 Okay. Well, you let me know when you think you're good everybody. Yeah. We're at 531 since we have Katie with us and we're just missing the one and we are recording. Do you guys want to check it off? And it's Maria. Jump sound. All right, so I'm going to call the meeting to order. And. First thing on the agenda would be to. I don't have it in front of me, but I'm assuming it's public comment. Yep. Any public comment. Hearing none. We'll move on to. Approval of the minutes. You want to make a motion to approve the minutes. I move that we approve the minutes. Okay. Second. Okay. Motion is made in second to prove the minutes. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Okay. Minutes approved. And on to the next item. So. You said, I don't have my minutes in front of me, but, uh, I mean my calendar in front of me, but what are we up to next, Trevor? Yep. I think we're up to, we may have missed the approval of the agenda. Just as a housekeeping item. Oh yeah. So okay. Motion to approve the agenda. I so move. Okay. Second. Second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Okay. Now we're on to. Highlights of the meeting. We've got Katie Buckley with us from VLCT. She is the, correct me if I get your title a little off here, the ARPA coordinator. It might be, might be more to it than that, but. It's okay. I could care less about my title. It's just the, what I have to say, right? About the information. So, um, We can turn it right over to you if you're ready and we can launch into. Sounds great. Thank you. I have a slide deck, um, which I'm going to run through, which are the basics of ARPA. First of all, I want to thank you for having me tonight. It's my pleasure to be here. And I hope that, uh, the information I share will, you'll find it helpful and valuable on your road ahead as you, uh, start together and put in make decisions, uh, recommendations to, uh, the town manager and your select order, whatever your process is in your community. So, um, I am going to screen share. My screens are in a little different order tonight. So it's. Not a sink here. Let's see if. I'm sharing the right screen. Hopefully. Do you see that. Opening slide. Yes, we do. So let me just quickly go through, um, what I'm going to cover. I'm going to give you some background, talk about what Vermont share of ARPA is, uh, some final rule basics, spending, the standard allowance, uh, Vermont and nationally public engagement in your award and the role of Vermont, League of cities and towns in your regional planning commission. So the American rescue plan act is just about one year old. It was passed in March 11th of last year. Um, and of the many things it created, it created a state and local fiscal recovery fund, which we simply call ARPA. Its purpose is to help, uh, governments respond to and recover from the pandemic. Uh, ARPA is implemented by the final rule, which was just issued in January, January 6th, and it contains sweeping changes from the interim final rule, which had been in effect from May of last year up until January 6th. Um, Vermont share. So Vermont is getting $1.25 billion in ARPA money. Uh, a little over $1 billion is going through the state of Vermont. And that is, uh, half of it was allocated during the last legislative session. And the remainder is being allocated during this session. Actually, as we speak, um, it's going out in the form of direct assistance to households, businesses, um, in the form of either direct assistance or grants, um, and programs that are available to other eligible applicants. Uh, a little over $200 million is going directly to towns, cities and villages throughout the state of Vermont, like yours. Um, it works out to be about $300 per Vermont. I don't know if you were involved in the early conversations. When the money was first being discussed, um, about it coming to the state. And there was a $121 million of county money, which because we don't have county form of government in the state of Vermont, we allocated to, uh, Vermont municipalities, which made your awards much larger comparatively to town, other towns, cities and villages throughout the country. Um, whoops. Sorry. My, my mouse got a little away from me there. My apologies. Um, so you can see from the image on the right that, um, 277 out of 278 towns, uh, certified to accept their ARPA funds, which was quite remarkable. So a lot of towns took the leak into using federal dollars, many of whom never used federal money before. Um, and so there, they agreed to accept this one time funding. Um, and because those ARPA awards are larger of those 277, 249 have awards greater than $100,000. So not relevant to your town, but it's interesting nonetheless. Um, so the final rule, as I mentioned, the final rule is, um, what implements the state and local fiscal recovery fund. Uh, it replaces the interim rule. It takes effect April 1st, but recipients can start using it now with no penalty. And we highly recommend that you do because the changes in it are, uh, make it much more flexible. All funds must be obligated by December 31st, 2024 and extended by December 31st, 2026. Uh, the legislative body is the ultimate arbiter of the funds. So, um, there's no higher power or authority who has to approve your process or your spending. It's the legislative body in each community. Uh, all municipalities are required to do the reporting directly to Treasury. You have your grant agreement directly with Treasury. There's no intermediate area. The state of Vermont has no oversight over your funding. They cannot tell you how to spend it. Uh, it is a relationship between you and the US department of the Treasury and you will report to Treasury annually on by April 30th of each year. Starting this year. Uh, next month straight. 2027. So what you cannot spend the money on, um, and these are the changes between the interim final rule and the final role. So you still cannot directly fund in that word directly fund is a keyword there. Deposits into pension funds, contributions to reserve funds or outstanding debt service. What you can now do with the ARCA funding, which you could not do before the final rule is, uh, if you, uh, use the revenue loss approach, you can use your ARPA award as a grant match for any other type of grant, which includes non federal match for other federal programs. So that's, that's pretty big. That's why we love that change the most. So if there are, um, our additional funding sources that you're exploring for projects in your community, then you can use your ARPA funding as required grant match, which in a lot of instances that can be real money. If it's a 20% match per say a tree, a V trans grant, uh, what you can spend it on this, um, this table makes my eyes, uh, blur, and it has for coming up on a year now. Um, really the most important expenditure category out of this entire table is revenue replacement. It's with that little green arrow is pointing out right there. Um, and it's where we're having everyone focused. So it's round revenue loss and revenue replacement. So treasury allows you to either calculate your revenue loss using this lovely formula here, or you can take the $10 million standard allowance, which means in Randolph's instance, your entire ARPA award can be claimed as lost revenue and spent on the provision of government services. Um, one point and Trevor, this is probably the slide more meant for you than anyone else. Um, if you do take the standard allowance, you must make this election during your April 30th reporting of this year. So it has to be done. So when you're doing your reporting or whoever's doing the reporting for your town, um, make sure you point that out to them. So what does this really mean? Um, municipalities now can spend their ARPA awards on the provision of government services, which is really, uh, any service provided by a government. It doesn't mean it's something that you have had to do in the past or do do in the past. Um, but it's something that whatever you choose to spend your funding on, um, this can range from bolstering town operations to improving community gathering spaces to supporting local nonprofits, buying equipment for firefighters, highway crews, roads, bridges, it's pretty much anything. Uh, ARPA and Vermont, what it looks like, uh, on the ground here in Vermont, I get, uh, I've gotten literally thousands of increase in my inbox, um, on eligible uses. What can we spend our money on? Um, obviously more so when there were more restrictions under the interim rule, but now with the final rule, it's a lot, uh, the floodgates have kind of opened, but for municipal operations and lots of inquiries and cybersecurity, IT upgrades, uh, websites, hybrid meetings, uh, equipment. I heard someone mention an owl earlier. It sounds like you guys are in good shape. Um, digitizing land records, making capital improvements to, uh, municipal-owned buildings, code improvements, that sort of stuff, uh, creating formal capital plans, uh, even down to seeding administrative positions in towns, um, for a town administrator, economic development coordinator, um, either for towns themselves or shared positions, um, between more than one town. Um, to revitalize communities, I've gotten tons of inquiries on outdoor recreation. So improving parks, trails, green spaces, rec centers, that sort of stuff. Towns that are looking to advance diversity, equity, um, and inclusion work, high quality childcare, affordable housing. Um, as I mentioned, community gathering spaces, nonprofits, the whole gamut really. Uh, nationally, I think you guys might have seen this slide before. I looked at your minutes and saw that you, um, had the NLC local action tracker there. That's an interesting one. If you're interested in seeing what cities throughout the country are doing with their ARPA funds. Um, obviously their scale is much different than we have here, but, uh, many of the things that are being proposed in larger cities are scalable to them on, um, public engagement. So unlike a lot of other federal funding, um, pieces of federal funding, there is no requirement for public engagement. However, it is implicit through the final, the interim rule and the final rule. Um, and it, we're seeing it in all shapes and sizes throughout the state. Everything from, uh, just a regularly warned item on a select board meeting agenda down to ARPA committees being formed, uh, websites being created, web pages on town websites, um, to gather input and outreach platforms, people that are paying for platforms to help with gathering community input. So it's the full gamut, but we definitely are seeing lots of ARPA committees forming so much so that we, um, created a little ARPA committee formation toolkit on our website and have a template for a formation document, but you guys are informed. So I'm guessing you went through all of that already. Uh, your ARPA award, it's, it's some basic rules of the roads. Try and stretch your ARPA dollars anywhere where you can find opportunity to leverage if you're making your list of priorities for spending, see where there, um, are opportunities to add other funding. So if it's a capital project you're looking to do with ARPA funds, see if there are other funding sources available to reduce the amount that your taxpayers, um, the burden on them in terms of funding it. Use your existing tools if you have, um, sure you have a town plan. If you have any other plans, reports, studies that have been done, look to those as, um, you are forming priorities and, and shaping how you're going to have your public, um, dialogue around money and don't reinvent the wheel. Uh, there are a lot of towns that are looking to do direct assistance to businesses and there is a lot, a lot, a lot of resources available, um, on the state level. And an example right here is housing resources for Vermonters in need. We created a, uh, one pager that has links to all sorts of programs that you could direct your residents to everything from mortgage, taxes, insurance, assistance to rental assistance, uh, a whole variety of resources. So, um, if you, if you know of where, uh, if you have direct assistance that you're looking to do, look to other agencies and organizations first, see if they are already doing it because they've already stood up the program and they already have the administration in place to do it. Um, so look to them and you could even use your funds to augment theirs. So our general framework is pretty simple. Prioritize good government, governance, look to leverage your, your ARPA assistance and look for, um, long-term investments for your community. Uh, this is me. This is what I do. Uh, ARPA assistance and coordination. I attend select board meetings, ARPA committee meetings. Uh, I have a lot of one-on-one phone calls, trainings with all sorts of people. I read and interpret all the regs that come through and then help simplify it for you folks. Um, I have an area of our website with a lot of resources and I am available, um, to connect with, um, to the community. Uh, I'm in a little bit of a hurry. Whenever you're here, here I am. So as it relates to ARPA, I work very closely with the regional planning commission. I believe you're two river out of Quiche. Correct. Um, so I work very closely with the folks there who, um, their lead folks for ARPA. And the 11 RPCs throughout the state. We've been in, um, right in lockstep with each other straight through this whole process to make sure that, um, you're in contact information. And then the other thing is, um, to get the information that you have ahead with your funding. And that's my contact information for anybody who has any questions after the meeting. Um, don't hesitate to reach out, email, phone, whatever is best for you. And I will respond. So I'm going to stop. Screen sharing. And I know you had some questions. Sure. Let's open it up to some questions. Okay. Yeah, this is Matt. I have a question. Just, um, so that $10 million allowance, it sort of allows us to say we had, we had lost revenue and we can just claim this is lost revenue. Um, it seems. That's not the same thing as saying that we can then kind of do whatever we want with the money, right? The money still has to be used in a way which meets the, um, sort of the, if not the letter, but at least the spirit of the, uh, the intent of the funding. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Can we use it? Can we use it to, um, redo all of our gravel roads, but not somebody next year. If you could. I don't want, I mean, I don't want to, but I'm just asking. Right. And, um, so the answer is yes. Um, you, there's a lot of things you can use it for. Um, and that's where you have to, uh, do that hard work of making your priority list. And really the intent of the funding is forward facing. So, um, you know, if you're using that lens, um, you could use the money to do an analysis of the road to determine if it's a water. Issue on your road and do some rebuilding of roads so that you're not spending money in the future on it. So that's an investment in a, in a road. If you were doing that. Um, but it's really, you know, this is where it's tough. Um, the final rule came down, allowed pretty much every town, city and village to take their entire arbor award is revenue loss because of that $10 million allowance. Um, and provision of government services is. Anything. Right. So, um, it becomes, uh, how the select board wants to shape the funding, how the community wants to shape the funding. Um, and, and each community's process for, um, determining the, basically the lens that you're going to use to, um, look at this money and prioritize spending of it. So. Okay. Is there ever any audit, um, follow up audit to say this money was used appropriately or, or not, or if the select board decides they want to use it. Yeah. So depending upon, um, how the money is used, through the general ledger, uh, if it's all run through in this year, it'll trigger a single audit and the town will be required to, I'm going to guess, um, just by the size of your town. Trevor, this might be a question for you that you probably have a single audit on a pretty regular basis. Do you. We have had in recent years due to other grant. Funding sources. Time as we pass through for housing projects, for example. Yeah. That pushes up over the number a couple of times in the last five to seven years at least. So you'll probably have a regular annual audit. In general. And then, um, because of that, the, uh, single audit is triggered when you have $750,000 of federal expenditure in a single year. And so. Likely we'll have that and it will train trigger a single audit, which then they'll audit the program itself. Thank you. Taking that standard allowance would give us a lot more options than how the money can be spent. Definitely. And even if, even if you wanted to spend in the other expenditure categories, I think there's 83 categories now that they've been expanded to. So let's say just hypothetically you wanted to do a sewer project in your community. You would, you could still do the sewer project. You just reported all under the loss revenue category. So it just, it provides much simpler reporting for when you're having to do it through the portal. Um, it's less documentation recording. It's less documentation recording. And obviously whoever is the record keeper for your community with these funds, you're going to want to keep clear records not only for treasury, if you're ever to be audited, but also for your taxpayers. If someone said, Hey, I want to know how the money was spent. You want to be able to demonstrate to them. Here's, here's how much we got. Here's what we spent it on. So it sounds like we're going to be able to, you know, We could do a lot of different things. So again, you're right. You'd have to prioritize. What the important things are for long-term helping the community. It's, you know, there was. Their job, right? It's almost worse for folks like you who have to take this big universe, universe of possibility. And when it went down to a group of suggestions, right? So it's, you know, when you had more restrictions on the money, it forced you into thinking. Now it's like, it's a free for all. So it's, it's a blessing and a curse all at the same time, but to glass half full it. Yes. It is much more, you have much more opportunity. In terms of the sort of long-term investment conversation, we've, we've talked about it before. We've talked about it. And in terms of the sort of long-term investment conversation, we have, we've talked about, could we create a loan fund, low or no interest loan for, um, and that money would get paid back, right? So we're wondering if that runs up against the, the end of 26 deadline to spend it, quote unquote, all, but if we created something like that, there would be a recurrence of that money. You know what I mean? So if you directly fund a loan program, there are some funky rules around loan programs with ARPA because of the, must be spent by December 31st, 2026. And really the workaround is bringing it through your general fund and having it cover general fund expenses like salary and payroll, and then using the general fund money that's been freed up to then fund your loan program. So you're using unrestricted general fund dollars, not federal money as the basis for the loan program. Therefore there's no more, you know, timeline, all of that other federal characters off the money. Does that make sense? Yes. Okay. Yeah. And it feels wrong. Okay. Let's just be blunt here. It feels completely wrong to do something like that, but it's not. It's done all the time where one funding sources swapped in for another and then that others, whatever's freed up is spent on something else. Thanks. You're welcome. Are there any guidelines around obligation generally in terms of what to be thinking of in terms of how to obligate the money by the end of 2024? Is it just as simple as sort of, identifying and adopting some kind of list of projects or programs or, or there's a need to be something additional. Do we not even know that yet? Cause we're so early on. I think it's going to become clear after this reporting period. So if you claim your entire award has lost revenue, then it might be a little bit more than that. But I think it's a little bit more than that. So if you claim your entire award has lost revenue, then it might mean that all of that runs through your books this year. So it ends up being all spent this year. Right. So the obligation piece and even the spending piece of 20, those two dates of 2024 and 2026 might end up becoming a moot point, depending upon how treasury treats all the lost revenue. We're also waiting to see if uniform guidance, is it play for it? So there's still, there are still a lot of unknowns. And we're just sort of take every day as it comes and wait for the next piece of guidance to come in the next clarification. And so we're hoping that in the next couple of weeks, especially gearing up for this reporting that is one month away. The due date that we'll get more clarity and information on that. Katie, this is Matt again, I'm in talking to residents of Randolph for like asking for suggestions on projects and things they'd like to see a number of people have brought up some interesting projects, interesting ideas, but they're really just very conceptual at this point. And so I'll, I'll, I'll make up a hypothetical one. This is not one I really got, but somebody wants to put in a trampoline park in Randolph. I think that kind of recreational activity would be great. But there's not even a concept available. And so for projects that are really just sort of theoretical at this point, but, but maybe you could get a lot of support. Is there a, um, what are other towns and other places doing to, um, move these projects along so that the funds could be obligated by 2024 or, or does the, is this funding really only suitable for, for projects like that that have gotten through at least the conceptual design phase. It's up to the town. It's really up to your community how, um, you know, think of it as standing up a grant program. Right. You have to, you have to come up with what the program is, what's, what will be eligible, what won't be eligible, what's your application process, what's your selection process. Um, it's a, it's a fair amount of work to, to stand up a program and then fund local projects. Um, I, you know, you might look to existing programs at the state level to see how they're structured and then mock their structure. Um, so that applicants know how much funding is available. What, what they're, sorry, my family is having a big conversation in the background through their door. They usually know to be quiet, but I'm going to thank you. Sorry. Um, I just wanted to apologize for that interruption. My life is happening in the background. It's the dog. Um, so it's, you know, have you gotten, and my apologies, I don't know, when you were formed by the select board, I would imagine, correct? Yes. Did you have a formation document where you were given a charge? There was a scope of work in, in one of the, the, there was a memo we put together. There was a scope of work that was adopted as part of that. It set out some general themes. Yeah. They weren't the explicit, like how are we going to get into the nitty gritty and, and, you know, rank the, um, you know, the trampoline park against the Ferris wheel or anything like that. But they did sort of set aside, you know, one of the board schools was folks will recall was to try to get into the nitty gritty. And then they, they would go to the other board, but I figured out ways to deploy the funds where there's a broad based impact. So that each corner of town saw some level of forward looking benefit from the use of these funds. So there were things like that. The, some of the transparency and accountability pieces were baked into that scope of work. As well. So it was a one pager, but it did set out sort of like a little mini charter. work if you want it like I love personally I love the trampoline park idea what fun right however is that going to bring the maximum value and benefit to your residents does it serve all residents who does it exclude in the process you know who um does it help to benefit those who were disproportionately impacted by COVID right a lot of times that's low-income people um so if you can use the lens of ARPA as you're making your decisions around what fund and what not to fund that's super helpful you're you know I lean back into your town plan that one the town plan helps to again narrow the fields what are your priorities pick those areas is it you know is something that's being proposed does it follow attendance at ARPA yep check check check check um is it in compliance with our town plan check you know you start to put in criteria that helps you narrow and really at the end you want such a good process so that everyone who is funded understands why they were funded and those more importantly who were not funded they might be disappointed but they absolutely know why they were told no and it's that that simple so um and there I wish I could tell you it there's a one-size-fits-all approach there isn't every town has different priorities and are picking what is most important to them and um you know Westford is a town that went through a rubric of decision-making so you might reach out to them as an example um or for to see if they would share their rubric uh I want to say Brandon may have also done a rubric I believe Barry City is working through the same have you um where are you in your process have you started um like is this are you is this like your second or third meeting so you're going to be the third meeting yeah so third meeting yeah last meeting we discussed kind of a very broad intake form online or and and we didn't really get in the selection process after but kind of casting a wide net early it was pretty pretty good consensus um have you so I have a question yeah are these so communities that have spent the money so far are they putting this to like a okay so it's very few right yeah anybody is anybody contemplating a list and then putting that to a townwide vote uh not that I know of not that I know of okay only the only reason I'm asking is because we have a little bit of time here so as we select projects you know maybe it's what I'm thinking is is the committee kind of puts some projects forward but in order to maybe make sure that everybody feels like they've been treated equally if you put it to a townwide vote then it's either yay or nay and that's what won so I mean I'm just throwing it out there if that's a bit is anybody talked about anything like that yet um not uh not their entire project list we have had in uh this past town meeting we had a couple of towns I want to say that put articles on their warning about using their ARPA funds to create uh basically an ARPA fund you know so that the it's reserved set aside by the voters um and is a reserve fund so it's it can be rolled over year after year so if the funds are brought into your general fund and become surplus they're not used in any way that surplus is generally used but that it's set aside for a specific purpose but in terms of an actual project no we didn't see anything um on the town meeting mornings but everybody everybody's very early in their process even if our ARPA committees have been meeting um and forming ideas we haven't heard or seen a lot of spending beyond uh you know smaller necessary like digitizing land records we have a lot of digitizing records right I've heard about you know a bunch of towns are doing that yeah yeah and that makes a lot of sense that that they're having to do anyway hybrid meeting equipment you all have had to do some form of hybrid meeting for the last couple years so now you can either retroactively find that equipment that you already bought um or uh improve upon any systems you've started to put in place to make them better if you have money okay anybody else any questions oh perry gerry can you see me i can hear you did you get that information i spent out last night yes i did and where the money goes yes i did what did you think i don't think that's relative to this meeting what do you think it's relative to this meeting um yes i got it last i got it last night gerry and you know it's it's not something i'm prepared to discuss at this meeting tonight it's not on the agenda i didn't get the agenda why didn't i get the agenda i'm not really sure it's posted on but this is an ARPA meeting this is not this is not an energy meeting it was posted on the town website where we're supposed i don't know that this is the best use of our time i've looked at the town website many many times i have never found a walk you right so walk you right to it right now gerry i'm advisory committees go to the bottom because we can't change the order barely you don't our book committee agendas and minutes our book committee agenda with the links okay how would i know that that's where we've been posting everything it's for how would i know that you are all right let us cable this how would i know that i've looked on the town website with relevant information the past and never found it okay wise i think i'm i'm gonna call the plug pull the plug on this conversation that's not relevant to this meeting right now i have a question for katie fire away um i'm i'm trying i was actually trying to search on you i've seen it before but um there seem to be like i don't know maybe five to eight broad categories of types of spending like recreation health care i was just looking around for it i don't know if you can rattle off sort of the hang on a minute big five or the big eight or what it's just thinking of bins to to you know conceptualize where this money could go give me just a sec yeah you probably know where to click i've been clicking away unfortunately um let me just try and um um i'm gonna i'm gonna crudely screen share if that's okay yeah okay are you able to see which actually hang on you i'm on the wrong screen here sorry i don't know why i'm still in slide presentation mode you try a different approach um on our website we do have that um and i'm gonna get all our priority on you here it's the um it's the expenditure categories in the compliance and reporting guidance um i i wonder if i can drop the link in the chat that might be more helpful yeah great anybody who's online who wants to pull it up um and i will try and screen share now for those of you who can't sorry okay so can you see that screen yeah okay these are all of the expenditure categories that if you wanted to use these as your rules of the road for helping to make your selections or guide your your recommendations for applications eligible uses these are the arpa eligible uses there's 83 in total um but there are public health negative economic impacts um public health negative economic impact public sector capacity premium pay infrastructure which is water sewer and broadband um and then revenue replacement so those are the broad sort of strokes um and and when you dig deeper into those you'll see all the different types of eligible uses within those categories and it might help you shape what you're um looking to do oh i know what i wanted to ask you um was have you guys gone through vermont um council on rural development community visit i have we were part of well we were part of a process here three years ago with with john copan and i'm constantly in contact with them okay i wasn't sure if the town itself had gone through and then you would have been left with an action plan that's another good plan that could help shape some thinking um but perry you'd mentioned having uh bringing it to a townwide vote you could also just hold a big um townwide meeting that's not a town meeting with a vote and do it informally in that way um yeah that's a that's a process that you know we're quite familiar with because we did had we did do this session with um paul costello and john copan's a few years back and so you know we're pretty familiar with that format and i think that might be a good way to boot this down the road we're just not quite sure where we need to be just yeah i understand conversation i think we should have yeah as i've i've actually done that approach and it's pretty effective it's more you know obviously informal everybody gets dots and sticks them up there but it's a great way to to have your public help you move in a certain direction and there you have buy-in um but these are certainly categories um for you to consider if you're interested michael i think you're the one who asked about the the categories um does it what where can i get access to that katie um it is on the vermont league of cities and towns website okay great specifically on the um reporting and compliance um i just dropped the link in the chat i don't know if somebody can share that with you as well i'm gonna stop that would be good if somebody could i think i just i know you had some other questions i just want to make sure that i get to them i looked at your minutes from your last meeting and saw them so i just want to make sure that um we also have some resources for public engagement on our website if you're interested in looking at any of those um how to consider full system costs and timing for the use of funds programmatic use that may require additional time and resources to be operational as i said how you run it through your general funds can buy you time revolving loan fund we hit that one uh business focused we hit that one i think as well um broad benefit to randolph i think we hit that one as well um have you have you reached out to any of your neighboring communities the energy committee gary this isn't your meeting let let the other committee she asked her question what if she wasn't asking you you're being disruptive let the meeting occur i am a part of this meeting you are not on the no you're not gary i'm sorry but this is you're not on this committee it all that screwed up in your office fashion fashion what let us have the meeting gary we can talk after i will welcome that okay we can proceed great thanks sorry about the disruption that's okay um i just so you know i worked for um a small town in southern vermont which was my old town for almost 10 years so i'm well used to uh uh public process so i appreciate being a part of it and understand it it is the vermont way i love it um so what what other questions do you have and how can i be most helpful um i you know i know there's you know there's federal money also coming down uh for schools and infrastructure and other so just thinking about you know avoiding redundancy and overlap i don't know if you can sort of lay the land on what other dedicated funding is going to be spilling on to us so there is quite a bit of money coming through the bipartisan infrastructure law all that um through agency of transportation uh agency of natural resources and the public service department so broadband clean water uh through a and r and then a lot of existing b-trans programs will get additional funding but there's 26 new programs that they're going to have i don't know yet um of those which ones will have towns as eligible applicants so that hasn't fully been fleshed out yet so we're waiting on that to see exactly what that funding is going to look like but um there are a lot of existing programs that have gotten additional funds obviously with all of the rise of the escalation and construction costs a lot of those funds will get eaten up just through um inflation but still your ARPA funds can leverage those funds so if as you're going through your making priority lists of projects that are important to your community and you start to see a priority list coming up each one of those that are on the list if it is the type of project for which you can leverage other funding and if so um see what programs are available and you can either work with your rpc you can work with me you can work with both of us um i'm happy to work with all of you i'm happy to work with trevor um and really the goal of all of this exercise is for you to not leave one arpa penny on the table and us not to leave any federal dollars sitting um unspent and so if there was ever a time to do a project now is the moment and like if funding was ever a problem you have grant match right now sitting in your coffers um half of your award is is in the bank and the other half will arrive this summer i think 1.3 million of was your arpa award yes yeah number one four so it's it's not enough money to solve all your problems but boy it's a pretty good amount of money to just have land in your laps um so i i say this and it makes most people cringe when i say it but if you have a significant project that you are looking to do now's never a better time to take debt because of interest rates and because of all that other federal funding it minimizes the amount of bond or other form of debt that you would have to take um it's just there's a lot of money out there right now a lot of money flowing through and a lot of money coming to vermont especially because of our congressional delegation they brought a lot a lot of additional funds just because of their positions on the federal level so how do we keep track of what's being planned by by the different groups like the school system for instance in terms of ventilation for if we decide if we thought that ventilation was an important thing in public buildings how how would we know what grants or monies they were coming in with so that we wouldn't go there or might go there because that might be our priority too to complete a project schools typically get separate funding than municipalities generally speaking so like you wouldn't you would rarely compete for the same pot of funds and so um that there is a piece of legislation going through the state house right now it is um the bill number is h518 and it is uh it would the primary purpose of the bill is fuel switching for municipally owned buildings however um the funds could be used for a complete ventilation project of which fuel switching is part of it there'll be 48 million dollars potentially of funding that could come out of it so if you had a town office project or a library project or some other municipally owned building you could use your ARPA funding with that funding apply for that funding and you could get more of your project paid for it it really depends upon how aggressively your town chases grant funding as a another source of funding to do local projects and so there's there's not a single source you sort of figure out what your project might be and then you would look and say well what types of funding are available for this type of project so we're looking to do it uh you know if you were to say we're looking to do a town office renovation project you might look to those funding sources and honestly you can ask me I'm this is like the one area that's my bailiwick is federal funding especially state programs but federal funding that runs through the state of Vermont mainly because I've either used it as a grantee or I've administered it at the state so I have I love grant money I think we have I think we have a lot of projects you know that are out there that we need to really start honing in on here and you know we you know recently okay well we just did our sewer water facility over here in the village we've got right now I think the biggest thing here is infrastructure roads you know there was there could be some water sewer you know additions added on so I think it's a matter you know this committee's charge is to kind of figure out what fits the bill here and what we're going to get our biggest bang for our buck here and to figure out what other sources we can utilize and leverage to be able to use the money to as you said to cover part of the grant match yep yep all right anybody else have any questions are we good with Katie for now and I say for now because I feel would probably be in touch with you again yeah I hope you will I hope you will all right that's that's what I'm here for all day okay this is my full-time job I talk about this or read about it and I learn about it so great consider me your resource all righty okay all right so thank you very much you're very welcome and if you need me to ever come back or you need anything just give a holler well I'm sure Trevor has your direct number he's the guy all right thank you so much you folks have a great night and thanks for all right thank you very much yeah thank you all right so any old business to discuss I just want to real quickly there was a reference to IIJA was one of the acronyms in the presentation when it was about the non-federal matching funds that's the it's an acronym for what's essentially become known as the infrastructure bill it's sat in on a webinar about that today too so anything about potential project uses we could use it for that there's still a little ways away on that one in terms of how funds are going to flow but that's what that refers to and that can be everything from service transportation to bike ped facilities to you know transit types of projects there's a whole bunch of stuff in the broadband is included in there for example so there's quite a bit of overlap between the two but we're still a little ways off I think in terms of knowing how that money will flow so whether or not you want to consider setting that aside to match some other project or just leaving the possibility open I think we'll have to keep an eye on that as it as it advances but that is another potential piece of funds to stretch those dollars I don't know what the BIL acronym stood for off to look that one up but have we decided if we're going to take that 10 million dollar standard deduction it's on the agenda for the next board meeting which is April 14th oh okay I was thinking it was due tomorrow yeah we have a month to decide that yeah and one of the things to get through this kind of conversation with Katie so we understood um what the standard allowance really meant it was it as free as it seemed initially now I think we have some guidance on that in addition to some additional guides from Treasury that that makes it seem like it it could be um it depends on sort of what we put up for some card rails about the use yeah in particular that long term I guess my initial thoughts on that would be it would be good to do it but we should still follow the ARPA guidelines very closely not go too far yeah I think that would be wise yep but we have time to think about that but that that's just initial thinking so then it's one of the things where it makes sense to claim the standard allowance because you can still use it in the ways you know when you even think back to the interim rule that if that ended up being how we wanted to use the funds we're still okay because it allows for those possibilities as well but yeah I think it is something I didn't think about that she mentioned is that if you do just open it up completely it's going to be a torn its nest of projects so I think it would be important to follow the original guidelines unless we get something that is really very important identified and Treasury did layer on in some of their stuff and Katie kind of like referenced it at least in some sense we talked about it before some of the priority priority areas were used to fund in their more systematic equity focused community empowering results and evidence focused in worker centered and so there's I think some broad interpretation in that but that's when we we think of how to layer on the different considerations I don't know how that becomes a metric in a rubric but I'm sure there's we can either figure one out or steal one from somewhere I guess yeah well what time did she say develop the rubric that they went through that would be useful to get a copy of that Westford and Brandon she mentioned and that Barry was working on one yeah yeah I'm interested to look at some of those only I mean Westford's a some similar type community I'd like to see what they're doing Brandon same kind of thing I think it'd be nice to know what they're what they're thinking I'm kind of leaning towards a little bit towards you know possibly a similar to what we did with the r3 meeting process where you know you get everybody in a room you put down some things some things stick to the wall you know you get a townwide vote on it I think that was a good way to get a lot of input and then just see what those kind of things look like and whether or not they you know what they qualify for I'm kind of wanting to make sure that when we do this you know we've included you know everybody in the community and everybody feels comfortable and that's why I asked about you know a townwide vote process or something along that line you know I don't want to be you know hearing stories about while you know my project wasn't considered where's you know in the r3 process you know the people who were there got a vote and I think that's pretty important to you know make sure that we've completed our task here and the recommendations and what we do with the money is spent broadly so and that was one of the initial conversations with the select board it does seem like it would be pretty important though to have some to to to put out there some basic framework and also to let the whole community know which part of the community is actually included in these funds because I think it'd be really easy to focus on a Randolph project that doesn't defect Randolph center or what is it really Randolph Randolph center and Randolph that's the center right I totally agree with you I'm not and that's why I kind of think you know we we need to say okay these are the things that could be eligible projects let everybody think about that and then possibly you know put your project together and then you know maybe we just have a townwide meeting and say okay you know this is what came out of this and so you know let's let's brainstorm a little bit and see where this goes from here so you know I don't think we have to be in a big terrible hurry to do this I mean it sounds like we've got some time but I want to make sure that when we do this it's well thought through yeah and and just process wise um the whatever intake form would happen prior to the big get-together yes yeah and I don't know if there'd be a sharing out of like look at all these great ideas you know not with names attached or anything but just a sharing out of that kind of two I could see it going both ways I could see us soliciting ideas and then having those ideas come up in a meeting and then having the meeting and see if any other ideas come about and then you know maybe you know in that R3 process you know we had time to gather that information and then come back and say okay these are the things let's these are the things we talked about in the last meeting here they are on the wall again you know now do we vote and you know do we pick projects and it's just a matter of finding the projects that I think that that you know are the qualifying projects that's that's the key here and to make sure that you know those involved feel like they've you know been included and everybody or everybody's been included you know it's not that it's just a certain you know a project in East Randolph versus a project in Randolph Center you know it's like okay do these benefit everybody in the community that's that's the big concern here and so you know there's a lot of you know a lot of things to take into consideration and they need to have long-lasting effects I think yes and the difference from R3 is there's funding available for the projects we identify absolutely and I also have to think there were some projects identified in R3 that have not been done yet or funded yet or gone through like I looked at that document so you know both there and in the town plan there's plenty of projects already I think we could we could just work with those but I think you're right we need to reach out to the community and figure out the best way to do that well that was a very thorough process and I have a right to be here and speak tonight Trevor because at a at a BCR weekend meeting does the public has a right to attend this meeting not debating that and you're speaking well you told me before that I was not a member so I didn't ever write this you have something you want to talk to the committee about I certainly go you have so that was under public Gary that was under public comment okay and you know I don't want this to be you know go on for another half an hour 45 minutes here all right so if you've got some stuff you'd like to share with us I think you have put in a document and get it off to us so we can consider it I have been trying to do that for two months give me a chance folks I'm terribly frustrated I have been trying to make a connection and through terrible processes that exist I haven't been able to and I'm not alone in the energy committee and the energy well the point hold whoa wait a minute here okay information that's relevant I'm sorry but you know what the energy committee needs to report to the select board okay this is not the energy committee's charge you get on the agenda okay you I've given you okay we're not going to take it up I'm I'm done with this right now if you want to have this conversation we're gonna have it privately okay okay we'll have it done with it okay this is not relevant the energy committee but we will talk privately okay well I'm done with it okay we're moving on so if there's no other business here we should need to set a date for the next meeting yeah and I didn't know if you guys wanted to talk about a getting on a regular calendar too um yeah I think that'd be a good idea we would we'd love to but a little bit here and there but let's not pick the first week of the month okay because you're already filling my calendar up pretty much okay I'm four days a week already so how about you know like second week maybe Wednesday Thursday yeah that's what I was going to suggest a second week of April I think it's well Thursday will be a select board meeting so you know Wednesday would be open so Wednesday April 13th is Wednesday in two weeks that would be better before Easter you know um before we get involved in Easter I go away for Easter but Wednesday that Wednesday before Easter would be fine I'm I'm good for Wednesday April 13th if everybody else is as well does that work for everybody I see Michael's got a thumbs up right Matt's good Ramsey yeah I can make it work I have another meeting regularly on the second third and fourth uh Wednesday but I can adjust timing on the second one okay Jeff good yeah works for me Maria you're good with that Maria yeah Mary yeah okay all right so let's do that let's go for April 13th 5 30 yep great all right so motion to adjourn I make a motion to adjourn all right second Mary second all those in favor hi hi hi great motion to adjourn thank you very much very informative thank you have a good night everybody take care bye bye bye see you in April