fighting for, it's, we're getting there inch by inch, but you're right. This gives us an opportunity to maybe leap forward. And I'm not sure we're going to be able to hitch ourselves onto the federal money to do that, but we'll figure it out. Sandy, do you have something to add on that? That this is your world too. No, you've covered it well. We've done a good job up to this point. I think the senators and representatives for jumping on today, we've done a good job of kind of going over, you know, what currently is out there in the different phases that we could see. At this point, is there anything that, you know, the business owners would like to say to our representatives and in regards to maybe, you know, what they need that's not currently being presented, you know, so that when these decisions start being made, they can think about, you know, these other needs, you know, and somebody else had said it earlier. Remember, there's a lot of business owners that don't qualify for some of these current fundings that are available. And maybe through these next couple of legislations that, you know, the people that got left behind will get caught up type deal. So is there anything that's on any of the business owners, you know, Kurt or Rebecca or anybody that currently is maybe left out, like Lindley? You know, now's the time to kind of speak to legislators and hopefully they can have a question. And, you know, we're available, you know, email us, call us. I mean, we're available. It's not like we're going away after this meeting. So if something occurs to you, let us know. I mean, that's what we're doing. We are, I have to say, working pretty hard on all this. I mean, we're meeting regularly, every day, all day. But please be in touch. If you have another idea on these task forces, Adam's idea, I hope Adam emails me. I don't know what Adam's last name is. I didn't hear it. But if he could email us, we're all on the website. Just please email us with your good ideas and we'll get them to the right people. We'll do. Teresa. There was silence. All of a sudden there was a silence. Teresa was speaking and you're muted for a reason. Oh. No. Eileen, I just unmuted you Eileen. Okay. Well, what happens if there is a second wave? What is the, what is the legislature forecasting? And because a lot of businesses, if they do open and a second wave hits, that just doesn't end. And for us, we have to pre-plan what we're offering for future seasons. And if we have to shut down, we need to know ahead of time. We have no crystal balls. Right. Our incredible commissioner of health is making it very clear that we have to be planning on this. And that is why we're hopeful for the Fed's additional stimulus package because this money, as I said before, we don't have enough money to make us all whole, let alone think about a next wave. I mean, we're all thinking about it and we're trying to save money in this package to protect ourselves in that. But it's huge. I mean, we have to be planning on it. And right now we're just trying to get stuff out the door for immediate hurts. So. I think the question was, what perhaps are we doing now to be ready for a second wave? I'm gonna answer a somewhat different question, which is, I think we need to take the necessary steps to reduce the possibility of there being a second wave. And that is that people are starting to get a little bit sloppy about six feet, about face masks. And I think there's two basic classes of reasons. One is simply thoughtlessness and just neglect. But the other is that there really is this ideology out there that there's a God-given constitutional right to spread virus. And that we're taking away people's freedom by not letting them make us sick. And I think that we've got to really be clear with, and you can be nice about it. I just went out, I go out very rarely. I'm an old man, but I went to pick up a prescription and I found myself having to back away from people. And I wasn't mean or horrible, but I just said, six feet, please, please, like that. I don't think it was scolding them or being judgmental or anything like that. I think we have to keep with the program. Six feet, face masks, avoid spreading the virus. But we're also asking the state to reopen to tourists coming soon. That's a whole other can of worms for a lot of us. Yeah. It's a balance, it's a balancing act. I mean, look, what did we have today? 17 new cases yesterday or, I mean, as we open up, we are gonna have increased cases. And Commissioner Levine is the best equipped to understand and he doesn't seem faced by it yet, but I look at Winooski, it's gonna happen. Well, do we have any other questions from the business owners for our representatives before we? Rebecca Stone has her hand up. I think Rebecca has a question. Yeah, I actually have a question for business owners and government and one for our representatives and senators as well. So I'm really intrigued by Adam's thinking about how we can get creative and figure out some unusual business models. And a number of the White River Valley towns are starting to work together a lot more, especially with the Working Communities Challenge Grant and start to think creatively about this. So I'm curious if there are business owners on the phone who would be interested in having conversations with any of the other towns to think about whether there's something we could do together, either to market the valley, get the word out, ways of putting together unusual service delivery mechanisms, getting your things out that maybe don't involve coming to downtown Bethel when everything's dug up. I had a good conversation with Julie Ifland who's the executive director of Randolph Area Community Development Corporation last week about some creative ideas. And it seemed like maybe getting some business folks on the line from a few different towns would be a good step to just see what we could cook up. So I would love to hear if any of you are interested or put a comment in chat. To the senators and representative, I'm wondering, do you know any of the timeline on the marketing funding that's coming out? It is, yeah, it'll be in the phase two piece of the economic development package. Okay, great. So that might influence it. Part of what Julie was thinking is getting ahead of that marketing funding coming out. And I guess the last question again, I'll post to business owners and you can answer in chat or out loud. Wondering if there are things we could do as a town, and I'm specifically thinking in volunteers as well through Bethel Strong, to support you reopening safely, getting the word out, et cetera. So we do have a new website up that Jesse's brother built for us. It's gorgeous. And we're trying to deliver announcements there. So if you have changing hours or services or things like that, BethelVTstrong.org and there's a place to post your news. But wondering as well, would unified signage help to remind people of math guidelines or distancing? Or are there other things you can think of that volunteers could do or we could do as a community to support you? So I'll leave it at that. Rebecca, as always, thoughtful, insightful. I think we all need to wear hula hoops. Well, have you seen the full noodle hats that some communities are doing? I mean, you know, we were at the vigil yesterday and it's just a human instinct to get closer to people. It's very interesting. But if you have a visual reminder, like you walk around with a ski. You know, there are things that are, yeah, it's just people just totally the arbolavius. Yeah. So it looks like Jesse from Babes. Do you guys have a question, Babes? Yeah, I'm just curious for the legislators if there's a timeline for when this might be voted on for the next. The first package we're voting on tomorrow and it will, we're gonna probably do it through third reading and get it off to the house tomorrow. So the 70 million will be going to Sandy tomorrow and hopefully it will be out of the house because we've sort of, we've worked together the house and the Senate to make this happen. Hopefully we'll get out of the house Wednesday or Thursday into the governor. So hopefully it will be in progress by the end of the week early next week. I mean, it's, the money is there. We have the money and then the administration, the tax department, you know, they're just gonna figure out how to set up those systems internally to make it happen. But I think it's as fast as we can get it out. Thank you. All right. So, thank you, Chris, are you done with us? Well, I mean, it's always nice to talk to our legislators and we... You're, I'm happy to join you more often, particularly when we do it this way. It's much easier. Allison and I actually have another meeting to get to but it never ends. Yeah. I'm not complaining. I'm just, just in case you think we're getting a paid vacation. Thanks so much for your time. I really appreciate you willing to be here. I wanna thank, I wanna thank the businesses for your creativity and innovativeness and imagination, which is, this is one royal challenge. And... Huge. Yeah. We're doing it so far. You know, we're holding on. So thank you. Thank you. We thank you all so much. Thank you so much. We appreciate you. And please appreciate you. All these great ideas, please be in touch. Thank you all with, this was really, this was great. You said it. Thanks. Bye-bye. Thank you so much. I appreciate it, bye. All right. So we thank you, everybody that attended the the COVID discussion. Hopefully, hopefully it answered maybe a little bit more questions that that we didn't have answers for a couple of weeks ago. Again, you know, we'll continue to, I'm sure throughout the summer we'll have this as a discussion topic. So feel free to pop on at any time or reach out to Therese. I know we're always trying, you know. Absolutely. Best to promote downtown and help you folks out. So. Yeah, before you disconnect too, we should tell you, we just got the letter today. We did write a USDA grant to advertise for the downtown during the water project. And we just found out we made it through to the second phase. And we did get three webcam is installed. One at Mills Hardware, one at the town office, one at town hall. So people can, you know, keep an eye on the project without, you know, maybe rubbernecking. And also that could see what was going on. And just a reminder, if you have any changes, I know Dave Sanborn had mentioned at one point, possibly doing dinners. If you guys have any changes, let myself know or Kelly and we're happy to promote your stuff on our Facebook page. And if you get it to Rebecca Sanborn Stone, she will get things out on the Bethel VT Strong. So certainly, you know, keep that in mind. And once we hopefully we should know here in a couple more weeks and then we're going to start doing the radio spots and all that. So then we'll definitely be reaching out to you for information about what you need advertised. So that was a, we were happy to see that and get that letter today. How do we access the cameras there? Is that on the town website? Yep. If you go to the town website or to Bethel VT Strong, I believe that Kelly was on the phone with today with Rebecca and she was getting those links as well. So yeah, so they should be out there. Thank you. Help people keep an eye on what's happening. Great. Well, we thank you for everybody for attending this piece of our select board meeting. And it's nice to see a healthy audience. So it keeps things interesting for us when we have more people to talk to. It is. We're about to sign off, but we wanted to just say thank you, thank you, thank you to all of you for your work. You're amazing. We feel as newbies to this town we feel really lucky to be here and really lucky to be surrounded by such fierce and amazing leaders. And yeah, it's bringing us a lot of hope to know that we live in Bethel, especially while we've been closed for over three months with our brand new business. So thank you, thank you for your leadership. I know this has been like a really hard time on so many levels. So we just wanted to say we're really grateful. And we also just want to, before we sign off just to say that as many of you probably know, we're supporting David Fair in a rally on the 13th for Black Lives. David Fair is a Black resident of Bethel who's lived here on and off since he was three years old and he's now older than that, but I won't tell you how old. And it's happening on the 13th. We're gonna promote some stuff soon, but we believe that our town is a beautiful and amazing place and you all have shown us that since the day we opened and we're really excited to support David in his leadership. And I hope that we'll see many of you there. So thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Take care. Thank you. Great. So we will move on from our COVID-19 discussion, unless any of the board members had anything further. Okay. Next on the agenda, we had two individuals that were gonna resign their hosts with the energy committee. So I'm gonna entertain a motion to accept the resignations of Jose Lazo and Lauren Elmore. I'll move. Second. They all in favor? Aye. Do you know, Theresa, if they filled those spots or? No, they haven't. And I just was actually speaking with Rebecca Stone today and I sent her some links to a couple people. To the chairs, I spoke to Mary Floyd from the Conservation Commission and she appears to be the only committee right now that actually has people. So she was doing okay, but I did give Rebecca email addresses for the other folks. I was thinking about getting everybody together maybe for a Zoom meeting and trying to invite the public and so that they can talk about what they're up to. And I had already drafted kind of a two-page document and actually had just gotten it back from Deetree today after I got off the phone with Rebecca, just kind of letting people put on our website to say, this is what the planning commission does. This is what the DRB does. This is what the fire department's doing to try to get members because with Cecil Washburn just resigned from the planning commission, he's supposed to be dropping off a letter. So right now the planning commission is made up of Andrew Delaney and Peter Dorn. And I am the new planning commission member. So because you legally have to have three and I do not have to be a Bethel resident. I wrote to Sarah right about it at Two Rivers and she did a little research. And so I have to be on the planning commission in order to keep us legal. So we are herding for people. And we have tried personal invitations. We've tried Facebook posts. We have tried town meeting and all sorts of things. So Rebecca has an idea. But really it's outreach. If you know someone, please speak to them and see if they want to volunteer. A lot of these things are you're just asking for an hour, two hours, once a month. That's not a lot to ask to live in such a great community. So if you know someone, drag them to a meeting. Get them in your car and don't tell them where you're going. I've been working on Jesse quite a bit with that. And he seems to be interested in the planning commission side of it, but hasn't pulled it yet. There you go. Well, so we're hoping that Rebecca's idea works. And then we're also gonna, we're still doing something on the town level too. Of course, like I said, I just got that document back from Deetree and we'll be reaching out, making more requests of people. But if you know someone, encourage them to volunteer. I guess the concern that I have and I talked to Teresa about it and we've talked at the board level a couple of times is, the town is moving in a good positive direction and has been, I just, I worry now that it seems like maybe as a town, we're starting to get a little complacent on what's happening. And we're starting to see that with our community members on committees. We've relied on certain individuals on certain committees for so long, that have been 10, 20 year members. And it's unfair for them to have to be a committee member for their whole life. And currently what we're seeing and I saw at town meeting, for instance, a good healthy town meeting, I guess at least in my eyes is, if a board member or two board members are up for their seats, I would expect that somebody would run against each person. And to see the last, including myself a year before that, we've had three board members that have been re-elected without anybody contending with them. And I guess that's kind of concerning to me that maybe we're getting too complacent in this community and we could be in a very difficult situation soon of trying to fill a planning commission that has to have at least three members that we have two plus our town manager, it's not healthy. And we're seeing some of these committees that had lots of people now are down to one or two. And I don't know how we get the word out to people. And we're getting to a point where I know Theresa and I were kicking around some ideas about how maybe we can entice some people but we need volunteers to get on these committees. I'm just gonna revert back to old Beppel. Yeah, it's true. And the planning commission can have nine people. And obviously, and I make three now. So you're definitely looking to add more people. The Recreation Committee has three. I know, yeah, Ellie, you're on my list actually that I had given to Rebecca Sanborn Stone was that the Recreation Committee needs people, the Energy Committee needs people, the DRB needs people, the Planning Commission, I know. And we spoke to a lot of people. And I know last year when the pool was open, Deetree was telling a lot of people, get on the Rec Committee, get on the Rec Committee. And she spoke to a lot of people and a couple of times somebody might go to one meeting and then that's it. But I think people are forgetting that it can be a small, it doesn't have to be a huge commitment. It can be an hour, a couple of hours a month. Right. It's like the ones that are on the committee, I hounded and hounded for months and months and months and said, I bet you could be on our committee. I bet you could be on our committee. I mean, it's a matter of hounding them and saying, look, you wanna do this, be on our committee, be on our committee. So it's been like you said, hard. But I keep looking and we put a major poster to town meetings ago up on the back to try to get some members. We've advertised in the paper and so it's like spending people's backs or hands behind their back and saying, come on, you can do it. Yeah, you're right. Yeah, Rebecca, did you have, I see your hand up, Rebecca. Yeah, hey. So I focus on this a lot in my professional work, working with communities all over the country who are dealing with the same problem. This is not unique to Bethel at all. And I did talk to Reese just today about this idea of doing some sessions like this business roundtable tonight for the other committees to share what they're doing and get people excited. So I do wanna offer other creative possibilities if we wanna try to do it. I think one that surprised me is that there wasn't actually any real public event to get feedback on the new town plan to speak about the planning commission, for example. And I've found that in other towns, if you do that in an open-ended way and really bring people together and say, what do you really wanna see for recreation? What do you wanna see for energy or for any of the topics? People get excited and then they're willing to join a board if you follow up with that sort of thing. I just wanna say that the planning commission has had open meetings and has advertised their Zoom meetings about that and the select board, once we get the town plan, which will be close to December at this point, we will have public hearings about that as well. They have been having them and trying to advertise, but we definitely will, hopefully when we tackle it, COVID will not be a big issue, so we'll be able to do it in person. But there have been some meetings and we're doing more, but, and I did send you an email today of the list of the chairs, because I think your idea is a good one to try. Yeah, I'll say, I think what I'm talking about is not a hearing. And it's not. Okay. I thought you were talking about a hearing. I'm like, oh no, no, no, go spread that room. But like, you know, I think- Like Rebecca, like this is like a perfect example of my concerns with the town right now and lack of committee members is because when you get a committee that right now is really just on strings and- Yeah. They have really two members there and all they're thinking at this point is we just need to get a, right, I mean, by law we have to have a plan. So we gotta get it. Right. If you had a vibrant committee of seven people- Yeah. Five, let's say, won't get greedy, but let's say five, then at least you would have those, those, you know, out of the box ideas and let's, you know, share this with them. You know, let's get out into the community, let's get feedback. And right now when you have two people trying to do this, they're like, what is the minimum that we need to do to get this thing done? Totally. Yeah. And it kind of loses its meaning, you know? Yeah. But I agree. I was just gonna say, I think we're lucky in this town to have a lot of people who do believe and have skills to help organize and run that kind of event. So even if the energy isn't on the committees themselves right now, you know, BRI has talked about this before when the town meeting committee was active, we talked about this a lot and reached out. And I think one of these other groups could help set up a series like this and organize it and try to get to the point where there is new blood coming into the committees. And then it's kind of a reset. So if the town's open to that, I think there are people, I count myself among them who are happy to try to help with that and get the word out. Yeah. And get people excited. Yeah, we're definitely open to it. I mean, we have tried. We're, you know, I was telling you today, I've read a bunch of articles recently. One day in particular, I just read a whole bunch of different articles from across the country of how people were getting volunteers and volunteerism is a big problem. It's also a big problem for the fire department as well. And so I, you know, and a lot of them were, you know, we had tried a lot of the things and even trying to make like catchy Facebook postings and things like that. But I did send you that email and I have another email for you tomorrow that is the document that I got together to let people know more for the Bethel BT Strong website. But yeah, I think if you can put something together, let's, it's not gonna hurt, you know, we can get people to have, you know, of nine people on a planning commission to be great because you want everybody to be heard from. Yeah. Yeah. Doug, you said you were, you're gonna be on the planning commission, right? That was the hand up. Feel faking about it. I want to really thank you all for doing these Zoom meetings as well. I take it maybe there were more people for the business round table than a typical select board meeting. But this is a huge step forward. And I do think again, there's room to make a really concerted effort to make it feel more welcoming and get the information out in different ways. And I know you've all been trying, but I think there's still more we could do and people who could help. And I think if we're looking longer term at how to keep people engaged and involve the more continuing to offer this online option, even once we can go back to in person is a really important step. So I do thank all of you for all your efforts in thinking this way. I totally agree, Chris, with your points. And I think this is a great moment to try to work on it. Well, we appreciate your help but everything you've done with COVID and everything, it's always great to have somebody in the community that's so helpful. So thank you, thank you. Glad to help. I can see your lips moving, Chris, but I can't. Yeah, thinking here and Brady's starting to get impatient. So he's gonna take over the meeting here in a minute if I'm not careful. Our motions will look really different. Then we'll all be in trouble. So the records management and retention plan, did you want to take us through that quickly, Travis? Okay, so this is just, it's really a document that less doesn't really mean much to you but means something to us. It's basically storing. For years and years, the estate was the one who set the retention schedule. And the common answer for a lot of things was grand lists and a lot of the documents of the town treasure and town clerk create, it was to be saved forever. Well, that's just ridiculous. I mean, at some point you have to get rid of this stuff or it just deteriorates. So what the state stopped creating retention schedules for municipalities a while ago. And so each town was supposed to come up with their own. So that's what this is. And it's very long and very wordy and really just tells us how long we're gonna keep things. So what the plan is here is obviously we need to hoe out our basement because it's horrible and is the attic so that I can get it insulated. And one of the things is we can have this document path signed off on in advance, go through, shred, destroy, whatever we need to do with some of the documents. And then everything that's in a tote down there will have a sticker on it that says when it can be disposed of. Excuse me. So we need to basically start going through the documents and sort out what we need to keep and what we don't need to keep. Because we're hoarders basically. And if you went, that's Paul Valley. He's been in the basement. He's seen what's down there. And we need to sort through those things. So that is what the records management and retention plan really is. How long we're gonna keep things, where it's gonna be kept. What is the retention schedule for the state? When can it be recycled? And it's quite wordy. As you can see, they do ask for when a date on it at the town clerk, town treasurer has to sign it. And then there's a, just basically a note on there as to when the select board approved it. So that's really what it is. It's just something, and as you can see, it's been, the state archive is they want us to do it as well. So I don't know if you have any specific questions. Otherwise, it's really just a motion to approve the records management and retention plan as presented. So are we going to be, I just a quick question. So we would be adhering to the minimum retention schedule. Is that what your proposal? At least, yeah. In some cases, you're just doing the minimum, which for us is year. Some of it is forever. Some of it's 10 years. Some of it's three. So the state kind of sends it. And a lot of it is, yeah, we just want, like spoiled ballots. That's already in the election law that you only keep them for 22 months. And when that's whether or not we can recycle and whether we have to shred them or what we have to do. Right, I saw that. So like shredding, you'd have like what those professional shredding companies come in and. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, and trust me, we're gonna have to do that. Because we have a ton of stuff when we first go through it. That will be, it will be tough at first. But once we do it and do the massive overhaul and get everything taken care of and everything labeled so we can move forward with it, it's so much easier. Because then you just go down once a year and you deal with everything. Right, yeah. So I think that just makes our lives easier and makes it so we can clean out the pain. We can get it axially insulated in the basement and maybe install a door that goes all the way down to keep the critters out. That's the little things. And is there anything that we have to sign? No, there's nothing you have to sign. It's just basically a motion. If you look on page, oh shoot. Page two, it just says the town of Bethel Select Board reviewed and approved this procedure at their most recent meeting on June 8th, 2020. So it's really just you guys making an emotion that you approve it. Yeah, Jeff. Okay, so I'd entertain a motion to approve the records management retention plan as presented. So moved. Second. Okay, all in favor? It may just be one thing, Terese, that we'll have to include in our budgets going forward and maybe the first time around, it's gonna cost us more because we have gazillionaires of stuff down there. But then going forward, it probably won't be very costly if you're doing it on a year to year. No, I was actually gonna ask Jen at the transfer station. I know other transfer stations from time to time offer that sort of service where people can come down. I don't know if she's does that or if she's, maybe we could, sometimes they'll do it for real cheap. And but the other thing is too, we could offer them to come and set up in our parking lot and have other businesses bring their stuff. So they actually might offset our cost a little. So. Yeah, yeah. But anyway, so we'll see. But that's a project I'm hoping to tackle. I have to tackle this sooner rather than later this summer. Yeah, SecureShut does that. They have programs through AARP and whatnot where they'll set up in a location for an afternoon or whatever and everybody can bring in a certain number of baskets or whatever. Yeah, exactly, exactly. So, and if we can do that, they might reduce our rate versus, and some of this stuff can be recycled too. So it's not, you know, we'll have to see what's down there. I don't know. I think that anything that's in the attic is probably already destroyed or ruined. We'd probably, you know, I have to go up there and I don't know, with somebody bigger than me holding a stick. And so we can see what's up. Something moves, I don't know. Grace, did we hear about the insulation up there that we had to send out for? Yes, I did hear back that it was not their product. So it was not, if we had, if it was their product, which the name escapes me right now, Paul, they had like a trust where you could get it remediated. But at this point, it doesn't appear to be anything horrible. So, which is good news. Sounds good. Then we had COVID-19 update, which down here to talk about the pool and, you know, concepts, trees, and, you know, those are some of the most recent things and then anything else that comes to mind. Yeah. So, Deetree just put the finishing touches on her online River Safety brochure. I heard her on the phone with the school. She's also gonna be sending that to Rebecca Sanborn Stone to go on Bethel V.T. Strong. She's trying to get the school to also distribute it. She had spoken to the fire chief. She's, you know, looked at Red Cross. And so basically she's just trying to create an online brochure that we don't have to print that can be distributed to families in Bethel and possibly surrounding communities if we can get hooked up through the school. It just reminds people about some common sense approach to the river. Obviously right now it's a trickle, but because it's been so dry. But just reminding people, you know, don't dive in. You don't know what you're looking at. Make sure you have shoes on. You can step on glass, you know, all that sort of stuff just as a safety reminder. We're obviously getting some repair work done to the pool. We're gonna have, we need to have some outside spickets installed this summer. We're gonna have the building that's gonna get power washed. At least a couple ends are gonna get not stained or maybe a clear sealer on them. We're gonna paint the floors and the bathrooms, the floors in the office. And apparently the pavilion has these really big, like nuts and bolts that holds the actual pool pavilion together. And Deetree said, she's reached up to tighten a couple and they've actually fallen out. So that's one of the other things that we're gonna have. One of the young people doing that we are gonna pay this summer is to go around, you know, let's keep the pavilion upright. So we're gonna get all that stuff tightened up. And as you know, the swing set is down. And if you haven't seen Dylan finished excavating, I believe today for the skate park. He and I- He was over there. He was over there this afternoon. Yep. And I think he finished up. He sent me some pictures at the end of the day. They've installed some fencing around it. He and I met with Michael Parker from the skateboard guy last Wednesday. So Dylan has been in contact with him. And then of course, once the slab is poured, we're gonna need to keep a sprinkler on it for a while. At least two weeks. So excuse me, so we're going to hopefully get a couple of outside spickets installed. That'll just be easier. Keep them on timer and then maybe between D tree and Richard will keep the slab, you know, so it can cure. Because Michael Parker was saying that we need to at least have, I think it has to cure for at least like three weeks before he does anything with it. So that's about everything with the trees. Can I ask a couple of questions about, I love the new format of the website, but I was wondering with the pool clothes, is there going to be on the website anything about the pool is closed for the summer? I thought there was. So I guess I will all work that out tomorrow with Kelly. So thank you. Okay, and also I have another question that there's these yellow signs that say the playground is closed. Is there going to be anything on the website about the playground is closed? I wasn't planning on it because I felt like everybody at this point probably knows because of the COVID, but we can certainly let, I can put it up there with the pool that currently the playground is closed. Do you think anybody will be using the grills or the picnic table and the gazebo? Well, I think what we're going to end up doing is moving one of the picnic tables out from under the gazebo because they're too close together. So we're going to have to move that one. So whether people use them or not, I, you know, if anybody's gas, I don't know if people will use them or not, but we do want to at least move one of them so that they are more, you know, six feet apart. Okay, thank you very much. You are welcome. Absolutely. Thank you. So the other thing about COVID was on here was the concert series. I spoke to John Duddy the other day. I know that John is still advertising for his concerts, but he and I spoke and he's basically just waiting to see what the governor's orders are going to be. He knows his first concert is not until July 1st. So he's waiting to see what the governor's order is going to be. Obviously, if it stays, you know, 25 or 50, he's not going to, we're not going to be able to hold the concerts. I've already, I emailed him to let him know that I'd pulled his portalette because I don't have the staff to clean that thing twice a day. So we're just waiting to see, but if the governor's order stays at 50, then he's going to have to cancel the concert series because if there's an outbreak there, that is town of Bethel responsibility because they're part of the town and he doesn't have his own insurance. It goes through us, so. But I just asked him if I could just be part of the decision-making team when it got closer and we're just waiting to see what's going to happen. I spoke to Mary Floyd today. She obviously knows at this point that the forward fest is on hold. So again, everybody's just kind of waiting and seeing what the governor's going to do. No, I think I just want to interject into that, Teresa. And you and I had a conversation. Yeah. Let's do it so you know where I stand on the issue is as a town, we have to be careful. So regardless of what the event is, we have to be consistent. So if we're going to tell the concert series or the forward festival that they're not going to be able to move forward, then we can't allow people to gather in bigger than 25s of protesting or marching or parades. We have to either we're in or we're not. And fair to the concert series people to, maybe they could all socially gather responsibly at the band shell with their chairs apart from each other. But to say that we can't do one or the other and then let groups come in, most of the people are named from the town to do things. It's just at this point, we just got to really be consistent, I feel. Well, I think the difficult part is what a sanctioned in my mind and people jump in, a sanctioned town event is different than people exercising their first amendment rights. Even the governor in the daily notices that we're getting out, he's asking people to protest safely. We are not sponsoring that. We are not saying it's, we're not sponsoring those events. That's the way I'm differentiating. If we, the town of Bethel are sponsoring an event, then we are accepting the liability for it. If a group of protesters is gonna meet at Babes or is going to do a march on Main Street, then I don't really see us having a lot of legal ground to stop them and we're not sanctioning that event. That's not sponsored by us. That's not our insurance. So I don't know, what do you think about that, Lindley? Well, so I actually, I did wanna speak to just having been at the vigil that was at Babes the other night and knowing that they're planning a rally. They're very cognizant of also sort of promoting people's social distancing. Every single person at the vigil had a mask on and we're really good about it. And we actually had staged a whole handful of people we positioned ourselves throughout the crowd to kind of make sure that if people weren't maintaining distance, we kind of could give them that nudge to say, hey, you know, really, we're only doing this because we're all staying safe and if we're not staying safe, we're putting everyone at risk. And so I just, I agree with Therese, it's not a town sanctioned thing and I don't know if the town really needs to be stepping into that in any way, but just sort of for the peace of mind that there is sort of people are being really cognizant about those, even the organizers of it are aware of it and kind of putting things in place to help remind people to stay distanced and... There's a couple of points that I wanted to speak to also and one of them is I'm concerned about traffic control and I know it's not the town's responsibility, but if the ban shell of gathering comes in at many hundreds of people, I mean, they were close to 200, I guess, at the vigil. And if the group, especially if there's a lot of out of state people coming in to help support the cause, what's gonna happen when that group steps out into Church Street and makes its way down through and who's stopping traffic or who's making sure that both the marchers and the people driving through are safe and there are no incidences. The second thing is the, if you put that many people at the ban shell, I mean, we've all been to the Ford Festival where we've had maybe a couple of hundred at the most at the Ford Festival. If you double that, just thinking with the parking and everything, it's gonna be very difficult to keep the maintain that six feet. And I know the governor has created kind of a little bit of a double standard but allowing people to express their concerns and they've had the state actually passed out masks at some of the rallies that were held this weekend to make sure everybody had a mask. So I've got, there's a couple of concerns there but the town liability, it sounds like the town's not liable, insurance-wise or anything like that. But I think that it may cause a lack of cooperation from some of the Bethel residents to see this happening at a time where everybody is really striving to keep COVID out of this town. I agree. So I can tell you, first of all, this is a nerve, I haven't heard the rally, that's new. Last I had heard was they were walking from the ban shell to pee vine. And then I heard that they might go from the ban shell down past the Vermont State Police Barracks. Yeah, that's what I heard. I had spoken with Oscar because David Fair had called the office and so I had Kelly give him Oscar's number. And I spoke to Oscar the other day and David has spoken to Oscar, to the commander at the VSP and is working with them. So if they're going to march from the ban shell to the VSP, then the VSP is going to give them an escort. And Oscar said he's happy to, if he's the last car or whatever, to make sure that everybody gets there safely. But VSP plans on dealing with them because my only comment for Kelly to give to David Fair was the fact that once they had a certain part, they're on State Highway, they're not on Bethel Town streets. And so apparently he's had a great relationship working with VSP and that commander has a plan for that. And again, this kind of puts us in a tough position because you don't wanna start a challenge with someone about their First Amendment rights because we're all gonna end up in court and not paying for that. And if they wanna meet and they're gonna walk, if someone falls, say Dave Eddy falls and breaks his ankle on Main Street, we're not liable for that. We have sovereign immunity, the streets are the street. So if they're walking on the sidewalk, he's walking on the sidewalk. And it's not that I disagree with you, Paul or Chris, I totally am concerned about COVID. I've been turning myself inside out for months to have a COVID outbreak in Bethel now, but this is one of those times when you have to be really careful because you're right, the governor is issuing a standard that says, hey, protest safely. And so I think that if we just let this happen, David Fair seems to be super respectful in working with people and- Well, the posting on Facebook says that they're meeting at two o'clock and having some speeches, I guess, and possibly some music. And then at four o'clock, making the trek down through town and out to the barracks. Okay. Well, we do that- I wasn't aware of that. Exactly. If you're in the street, that's one thing. But if they're sitting on town property at the ban shell, we have liability there. This is the first I've heard of it. No one has told me that there was gonna be speeches at the ban shell. No one has said there was gonna be music at the ban shell. The only thing I had heard was that they were meeting at the ban shell and walking to the state police barracks. So I will have to reach out to David- I think it was the Babes Facebook page or perhaps there was another one too that Lindley might know what the other- Well, I know that David Fair's record label is Hustle Loyalty, I think. Hustle Loyalty, yeah. Something I'll find it. Can you send me an email? I don't do Facebook. So if you could send me an email, I'm happy to reach out to David because I'm sure if he has a record label, they probably have insurance. And we could just ask him for a proof of insurance because this is the first time hearing about that. That alls I heard was marching from point A to point B. So if you can give me his contact information, Lindley, I'm happy to reach out to him tomorrow and tell him if they're gonna do that, we just need some insurance. And to let him know there's no Portalette there. So if they're gonna have people there, there's responsibilities about Portalettes, COVID-19, et cetera. So- So in other words, we're giving him permission to use the ban shell? Well, we're not, I mean, right now, like I said, I'm just finding out about this now. This is not what I was told at all. According to the Randolph paper last Thursday, it said that they had the blessings on the town of Bethel. That's not true. I haven't given anybody- Not even if it was. Yeah, I haven't given person permission to do anything. So Therese, just not to push this back on you, but I would end up having, I'd have to reach out to Owen and Jesse anyway. And I'm wondering if maybe just reaching out to them because they are organizing it with David. It might be a little more direct than me reaching out to find out to you. Thank you. I am happy to do that. So I can reach out to Owen and Jesse then, because like I said, this is, I had just heard of all I was told about was marching. So how does this like word feel about that then? I guess, do you want to, if they provide insurance, if they provide Portalettes? I mean, do you guys want them to use the ban shell? Or do you want us to just ask them to meet there and walk to wherever they're going? I mean, again, you know, my stance is regardless of what the protest is about, if we're not going to allow our own citizens to use the ban shell for their normal activities, which would be the concert series or anything else, then why should we allow an outside identity to use it? I guess that's my opinion. I agree with Chris. Open it for both or we open it for nobody? Yep. Paul? I have to agree with Chris. And again, I'm in fear of what people... I'm in full support of the cause, believe me. Great. I've done my fair share of those type of activities long time ago, but now I have a great deal of respect for the organization of those types of activities. But I think that we're just opening up the possibility because then if we have another committee that wants to come in and do something, they could say, well, you know, you did it for them, so can we do it? Can you do it for us too? And I think it just puts us in a difficult position. I think we're in a really difficult position because the governor has said, you know, he's still going to say and recommend you municipality 25 people and we're not going to say anything about a group that wants to assemble in a protest. They can have thousands and not do anything about it. So I don't agree with that. What's good for one is good for another. I'm gonna have to agree with Chris. If we can't do it for our people, I don't think anybody else should use our ban shell. They can abide by the same rules. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, this is gonna be tricky. I'm gonna have to call someone tomorrow because, you know, us stopping the ban concert is not the same as stopping the protest. You know, that's a whole kettle of fish. I believe that there's a path forward here that doesn't put the town in a place of liability. And I think that, you know, trees knows those parameters and even spoke to them earlier. I really, I believe that there is a way to do this. It may not be them meeting at the ban show. We may have to put our foot down and say, you really can't assemble on town property to do this, but if you can find somebody's yard who's fine with you assembling on their yard and you can get the state police to escort you through the streets, then they've covered their bases and we're not putting ourselves in a position of liability. I don't think a hard no has to happen here. That's what I think. Let me call Jesse and Owen and maybe even Dave Fair and say, look, let me help you facilitate a way to do this, which is not on our property. Just explain the situation. We're already canceling possibly the Ford Fest. We're canceling, we've closed the pool. We've, you know, so if we do that, you know, so it's just gonna be a tricky to... So I'm with you, Lindley. I think that if I, Jesse and Owen are obviously great folks, easy to deal with. So let me just give them a call tomorrow and tell them where we stand. And just what I found out tonight is not what I believed it to be. I also wonder, Teresa, if you would benefit from reaching out to the state police to find out what they have or haven't agreed to before you have that conversation with Jesse and David, just to know what the state police have assumed responsibility for or not so that you're coming from a place of knowledge. Yeah, I can call the commander down there and find out what VSP is doing and then see and then give Jesse and Owen a call. So yeah, cause I had not heard anything about a rally. That's like, I'm listening to that tonight. I made a note, rally, question mark. I'm like, that's not what I've been hearing. So all right, I can deal with that tomorrow. I think that's reasonable. You know, obviously we're all about mitigating our risk. So I don't have any problem working that out. And then I can just send you guys an email if you're all okay with that. I think it's scheduled for next Saturday, isn't it? Yeah, the 13th, is that what you just said? All right, let me talk to make, I'll call the commander and then reach out to them and find out what's going on. Thank you, Terese. Now, what about some of our other, you know, not just the content series on the green but portable and other activities that we typically do in the summer and fall? I mean, are there out of the box ways that maybe some of these can go on so that we, you know, I mean, I think for now anybody that can take advantage of some of these smaller events is good for mental health and well-being. And, you know, we've all experienced a long three, four months and, you know, to, you know, to go hear some music on the green, you know, every Wednesday, as long as we can make it work, you know, spacing-wise and numbers-wise and, you know, legally-wise. I mean, what's the harm in that? I agree. I mean, I think we're just waiting right now for the state, you know, to figure out what the governor's gonna do. When I'm all for the Bethel Concert Series moving forward, as long as we're adhering to the governor's order, I did speak to Mary Floyd today. We exchanged an email. She wanted to do something about celebrating, you know, the women's right to vote in August. And I talked to her about it, saying maybe she could reach out to ORCA and work with ORCA and have a presentation, just have people make reservations. So the people that can come, when she fills those seats, they can come. And then anybody else can, maybe it shows on ORCA. So I do think you're right, Chris. There's ways to do it, maybe even working with them on the concert series. Maybe if John has, the governor says X amount of people, maybe John's willing to take reservations and sell X amount of tickets for his concerts. Yeah, something, yeah. Yeah, you know, I think we're open to creative ways. We just, at this point, we're all just sitting here waiting for the governor to tell us how many people. Well, in some cases too, what they're doing, like with the beaches down in Rhode Island, I know, they're allowing people to come on a social distance, but they're restricting the parking. So at the White Church, for example, part of the congestion issue is the way that parking lot is set up. So maybe you have to reduce the size of the parking available there so that people can spread out a little further and then you'll have a little more separation there. You'll have a little more congestion as far as parking goes, but maybe we could arrange something with parking at the town lot, the downtown and coming up, you know. Or the school. Or the school, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I think John has opened ideas. You know, he's just, basically, he's just waiting. He's talked to Chris, I've emailed with him and we're just waiting. We haven't said no. We haven't said no to the forward fast. I just talked to Mary about it today and I think we're all just waiting. I mean, it would be really nice to try to keep our local activities alive. I mean, there's gotta be a way that we can be responsibly safe and continue to do some of these. I mean, they're outside. It's not like we're saying we're gonna have our weekly concert series at the town hall, you know. Right. It's outside and I think there gotta be some ways that we can do it safely. Yeah. Well, and we're all waiting to see what the new agency of Commerce and Community Development guidelines are gonna be. So hopefully, you know, if we don't have a lot of outbreaks, things kind of slow down maybe the new standards will relax a little more. So I think we're all trying to keep open minded. We're just, you know, at the time to close the pool, we had to make the decision because these other, we had to let the lifeguards go so they could go find jobs. The addendum order, addendum 17 to the original executive order that came out said, municipal ordinances and regulations for the restart of bars, catering facilities and restaurants. And it said, we can enact local requirements which are more strict than guidance issued by ACCD regarding the operation of bars, catering facilities and restaurants. But it doesn't seem like anything we wanna do. I mean, I don't know, we don't have any way to enforce them. I'm not sure why we would wanna make the guideline stricter to add to the local businesses, you know, hardships. But I mean, that was something that came out recently that, but I can't imagine. Any of you are interested in doing that. Agadoula and Tozier's are holding off on opening up their indoor, I'm not sure about the creek house, what's happening down there, but they're looking at whether or not the capacity level that they've been given is worth bringing people inside when they've already got a pretty good handle on the takeout side of it. Yeah, we did have somebody reach out to the ginger boardman she actually, then she'd done a Facebook post just as we were gonna reach out to her. She is opening her window. So she's gonna be opening them up too, so which is good. The other, the last thing about COVID is you can see, put in your packet, what may be coming true, what I already told you about was the possibility of us having to push off our next, instead of August 15th, having to push that out. Cause it does say, you know, towns that typically print bills in earlier mid July should consider adjusting time frame. So it sounds like between school tax or the school rate, excuse me, and homes to declarations, that's probably gonna become a possibility, probably gonna be a definite thing we're gonna end up having to do, but we'll wait and see a little bit more from them, but that's everything I have for COVID unless somebody else has anything else. You know, I guess it's sort of COVID related, but we probably just talk about briefly on, you know, how our meetings look going forward. I know we've been kind of waiting for the governor to see where we're at, you know, we were at 10 and now we're up to 20, which I guess could be, you know, could be a, well, typically is more than enough for a meeting for us. Unless we get into some of those public hearings where, you know, you know, maybe town plan there's a little more people that come out for it or something like that. So how does that look going forward? I did see some of the group chat going back and forth about, you know, maybe there's a combination of in-person and able to keep the Zoom meeting going, you know, for participation reasons. So what does the board feel at this time? I was able to talk with a couple of different boards throughout the state past week. So like kind of Warren, for instance, they're sticking with the Zoom meetings for a little while longer. Another board that I talked to, they were gonna be starting, I think they said in June, I don't know when their meetings are, but they said in June, they were gonna start an in-person meeting and have the ability for town folks to continue to call in or board members. So they were gonna kind of do a combo. So what do we think and what would we like to see? I mean, I know right now, personally for me, the Zoom meetings are very easy. I don't have to drive anywhere. I don't have to worry about what my kids are doing for two hours or the dog, even though he wants to participate. I do know that the two challenges we will have is we do have the town plan that we will have to have a gathering at some point this fall to talk about. And we also will or should at some point be putting the trash ordinance through, which means we will have to have a hearing for that. So other than those two hearings, I can't think of anything else, large gatherings. No, I can't either right now. I do will say we have a stack of stuff for people to sign. And we haven't had any increased participation from Zoom than you've had when we meet. We haven't seen Joe Russo. He's the person who came in person. I guess it would seem as though you could probably do both, which is still have Zoom, but maybe not the video chat part, but maybe just have the call-in so that some people could call in. What's the cost of the Zoom meetings? Is that a big deal? Yeah, right now I'm paying like either $14.99 or $12.49. I pay per month. I pay for it myself and then we just get reimbursed. So... Is there an expiration on the, wasn't there an exception made to the statute to allow us to do? There was, I don't know when it runs out, to be honest. I can't, I don't remember what it had for an end date. And I don't know off the top of my head, I'd have to go back and look for it. But it seems like if you could, there's obviously a call that people don't want to come and they want to participate somehow via Zoom. I personally miss the getting together and being able to see people and talk to people. I feel like there's that connection, but that's just me. I mean, hey, I'm wake out great. I get a half an hour to get to come home, do the meeting, hang up instead of have a half hour drive home. So I'm better than any of you guys. This is wicked nice for me. And although I'm sure my husband's sick of listening to me, listening to our meetings, but maybe there's a way to do both. Right. Now that's what I was thinking is maybe if there are folks who want to meet, you know, as a board down at the town hall or at the town office or whatever. You know, in terms of, from my perspective, it's a whole lot easier to hear everybody in this Zoom than it is when we're at the town hall. Well, and to add to that, are we wearing masks and are we all six feet apart from one another? And now we're also trying to hear each other yelling through masks. I mean, there's a part of me that says this is very functional. Given all the stipulations we'd have to meet to do an in-person meeting, this is more functional and more accessible and frankly safer for everybody because we don't really know, you know, we're going on the governor saying we can do these things, but we also know that if it were to come into our town, it would spread quickly. And, you know, so I don't know. I think I'm on the side leaning towards Zoom. If we vote or go towards personal, I'll make that debate between myself, you know, am I going to be in person or remotely? But I think that as a board talking through what some of the real issues of actually being in person would be, because if we're going to be in person, we're public figures, we have to be six feet apart. We should all be wearing masks. Do you guys want to be in the town hall in the summer wearing a mask? Are there any towers? I don't, I do. Yeah, that's a good point. You're still dealing with whether or not people want to be involved in the town decision-making process. And whether it's in person or whether it's in Zoom, Zoom to Lindley's point is safer for people they don't have to worry about coming out and being with other folks and the possibility of spreading the virus. But we still have an issue where we need to get people more interested in town government and how the whole thing happens. And maybe I think the Zoom angle makes it easier. A lot of folks are more comfortable sitting in their living room and their pajamas on their laptops than being in person. Do you think that we miss people? I didn't realize you were sitting around pajamas. Just the bottom half, Mo. You missed me. Who was in his pajamas? Do you think that we're missing people that people aren't participating in Zoom because they don't feel like it's, they're not tech savvy or they feel like it's off-putting? Do you feel like we're missing a group of people because we're not in person? I mentioned in the chat there that I've heard from a couple of people that they've had difficulty in figuring out how to get into the Zoom meeting by looking at the town website and trying to click on that link and they've had difficulty like tonight. We all had to update our new version of Zoom. So if we could do an instruction sheet, something to make it really user, more user-friendly, we might get a little more participation. And I did finally work with Kelly to make sure that now we put it under announcement so when someone clicks on it, they go directly to the Zoom meeting. They're not being taken to 15 different sites which had happened to Chris one time. He was trying to find it. And so we did work that out today or last week when we posted the agenda. You also have the call-in number. So if somebody says- Yeah, the call-in number is right there on there too. So I mean, I'm not sure. I mean, I guess I would be curious if, you're right, Lindley. I mean, my thought was if we met in person, then yes, we'd set up the tables. We'd have to be six feet apart. If you were speaking, you'd pull your mask down because you'd be six feet apart. We'd have the windows open for cross ventilation. We would set the chairs up in the hall so that they were six feet apart. So that if we knew, if we had appointments, we would book appointments to make sure we knew who was coming. Normally it's Joe and maybe somebody else. So I figured there was a way to do it, huh? Well, Doug is always here with us. That's right. Doug is here with us. Right, again. So, you know, we'll try to, so that was my thinking. If you wanted to meet in person, I did feel like there was a way to do it, but maybe we could try another combination meeting to work the bugs out. You know, I'm happy if I had, you know, one other select board member we could meet at the town office and I could, we could see, try to work the kinks out if people want to meet in person or we could stick with Zoom. I don't know. What's your thought, Chris? I'm good with the way we're doing it right now, honestly. Even though I believe in person one, we're going to need to do that soon, but for a little while longer, I'm good with what we're doing right now. I would agree with that, yeah. Yeah, I agree with that, Joe. You want to, I mean, again, I mean, take this meeting by meeting too and, you know, even now, you know, now that things are being opened up and released more, you know, the difference between now and next or the difference between now and Friday could be whatever, you know? So I don't think it hurts that, you know, June 22nd, that's our next meeting, right? Yeah. We do another Zoom meeting. I mean, we can work on the trash ordinance. I mean, we can do all that stuff. But I think we probably ought to also try to figure out how an in-person meeting or maybe a combination might look like and how can we get through some of those kinks like acoustics and, you know, that we have challenges at the town hall and I know right now, you know, if you can keep your spacing, so if we could arrange the tables in a way that everybody is six feet apart from each other, then you wouldn't need to have a mask on during the meeting, the whole meeting. If you couldn't do that, you would have to have one on. So, and then who knows, two weeks from now it might be much different. So, you know, maybe we could just stick with this for at least for the next meeting and then we can talk about it again and see where we feel where the state's at. I think the only thing that just, you know, I think it keeps in the back of my mind is just the whole thing of, you know, we are a town government and, you know, right now this state does say that we can have up to a meeting of 25. So, with us continuing to do Zoom meetings, you know, what does that look like in the eyes of our citizens or does that make them look like that, you know, our board is out in front of this or that we're hiding in our houses, you know? So, you know, that's just kind of the thing that goes through and I was fortunate to be able to talk to a couple of different boards this week to kind of get their feel on what they're doing and it sounds like they're kind of all about the same what we're doing, the trying to figure out when do we go back to in-person? Is it this week or is it two weeks from now or, you know? So, I think we could probably just do a meeting by meeting at this point and at some point we'll probably have a better consensus on staying or moving into a town hall or... Oh, now we've got this, you know, this little pop-up thing in Winooski and now spreading a little into Burlington and I think folks are a little leery, you know, if that starts to occur down this part of the state. So, it's probably a safe thing to continue the Zoom for a while here and see how all that sugar's off. I think Lisa is a great... How does this work on the orca? How does this work on the orca right now? Right now he's recording our video, so which works great for us because he records the, or he or she, whoever, records the video for us and then put it up on their website and then we put their link out because once we meet like this, we have to record the meeting and then we have to publish the minutes as well as the link. And so what we do is we use Orca's great about it and sends us the link once they get it posted and then we put it with the minutes. So in other words, the count at large can actually see what we're doing through Zoom too. Yeah, I think, I don't know if it's easier for them. It might be just audio, I don't know. I think it's just audio. But I think one of the issues we're gonna have if we try to keep the Zoom meeting and do it on-site meeting is gonna be the acoustics. Lisa makes a great point, is trying to figure out how, you know, a speaker phone, we, I mean, not the acoustics, they're stank. I mean, that's the bottom line. I guess I'd have to go downstairs and look in that room again to get a feel for how many people could be down there because that's gonna be tough. The acoustics are bad in person. They're gonna be really bad on the phone. I think that a room downstairs is almost... I think, yeah, yeah, it's tiny. Yeah. You've been doing all the spacing from the governor's like 200 square feet per person and then when it's smaller than any space we have in the Arnold block and we can have like two in some of our space spaces. Yeah, I was just trying to think if we need, you know, if there was only two or three of us there, could we be in a smaller, in that case, we'd be better off meeting at the town office. Just trying to figure out how, because if we're gonna do some Zoom and some people there, some people Zoom, that's gonna be tough because the acoustics, they're stank, as Lisa said. And they're even worse if you're on the phone. Trish, when we get to the point of needing to, I'm happy to sort of test that out with you and kind of figure out acoustics for these... Yeah, that would be great. You'll need a few people, I would bet. Yeah, I think that's true. And right now, Dave has scaffolding set up so we can't meet there anyway, so... We don't. Oh, you took it down? It's all gone. Yes, we did. Did you get the balloon? The balloon is gone. Yay! Until the next one. We've got an envelope, we're gonna ship it to Lindsay. There you go. I told Kelly, tell whoever rents the hall no more mylar. Yeah, not a lot of any balloons. Yeah, we're done. One thing I just wanted to bring up with our, and I've been able to, through work, see what other boards are doing right now with bins and stuff. And I will say that our board is doing a really good job of, when it comes to adhering to the open meeting laws. And I don't wanna rat any of the other boards out, but the things that I've seen at some of the other board meetings are not even remotely legal that they're doing. And they're taking advantage of the Zoom meetings to have their own private meetings. There's cases where they're not allowing public to attend things. So I will say that we've done a really good job of making sure that the hours are, if we bid something, we should be allowing the contractors to jump on the meetings, just like normal. So these meetings, it seems like they're, when they tell you as a contractor you can't dial into the meeting then. So, and that's going on. So I- That's not good. I do think we've done a really good job and clearly of getting people on here. And I know at times, at times even for myself and I'm pretty tech savvy that I have issues getting on the Zoom meeting once a while, but I think we've done a pretty good job on that. And then I think the only challenge will just be if we do run into any executive session. I know we did one executive session where we kind of had our separate call in. And that was a little challenging because I think we were trying to call into one and get off onto the other one. And I think the executive sessions might be a little challenging on how to actually get into one and get out of the end. I think if we did that again, we would do it at like five o'clock and have an hour instead of that quick to quick. And that was, I mean, I think for the most part that worked because basically you had to pre-register and then you were emailed your, you know, link in your password. So, but I do think we were trying to do it quickly. So I think we would definitely try to add more time if we were going to do that again. Yeah, that'd be the only thing I would just say going forward with Zoom, we just have to, you know, either put the executive session on the tail end so we don't have to worry about the allotted time or make sure we have enough space in between, but. Sure. Hopefully we don't have too many of those. So I've got to throw in a pitch for Dave. I want to say thank you, we should thank Dave. He got the balloon down. He got all new bulbs put in. Got all the chandelier housings cleaned and put back up there again. And Dave Albergatti donated the scaffolding and Mo was there today and I helped out. We had a good time of everything's bright now. You can see what's going on. And thanks to Dave for putting all that together. Right. Thank you. And he's in one piece still. And he didn't fall down. Mo was there ready to dial 911. Mo was catching up. He was going to catch him when he fell. Yes, thank you very much. I think it's going to be great. That balloon was driving me crazy. So. And the team effort. That's right. Well, thank you. Dave Albergatti. Thank him for letting us use the scaffolding. Did you have anything Teresa left on Town Manager's Report? Do we go through? I told you. I'm looking through my list. So the RFP for ditching went out on Friday that's on our website. And I registered that with the state. So as I said in the Town Manager's Report, I've been doing some zoning enforcement and a thank you to Judy and Louise for letting me know when they find things. The graders out for repairs. It should be back by June 15th. That was per the equipment committee. And we're also still moving forward, looking for a vehicle. So that's moving on. Good catch on the rental fees for the tower. Yeah, that actually was Louise. Yeah, Louise and Judy. They were looking at some contracts because of that. And then the new tower that's going on Deering. And so Louise and I spoke with the gentleman the other day. And they apparently realized they'd made a mistake and were going back and we were gonna see if we could renegotiate with them. Somebody had questions last time about people who hadn't registered their dogs if we could do another rabies clinic. So I spoke to Pam and the local animal hospital didn't wanna participate in that to do it again. So that was a no. But she did send out notices reminding people to register their dog. So if you have not yet registered your dog, please do so. And disregard Chris Jarvis' complaint that if your dog is not food, then it's more money. So Chris thinks- He's still feeling discriminated against. Yeah, Brady's gonna lodge a complaint. And then again, the change of appraisal notices went out and the listers have grievances set up at different times. So if you're gonna make in a, there's a way you can make an appointment to do that. So I think everything else in there we've covered. Thank you for the update on the water project. Yes, yeah, Tim's gonna do one of those each week. And then we're just gonna slide it in there. It's gonna be easier cause it's a lot of change as you go each day finding things. I will say their last meeting last week, they were very complimentary of Tim and appreciated his knowledge of the system and just being there and that work that he'd done in advance with Vermont Rural Water, trying to locate as much as possible. But we all knew we had some challenges as we didn't really know what was in the ground. So, but so far so good. So that connection that they did last week that resulted in the boil notice. Yeah. And that's kind of more of a one-time thing. We're not gonna run into too many more of those, correct? No, hopefully not. No, obviously if they break something, but it'll be that. It'll be the initial dig like that. There'll be one, and then there'll be another one when they go to sanitize and yeah. And when they sanitize it and everything. And the great news is we're getting some valves put in at the same time. So, you know, if somebody has a leak, we're not shutting down the entire town. So once they energize it and sterilize the pipe and all that, we'll do it again, but. That's what I tried to explain to a few people that called me that, you know, that bit. The way the system was configured currently and what they were trying to do there, that this was more of a one-time nuisance for everybody. Yeah. There's gonna be a couple more. Because they were going to build that every day after they did, you know, 50 feet of pipe that they would have to. Oh, no, no, no, no. I noticed for, you know, three days, and I said, no, they'll be able to do that under pressure, but you know, again, those are just some of the information. The more that we can get out to people, because if not, they just assume. Right, and we did put out in the water bills, you know, we let people know. Everybody on the system, you got the new rates, and along with that was a little blurb about where we were at, what we felt a tentative schedule was gonna be when we put the water rates, when we put out the water bills again, we'll do an updated schedule for the next round, saying this is, and obviously it's tentative because if you hit something one day and you're, you know, can't put that 100, 200, 300 feet of pipe in the ground, because we hit something, then it takes a little bit longer. But that's the plan is to continue to update people through their water bills. So, Terese, how do they establish how much galvanized piping do we have there? Measuring it as they go along? Yep, yep, that's it, exactly. Once they uncover it, because they're changing the valves out, yes, you can, that's exactly it. They're obviously assuming what's there and moving forward. So the engineers are tracking that as part of our package. Is it possible to put that update on the public board downtown? Because as a renter, I don't have a water bill. So I don't get that update, but I live in town. So maybe for those of us who don't get water bills, there could be a central place where we have access. Even maybe on the town website. Yeah, put on the website, yes. We'll publish the sketch. You can have water bill if you want. I think it might be on the website, but I'll look, Lisa, if it's not, I'll get it out there. Okay, thank you. Yeah, no, thank you. Lisa's accepting all of our water bills these days? Yes, yes. You're going to be on the planning commission too. No, no, no, no. With Doug. With Doug and his wife. Yeah, there you go. We're full now. I think you got the better end of the deal here. That's right. That's all I have, Chris. One last thing on the water. Once we get going on the water, you know, it's only been a week and a half, but once we get going here, will we be able to get an update on too? Because originally, you know, $2.8 million is the total water. And then we had the piece where, you know, 50% forgiveness. And then there was another 25% potential. Do we know about that other pot of money? Did we get that? Are we using it right now? We're still waiting because our loan has, our loan is going through the Vermont Bond Bank right now. So basically we're moving forward with the project, knowing that anything that we have done now is covered by that program. However, we're not yet through the process yet. So once we are through the process, then yes, I will have more information for you. But right now, we're moving forward with the project. We'll get reimbursed by the state for anything. But if we get, you know, obviously they don't see us getting denied, but we haven't got the final approval yet and it's going to be another few weeks. But once we get that, yes, I'll have a better idea. Because the only guarantee that we had at the time was the 50% loan forgiveness on that one section. Right, and I think 25% that we could qualify for if the money was still there. And then like Paul or Davis was saying, and there's the galvanized pieces that as they pull them out, we get the one for one money. Right, I think what we're, as the board, as we go through the project, maybe once a month or something that we can kind of see that. It looks like we're on par or we're coming out ahead or it looks like, oh, we didn't get this. Or more than we're pulling out of the ground isn't galvanized or, you know. I think that what we're going to find out here is once we get this approved in the next, you know, month or month and a half is I think we're going to see our package. I really think what they're going to do is they're going to take the, perhaps take the engineering estimate upfront of how much galvanized was in the ground already. And I think what they're going to say is, okay, we're going to wrap this together and this is what your package is going to be. So what I'm hoping is they make that determination upfront instead of waiting and they say, okay, basically we need to give the town of Bethel one point, whatever, 1.8 million. And so they're going to wrap it together in a package and just give it to us and not make it contingent on something in the end. But that maybe just wishful thinking on my part, but we're still kind of hammering that out at the state end. Right. As soon as I know, yeah, I don't know. Right now I'm still waiting to get through the process. So I know the numbers change quite a bit. So. Yeah, I'm just, I was just sending more information to Ashley Lutz at the bond bank last week. So. Did you have anything else, Therese? I'm all set. Thank you. And then we had the select board meeting minutes from the 18th of May. Anybody have any amendments to that or are they good to approve as noted? Move to approve as printed. Okay, all in favor? Taking it easy on Lisa. Paul, you had all that time. You couldn't find something. No, I couldn't. Because that big word draft going right across it blocks out a bunch of the letters. I do that on purpose. Strategically places that. I do it. I'm sorry. All right. And any other communications or anything else to come before the board? I know we talked about communications there a little while ago when we were talking about committees and stuff, but. I think you had plenty of minutes this time. The conservation commission is meeting tomorrow night at six o'clock at Peaveyne Park. So you're all welcome to go. 30, I think. I think it's 630. Oh, I'm sorry. Okay, 630. So they're meeting tomorrow night. So I did see some minutes there. People are using Zoom and other things. I've set up meetings for the transfer station and other people. So I goofed up the rec committee one last time somehow. And so I rescheduled that and fixed that one. So are we going to be able to do any patching on Sandhill? No, the short answer is no. Well, here's the problem with Sandhill. Sandhill is a multi-year project. We need to go in. We need to take off the pavement. And then we need to upgrade the infrastructure in there. It's going to be gravel for a while. We need to look at the water line that's in there. We think the sewer line's okay, but there's some old storm water infrastructure in there that's not in great shape. Chris and I have talked about it before. And the Christian Hill needs it. So I will be writing a paving grant this winter. And we've been leaning towards kind of making that Christian Hill, doing Christian Hill first. Well, I'm thinking more just filling the potholes that are there now. It's kind of like playing. They did today. They were out with some cold patch today. I have spoken to Alan about that and said, to please stop using cold patch and to get some hot, hot mix and actually clean out the hole properly. You can use this sort of emulsifier for lack of a better word. It's something like tack. And then put the hot mix in. Chris will correct me if my ling goes wrong. And thank you. And get it, get them done properly. So I think he's waiting for his July budget because he did it again today and it's all gonna be gone in a month. I did speak with Jeanine Reeves and let her know what the situation was. But unfortunately, Sand Hill is just a much bigger fix. And it's a big project. And you're talking about upgrading that infrastructure and then we have Crystal Drive, which is still out there to be dealt with. And we're dealing with this 2.8 million. And it's like we're hemorrhaging money. So we need somebody to leave us like 50 million and we can fix a bunch of stuff. So if you know anybody, you know, Bethel accepts bequests. All right, anybody have anything else? No, good to go. All right. Dave's in the black over there. I was gonna say Dave's in the dark over there. I can see it's still there. I think it's fine. Yeah. We can see Trace this time, but not Dave. That's right. That's right. I moved my chair around so I didn't have backlighting. All right. Well, have a good evening, everybody. Good evening. How are we motioning? Move to adjourn. Is that Dave? I can't see him. So it's Dave and Moe, move to adjourn. Dave Moe. Thank you. Okay, all in favor? Aye. All right. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Have a good evening everybody. You too. You too, guys.