 So, I'm going to do my best. Our chair, Mike, has lost his voice, so he is here. But I'm going to step up and use my voice to run the meeting and do my best to fill those vocal cords for shoes, so to speak. So it's as if I've never been to a meeting before because I'm nervous. But we'll start with approving the agenda. Could I please add a liquor license for the wine vault and an outside consumption permit for smuggler's notch distillery under consent agenda items? Wine vault, smuggler's notch distillery. Cabot annex, those are the three then? Yeah. Any other changes? Then I'll take a motion to approve the agenda as amended. So moved. Any second? I'll second it. Anything further? All in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Great. Agenda approved. Move on to the consent agenda. I'll move to pass the consent agenda. Second. Any further discussion? All in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Great. Yes, sir. I should abstain because I'm on the consent agenda. Ah, okay. So as Megan though, Mike is abstained from that. And the consent agenda passes as amended. So we will move on to public comment, whether via Zoom or in person. This is a chance for the public to speak on anything that is not on the agenda. You will have a chance to speak on any agenda item when it does come up. And we are looking to limit comment to two minutes per person. Is there anyone in person or Zoom who would like to speak at this time? Okay, then we will move forward ahead of schedule and hopefully keep this trend. Moving on to select board items. The first is off and commission interviews. Sandy? Yes, ma'am. Megan Noonan has a respectfully withdrawn. She's a law clerk and was told by her supervisor that it's sort of a conflict. Oh. So she'll be free in September to volunteer for something then. Okay. So Megan Noonan has withdrawn. So we have Katie then today. Katie Gallagher. She sounds good. On Zoom. Spectacular. Katie, if you would like to start and tell us a little bit about yourself and your background, and then we can move into some questions. Sounds perfect. Thank you. And thank you all for having me tonight. I wish I could be there with you in person, but I really appreciate the opportunity to be able to speak with you over Zoom. So I live in Waterbury center right across the street from the Hope Davy Memorial Park. And I'm really happy to be able to speak with you. I'm really happy to be able to speak with you over Zoom. And I know my husband and I bought our home here in December, 2019. It was great for three months and then COVID hit. But we were just really incredibly lucky to be able to find and afford a home at that point in time. And to be honest now would, would not be able to afford our home. So housing is, is a really personal issue for me. I had a kid on the shoreline. Another lovely place to be, but grew up during a time when folks from New York and Boston were coming in and knocking things down and building their fourth home to come and live in for a week and not really change the character of the community in a way that was pretty devastating to me. And I think that in part led to my professional choices, which have been to follow a line that is somewhat in the planning world, or mostly in the planning world at this point, I guess. So I currently direct the sustainable communities program with Vermont Natural Resources Council, which is a environmental nonprofit based in Montpelier. But for the past couple of years in my work as a planner, I focused on affordable housing, sustainable transportation options and place making. So how do we make the places, especially our downtowns and villages, places where people want to live and be and put and have their, their businesses and so on. And I guess the last thing I'll say before I move on to questions is that I also received my master's degree in community development and applied economics from the University of Vermont several years ago. And for me, I chose that program specifically because I was interested in gaining a really as much of a well rounded kind of education in both the community development side of things, but also the, the economic analysis side of things, which came from my previous experience in, in the policy world and understanding just how much the economics plays a part in all of the decisions that we, that we make. And so I was very fortunate to be able to, to pursue that. So I'll leave it there. Thank you. So move to the select board. Anyone who has questions for Katie? Katie, this is Roger clap. I was wondering, are there any particular issues before the planning commission that attract your particular interest? So I know that the, well, there's several things I guess I would say one, in general, I know that the planning commission is working on the town plan and, and hopefully trying to wrap that up. That is something in general, I think that is, it is a huge task. And so for me, while that is something I'm very interested in helping to support move, move along. I also understand there's been a lot of work that has gone into it at this point. And I hope that I would be able to help continue to push it down the path towards completion. That said, there are things that I see as a waterberry center resident that I hope the planning commission would be interested in taking up in the future. I think that the center has really enormous potential and opportunity as both an economic and a residential hub. And that is definitely a priority for me that I would hope to be able to work on in the future. Katie, I've been in the construction industry for more than 40 years. My opinion, the word affordability ought to be stricken from the dictionary. I've seen the construction industry morph into this unaffordable avenue for a lot of people. And I always hear about people wanting to get involved in solving these affordable issues outside of subsidizing, which my belief is anytime you subsidize something, it's a broken business model. Trying to get back to the root of the problem is probably more critical in solving the issue than just throwing money at it all the time. I'd be curious to know as this board continues through the year, what some of their suggestions might be as well as people like you as to how we're going to approach this thing and try to keep it affordable across the board. Yeah, thank you. So I do agree that the word affordable has different meanings and there's capital A affordable subsidized housing and then there's affordable for everybody. And again, for me personally, my husband and I are, I would say, middle of the road. We are very fortunate. And we, we spent many years working, saving up, working to afford a house. We chose Waterbury specifically. There was not very many houses on the market when we first looked and then we were, we, you know, made the dive, bought our home. And then as you all know, there's pretty much nothing else in the past couple of years. So we were very lucky in that way. What was affordable, our home at that point is no longer affordable for us. So when I talk about affordable housing, I do mean affordable for all folks. And that means homes of different sizes, different types. So not just single family homes, but also apartments, both ownership and rental opportunities. And one big way that the planning commission can help to address that is through making homes and housing density an option. So in where I live, for example, we have the house was a, had a, an accessory, accessory dwelling unit at the back of our house that was built for their grandmother at the, at the time. So we are lucky that, that we have that second unit already on our building or in our home, but we would not be able to, in our current zoning structure, add another unit, even though we also have a garage that would be able to, if we updated our septic accommodate another unit. So that's one way that, that we would be able to help to make that incremental change to add additional units in a way that is affordable, both for us as homeowners and small scale developers. And for the folks that we would then be renting those, those units out too. I mean, passive income has certainly been a driving force and the ability for certain people to own a home by renting portions of it out, such as you're considering doing. The trades, I mean, we could go on and on about this, but the trades, the trades industry is woefully lacking qualified help. I think that's also part of the problem. I mean, my time in school was spent learning the trades and, and not other things. And fortunately for me, I was able to build, you know, several houses through my, my life here in Waterbury at a considerable amount less than what most people would have to pay for it because they have to hire people to do it. And I think that's certainly an avenue that should be pursued in the future as far as the trades industry is concerned, getting more people the knowledge to do things themselves so they can, you know, save substantial money. I applaud your efforts to try to help solve that problem. We have our home is, is I think 1825 old farmhouse. And so we were doing, well, we renovated the entire downstairs ourselves over the past two years. And thankfully my husband is much handier than I am, but it is, it is a ton of work. And now we're considering, well, we need to do the upstairs. We're considering hiring folks to do just like a sheet rock or do one, one part of it. I'm just dreading going through that process because I know it's going to be probably more difficult trying to find workers than to just do it ourselves again. So I, I absolutely agree. Other questions for Katie. What is your opinion for what is your opinion of environmental rights versus landowner rights? Oh, boy. That game of him. No, I work for VNRC. This is a hot topic. So I, I think there is a, a delicate balance. And I think that we are very fortunate to live in a state that has long recognized that balance. And where most of the time we are starting off in a pretty good, good space already. I think landowner and property rights are incredibly important to the foundation of our culture and of our society. At the same time, we also know that certain environmental issues are also underpinning what make our businesses possible, what make the town possible, which makes residences possible. If we're all to build in the middle of the forest up on the mountains, you're going to quickly run into some pretty big problems that would cost not only the town money, you're going to cost residents money. And that cascades down and down. And also not only physical environmental issues that we can face or that we can feel, such as water quality, air quality, things of that nature, but also when we think about our impact on climate change. So it's, it's a very delicate balance. And I think that that is probably one of the most challenging, but pressing questions in this point in time. For me, in my, in my current work as someone who deals with sustainable land use is exactly that, that question. So I appreciate it. And just knowing that you have limited time, I'm going to try and leave it there and keep it, keep it quick. Thank you. Anything else? So can you probably know this, but we do have another candidate at our next meeting. So we won't be making any motions or decisions this evening, but we're so thankful for your offer to, to be of service to the town. And then in two weeks we'll go through with the other candidate. There are two positions open. Oh, there are two positions open. We've had three candidates. Great. Spectacular. So does that change what we're doing this evening? So we can wait until the next. Is there just one position to fill? No, there's two. I wish I didn't realize. Two candidates and two positions. Yeah. So we can move forward tonight if we'd like. The preference of the board. I'll move that way. I'll point Katie to one of those positions. So pick one. There's a list of position that is a remaining two year term until April 30th, 2024. And there's an open seat to April 30th of 2025. Did either of them put, do we just choose or did either of them express interest in one of the other? I don't think they do that information. Yeah. Katie, do you have a, were you able to hear those details and did you have a preference for either of those? I would say I do not have a preference. I'd be happy either way. Do we want to wait and see if the other candidate has a preference then since they're set different? I thought we had three candidates. So I thought there was no. Go to the next meeting. So we will wait. Then I can vote for meeting. We're going to wait to appoint. We're going to wait to appoint. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Moving along. So the next item on the agenda is revisiting the CV fiber request for appointing 75,000 of ARPA funds. So that we can, so that matching funds can be applied for. Mike originally wanted to revisit this tonight and keep it brief. So I'm going to do my best to represent his perspective and you can, you know, throw notes or whatever it might work. Essentially, I don't know if everyone was able to read the email today with documents that Linda sent out was just this afternoon. There's a chance you didn't see that just yet. But it had some examples of another town who has done, has gone forward with this. Essentially, if it's possible tonight in a brief conversation, what Mike thought is we could come up with the terms under which we would want to agree. And then if we do agree on those terms, we would need to either finalize them to move forward or revisit next week if we were unable to agree on those terms in a timely manner this evening. I think what Mike had in mind was for the limitations being that it's the funds are to be used only for the underserved households, I'll call them. And his suggestion was to use an income limit to be determined. And I don't know, I think that's going to be potentially the hang-up of the conversation. What was that the only? Okay. So I will see if others have input at this point and then see how to proceed. Any thoughts or have we, since our last conversation, Well, as I said at the last meeting, last time we had this on the agenda, which I think was the last meeting, I do support trying to get these underserved households connected because I do think it's an important part of living in the 21st century. My concern is really that we're trying to work with them in a fairly dynamic marketplace, which has both the CV Fiber working along with Comcast, which is already fairly dominant in the town, and then Consolidated, which, as I understand it, is coming forward fairly aggressively and expanding with very low rates compared to Comcast. So in the interest of our constituents, I'm interested to hear if CV Fiber is willing to collaborate with Consolidated, which I believe is as well ahead of CV Fiber in terms of its plans to build out its system. I don't believe we have the authority to do that. We are a municipality and they are a public and private company. Could you check on that? Certainly, but in the planning and development of the committees that I'm on, we had discussions about the private, the public companies that are available in the area and our charter has to do with the underserved that they don't want, they don't want to serve. Based upon the data of a couple of years ago now, even if they move forward with trying to serve those people, our charter is based upon the data of two years ago. Well, again, my concern would be that we would dedicate a certain amount of ARPA funding and then it would potentially remain stranded if you determine that you are unable to build out your system with the grant funds that you've got. And Chris said last time we spoke that your system would not be sustainable without capturing some of those clients, customers, that are currently either with Comcast or could be consolidated. So it seems to me like you're in a competitive situation whether your charter spells out or not. I think it's a good thing to have competition in Waterbury and if we're driving down the prices for Waterbury residents due to our being there, I think that's a good thing too. I'm curious if there has been any conversation about what would happen if, as Roger put it, funds end up stranded. So if we do delegate these funds and then down the line, this is determined to be unreachable goal. What happens to that funding that we've approved? You can specify that in your letter. That the money would come back to the town if the project is unable to be completed? Yes. I saw on the agreement that's structured there, kind of a MOU between the town and CBD fiber that the town gets held harmless for litigation issues, but nothing to the effect of if the project isn't built out. So we would have to put that in. The other thing is too, Bill had mentioned a couple prior meetings that one of the possibilities of CBD fiber building out the areas that aren't built out yet and having the two private companies that are currently dominant in this area bid on those infrastructure packages to see which one of those companies might be interested in taking on that. Seeing as how they got an old skin in the game and those build-outs. I'd like to give a quick update that might set this at rest. Today, this week, we received the delivery of our first fiber school. We are starting construction, in other words, in our 21 members of actually stringing fiber. We have hired an executive director, and she started on the 11th. Her name is Jeanille Smith. She has background in telecommunications. She is a Vermont attorney, and she has worked with telecommunications for a long time. She is taking over the reins of running the construction and the operations. We signed two contracts with one with Waitsville Telecom to start putting together marketing and operations of our customers, and another with NRTC, which is a national construction of fiber company. They will be doing our design and construction, and they will be running the contractors. I guess I see two possibilities that might hold us up, and that is that there's going to be a huge demand for fiber optic cable, and we have put in orders enough to keep us on track with several deliveries between now and the end of the year. And through the state of Vermont, who has put together a coalition of the CUDs buying fiber together. And the other is labor. There's a big demand on people who can do pole inventories and construction, and that's why we hired this NRTC company because they are one of the largest companies in the East Coast, and they have access and have been actually hiring more construction people as they have been taking on more of these type contracts. I think this should put your fears at rest as to whether or not we are going to be successful in this venture because we have now hired on professionals to take over what the volunteers have been doing all along. So it sounds like what you're saying is that which telecom will be the provider for all the 21 towns? Yes. Okay, so that it also sounds like it has to be a complete and total build-out infrastructure. It's coming in pieces, you might say. We're going live in pieces around. Yes, but I'm saying ultimately it's a complete and total build-out of new infrastructure. Yes. It doesn't seem to be a way around it. We can make a contract with Woodsfield Telecom but you can't make a contract with Consolidated or Comcast. Can you take your mask down, please? Just to... It's okay to make a contract with Woodsfield Telecom but it's not okay to make a contract with Consolidated or... They're providing the service. They're not in competition. They're providing a service for us by... But you could ask Comcast to do the same thing, could you? We've got a better contract with them. But you have to build... They have an excellent... They have an excellent reputation for customer service and that's one of the reasons we selected them. Mike, I have a question, but let's be a-writing. Mike says it's a good thing we have competition but not via public funds. TV needs to take the risk for entire build-out. How much for the cabinet example is underserved? Neil Smith? She's the executive director. Was that a question about Cabot? I'm just... I'm not sure about the question. Besides the fact that they are just about as far along as Waterbury is and have put together this letter that they are interested in pursuing the matching funds and they want to work on the agreement. And so the MOU came about for Cabot and it's been passed around to any towns that are getting close. And it gives your lawyers a chance to work with ours to put your special touches or whatever you'd like to see into the agreement. So I guess... Oh yeah. Cabot's really small compared to Waterbury. Right. I don't know if it's proportionally interesting. I can find out for you. Maybe to follow up from Mike's question and this is more a statement than a question for you. And my question is, I guess, alluding to Rogers' previous things of orphan funds. What was the... I wrote it down. Stranded. I feel like we have some consensus among the board of supporting underserved locations, potentially not campsites, but other single-family homes that may not be served. The latest you sent us today I had a different number for the per unit hookup cost. But I guess my concern would be if we're not supporting the general build out, I don't want to allocate more funding than is available to be used. So if it's 89 residences and we're going to assume not all 89 are going to meet whatever income criteria and the proposed rate is $1,700 per household. I'm not sure that's getting us to the 75,000, which was an arbitrary 5% of Waterbury's ARPA funding. So I guess that's just to speak for myself personally. I think I would... In this letter it says, CB5 will consult with the Town of Cabot to determine how to best apply these funds within the town. I think we seem to be tending towards a more restrictive use of funding within the town so I would want to make sure there's adequate justification for whatever funding we would want to connect. I think that they are going through an agreement process. Just like you are. The commitment letter just says that that's what they want to do. They want to make sure that their funds are going to go to the things that they're most interested in. But they haven't decided exactly what those are either yet, but they want to make sure that they put in their offer for the matching funds before the limit, the time limit. So I think Alyssa's point is actually to the board of we want to know that if we're not going to reach that 75,000 by surveying those underserved homes, we want to have a contingency use of those funds to make sure that we all agree on what those funds are being used for. So it seems at this point, I mean, the ask of us is simply do we want to allocate these funds and what, if yes, what restrictions do we want to place on that and if no, do we want to adjust the amount or not approve it at all? My fear is that if we don't move in some direction, we'll just continue having this conversation at every meeting forever. So I'm interested in hearing if there are any strong opinions of either moving forward with saying, yes, we want to do this, but let's decide on the restrictions next meeting or if there are any motions that anyone has today. Well, by no fault of yours, I suspect this process has gotten to the point where, in my opinion, the town is, for lack of a better word, has been corralled into one option, which is this option of a complete build out with Watesville Telecom as a provider and the ask has been 75,000 and I guess to your point, we just need to decide whether or not that's justifiable and will it be the final ask or do you think that next year, CB Fighter will come back looking for more money possibly? It's possible. I'm not going to rule it out. I don't see that the legislature has put up more funds yet for next year for more matching funds, for example, but I did talk with a couple of people in the legislature who said they really want to encourage the town to spend money on broadband so I would not be surprised if more matching funds become available next year, but I haven't heard of any yet. Let's say that. We also can say, I think in the agreement that it's a one-time agreement if that's a concern that everybody shares, I think that's valid or just need to open and know that next year it might not be. So you just brought a good point maybe we say that it's a one-time based on the actions we already have given the future, the state appropriates more ARPA than we could reconsider. That leaves an open option for them, but what's the kind of... It can be in there and also remember, even if it's not in there, we can still say no if it feels inappropriate in the future. The one thing I do want to say is that the former board, so three of us out of the five did some work with equity with a facilitator and we talked a lot about how we can view decisions with a lens of equity and a lot of that had to do with racial and cultural backgrounds, but this applies as well. So I want to think about how we can look at this decision with a lens of equity knowing that someone lives on a certain road might be an assumption that they can afford or have a certain income or because they have income can afford something, but we know that there is a group of homes that are underserved. We know how essential, solid, good internet is for school children, students, college students and people working and so I just want to keep that in our mind as we go forward with this conversation. So Linda, is there a limit on, I suppose it would have to be income based, there are certain people that live in areas here that are probably underserved that ultimately could probably afford a pretty good chunk of this investment, but wouldn't come forward unless they had to. Is there any care to try to coax some of those people to help pay part of the bill to get sections of their area done as opposed to, because anybody else, I've had a couple of developments in my time that those residents ultimately pooled together and bid the bullet to have that run to their residents with no help from anybody. There are people out there that can afford. Yes, I was just going to say that. There are people out there. I drove through some of these areas and looked at some of these addresses that are on the list myself. And these houses, they look like they can afford to make their own connection. Then there are other ones that are, you can just tell when you drive up that there's not been maintenance done on this small house for a long time and these people probably are having a hard time with it. That doesn't give us much for equity though. I mean, basically the policy committee is looking into working with the other CUDs to put together an equity application. And what they found was, they did a test last summer, as a matter of fact, and what they found was that just getting people to apply was a big deal. I don't have internet now, why would I want it? You know, that kind of thing would happen. And at the same time, they had kids and they had to sit outside of McDonald's to do their homework during the pandemic. And so it was taking like a one-on-one to basically control the person into you would really love to have this. It would be a great thing after your life. So it's not easy, in other words, to even get the people who are underserved, who we think of as underserved, to even step forward. Because that would bring down the cost of the subscriber, ultimately, like you're asking the town to do by giving 75,000. Your goal is to not borrow as much and to bring down the subscription cost in that housing and the equity margin of this project. Bill had a question also, I think. Yeah, so to kind of flip the science head in terms of how, and I wish I had thought about this a couple of months ago now, but typically when the municipalities approached for use of public money, the people who are approaching, the organization that's approaching says, we would like to do this. Here's our proposal, and this is how much it's going to cost. And I think Linda, and again, I apologize, I didn't think of this before. You and Chris and the whole CD Viber board knows a whole lot more about this than any of us sitting around this table. And wouldn't it be better for you to come to us and say instead of we want 75,000 dollars, which is 5% of your ARPA funds, and you can restrict it any way you want, why don't you tell us what you want to do? And that means we would like to run the Viber up these roads that don't have service now. We would like to run the Viber where there is a public highway that has these driveways to these households that have incomes less than XYZ. And then let us respond to it because I think asking us, or asking the Select Board to figure out what the restrictions should be is difficult. I don't think we have the... I think that's just what... We don't have the bandwidth to do that. Cabinet is doing exactly what you said. They said, we don't really know. We don't have the expertise. We want to work with you guys as you are going through our town to determine which ones we should put our funds to. And I think if you read their letter, that's kind of what the open restriction that they put in has to do with. And that's why I brought this sample because I thought... To Bill's point, I think he's saying that if it came, we would be able to look at a budget and see the funds, see what amount makes sense to us and see what it's being allocated to versus agreeing up front and then figuring it out to have a plan in front of us where we could look at the budget and say, yes, this is where we want the funds to go or let's strike this line item and then it'll be $55,000 versus $75,000. I guess I'm asking you to put funds aside and as we come to Waterbury, you'll be able to look and say, okay, we don't want to do camps. We want to do these houses. These people, their property value is so low that we should go and approach these people and see if they would be interested and decide at that time, these are the people that we want to support with the ARPA funds. By putting the funds aside now, you get the matching funds. Put a contingency in that says, if we don't use up all the funds, we would like it to go toward our design of Waterbury Network or the cabinet boxes that we have to put in town to make connections on the... So I guess that's the other option is we can okay the agreement without the restrictions this evening. All right. He says, I move $75,000 to CB Fiber only for the underserved mileage with income restrictions to be determined with only a one-time funding. And as a reminder, we can second the motion and have further discussion. Just to put it on the table for discussion. I'll second. Further discussion? Or does staff have concerns about going back on ARPA allocation or assuming that we take revenue loss if we could reshuffle or with just the process needed to get this agreement, which looks somewhat arduous? The revenue loss is what we're going to do and this works into that. This will not... Approving this will not put us in a precarious position. Thank you. Other discussion before we take a vote? I'm just wondering if the scenario that I started came to pass, let's say, just for safe argument, that CB Fiber gets to a point that determines that they cannot move forward with a sustainable plan to lay out Fiber to connect all these houses in Waterbury, which is, I think, if not likely, it's certainly conceivable. Can we get this funding back? I guess my question is if I think, yes, we could put it in writing, if there's money there, we would get it back. I guess the concern would be if the money's spent, then do we end up in legal situation when we're trying to get money back from the municipality, which sounds not like a position so obviously. So with that question being asked, I'm going to ask Linda another question. Does this build out in such a manner that portions are completed, that the money that we give you if it were spent, at least we've got a portion that are being served? Yes. The most in nobody? Yes, we are. I'm on the Planning and Development Committee. We have a project plan that basically does by areas. And as each area is tested, it gets, they call it energized. At that point, as soon as the testing is done and the area is energized, we can actually take on subscribers right away. And that is trying to help with our sustainability. And we, Wakefield Telecom knows that we will not be able in the first same year of doing this, we will not be as sustainable for all because we won't have enough customers, we won't have enough lit areas yet. Okay, but we see ourselves as at right now having at least half of all our grant money that we need to run this project. Okay, so that means we should be able to get to a point to have enough sustainability because it'll get us at least halfway through the three years that we anticipate this project running. We are also applying for more grants, by the way. Right, and I imagine there's got to be more coming down the pipe. Yeah. Other discussion? I would ask that they delay this. Okay, sure. We're going to pause for a second. Call the question for about, no. Bill is, we're waiting, Bill is, what looks to be a motion. So we're just going to wait a second. Should it be 50? I mean, I'm not, I'm not this, I support the motion. I support if we want to do the allocation, but if we already don't have the cost to back it up and 5% in my mind was arbitrary and we have not done a holistic planning process for ARPA, which is what I would have liked to see. I don't know that I would start at 75, but I also don't have the expertise to pick a lower number. I mean, again, we've got 1600 for house connection on the latest. It was 1750 on the earlier one. So, um, essentially. We're not in the castle where there was a lot of life. It's a minute through. And this is about... Or even like 50. I'm just saying if we're not sure how far we're getting I don't know that I'd go to 75 to start. I might start with, you know, we could do 25. We can get on board with CB5 or maybe we can look at matching. I think all these numbers of 1600 and 1750 are all estimate. Driveways are different lengths. And we try to figure out... I agree and that's driveways only, but the question is if we have 86 underserved homes, a third of them is 30. 30 times 2,000 houses, 60,000. And we're going to allocate more than that before matching. Well, I put next. I'm just... Where we at? Well, it will depend on the amount that we choose, but with the wording it's up to. So with Bill's help, a revised motion. Do we need a vote on the old one to put a revised one or can we revise? Third heating withdrawal. Just withdraw. Just withdraw. You withdraw your second? Yep. Okay. So this is just for consideration? For consideration. And then if we are okay with that, we can move on with that. A motion to appropriate up to X number of dollars to CV fiber to be used exclusively in Waterbury to provide fiber optic service to unserved and underserved permanent residents with the select board, preserving the ability to review specific plans for... Sorry. Construction and construction. So we can move on with that. Specific plans for... Sorry. Construction and connection. And if we're okay with that, then we would just want to finalize that number up to... But I don't know how that would come into. I'll so move with that $50,000. Is there a second? Any discussion? I can't read that, sorry. We're making it happen. This is, you know, real life. I would like to just mention that Cabot is a lot smaller than Waterbury. Understood. Is one type of that? No, I didn't think of that. That doesn't say one type of that. More discussion. Yes. Mike says there's nothing on income related in that. Right. I'm personally okay with that. I think that's... It can be arbitrary. It doesn't tell the whole story. And does it for me serve an equitable decision. But I'm okay to open discussion to that if others want that to be a part of the... It does say... Yeah, I mean, it says... We can review the term. It says un-served and underserved permanent residence. So there's got to be a definition... We have that, yeah. Thank you. And then you get to review the specific plans for construction and connection. So that means... We can say... You can see that it's going up. It's going down. I think it gives you the flexibility that you're looking for to be able to ask questions to say, we don't really think that it's our job to do this or it makes a lot of sense to do that. You don't suppose anybody can cry foul or something like that? Well, they cry foul all the time. I think if they saw the arduous discussion we've had in this decision making, they would know we have the best interest on the talent art. So it has been moved and seconded? Yes. Further discussion? Okay. That was in favor. Say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? The motion passes. If you would like to move forward. Yes. We need a letter similar to what we have it on your letterhead. That opens negotiations between basically your lawyers and our lawyers to put together an agreement. Do we have to have a boy? No. There's your house money. So what do you need from us to ensure things move forward? Well, I'll take that. And what I'll do, I assume you're looking at me to write this letter. So I'll write a letter. I'm happy to help draft it if you don't mind. I can write it and I can circulate it. Okay. I'll go from there. You can come back. And you know, I'll send it to each of you. I'll send it out all together. But then when you respond one at a time, respond to me please. Thank you. All right, thanks. Thank you. I would like to thank everyone for their consideration of doing this for the residents of Water Valley. Thank you for having me over here. All right. And I would love to come and keep you abreast of what's happening. Please do. And you can always send stuff electronically as well. So I can talk. Thank you very much. I will. All right. Spectacular. We are slightly behind, but not too terribly. So we're going to move on to the last item under select board items, which is the letter of support for the Worcester cell tower issue. So I think every did everyone receive an email about the issue and what's the best way to move forward? Do you want a separately? Of course, I did not discuss it. So essentially Worcester or some of the beginning of the letter sums it up. Worcester received word that industrial wireless technologies a mass firm lease land was preparing to build a tower at the top of Norton Road in Worcester. The proposed tower is 20 stories high to be built 300 feet from a neighbor's home, the town had no warning in advance of the plan. So this is a similar situation as to what happened in Waterbury. I cannot remember the year. So yes, I was clearly not hearing it. And the ask is to the select board of Waterbury to sign a letter of support for the town of Worcester and their opposition to the proposal for the cell tower on Norton Road. There are some restrictions at the bottom of the letter. So I'm not sure if there are questions, concerns, or clarifications. Who does the request come from? Mike John. The name, huh? Oh yeah. At the bottom. My question would be, can we talk to Steve? I mean, I would just say, the planning commission member, we do get received notice of, and again, I was not here for Norfield cell tower. I know it was quite a saga, but as a planning question member, we did receive notice of, I think the new location of it. And the town has party status through the planning commission. And so I'm a little unclear what our grounding is to comment on matters and other municipalities. And I would love to hear from Steve who we just reappointed to be our rep to the regional planning commission, not to put you on the spot. If you're willing to share. Yeah. Like I said, I wouldn't feel comfortable. Again, Mike just, I did not talk with the gentleman. Mike just forwarded an exchange. So I just before, before writing planning support letters on behalf of other municipalities, I would want to know what your perspective is. Yeah. Yeah. I'll just say briefly that normally there's a requirement for a 45 day notice to the municipality for any major applications to the public utility commission. And that would include for cell towers. We have one for a tower that is now proposed between regular road group 100. And, and that gives the opportunity for the, the slack word and the planning commission in a town to, you know, to comment on it's a 45 day notice in advance of the application. I'm not sure if that's what precipitated this letter. And then the full application would come in. So I know enough to be dangerous about this. I've heard about it. It's come up at the regional planning commission level, but I don't think we have party status. And I don't have a lot more information than what you, what you just heard about. As far as this particular project, I know it's, it's extremely tall tower. And I know there's opposition, but beyond that, I don't really have details for you. Thanks. I guess just my follow up with the question is, again, I'm just reading this email from Mike, which I'll hand to Stephen a minute, but it says the select board of water, very Vermont supports the town of Worcester and its opposition to the proposal for a cell tower. As telecommunications develop in our state, several restrictions must be observed. Town select boards and planning commissions must be involved in the siting process before locations are determined. Is that happening to any extent in the state currently? Contrary to law. Act 248 cuts municipalities out of this process. So this is. So that's what they're arguing. They want our support. It must be. And it would be nice if they were, but that would be better addressed to the legislature than to the town of Worcester. On number three, and again, we fought against, was it Verizon? Verizon, correct. Yes. We fought against Verizon's cell tower in Waterbury. And what we were fortunate to have been going for us was that it was in this natural area that the state had been to be somewhat sensitive ecologically for wildlife habitat. And we ended up prevailing. But frankly, only because Verizon was unwilling to move the tower about, you know, 100 feet. If they had just moved it down the hill, I'm pretty sure we would have lost. And number three that they have written here, the public good, not the developers profit, must remain paramount in the town governance, must guide this. I don't necessarily disagree with that, but the reason why municipalities don't have the ability to review these projects is for the public good, because no one wants it in their backyard. And if every town had the ability to say, no, we don't want this here, it doesn't work for us, then there would be none. And this is a hard concept. And I'm not against sending a letter to Worcester saying, this sounds excessive 300 feet or whatever it is, seems pretty odd. But I just want you to all understand that there are a lot of things that the public relies upon in terms of modern life that if you allow towns to have the say, there wouldn't be any of them, you know, landfills. If every town could say, we don't want a landfill, then what are we doing? So I probably shouldn't have read the whole letter. So it looks like Steve, they are going through the process that you just outlined, because it says the select board is unanimously opposed. The planning commission is unanimously opposed and the citizen read overwhelmingly opposed. And they're asking for the letter, and I think to send to state regulators, which is what it looks like here. So yeah, if we do want to show support, then we would maybe want to revisit the letter of the template that they sent. One of the aces that we held in our hand as a municipality was in our municipal plan, we had stated that there was to be no cell towers or communication towers of any sort. If I remember correctly, in those critical wildlife habitat areas, that was, so we were following, we were fighting for what we had adopted as a town plan. I had talked a little bit with Mike about this letter, because that's the first thing I said. He's sticking our nose in other people's business. My biggest rub for the cell tower issue wasn't the fact that it was the cell tower. It was more the fact that a landowner was going to pursue residential building using the infrastructure that the cell tower company was going to install in that area. And being a critical wildlife habitat, the cell tower was nothing. The cell tower just stands there and you might get a visit once a month from a crew expecting it. It was more the residential build out that could take place afterwards that would have really impacted the wildlife corridor. That was my bigger rub. And that issue still exists. Potential issues still exist even though the cell tower didn't go in. And to Bill's point, he's right. We all want good cell service, but then if you're going to put it online now, we're the neighbors out, you know? So this is from a member of the oyster slug board. Did you have something to add? Just for a brief moment, basically what I did for Iison says, you're doing it our way. No, I swear when the oysters died. So totally out of pose, they want to look at options. And that's the same thing that happened in Waterbury. There was Iison said, no, we don't want to see her. No options. And you know, this is the, you know, a 200 plus foot tower and stuff. It's a lot smaller than we want it to be. So I have a lot of sympathy and I agree with what Bill said. So what do we want to do? I guess the options are to not send a letter or to revise the template sent to show support or to get more information before we decide either way. I don't know. I mean, do you think they're looking for our support because we have them in our case and it might have some leverage in court? Is that why they're asking? I assume they're getting as many letters of support as possible just to show like mass, you know? It's like what you do in here. That's why he contacted me because he said he's going through it. Results. And we're in adjacent town too. Right. But there's no requirement for adjacent towns to be notified even. So this is really a battle that the town of Worcester needs to take up with the, through the Public Utility Commission. I think when they talk about state regulators, I think they're talking about the Public Utility Commission. Right. In our case, I forget, we spent $60,000, $70,000 after we bought that. And we prevailed fortunately for us, the state of Vermont Agency of Natural Resources decided to fight it as well. And they had their lawyer that did a lot of delay work that saved us considerable money. The challenge for writing a letter is unless you're just going to say a town should have the ability to veto this, I'm not sure what you can really say. You know, we don't have the information about this. We don't know what's in their initial plan even if they haven't. Could you write to John and just get more details? To me, they basically are the same. This is this one. And I understand what they'll say is, we need cell service. It's a bad location in everyone in that town. It's really opposed to this. And I don't think it's totally it. I don't like the ambience. It creates and equates to this issue. Yeah, the town of Worcester can demonstrate that there's an alternate site or a whole location site. You know, they may have a case. I think every case is so nuanced. And towns have been successful. I think we're successful in getting a tower moved to a co-location site. So I think we can be supportive but writing a letter to me is maybe not an appropriate role at this point. But we can probably get a copy of the application or the 45-day notice. It may even be public information. Okay. So it will take no action at this point and then do you want to have more conversation with John? I'm on another point. I don't know if you've already spoken to what is that? Now I get three emails a week. Gwen and Karen at VLCT. They pick all the VLCT advocates and they're certainly more versed in making public campaigns than I feel. I or even as a board member. So if he hasn't already done that. Thanks for your helpful time, Steve. The joint meeting with the commissioners. We have one here, one way or the other. Great. We have them. Do you want to come on up to the table? EFLA, commissioners? No, we're okay here. Oh, you're okay? Okay. No, you can come up if you want. Come on over. I don't think the owl will pick you up from back here, by the way, if you want to be a local person. Okay. If on Zoom, if you can't hear, let us know. I need to call the meeting of the Edward Farrar utility district to order for a joint meeting with the select board on April 18, 2002. And we have with us here myself skip-lenders, lefty-say, Natalie Sherman and Cindy Parks Bob Finokin is on the Zoom screen here. And we're here to talk about four items on the agenda, the Stow Street Bridge Project update. The manager search committee items, which include four things that we want to talk about. The service agreement, having alternates, the old, the meeting law and the number of members of the committee and also a MOU with E-FUD regarding potential transfer of properties to the town and to review the RFP for the recreation master planning, which includes some E-FUD property at the moment. Can we check with someone on Zoom if that's audible just before? With that, you can continue on with your agenda as appropriate there. Okay, I'm not sure who's leading. Excellent, thank you. Well, I've got assistance on Zoom. Tom Knight is our consulting engineer from Stantec. He's on. He'll be sharing a screen if he's got privileges. And he'll probably lead us through most of this and I'll jump in and maybe talk over him occasionally. Sorry, Tom. And then I also want to introduce Mahendra Thilliar. He is a V-Trans project manager and he will actually be taking over this project for me because I will be departing V-Trans in a couple of weeks. So he also is managing the bridge project on Route 2 over the Little River. So he'll probably be in touch with you guys if he hasn't already. So he'll have two water bridge projects that he is managing. So awesome continuity there. But with that, I guess if Tom is able to share, maybe you can kick it off. And we'll keep this as quick as we can until we can get to the questions so we can hopefully recover some vagina time for you guys. Very sensible. All right, we can see you this time. Go ahead. All right. Thanks for having us back. I think one of the points we wanted to make here, John, was that with your project managers within V-Trans, you know, Stantec's happy to be here as the consistent member on the team. I've actually been working on this bridge off and on since about 2005. And hopefully that familiarity with the town and familiarity with the project serves us well moving forward. Here we are in the product development process. And do you want to say? Yeah, so last time we were here we were in product definition, kind of scoping, selecting alternatives. So now we're farther along. We've gone through our conceptual design. We're into preliminary design. And we've really kind of identified all of the constraints of the project. And we wanted to give you guys an update and really talk about conflicts, which we have some slides on. But we're moving forward through design and ultimately towards that contract active contract phase. Okay. Just to refresh the recommended alternative here is for a structure bridge, replace the existing bridge. And I've got some pictures that describe that a little, a little better. When we were, when we were presented the alternatives to the town back in the summer. We were, we knew we were going to be looking for a 60 day closure of Stow Street. And we knew we have some potential impacts on Lincoln street traffic. And that's one of the main points we want to update on today. So a refresher of what that project looks like. This is an aerial view that we showed during the. Alternatives presentation meeting. And just orient everyone. You know, here's that your brook. Going from the page to the top of the page. North is oriented to the right here. This is, this is Stow Street. And this is Lincoln street. You can see my cursor there. So as you can see, we're, we're talking about adding a right hand turn lane on Stow Street. There'll be a left hand and through Lane coming off the street onto Vermont 100. As well as the, the single lane accessing from Vermont 100 on Stow Street. This is what we're showing here, the buried structure. This is an archetype structure from, from the actual road service. You're not going to see much of the, of the bridge. We, we did this three dimensional. Rendering at the time of the alternatives presentation to explain what that looks like. The street looks like away view. Basically, it's going to be the street roadway built on top of the arch. There's a relocated sewer line that's going to be within the fill of Stow Street. And we've done a little more work since then. Taking this three dimensional artist rendering in this, this plan view drawing. more accuracy to it. Accuracy in dimensions to it. And one of the things that we put this together for was to demonstrate when we build this structure, we're going to have a big hole dug out on Stow Street. And the limits of that hole are becoming better, more well defined as we progress with the design. But as you can see, the edge of that hole that we did here is kind of eating into corner Lincoln Street and the end of Stow Street. And that's going to limit the amount of room we have to do the construction. And ultimately, it's going to limit the traffic that we can maintain on Lincoln Street during the construction process. I'm going to flip to the next slide. So again, representing that same hole on the ground here, we have a brown shape looking down on the site now. And these lines would be the finished edges of Lincoln Street. And you can see this area is going to be occupied by equipment or a good portion of the project construction. Ultimately, what that means is we'd like to get to our traffic away from this area, preventing closed Lincoln Street for 21 days. I'd like to elaborate that, you know, while there's physically space to make that pass through there, you'll see on the slide here, we're only recommending that that closure would apply to emergency service vehicles for a shorter duration. Because when the contractor is doing excavation or backfilling, those pieces of equipment can get out of the way relatively quickly for emergency service vehicle. When they're in this configuration as shown on the screen here with the crane, that there's a lot more setup and breakdown time there. So it would be inaccessible to emergency services. We have already held a meeting with the emergency service providers to let them know about this plan, and they are comfortable with what we were proposing. But effectively, what we're proposing 21 days for the Lincoln Street closure allows the contractor to basically have free and unrestricted access to the site to make that excavation, place that cast in place footing, erect the precast and do the backfill without having to try and maintain traffic through Lincoln Street. And even if they do maintain traffic, it's still going to queue up substantially as they hold traffic for their equipment to get loaded and unloaded. So there's going to be a time conflict either way. And, and ultimately, there are activities which traffic cannot be maintained, such as the installation of the precast structure. So, you know, our proposal for 21 days, we feel is the safest to keep traffic away from an open cut, keep the site clear for the contractor to have unfettered access to the site, which gives them a better chance of being successful in the overall schedule to deliver this. So we are still, you know, planning for construction year 2025. So there's plenty of time to plan accordingly to notify people to outreach these activities. And we're really hopeful that, you know, with with this 21 days that this will be, you know, a really high quality and executable contract. What happens to the households that are right on that corner? So everybody that is on the Lincoln Street side would be detoured around. So we've got Justin back here who's probably going to get the worst case detour. And they, we still have to maintain access to their driveways. So their driveways would be open from the Lincoln Street side. But they, the, there wouldn't be access through the site back onto Stoke Street. The detour would be up around. Yeah, it's like a 10 minute drive around from end to end. Just don't do the project during this. One time of year, we don't want to do this. And there's no pedestrian access either. Like, could they walk from Lincoln Street to Stoke Street? We should be able to, and Tom correct me if I'm wrong, but we should be able to maintain pedestrian access around Lincoln Street and Stoke Street. But there will be no pedestrian access across the Stoke Street bridge to 100. And another, I think, important note here is that in preparation of this, we also executed an MOU, and I'm jumping the gun a little bit, Tom, with BGS to relocate the park and ride facility to the state complex. Not just for that closure, but for the entire duration of the construction contract to reduce the number of traffic trips that have to go through there. And so we've already executed that agreement. BGS is amenable to it. The next step would be to coordinate with the transit authorities to make them aware of that and update their routing, their preference in routing. One other thing I didn't mention, and we haven't talked about it also, is the minibus facilities, obviously, sewer will have to be bypass-routed around that open cut. And then the water line in Lincoln Street is in the proposed excavation. So that would have to be relocated farther away from the excavation limits prior to the closure of the bridge. So there would be some traffic impacts to Lincoln Street to relocate some infrastructure prior to the closure even starting. And is there going to be any improvement in access to Lincoln Street coming off of Stoke Street, particularly when those buses come into the park and ride? Absolutely. Tom, can you show that layout again that has the lanes yet? Right there. And you can see Tom's cursor on the corner there. There's a flare. So the advantage of a buried structure versus a new bridge is that you basically get to fill it in. So the earth flow can re-grade that whole area. So we're able to facilitate that curve versus if we'd done a traditional bridge with beans and girders we'd have to put a kicker in. Oh, fulcrum. Oh, that's going to be huge. Glenn, can you mute yourself, please? Oh, whoops, my bad. Sorry. So yeah, substantially larger tourney radiuses for buses for that park and ride facility. Again, apologies. And there's a typical section on this sheet too. We're currently there is no shoulder. The new structure will have four foot shoulders. And then the sidewalk is actually changing sides of the bridge. And that'll be carried all the way down to the North Street intersection, which also provides some connectivity to Lincoln Street, which currently there isn't because it's on the other side. So the bigger question is, between now and the time this project is done with cost being what they are, I forget, is it four million original? Right now our current estimate is about four million dollars. I think that has about $680,000 in engineering, per point of engineering. And then I believe 50,000 in right-of-way acquisitions. And then the remainder are in construction and construction engineering contingencies. That does consider a 20% escalation from our bid history. However, what we're seeing in our bids are 50%. So it's low by the bid openings that we're getting right now. Not sure what that trend will be in three years. They could continue on up. Hopefully, you know, hopefully we'll get some ramp up in production materials from ramp up in labor and we'll get a leveling off. Or at the flip side of that is people will stop building stuff because the cost has gotten so high. So then we'll have enough labor and materials to build what people are actually producing still. So hopefully they'll level off. But right now I believe our estimates are low. Probably by about a half a million. Based on what we're seeing for trends from the spring's bid openings. You mean it's conservative? Well, we already put a large increase on it to try and capture that and it wasn't large enough. So, and I believe on this project the town shares 5% of total costs because we're closing the road. So we've got 80% federal funding. We typically have a 10% town funding and a 10% state. But with Act 153, we were able to reduce the town share in half by closing the road. So by closing, so straight for this construction, town share went to 5%. The other five goes to the state or where? The state picks up the other five. And the feds continue with their 80%. There are some opportunities in the funding right now from some of the new legislation coming out. The federal highway will be picking up 100% construction costs for municipal projects. They haven't picked which projects are going to get those, but this one is on that list right now. But there's no guarantee that that'll happen because it still hasn't actually been approved yet. So there is a plausibility that the town would only be paying for the 5% of the engineering and the right of way acquisitions. The engineering costs and acquisition costs would be a little over $700,000. Do you have geotech engineers working on this or several engineers who think they're geotech? We have all sorts of engineers working on this. So we do have geotech for those of you who that's probably a good another talking point. Later this week, there will be drill crews out there on site for the third time. We've got a lot of variability in the ledge and as we advance the design, we recognize that we needed to get more information because we've got a 60-day bridge closure period and we've got prefabricated elements that are already built to fit. So we really need to understand what we're putting them on. So the drill crew will be out there at the end of this week, either Thursday or Friday. They'll be behind the guardrail. They shouldn't be interrupting traffic at all. And then on Monday next week, there will be a brief interruption to traffic in the morning when the town forces are going to pull the guardrail to get the drillers in behind the guardrail. So that's occurring next week. But we have a substantial geotechnical effort from geotechnical engineers on the project. There's blue clay very close to that. That's funny. I asked a question. We're going all the way to Bedlock. So we're going right to the bottom. Can I offer some comments? Can I have your name? Yes, Al Lewis. Oh, hi, Al. I've lived on Kerry Hill going on 50 years. So I don't know how many times I've passed through that intersection, getting on to Route 100. If you could put the slide up that shows the bridge, the traffic across the bridge. Can I point out a couple of things? I've given comments to Bill Woodruff, by the way. And I advocate for the town to have Bill present those to the state because some of it deals with what the state might need to do. But on this drawing here, I believe we got your comments last week. We actually took a look through those and we are going to adopt some of them. There are some that are a little out of scope for what we're doing on the project. But we are adopting some like moving the stop bar up. I think that was one of your comments on Stowe Street. I will back off. You're more than welcome to bring everybody up. But if you want, we can, once we've finished resolving our response to your comments, we're going to give it back to Bill. I just would like the town to make sure that Bill Woodruff has enough backing in order to force some of these changes because this bridge, yes, there's improvements that are made to the bridge. But there needs to be improvements on the whole intersection. And the whole intersection improves, actually the improvements on the intersection, a lot of it can be made with simple line changes. And that's the same thing with Blush Hill. Traffic coming down on Blush Hill and going across on just briefly, just a little thing like bringing this stop bar out here. If you watch the traffic today, the way everybody works, the traffic stops here even though there's only room for one. It stops here and the other cars go over here so they can see. They can see traffic coming down on Room 100. So little things like that. Yeah, and that is one of your comments that we are going to include in the final design. So that's one that we accept it as makes a lot of sense and we're definitely doing it. There are some others that I think that make a lot of sense. We weren't going to adopt this part of this project because it's a town highway bridge project and it's got town funds and it's a kind of a state owned intersection. So I sent those to my traffic engineering division and I don't have a response from them yet, but once I get information, I'll circle back with Bill and yourself and also this board as to what we will do or can do and what we are not doing and why, if that makes sense. I guess I just want to advocate for having support bill in this because when the Room 100 project was being done they said it was too late to make any changes. Several changes like moving a line and then putting it on the road and no one can do that. I recognize that but now might be the opportunity really to fix that whole intersection. I go back to that intersection every day also. I'll do what I can. It was painful to sit there and watch the white and the yellow license plates go through the red light because they're inpatient and then they're sitting on the intersection and you want to get out because they're only a few minutes in order to make it onto Room 100. There's things that can be done that I think can make a bigger tool. Thanks mom. Can you stand up? I don't know if it's still in. Yes. I'm Jane Brown. I was on the select board for five years and during that time, can you hear me okay? Is that any better? Yes. Okay. During the time I was on the select board I was on a subcommittee I guess with the town planner Steve and we had a we had a coping report done for pedestrian and sidewalk and bike improvements but primarily sidewalk from this intersection with Room 100 here on show street up to Colbyville past Shaw's and it's a tricky one for pedestrians and I see you've moved the sidewalk from one side of show street to the other and it works beautifully with getting that sidewalk wrapping it around the intersection of Room 100 up towards the mobile station but it doesn't do anything for the neighborhood or the people that live on Blush Hill. There is a school nearby in the village of Waterbury as you know on show street and there's a neighborhood up in Blush Hill with people that may want to walk across Room 100. It seems like you've made it more difficult to make the rationale for a landing on both sides of of show street to cross Room 100. What are your thoughts on this? I didn't see this earlier so I haven't written any comments but another issue when Room 100 was paved it was noted that it would be a lot easier for bicyclists to come down Room 100 and just turn down show street and take that to get down to Waterbury rather than stay on Room 100 and cross the interstate and that's more tricky business because I think you've solved some problems but I want to know about what your thoughts are. Tom, you can correct me if I'm wrong but I believe we terminated that sidewalk as outlined in that scoping study that scoping study recommended crossing Room 100 at that location so we are taking the bridge project and the sidewalk to it's a logical and then the confines of a town highway bridge project and it would be up to any subsequent future projects that we're going to construct the rest of that facility to tie in. We followed the scoping study as far as where we can So it's been a couple years did the scoping study remove the sidewalk on the other side of show street then? Yeah The recommendation was to include the sidewalk Okay I don't know how anyone's ever going to cross Room 100 but We have a bicycle and pedestrian grant project that includes a crosswalk there at the termination of the sidewalk that shows over to the Blashill Road side and then a sidewalk that continues up to the Exxon station so that project has been funded it's on hold until the bridge gets reconstructed so Stantec was involved Tom you may have Tom circling where the crosswalk will be VTrans would not approve a crosswalk on stow street at Room 100 so that brought the sidewalk to the north side of bridge and once the bridge is constructed then we can move ahead of the bike head project to create the crosswalk Alright, thank you for refreshing my memory on that Tom, oh Tom have a hand up Yeah Just a quick question a lot of people walk to work at Shaw's up Stow Street and a lot of people walk for their groceries so that's a significant hardship they'll have to go downtown Waterbury and I don't know how the people will get to work but consideration of a temporary footbridge across the river say even from the parking right just to create a path that people can get over there we discussed that at the original we discussed it heavily at the original scope or the original scope and presentation about how that any construction on the new bridge actually points out the Act 153 funding or the townshare reduction of share so while it wouldn't be included as part of the project necessarily it wouldn't preclude the town from using the money that they've saved to put something in this temporary one advantage of relocating the parking right though is that there is bus connectivity downtown and hopefully and we haven't taken this upon ourselves yet but it is an action for us to at least facilitate and see if it's feasible it's to reach out to the Shaw's folks and see if we could have a place where a bus could temporarily pull in and stop just for the duration of the construction project because then at least we can maintain connectivity from downtown across the limited access highway to Shaw's it really will be Shaw's decision though is whether or not they have the space for that or it would allow that our plan would not be to procure right of way to do that for a temporary basis so it would basically be at their will and their support but it could be a benefit to them and their business by adding you know patronage to them so hopefully it's something we can work out with them and the goal would be that we maintain that connectivity with existing public infrastructure and a B-trans would be responsible for working that agreement out with Shaw's and do an outreach correct it would be part of the project so we would have to do something similar like we did with BGS as far as an MOU it's easy with BGS because they're another state entity that's actually where I'm going to work so I will reach out to them pretty easily but we would work out work with Shaw's but at this time our plan would not be to procure rights from them it would basically be if they would be willing to do that we would be willing to put up temporary facility line striping and whatnot to facilitate it to make sure it was marked and signed appropriately so that would be something that's on the table but we don't know the answer to that yet during the closure is there a shuttle I know that was discussed is that included in the scope it is not included in the scope and we were hoping that we could come with that with existing services what what level of completion are these plans you're through conceptual and we are probably 50 percent of preliminary time is that fair yeah even even further than that I think we expect to have preliminary you know okay so I would just recommend that you in the slope restoration for completing the project that you consider restoring where you can soil and planting with native plantings on the slope so to I know you need some stone probably for stability but nothing else is to disturb to try to repair the planting that's removed with some native plants thank you absolutely we're planting plants in all the soil projects now so something that we've been doing more and more of and I pending further discussion I think we would be looking for the select board to basically approve that recommended closure period that's something that you guys would be willing to do because it is your road there will need to be some duration that we have to close it 21 we believe is a very kind of happy medium between not closing the whole time the projects there but also not constricting the contractor to an unrealistic schedule but it's possible that it could be done in less we did do a kind of a best case scenario schedule and I think we're in the middle of the range but I wouldn't want to start there our preference would be as long as you were amenable to it to stick with the 21 days could it be up to 21 maybe? it could be yes and I think the way we would put it in our contract is that they will have probably from the time school gets out to the time school starts to perform the 60 day closure which gives them a little bit of wiggle room much more than 60 days and then that 21 days could occur at any time inside of those 60 they might be consecutive they might not they might do 7 days then open it and then close it again for 7 I'm not sure but the way the language would be written our intent would be to give them up to 21 total days concurrently within the 60 days do we need a motion now? we would need a motion to approve the Lincoln Street closure I'll move that we approve the Lincoln Street closure up to 21 days that's proposed second further discussion alright we'll take a vote on favor? aye any opposed? and the motion passes thank you anything else? that's it if you guys have questions reach out to yourself Tom we have a formal notice to someone here about the transition over to Mahindra as the new project manager but still a state employee so if you have questions I'm still also a town resident so feel free to reach out to me I drive over a place today my kids that's kindergarten next year so thank you Tom can you share your screen? thank you Tom moving on to the manager research committee items if you are going to speak to that alright project when you update everybody on what's happened since you last appointed two people Mike and Annie to the committee and myself we have met with Rick McGuire of the BLTC three of us were here and two of us were by Zoom I would say we learned a lot since the last meeting even though we haven't done a lot with that we appointed two people so we would avoid being a core on the beat of the boards and it was a question of whether or not open meeting law applied but it's a committee doing municipal business and falls under the open meeting law so that going forward we're going to need to do agendas the 48 hour notice post minutes and things that we're going to have to be in full compliance with the open meeting law Rick said that other communities have done it following it and it hasn't been a problem you can go into the executive session for interviews and reviewing applications Bill has been in touch with Jill McLean who's drafted some motions and things that we would use going forward so even though it maybe complicates planning and doing some things you know what we need to do and also we were thinking about scheduling our next meeting and the first thing we did was run into vacations so that the question came up whether somebody else could attend the meeting in their place which I think is a great idea and I think each board would recommend that each board appoint an alternate for their two members that if one of those members cannot attend the alternate could attend the alternate would get any information that's sent out but not attend the meeting only when the primary member was not able to make it so I would recommend tonight that each board identify an alternate for the two members in another item that kind of has come to mind and he talked a little bit about it with Rick was the number of members having employee input maybe a public member and things and that this committee gets all its authority and direction from the two boards so that the two boards I think are the ones who would decide who the members and the members on the committee would be also as we sat there with two members each a four person committee it seemed a little odd even though we had an even number of members that it looked at it four boards are usually the three or five people and things you don't have even number of members that you know lexicon you can get high votes and things so that became apparent as we meeting and after that meeting I got an inquiry from the library commissioners that they were interested in maybe participating if they could in this process and thinking about it library commissioners are elected just like the select board and the e-fund and even though they are they have a direct role in hiring the manager he does work with them he helps with the budget their house here and provide an essential service to the community so I recommend to both boards that we authorize the library commissioners to designate one member to work with the search committee of the two members of each of the boards and they could have an alternate that would give us the five people at the base committee and if we wanted to talk about having a public member at a future point and or how to get the employee in but we could do that and the last thing Rick asked us in the meeting if we had seen the service agreement and everybody said no we haven't seen the service agreement they had sent us a proposal before which was more about their recruitment plan but he has sent us a two page service agreement that I think Bill has looked at that the two boards need to authorize the designated person to sign that agreement to get it back to DLTC and then they'll get started we can't schedule the next meeting to send us a recruitment plan which is really getting started and that we will be going over so those are things I think we need to decide tonight going forward so that we don't have to have another meeting and we can the committee can get started getting the agreement signed getting the recruitment plan set up our meeting through it's most likely to be a hybrid meeting here and Rick felt it was outrageous to him to be on Zoom he saved travel time and the cost to the community and if some of the members can't make it for one reason or another they can be on Zoom so that's my recommendation you can take them up one at a time what time of day do you have your meetings with the well we did one in the morning because we wanted to retire people plus one who could work in the evening but I think going forward we're going to probably have to pick a day and it may end up being the evening to accommodate everybody to work it around someone from our board could attend I advocated so that it could be outside general working hours also so I could attend it so I guess first is the idea of having an alternate so if there's interest we'll start there sounds like you're just like great put my name into the ring I would say in general and I don't need to be cranky but I think I would love to have a conversation about how the communication between this and other boards and committees is going I just feel like again I'm happy to have you as the representative but I would like to know how and when other board members are receiving information or conveying input outside of when it comes up on these agendas yeah I also we started with some miscommunication of who was a contact person who was a point person and that didn't it was instantly didn't work so it's not only took minutes at our last meetings so if you're open to continuing to do that and if not that's okay we can ask someone off too but if you're open to continuing to do that so that we know someone is designated to take minutes and then I think it would work best to be distributed to both boards both full boards correct yeah and then that way any questions that come up can follow that's like the base level is there more that we want to start with right now well yeah so now Skip is going to be the contact person um setting up meetings with Rick and then notifying the rest who are going to be in attendance about those meetings or getting consensus on the times um so we'll start there and then if more communication issues come up we can work to resolve them and feel free to not wait till a meeting to ask for more communication if it's needed from anybody um so Roger has volunteered is anyone else uh yeah I don't mean to step on any toes if anybody else is interested um we need to actually vote on that I assume right so we'll take a motion to appoint Roger as the alternate so moved thank you all in favor oh other discussion sorry okay motion second mic second Chris I can go Chris second sorry so if uh Bob if he's still there and Cindy and uh lefty or any of you volunteering to be uh alternate yes I could do it um Bob are you still there hey hello Bob the um I'm reluctant to volunteer the um so you moved to appoint lefty as the alternate or someone in the room can do that as well I'll make a motion to like to choose lefty as the alternate for the editor which would be district oh second second to appoint lefty as the alternate to the manager search committee any further discussion if not all those in favor say aye aye motion passes lefty congratulations I'm a little maybe not with the time but um we want to have I guess a more holistic conversation about forming the full committee um which would include voting on including somebody from the library commission or we can just vote to include some of the library connection now and have a bigger conversation around the committee after our next meeting with Rick I'm open for whatever works I guess my recommendation is to vote now to put somebody from the library commission have them designate a person that's our five person base committee going forward and then after our next meeting with Rick we would talk about soliciting input from employees and the public employee yeah question? yeah thanks kid so yeah Maroney here I'm actually on the library commission and thank you for bringing this up I just realized over a year now I've been in the commission I've never realized that much close the commission works for the town manager and so we as a commission thought it would be appropriate for us to be part of this hiring process for a midtown manager and so the committee had a dedicated me to be a person to be I mean the commission had a dedicated me to be on the committee whatever committee is formed so yes we would love to be part of this process and again we just think that it's appropriate as we work and to expand a little bit Rick talked about like other processes he's been through where they do solicit input an individual input from employees of the town so that it can be private not in a group setting to make sure that they have a voice as well as in another process getting input from the public as well so this would be the base five person commission yes sir so just to be clear and we're always correct that I work very closely with the library commission but I want to make sure that all of you and Roger and Alyssa who are quite new understand the library the library is the one department of the town that the municipal manager does not have any direct authority over the library commission is elected by the public the way that library has chosen to follow the state laws with regard to libraries we have an elected library commission the elected library commission appoints a library director that's Rachel News she is the only town employee that the municipal manager doesn't appoint except there's only the administrator which is a hard job situation but I do work very closely with Rachel in helping with the budget I work with the library commission and try to give them the information that they need to work through this but I want to make sure that you all understand because I have no authority in the library the library commissioners as elected officials have no authority over me I don't appoint anybody I think it makes good sense especially if you're looking for a fifth person I just want everybody to understand that while the library commission should have input they don't have any authority in making the appointment when the time comes so don't we have a number of committees in addition to the library as well committee that also perhaps should be considered as an additional member of this commission other commission it seems like those other committees might also want to know that well there's one other elected commission in town and that's the cemetery commission I work with the cemetery commission they have a trust fund that we use to operate the cemeteries there are no dedicated cemetery employees so there's you know the public works director I direct him and we provide whatever labor is necessary outside of contractual work it's up to the it's up to the select board and the e5 commissioners just as with the library the cemetery commissioners are not an appointing authority for the municipal manager the other boards and commissions they're just that the boards and commissions and I certainly would not encourage you to put members of the we have elected listers as well but again they don't appoint the manager and they have very narrow responsibilities authority but the planning commission and the and the recreation commission committee and conservation committee yeah there's a lot of committees but she pulled on and ended up with a search committee of eleven or twelve people and that's unreal but it's your choice that's my concern is getting into a quagmire of committee opinions in the ocean at Boine whether it be good or bad yeah recommended the board final decision making so you just want to be careful that we don't end up with too much input opinionated drag down of this process very brief as much as I respect our library commissioners commissioners I think they do a wonderful job but I'm a little bit just like what Chris says I hate to have and I know we're not going to appoint every commission with a seat on this table but I'm more open to looking at a public member could be a library commissioner could be a lot of other could be an employee could be a whole bunch of different things but I don't necessarily think we should have it's kind of like you know we're saying a certain group should have a seat at the table I don't you know I don't think the library commissioner I think would probably be a good choice but I think we want to keep the numbers down and we should keep our options open I just want to move forward with an execution and figure out the other members I will say with you know in deference to the library while I'm not appointing authority over any library employees it's a rather large department they fall under the municipal personnel policy that library employees get all benefits that all other municipal employees get you know it's a big segment of the municipality that that the library commissioner is overseeing and it's an important service so I'm not here to say you should or you shouldn't but I just want everybody to understand that they do have quite a bit of skin in the game when it comes to employees Roger Yeah we have a recommendation from EFAT this appears to be one of the few commissions that's actually elected by the townspeople which I think differentiates it from the recreation committee and the planning commission and I too would like to see this process move forward so I'm going to move that we accept the recommendation from EFAT that we appoint a representative from the library commission to be the fifth member of this committee second further discussion I would say we should encourage them to include an alternate too if that's what all the boards are doing yeah excellent and I would like to add as well I guess that would just mean my one is I support it I'm going to vote for it I think I don't want to say it's presumptive but I think I just to echo for the record Roger's point I think it is a distinction from the other boards and commissions which we appoint so then it's like we would appoint someone and then put someone on the committee and it gets huge because the library commissioners are elected I think it really makes sense to be that fifth member we should encourage them to have an alternate as well yeah so I will run this to the commission our next meeting is 11 I believe next month so we'll have a personal meeting and then before the vote as well just to sit is there any way to move a decision quicker just for an alternate just to say that there will be routes via our work with VLCT to solicit input from board commissions, public members and employees that was something we all said was important to us going forward in the process so it's not just five people in a room making decisions without external input so that's important to all of us for the discussion that's to be clear are we setting that five people as the hiring committee definitively forever or is there still the opportunity I think I'm not trying to prolong my time for now no that's not a solid in the motion the motion is just to add a library commissioner all in favor aye any opposed the motion passes Melissa just to be clear we set a hiring committee we'll make similar motions sorry sorry sorry the boards cannot delegate their authority to the hiring committee working on the guidance yeah and then if we could I'd like to make a similar motion on behalf of EFUD to add a library commissioner and alternate to the search committee so is there a second to that option the second the motion has been made to second it to add a library commissioner to the search committee and an alternate going forward in any further discussion if not all those in favor say aye well aye aye motion passes and I I think just speaking to Chris's things there doesn't have to be any more people on this committee than the two boards authorize there so it isn't going to grow to six and eight unless you want it to so I don't think adding one more member is not something that's foreseeing the future to come that we add a person every meeting but I do think you know Bill's point that it's elected I think it's a good move the last thing was the service agreement with the town of mercury and the Edward flower utility district with the league of cities and towns laid it out and it agrees somewhere to have $7,250 and authorizes the league professional services that $90 an hour it's set up at town of water very select board chair would sign if it's authorized and the district here I assume bill is looked at this have you heard yeah I didn't see any issues I think there'll be another agreement that comes after in terms of the whole recruitment effort that will be more similar to what you review a couple of meetings and so there may be some additional costs beyond it and I guess every copy had draft on it did it I don't know the draft 14 on the one I printed so I don't know if they want to send us one without draft that we signed if you could at least approve it and then that way we can let them know that it's been approved but they need to send they can put their signature on it first and then we can get it and then skip when he sends it I guess well I guess that's between me and you Mike that someone should send it to the full board to look at as well so if you want to take that responsibility perfect I authorize Mike Bard to be able to sign the service agreement with the league of cities and towns on behalf of the select board once finalized and unofficially to also distribute it to board members individually. Thank you. I'll second that. Any further discussion? Those in favor? Aye. Motion passes. Do you need to do this then? I'll make a motion that the chairman of the Edward Farrar utility district signed the agreement with the service agreement with the LTC. Second? I'll second that. Motion is made second if you have the chairman of the district Edward Farrar utility district signed the agreement with the league of cities and towns for the manager's service. All those in favor say aye. Motion passes. So moving on to the town. Sorry, I couldn't see you. For the agreement? No. Post. I'm sorry, I don't know what you're asking. I don't feel like the committee would be we're going to do the agreement. Right, I think we're waiting it needs to be signed and sent back and he's going to send the recruitment agreement and then we're setting the next meeting is what Skip said. So I'm deferring to that. I think now is yeah. And just time wise not the best use of time. But let's work on it. Next up is the town MOU regarding the land transfer. Okay. I'm sorry. You want a little background with this? Make it short. Yeah. When the e-fund commissioners were considering transferring to the town these four properties we have all talked about the Elm Street parking lot the Rusty Parker Park the little welcome sign which is down there what we were willing to do that but in return we wanted some assurance from the select board that e-fund would be charged rent for the employee space here that we paid for this building as the taxpayer and didn't think we needed to be charged additional rent so that we came through I don't know meeting in October with the previous select board and discussed this with them and they agreed and we had an agreement drawn up and hadn't been exited to my knowledge now we're kind of changed that we'll be considering merger out into date which we don't know if it's going to pass or not pass but we're willing to put the transfer on the forming for our main meeting and if it passes we transfer it that this document has been modified that if the merger doesn't pass the town still agrees that they wouldn't charge e-fund rent for the space we still pay our share of the normal operating expenses and things through our contribution under the managers salary and things the pro rates and things for what we should pay so anyway we would ask for the vote so then May we could indicate to the voters that yes this agreement has been signed so if the property is transferred we're sure that we wouldn't be charged rent as a future pool and if you've got the same copy I would use the added provisions that you'll put in there for us just to be clear the number 5 we didn't take it out this was a discussion about the town if it decided to develop the resty park the park would have to come back to e-fund and give them a chance to purchase it back and below we didn't take this out but subsequent to the to the original draft get found records in the land records that circulate that the property can only be used for public use so there's really little we don't have to take it out of the agreement in case somebody down the road wants to talk about it but there's very little people that got whatever happened here in the district I'll move to accept the proposal from e-fudge nice second any further discussion? it says appendix A to B determined but I assume it's the four properties we previously received at the last joint meeting with e-fudge thank you I also think I don't know if you said it or not but likely the voters will the voters are going to be asked to approve this the e-fudge voters and give still the end of the year for it to be able to happen so that will just make sure all the eyes of God and the teeth of God further discussion? hearing none aye any opposed? motion passes e-fudge we want that motion that authorize the disability district to sign the MOU the town of Waterbury referring to transfer the property and not be charged by the teachers so moved thank you good move is there a second to it? second motion has been made second to authorize the chairman to sign the MOU with the town and the equity for our utility district regarding the transfer of property all those in favor say aye aye those opposed? aye motion passes thank you thank you thank you alright last on the joint meeting agenda is the review the RFP for recreation master planning and now Steve welcome again sorry Bill did you want to introduce this? no I think everybody is all set Nick's in the back of the room as well Nick had a big hand in this RFP and shared with the recreation committee so he's hiding way back there well Steve, that's pretty straightforward okay so I've got a couple copies here I didn't bring one for everybody but I did bring a couple copies this was sent to you the end of last week so Bill asked Nick and me to put together a request for proposals I'll drop my mask here for a minute so people can hear a little better and this is for a consultant study and master plan for two parks for Hope Daly park and for the area of the vicinity of the ice center so we have one town owned park and we have one owned by the EFUD so we met with the recreation committee last week and got their input Frank's following it's on Zoom and we've got Meg and Jane Meg was on the call I'm not sure if she's still here but Meg Valador but Frank is here so we had a very good discussion with the recreation committee got some good input I incorporated this into the request proposal before sending it to you this would utilize the $50,000 that was approved by the voters at town meeting and the goal would be to have a very inclusive process we'd have probably a total of three public meetings the last one being a presentation of the report to the select board and the EFUD commissioners that we would solicit proposals, a competitive process proposals in mid May we bring a recommendation to the select board since this is town funds at your first meeting in June and hire consultants the goal would be to wrap up the study by mid December so we'd be within the fiscal year and I think at this point just looking for any further input that the select board and the EFUD commissioners have before we advertise this we have put the draft on our website we intend this to be a fully open and inclusive process so with that it contemplates a steering committee at any point right it does Bill the steering committee would be approximately we said approximately eight members we'd have representative from the recreation committee if the select board and the EFUD commissioners would choose they, you could each have a representative we would have the various interest groups that are involved with the parks the center chain of golf course people the capital soccer the ice center the ice center washington west the water area trails alliance that helps manage the very hill trails and the access and the pump park and then we want a member at least one member of the public perhaps from the vicinity of Hope Davy park that would participate as well so that would be a steering committee that would be involved with staff and the consultant to carry out the study and take it to its conclusion the goal would be to have recommendations on both the recreation facilities and the protection of natural resources in these park areas the wetlands the forest resources and so on so in terms of both the development of any new facilities modification of existing facilities and then recommendations on any protective measures that may be needed for the natural resources start out with an inventory process and then move towards what I think was the master planning process with public input and then conclude with a final draft and recommendations and some graphic plans that would be presented if you had anything you wanted to add so I think at this point we're really looking for any input or comments that you have before we would move ahead with advertising I was just going to say I gave the timeline Bill sent out is not tight but it's important we follow it so I have given the select board until next month to appoint their recommendation to be on the steering committee as well as Tammy's on the call but they have a coalition down there at the ice center of the interest groups so the water, the dog park the ice center and their skate park group and so they're going to at that meeting it's going to be two for one they're going to recommend as a select board or the rec committee who they would like to appoint to the steering committee as well I forgot to mention the skateboard park group sorry Tammy that's I would recommend to the select board to authorize the distribution and advertising of the RFP but simultaneously I think you should ask begin the solicitation process for people who want to serve on the steering committee I think you can appoint that steering committee perhaps at the meeting that you choose that you review the proposals but I think it would be helpful to get all of it going as opposed to wait until we get a consultant and then appoint a steering committee I would agree Bill and we're also going to need to have a small selection group that would potentially interview consultants but I think what Bill and I Nick, Bill and I discussed is that the select board would actually appoint a member of the public as well when we get to that point we'll probably solicit interest from members of the public that are in the vicinity of these parks and then have you actually make that appointment Do you have a question for David? Does the you mentioned the historic site the old summer hole and what impact that they have is the historic division whatever they are to be able to either cover over that so that it looks like it could be a significant factor in deciding what to do there that we were hoping not to have to preserve it So that's a good point In the request proposal for a survey of the archeological resources but it would be a compilation of all the existing studies that we have including the most recent one of the site this is a former house that is the clump of trees in the middle of the former cornfield that Skip is talking about and then also do a just a broad survey level answer to your question that can be part of the study is how to move forward Did the state never respond to our request Yeah, they have not responded with So they haven't acted? They have not acted, no They have all the information that we sent but they haven't made any determination They have not made a determination We may have to apply for a permit to develop a facility to get a determination This is something that I think the consultant can help us You know, sometimes what you have to do is push the envelope but well this is something that I think the consultant can advise us on about how to move forward with that and maybe needle the division for a sort preservation mold that to give us an answer Does it also address the moving of the road as to the future use of the area depending on whether or not the road gets moved and the cost is so cheap Yeah, definitely We're turning over that study so they're going to take that consideration when they're looking at that part That's a big part of the centerpiece But at this point you're looking for authorization to put out the RFP and to solicit membership on the steering committee Is that correct? I will so move A second Oh Do you want a second and then further discussion? Okay, second is and now for the discussion My only comment is as much as I think this is a wonderful movie document I think if you go forward big committees everyone can't be represented because if you have a big giant committee nothing happens I'm not saying have a three-four member committee but have a reasonable amount of people and other people could be represented by their comments That's my only opinion I think it's a wonderful idea and I want to see it move forward I'm going to put a number on it like nine I think that's two I've asked the recreation committee to select one member to represent them and the coalition the skate park coalition the river road access park one member from them they can choose either water or dog park so far that's me, Steve two more people, it's just four then hopefully a community member too or a select board member we're looking at like six I totally agree with my point but I also think that we need to think in terms of not having this committee have people who represent diverse communities as well I think it's a steering committee so I will say for the search not hiring committee as we said earlier I think there's probably more of an ongoing workload in my sense is this is to help define the scope and make sure that they're conducting outreach appropriately to all of these other communities so for a working committee I think that seems reasonable I was going to add can we as a select board say just my personal preference we did it today for planning commission but like a one page form if you are interested or just having sent a paragraph to Carla I just personally find it nice to have something the person's name who's interested in the committee and why they're on the committee and we can still bring them into interview I think that's fine, I just think some base formality might be useful I agree, I think a little bit more process would help us all in our organization so we would need to come up with that by when would we want to have that process decided you could just like send your name and a paragraph about why you're interested to Carla I'm not saying you need to go 0 to 60 but I think some in that advertisement can I say something sure Tom I just would like to have the disabled population represented on that committee there are significant 80-80 issues out on the whole committee I'm hoping we need to address thanks Tom could I just mention something I'd rather the number not be too restrictive I would say eight is what we wrote in here so we can get each of the primary interest groups represented I don't want to cut somebody out quite honestly I think it's better to have an inclusive process perhaps someone who's you know has a disparate ability as well so that would be my suggestion would be to let us work with the applicants we can solicit applications and then you can ultimately decide if you like our original motion did not have a number in it and I don't think we need to add one we'll let you when you say we when you say we when you say we I think staff is going to do the solicitation and then we can bring the applications to you staff can put together the process of soliciting yes do you guys have a draft RFP yet because the scope sounds far and accessible so if you're totally broad you might not actually have anything to do with that is there a later review I review because of the proposals all day website so we want it to be as public as possible or they have made it as public as possible so it can definitely be reviewed and then I would reach out what to you Steve or to all you and me not to come over and we're going to be public with the budget to be honest with you so consultants are going to have to tell us what they can do exactly but 50,000 isn't that much yeah yes we're going to eventually be involved I have no problem I think we have a lot of talented people in our community that can well represent a lot of different interests and what eventually comes out of it I hope we need to be you don't feel infinitely involved in that committee we should be involved in every committee that's not your problem your a goal is to have a select board member we want that option available to you it was a suggestion but that's really up to you Karla can you read that motion back now please no one will look at you I need to worse myth it's a little bit that's not any motion to put out the RFP and solicit membership with this Jerry today perfect so we're not locked into being on the committee in any way with that motion it's been moved and seconded anything further alright those in favor okay Niko's excellent that passes do you want me to do the same for that or I don't know it was just under the joint so I didn't know you want that perfect excellent thank you thank you our next motion is to adjourn love that for you love that for you can we accept that we'll do it all those in favor say aye aye thank you for the evening thank you very much okay only 45 minutes passed agenda time we are moving on to managers item starting with the Vermont State Police report Phil since we're 45 minutes past since I forgot to send out the police thank you excellent I don't hate that thank you all that's an accident okay what do you know we will move on like we did our for the last time so at the last meeting at the last meeting we talked about you know we pointed Nick to to move up to the finally as it means meetings on whether the meeting is and we talked about the fact that we want to take advantage of using last revenue as used by which we're going to disseminate our profit funds and I think that there was a broad agreement about that but when I read the minutes even though I thought I could make a motion to suggest we're going to do that it wasn't in the minutes so if Carolyn didn't hear I heard something that wasn't so I would like to recommend to the select board that you approve filing our our report to indicate to the federal government that we are going to choose the option of using the last revenue as there needs to appropriate the funds so moved for a second moved and seconded further discussion alright those in favor aye passes next up first quarter budget review this won't take long I will pass those out I apologize I really got kind of hijacked or sidetracked whatever you want to say last week I'm allowing you to finish this report I ended up never sending it out and said it's not that difficult to just present I told the board at the last meeting or a couple of meetings ago that typically I will report to the board on a quarterly basis the budget and we really didn't have an official budget until the 1st of April even though we have been spending on that budget since the 1st of January there's at this time of year there's very very rarely anything that's really out of line we typically don't get big storms and the like that can cause our highway budget to go haywire this time of year we might get a big snowstorm but that usually doesn't end up costing tons and tons of money when we get to the highway budget in a minute I will share some concerns with you on the first page the first two pages really and I copy these back to back this is our revenues our major taxes our major revenue we don't collect taxes until August so until we send the tax bills out we're going to be way behind the calendar when it comes to revenue so all in all we've received this adds up to about 0% of our revenue to date so it's a little higher than that I think I didn't carry to that last one but there's nothing unusual about what we're receiving for our revenues the tax tax fees for about 21% that's on the first page and I would say that usually the first quarter is the slowest quarter there's probably transfers and the like in recording typically ramp up a little bit we have taken in a considerable amount of recreation programming fees already we've taken in almost 68% of the rec program revenues that's for the day camp and we've opened that up on the day camp sold out in 3 minutes or something like that so we've got that revenue the day camp income we should really change that is that after school programming mostly but we're already we're still ahead of the calendar at 32% there moving through into the expense side of things our pay lines are typically the highest single expense is the case with almost any organization that has the numbers of employees that we have you can see there the regular pay is about 22% right now and this is all through March 31st so the last couple of weeks I included here and the fact that we're 22% through 25% of the budget year just indicates that wage increases and salary increases that were budgeted don't happen until the second quarter so we're typically going to lack there a little bit there are some things like health insurance that we actually pay in advance so we've paid four months worth of health insurance through three months of time here because we paid through April so the fact that that's it about 30% is normal same with disability insurance unemployment insurance workers compensation insurance property and casualty insurance you'll see those are all 50% spent we pay those quarterly but in advance so on the 1st of January we pay for the first quarter we pay for the second quarter so we've paid up those insurances through the middle of the year there's a few line items that are over we spent $259 more on printing the annual reports than we had budgeted but that expense is done for the year association news again that's front loaded we pay dues and the like early there are some transfers that are in the general fund so about two thirds of the way down on the first page in the general budget you see that two MBOF MBOF is the municipal building operating fund we transfer that money and the library transfers money from our operating budgets to the municipal building operating fund where all the expenses of this building are paid for it's paid for by the library pays a little higher percentage than the general government does because the library has a little bit more square footage than we have on this side we make those transfers at the end of each quarter so that they are in line with the budget when we make the budget before fire department nothing really special there so the regular pay line is what we pay the firefighters for training and for maintenance meetings so they meet twice a month for training and once a month for maintenance meetings that money is paid at the end of the year it's pretty typically very close to what that budget number is in effect they kind of take the money when they count the number of total person meetings that they were and then they divide it up that way the part time pay line is call pay so when they get fire calls and the like it gets paid for from that and we pretty typically pay quarterly for that and it just so happens that's what I've spent today the building maintenance line is looks way ahead of the calendar we have some maintenance contracts that we pay on an annual basis so things like elevator maintenance heating and ventilation and mechanical system maintenance we have contracts with those companies and we pay those contracts at the end of the year and so it shows that there's a lot of expenditures there I think everything else there I've already explained in terms of health and human services we haven't spent health and social services we haven't spent anything there yet then after that we have the pool which we do have some spending in pool this time of year because we have swim lessons that are ongoing where what's that stuff rent facilities and do swim lessons all year round you can see in the right programs the mini camp pay line again that's really after school programming so we have that ongoing through the year so we've spent some money there looks like on the unemployment line there's I've got to check out why that is it's not a big it's in a $575 budget so it's either made a mistake in budgeting or in paying or it could be that we had the audit already and I assigned some of the additional money from last year's audit to that line so it's it's an outlier when you look at percentages but it's only a couple of years um record ministration the line here that is the regulation director's pay so that's in line with the budget a little bit later in behind because raises during this period are not coming to effect yet when are those going to effect? around then okay Nick computer services do you remember what that is? it's our recreation website so again that's a we have we have a website that people can sign up and register and pay and do all of their interacting with the with the town and we pay for that so again that's pretty much fully spent there's some other things that our IT director does from time to time that's the private contractor that we have that does IT so it looks like it will probably be overspent a little bit parks really not much there it's like a back on record ministration looks like your fuel bill went up yeah all our fuel bills went up but that could be that Michelle, the bookkeeper put that in the wrong line you see the line above that is the actual heating expense line so my guess is that 1068 should be up the line above that as opposed to the burn service that we would pay for so it just might be this goes there but when it comes to fuel all our fuel lines are going to be over because right after we adopted the budget the fuel expenses started going through the roof so we'll deal with that as it comes nothing much has been spent in parks yet the health insurance line one of the highway employees works in the parks budget and we split the health insurance payments between the highway budget and the parks budget so that's going to be a skew but that's really the only one that looks really out of whack nothing in particular in the planning budget that's unusual that I can see anyway debt management that again is we pay from the debt management budget into the municipal operating the municipal building operating pay the bond will be paid at the end of the year and actually the payment is interested in paying the principal and the member I think so that's going to follow the calendar I budgeted very little for interest expense which would be for tax anticipation borrowing I talked to you all during the budget building process that we found at the $775,000 that we received last year that we haven't spent yet but we have a fairly healthy balance in our bank account the last I worked last week it was still over $100,000 so we may end up having to do a little tax anticipation borrowing right before we send out tax bills but right now it brings a little pretty good so we won't have any huge expenses there the special articles pay those all of those not-for-profits at the end of the year so that budget is not spent the senior the senior senate gets paid out of two budgets if you look at the the general government budget you'll see that we're we pay them monthly but we haven't started paying out of the special article one yet the three the two big ones at the bottom of the page on the special articles the appropriation to the ice center and the recreation master planning the ice center we haven't made that payment yet we're wanting to first of all we have to wait for the budget to be officially deemed good after 30 days and then we don't want to make that payment and have to report on it in this recording period so that will be later in the year and I'll talk to them I'm probably going to ask them if we can depending on to that money until after we start taking tax money so we don't have to borrow so that will what are the municipal taxes do so we build the taxes in July and we're on quantified accrual accounting so as soon as we send the bills it's going to show as a revenue on the revenue reports but of course it won't do anything for our bank account until people actually start paying and you know I used to joke that now I'm stating to be an old person but I used to joke that we would send out the tax bills and then you know three days after we sent them out many of the elderly people would come in and I would say they're not doing until August and say well I don't want to owe it if I die so I'm going to pay it back taxes are due in August so I always laughed about that but amazing Fund 12 is the highway fund again property taxes are the flying share of the revenue there when July comes and the tax bills go out that's 16, 1.6 million will show as a revenue there all of the funds other than the general fund get all of their tax everything to do that as soon as it's built so we'll bill out $12 million worth of taxes they'll be well actually it'll be about 15 million, 16 million they'll be $12 million due to the school that will go on the balance sheet and then 1.6 million will go to the highway fund and $400,000 to the library fund and then the balance will be posted to the general fund and all of those funds will get all of their money and whatever delinquencies existing at the end of the year will be absorbed by the general fund that's just how the the law works what's this? looks like just that was asked but was anything if you see a number signed with a divided by zero it means that I didn't hide that particular cell I just copied those formulas down and what that's telling you is if you divide anything by zero it's zero so it shouldn't be there we don't we don't get that payment any way any longer it should be on that so on the highway expenses still from revenue what's the transfer into ARPA that's budgeted for highway fund that's just that it's just well it's was used to balance the highway budget it's lost revenue and put together the budget I recommended that we would use $600,000 for the transfer to EFAT $100,000 to the ice center and this $95,000 is here for highway funds and what I told the select board was that at the end of the year as is the case fairly regularly if our balance sheet is showing that we don't need to transfer that money we won't but right now we did budget $95,000 in ARPA to go into the highway fund just as you know as lost revenue so if you look at the expenses for the highway department you'll see a couple of things that are of concern we already talked about fuel lines there's some fuel lines that are already overspent I'm not sure why they're propane and sometimes it's just a matter of you know the tank empties and the first of January or the 10th of January they come and they fill it and then we don't get the visual fill after so those kind of things are always a little bit of a guessing game but the line that I want to point out to you is oh it's not here yet that's ahead of myself so you all know that one season was particularly bad this year and I guess we made the payment in April and not why I'm sure it's not showing up here yet but we did far exceed that stone budget in fact it's in the $20,000 range budgeted $20,000 I think that is it's either going to go on that line or the emergency road or the airline which really doesn't matter because the emergency road and the airline doesn't have a budget line an appropriation anyway we have that line to just show if we've had any really emergency expenses but we don't budget for it typically we bought quite a bit more stone than we expected $9,000 is typically what we've been spending and we spent about 25 or 26 years already on stone much of that stone was not used I mean a good portion of it was used but the rest of it's in a stock file and it's there for future use we went into the year frankly with less than Bill Woodruff would have liked and I didn't go into detail about why but you know the stone doesn't go bad we've paid for it it's there it's probably going to cost less this year than it will next year so it will hurt our budget for now and we do have the ability if necessary if the year continues going really alive as far as large expenditures in the highway department if we have to we can reduce the amount of money that gets transferred to the capital funds the last line item on that budget is a it's almost $795,000 that we're transferring to the capital fund which is an increase over last year I didn't bring the report with me but it's a significant increase over last year I'm hoping that things will balance out as we go through the remainder of the year it won't be too difficult and we'll still be able to make the full transfer but if it's necessary we can reduce that transfer into the capital funds to saving cash and balance the budget this year but we're a long way from knowing that or doing that at this point so as time goes by and we won't really know until getting through the summer well into the fall typically our most expensive seasons for emergencies are summers that seems a little bit odd to people when they say we're all in the summer instead why don't we have emergency road repairs there that's typically when you get flash floods you get gully washes and we end up having to go out and repair a lot of washed out roads and I'm not talking about Irene, I think I'm just talking about you lose Shaw Manchin road and pilot Harry Dill or Wood Hill road and Fire and Sill one year right below Fire and Sill right below the water treatment plant I think it was about three years after the plant was built we had a wicked rainstorm and Badger Brook came out of its banks and the brand new water lane that we had just installed was in the air there was no road there at all when those things happened it crossed mine so we won't be in a position to know whether we're going to have Badger or just a moderately Badger and Sill well into September or October but that's what was going on the last page was the library fund I didn't mean to skip over that but the library budget is there's almost no there's almost nothing that can happen that will cross the library budget to go exceedingly over you know even if we had a fire had to forbid we would have insurance that would cover that you know you could have somebody decide that they a couple of years ago we had three people that unexpectedly left and you have the hired people and that can cause a little to happen but typically the library budget always comes out pretty close to on the budget so if you have questions I'll try to answer them otherwise just wondering if you normally do have emergency road repairs why don't you budget for it well we don't always have budget we used to budget for it we put $5,000 in it and then it turned out well $5,000 really doesn't represent an emergency setting anymore back when I started here $5,000 was a lot you know we can have like this month season that probably cost us between materials and equipment and manpower that might have cost us you know $80,000 and it's still not going to cause any big problem so if you put a number in the budget then you have to raise that in taxes we're required to have a balanced budget so what we've done now is keep the line item there just to show that if something does happen we can put the expense on that line and then it's a more visual explanation to the voters that we had an emergency that caused us to go back to that good question I did speak to Bill Woodruff a little bit about issues surrounding month season this year and his comment was it was a warmer than normal spring and I said well I think it's going to become the norm so I think maybe as the summer goes on here we have the chance to talk about solutions to some of this these types of problems especially with the fact that we've got and whether we can use some of the art of money to help address those issues so they're not reoccurring because the money that was spent was needed to be spent but the problem is when you throw that stone into the mud it doesn't solve the problem the issue is when it's going in the same mud again the problem's not going to go away we need to start trying to fix their problems as opposed to band-aid it so something you want to put in a parking lot for future meetings like month season considerations or roads I would say that maybe even ARPA I don't know if we, I know it was ARPA it's agenda items but I just wanted to think for the record to put it on or even just to say for people listening and I should have said after I made the motion like that was just for us to allocate what we're doing to the feds and I just wanted to be clear to residents that that's our reporting we're doing to treasury but we still need to talk about the larger funding issue of ARPA funds do you want something in the parking lot ARPA fund consideration news of ARPA fund I mean we don't have to put it the parking lot doesn't have to be a thing I just wanted to say because I made that motion because we'll keep talking about it and then we're going to get it on an agenda Bill are we allowed to use ARPA funds for what I would consider a somewhat of a maintenance kind of item yeah we don't have because because of the lost revenue we can just do it but the the designation of lost revenue means that you're allowed to use up to ten million dollars of ARPA funds and just consider it as a revenue in your budgeting process so yes that's what I thought so when do we receive the rest of it the other eight million okay you can get a date hopefully we'll receive the other 775 thousand in September or October and then the other email next year don't worry let's go discuss any other budget questions okay discussing our next meeting yeah so scheduled to meet on May 2nd I think given that you have some interviews for the planning commission you probably should I'm just letting you know I'm going to be out on vacation I won't be here on May 2nd okay so you'll have to meet without me so there will be a planning commission interview I hear third hand and might be a school board interview Lisa probably knows more about that than I do okay your face says you have something to say no I just I may have a commitment myself as well it could be brief it could be okay we can just see what shakes out the next couple of weeks okay so we'll leave it on the calendar and then go from there alright last of manager's items update on wage salary ranges we put this under manager's items but it was because it was requested correct and I think that there's some of it will involve evaluating the public employees so that is something that should be done in the next session I can't make a decision in the next session of course I would like to have a motion how do you define it first I move to enter executive session to consider the evaluation of a public employee I'll second and the select board gets to choose we need to vote well before you vote the select board chooses who it wants in executive session that should be the product of your motion okay so I assume you want me I don't know if you want anybody else probably doesn't mind me standing I'm going to put everybody here back in the waiting room so they need to make a motion first well yeah oh okay yeah I would like for Nick to stay for that conversation as well but Tim I don't know if it's worth you know certainly you don't want to hear Bill to hear what this is all about but we could I wonder if the board could have a session by ourselves maybe after you talk to us or that's a great idea either order whatever you think yeah like we discussed first and then we're going to have to leave you're going to I can't hear anything you're going to have to you're going to have to stop the sessions yeah we have it okay okay Chris do you have an opinion on which order like we talk first and then have or have Bill's input first perfect so then maybe I'm happy to go yeah I could take minutes for one because I just there's somebody now let those people back in yes why would they be coming back in there's nothing else we have a motion you can't bring the term out so they're going to I have that motion well we have so I should amend it I should have made it so I'm withdrawing that motion so then we're saying I move to enter executive sessions to consider the evaluation of a public employee and to invite the municipal manager and if we wanted to and and then when we do another one after for if we wanted to ask others to leave the room no okay and just somebody right down the time so a second to the amended motion thank you Chris a second then further discussion all right all in favor I I would suggest that