 We'll call the public hearing for the traffic ordinance to order at seven o'clock. We have Closemath, Pratt Town, Justin Lawrence, John Quinn here from the select board. Any additions or changes to the agenda? There's one of these when we get to the select board meeting about public hearing. All right, public comment. I'd like to take a minute where our local rep for the town of Berlin and Northfield's here. I think you want to say a couple of things. So you want to talk in, I don't know if that was a good time or if you want to wait until everybody's done or? Just nice to be here. I'll talk afterwards to hear what's going on. It's just nice to be back around seeing people and meeting in person and hearing what's going on through this in Northfield and in Berlin. A lot of passion I have to do and it's just nice to see people's faces again in person. Absolutely. Thank you for coming. Yes, thank you. Thank you. So we'll open it up for public comment, I assume. I have a question. This is the right time. I think you're talking about the Swingland, not Rogers, that 705, but I wondered if we could also add to that to put in a no-outlet sign on that road. I don't know if it makes sense to do it now or at the time when we're doing that road. I can speak to that, Justin, if you'd like. Yeah, go ahead. I'm checking the roads and the signs as well. And I will be coming out with a list of recommendations for street signs and that is one of them, that it's a bit in-street. Can we get in on that as well? What street? Co-Ost Trail. Yes, Co-Ost Trail is on the list also for that, so. I believe I talked to you maybe a couple times. You did, and I met you on TV. Oh boy. Oh boy. Perfect. So that is covered and it will be, there'll be an update on that on what the recommendations are for that, based on the driver and the data that you put that has. Okay. Let's do signage updates. I think there's a lot of roads like that in town that definitely need some signage, you know. The corner up on Crosstown Road, we spend a lot of time up there with our police department and our fire department. I believe in ours they have, they missed the sign and they want the medical center that is just up from us. So they come in our yard and turn around. Yep. We average three a day. Yep. Any other public comment on this? Speed limit changes, you know, Brookfield Road, we did a traffic study on reducing the speed limit. Just a matter of procedure, don't we need to actually go into the public hearing and it flows out of the public hearing? Yes. Okay. We're in the public hearing right? I thought we were just doing public comment at the beginning of the meeting. I just wanted to make sure we were all procedurally doing it. Okay. Well, I thought I opened the public hearing. Okay. And then I opened it up for public comment. Oh, okay. And then I was going to do public comment again before the SWAT board meeting. Oh, okay. So I got the right procedure. Sure. Your meeting. Anybody opposed to that? Okay. I understood the comment. Any other comments on this, John? No. I don't have any either. Anybody else from the public? I don't have any. Would you like me just to give a summary of what some of the changes were highlighted for everyone? So basically, you know, the review and the recommendations, recommendations coming from an actual state approved process for doing an engineering study on Brookfield Road specifically as well for the speed limit changes. But we're looking at a reduction of speed limit to 25 miles per hour for Brookfield Road, Mirror Lake Road, Richardson Road, and Coaust Trail. Those are the four for this revision that we're looking at. In addition to that, just to give you some numbers, in 2020, the state data road count, car count survey on those roads for traffic, for average daily traffic on Brookfield Road, believe it or not, in 2020 was 310 vehicles on Brookfield Road. Mirror Lake Road was 76. There was no state count done on Richardson Road, and Coaust Trail was two, average two per day in 2020. So, then in addition to that, we're talking about some parking as well. On Payne's Turned Bike, on the west side of the road, that would start at the southern end of the guardrails just past the turn to Brookfield Road. There's a set of wooden guardrails there. At the end of those guardrails is where this parking would start, and it would extend south about 800 feet. So that would, if we did a little bit larger than normal, I think 20 feet is the normal for parallel parking along the side of a roadway. If we did 25 foot spots there, that would yield us 32 parking spots in that location on Payne's Turned Bike. And that would be off the road, by widening the road in our right of way, and it has been reviewed with the city of Montpelier as well, they understand it's in our right of way. They don't really have any issue with it at all for that portion of it. Then there was the discussion point about on that little section next to the boat launch on Brookfield Road, potentially eliminating that with the addition of those 32 spots to just to clean that area up. And then no parking, no, let me rephrase that maybe, no town authorized parking on Mirror Lake Road. There is a small area there, but the town really can't say that that's a parking area because it's really located on private property. So that's kind of a summary of what we're looking at and where we are with this. So I thought, I thought a couple of meetings ago, we talked about leaving that as parking in the area of the boat launch area for now. Yep, just looked up that it was looked at. So there was discussion on that. I don't think a decision, I don't have anything that showed a decision was ever made, yay or nay to look at. No, no, I don't think so either. I just, so are you saying that, okay, so you're not, you're not recommending that it be closed. You're just saying that it's up for discussion. It's up for discussion. That's it. Any questions for me on that summary? Oh, that the potential closing of that parking was kind of brought up, that brought up my mock bill here, is that? It came up in the discussion. What were we gonna keep it? What were we gonna deal with it? I just said it's on the table for discussion. That's it. We reviewed it on site. I think in the end, with a lot of us, with a lot of the different things that we have going on, we'll end up with much more parking around our own home than we currently have. 32 new spots, we'll definitely do that. And then we also have the spot on Irish Hill that we're working with Montpelier to get, you know, all the barricades are up above that. For the snow machine parking? For everybody. Right, yeah. Yeah, so that'll actually free up a lot of that area, I think. So Mirror Lake Road would still be open for parking, no? Well, again, as far as on Mirror Lake Road itself, we're saying no parking. There is a small area there that's. Who's saying no parking? Well, that was the recommendation when I reviewed it with Tim from, you know, the winter issues that he's been having and even the grading issues. It's a tough call. I mean, either way, but, you know. Yeah, I mean, someone who lives in the area, a lot of people launch their boats over there. It's a long way across. The other concern I had heard was that this could be special. Exactly. So the flow of water when we're on the other side is the current. It doesn't freeze well. So they have to access it from over there. So there was absolutely no parking there. That was another concern. So, you know, I do know that we have concerns with being able to get through with our plows. There's times when it turns out to actually go back around. Oh, really? Yeah, that's a clear road because it was blocked and we couldn't make it through in the wintertime. If there's a guy out there fishing in the morning, typically they park right at the culvert because that's not on most of your property. They park there, they offload and haul their stuff out and do the fishing. If there's somebody parked on the culvert, they can't get through with the plow one way or the other, whichever side they're on. So they park on it. It's definitely some concerns we need to address. I know last year there was at least one occasion where they were parked on both sides of the culvert and you had to go all the way back around because you couldn't get through. Yep. Right, but the police should have taken care of that. I mean, at some level. It's difficult if it's something that they can't really enforce because it isn't deemed a no parking yet and it isn't deemed a parking yet. Right. So maybe one side of the road, no parking. Would there be a solution or should? Yep. It's definitely not wet there. No parking on the culvert, obviously on either side, probably. No, it's still the same width, isn't it? No parking on the side. That would be a good. Anything else? There's a bubble up here. Oh, I didn't actually have to. Thank you. Oh, Joe. Go ahead. So you're talking about the culvert on Merrill Lane Road. We also have some no parking zones if you want to call it. You do have a dry hybrid there. And so I think whenever you want to decide on what you do there, I think, you know, a distance, probably the length of the driveway else would be great not to have any parking. Either side. You think that's going to be one of your recommendations for signage with the road signage, something like that? We're looking at, again, whatever the decision is, we're looking at the no parking signs and maybe some other verbiage on the signs for exactly this type of thing. Right. We have to put the signage on the show. Thank you, Joe. Sorry. For the fines that I see for no parking, I see you have like TandyCat and the fire hydrants set up $100 and you have a fire lane set at 25. Is that not as important? Well, that's a great question. Again, the only thing that was changed are what's highlighted in this. Those fines are pre-existing. There was no changes recommended at the time we went to revision on this for those fines. It's an open discussion, I guess. That's a good question. Right. Any of these fines, is that on private property or is that just for public property? Well, it's making sure of both, right? If you're blocking a private driveway, there's a fine associated with that. I was thinking of the fire lane, like at Price Chopper or at Shaw's. That's on private property. But it's still a ticketable offense, right? I believe so. I can double check. I can double check. I'm not going to have a private property. That's not, that's true. I mean, if it was a fire lane out in front of the town clerk's office. I can tell that gets a statute, Brad. Take a look at that. I just don't want to stick to somebody and not have a chance to come through. And then I can, I will, based on the findings of that, I'll revise the statute to the ordinance to reflect what the statute says, whether it's private or private. Thanks, Bill. Go ahead, Joe. So I have a question that might be the same line as yours. The fire lane being at Shaw's at Price Chopper. Is it private? They also have handicapped parking down there. So it would kind of go hand in hand. You're going to treat them both the same? It depends what the statute says. If we can't take a ticket on private property. Either way, Joe, as president of the Fire Corporation, do you think the Fire Department would like to have some input on this? Yes. Okay. Perfect. Well, so we got an email from a resident saying that they just wanted to voice their disapproval of banning parking on the LA road. That they always park at the turn out. Who is it? Louie and Laura. So feel free to contact them with any questions, but everybody can kind of comment on that. Questions, are you saying that you don't want any parking on Mirror Lake, even that little pull-off that is... Well... There's like four parking spots down there that keeps people off the main road? The issue that we've had on Mirror Lake is sometimes in the winter, people park on both sides. It's blocked, can't get through with a plow truck. I think that there's a lot of use that goes on down there. John brought that up as well as one of his concerns. So the reason that we're talking about it is maybe looking at one side of the road, having no parking, and that will ensure that fire trucks can get through there. Emergency services are plow trucks. The issue that we run into with a lot of that property is that it's either out of the town right of way or private property. I thought that's why you built that little parking spot in the middle of the road, was to keep people out of the road. It is, but it doesn't, I mean there's, that parking spot is, I mean it's good for four cars at best if everybody parks appropriately. But you're not thinking of getting rid of that one? That wasn't part of that, I mean... Again, just the same the issue with that is that property is for sale and it's not town property. So we can't say that it is parking. We can't say that it isn't parking really. That's convenient right now, but at some point in time it's probably gonna go away, depending on the sale of the property. Right, so it's beyond our control in many ways. But what we can do is look at saying, okay, well we can designate one side of the road as parking, and just try to make it more orderly, if that makes sense. Any other questions, concerns, comments? Close in the public hearing, you guys? We're gonna make a motion to close the public hearing. If there's no further comment? Second. Any comment? No, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Motion carries. So we're closed with the public hearing. We'll start our regular select board meeting. We have additions or changes to this agenda. I have one addition and that's in your package as well, it's a document for the Fish Road Scoping Project. This is from the regular agenda. Discussions on adopting building codes and enforcement, we're planning commission. So, David done a lot of this, so it would have been great if he had been on here, especially with the development we have in town going on. I've realized, I'm sure you guys do as well, that we don't have any building ordinances, other than that there's the state that was obviously for the commercial, things like that. But, so, these got like the fire departments not overly involved in the process. It's gotta be hard though, being a volunteer fire department to do inspections on this type of thing. Right, so it would be kind of like the dog catchers where you could appoint them to allow them to do it. Some of the other municipalities do like Berry City, they do inspections. We're about to have 500 or so apartments in the town of Berlin, and there's definitely gonna be things where there's smoke detectors and there's public safety things over the years. And I know that, like all of my apartments, I have to pay an annual fee for registration and then they get inspected. And then if there's updates or changes that need to occur over time, the public safety will go in there and give me advice on that. David brought it up, he wanted to talk about it, but unfortunately, he's not here at the moment. Is there anything, you had some thoughts on that, Joe? I have been talking with Joe Alford, he was at a meeting at I think Fuels were at and discussing it. I think it's a program of which the town of Berlin I think could really, I think they would do well with everything that's there. We have no control over anything with all the development that's going on. The state is always short-handed. They're reactionary with everything. And just, I think this is something that I think that the board should really discuss and decide what they want from the fire department or somebody in this role. That's sort of your point, being a volunteer fire department. That's something that, they have a survey that's coming to us and the results of that survey from the town as far as what they had for, you know what they perceived the Berlin volunteer fire department as. And we're waiting on some of that data on the issue. When should we have that? It's just putting the presentation together, just cleaning it up. And so what it was also part of was kind of like a pros and cons analysis from the fire department on whether it would be beneficial for the municipality from their perspective to be, to maintain volunteer independent status or become a municipal department at some point, what that might look like. So I think it would be beneficial for us to start having discussions about that. Go ahead. That is true how that topic was, what, how it originated. I think that it's happened meeting almost two years ago with Brad was there I believe. I think what we really looked at was not just staying volunteer or municipality, it's what model. I think that's clear that the model that we currently have is not keeping up with the development of the town. Right. Okay. Berlin is growing immensely and the speed of which the department is kind of at as, almost at a standstill, as so it feels. You know, I see Berlin as being like a little village. It's growing in various places and all of a sudden you're going to turn around and you're going to have just a lot of development. Right. So I don't know. I think it would make sense for the select, there's funding out there grants. I think it would make sense for us to look at it from a board perspective and say, okay, well, you know, we've never set expect, I mean, expectations or what we need for services covered by the fire department. So this is what the town needs. They haven't ever done that. I don't know if you know Brad, but. I don't really know him. I just think it would be a good idea looking forward as we're developing and growing. Yeah. I mean, we're a community of less than 3000 people, very cities, close to 10,000 people, much different clientele. I think even though we're kind of the center of it all, I just can't see putting the additional burden on Slam or a lot of them are doing their best, given what they have. I don't know that an inspection program necessarily benefit them. I kind of go back and forth on it. You know, the state does command if you're building new and they will go into the new development we have and make sure they have everything. But they, like Joe said, they're understaffed. I mean, they're not ever going to be able to keep up with a regular pace. So that being said, if they can't hire the staff, neither will we be able to. About the, from a direction standpoint or how we feel about the Fire Department and the services they're providing, does anybody think it would be valuable to have a conversation around that and look at a five year, 10 year idea? Yeah, I mean, certainly always good to understand where they think they want to go, where we think that they should be going, where the other departments in the local communities are going or where they have gone. The municipal fire service overall has been fairly stagnant and that's not meant to be negative. It's just the way the Fire Department budgets have been and the cost of equipment. They haven't had a lot of room for growth or opportunity. The training hours are five times or more what they used to be as far as being a certified firefighter one. Enrollments down as far as membership. Be interested to hear where they'd like to go and how they're gonna recruit. How is your enrollment right now, Joe? At the current time? We probably get three new members come on and probably losing two within that year. So, how many members do you have total at this point? Do you require them to go through the firefighter one? At this point, do we have, we just had three that went through the firefighter one. Yep. Just for the record, about 230 some odd hours. So, like Barry said, you're in order to go into a burning building, you have to be firefighter one, right? Like that's the requirement, but we don't require that. We require fire one for interior. Interior. That's for the inspections of houses or buildings. What is the monthly charge for that service? Barry at that point. I think it's Barry and roughly $50 a unit a year with an inspection, I believe, every other unit, something like that. Yeah, I think I'd pay 75 a unit a day, but it's every other year for an inspection. I was just thinking that if the fire department can, is there any training for that? Sure. We've had some people that have taken 40-some odd hours of that training. There's more to go as well. I just wanted to be a representative. It is, and I think that there are, you know, after incidents in Mary City, like the fires, and they make some changes, you know, they'll say, okay, we'll want to change the location, maybe of smoke detectors, and put them in bedrooms, and I've never perceived it as a negative as a landlord. I think it's positive. I certainly wouldn't want to put a burden on anybody. I don't think that $75 is a real burden for each unit. I don't know that it's the perfect answer, but I definitely think it's absolutely worth exploring because that's one of the pieces that may allow us to kind of build up the fire department, get that to a point that can maintain what the town that we need. Yeah, I'm just thinking about the logistics of it. Beyond smoke detectors, yes, you have them. What if you're blocking an exit, you know, or the baby crib, or what happens if you don't follow the recommendations to a tee? Do you get by the tenant or the landlord? Landlord. Landlord. Right. So in a situation like that, I mean, obviously with a crib that you wouldn't, that's not fixed, but. Yeah, I'm just saying, I don't think it's a business that we should get into, but. I think to answer your question, is it landlord or tenant? I think it works both ways. You know, where you have a tenant that may not be, you know, the perfect tenant, the landlord is assured that at that time, that it's being checked and that it's being extended. At the same time, you have tenants that have landlords that aren't doing what they should be doing as well. I think it works both ways. So I don't necessarily agree or disagree with whether the business that the tenant wants to get into, but I think it's definitely worth exploring, as you know, Brad mentioned, or I can see it as a revenue stream. I can see it. It's a revenue stream, but I thought it's a tax. It's a tax, absolutely. On people that have apartments. Absolutely, I agree. And I'm also, but it's also a way to help on some of the, like our governments help. The services they need, they could. That's exactly why we're having this discussion. Right, no, exactly. And I'm just thinking like we're gonna end up paying for someone for them to go in and do the inspection eventually, right? So is it gonna be the, are we actually gonna make money or is it just gonna be the pay to have the inspection done? It's all the topics we're discussing in the process. But you're spot on. That's why, yeah. I wouldn't just say no right away, but I would say from now, unless we have more information, which we're talking about, is there anybody from the planning commission on here? Yeah, Carl is. Carl, Carl is. Carl, are you here? I am here. Sorry, I joined late. I didn't think you were talking about this till eight o'clock. Well, we were chugging right along, so we're on it. Have you? Yeah, for some reason I've had the public hearing previously had the last for an hour because it was scheduled for so long. Anyway, here I am. I didn't hear the conversation. I'm not sure if you're looking for building codes for, yeah. So, you know, from the planning commission standpoint, have you ever looked at adopting any building codes or any inspection process for like, say residential units or anything like that? No, and I did a little bit of looking into it. And from what I understand, very few towns in Vermont have building codes because it's too expensive to enforce and administer. I think the size of the town is, I think it's a little, I would personally, without doing it, again, without hearing what was said and without doing a ton of research, think that the size of the town kind of does not support this type of activity. But that's my personal opinion. I mean, we have a lot of other things that we, I guess I would say that we have a lot of other things that would be more of a priority, I would think, for the town. But again, that's my personal opinion. The planning commission can certainly look into it and discuss it with this Blackboard if that's something that you're interested in. I'm happy to take that up with the planning commission and we can move forward and sort of do a little bit of exploring, maybe reach out to the Vermont League of Cities and towns and talk with them about it, in terms of towns that have or don't have it, et cetera. Okay. Well, I know, I know that Dave had brought this up. I talked a little bit about it with Joe, just the process that I do with the properties that I own. And I wanted to have a conversation about it at least and just see what the planning commission thought was on it. What involvement the fire department would have, what their thoughts would be on it. Yeah, sounds like- Yeah, no, I think that's good, but you're talking beyond just fire, right? You're talking building codes, generally speaking? Well, I think that was Dave's intentions when he put it on the agenda, so I can't speak to that for sure, but I was just more concerned personally with the fire. That was my concern. Yeah, no, I'm just asking for clarification because I wasn't sure. Yeah, well, Dave, I guess, probably for right now, we'll move along because Dave's not here to discuss this point that he wanted to bring up. Yeah, I think when I talked to Dave a little bit about it, it was a little further reaching, I thought, than just smoke detectors, right? Yeah, it was like structural building codes, which would be extremely difficult, you know? Yeah, I think that's beyond our capability at this point. Yep, I would agree with that. So, do you have anything else? I would just say planned. Yeah, I think it's something to talk about for the future, but I think that might be a ways down the road. Maybe the planning commission could just have a talk with the fire department about what their needs are and what they feel it should be and then see if it's feasible and we can have it as a select board about it. Does that make sense? Yeah, absolutely. So maybe invite them into one of your meetings and we'll go from there? Yeah, that sounds good. Thank you, Karla. You're welcome. Justin, it's Keith and Otterstein. Can I add one little tidbit? Absolutely. So, in speaking with just the fire inspections portion, we had conversations with the Joaldsworth, Don and Barry City about their implementation of the fire inspection is because as you know, they've assumed portions of it from the state of Vermont. And the end result that they saw was less of a revenue stream and more of increased fire safety and reduced the fire call load to the fire department itself. That was the benefit that they saw from it. The fire department charged Barry Town for use of the, over there, and then they came back to us and said, well, it's over a 3% increase. Well, let Vince talk about it, but they were convinced that essentially, Rob, our assumption that since they had the contract six months prior to going before our renewal, what their rates were going to go up to, that it wasn't a 3% increase. Those are the contracts, the one that the town signed and the one that is out there for signature between the fire department and the EMS as well. And so, we signed this on January 20th. When did you give this to Barry Town EMS? October 6th goes in October. So, I think it was a, and I knew at that point that Joe, when I was the rep for the select board to the fire department, I did know that he had provided that with him. I couldn't remember the exact date, but prior to the RFP coming in, they had already known they were going to have a rate increase. So, I feel like we had assumed that that was in their new rate quote or the new RFP and their new pricing and that it would be a 3% increase over the current of the 1550 that they knew it was going to renew that. What was Rob's opinion on that? Rob's response. Did everyone, I was the only one who got it. Yep, I sent that out. So, it says this, Vince, it's my understanding that Barry Town EMS received notice of a 15% increase back in October 2020. I further understand that the proposed Barry Town EMS service contract was submitted to the town for consideration after that date and that the representative for Barry Town EMS signed the agreement on February 3rd, 2021. Based on this timeline, I further presumed that Barry Town EMS had notice of the increase in the rental rate from the fire department while in advance of submitting the service contract to the town for review and approval. Regarding their request to increase the per capita rates in the service contract, Barry Town EMS apparently relies on provisions that allow for such increases in the event of extraordinary unforeseeable circumstances. In such circumstances is an increase in Berlin volunteer fire department rates by more than 15%, I thought it was 3% in there. However, under the timeline set forth above the October 2020 increase cannot be said to be either extraordinary or unforeseen as the increase was known at the time to Barry Town EMS prior to its submittal of the proposed service to the contract for the town under such circumstances, Barry Town EMS cannot rely on misprovision as a rational to increase their rate. My understanding of the timeline of events here is correct or there are other circumstances at play that have not been brought to the town's attention and may need to revisit the issue. Otherwise the town should resist any requested increase in rates for any reasons articulated by Barry Town EMS. So I just, I know we've had a discussion about that. So I guess we really just needed to see where the board stood. Have you had further discussions with Ron regarding this event? No, I just thought so. Just that. Of course, Paul, it's unhappy to have on that. Chris, Paul, he said he'd be here in about four minutes. You know, my position hasn't changed on it. Yep. They signed the contract. I mean, this pretty well lays out the timeline. All right. I've been here. And that's why I had asked him to ask her off and see, you know, where it stood from his perspective. He feels the same, obviously. There's a brilliant opinion change there. So do we want to move on or do we want to wait for Chris to get in here and explain it to him? I think it's beneficial to hear Chris and what he wants to discuss. You said he's almost ready to come on board. He'd be pulling in in four minutes. And then do the board. I was going to say, we don't have a lot left. Usually there's a public comment at the end of a meeting, too. We could give him that opportunity to talk to us. It's not on here, but I think it was just messed in here. We can always come back to it. But I would move on with the licenses and permits. Plus we have also, we had to add the Fisher Room Scoping Survey, which we added at the beginning of the day. So Ben, can you explain that? Fisher Road? Yes. Yes. Thank you. You should have a notice of award in there as well. That is just looking for the, I'm looking for the authorization to sign it since I'm a designated person on that from the board. And then basically the breakdown on the cost of Fisher Road that came up, our loan amount, first, we were approved by the voters for $1.4 million. And you should have a page in there with this information on it as well, with my notes on it. The loan amount that we have is $1,063,200. So the total cost of the project is $1,399,412, which means the town has to fill the $336,212 gap. Diane has worked on those funds and she has reserves of totaling roughly $496,997 to cover that amount from the reserves and the structure fund. Which would include FY22. Correct. Reserves. Leaving a balance in the 22 structure fund of $159,885. Again, that's in the, you have those numbers. I know that's what we're talking about. Is that a special fund for highways? We have a reserve that was, I think, that's in there for $96,000. Then we were planning on carrying over $150,000 from FY21 to FY22. And the balance would be what we have budgeted in FY22 for structures. How much were we initially intended to visit $336,000? No, $265,000. I think it was $265,800. It was going to be what we were going to be putting in, the cost of the condo. But we're still under the 1.4. Well, this is without any project contingencies, right? Right. Right. That's concerning. At the limit, there's these contingencies. But the 1.4 would be borrowing. See if we can borrow them. We're not going to borrow them. We're going to borrow them at $63,000. OK. And if, so, under the project contingencies, if there's a problem and we need to borrow more, can we, or once we? Not from that. This particular area. I'm not sure what we could do, but we might be able to get, like, a loan through a bank. But I'm not exactly certain on that. They're always the same. Always. So I think we should probably find out from Rob. Well, take 10% right here on your $5,000. Pretty close to that. Right. There's a lot of structures. Yeah. Right. I suggest not spending any of that for a while. Well, that's it. That's my other one. Yeah. So this probably wasn't that. So we need a motion to allow VINCE to sign one. Yeah. Notice of award to Du Bois, or the whole better, $83,900. I make a motion to have Vince Conte sign the notice of award to Du Bois construction in the amount of $839,900. I second that motion. Any discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Motion carries. I apologize. I allowed you to get that. We're looking at the scoping, initially. But the last agenda. You moved on to the scope. Yeah. We also needed a motion for him to do it. It's going to face up them. I thought you were going to yell at me. I probably will, yeah. I'll bring the scoping up to the ground. But we have to make a motion to authorize you to sign it. So that's what I was looking for a motion on. What do you say? Please follow along. Make a motion. Yeah. I make a motion to authorize Vince Conte to sign the project commitment form, the scoping of Fisher Road. Second. Any discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Well, approval of license permits, vouchers, and applications. I make the motion to approve the license permit vouchers. And in payroll warrant 22-03 from payroll from July 18, 2021 to July 31, 2021, paid on August 4, 2021, in the amount of $51,071.07. And payable warrant 22-GO2 with checks 21-317 to 21-345 in the amount of $81,493.75. So good. All right, thanks. Any discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Motion carries. We did review the public contract already. Thanks, John. I'll be efficient. I see that. Round table. So, Chris, we had a quick board discussion here. Let me switch forward because I can't be behind me. Yep. So I guess we want to take a moment and have a round table discussion with you and hear what you had to say about the increase to the flanger position. We'll go from there. So we've been at the Berlin Fire Station for more than my time here. The rate increases every cycle as it goes. This past cycle, the previous cycle, they talked about increasing this increase last year. They did it about halfway through our fiscal year. So talking to the chief and the president, they agreed to hold it off for a year because we had already budgeted for the year. So they put it in for this year. And so that's why we're talking about now versus earlier. The increases historically have been about 2% to 2.5%. So that's what we budgeted for. And so then I get the contract from them this year with that rate increase, which they talked about last year. So I see the full numbers. I put it in with our budget. I talked to the town manager and the slank board. And they bring out the provision of the Berlin Town EMS contract. Let's make sure I get the Berlin and Berlin. The Berlin Town contract has the provision where if there's large increases in something or decreases in revenues, there's an avenue to talk about the per capita rate. I talked to the interim town administrator here. We tried to get it done before. So we're going to do this kind of handover on Vince. Is that who you guys? I am. I'm Chris. We've back two times. I haven't seen him. I tried to get it done before. He got here, but I wasn't able to. There's everything going on. And we kind of talked and said, rather than just say, here's what we expect to pay every year. And we increase it when we budget every year. We're just going to throw the whole thing on Berlin. It was the interim town manager, Tom. So Tom and I talked, and Tom mentioned this idea. What about splitting it 50-50? And I thought that was a pretty fair arrangement. So I did the math out, talked to Tom, and wasn't able to get it in writing. I'm going to get it all the way down through till he left and had been started. That's what got us to here. That's kind of how we ended up in this 50-50 split. It doesn't necessarily look like a 50-50 split perfectly because every year I based it on what we expect. So this year is 50-50 based on what we budget and what the extra cost would be. Next year is we pay 2% more and then split the 50-50 and then the third year. So that's why you notice the price I gave you kind of went down each year. And that's the reason for that. I think that's kind of the follow-up we got here. So I think the board's perspective on that was slightly different. The way we perceived it, knowing that you had new renewal rate prior to the new contract that we just signed was that the renewal rate, whatever percentage increase that would trigger in the contract was based on being in the middle of the contract. So if in the middle of one of our contracts they decided to increase over that it would trigger that so that you guys could do it. Our perception was that when we received that RFD from you for the services that you already knew that that's what your rates were going to go up to. So we figured that was what was faster than that. That's the board's perception. So we didn't, I don't think we want to split it. Justin, were you aware of any conversation between Tom and anyone on the- There were some emails that went back and forth but there was never any real in-depth discussion on it. But I don't remember, it was after, I don't remember the time frame. I don't think it was prior, I don't recall. What do you remember the time frame was, you know? I'd have to look at when that would take place. I believe it was after we had signed the contract review for the new one. And I do know that one of the things that Joe had worked on was making sure that the rental agreement with Berrytown EMS went coincided with the town contract now because it was off a little bit. So I thought everybody was on the same page and I apologize for your misunderstanding. Yeah, and I can bring it back to the town board but one of the things I think they'll notice is that in the previous purling contract the same language was there. The same language is in our previous EMS one of the view and the post EMS one, so I'm sure how that. We're not debating that. What we're saying is the way that the timeline went out that you knew your police was there was about the $1,550 a month. So we were under the impression that that was built into the new RFP because we were already home. Gotcha. And so therefore with speaking to our town council it was also their perception that given that timeline that that would be reasonable understanding and even the contract that we should not just vote. And my, just outside my personal opinion which I probably shouldn't state necessarily is I think that $1,550 for the space that you have available in the purling corner is a little different. I think it's fair. It's available. One of the issues to recognize is that while that space is large the space we have that's ours is two, nine by 10 bedrooms and the rest is shared. So we don't have any space for, you know, while it's a large building there is an office space that the two of the people are gonna have to give other storage or supplies, things like that. So you're right, it is a very large building we get to kind of cruise in but the space that's ours to use is pretty. I understand the space that you have available. What was on the board prior this year? Joe, do you have anything you wanna add or say or? No, except that, you know, I mean, we're talking about space and shared space. I'm gonna say probably 90% of the time that shared space is very county and that's used, utilizes that. Joe, remind me what our utility cost is in that building for a year. The average for the last four years is just over here, $4,000. Yeah, just the utility cost. That's also including trash. Yep. Which is included in the very town, the MS lease agreement. How do you determine your per capita rate? And is it the same no matter what town you're serving or is it different depending on the town? I mean, I can give you very cursory ideas of that. In reality, I manage the contracts we have so the town manager would have an answer for that much better than I would. I can answer, the parts I can answer is that it is different for every town. Berlin's per capita rate is the lowest of the group that we have and the next one above high, sorry, the next reduced rate would be all of our other contract towns, all of those towns have the same rate and the town of Berlin, actually, the town of Barry pays more than, I can't say, I'll top my head. I wouldn't use any words to define the differences but that's kind of the case here. You don't know the formula though, it's not proximity to a hospital or anything like that. No, I don't know how they calculate that. That's between the town manager and the slide board when they present it to the town's. And so when you're also calculating your revenue, what you said, if revenues decrease, that's one of the things. Are you using non-emergency transfers? Yeah, our revenue is based on 901 emergency transfers, sorry, let's say, 901 non-emergency transfers and then any third-party things we get which could fall on their repairment intercepts nowadays, any kind of COVID money that comes in, whether it's grant money that was given out to the U.S. agencies and or some of their vaccine and testing clinics we've been doing, that's all calculated in those revenues. So are they, I noticed you're doing a vaccine clinic over there, have you talked to the fire department about it and they tried to do anything extra to utilize that extra space in the traffic, do they or how did that all come? They did not, so the current one, and I'll publicly apologize to the fire department that we did a clinic at the fire department Thursday-ish last week, the exact day last week and then we went scheduled tomorrow and we started doing our own vaccine clinics in the last four to six weeks prior to that, we were just assisting the state at their big clinics. And so in that, we were finally given our own vaccine and about a week and basically two to two and a half weeks ago we had a transition and then my person who leads it left for medical school so when everything transitioned to me, I kind of looked at some of the information and realized we had 95 doses that were gonna be thrown away as of the seventh of this week, their seventh of this month was Saturday I think. And so I talked to the state and said, are we allowed to just do our own clinics to try to get rid of these rather than, I'd rather throw away four doses and give one than have to throw out five and last minute came up with this idea of like, well, great, they said we can do them and the person that I asked to do it mentioned the idea of well, could we do one here and one in Berlin and with all this happening the last two weeks, I missed this and completely me did not reach out to them and asked for use of that space. I have no excuse for it and I have already talked to them and apologized for it. At this point we're done after tomorrow because we don't have any vaccines and moving forward if we did then we can fix that. No problem. Thank you, Chris. Chris, you're welcome. Appreciate it. What does that mean? Do you have anything for round table? Seems like you have a lot to say tonight. I do. No, I don't have anything for round table. Well, yes, I do have something about round table. I'm a little concerned when we, my family first moved to Berlin, we would see the police department daily through our neighborhood. We got about 300 walkers a week, more when it's nice out. And we just don't see them at all anymore. My sister's car was brushed. Someone hit my chickens. We don't even let the kids ride their bikes in the road anymore because the speed is just crazy through there. I've asked a couple of times to have the police department start patrolling and they're nowhere to be found. Well, yeah, I would be interested because we're not at the hotel anymore, right? Well, I'll let the chief into that. I think he still pays it some visits occasionally. Chief, would you like to speak to that? We had several calls for service regarding traffic enforcement, which we try to address whenever we can. We're still at an extremely high call volume. Our arrests are on par or just following behind Berry City. So given a police department that's half the size of Berry City and we're trailing Berry City and arrests, kind of shows us the level of intensity of that. I hear you, chief. I guess my concern comes from when I see Facebook posts about all the people we pull over for doing 15 miles an hour over on the Berry Beltline. We have 300 walkers walking across Berlin Pond on hills with blind corners and no patrol. I think the average speed on Berlin Pond in that circle is comparatively higher, I think, than the 15 miles an hour that you guys are pulling people over for on Berry Beltline where there's, I would say, less risk to pedestrians. It's just concerning knowing the number of people that are there. We're lowering the speed limit. We're trying to do our part, but if we're not actively patrolling, people are gonna continue to do the same speed. I understand you guys have a lot of calls and I certainly wouldn't want their job. I think they do a great job. All I'm asking for is that this is a high traffic area that's not getting any service right now and I'd really like them to start patrolling again. Is that part of a normal routine? It used to be. But is it now? I mean, is it part of a, or is it just a, you feel like a stretch so thin you can't get out there? During the daytime, it would depend. Like today, for example, we had officers following up on a bunch of nonsense to happen this weekend. So I myself have gone out there and have not observed a whole lot of traffic. It's difficult for me to justify expending officers' time there when there's other stuff that needs to be addressed as well. So the only thing that I can suggest is that we start to monitor traffic to see if there's any patterns there and we can do that by putting our speed enforcement card out there or speed enforcement sign out there so we can track when the speeding is occurring and how frequently it's occurring so that we can better utilize officers' time addressing when it should be up. I think that would be great. I think earlier, Vince mentioned something about 350 approximately. Cars go across Brookfield Road every day, 310 per day. Average. It's a fair number of cars when you consider the number of walkers. If you walk around the loop, I guarantee you more than once you'll jump to the side hoping you don't get hit. Not just from speeders, but just from the blind corners themselves. So I think the select board's trying to do their part by lowering the speed limit, but a little bit of enforcement will certainly make people recognize that they need to slow down. I'm not asking for all the time, I'm just asking for a little bit more. So does it make sense then that we try to put a speed sign out there to monitor what we... Yeah, that'd be a great first step. I think that would be ideal. Thank you, Chief. That was it for me. Thank you. Brad, anything? No. Before you do that, what's the state's policy going to be on closing or stopping the voucher system for the hotel? I don't know yet. I think you're so much left to be determined. I think there's a lot of information that comes out in October that I'm really anxious to hear more of where we're headed with stuff. I think there's a big amount of COVID money that is going to be distributed and stuff like that. I know I posted it, I think I talked to Vince at the Ampract Gathering, and I think there's a million dollars in the next couple of years that's going to be with Northfield and Burling, and I think that's divided up per capita. And where Northfield will get more is because of the university. That part of there will help us with that. But it seems like with this American Rescue Plan I've got our first thing there, it looks like that could be ongoing and sure, some money may not be able to be used for a certain thing that you're trying to do, like some of these bridges and stuff like that or COVID's, whatever you want to say. I know I get a tremendous amount of input calls on Lovers Lane Bridge in West Burlin or Riverton, whatever you want to say. I mean, I feel like I'm on the Burlin Select Board. I mean, I was on the Northfield Select Board for 10 years and it's like, oh my, you know, I'm right back into the switch. Which by the way, this is fun to hear again too. I mean, I do miss it, but yes, miss it. Do you know at the top of your head about what percentage of the ARPA funds the legislature's expended or appropriated? I haven't been on top of it that much at John. I know it's a different committee, so you have your own stuff in judiciary. I couldn't remember off the top of my head, so I wasn't sure if you knew. If I come back for a third term, I'd like to be on those money committees. I'm not against lawyers or any of that stuff there, but I happen to deal with this guy before, too, in Northfield, but I enjoy working with the money committees a lot more. So, but anyway, I appreciate, I miss this stuff. This is good, this gets right back to the community. What's going on with everything you guys do or all of you do, and it's great to see you and really appreciate what you all do. I think to read between the lines there, he's saying these are the boards that get stuff done. Just kidding, representative, go side. Thanks, Mr. Friend. Enjoy the rest of your night. Thank you. I would like to spend some more time around Berlin and how that COVID is hopefully taking a break and maybe disappearing and get out and about more. It's good to see people move in again. Thank you for being here. Thank you. Appreciate you. Appreciate you. See ya. You're going on a second discussion, right? Yes. Howdy here. Entertain a motion at the executive session. So moved. Second. I can call with my water a little bit sometime, right? Yep. Any discussion? Is that a priority list? The only favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Where you by.