 just happened. I thought they'd want to see you. I'm Peter Hood. I'm the chairman of the select board and I will be the moderator of this meeting because this is actually a select board meeting even though it is an informational meeting for our town meeting as you all know. This is an informational meeting. There will be of course no voting so it's information only and it is definitely not excuse me a candidates forum so it's to discuss it's to discuss the articles on the Australian ballot for town meeting not to discuss the people who are running for office. At this time I'd like the select board members introduce themselves. You've heard from me Steve how about you? Hi Steve Martin. I've been on the select board for several years. That's it. Okay Phil. Phil Hayek. I'm Steve's neighbor on the the board about three and a half years I guess. Mary. Mary Jessica on the board for quite a long time been in mental sex since 1976. And Liz. Hi Liz Sharpe. This will be my seventh year on the board. I'm not up for re-election till next year and I live on Culver Hill Road and I've lived here for 20 years. Thank you everyone. So for the participants in the meeting please identify yourself when you speak and in a minute I'm going to introduce Delia who is going to tell you how to say change the name excuse me on your screen if it isn't your real name because otherwise we won't know who you are. But it's a good idea to identify. I'm sorry. A tickle in my throat. Oh thank you. I heard Mary. Oh no she's here. She's keeping an eye on me. I guess now this would be a good time to introduce Delia who's going to be our Zoom facilitator to give us a little pep talk on how to use Zoom. Sure. Hi everybody and hi again the people that I saw last time. I live in Woodstock Vermont and I'm just helping out with Zoom tonight. So it is really good to know who you are. You know who you are but for everyone else. So if you hover your cursor just above your face you'll see three little dots and if you click on those dots you'll get your frozen. Yeah so you can see that you can stop video if you don't want it to be looking at you but don't do that because we really want to be able to see everybody and that's where the mute button is also which is also down on the bottom. It's good if you mute yourself when you're not speaking and that way in case your dog barks or something like that it'll be quieter for everybody else. And then there's one called rename and if you hit the rename button you can type in your first and last name in case you've got your kids laptop or your organizations or whatever so put your actual name on there. As I said I encourage you to keep your camera on the whole time. It just helps build sense of community unless you have bandwidth issues. I suggest you find the chat button which is down along the bottom and if you click chat and keep it open during the meeting that's how you're going to be identifying if you want to ask a question. You'll be putting your name into chat so that's a if you have it open you'll be able to see if anyone else is putting in questions. We're not going to have comments about what's being said in the chat though so don't we don't want to have a lot of side conversations in this particular meeting. If you get into and I'm going to share my screen now for a minute just to share some of these points if you use that gallery view and that way you can see more people if you want to and the only other thing I wanted to talk about was if you want to ask a question about the article at hand wait until Peter has introduced that article and then type your name into chat and make sure it's addressed to everyone you don't want to send it just to one person. If we have fewer 20 or fewer people then you can just raise your hand Peter can see you so this this will if we end up a little bit bigger group then that means he won't be able to see everybody and that allows you to get in the queue to ask a question. If you have a tech issue during the session you can call Sarah Briget she's at 802-689-0719 and she's standing there to help with any tech issues and also if you can't access chat to get in line she can help you do that. That is all I've got to say about Zoom and have a great meeting. Thank you Delia and again thank you in advance for helping us with this meeting we got a little we got a trial run a week ago so hopefully we'll be a little more professional this time but the meeting went pretty well a week ago. So the only other thing I have in my introduction Sarah is the point about the missing balance is that still an issue? Yes in fact we've been able to narrow it down a little bit it seems that most of the people who are experiencing missing town ballots lived along center road a certain section of center road we don't understand why just this the machine failed those people on but there you go. Okay so the issue is yes Sarah. I have a related question go ahead Peter. We have three Sarah's here so you can just call me. I'm sorry Sarah Seidman you want a question? I am I on mute? No. I just wanted to ask about the the births and deaths and marriages that didn't get into the town report what are what are the town going to do to because the historic society obviously we all use that on it. Well Sarah record the history. We have that was that was a pretty error and with it we found it out the day that it disappeared and when we put it on our website right away so you can just get page 110 109 or whatever it is but I'll be glad to send it to you again. Well I'm more worried that it gets recorded as part of the official town history so I don't know whether next year we put in two years worth or well we we were thinking of putting in two years also I bind all the town reports and I will tack that on to the town report as it's bound and put in the vault. Okay great thank you. So with that I think we're ready to start we have we have warned the budget discussion for uh 615 and it's not quite 615 so what I would like to do is talk about article five which is the shallot town and middle sex voters authorize the select board to purchase a new grader in an amount not to exceed 290,000 to be financed over a period of 15 years. Select board members to present followed by questions select board members to present. Steve you're muted Steve. There now I'm not. So yes our our grader is 23 years old and approximately 10 years ago the maintenance was done and the select board had decided to into it so we've gone another 10 years but the grader is getting tired it needs major work it's time for a new grader so that's why we're asking for that amount of money not to exceed that 290,000. Right at this time we have been offered 35,000 for our grader from one of the vendors that may change a little bit but some of the vendors may change uh they may ask a little more for their uh for the new grader and give you more for the old one so it's just that game but anyway uh I guess that's about all I have to say about that oh no one other item is that uh just greater we would be receiving this greater after July 1st of 21 with our first payment due after July 1st of 22 that's all I have on that any questions so I just have uh one comment to add to that um our concern is that if we wait any longer and we've already waited longer than we dared almost um and we have some kind of catastrophic breakdown to the existing grader it will either A be valueless or at the very least B be very expensive to repair and kind of be like throwing good money after bad the other issue is um because the grader is worn out the grading portion of the of the grader it doesn't grade the roads quite the way the road crew would like them to be graded um so it causes them to work at a slower pace and it causes the results not to be as good so the bottom line is we need a new grader and it's time and this is as good a time as any uh for us to do it because we have no other other major uh major purposes and by spreading it out over 15 years the annual consequence to our budget will not be uh will not be as great yes bill just a quick question steve what's the expected life expectancy of the new grader um well it normally the a lot of the towns are doing 12 15 years in that neighborhood normally that's a kind of a normal time frame okay once we would hope a little longer though right yes we always hope for that yeah yep any other questions okay then it is now randy i'm sorry uh so i was just curious as to the the range of the difference in any bids that you may have received or through the discussions that you're having with any of the vendors how big of a gap between high and low or have you even gotten to that point we haven't gotten to that point randy i'll make that available as soon as we have that though thank you a lot of issues to be considered in purchasing this grader you know different options different so we're we're just in the initiation phase of the process so it is now uh six 15 and it's time to talk about the budget does everyone now have their town report i hope is there anybody who doesn't have it because i'm hoping last week most people did not have steve was the only person in the whole group who had the town report uh so we had we asked delia to put the budget up on share her screen and put the budget up on the screen but it was difficult to follow and hard to see so um i guess delia we're going to be off the hook on the budget that's the that's the good news and i would refer uh everybody to uh to the budget which is on page 40 to 44 and also uh the select board budget report on page 23 and phil is going to uh give you the highlights of that budget report phil thanks peter um as peter said everybody didn't have 10 reports um last week when we did this so i actually went over the entire uh budget report but this week i think i'll take questions on it you can find it again as peter said on page 23 it also has been posted on uh front porch forum for those of you who access that and what we try to do are what we've been doing the past few years is to go over the highlights breaking it down by the the by the categories you know general government administration town hall um and look at the the big items that are impacting the budget in in a number of cases um you know because we're a small town we have uh budget increases that will uh look like 100 or 200 percent but you know might actually represent uh 50 or 100 dollars so they're not not big ticket items and you know for the most part we've tried to ignore those and look at the things that actually do uh have some significant impact on the budget so we could hang for a minute here peter if you want give people a chance to go to page 23 take a look see if there's anything that you have for questions or somebody already has a question that they want to raise we can deal with that now and then i guess we'll move on to the the budget itself well also uh field you have the graph on page 39 where the money goes i think that's dorinda's oh sorry yeah she does that as treasurer the other thing i would point out to everybody while you're perusing that is on page 37 there is a chart which shows the cost of all the articles for a house appraised at a certain value which is useful information for our discussion of all of these articles um just to let people know that the actual budget itself begins on page 40 phil's budget report begins on page 23 but the budget itself every line and item begins on page 40 unless i have a report 40 to 44 yeah so questions on uh on phil's report or any questions on the budget in general yes justin you're muted you're muted justin galey can you unmute him sir no sir sir sir berger has the power now i do not have a question i'm sorry about that oh okay justin's caught talking about the water very senior center he did right right i was um i was trying to get a cat to get off the desk at the time i apologize no problem peter well i'm talking i'm going to turn the controls over to sarah berger and and it sounds like you don't need me for the the other things so she's already she's on char she's on deck okay thank you delia sure see ya hi thank you bye bye waving hands or nodding faces does that mean that there are no questions on the budget we have a peaceful group tonight peter many of the people there on tonight were also on last last tuesday so no i know mary i'm just i'm just trying to give everybody a little time to to look things over if anybody thinks of anything as we go along here yes bell you're muted yeah there you go uh just a quick question on uh the whole pandemic mess this year did it affect the budget up or down on any specific items and how about going forward so we were like just about every municipality in vermont and across the country we were worried about what the effect of the pandemic would be on us and in particular our concern was that people wouldn't be able to pay their property taxes and that would adversely affect the town um to date that has not been the case is it still a concern as this goes on yes it is but uh our delinquent taxes are pretty uh are pretty steady it hasn't been an issue we were also worried about uh particularly the road crew but all our town employees and uh also operation of the town clerk's office during covid times but as much as that's changed the way the road crew works and it certainly changed the way the folks in the town clerk's office work i don't think it's had a horrible uh effect on the service to community members we've been convenience to a few lawyers trying to do uh trying to do title search work uh because we can't have too many people in the office at one time but in terms of in terms of dollars and cents we spent a little money uh reconfiguring very little money because we had volunteers doing the work uh reconfiguring the town clerk's office um but really minimal uh minimal impact i would say uh sarah you have anything to add to that or vick for the road department uh well speaking from the town clerk's office it's things seem to be pretty smoothly now smooth now and i don't think we've incurred any extra costs maybe dorinda can speak to that like peter said uh david crowl and charlie put together the counter from reclaimed items the only charge was the plexiglass uh to put it up to put up the divider and um we've been taking a point we were one of the first offices to create appointments so that lawyers could come in and research so we've we've been pretty open just it's an inconvenience for towns people they who want to come in and pay their taxes and have to knock on the door otherwise that's about it but it's a good question bill peter yes okay yeah um to answer that question no it hasn't uh of course i've only been there for a month not even a month as road commissioner but uh spot fast doesn't it yeah it's a lot of fun i don't know uh yeah no it's it's uh really uh i i don't see that it's affected uh the uh road crew that much i mean they're pretty much in their vehicles by themselves if they're plowing or anything and uh and uh of course we uh adhere to the best of our ability at least by distancing uh whenever we're around the the garage so i don't know of anything that it's really i can't think of anything that's really affected or raised the cost of doing business so to speak well i'm going to knock on wood when i say this but so far uh none of our staff have had a positive covid test right that is truly the good news and hopefully that will continue okay then well if you uh if you think of a question with regard to the budget uh we can we can go back to that at any time this this meeting does not have the formality and structure of a regular uh a regular town meeting so don't think you can't ask a question at any time so uh let's see we've done the budget we've done the greater uh we should go back to article two should the town of middle sex authorized payment of all property taxes to the treasurer is provided by law without discount etc etc etc uh basically allowing for uh four payments of taxes which seems to be uh or seems to have been seems to be very popular as well as allowing us postal service uh postmarks certify the due date does anybody have any questions about that article pretty straightforward article three should the town of middle sex charge interest at a rate of 0.5 per month or fraction thereof for overdue taxes exactly what we've done uh the last few years and we're proposing to continue that at the same rate any questions about that article or concerns okay so now we get to the uh special articles and in your town report uh the again the cost of those articles is on page 37 the special articles uh the discussion from the people requesting the money uh is on page uh 67 to 98 of your town report um so we'll go through these one at a time in some cases we have organizations here who will briefly uh talk about their requests uh in other cases we they have board members or other members of the community talking for the organizations but uh to start out with article six of the town of middle sex appropriate the sum of $2,500 um to the middle sex conservation fund the middle sex conservation fund is a fund of money administered by the conservation commission which uh is there anybody here from the conservation commission or i talk about this no okay um and this has been used the the money in that fund has been used for uh different town projects over the years the most notable one uh being the acquisition of the town forest um for many years uh the conservation commission with the support of the select board has requested $5,000 uh to be added to the fund every year this year the conservation commission recommended and requested $2,500 in lieu of covid trying to keep uh help keep expenses under control so i think it is a worthy uh a worthy thing to keep that conservation commission fund going does anybody have any questions about that article um article seven shall the town of middle sex appropriate the sum of six hundred dollars to the central vermont economic development corporation so i'm going to speak to this one also i am a member of the central vermont economic development board have been for a number of years mary skinner served many years on that on that board uh before me um cvdc is an independent nonprofit uh organization funded mostly by a state grant but also by member dues and contributions from municipalities they promote economic development in our region and in co in concert with the other economic development corporations economic development across the state um while uh we have not had many projects uh in middle sex where uh the economic development corporation was involved red hen is probably the most notable recent one um many of our town residents work for companies and organizations who have been supported by central vermont economic development so um they're requesting we're requesting six hundred dollars one thing i should have said at the beginning of the special articles and i forgot i apologize is in the past all these articles would require a petition except for the articles that are presented by the uh select board this year in light of covet uh we made the decision very early in the process meaning the town of middle sex made the decision that if an organization wanted to apply for the same amount of money which they requested last year we would not require a petition uh just a request letter and a report which is included in the town report so these numbers are almost all with one exception the same amount that these organizations applied for last year i'm sorry i forgot to say that before we started um so next article h of the town of middle sex appropriate the sum of four thousand fifty dollars for central vermont home health and hospice and i believe we have mary hood i am here i'm mary hood and i am on the board of central vermont home health and hospice and um we are asking for the same amount of money that we've asked for for the last two or three years and we also want to thank the middle sex select board for um agreeing not to require a petition because going around and trying to get people to sign their names and was going to be almost impossible and many of the time i think a lot of the other towns in the state are doing the same thing um we also have started central vermont home health is started to give patients who are in their um who are home health patients have been able to go out starting last week i believe and give those patients the covid vaccinations and that is so helpful um to families who have homebound relatives or even just people they take care of um the i think on the page 69 of the town um bulletin is the central vermont home health and hospice page with their report of what they've been doing this past year we serve 23 communities in central vermont i was skilled nursing care physical speech and occupational therapy medication management social work support and personal care to care for central vermont is of all ages in the comfort and privacy of their home regardless of the person's ability to pay their geographic remoteness or the complexity of their care needs i think very impressive is um the numbers for middle sex um for this year um um the home health care we've had 942 visits home health is in middle sex hospice care 21 long-term care 466 maternal child health 44 the total visits in context with 1443 total patients 50 and total admissions with 59 um and if there's any other questions um if i could answer them i'd be glad to do so if not i can ask um people at central vermont home health and get back to you oh thank you thank you for your support question for mary anyone sorry if anyone's in the same room as someone else who is also on this call or the same house you're gonna have to mute yourselves we don't get that's mary and i that's why i keep that's why i keep trying to mute myself i'll mute myself now now you're both muted yes sorry about that we uh we are well socially separated but not sound separated um but moving on article 9 shall the town of middle sex appropriate the sum of three thousand dollars to community connections and liz you spoke for them at the last meeting are you guys are anyone else here who came to speak about community connections no okay going once going twice all right so community connections is a program in washington county that provides after-school care for kids um and also during like summer breaks and and um school vacations um people use it for before care before they go to work and after um they uh you know after school before they leave for work um and then they use them over vacation and it's just a it's a great resource um for families um in middle sex and other towns and um and they've done great camps and you know my kids attended a number of them i'm sure a lot of people on this call if they had kids their kids have also attended community connections and it's super it's a super valuable asset to the community so thank you any questions on community connections okay article 10 i had one question i'm sorry i had to this is mary hood um liz am i correct in saying that uh it's a sliding scale fee for parents um yes yeah but does um have like the subsidies for like if you have a daycare subsidy those go along with this program right yeah just wanted to clarify that thank you liz uh do you know anything about how it was impacted through this year were they able to stay open through covid had did they have to shut down what was the impact you know randy i i actually have no idea um what's gone on during covid i only spoke about them because there's no one else to speak about them i don't know what's happened i um did someone sarah do well i work for the montalier rocksbury school district which has a very similar program um and i've i've been connected with the vermont after school community in a variety of ways and they are open um if kids are in school then the community connections is most likely in that school i would be very surprised if our district had done that differently and you know it's they're doing the same safety protocols the schools are doing during the day any other questions for liz but randy i can find that out i'll just email the principal i'm sure he'll be able to um tell me that and i can email you to let you know it also looks like margaret noted in the chat um just read what she said i'm not sure why she's not needed uh community connections is open and vacation camp is happening this week right thank you thank you margaret yep okay article 10 show the town of middle sex appropriate the sum of 1500s to girls boys first mentoring and i believe liz you also spoke to this article i think there's someone here um to speak to okay i'm sorry this is here i'm sorry for that i'm i'm fred sceals i'm on the uh board and stepping in for our outgoing executive director um we've been an organization for 21 years uh basically serving Montpelier and the u32 school district um we actually have four mentors from middle sex and five mentees uh the match up of mentees the mentors only goes by gender not by town so we often have mentors that uh go to adjoining towns um somebody from Montpelier may go to rome or may go to uh middle sex um our total budget is 60 000 for uh the year uh initially we started out at 100 federal funding and we are now down to zero dollars federal funding um and between the board and our executive director um we solicit all of our funds and municipalities and towns on that list we have good participation from all the towns that we serve and uh the majority of the funds that we solicit from municipalities go directly towards operating expenses um and we greatly appreciate every single penny we get from our cities in town uh i'd be glad that the description that was in the annual report was provided by Wendy um and is quite thorough and i would be able to answer any random questions that you may have or get the appropriate answer and send it to you thank you fred any questions for fred um i have a question fred are they planning on replacing like the executive director um or making changes to the program because i know covid was really um you guys were hit hard by covid uh yeah we were we got pretty inventive through through the pandemic um some of our pairs uh continued to be need in person but socially distanced and masked and only appropriate stuff um some of us met on social media through zoom or actually just did regular phone calls to our mentees and some pairs actually have ceased communicating um for a whole host of reasons depending on living situations and stuff like that um we are currently in the process of uh developing an advertisement to go out and recruit a new executive director um that's basically the person that binds the word members together and keeps us all focused on the providing services questions for fred thank you fred well if you know somebody wants to be in a part-time executive director send them our way will do article 11 shall the town of middle sex appropriate the sum of twenty nine thousand eight hundred and one dollars to the keloch hubbard library uh sarah seedman yes i i can speak i i'd also like to introduce the co-director of the keloch hubbard library carol and brennan who's here to offer a little bit carol do you want carolin do you want to start with a little data yeah sure um so i'm carolin and one of two co-directors the other co-director is jesse lin and we split up the administration of the library uh i do anything that's library services related and jesse does anything that is related to the operations of the library as a nonprofit because we are a 501c3 nonprofit uh so we have seen uh similar upheaval to other organizations this year there have been uh times where the building where we haven't been able to have foot traffic in the building where we've had a very lively um phone and internet reference service going on uh and we've done curbside circulation of library materials uh our total uh physical indeed physical and digital circulation uh for the fiscal year that ended in july was 356,484 total items uh we have our our library collection now stands at about 70,000 items give or take uh and it's probably going to stay there because our shelves are full and and so as we add things we have to also take away tired uh and worn out things but we also now have a digital collection uh that's about 80,000 items and that is um that is streaming movies through a service called canopy that is uh digital magazines through a service called flipster uh and then and that's also downloadable ebooks and audiobooks through a service called Libby that we share with other libraries as part of a consortium called the green mountain library consortium uh our our budget for this fiscal year that we're in right now is eight hundred and eighty seven thousand dollar eight eight hundred and eighty seven thousand six hundred and seventy two dollars that's down about um five percent from our budget last year we're seeking level funding with all of our member towns this year uh and so for um middle sex it's 29,801 that pays for about three percent of our total budget um and I am happy to I love throwing out numbers I get to do all the stats at the library so uh if anybody has any questions about things that we're offering or what we're doing right now or uh what usage is like I'm happy to answer those questions I like having Carol learn to do that because I'm not into the I'll do the other side here's a question yes so I just had a question about how the um how it works for folks that have a card with you um is each family allocated a card is it by person within the family um how does that work if somebody was come purchase a library card what what does that cover yeah sure uh so anybody that is kindergarten age or over that lives in one of our member towns slow so middle sex included uh can come in and get a library card whether or not you get a card for every member of your family or you get one single family card is up to you you can absolutely get a card for each person in your family um I find I've got two kids at home and a husband and uh I find that if we keep it to one family card it's a lot easier to keep track of everything that everybody's got out especially the kids so but that's entirely a personal choice so you can come in and get a card for everybody in your family if you want as long as their kindergarten age or older so if you're not if you're not a member of a participating community that family card gives everybody acts the same access at the same time yep exactly so then uh we charge $50 for cards for people that don't live in our member communities um and those are those are more generally accessed as a family card and so people get us they buy a single one uh and then uh and then the whole family uses it that's how it typically happens okay thank you yep um this is Mary Hood again I want to thank Sarah Seidman Seidman um for the really great reports that she um has put in um the front porch forum right I I she's just a great representative for us in no sense and I'm always impressed reading all the things that you do Carolyn um and how you've reached out during the pandemic to make sure people can access your resources um anyway well we certainly appreciate everybody's support and um and if there are other ways that we can reach out or particularly serve the residents of middle sex I always want to hear about it so email me or call me at the library because we're we we aim to meet the needs of our communities Carolyn I heard that some of the libraries um are loaning out snowshoes to people um they're a bunch of them but it looks like kellen cupboard is not one of them is that correct that is correct we don't at this time have any sort of special collections or library of things type items um and that's mainly because we serve a really wide service area and I get lots I feel lots and lots of requests for these types of collections and they're and we have a limited amount of space and it requires a fair amount of upkeep for some of these collections and a level of expertise that goes beyond books for things like cleaning and maintenance and there's never been any one special collection like that that I feel serves all of our towns pretty equally and I'm not sure if snowshoes is that item I'm still kind of waiting to see if there's ever a a pretty strong consensus for something like that but I've been asked to to carry things like bear canisters for hikers power tools gardening equipment seeds um cleats for for for child athletes so we get lots and lots of those requests and you know one of these days something's going to click and really work for everybody and we'll carry it but we haven't gotten there yet yeah I saw that Sarah um and it's true that if you go hiking like on the nature center um actually uh what's his name is here now chip is here now we'll he'll talk about that but they have um free snowshoes that are like hooked up on the trees so if you're doing the trails there you can borrow the snowshoes and then you return them to the tree it's kind of cool thanks carol I just want to add one thing which is I'm I'm as a new trustee I'm filling the very big shoes of people who've come before me like Mary Hood and like like Michael so and also I would just like to point out that the other thing that the library does is offer free computer service and high speed wi-fi and I don't know about you we are not well served by wi-fi on culvert helen so uh having that as a resource has been really helpful too so thank you to everyone any other questions for sarah or carolin okay thank you both very much I'm moving on to article 12 show the town of middle sex appropriate the sum of seven thousand dollars to the montpelier senior activity center and we have someone here from montpelier yes hi yes hi I'm down in the corner I'm sorry okay welcome hi thank you I serve as the director at montpelier senior activity center I've been there for about a decade and we've been really grateful for the continued support of town of middle sex voters and residents at least 70 of your residents participated in our programs and services this past year despite COVID and like a lot of other organizations we've pivoted a lot and been responsive to the community's needs of primarily older adults but and increasingly we're serving younger people as well with a lot of intergenerational programming and services um part of our bread and butter is our lifelong learning and healthy aging classes before the pandemic we typically had about 75 weekly classes um mostly in our facility occasionally in other towns like we've done classes in the town hall in middle sex and out in the wister town hall in some other locations in berlin and around montpelier so we really consider ourselves a senior center without walls um and this has become especially true during the pandemic because we've pivoted to now have a couple dozen classes online on zoom and about half of those are in movement um and most of them are available to folks who are younger we have a few programs that are strictly for people 50 and up we're also currently still doing our one-on-one foot care clinics in partnership with home health and hospice and we've brought back the sheer um with AARP help a free tax preparation clinic um that serves people in a low contact safe way um in our facility and we we typically serve a couple hundred people with that clinic this year we're having to space it out differently and we're we're still serving um i think about 80 people hoping to add more um but that's a really important service to people um like the library we have free wi-fi in a computer lab when we're open uh for the public to use we also house the Savoy's uh former um dvd archive which is available to our members as well as Savoy members um and we host a lot of educational programs now we're doing many of those online um in march we're getting ready to host 10 um pandemic safe online events as part of our march for meals campaign encourage you to check those out on our website um and some of them are family free family friendly some are health and wellness related we've got a film history course with um Rick Winston one evening it's a really fabulous lineup um i'll also mention that we're governed by 10 um uh advisory council members who work closely with me and our staff team um and we have several vacancies coming up we would love to have um some nominations from folks from our supporting towns like Middlesex so if you know someone who might be interested um i would be happy to provide them with more information and it's also available on our website so we are looking forward to eventually opening our doors back up and in the meantime we're um also offering wellness calls um getting ready to help folks with outdoor chores in this in the spring um and continuing to partner with a lot of the organizations that your residents um sometimes volunteer with and and receive services from we're really grateful as i said for your past support and i'm happy to answer any questions i can um and i'm realizing i forget to mention that we're continuing our Meals on Wheels service um not to Middlesex residents but to Montpelier in Berlin and our curbside meals are available to folks from all towns and i know some Middlesex residents have taken advantage of those this year uh we'll look forward to bringing meals back inside when it's safe to do so thank you you're welcome can i answer any questions from anyone okay thank you all right thank you have a good evening so article 13 is the exception to our previous rule because the uh Northport Nature Center did not request funds from us last year they did need to do a petition this year so this article they did their petition and this article is by petition they're requesting two thousand dollars and we have Chip here saying what's his name Chip hi everyone Chip Darmstadt i'm the executive director of the North Branch Nature Center and uh Susan Sussman is on this call as well Susan is a former board member and volunteer of the Nature Center so Susan feel free if you have anything you want to add it's been quite a year at the Nature Center and quite a year for all of us but like many organizations we managed to pivot and continue to serve our community including about 250 Middlesex residents not counting people who come to walk and snowshoe and ski the trails and yes Liz we do offer um snowshoes available for loan that's what that's the what's his name they're they're on the front porch so you could just come by grab a piece of grab a pair of snowshoes and sign them out and just return them when you're done but the trails are groomed where they're open 24 7 our visitor center is not open still we've been closed to the public for indoor programming since last March but we're looking forward to reopening at some point hopefully this summer but there is still a lot going on we have a lot of online programs that has been a big emphasis of ours this year so if you go on to our website north branch naturecenter.org you'll see about three dozen online programs that you can watch for free and there's more coming up this Friday there's a a presentation on Vermont Owls by Zach Coda on Friday at seven I believe it is and just go to our website and follow the link and you can watch there's also online courses for fee and there's also there are a number of in-person programs mostly for children there are a few for adults right now including a tracking series but our after-school program will be starting back up again we just recently started a program for for homeschoolers based on our eco program educating children outdoors our eco program has continued this year despite the pandemic we are still serving about 10 different schools and we are starting with Rumney school it's been a little slow getting off the ground this year with the pandemic but we hope by next fall to really be up and running with that program at at Rumney school so we're excited about that as I mentioned the trails are always open people are welcome to come out I was working on a grant today for an accessible trail a universally accessible trail so we're fundraising and grant writing for that so there will be a a trail that would loop around the community garden that would be accessible to all so uh lots going on check out the website even though the pandemic has changed the way we do things in some cases there's been silver linings like the online offerings we we are putting out there now that we're going to continue post pandemic so uh hope to see you all at an online program or on the trails and hopefully in person soon as well if there's any questions happy to answer those oh one other thing I wanted to mention sorry I forgot summer camp is happening this year we've actually it's already full we filled it in about a week or less however we did reserve at least one scholarship slot for each of the weeks and those scholarship slots are still available so um we are we are reaching out to the community including capstone to identify folks who might benefit from a scholarship for summer camp at the north branch neater center so if you want more information about that give me a shout chip at north branch neatercenter.org or give me a call uh so yeah any questions or susan did you want to add anything no just chip do you want to say anything about the construction that's happening now yeah uh thank you for that reminder uh so I don't know if folks have driven by and had noticed that the farmhouse is looking quite different we got a grant to weatherize the farmhouse so that 1850s farmhouse which has been a very leaky uh energy suck is now properly weatherized we're hoping to be a net zero campus when all is done so we're doing some interior renovations to the farmhouse as well so it's a major facelift and a major energy upgrade for the nature center and we look forward to people being able to see that when we're reopened to the public thank you uh susan and chip any questions for either of them okay thank you thanks for your support article 14 shall the town of middle sex appropriate the sum of ten thousand dollars to support the waterbury senior center meals on wheels program and we have justin and his cat here ready to talk about that thank you the cat is being quiet for a moment so i'm good to talk so uh i am the chairperson at the waterbury senior center um i wanted to report a few numbers for you especially about our meals on wheels program which is the part relevant to you guys um at the moment we have eight middle sex residents who are currently receiving meals on wheels and most of those get seven seven meals each week we deliver five days a week and that means that approximately 260 times each year one of our drivers will knock on the door deliver the meals and what i think is most important they will have a brief short a wellness visit we call them with our recipients a chance to say uh say hello see how things are going um those difficult tasks in the day opening a jar or helping reach something um that is so important and that is going on approximately 260 times uh each year now for each person that means uh approximately 2500 meals uh delivered in your area um uh in a year and funding is especially difficult at the moment um we are not able to use waterbury centers own space for congregate meals or to rent out to have any income that way so we are especially thankful for the support of the towns who we serve um and we are requesting ten thousand dollars which is the same as last year and every penny will be very very well spent any questions thank you justin take good care of that cat i will thank you okay good evening uh so next is article 14 article four excuse me article 15 article 15 is our i call it the omnibus article it's all the organizations who request two hundred and fifty dollars or less and there's quite a laundry list of them um they're in there they're in the town report and there is also a little uh report from each one of them describing what they do uh the way this article works is you vote either or will vote either for for all or none there are no picking and choosing so the amount of the article the total is five thousand seventeen dollars if you vote for that article all those organizations get that amount of money that they requested um i really can't speak in particular for any of those the reports are in the town report you can you can read them if you have any particular questions or concerns you can contact myself or any other member of the uh select board but there's no uh there's no changing those requests and there's no adding or removing anybody from that list um so with that if there are no questions on that i'm going to move on to article 16 which is a petitioned article and it reads shall the town voters authorize that all special articles requesting town taxpayer funding except the annual municipal budget be voted on by Australian ballots starting on March 1st 2022 so that would be next year's town meeting so right now we're voting by Australian ballot on the basis of a one-year exception if this article passes um we will be voting on all these special articles in the future uh by Australian ballot the same way we are uh this year and is there anyone who would like to have a municipal budget excuse me Mary except our municipal budget i said special articles yes municipal budget will be considered a town meeting yes that will unless anybody has uh any other questions or concerns about any of these articles that will conclude our informational meeting i would like to ask the select board to stay on just for a quick minute after we adjourn the informational meeting thanks all yes just thank you oh okay okay everybody thank you very much good night select board members please stay on thanks for coming everybody yep hi mary um peter i made sarah the host so if she's going to stay on for the select board meeting that's all the way if not you have to make someone else the host nope sarah that's fine thank you sarah sarah stay on bye guys bye thank you sarah bye sarah do you want me sure you bet me uh i don't think we need you vik but you're certainly welcome are we allowed to have a meeting you're not allowed it's not a meeting this is a meeting you no i don't think we cannot you cannot take any action at this point we can't take any action can we discuss anything yes yeah okay it is it is uh noticed and that was yeah yeah it's a meeting so i just have i just have two really quick things the meeting one thing is the the question came up uh after after our last board meeting about doing a background check on our new financial person and uh i know dorinda has feelings about this i don't believe myself personally in reference checks because nobody gives nobody gives anybody a bad reference or in my experience 45 years of experience nobody gives anybody a bad reference but uh a background a background check is a different issue uh dorinda pointed out to me that what i already knew is that this person has no ability to move money sign checks get money access to money they can look at they can look at numbers but they can't uh they can't uh they can't get it any money there's no way um so i just wanted before we go any further with that i was curious if anybody else had any thoughts of this i did ask uh liz to find out who um capstone uses to do their background checks um and i know there you can go online and there are all kinds of organizations that offer background checks for fifty dollars or less i don't know which ones are the good ones or the bad ones i would use if we decide to do it um i would use uh i would use the one that uh capstone uses and i would do it on do it on my authority so we don't need a motion or we don't need to take action but if anybody has anything to say about that uh now is the time i'm confused are you thinking that you want to do it or that you don't want to do it you and well it's been it's there's there's been concern expressed that we did not do it my feeling is i am comfortable i am comfortable not doing it uh dorinda you might want to speak up well um i agree with you first of all nobody's going to give you personal references that are gonna condemn any you know them at all so um and his resume resonates where he's been working with um a lot of different um in a lot of different places um not physically working but volunteering and other activities and interests i did certainly you know google his name and um did as much research as i could that way if there's a concern about um any kind of sexual predator or anything like that that's free access to the website um but my thing as i told peter is i don't see how he could you know walk away with any money he's not the treasurer he doesn't have that role at all and um he's only got eyes on everything well i will make the point that as someone who hires people first of all references should have been just that's just common place with anyone i don't care if they're giving you references that are going to be good references if you know how to ask the questions you can usually get what you the information that you need and if it turned out he was a terrible employee then we could say well we checked his references right if we do nothing i i i cannot stand by and allow us to not even do reference checks or a background check on someone who's going to be a bookkeeper for us i'm sorry i just cannot and the fact that it was made public on an orca meet on a television and it was sort of flippantly you know just regarded as like well liz uh you can say i told you so that to me is just need to do something we either need to do reference checks or we need to do a background check and i'm happy to do the reference checks he's not he's not going to be mad if i call him up and say hey we missed a part do you mind if we just do some reference checks he'll give us names i'll i'll do the other check too i'm i'm not saying he would but first let me say something that i would have been done a lot of hiring myself for over many years and i mean you didn't attend the meeting you didn't have the interview with the gentleman okay so that's one thing secondly nobody was being flippant about it the select board all except for you were there and nobody at the time suggested this and we i would say that's because we don't do this we're never hiring people that's not our we normally aren't hiring people for for positions it's normally like steve hiring someone for the road or something well but we did hire our last bookkeeper with no background check and the one prior to that with no background check so don't say we don't put people in this position i'm not here to argue it i'm just saying that we're kind of putting we've offered the gentleman the job and now we're putting the tail before the dog so it's not too late to do it that's all i'm saying and i think that it's just prudent for us to if anything were to go i mean you read about this in the papers and on tv that somehow someone has and i'm not i don't think this guy's gonna i have no worries that this guy looked at his resume he looks great you can't find him on the internet i don't have any worries about that but i just feel like as a town that we are you know it's our due diligence to do very simple things that everyone does when they hire someone i mean i check steve sun's references i didn't say oh it's steve sun i'm sure he's fine you know i so i just i i'm standing firm on that well i mean i think you have a bigger concern when somebody's elected to a position like a treasurer and there's no opportunity to do any background check that's a bigger position problem so we can't take any formal action we can't have a uh uh we can't have a motion and i don't think we should wait until our next meeting so i guess i am i am happy on my own authority to call him up and ask him for a couple of references and liz you can check him how about that is everybody okay with that i'm fine with that and what about what about doing a formal background check i am not in favor of doing that no i don't think we need to that will make you have to do something that's okay that'll make you happy well darinda and i did i spent i spent about an hour and a half searching around uh on the internet i have to believe if there was anything really bad out there it would have popped up or darinda or i would have found it but anyway um i don't mind i don't mind calling him and asking him uh and if he gives me a hard time about it we'll figure out what we do i don't think you will um i'll be nice i'll be nice um so that's item number one quick item number two is uh as you know delia uh delia volunteered her her services to our town and she's not a resident of our town she's not an official of our town she's uh susan clark's sister which is a very important role but um she provided a lot of value she participated in a couple of a couple of meetings she spent the entire time in our last informational meeting and i think made a substantial contribution to this uh to this process of these informational meetings and then uh sarah brige who is a town resident also uh also contributed uh quite a bit um i i thought we should maybe do something for susan clark too but sarah pointed out to me that she's the moderator and that's her job so we shouldn't do anything for her so she gets crossed off the list so the question then came came up what to do and um i asked uh i asked uh susan to come up with something for her sister and she came up with um who was it sarah simon pierce yeah a dinner of simon pierce which would be not that we have to pay the in prior cost of the dinner but a gift certificate at simon pierce sarah with her with her with her eye on the prize uh suggested that that seemed that seemed over the top to her and maybe we should give gift certificates to businesses in town well that would work for uh for sarah brige but it's not going to work very well for delia because she lives in woodstock um so i was i was fine doing a 75 or 80 dollar gift certificate to simon pierce and and whatever but i i don't just want to do that and uh i don't want to disrespect uh sarah's sarah's opinion that it's too much so i don't know how you guys feel and well suggesting sarah berger yes same thing for sarah berger i don't know mary i i would say so yes i mean i would say she didn't she put in as much time as really did maybe not i'm here's uh simon pierce gift certificate for sarah berger no no no i did a different restaurant well i mean we could we could do a red hand gift certificate for sarah berger i just was wondering why you'd want to give sarah one she'd have to travel down no no no no no yeah delia i don't know guys i i just think you know we we said we would at the beginning of this process that we're willing to pay somebody her normal fee would have been to do these two meetings would have been about 800 dollars i i i think we should so i would go with 100 though for um for delia somehow 80 seems like not two people yeah it's either 75 or 180 is like a no simon pierce isn't cheap no no it's not it's nice though it is nice well i just i think she she really provides she's you know she's volunteered and done stuff for our town before too so it's just it's a thank you it's not a real a real measure of uh the amount of effort she put in but okay and and would we do this do the same for uh sarah berger do it for red hen yeah okay okay hey we want a hundred dollars for red hen and a hundred dollars for simon pierce yes okay they're up can you spend a hundred dollars at right now i was gonna say what about the burger joint the new burger joint in town a filling station yeah do they have gift gift cards they're opening on friday at 11 a.m oh you can be the first in line sarah to get the gift card no don't that's what we'll be doing on friday he doesn't work on that day remember that's right friday she doesn't work for us on that day well i don't i don't care whether it's the red hen or the i mean it might be fun to do the filling station i don't know i don't know anything about him he might not be able to spend a hundred dollars there i don't know they serve out the whole area you can spend a hundred dollars you could spend a hundred there yeah you could have two visits what about roots oh that's a good idea well that's another one yeah i bet she'd love that you could easily spend a hundred dollars at roots yeah you can buy six years you can buy six years of corn for a hundred dollars well they so they have wine and beer and they have all of that so that's a great idea i think that's i think that's a great idea yeah roots is much better yeah me too okay so do simon pierce for delia and roots for uh sarah yep yep i'm not going to put this in the minutes okay because i don't want to ruin the surprise right there you go don't put it in on orca somebody is recording it it doesn't matter no i'm sure delia is watching right now maybe i don't i don't care i want i want to say i want to say thank you she really uh she really stepped up for us so i think we should we don't have a meeting next week right well that's what i wanted to ask you so march the second is that your normal meeting yeah but but i ballots and stuff we don't want to know no no no uh i'm not doing three freaking meetings in march i am meeting out me so if i i'm gonna have to like just skip a meeting because i'm just gonna my head's gonna explode so there's why don't we just have the meeting next on on the on march second you can sign orders will be really quick and dirty then the next meeting will be the six will be the 16th that's the organizational meeting and then you'll be done until april doesn't that sound nice yes yes oh five we're saying is we're not we're not gonna have a real meeting on the second we're just gonna sign orders well we're gonna have a meeting like this we're gonna chime in if there's like a a driveway permit that needs to be signed or you know orders you get all that kind of housekeeping done and then we'll just say bye bye it's not like we're gonna have anybody you know testifier a quick five o'clock a quick five o'clock yeah and then the 16th be the organizational meeting but look at you guys have been meeting we've all been meeting meeting meeting i mean this is gonna this will be great you'll be so happy by april so is there anything that needs to be done can we delay the organizational meeting till the next meeting well it's between the the second and the in the 16th i guess uh you know you'll just turn in your oaths and uh and then i think we can i think we can exist for for that time period of time without you'll have to give me permission to pay bills yeah okay we can do that at that next meeting yeah you're saying no meeting on the 16th no i'm saying no no no that would be the organizational meeting oh okay all right why would lend why would durin to have permission to pay bills well i mean next week is our um check run like this week was payroll next week is checks we have to sign so that's the second if we do orders isn't that the permission well i mean i can send that out you'll have to give me you'll have to do that without can you do it without a long meeting no we're gonna have a meeting on the second we're gonna have a meeting oh you're gonna have it on that's the only reason to have a meeting on the second just so we can do that okay and then you'll and then we'll have a nice one on the 16th yeah it just was just to the normal schedule okay all right yeah as long as you're doing the orders on the second i didn't get that so we might have new select board members so it's a new select board meter members that meet on the second no because they won't have been elected yet that's correct it'll be okay all right okay got it yep can i ask a question done yes wait what were you gonna say phil i just said are we done uh i just had a question thank you so so just quickly and i guess i we i can ask everybody here at the capital spending plan meeting there's a sort of our first task is the central Vermont regional planning commission talking to the select board about the parameters around what gets included in a capital spending plan so like you know the cost of something the size of it like what you know is it trucks is it buildings is it whatever it is is that something that you think we need to have as a like she would need to come to a meeting that is one of our regularly warned meetings because that would be probably the meeting right after our informational or our organizational meeting um or is it like something that she could sit down with like peter and me to talk about um i think the i think the board should make the decision about what's going to be included and excluded on the size but i don't think she needs to be there i think she can i think she'll she'd be there to help guide to to frame what it is that we're talking about like i think that that is part of what she want that that she will meet with us on well then she then she should okay be there but i think it's important for us to make those decisions okay all right so i will tell her that um and sarah i'll be in touch with you about i think it would be the following meeting because the deadline because this we're pushing everything back a little bit so that we have it for town meeting potentially to sign a year from now so everything has to move a little bit faster um so well we could do it on the second part on the 16th yeah organizational take like 10 minutes okay well yeah we usually hold just an organizational meeting and then we get down to the uh regular meeting i want before we go i would like everybody to kind of think of a couple of things one we have not in my tenure appointed a tree warden and somehow during re investigating all this stuff we had to do for what needs to be on the ballot it came to our attention that that is an absolute necessity you absolutely have to have a tree warden which will solve some of the problems like what lisa perish was saying you know so let's ask the conservation commission to help us find a person fine but i mean just let someone to just get get in the when you're thinking about appointing people the other thing is that it's very unlikely we're going to get enough guidance for the lister position and we need a third lister having two listers is just a disaster so um if you can possibly think or come up with some names of people who might be willing to uh serve as lister for at least a year before they run again those are lister zba tree warden well zba is that the one phil just stepped down from yep oh that that's a toughy it is a toughy so what does the tree warden do well the tree warden does if the town needs to take down a tree the tree warden goes out there and says you know deals with the landowner and the and the and the the road crew or whoever you hired to take down the tree to talk about taking down trees if you say we want to clear some trees on center road to improve our sight lines whoever's property that the town's right away runs into where those trees are they need to be consulted with a tree warden that's what the tree warden does and it's a weird it's like we've been we've been having you know you know grand jurors and you know whatever for years this is actually something we've actually had to have well it sounds like a road commissioner job sarah well it does and that's where you get into problems now you can you can just get the tree warden to work with a homeowner so that people don't get mad trees are controversial like roads are controversial back when i was on the select board peter weren't we wasn't all the select board members they were the fence viewers the tree wardens everything we were all i was the fence viewer for about 15 years i think i never viewed one fence yeah that that's basically what we did in the past i want that job sarah what you're telling us is by statute we need to have one by statute it's by statute like one of those things they stumbled upon and and you know lisa pair she raises a when she calls up and says who did that with the trees you know if that were on her property she could say where was the tree warden in this that's a perfect example well i think if you don't you don't want the road commissioner to be the tree warden also i don't know maybe i didn't say that no one's there's nothing that says you can't you worry what's that there's nothing that says you can't be the tree warden oh well i would say over the years most of the tree problems that i'm aware of have all been you know town town right away but private landowners land issues that is exactly right you know nobody's nobody's worried about the big ash tree that has bugs in it that's in somebody's back 48 so peter yeah just think of our neighbor um liz and how angry she was when her trees were cut back oh she's not alone yeah mary permanently has her hand up erie no you permanently have your hand up i don't know hey guys i'm willing to say i think we've all had enough for tonight vik's got the last word yes vik okay so you get um next week uh i'm back in the same situation i was a few weeks ago i got a dentist appointment but i should be out by five okay but i don't think it's mandatory that i'd be there anyways unless you i don't think it'll be much a minute meeting yeah i think steve could fill in for me he's very he's very expanded experience i think we i think we can i think we can handle it in your absence victor if something comes up oh right you got two of you we can get a great job of shoveling the front steps that was a monumental task and he did it right away and they're fantastic it was just like that i asked him once it was done there you go and he responded very quickly to my email around it was we couldn't see over the hills anymore at the bottom of culver hill road it almost got smashed into again and he was like i'll clear them so that's great yeah it's really nice okay guys okay i don't know about the rest of you but i'm done i'm adjourning the meeting thank you all very much