 out with a public hearing on the town plan. This is a chance for anybody who has more comments or things that you think. To be discussed later. Thank you. You should have. Very kind. My name is John Peppenthal, East Randolph, and since East Randolph has been put back in the town plan, has the town also re-applied for a village designation for East Randolph, which is one of the requirements. And not only is it apparent the plan has an application in the name to regain the village designation for East Randolph. Well, once the select board approves the plan, we can then apply for a re-designation. Okay. I just want to make sure that's part of... Yeah. That's in process. Okay. Yeah, George Holt just wanted to know from the select board if any action has been taken on the recommendations that I made at the first hearing. Last one. It can review those recommendations if you like. Action on anything that the town plan is on the agenda for item five during the meeting. Okay. I'll get to it. College on the town plan. Excuse me. Yeah. That's in college. Thank you. I'm the only one, really. We've been through two already. Yeah. I was away. Sorry about that. Now I have copious ones and I can submit them. This one was in writing. Chamari, if that's easier. We're taking action on item five tonight. Oh. On the plan. Okay. This is the second hearing for it. Yeah. I'm aware. Sorry for that. On page 28, under the actions to implement policy three, a couple things. One is that the town plan refers to the Easter egg off designation as if it is in place and we need to retain it, but it's actually lapsed and we need to reapply. So it's just a matter of correction because there's no map in the map section for that. It would be probably more consistent to correct that to read reapply for as if it were in existence, you would need to have the map in the map section. So just a note. Probably my most significant comment is that I think that we talked about this before during the zoning, the zoning rewrite, remove the QD section, which I think applies in economic development as supporting fostering high quality development and redevelopment that strengthens the economy, respects the environment, compliments the community's larger goals. So I would recommend under actions to implement policy three, to add enable or consider enabling QDs or re-enabling QDs to encourage creative development and redevelopment. There are already QDs in town, so it creates a zoning challenge for those QDs already in existence and then there's no opportunity in the future to do creative redevelopment, especially when things are already under permits or active route 50 permits or have challenges, develop challenges. 8 is 64, 65. I would recommend under the chart on the top of page 65, changing words subsidized to affordable because not all of those are subsidized. And there's a difference between those two terms. And if you wish, I can add the things that are missing and correct those numbers if there's room in the draft for just a technical correction of the list because we weren't concerned of this being happening and of the process. I will say this vary from the others except that there's also reference to capstone, which is the name changed. It's essential in that community action and now it's capstone. So. Any questions on this? Any comments? So you need to close the public hearing. Moving to the regular agenda versus public to be heard. This is on anything that's not on the agenda. If you had Sam. Are you here for public comment? I'm not on the town plan. We're now on to the meeting. We're on the meeting agenda now. Okay, good. So I have here. As the select word goes, I've been the letter with regards to the assessed values in the downtown business district. And I, you know, change my wife and I have been here since 1971. We've taken a number of properties in the downtown area such as. South Main Street where the rising used to be on the ground floor. And where we really have personally had that building taken for the third or part of 10 years. As you all know, we. You bought the old. The National Railway building did a historic renovation on that building. You bought the money to golf club as it was about to go out of business. And. You bought the old co-op. Space with 24. Street. And you know, of course, you only being out of stock farm. The three standing in until recently having sold it to the Russian school. I feel that the assessed values in the downtown business business district. Are inaccurate and not. They're not where they should be and they're not, they're not anywhere close to what today's market values are. And I think that. The number of. Outsiders. Professional. Real estate people. White River. They know that the assessed values are not accurate. And I think it's hurting the town's reputation. It's not making us look like we are. Running town professionally. And I think that. Recommendation is. That. The. Assess values. We brought in line with what today's two market values. So that is my. Request. Love this town. Got a lot of state. And I want the town to have nothing but the very best reputation. And I think. That. The town needs to address this issue. Immediately. The. The agenda. I'm sorry. I know. Sure. My name is Brooke Dingle Dean. I see that on your agenda. Not exactly sure what. Decision or recommendation exactly is being made. But I understand select board has been asked by the. Orange Southwest supervisory. Or orange Southwest school district. To fill the vacancies. On the school board. For to the positions from Randolph. Randolph has four representatives. On an eight member board. At our school district. There are two members from Brookfield two members from. From Randolph. After the August meeting to members of the Randolph. The board myself included. Resigned from the board. I did so because. The board is operating in a rogue manner against the law. And it's preventing. Board members from obtaining. Evidence. To. Review the actions of the superintendent. The public to be heard is for anything. Not. I'm sorry. There's for anything that's not on the agenda. Well I'm not saying. So if you don't mind entertaining my comments on this at this point. I would appreciate it because I don't have the opportunity to say. I'm not sure how long the board meeting will be. So. Is that all right if I continue. Or we can. In our next item and. In the approval of the agenda we can. Be here for the whole conversation. Sure. I'd be happy to. Thank you. Any other public comment. Approval of the agenda. If I may ask the board to entertain a request. You received a grant. Announcement. Today. For a dry hydrant. It was. The last three weeks ago. Because it was received today. We're not not able to amend the agenda to include it. If the board. Why we could include it as. Another business item. Or if the board would like we could again entertain it. For next month's meeting. It won't delay the process by much. But I thought I would bring that option. Okay. To. By the L. To the top of new business. And adding the dry hydrant grant. To the other business. For the agenda with those changes. So. In the second all those in favor. Hi. Toes. We just have the consent calendar. Inter. Meetings. And the warrants. So. Anybody else. The public hearing. The warrants are the one that Wendy sent out. Right when I happened. I've been minutes from last. The replacement. One was. Public hearing minutes. I move we approve the consent calendar. Second. Second all those in favor. Hi. The. Motion carries. Go to. New business. Board vacancies. For the. The. The. The board has not yet made any recommendations. To the select board to consider. According to state law. The select board. Must be. Included in the selection process. The. The board. The board has. The board has indicated with the. The board leadership. They have committed to. Advertising vacancies that are available. And as soon as they have candidates for the vacancies. They will. Approach the select board again first state law. And ask for the select board's input into the process. But as of now there. As far as I'm aware. It may have only one candidate. So. Right. The exact wording. I don't have in front of me. But if I am reserving correctly. The. School board makes the appointment. But has to consult with the select board. Of the town. Who's represented. Who's representatives there appointed. So select the school board will. Gather candidates. They will then consult with the select board. The exact language I believe reads that. The school board makes the appointment. With consultation on this. Give us the. Statutory. Reference for that because. In my knowledge. And I actually got on the statutes. This morning. To double check because I was very. I'm theorist what select board was being involved in this. To my knowledge. The select board has no role. Very separate governmental entity. And. It is the school board. That. Fills its own vacancies and must do so within 30 days of the resignation. Correct. I don't have a language in front of me but the language. Again from my memory. Specifically states that you are correct in that the school board. Selects its members. In consultation with the select board. Now it doesn't say that select what has to vote to approve. The appointees. But it does say that select board is. Consulted in the process. I'm all for the select board being involved. Because I think. I had much better trust the decision makers. In this arena. But I'm not aware of any. Statute that even. Requires a consultation with you folks. But if that's how they're proceeding. Thumbs up for me. Because I would. Welcome. The select boards. Involved in this. Because I think it's a very important. Decision that needs to be made. If I can just continue with the commentary. What is at stake here is. The lawful operation of the school board. And that is not happening right now. The law is being violated. The select board was given a report. By the superintendent. That makes wild accusations completely unsupported. Conclusory statements. And. That was given to. That was a. So under the. Governments process. That the school board. Follows. Which is called policy governance. There are. Policies. That are enacted. By the school board. That give parameters for the. Authorization. And. Decision making. Authority that's delegated to. Superintendent. And. In. Shouldering that responsibility. Superintendent must then. Report back. Whether or not he has complied with. Those delegations of authority. In policies so every year. Each policy that delegates authority to him is reported on. And it's done. Monthly there are two policies that are reported. Because by the end of the year. Then. Superintendent has covered all areas of his authority. So. There were two reports. That were submitted by the superintendent. And. In some. July retreat. Not a real board meeting. Apparently the board. I was not there with the board claims that they've made decisions. In a. Nonpublic forum. Changing the process of how they are going to be. And. And. They said instead of two board members going. And. Verifying the information in the evidence book. Which is. Superintendent says. I've done no wrong. He must prove that. By having a. And. It's traditionally been done. Every single policy has its own binder of evidence. And those two board members who are signed. By. The central office. Read the report. And look at the evidence. To. Ensure that the recording that was done by the superintendent. Is accurate. Verifiable. Just like. Entities. School board select boards. Towns. Higher auditors. We don't just ask our chief financial officer. We say is there money in the bank. Have you complied with our budget. And prove it to us. And the way that we prove it to us. Is we hire auditors. To commit and verify the information. In the school board setting under these policies. It is the school board that must verify the evidence. They're the auditors. So at this July retreat in secret. They apparently came to some decision. That the whole board. Would review every policy. We would not send to. To look at the evidence and report back. After they've looked at all the documentation. And you know the evidence is. I've complied with state statute. Because. Let me give you an example. Because any services or goods. Over the statutory. Limit of $10,000. We didn't just hire someone. We sent out. For public request for proposals. Here's the list of all the contracts. That we put out to bid. And the board members can see. That if the superintendent says. We complied with the law. They can actually verify that the law was complied with. It's like an audit. So at the August meeting. We had two reports. One was even sent in secret to us. It was not sent publicly. Which is the way that these reports. Are supposed to happen. And. I got sent this report. Not knowing that this process was changed. But. We sent it only to the board. And then the board. Current board chair sent an email that said. All the board members are going to review this policy. And I was kind of scratching my head. And I'm like, okay, well, I better get my. Myself over to the central office to look at the book. To be prepared for Monday. One day away. So I went and I emailed. And said I would be there on Monday morning at eight. Went to see the evidence. And superintendent refused to allow me to see. But the board chair said that. The board members were not allowed to see the evidence. Scratched my head again. Went to the board meeting that night. And unfortunately the orca video. For the board meeting. Whatever the date was. I can't remember the 10th or something like that. They had technical difficulties. So there is no public recording. Of what happened. At that board meeting. Wherein I explained that I had been not. Denied. Access to the evidence. For some pretty wild accusations. That are very self-serving. And that are now being. Redacted from the public view. Claiming these are employee issues. Employee performance issues. I need superintendents job performance. So. At this meeting. I'm like, what are you people doing? You're voting on a report. And you have not. Verified the contents of the report. You're voting to accept something. That says, I did a great job. But don't look at the evidence. It is. Not only concerning that these folks on this. Board. Don't want to see the evidence themselves. Because it's. There's a conflict going on. There is a dispute. And I am. I don't want to see the evidence themselves. Because it's. And I am told. From representatives of the remaining board. That they want peace. They do not want. Conflict. And they want this in the rear view mirror. So I explained to this board. I'm sorry, but conflict is part of your job description. It would be wonderful. If we didn't have any disputes. Any problems. But that's exactly what your job is. You are the. Court of last resort. The board. The board. The board. Students. Parents and community members. Staff. Administrators teachers support staff. To come to you to sit in judgment. Of how they have been treated through the system. If their due process rights have been. Protected. By this board and by the administration. Who often is. Criticized. As a board. Would have to sit in judgment. Just like sometimes you folks. In that position as well. So what this all comes down to is the fact that. Because these folks. Don't want to do their job. Because they don't want to have to deal with. Conflict. They're sticking their head in the sand. Refusing. To verify the reporting that's being done. That satisfies. Our community. That's our community. That's the. Enormous authority. That is delegated to our superintendent. Under policy. Is being. Properly. If you won't look at. If you're looking at a report that has. Little snippets. Of an email that's superintendent. Sent to somebody. And you don't see the whole email. You don't see what the. School board's lawyer. Sent in response to the superintendent's concerns. In an email. How can one possibly. Assess and analyze. Whether or not the self serving. Reporting that's being done. Is or is not accurate. I. As a result of this conversation. And this board meeting. Endeavored. My utmost to try to explain to them. This is not rocket science. You can't stick your head in the sand. You must. Do your job. And not only are they not doing this. But they're preventing others from doing their job. With this pretense. That now the whole board. Is reviewing. The report. But when you don't allow a board member. Myself. Who said I want to see the evidence. And the superintendent is allowed. To hide that evidence. From everybody. Not just the community under some. Self-position that it's about his job performance. But from the board itself. We have two members of this board. That just joined this board. In March. Angelo. Retired from reentry. And. Randolph member. There's a contested. Election. They have no idea. And from a very concerning. Emergency emergency situation. That required. Protection. Of our. Of our school district and. Some very important decisions that had to be made. We have probably never. Faced a crisis like this. Of this magnitude. Before. This past year. And it's about that very situation. That the superintendent. Is not. Allowing anybody to see the. Evidence. We need to figure out. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to get so lengthy. So. Please. If you are involved in this process of. Pointing someone. Please pick someone. Who is willing to stand up for the law. I have to resign. Because I could not fulfill my oath of office. As a public official. I could not. Deliver due process of law. Our most fundamental. Job. And duty as a public official. Transparency. And accountability. Is where it's at. And if you do not hang on to due process of law. So that everyone is treated equally. And fairly. Before the law. Then we are lost. Who you know. Isn't afraid of conflict. Isn't going to stick their head in the sand. Is going to demand. Evidence. And if they are not allowed to do their job. Hopefully they will resign as well. Two of four. Randolph board members are no longer on that board. And the two people who have resigned. I was a board member for 15 years. And I have been a lawyer in the state for 25 years. I. Had. Assessing on the issues of their actions. Please pick someone. Who has the guts. To stand up. For what is right. Who will protect our students. Our staff. Our other administrators. And the board. Because the board knows not what they do. So for that. Waiting. For their action. To bring. And they were proactive in approaching the town and spoke with our treasurer clerk choice to notify her of the vacancies and notify her that at some point they would be providing more information to the town so that we could become involved in the process. How did they end up being what they're doing to try to recruit people or are they just... They have been, they've received one unsolicited request to join the board. The position has yet to be advertised. They will be advertising in the Herald. We plan to perform advertisement in general for the vacancies, but they haven't done that yet, which is why they don't want to take action on one person who has expressed interest because of articles that have been in the Herald. The town plan. Sure. I knew you didn't ask. Yes, it's amazing. Thank you. The name's please. So for the town plan, it's the... I was just to jazz up the cover songs with some photos and to add an introduction that had been written by Mr. Hald, please to those. Objection. Oh, seems like it's not perfectly appropriate to know. Two covers, two posts, and I don't know that we need to get any of those. Any of you can do that. Sure. There's also a request that came into this revolt, which was removing some of the, this is why we need the plan language, putting it into an appendix, and reshaping chapter one. If we did that, it would then require us to send it back to the planning commission, get them to re-graph it, and then bring it back to us. Flip over to hearings again. Commits that it needs such a big difference that it should go and be the next version. So we're under some time constraints here tonight, right? We are. We need to get this to the regional planning commission so they'll accept it, and they can get it to be adopted. We need to keep our downtown designations, and then to re-apply for those designations. Right. Sounds like Jesse gave us his comments that were incorporated, and that was fine. That's perfect. Well, you're here. The search was done for large industrial wind. That didn't come off. It was referenced to wind on page 63. It calls a small or larger commercial scale wind. Any idea? I don't have my copy with me. Yeah, I think the page numbers changed too since the last one we looked at. Yeah, of course they did. It's not the same section. I'm trying to get it out. I didn't read the copy. You're a belt. Hi. Just read the belt. Hey, then I'll tell you where it must have come from. Oh, whoops. I'll tell my computer. How do you look at the front? Oh, you get it. I got it. I don't know where I left it. Yeah, my only comment on that was, you know, big wind was dead in the room, basically, so it wasn't reflective of the reality of what's happening at the monitor. This is not anything of significance. You should not worry about either needing to pull it out or whatever at this point. And then I think there was a plan with the Planning Commission to move forward in the next year or two to get the energy certification. So these are just minor details. Remember, the template's not a regulatory document, so, you know, the level of minutiae in this is really not critical because you're not using it like it's in the room. So I'm not even worried about the comments I was just trying to clean it up and make it seem less of a correction. Thank you. The comments tonight be the PUD and that being not included, we would want that to go back to the Planning Commission because I think that played into some of their zoning and changing stuff. So I don't know if you want to put it in here without consulting them. Updating the list on page 65, to change the title and to the portable and to mark the list. I think that's the thing that probably Marty can do, that we have no bearing really on anything in the plan. So if you want to send those to her, I don't think it's good or anything else, but if we've heard, see, I don't know. So it's good to comment that. So if, I think just as a recommendation to future the third, especially the organizations that are mentioned specifically in the plan, it would be great to reach out to them because we could have provided this and it would have been right. It's clearly a lot of old data that wasn't updated and no one had that. And I don't think other housing groups or other civic organizations necessarily reached out to and we thought it made the term planning easier and people in less comments at the end. I did mention the PDE stuff before patients and I'm not sure, you know, you know where it is, but I think it's important in that we have existing PDE's and there is currently no mention of them anymore in the zoning document, which I think is a problem. And I think it is also an opportunity to put it back in. So I can go back to the planning commission and talk about a zoning amendment as we discussed before, but the town plan and the zoning document are supposed to be in performance. It's not mentioned specifically, but I think it's in keeping with some of the language in here, so. There'll be updates for this, as they do the integer planning and whatnot. Okay, yeah, I'm sorry, it didn't make the earlier meetings, but. It's probably a better place to catch it, so they have a chance to talk about it and why it came on. Okay. I'm not good at thoughts, but. I'm sorry, why didn't you touch your name? Oh, too late. Oh, too late. You were in the last name? I, F, F, L, A. Oh, too late. Yep. Any other comments? Any comments? So, it sounds like we can adopt this tonight and then take some of these changes and give them back to the planning commission for consideration for a new addition, which would be much, much a distant future. Sounds reasonable, doesn't it? Well, it's going to be placed tonight, and then we can go to the RPC and get on there and then we'll hopefully be adopted right off-site, so. Told her something. 10, 30. Well, I think we're able to get it onto their September 26th agenda, so we, they scrambled a little bit to help us and we're working that out on their end. You're welcome to accept it. So, we're gonna include the preface, Mr. Holt. Yes, with the changes that we just discussed, right? Yeah, that's what I said. That's what I motioned. Okay. I accept it. Second. I motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Staying? I'm just curious. Do you have the representative here from Cassella? We do. We have John Skates here, who's been very proactive in keeping open communications with the town. You know, I've become fast friends and I've become a baseball teammate at some point. John, come on up. Thank you. How are you today? Good. Thank you for having me. Should I just stand here? Sit over here, wherever you'd like me. I'm in the trash business, so if you smell something, I'll go back over here. I'll look. Would it be okay if I pass down a little bit of information? I have five copies, so I'll be without one. Since you showed up. I'll be as efficient as possible. My goal here is to give you two pieces of information and then one request. And then after I'd be happy to address any questions you have of any nature on the transfer station or the industry, or there was a document that was released about legislative changes regarding the transfer recycling. Did I miss you with this? There you go. So thank you for having me tonight. And I wanted to let you know about and a change in the recycling industry. This is nationwide news. If you look on the big media, you'll find that involved in the trade disputes with China, recycling actually is involved. We send a lot of recyclable material, not only to cross the nation, but overseas as well. And mixed paper particularly has been subject to basically not being accepted in China. So lots and lots of tons, millions of tons from the United States have been backed up into the States, which has reduced the value to basically nothing for mixed paper. So therefore bundled recycling services are more expensive to process, long story short. What that means is that, and you'll see from the document you have in the front, the document that I gave you, that the state is acknowledging, A&R is acknowledging that this is happening. They're going to continue talking about how we can improve the way the state looks at recycling. We're gonna keep it around. It's something that Vermonters believe in. Macella was offering recycling before I was involved in the company. So it's gonna continue. And this doesn't threaten the services that we want to provide. What it does is it's going to affect the cost. But it's not gonna make it so that it's as much as trash by any means. So I'll put that in context for you. And I'll get to that as we go, but I just wanted to let you know that the recycling cost has increased. The second piece on here is legislative changes. And right after the front two pages, there is a document which outlines the changes that involve transfer stations. Particularly, recycling since the law of 2012, the Universal Recycling Law, recycling has been bundled into the price of a trash bag. So you go to a transfer station. You wanna drop off trash and recycling. You typically only pay for the trash bag and then the recycling would be for free. And the way that's written into the law is that the price of trash would carry the cost of the recycling service. And what has been changed since the legislature left is that those two charges no longer have to be bundled for transfer stations. And this is a good thing, particularly for bag drop-offs and transfer stations or transfer stations like Randolph, because what happens is people that are bringing trash and recycling are having to more or less subsidize through the cost of the trash, people that are only bringing recycling to the transfer station. So the town owns the property. We manage it. We set the prices so that we don't have to pass along costs for the service to town residents through taxes. So the charges that generators of trash and recycling, what they pay at the transfer station supports that whole operation, meaning no taxes from that transfer service, right? But there is a stress on the system when people are allowed to bring just recycling and not leave revenue with that transfer station. So this law has undone that piece of the legislation which says that you can charge for trash and recycling now independently. And so the third piece is I wanted to come to you with this information. This is kind of a wrapped up shorter version than I used to giving, but I wanted to post that we intended to separate the charges. And we wanted to do that in about a month. We'd like to give 30 days heads up so that people can have the conversations, why it's happening. Our attendance are very, very adept at handling people's concerns about why the changes are happening. They can field questions. It gives it time for people to come back to a board meeting if it comes to that level where we can address what concerns there might be. And the last piece that I gave you was the intended changes in prices. So if you look at the current, I gave you a current price list on the last two pages and a proposed price list. And what the going rate for recycling at the drop-offs throughout Vermont right now is about $1.50 for a 30 gallon barrel and then for every incremental 15 gallons it would be 75 cents. So your typical 30 gallon garage barrel would be about a $1.50 in recycling. And to offset that, because the trash bags have been carrying that cost this whole time for the last three years, the trash prices you'll see in the proposed list have come down to offset it. In the past, any board has approved the raise. So yeah, I bring this to you because I wanted to make sure you understood that this is kind of an odd scenario. It's not just a, hey, life is getting more expensive to live here so here's more money to, here's more costs. This is a little more of a story behind it why we're gonna be putting a cost in the recycling but lowering the price of the bag of trash. And that's in why we would do that. So in order to do that, yeah, I'd have to come to get approval from the board. I seek your approval but first I wanna just make sure if you had any questions or concerns about why we're doing it or if it's gonna be the best option for your residents, I wanted to make sure we talked about those openly. And with that, that's what I had to bring you today. With the change in money being paid for mixed paper, are you gonna change your handling of that and actually separate it out so you separate the lower cost or lower revenue generating materials from the higher generating? I know that's being done in Southern New Hampshire where very successfully where they're managing their revenue pretty efficiently to store the materials that aren't as high value as the others. So in Vermont with the Universal Recycling Law, it's a great question. If you didn't hear it, can we start to look at pieces of what parts of recycling are of less value? Can we separate those from the recycling stream so that we don't have to pay such a high price for recycling? Maybe it would even pay for itself because the value of the material would be such that we wouldn't have to pay for it. Glass and paper are currently those that cost money to get rid of. But the Vermont law is that those materials are banned from the landfill. So they're still gonna have to be managed. And unfortunately, stockpiling them, nobody's gonna take them without, there's nothing that we can really do with them in the state as such that we would be able to create a second stream for that recycling material. Not that this is a permanent answer to your question because recycling is a very fluid concept. What materials go in and how are those handled? Where are the end markets for those materials? So we're looking for options and usually those options are on a larger volume scale versus at the local place because we have a very efficient process for collecting it easily as a combined recycling stream. And then when it gets taken in a truck to the mirf, it's efficient at getting that separated there where it's then sold off in its commodity value. But right now that hasn't changed the infrastructure yet. But if there's more strain on the system, like another one of the plastics, if that becomes less value on the end, then it could put more pressure on the system. But Vermont's overall pretty rigid in how the law is written. It doesn't change as quick as the marketplace changes on these commodity values. Does that answer your question? Mostly, yeah. Okay. If I can clear up anything, let me know if you have any too. How often does it change? When's the last time it changed? I think we can contract the annual, don't we? Yeah, we didn't, the prices haven't been adjusted for a while. They should have been adjusted. The trash went up I believe 50 cents about four months ago because this effect was happening. That's true? I hope we didn't receive a notice for that. Prices have gone up at the transfer station, but I don't think we approved it. It's changing. It's changing. Yeah. Yeah. My bill went up. The story should be back. Please don't remember if you didn't notice for that. Your own thing says it's for. Well, these aren't these the new, the proposed one? The current one. The current one. So there's the current one there? Oh, I see. What they're saying is that's not the rate that's actually being charged at the transfer station. That's the current rate we have. The current rate here it says 550, and that's what I paid last time. I was at the transfer station. But that went up recently, but I don't get to select what it is that increases. I haven't seen it for over a year. Is that something, off the check through our letters, because I mean at minimum we would send a letter to like Mel in the password, then Mel would have been the one that we send the letter to. I know our agreement says the rates are allowed, but we have to receive notice. Yeah, why don't we, yeah I'll look into what kind of history of what kind of notice we've done for that, and make sure, but that change for where it's at now compensates for what? So it was ever since about last October, the end of last year, when the recycling industry was changing to what I was talking about. So we're a good 10 months into this, which is why that rate changed about 50 cents in the trash to cover that recycling charge, which is also why the proposed changes that you see don't have another increase forward to cover it again. So the proposal is to now separate the charges, not to increase the cover of that first effect I was talking about, because we already did that. Any concerns with any rates? I guess not. So I guess the question is, were the separation paying separately for the recycling once, and I'm a little confused because the terrorists hadn't taken place in 10 months ago, right? So I would assume it's more of a marketplace of what China was consuming, not a tariff issue. Right. Don't know. Right, it's not a tariff issue. But say there's a demand on that, I mean, is the intention that you're gonna come back and reevaluate this and go back to the old, charge it for the bags only of trash and not for the recycler, or what's the longevity of this approach that, I mean, is this for the year kind of thing? I understand they can do rate change in the year, but is it, is the separation of trash to recycle intended for the year? Yes, okay. A state law, it's gonna change some of it, it allows them to charge it for recycling now. But if there's a high demand on it, is that gonna be kept as profit, or prices reduced to consumers? You know, I'll check into the contract, but as recycling, and it hasn't been pretty for about five years, recycling has been, material has been, the value has been going down for about five years. So there hasn't been a lot of good news about money coming back, rebates about the value of the recyclable content, but I want to check the contract because most are written such that if there is a value change, we can reduce it, we can change the prices, but that's either way. Look back at the 12 months that just passed and if it didn't make out as we assumed it would, and that's for the town or for the company, then that's something we can take to talk about, and I expect it, so I don't see this as, I see the separation of the charges as being from here on, until other changes in the legislature were to come and put it back on how it was. But whether we charge $1.50 for 30 gallons, or $1 versus $2 in the future, will depend on global changes. A couple of questions. Sure, you mentioned earlier that there are folks who come to their transfer station with just recyclables, and so they're kind of getting a free ride. Do you have any figures on how that balances out, like what the level of unfairness is of people who are sort of, in a sense taking advantage of that situation, taking their trash someplace else and getting a lower rate and then coming to the transfer station and getting rid of their recyclables for free? Anecdotally, I mean my attendance, know a lot of people who might know my attendance, Bob Nichols and Stu LaFond, they- So you don't have any real data? They know how, I don't have- So you don't have any real data? I don't have a survey of, hey, did you pay for your trash somewhere else and bring your recycler here? Cause that brings in a lot of questions that I don't really, I don't really wanna put other companies on the spot. Well it just seems like you're proposing to make these changes that we're paying. Parts who alleviate this concern figured so we're making this change but it's not based upon any data, right? It's just a couple of guys who are saying, yeah, so a bunch of people seem to bring in their recyclables here and getting it for free. Yeah, so I guess internally we have a method of looking at per revenue, how many tons of trash or how many tons of recycling are we bringing in? So we can understand kind of the scale of what's the expected traffic flow, revenue flow and what's the balance of trash and recycling and Randolph is one of the drop off locations that we manage that has a higher than expected recycling tonnage rate per trash or per collar. Such that- It's cause we're more responsible than other towns. Recycling. Yeah, that's right. I can't argue that. I can't argue that. I guess the point of this is that by charging the trash at the price that it costs us to do the service and by charging the recycling by what it costs to do the service, we're being I think as fairly possibly could be that if you value the service, we'll provide it. And it doesn't call it a question as anything else about whether or not other haulers, competitors are offering both services or just one or charging widths for that. No questions asked. So I think that and what that does is it keeps Randolph out of the limelife ready state intervention on our practices at the transfer station. Fair, they are. And they will promote recycling and still cheaper to recycle. So continue to recycle. And I hope those tons continue to stay where they are. Great. So that brings us to the other question which is at the transfer station, the attendance has these gigantic wads of cash and it's completely cashed. There's no receipts. How do you make sure that what we're paying for actually pays for the stuff that we're doing and it doesn't wind up into other pockets along the way? Do I, how do I trust my attendance? Well, is that the question? Yeah. So I don't have any, as a particular reason not to trust them, it's just that it's an unusual and this today, day and age is kind of unusual way of handling a financial transaction. Yeah. So yeah, I'll look at that because I definitely don't want them walking around wads of cash in their hand. It's not safe, first of all, for them. Now that everybody knows. Well, it's not a big secret. I mean, when you go to the transfer station and it pays for it to see the attendance pull out. And I've had these conversations with my employees before at the back drops. But the way we know that the money is right per the weight of the material that we're collecting is because we track, are we getting the dollars we expect for the amount of tonnage that we have? And so it's based on some assumptions about per bag. There's a certain weight expected and so forth, but we can see which ones are outliers on any given week or any given day such that we would question, is there something missing? Is cash working as far as? I mean, it works for me to pay in cash. I mean, it just raises a question. It's just easy to imagine some unscrupulous employee deciding that, well, this $5 is just gonna go into my pocket instead of to my employer. Yeah, I would hope that. Which raises the cost for all of us. I got oblivious to the fact that that is a possibility. We do, and in some cases, I'm not letting out all my secrets about how we're capturing all the information to prevent such things, i.e. we might use cameras or other tracking systems, but it is a concern of ours and we feel like we have it, we have it in a good place and we have very longstanding good natured people, I think as well, working in there. Great. So I guess my last question is in regards to, I mean, the recycling initiative, right? When it's free, people have probably a more better propensity to use the service. Now we start charging for it, you know, what is the, and honestly, trash bags cheaper, right? So what's, is there any studies out there? Have you guys considered the fact that the recycling may drop or the recycling is gonna end up in the trash bag? I know there's a law there, but you guys aren't ripping through every bag, right? Yeah, we're gonna watch that and it's gonna take us probably two months to get a good sense of the data on that. We put this into effect starting late July and some other drops, some other bag drops. So I think at the end of September, we'll have numbers till we start to see what's happening, but it's still, like I said, cheaper to recycle. So continue to do that. I think anyone who has been recycling and throwing away trash, I mean, I think most normal, I think we expect most people are doing a quantity of both. Shouldn't see a net change on average in what they're paying when they go there. I heard somebody did do it for us that are still gonna pay the same and more solid rate than they did in the past. They generate more recycling than trash, so. Some of those work in these cases are open. Sure, did you have any questions about the other document, the food scrap piece, or did you mention that in the email? Well, I know that something that we really have to work on for the transportation. The transfer station currently collects, if you didn't know, collects food scraps. It's been a lot to do so since July of last year. Yeah, that's where my trash goes. We do have a collection of food scraps there to meet that law requirement. It's not a very robust business line item, but it's there for people that did value the service. And does that fall under, because I'm sure they don't bring it in by the 15 gallon bag. It's, by the gallon, it's charged by the gallon. And then the law says that by 2020 in July that all food scraps will have to be diverted from the landfill. My view is that the law is subject to discussions every year about how that's coming along. So that should change. There will definitely be discussions about whether or not it's practical for people in the hills to have. Where these composting locations that are gonna be up this year in discussion too, because there's two nexus state airports and birds and airports going through. I'm not sure. Yeah, I think there's a lot of concerns about material and biological concerns and how people manage it. You have to go to a certified place, but then how do we train people that what goes into the food scraps is, which is gonna be handled by people and who knows if they're gonna feed the people or can we reapply it to soils where we grow food for human consumption without knowing what all those food scraps are made of coming into the system? I think there's a lot of questions that need to be answered about that. Now I'll have the answers. Who do you wanna accept the rates? I'll make sure we accept the rates as proposed by Cassella. Second. Second, all those in favor? Aye. Thanks for that. Thank you. Next we have One Home Roads. The action item sheet for this item lists the series of roads that our highway department has identified as being, what they refer to as One Home Roads. The majority of these we are currently looking at for because of safety risks. We are under pressure during the winter to ensure that all the roads are maintained open and in accordance with the trans standards for class three roads. These particular roads again, we are looking at for safety concerns because they are servicing one property and in many cases are smaller isolated roads that do require considerable attention. So what we would like the board to consider is potentially starting a hearing process that would allow the community to have input on whether these roads would be classified as Class Four Roads, then allowing our town crews to not have to maintain them as well as we would maintain a Class Zero. And the process for that process to commence would require the board to essentially schedule a public hearing. It would have to be 30 days announcement in a week period from when the board decided to commence a period and then we could continue with the process after that. On the list of roads, one of three, that would be just the stub off the Ferris Road that goes to their farm. Most of these are very small. The Ferris Road actually goes from 14 up to the snow farm. So it's the whole road. It's, I think you're getting at least a little tear out. Stub off them. Yeah, don't have the map for the road. I think that's the one thing. Whatever that road is. So other than the danger that puts us, you know, our workers in and stuff, I see the loss of $800. Do we know what the cost is? I know the amount of snowfall changes annually or do we have an average cost for these? We don't, but you do know that in terms of staff time, it could be that we have one driver who's driving in a large flat truck that they have a large route. And because some of these roads are much smaller that they can accommodate a larger truck. Once they perform, they have to head back, fuel costs, jump in a smaller truck, head back and plow. So there are instances that that exacting happened on some of these roads, not on all of them, but on some of them. It's gotta be cheaper to not plow these and give up the money than to take the money and keep them. Oh, I'd assume so, I am. Yep, I have good data. I just wanna earn the magnitude. Yeah. I bet it's pretty significant. I believe when we looked at it the first time, we had this thing done, about to 16,000 in Arizona. They used an average... Per mile. Hours, yeah. It was an average number of hours that it took them. Okay. Some of these are narrow roads that you don't have a good turning radius off the road. And then it's a long straight narrow driveway to the house and they have to go get the loader because they gotta go in and actually scoop the snow out of the way because they have no place to turn. So you even remove the snow. The list used to be longer. I thought we were in the 20s on the roads that we were looking at a couple of years ago. I was looking quickly, but... Yeah, I compiled this list with our old former superintendent, he and I were looking at the map, going through the roads, picked up the ones that he understood from the staff were issues, but I couldn't find any historical data on the previous effort, so they could have been longer. Oh, originally we looked at it as just getting all roads, one home roads done, not necessarily the ones that were safety issues, but the ones that didn't meet our current standards. So I think that's why the list was considerably longer. There was a recent, were there two court rulings that I should share with the board? One, I believe it was a ton of higher. Ira, a ton of Ira, where they had made a decision to eliminate their one home roads. Their decision did not go specifically into safety. Their decision was specifically based on just the economics in the Supreme Court, where the state decided that the town was not allowed to make the change strictly based on finances. They had to maintain the road open to classroom standards. The town of Danvers, I believe, 2011 had a similar case. The town of Danvers' position was that their roads were a safety issue, that they had considerable damage to some of their vehicles, and then it became a problem in terms of the public good because their vehicles were being damaged and their employees had a greater potential for harm. So their plan to eliminate their one home roads was successful because it was specifically based on evidence of safety. What I can do is if the board would like, I could revisit the road that had been looked at before and add them to the investigation of the safety concerns that exist. We should be looking at the characteristics of the road. Turn radiuses. Turn around once they're up in there without doing the 20 point turns. Yeah. When you're moving even for snow storage and whatnot, you have to have them to operate because a lot of these, just knowing that there isn't, some of these can't even be the mother car at all. If the person who's leaving for work is the full-town vehicle that they're going to be, somebody would be backing up. I mean, you just set a date for the hearing. What are you looking at for time? We have to have a 30-day notice period and the next Select Board meeting, the second Thursday of October would be within the 28-day period. So at the earliest, it would have to be Saturday, I believe Saturday the 15th, whatever it would be. The 13th, 15th. So if the board wanted to just, like we did at the last meeting, meet on the third Thursday of the month, as opposed to the second, no one would be in compliance. Have a mover meeting to the 18th. I don't want to be here. You feel free to have it that night. I can set a special date for it. Yeah. When are you available, Mike? It's Saturday morning. Tell me what you think of first. But you're out that whole week. It's not like just that day kind of thing, Frank? No, Wednesday to Wednesday, the 17th of the 24th. Okay. So that Monday or Tuesday is open? Yeah. Who else availed all those? I'm open to 15, 16, the other one. So we're talking about changing our meeting to that day, postponing our meeting to early the following week, 15th to the 16th. Or just a special meeting? This would be a special hearing. So this would be just the special meeting? Yeah. Or in addition to this meeting? Okay. Because we could just move the whole meeting. Right. And just take care of it all at once. That would be fine with me. Exactly. To do that on the 15th or the 16th, if I could do it in one. I will probably leave early that night. If it's which night? The 16th. The 16th. Just because I have a 5-4 to 5 flight. And Wednesday morning itself is a big deal. I appreciate that. Because I would have said the same thing to you guys. How about the 15th? It's Monday the 15th. Or to move the whole board meeting to? Yeah. We could move on like that. And have the hearing in it. Mm-hmm. Okay. Okay. Okay. 11-10-9. Any time at 5.30 p.m.? Sure. Okay. Okay. Are you sure? Is that closer? Yeah. There might be 19 people there. 18's there. Okay. Student instructions are going to be done later on. The municipal tax rate. Yeah. And Lou. So I had Mr. here for that. Yeah. I'm going to ask you to mention something. Please. Hello. Is there anything to point out? Thank you. I ask you to mention the BRI. The full tax rate. About 5.5 cents. For the non-resident. And about 3.5 cents. I mean 5.5 cents for residents. And the three and a half to nine, we have no control over that. Last year the school life tax was 1.363.1. This year the home spend tax was 1.4179. Last year the non-resident school tax was 1.491.0. And this year it's 1.5265. Just for the record, for those people who think non-resident means you are not a Vermont resident, that is not the definition of non-resident tax. That's anything that's not your homestead. Like my current house, George. Your land, everything falls into that. What is beyond the two acres in the house? So I'm sorry, I'm sorry. On line one, it's 0.7511 for the homestead municipal last year. What is it now? 0.7638. 0.7638. Okay, yeah, cut it. If you keep going, it shows involved. Oh, back side. Yeah, back side. Sorry, I'm jumping out of here. Same in trees. Yeah. Recycle, that's good. Police district owns about 3.4% of the walkways from the capital budget that we had the last year, so I don't know if it's going to affect the quality of this. I don't know if it's going to be fun or not, but I think it's going to be a good place. Well, we're going to keep trying to keep everything level funded, so the numbers won't fluctuate too much. In fact, we may actually have some savings, but yeah, we won't have any savings. So the majority of our tax rate overall increased, we don't have any control over it. No, no, no, no, hopefully, I mean, hopefully our rate's been doing good. Right, well, we were good. But it's the state, education tax is going up and down. But we still blame us. No, we do. Yeah. Any questions on it? And it sucks. Yeah, I don't really accept the municipal tax rates for fiscal year 2019. Is this your favorite? All right. Thank you. Okay. Thanks. No rush. No rush. Give me time to set up. Thank you guys. You should have been here for the presentation. Thank you. All about his rate. General briefing from the director of creation. So I just want to point out that before I get started. She has done a whole lot of new work has organized many different things. Some of the changes. Many people are, you know, they see changes and they think it's a little different. It's not what they're used to. So sometimes we see criticism because it's new. But with time in the year that Heidi and I have worked together. The changing programs and projects and that type of criticism has gone away for the most part. And a lot of it is we like how it's working. We like how it's running. Most recent positive comments that I received were about soccer programming. Folks that had previously come to me and said, well, I don't know what's going on. I feel nervous about the recreation program are now starting to come back and say, wow, soccer has run a whole lot better this year than it has in the past. So I just wanted to share that with the board and that we feel very confident in Heidi. And we wanted to make sure that the board knew exactly what she was working on directly from her. Thank you. It's been a while since I came. I'll start off with a random little soccer whistle. 185 kids are in soccer right now. Big changes is that I brought in some sponsorships in. I was able to get five local sponsors to provide all the uniforms for this year. So no more t-shirts. All the kids have uniforms that represent Randolph. They look very nice. Thanks to the five donors as well as the business stock wealth. He is printing the sponsor's name on the back. Kids will be able to keep their jerseys. We're not in the business of keeping things. It's too much to hold on to. But it's also great for them to go out, keep that shirt. We're at a school every day and show off that sponsor and all that. I think the coaches are very good. The coaches have had coaches meeting, coaches handbook, code of conducts were given out as well as parent code of conduct and player code of conduct. So that is a big change that we are pushing forward. Everyone received it pretty well. We're here to promote the fundamentals and sportsmanship and moving forward representing Randolph. We've got our schedules ready. So season, our kickoff, soccer dates are this Saturday. Still trying to recruit some more kids from the high school. We've seen teams that help us wrap these games. Just like we do in basketball. It's been a little slower start, but I think we'll get there. So we'll have a lot of people just kind of helping out. So Heidi, just real quick on that. Because I know my daughter's looked at it, there's lots of conflicts this year between the high school varsity teams and the youth programs on Saturday. There's a lot of Saturday games this year at the varsity level that wasn't there. So I don't know if there's a consideration to maybe adjust the youth program somehow to get more of those or there'll be seven numbers from that. I just know there's a big conflict this year. Yes, it fluctuates. If I had my way, I would play a little bit more during the week, but that conflicts a lot. So sometimes Saturday mornings does help a little bit. But with the varsity team sometimes traveling, we do have a varsity player coaching this year as his senior project and on his mentor. And so I'm hoping that encourages more varsity players to come down and coach. The kids love it. The parents love it. And it's been working out. So we're definitely just trying to help these kids out. Big two events that we want to put on that I've been working on. Halloween's just around the corner. We were not. We've been doing the second scene with the chamber and the RACTC. Last year, Adolph and I were just barely here and we saw how big it was and how everyone in town came to Randolph. So a lot of our ideas was kind of like maybe closing down the main street. I went around the businesses, Friday, the gas stations and stuff, and they're all for it. I asked them if they're in, they're all played to have some more events in town that shut off that street between Southbury and the Kiziba. And they're like, we get more traffic in our business when we close down the street than we do. And so, and they also love to participate. There are a lot of businesses for Halloween participate. They also feel like it would provide more safety for the kids to go to business and business. We also heard from a lot of parents that there's no food really there for their trick or treating all that and then it's hard to get dinner. You know, and so our vision was to have a little bit maybe one or two food trucks. It might not happen this year, but moving forward, that's probably something that I would like to get one or two food trucks closed down the street, put our cables out from the pool, and you know, have more of a place where people can gather. The kids can do trick or treating and have some more food options. I think it would be a nice event for our community. And the public, the main street loves it. They're like, we love participating. We want to be involved. And we're not asking for money or asking for donations, so they even like it better. They're like, we make more money those days anyway. So the next one that I've been working on, I hope that you guys consider a blessing here is a winter parade. Many years ago that we had a winter parade. I've been working with Valerie Schoolcraft and I, we're putting together a small committee with our right committee, putting together a winter light parade. So it's kind of like bringing back those horses and oxen and small road tractors and slays down Main Street. We want to put it together with our tree lighting event that we did last year that was very successful. Lou Stoll already confirmed another tree this year. He's very excited to have us over to select the tree. I'm also looking into with Adolfo and Bill about that tree next to the visible, maybe bringing it down and replanting with a better tree. So that can be our tree that we decorate. So we don't have to keep cutting trees down and putting one in the middle. And it's pretty dead. And I don't think, I think by replacing it with a better tree that we can light and we can grow better, we can decorate that tree and make it look pretty nice. So that is something that I would like to move forward with and we're trying to figure out how to get that done. But in the meantime, if it will get done for this year, Lou is ready for another tree. So the parade will happen. I talked to the League of Cities. We're all kind of clear to go once I get the permit in. So next month you'll see two of my assembly permits coming through the safety and the winter parade. I like the group we're working with is a small committed group that wants to get back to Randolph and bring back some holiday cheer. We want that event to be our kickoff to the holiday. With the small parade lighting up the tree, Santa's there on December 1st. It is the day that Lord Morgan is coming to town. The idea was kind of spurs up with the Chandler stating that there's going to be people in Randolph that day. We had between five and six, the little parade and then the tree lighting. Those that have kids are not going to go to the concert. We'll have our Santa, hot chocolate and those that 7.30 want to go to the concert. They have their concert. Let me know how a lot of people are in town. I'm willing to do it with our little committee. I hope you guys agree that it's something good for Randolph. A lot of people have been talking about it. No one has knocked it down. Really, I brought it to the rec committee. They thought it was good. They're like, if you have the energy, go for it. I'm willing to give it a try. That's why those that are in our committee want to help as much as possible. And if I didn't have a small committee, there's no way I would do it on my own. So that is something that if you guys had any thoughts or questions, good, bad idea. I think Valerie had sent me an email this week. I hadn't responded yet. I've been crazy busy, but I'm asking about the fire department. That just has to go to chief, you know, for his inhale, bring it to the membership. Probably best to do that before the next beginning of October. Yeah, I've been trying. So it's something to reach out to him. We've been trying to, yeah. Okay. We can remind him a little bit. Michael do it. Oh, that's fair. Before you step. Yeah, appreciate that. I was like, got me sure, you know, the insurance and he sees all I need to get things ready. Part to the sheriffs as well. And so we've been putting little plugs in stuff and overall seems people are very excited about it. Yeah, seems neat. So one item that I don't think Heidi will talk about today, but something that she did bring up to me a few months ago. That took some time to develop and that was a potential for a tri town recreation department. It was your initial thought. We have since been able to establish communication with Brookfield and brain tree. Both towns are interested in the three at least having the conversation of what it would entail to have a tri town recreation department. We're meeting with them next week, the 20th. Heidi will speak with them about some of the programming that could happen there. And what their investment could be in the Randolph recreation department, whether it be through taxation of their population reduced rates similar to the Randolph resident rates here in town. And then also additional programming in their in their town. That's something that we're hoping to do to make use of the infrastructure we already have and the resources we already have. And that was something that Heidi brought to us. And for now, the planning stages will eventually bring it to the board for consideration. Yeah, it's a good idea. The other thing I was thinking of Heidi when I'm when we were talking to try town stuff before was with some of these other schools getting smaller closing down. And I know some of the residents are changing even locations where they're going to. And I know we got a certain population that came to the high school because of the other schools. But I'm wondering what the effect is on their local youth programs for sports, whether it's baseball, basketball and soccer. And I think, you know, with the strengthening of our programs here underneath the umbrella of the town rec department, if there's an opportunity to do some outreach to those folks. So that as they get older, they'll be more interested in coming to the high school. I know like Rochester or Chelsea or I don't know what their health of their youth programs are across the board. We're definitely playing them. I would like to take them more under like more coordination if that will just came because we're playing against barely any teams. They're barely making their numbers and their co-ed. Right. Well, it's good thought. And I think some of the challenges with busy lives of everybody travel. You know, I know the baseball teams are starting to have to travel to Washington to play a ball game with the young people because we couldn't find teams, you know, local. But if we can grow it from those round of teams to play internally more. Our ones and twos, we've got 55 kids. We have five teams and we can play internally. Soccer. Yeah. There's no reason to go out. And so those numbers definitely have gone up since last year. And I'm hoping that with what the changes that I've provided with having more games at even at four years old is brought. So they've had a good time at pre-K and K. Now the ones and twos are feeling it. Great. And we're trying to fill in the threes and fours. Things are changing slowly kind of deal. But I think overall people are liking it. The kids are more involved. And, you know, I'm especially baffled. Or those kind of teams that are co-ed and they're barely blending. I'd rather just them come up, you know, and then we can provide something, you know, for them. But and then just to put in our teams, you know, at least they have a consistent team and they'll have games and then we can play more internally. So I've been going up more to Worms County Northfield to play because I know they're going to have teams. That trust. They're going to be there every day. Sure. On that note too. In the fall, we are putting together a little bit of an after school, the early weeks days. We'll coincide it with the camp. I mean the camp building for one day. This would be good because then we're charging $20 just like the school is for an after school. We'll help us get more kids in the ice rink as well. If they sign up for $20, they get some activities done and they get to have access to the ice rink. And hopefully that will encourage people to learn, you know, build our Learn to Skate program or get out there and skate. We build that program. So that's kind of my next target. We'll see how that goes. And then also with Parks and Rec or Rec Committee, we're working on the ordinances. So you'll, once we start some ordinance specifically to Parks or Skateboarding. So we've had some youth come to us asking to revise or amend the skateboarding. So with them, this is a great way for them to get involved. We amended some of the skateboarding ordinances that we've done about 30 years ago. Updating them. We'll take them, we'll review them. Put it through the right process between the attorneys, Tom, manager, and then we'll come to you. Same thing with the park ordinances for closing the parks at night and some just basic rules. We don't have any of that. We're definitely working on different models. We'll definitely, Zach Freeman is involved. So with some of the trails, we'll learn some of that. As well, he also commented on how we should work with the Conservation Commission on signages and stuff like that. We're all in the same boat right now. And if we all work together and turn those things, we can definitely be a good help to each other, especially with the parks. We definitely, they are signage at our parks, at our facilities, especially at the ice rink, the pool. And so we hope with that momentum that the town is going with, we'll be working on that. So that's a big project for the committee, which they're all invested. So our committee, if you're at all, there's five, and there's room for one more or two more, but they're all broken up into subcommittees. And so some are involved in ordinances, some are involved in special events, too. Some are involved in hopefully finding some of the grants for us. And so everyone's trying to do a little bit so we can get things done. That's my goal is to try to get things done. So, right? Push it along. Yeah. We got a lot of work. Well, I would, I would, I mean, hesitate to say it because you've heard me say it so many times, but, you know, I think everything that's been going on in Rec 12 has been awesome. And all the changes that you've made, it's all just been one positive thing after another. And anytime I hear anybody talk about the Rec department or the job you're doing, it's always really positive. I never hear a negative thing about the Rec program. It's awesome. Come on up. Yeah. So we can. She's from LA. Yeah, yeah, too. We could do it a little bit. I don't know how we got here. We're here. I've got a lot of energy, so let's do it. Yeah. So if you have any questions and it's nice and we'll try to come forward later, you know, I recorded coming update. But we got a lot of things and I just can't believe it's already the fall and spring is going to be happening soon. And, you know, it's just pretty fast. Things are rolling. Quick general question if I may on the rec, kind of with the rec turn and also with the town kind of things like there was talk not too long ago about expanding to like a different area, building more soccer fields and ball fields and all that other stuff. And I don't. Is that in the film? That's what I heard was laying though. I didn't want to say there just because if if that was just rumor only but yeah, I'd heard the landfill for getting some more facilities. I mean, because there's certainly options right for hosting. We can't host like a baseball tournament where we have a weekend during the day, but we don't have lights. We only have one field and stuff like that. And there's not as much challenge with the high school getting a large field anymore as there used to be. But even so there's the men's league. There's Babe Ruth. There's a Legion ball. I'll try to share that resource right now. VTC used to be an option, but it's just since they get rid of their ball program, it's not even a usable field anymore. I mean for several years, but I participated in the softball league for adults. And that's something that I want to be able to do over the golf. It's not even here. No. And there's not with part of the Randolph team and the Randolph team had to go to sheriff. You know, nothing for the men's or women or co-ed. And that's, it was amazing to see, you know, work from California. You don't get these numbers in California for softball. And so the families are involved that we can, you know, if we had a ball field or. Yeah. A bigger space, you know. There's some great fields that I've seen now that I was able to travel to and stuff. And I'm like, wow, why can't we have this, you know. And so it's, yeah, that property was mentioned a long time ago. So it's still being thought about to talk about. Well, one of the challenges is that there is a rail crossing on landfill road leading into it. And I not look at the specific rail regulations, but I believe that if we are to install a new rail crossing, we have to eliminate one currently in the town. And so if we open up the landfill for recreation to make it more easily accessible to people, we would have to then determine where else in town it would be safe for us to eliminate a rail crossing. Crossings are there. So you'd be changing type of crossing that's there. So you wouldn't have to eliminate another one. The big question would be if they would go, because I mean it's a firm crossing, if it's pulled technically. So would it need to go to, what would they require it to go to? Okay. But we can look at that if you can. Don't let that be your stumbling block. I also want to open the landfill. I don't know what that's in the water. Most of the tarry bogs are green. There's a potential there to create this land, and that's probably an ideal space for big blotchy courts. A small park to the right. There's parking there or another play structure. Not much green, but there is some potential there. How about that exit four property? That would be great. A lot of ball fields out there. Very accessible. You'd feel the dreams right. It would still be green. We'll move on to the pool. Any other questions? Thank you. Next is a review of the Aerocube pool repairs. The pool was constructed back in the 70s. Have we looked at whether it's worth dumping more money into it versus a new pool? No, we retrofitted in 2001. We've had people come and survey the pool and give us a survey about our pool standing. They all like our pool. They're impressed on the shape of how we have maintained it and stuff. For being a 50-year-old pool, it's not in bad shape compared to other pools they've seen around Vermont. We had that assessment done early on in May before we found out the leak was here. We have found the leak and isolated the situation to two pipes in the same location. With the cameras, we're able to detect it and see it. So we don't have to dig up the whole thing to repair it. It's just a section that we need to do. The skimmers, that's one of the main issues, are the repairment of the skimmers. With the technology now, there are better skimmers now. The loss is another 30-40 years if you get the good ones. You do it right. Thanks for your question specifically, Trini. Heidi and I had a preliminary conversation about potential costs for a new swimming pool, especially one of our size. We didn't spend money to bring in a consultant to identify our space constraints, what we had, how much it would cost. We did have some very non-specific information shared with us by some of the pool people that would come to take a look at our problem and say that we could potentially have a new swimming pool and a half a million dollar range. So it would be a lot more expensive than repairing it, but you're right, at the same time it could be the pool for the future and it would be a much more costly project. Sometimes you can find grants if it's a new item versus a maintenance item too, so if you could get a grant to pay for a new matching grant. Part of it to put your matches still. Well there's just a rubber pool right there, without any buildings built it was $2.3 million. And the person, the contractor that built that was here, he was like, your facility is much nicer. Your park is nicer. We have a good space together with a nice pool. So we can spruce it up, we need some love, and get it corrected and it can be a good thing. But around that, they have a competition pool and they have a whole kid pool. It's a 25-meter competition pool. And then I'm updating their facilities with bath and well that's for the cost. I think one of the challenges that we are facing is the community's need to want to open the pool. And we could, from my perspective, I would be more than willing to delay the project as long as we could to see if it would be a better investment to have a brand new pool put into place. If you find that that would be a costly project, it would delay opening the existing swimming pool. But it would be an opportunity to potentially investigate if we can get a brand new pool for the same size or not much more money than $100,000. The challenge there is the community coming to the select board, coming to Town Hall saying they didn't promise to have the pool. I mean, I never once promised to have the pool open by a specific time always saying that we're addressing the problem and looking into it. But if the board wanted to make the decision, I could certainly delay this process a little bit. So do they feel that we put the same $20,000 into the pool and that'll buy us how many years with it? Or do we have any idea what that's going to... The skimmers have a good lifetime. They do last between 20 and 30 years. The new piping still looks really good. We camered it. All the people who came to camera, they're like, wow, this still looks pretty good. Can you see? You can clearly see with the camera that it's all in good condition. So if the pipes were in bad condition, I would tell you that. Yeah, maybe that's it, but it's not. So it's a hard call. We can talk about it, see what the lifespan is in a few of those items. But overall, the pool consultant that came, I can forward you his report to you. It shows it's a pretty good condition for being a 50-year-old pool. And he's been all over. I took a class from him, the pool operator class. That's why I trusted him to come out and really check out a pool. Detail analysis and stuff, and I can share that with him. That's a pretty good pool for his age versus how long it will last. But a new pool has an appearance of $2 to $3 million, the size of the pool we have. Two to three, $500,000. That's not even that. I don't know. I like his number better. I want to do that. I had also thought about year-round structure, which would potentially be more costly with a basic structure with potentially garage doors that open and close that would be potentially insulated. So we could use it year-round. It would be possible to look into it, have someone give us a more detailed look, or have a more detailed look at what it would cost to potentially have a year-round pool. So we could use it year-round. But with the challenge, if the due delay, if the purchase is due to delay approving this, we could put it off another month. I don't think you would put it in complete danger of not opening in time for next year, because I don't believe we have very much time left this year for construction anyways. We have $100,000 just sitting in the rec budget. No, that would cost for repairs would put off repairs to the existing swimming pool building. We had put aside $40,000 for it. We had also put aside a considerable amount of money for repairs to the East Randolph Hall. We have learned that repairs to that hall will have to be done on a much longer time span than we had initially anticipated. So we're borrowing money that we already have put aside for pool building, and then also money that we have put aside for the East Randolph Hall, knowing full well that by the time we get to those types of repairs in East Randolph Hall, we would have been able to re-raise the funds through tax. You know, the community, you know, this summer was really loud and clear that the pool was very important. I think they've all expressed this to you. I think the delay in this would really discourage people in this town, because you now know it would take years to go through the pool, you know. And so we have a great asset in our community right now, and it's really important, not only to staffing for kids, for our camps. I mean, I heard it every day, you know, and I know you have too. So I think we can get you more reports about how much it will last, but I think this investment would be a good one for this pool. It's a great pool, and I know the community really, really loves it, and I know they were really upset this summer, but we know how long it would take to build another one. And we have a great asset just sitting there. And we have a great asset, and we stand up sitting there. Oh, yeah, no, I agree that, too. But we have to stay in place with the water. We put the water on there, so there's about $30,000 there with water that we would not spend. $40,000 with the building. The building can last a little longer. So we have about $60,000 to $70,000. So that's why an RFQ is important. I think if you get qualifications to get a really good contractor that has expertise in the field of the pool, then I think you can get a good contract rather than just getting money. So just so I'm clear of the intentions to do it this fall? The contractors, yeah, they can do a lot of it right now and then finish in the spring. Yeah. If we go through it right now. If we push it forward, there's still a lot of work. If we push it forward during the weather, we might go into June to open. So I see the dates highlighted on the back here. So when would you want the RFQ responses back? Ideally, as soon as the board approves it, we'll start working with the board. I think there has to be a two-week advertisement period. So we'd have to close it online, send it out, and then give it a two-week notice. So ideally, we sent it out, not tomorrow, but early next week by early next month, October. If we had the same contract here with you last year, we were... Yeah. They were able to work until December. So I guess personally, I mean, I had no problem with going out and getting the RFQs, but I'd like to see what the expectation of how long the material is going to last and what the cost of a new pool is. Right? And then before we actually let the contract on it, I guess. And if we have a select board meeting prior to awarding anything. And what we're not going to do. So what are we not going to do to make this happen? Clearly, the money's not in the recreation budget. Yeah. So for the like, we could delay one month the next month until we can provide more information, including the items that will be pushed off for the future... Getting the RFQ doesn't commit you. You can get the RFQ out, so get the process started. So if the cost is astronomical or in the... For an RFQ, you're not getting a cost. Good question. Half is written for proposal and half is for qualifications. So which one are we asking for? Qualifications, you're just telling me, hey, we've done a whole bunch of these hires. I thought they're getting... RFQ typically is how am I able to do this and how much is it going to cost? No, RFQ doesn't... A request for quote. No, it's a qualification. Oh, qualification. Which I thought the backside is written as a proposal. So we'd have to clean it up. How are we doing designing building? It's replacing two pipes and installings. What have they been signing? Well, we can talk about that with their proposal. We want to find somebody with a contractor that specifies works with pools. Not just some contractor that... Oh, I can use some pipes for that. Not somebody that knows what they're doing because it is for a picnic and the slabs of concrete. It's really close to the actual pool. Hopefully you would do that in a proposal where they would give you what their qualifications are and you would score them using points. No, I agree. But we... And then you get the bids so you know about what it's going to cost at the same time. Right. And then, because it may not be... We talked to a few... We walked through a few of the contractors. This is something that they're going to do a few times. And those costs are based on the contractors that we talked to. That did do tools for these palliings. What we're going to want to see when we look at this isn't just what we aren't going to do, how long is it going to last, but when the bids come in, is it a qualified person to do the work, but what are they getting to do that work? So along those lines, if you just look at the work to be completed, does the number seem astronomical to you? Because it does to me. Because when you look at the work to describe, it says replace a 4-inch pipe, some concrete panels and some pavement and 13 skimmers. $100,000 seems like a lot. Right? I mean just looking at that... That's a little question. We're at about $70,000. So it's about... I don't want to get to specifics, but it's around there. The concrete is a set price already. That's what we wanted to negotiate with a contractor that has experience, rather than just get the lowest bids. So just so I'm clear, there's been several contractors who have given you some analysis of what needs to be done. They've given you a roundabout number of what needs to be done. So to me, I think in my world anyway, and maybe I'm wrong here, is that when proposals go out from the government to us, we say, hey, this is why we can do your project and this is how much it's going to cost you. And they say, this is what I want done. I guess I expected that same kind of thing here. The town says, we've got this problem. This is what we think, where we've heard it has to be done. Will you provide analysis? What are your qualifications and how much is it going to cost us? I don't know, that's... That's all I would expect, too. And then it comes back. We have qualifications. They say this is going to be done, but company X found that's other thing that they think has to be done, too, that maybe company Y didn't see or didn't consider. And then it's really a good comparison along with the associated costs. And we compare that against what the cost to repair or replace versus in longevity. I don't know. And I think I'd put in, you know, with your work, what are you warranting for and what are the expectations of life? My recommendation. I appreciate it. And so you also want to do some research like, you know, the actual numbers of the Rutland pool or some other pools in the same size. Sounds like Rutland is different. There's two pools. I don't know how quick pool companies work. I mean, how quickly our RFQ process works, but what about putting an RFQ for total replacement and having a couple of people bid that and see what that costs? I don't know. I'm throwing that out there. I'd say more than I do from a town perspective. I'm more than willing to do it. Absolutely. And if we get them both back at the same time, right? Okay, you include in the same RFQ scope of work or the rebuild. I don't know what the town rules are. Government typically, what I'm used to is, you know, if you do repairs this, you know, it's two different things. I don't know what that is. Lots of times I'll have two different types of businesses bid on it. One of them may not repair and may just do new installs. So I don't know. Maybe I don't know. I'm not trying to prolong anything. Two RFPs at the same time. I don't see why not. We're going to a new pool. We're going another year without a pool. No, I understand. But the answer is the question that is also being asked of. We put $100,000 and don't do other stuff. What are we gaining for time to build a new pool? Nobody's... I'm not sure what the cost. No, I'm just thinking of all the peripheral stuff with locating a new pool. That would be fun. Yeah. Locating a new pool? Well, you're going to remove it from where it is and then build a whole new one there. Or you're going to find a new location so that way you can speed up the process. I'm not familiar with pool removal and replacement timelines. Anyway. We can put off that conversation. It sounds like we can do some more investigating and still move ahead and not lose time. That's what I was thinking. I don't see the reason why we shouldn't do that. Keep our options open. Make sure that we're not doing something stupid because we want to just make sure we have a pool next year. Yeah. We've put a lot of work into that. Yeah. Investigating. Yeah. I would love to see a pool next year, but it seems like there's some reasonable concerns that would be prudent just to make sure that this is the right path. Putting in a new pool if it turns out that that's a better investment. We'll see what we want to rule that at this point if we can make that decision at our next meeting. It doesn't make. So if the board would like what we can do is we can continue with the process with the caveat that we do a better job with wording the RFQ that was put in front of the board make it more consistent so that it's either an RFQ or an RFP fixing all of the areas that are in there while moving forward with the understanding that additional information is presented to the board. For infrastructure that's going to be replaced, whether it be better for us in the long run to have an assuming pool put in place, what the replacement costs would be even potentially go as far as identify a potential new location within the park, potentially on the side of the river to place in the pool and then replace the existing pool area with grass surface to not use too much park surface area. Just a little reason why we did, I think the RFQ is because I'm not here to speak for Mari, but she felt comfortable doing an RFP. She wasn't knowledgeable with the pool. So is there something like if the town doesn't have someone to write that how we work around that? Writing an RFP? For the pool specifically. It's about the same. The process is about the same. Q's you usually use when you want to go out and find out what's going on. That's when Mari felt comfortable doing it. And then you still have to put the RFP out to those at the RFQ. So you've still got to develop it. It's just another step. So to me, you've already had a study. You've identified what's wrong. The RFP would go out as I would like to know from company X, Y, and Z how much it costs to fix the pool. What is your past performance on this? What are your references on this? And what is the warranty and lifespan expectation? We've already paid the time. And you spend hours and hours with companies trying to identify what the issues were. So it seems like here's a problem. What's the cost to fix it? And what's your qualifications to do so? I just would like to see to make sure that we don't delay the opening right now. I think we can move quickly and have it. I think the month timeframe that I heard from Adolfo is certainly doable to write an RFP. Okay. I'm just putting it out there again. It's not much longer than spending time looking at something else and then have it be like, oh, and now we need another month. And I think you can reference the document and provide that document of the findings right as part of your RFP that goes out. This is what we've paid to identify. This is what was identified as wrong. And I wouldn't leave a little cushion that says, hey, if you find anything else. Yeah, that's why. I have an intuition that the new pool is going to be way more than prepared. Oh, probably without doing our homework. No, I agree. I want to have my cake needed too here. I want to see what the new pool costs but also go ahead with making sure that we can, if we don't put a new pool get one in as fast as we can. And to that point, we're going to have to look at the application stuff, all the upgrades and all that other stuff that was required. It could be astronomical because of whatever compliance is. Yeah. So I get it. I'm just trying to be responsible with what the cost is because it's not a little bit. And I don't know. East Randolph Hall Community Can't even work now. You know. They understand that we have Well it's got to be more than that on there. Yeah, there have roughly about 120,000 that had been programmed to be East Randolph Hall, 40,000 alone for ADA, bathrooms and that had to be put aside for immediate work so that the hall can open right away. We have since learned that it's going to take a long time to open it a year or two and in that time we'll have $40,000 in the capital budget that could be used elsewhere and we could recuperate recuperate it over time. The group isn't entirely happy. They don't fully agree, but they also understand that we're not going to get to the bathroom right away. So just from my curiosity and how long does it take to recoup $40,000 into that fund? It depends on how much we want, the taxation to hurt every year. I mean it won't take two, three, four years to recoup that amount. I just want to make sure it wasn't a decade or two. No, it wouldn't be that long. But it could be that long. Did you make these? So you need a motion to issue the RFP? Actually we feel more comfortable if the board would make the motion to issue the RFP with the caveat that we make all the necessary changes to improve the language. Then what we can do is we can work with staff and also with you Michael. That's the story behind the cookies. The meals Randolph region group recently formed. The cookies are brought to you by the meals Randolph group. They had a community luncheon this morning to try to bring attention to the needs of certain members of the population of Randolph that need help. And the luncheon was held today. It was not as successful as it would have liked. So they had access to food. They were able to bring it to town hall, share with some of the staff. And then also now brought it to me. Same for breakfast. So that's the food. They've been at last. They're able to go. Can I obtain a motion to authorize the assurance of the RFP? So I make a motion that we authorize the RFP release with modifications to the wording to address the pool repair, covering qualifications, warranty periods, and longevity estimates. Cost of the pool. Seconded. Motion to second. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Post. Stained. Motion carries. Thank you. Okay. Thanks, Heidi. Thank you, Heidi. I would be cheap if we got everyone to get a pool and a slip and slide. Okay. I'm going to pull out of the water slide. That's the one off waiver. Very good. Let's talk about that. Okay. So next we have the assembly permit for the fall voting is run. We received a request from Mark, Matt and Emma Rausen. This is an annual running of race event. The assembly permit was dropped off earlier this week. Shanding has been ordained diligently to try to obtain all the necessary signatures. We have received the signature of Chief Collette. I'm not sure if we've received others. Yeah. The police chief too, I think. Yeah. Sheriff Poniek is already, yeah. Oh, sure. Yeah. Chief. Police chief. Permit for upper pass coming also. Separate. They're separate. Permit for what? Upper pass. So that you're provided and served by upper pass will be served under their license. We have not received that. So we can reach out to Matt. Show that. Any questions on the possibility of running? How do you run? Really slowly. It's hard, especially on the patrol part. Yeah. You feel it. It's really disappointing. He leaves it that way. That's right. You can, actually. Do you have concerns with that one? No. We move that we accept the assembly permit for the fall foliage. 15K of running race. Second. Motion to second. All those in favor? All right. All right. Post. Staying. It carries. ETC. Telling something. Festival. We received a telephone call from ETC's event coordinator. I've looked through our records and have not found evidence that government had CDC been issued for this event. So I think maybe it's a new person. Planning the event, went on the town's website to learn about our permitting process and submitted the application. The event is scheduled to take place later this month on the 26th and it is specifically for their homecoming activities. I believe they're going to have a live music area, photographs at the end of the package show where the music would be. They do have their on-site security and we are currently working to again all the necessary signatures. Yes, we, our current health officer is not, the primary health officer is not in town. The assistant, the deputy health officer, the uniform felt that because it was on the college campus that we would not necessarily have to approve of the actual public health permit itself. That was the decision the deputy officer made. We would do it if it was different or someplace else. I think that. Should we accept the D.C. oncoming permit application? Move the health officer's signature. Move the health officer's signature. Motion? Motion. Assistant. That cut. Motion and second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Stained? Motion carries. Economic Development. The next line item or agenda item is part of a previous, loosely related conversation of the board had brought up during a previous meeting. What staff members have done is compile a list of venture characteristics of something that we would like to advertise with the positions. One is the economic development position. A different component would be the community development. And also the grants administrator component. We have shared drafts of position announcements with members of the community. They have shared that with their contacts with the R3 groups. We have received comments from those groups. We received comments just before the start of the meeting, so I wasn't able to include them in the packet. For the most part, the comments will be incorporated eventually into position announcement. I was hoping to have the select board review these lists of potential characteristics, see which ones worked, which ones did not, or if for some reason if we left something out or didn't think of it, so we could have the board's input on what to look for. We have identified enough money to offer a position, a salary. We have consulted with our attorney and determined that we can make this position a temporary contract position in terms of length of time. We haven't determined length of time, but we have a three-year period for now included as a potential timeframe. But we do have, again, at the very least, identified roughly about $50,000 to $60,000 worth of funding to be able to pay for a salary position with no benefits such as health care because it is a contractive position. 50-60 annually now for the term of three years total. Annual, I think. We're also working with a bit of a tangent, but currently speaking with the school district and seeing how those conversations go and stuff is going with Gifford, if we could work to eliminate one of our existing positions, say, for example, our current vacant buildings and grounds director position, and we could repurpose some of that salary toward this position and make it a potentially more attractive salary for someone. A way to mainstream what we have and what we need. There have been input from different members of the community. Some have expressed concern with the availability of different websites that advertise different events in town, some advertise one area, some advertise another. They seem to potentially compete with each other. Some don't list. There's no real connectivity between all of them. So one recommendation had previously made that this person should also focus on that type of work. It would be challenging to find somebody to do economic development, business background, and then also someone who's IT capable because if we do make the position too broad, then we risk setting this person up a failure because we're expecting one thing and then they're not gonna be able to fully deliver. So you want comments on these from the board? We would love comments, suggestions, recommendations. If the board wanted to strike a few or leave them in or just make suggestions for how to augment the points, it would be very helpful to stress that we work towards the recruitment process. What are your planning for recruitment? As soon as we receive comments from the board and we fully review the comments that were made by members of the R3 group in the community, we can pull the entire position announced together. I don't believe that we will go out to recruitment before the next elect board meeting, so a goal could be to have the final draft position announcement done by the next meeting, bring it to the board for one final look over. So if we have any comments, we should try to get them to you in the 20th. A week. A week would be helpful. And this is an element of discussion. So we thought, well, this one line item was put up so that we could have some more information shared with the board and potentially have a discussion on how we can create the agenda, how it's created, what items are put on the agenda and potentially have a process where members of the board can then speak with me and then I can then relate to the chair or just a more formal process for how the agenda's created. So we thought it would be a good idea to place this on the agenda now so that the board can talk as a body as opposed to have individual conversations. Is there any, or are there any questions on how the agenda's created or any requests on mainstream in the process? I don't have any right now. Reviewed by the board to make a decision. I typically will share that with the chair, we communicate and say, this is something that we should have on, this is something that's important or the chair can then share with me. You know, I've heard from a member of the board this is something that should be on there. So that's typically how the relationship has been working now for how to create the agenda. And if there was a change that the board would like to consider or maybe have a more formal process of coming to me and then I go to the chair or just going directly to the chair and then having me pull it together that's something that I consider. I think it works great for the way I'm doing it. Yeah, I have an issue with it. The only thing I thought of and I've been talking with both Ben and Jay about are trying to get, you know, we have a lot of information that sometimes comes up from the community when they get to speak, like affording our representatives sometimes to talk sometimes 10 minute brief quarterly that says this is what's going on at state level. So we have some more information there because maybe it takes more time to be proactive about that but I'm not as proactive probably as it should be on that, getting that information but having them share some of that would be helpful at some period of time, I think. To that point, I recently started pulling together a general update from the town some of the accomplishments, some of the challenges that we're facing, some of the help that we could potentially need from our reps, sending that to them in an email. So the first one just went out earlier this week with the caveat of we need help with this one item, help us but to that point, we could also continue to share periodic updates with our state representatives and say this is the great stuff we're doing. We could use help here. Oh, and by the way, every quarter, you're welcome to, we have a reserve spot for you to come and speak to the select board around afternoon. In this agenda of development discussion can also be a time where Adolfo, you have a chance to discuss issues that you think the select board should be involved in, right? Things that you might be hearing from individual members over a period of time instead of having individual conversations, can be a chance for us all to sort of weigh in together so that if there's questions about, that you have about how you're getting guidance from the board for issues that you think are important for you to get guidance about, but we have an opportunity to do that. Yeah, okay. Be helpful. Do you have anything currently going on that you should be talking about then? Well, we have the Maple Street project but that was something that I was hoping to do before the manager's report. There's an existing conversation with the swimming pool. That was another project that we had going on. That's something that we could certainly continue the conversation on. We've already discussed it, where the board's already discussed it. I could always bring it back. As far as I'm aware, there's a new, things that I'm pretty sure I'm forgetting something but off the top of my head are the only things that stick out at the moment. Next we have the review of the personnel policy. Staff are sharing this with the board because we are actively working to make improvements. It has some bearing with our current negotiation with the international community and public employees. We're not able to share too much because of the rules that we had agreed to with the negotiation process but there are a few items in the personnel policy that are dependent on, well vice versa, some of the items in the contract will be dependent on some of the items within the personnel policy. Much of the work that has been done to this point within the personnel policy is to just mainstream things. Bring the personnel policy at the date. We had the previous, well we had a very outdated list of select board members in the policy itself. Things like that have been changed. We would like to also create what we will have to create which is not in this packet that you have now but will be presented to you in the future is a domestic partner policy that's also part of the negotiation process. So there are just items in the personnel policy we'd like to have your input on and if the board would like and if the treatment you're okay with it if the board could potentially share if they have any input at all into the changes that we proposed and giving it to a staff by the 20th of September. Same deadline. I'm just encouraged to see my comments very soon, so I have no homework. So can you expand page nine reasonable suspicion to some drug now called testing or to use this there's special training required for BLCT that's special training to determine if there's reasonable suspicion? Yes, there's special training that is available to help determine whether there's reasonable suspicion of consumption of alcohol or drugs. We have, the changes that we have implemented have been reviewed by BLCT, not yet by our attorney, but would be before sharing this with our attorney and incurring costs, we wanted to make sure we had the boards input first and then sharing it with our attorney for one final legal overview. But more specifically to your point, yes, there are specific trainings are available through BLCT, this one being one of them. It would make it very challenging to have someone on staff to go through this process and then have them determine, hey, you know, that person's been drinking or now that marijuana is legal, you know, that person's been smoking and is under the influence of, there's still some issues with the way things are operating with BLCT and with our personnel policy. Where do we cover part-time, elected employees? I don't think we do. Is there a reason we don't? It's a good question. I haven't checked with BLCT about part-time elected employees. Because it looks like we specifically added the word full-time, so. We did that because we currently do have full-time elected employees and. And many more, part-time elected employees. Right, and so the challenge that we're facing, and I think this is something I'd have to look into, but I believe there had been a previous agreement with one of our elected part-time employees to allow them to extend, to be more closer to full-time. I'd have to double-check that specifically. Is there a specific direction in which we're going for that? I just think we have a lot of part-time elected employees that we should have policies that cover them or include them in this. No. I'm not disagreeing. I'm just, there may be a potential issue in that because they're elected, they wouldn't necessarily fall under the, even though there is language in the policy to cover them as an employee. I believe there would be an issue because they're elected, they ultimately would be responsible for the voters. I'm not saying that that's, that could be it, but you're right. I could certainly reach out to our attorney. I just think that a Lester is a part-time employee who could go into somebody's house and if they're violating any of these policies, that could be a detriment to the town. I think that's the point. Are we now requiring direct deposit to all employees? We're working toward that, yeah. I see it in there. They're paid bi-weekly via direct deposit. It doesn't give an option. Yeah. When we're running in here at 7.55 on Friday morning to sign it for the guys who are here at 7.56 to get their paycheck. The day before, because they're on vacation the next day. Page 11, some of the added text, compensatory time, A. I think that's a little bit ambiguous. I don't know if we're looking to comment in real time here, but page 11 under compensatory time, A. That can either be read as you can accrue more than 80 total in a year, but if I accrue 80, use four. I can't accrue anymore, right? Four could be. So if you're here five years, you can have 400 hours? No, you can accrue 80 hours in a year, and that's it. You use 10, you can't accrue 10 more. You can accrue 10 more. Okay. I assume the other. That gets paid as cash time. That's time and a half? Yeah. Comp time is time and a half. So that's not a summation of what they can carry at any one time. It's a summation for the annual. At the end of the year, they get paid anything they haven't used. But if I, okay. So if I get 80, use 20. I can't go back up to 80 again within that fiscal year. December 31st will pay you 60. Okay. If you're understanding that, a lot of the language in here is going into very specifics and nuances. We wanted to make sure that we shared this with the board sooner rather than later and just give you time to review and take a look. Yeah. I'm going to be on the flight. You can leave it on the flight. When do you want to come? It's 5 a.m. Okay. Hopefully by the 20th, if possible. We do have an upcoming labor meeting. Don't believe that. We will have a full agree and some contract by then. So the personal policy issues that are being changed in compliance with that contract is that we're a deadline now whenever we sign the contract. We sign the contract. Next we have the grant agreement. What will you get me? We finally received the grant agreement, the final grant agreement from the state. They are asking that the select board approve, accepting the million dollar grant that will be essentially a pass through to the LED dynamic project. In addition to accepting the grant, there's also a resolution that is required that essentially states the fact that the town is accepting the million dollar grant. They're authorizing tours out of Quiche, the Regional Planning Commission, to perform administrative duties, many of the administrative duties and then authorizing the town manager to act as the agent for the county signing documents. Does this have any impact on the right-of-way for the water and the lines and all that stuff that we talked about previously? Well, it's still a bigger part of the process. This would just continue to fund the project with the understanding that agreement on economic is still working to resolve some of the water issues and the road issues. My understanding is that they are actively seeking funds to correct the line of sight from exiting of the entire complex down to the gap on the legal road, the culvert area. So this project, these funds are essentially just continuing the project and having the contractors reimburse with the understanding that agreement on economic has committed to finding additional funds or fundraising for amending this agreement later on and coming to the board for more money to shade that portion of the legal road, literally shade the crown of the legal road so we can have a better line of sight down to the culvert. But they walked away from trying to turn the water line and stuff over. Back over the town, okay. That's what I was asking about, I'm sorry. Oh, it's different here, I'm sorry. That ended, they just paid him. Okay. Water issues, sorry. No, it's all right. Water? Water, yeah. I'll talk to you, I'll talk to you about the other. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry. This one? No. This is for you giving new authority to sign, right? Well, if the board were to choose to approve it, it would be a motion to approve or accepting the grant agreement form and then also accepting the resolution that is attached to the grant agreement. So moved. Second that. Second, I'll move in favor. Aye. And you should mention the resolution sheet is in your packet is in the signature warrant folder in here, so already. Mr. You have the payment, some grant. This is part of a long running process between the town, the state, and the town. We have been working to try to recoup losses mostly in terms of staff time and resources and cleaning up debris that flew all throughout the town during our winch storms late last year, when it rains. So we have two grants that are pending. Well, one now, this is the one that FEMA has approved has sent over to the state and now the state is issuing to the town in the form of compensation for staff time and resources spent in clearing up our debris. We did participate in what is called administrative costs. It was something that was new this year that allowed the town to not just recoup the lost time for salaries of labor downfield equipment, hours used for idling the trucks, but also to be able to recoup time for administrative costs for our staffer and the grants compliance office as well as my time in having all the meetings with FEMA in the state. So that is not as high an amount as the initial recuperation of 5,000, but it is an additional $270. In their scope of work, they have a project cost budget, but in the actual grant, there's no money. Yeah, they list zero in terms of the actual grant that's being given to us, but on page, there's no page numbers, but on this one, two, three, six page, yeah, it gives the total cost of $5,400 in change and on the final page in the end, it gives the total cost of $270. Don't those have to be in the grant document? But then they have to check. We can accept it, just make sure that they fix those. They fix the allocation amounts for you. Before it gets to the motion to accept it and to authorize you as single-term. Yes, please. Make a motion to accept and authorize it all for this time. I should approve with the verification of the amounts in the grant. I closed stating to motion theories, transportation alternative grant. The state has opened transportation alternative grant process. We are working on identifying projects that could potentially fit the scope of the grant. We'd like to have this elected authorize us to, not only look at these projects, but potentially fly through the project that sets it for apartments, which is why we placed that item on the agenda. But before we do apply, we'd like to mention that we're gonna make sure that if the project, we're gonna propose a project, it's not gonna set us back too far with any future projects that would better be served by a grant money. Looking at the sultry. My sultry. Yeah, it's the only sultry. But we could potentially not do the sultry, try to extend that life a little longer. We might have some other stormwater mitigation project. Yeah. So you want a motion to allow you to apply for a transportation alternative grants? Yes, please. That's my motion. It's okay. Thank you. Those in favor? All right, all right. Opposed? Statement of motion carries. All denies. Yeah. The local operate local emergency operations plan is something that we have to file with our regional planning commission. Staff and I have been working to try to update the plan as much as possible. We've had the clerk treasurer's office look over some of the sensitive sites that are listed on the plan to make sure that sites remain active. We've added a few items to the sensitive location sites, including a child care center and a private home. We've updated the contact information for emergency personnel, including our new fire chiefs and then also our new law enforcement representatives. This is what you're looking at is the base plan. Essentially the only portion of the local emergency operation plan that is required to be submitted to our regional planning commission. There are other appendices that we can continue to work on to augment it, which includes neutral aid to other towns and vice versa. That is a more lengthy process. So in order to continue to bog down the process to get those emojis into place, I thought it'd be best to just get what's necessary to our regional planning commission and continue to work out those appendices later. We have over the last several months received full inventories of equipment that is available in our fire departments and also police departments. So much of the information in here is fully updated as of this. The board has to adopt it before it goes there. That's right. So page eight, the planning task number five. So just trying to make sure I understand. So it's a primary and secondary, I assume, for PNS. That's right. So select board has the primary responsibility for floods. I went back and forth on that one. Much of it is pre-planning for floods. Just we have a rainstorm that's coming out. We know where we typically have flip lane areas. So we would work with our town engineer and staff to identify those areas. We will have fire and law enforcement personnel on site when it actually happens. So it's one of the reasons why I feel historically I've been listed as a select board in advance knowing what floods could be. But it is something that we could change. I was just curious. And I didn't consider the planning side of it, I guess. I think the power outages don't make sense. Although I've never seen them at two in the morning. Power outages? No, the public works out there with us. When public gathering, when law enforcement be a primary and on a secondary. When are they? We guys go out. Because this is actually not a public process. No, no, I was just in public gathering and became an emergency. I'm not doing police. I couldn't be trying to get to that point. Law enforcement. Yeah, there you have it listed as secondary. But you're right, it could be primary. Which one does it? Public gatherings. Public gathering. It's becoming a type of disaster. I think it's after the fact that we've seen it. And so it probably wouldn't be a primary for that. It probably be law enforcement. Also, I'm not sure Jim and Barb Townsend still own the fuel tanks. I thought he retired and they were done when I double checked that. Okay. That's on page five. They're both tanks. Oh yeah, I think those are on by lights now. Yeah, I think he blocked the entire business. I think that's right. Maybe Jim and Barb still own the tanks, both of them. It is, it's here. No, down here. I'm not sure they're still the owners of those. Oh, you think Wade's bought that? They did, no. I know they took a lot of business. Well, yeah, sorry. They did take business. So I have two changes, one on page eight for primary response to law enforcement, the public gatherings, and on page five, to confirm ownership of the site at the Sixth Coast Street. I guess another quick question, the new fire department operation center, but not a shelter. I spoke with Jay about that. There's a shelter, I mean, there's a kitchen, but we don't have, am I understanding, like the COTS. There's no COTS right now. So we didn't list them as a eventual overnight shelter or things of that nature. I did list the ones that we had before after confirming it by VTC and these places of, yeah. So the high school has the COTS stored there? They said that they have the equipment for that now. I don't think they do. I don't think they do either. Okay, who's it? Wes? Wes and Bob, Bob Wardley? Yeah, I think more to the West. They've confirmed that they hide overnight shelter supplies, but I could check with them again. Yeah, I thought that they could also provide the COTS. Yeah. And that VTC actually didn't have them. I know when we talked, we were in the planning phases for the fire department, that was definitely something that was communicated, talked about. I didn't know what the plan was to do and so forth. But it may be another opportunity. So the third item, check with Bob and Wes to reconfirm shelter supplies. And I guess if COTS are a requirement, how are we prepared for those kinds of town perspective? VTC. From this space? I'll go up there. Old dorm. Ha, ha, ha. We don't have any questions on that tonight. So accepted with those changes. If the board would make a motion to accept with confirmation of these changes, that would be ideal, then I could make those changes if necessary and submit to a move that we accept the local emergency operations plan with the changes as we discussed. So. I'll use the paper. All right. Hi, hi. I'll use the stained motion papers. Ready district discussion. We don't have any representatives from, or any of our three representatives, EC-Fiber, Center and Invitation. We received one for fly and also a personal visit from Cherry Ward, one of our, I believe our second alternate. Conversation revolved around the need to have both a ready district and also EC-Fiber's presence. Let's spur that invitation was a previous conversation that I had had for Paul Haskell's request to speak with Paul Giuliani, your attorney that has worked with EC-Fiber, gotten that group to where they are now. In my conversation with Paul Giuliani, a concern was expressed in having two groups with the same mission in town. He was not opposed to a ready district, but had expressed serious concerns with having a ready district, unless there was a letter of support or some kind of support issued by EC-Fiber. So we left the conversation at that point. I reached out to Paul Haskell. He confirmed that EC-Fiber would not support a ready district. I then reached out to EC-Fiber, our representatives to EC-Fiber, and they confirmed that the reason for potential, why a potential ready district is being proposed to the board is because EC-Fiber has prioritized other areas that are now being proposed in the ready district, which includes Thought Farm Road, East Bethel Road, Official Road, neighborhood. So I have yet to speak with Paul Haskell again after having these conversations, but my sense is that a ready district is being proposed because of a frustration with EC-Fiber for not prioritizing this particular neighborhood. And so that's where we are now with the ready district and EC-Fiber. So just to make sure I understand you, you're saying that EC-Fiber is now saying that those areas are high priority areas for them to cover? No, there is a group that's lobbying EC-Fiber to make those areas high priority. EC-Fiber is, they have not said that those areas are not high priority, but they have said that other areas are priority. And so money is being diverted to other areas throughout the state. Our group in town feels that that would be a priority, has made it publicly known to EC-Fiber that it would be a good idea to extend services to East Bethel, Stock Farm Road, Official Road. Their request has not been fulfilled, which I believe is what spurred this sense of frustration with now there's this opportunity with a ready district. Let's move forward with it to get what we want in that neighborhood. But that mission and that movement could be counter to what EC-Fiber's working on at the moment. So why can they bid it out on EC-Fiber and win it? And basically they're subsidizing EC-Fiber's expansion. Similar that they were gonna do with the consultant. EC-Fiber still has to go through the permitting process to get onto the pole. And they're claiming that's what drags it out. Whereas these guys are claiming, basically bidding it out is to who has wire on the pole already is what they're looking for, which is one company, which is probably why they're only able to talk to a consultant. Right, but that's just time then. Right, which is why they're having EC-Fiber service is time also. And then they don't wanna wait that time. They wanna create this district. And the concern, if I understood it correctly, is that creating a bunch of these is gonna undermine the whole pyramid that's set up that basically makes EC-Fiber real. Yeah, I thought EC-Fiber was self-sustaining as it was going along. But they're not counting on additional built out areas for to guarantee a future business model. That's the case, I'm not sure why they're so concerned about this district being formed though. Does they want the money eventually, maybe? I don't know, to me, I've been meeting with some teachers and a lot of the themes that I'm hearing from the local, you know, the teachers of the school systems is they look for 10 years behind on some of the stuff we're able to do because they can't assign online homework or math problems online to a class because some portion of that class can't get online. So they're really looking for solutions to help them out. And so whatever we can do to get high-speed internet or some better form of internet to the folks in the rural areas of our community is super important, I think. And I think it's gonna make some of our classrooms more attractive, our schools more attractive and also benefit our young people, for sure. And I don't know how that works with this whole political or money or pyramid or whatever it may be, but. I think it says they aren't concerned enough to show up. Is it how big they're concerned? Not one of them could make it here tonight. If I'm explaining what their concern is. They being. Our three appointed reps for the DC Fiber Board. Oh, DC Fiber folks, okay. I'm not sure if you're ready or you're using Fiber. I'm ready, he's not here either. How important is that to them? It sounds like things might be changing, but the track record for DC Fiber is that it takes a really long time for service to happen. So if someone says we can form a ready district and they can actually make it happen in a short period of time and it saves years for those people to get online with a reasonable connection. I'm not sure I want to stand in the way. And it's because of funding. So they got to get permission to get on the polls after they get the funding. So this district's going to provide the funding. Now it's just a few months to get permission to go on the polls. That's a totally different estimate on DC Fiber scheduling, right? If they have some plan, some layout that they're working, I don't know how much of an impact would be for them to change that, modify it, whatever it is. So just being in addition to it would be changing it. But if they're promised areas, you know, hey, you're going to get here, you're going to get here, then all of a sudden that district goes for the area you're going to see in the list till, I don't know. Yeah, but I think it supplements their plan. Could be, could be add staff and they hire more crews and they can get twice as much work than I don't know. They hire all the work done anyway? Yeah, I think they're hired. I've been. I've been doing all the contracting. I don't know, I just know from a housing perspective, from an education perspective, it's definitely all, excuse me, a whole. It's certainly one of the topics that comes up over and over again is getting high-speed access to every corner of our, of our region as fast as we can. So who approves and adopts the bylaws, us or them? Or the ready district? There was some confusion with the way it worked because my understanding is that the only involvement from the select board in the ready district is appointing representatives to the district and then the connection ended. I haven't looked into how the actual bylaws are created. Well, we create the ready district, right? We give them the authority to, to exist. I just wonder if we can do it so that they have to go out and competitively select, and we put something in their bylaws that require them to competitively select who they- Three quotes. It's purchasing policy. It's sort of government. It's everything. Yeah, for things that are coming in. We've taken them out of the trees to give us a zero quote. Not interested to see what we can send out three. Yeah, it's been a problem on federally funded projects with WBEs and DBEs getting people to bid. Since the board would like to continue working on the process, find answers to the creation of the bylaws, understand how, if the board would choose to create a ready district, how it would either work with or directly conflict with or what its relationship would be with EC-Fiber, then I could report back and then give an opportunity to REC-Fiber reps. And, Paul, to come back and speak from their perspective again. If we can't get our reps to do it, we may have to go to the- The actual one. The executive director or manager, whoever it is, EC-Fiber to get somebody. The big question being, why can't they do it? If this group can raise the money, why can't EC-Fiber get in there and put it in spell? Yeah. Especially since they could then carry it through to other people at the other ends of this district. And our reps to EC-Fiber, those are people who are acting in the best interest of the town, right? As our representatives. So they're not necessarily people who are representing EC-Fiber to us, thinking, trying to protect that as an organization. So that might be why we're not seeing them showing up. The latter would be why? Just that they might, maybe they all think, maybe our reps think, yeah, right, the district would be fine. Even though they're the reps to the EC-Fiber, I mean, they think, oh yeah, EC-Fiber is taking a long time. So maybe the town really should pursue other our avenues if at all possible. They have no objection to this process. EC-Fiber itself might. I do know that two or three reps are connected in a certain way. Some in ways that really would choose to not share in public. Just yet, not to me to release their news, but I think you're right in that there are issues there. They're not entirely opposed to it, but they're, we're in Randolph. Our representatives know the right to district interested party and so there's, there's a relationship. Beautiful. More people get competing for this and better as far as I think. So I'm trying to see it down side for the time. Don't report back with warrant next month. Contract with Orange County Sheriff's. We have received. Right one yet? Right one yet? I said we haven't hit the right one yet. Received notice from our Randolph Police Department officer, sole meaning officer that he will leave or has resigned his position effective as of September 16th. So that will leave the Randolph Police Department with no police officers. I would like to request that the board authorize me to amend the existing agreement with Orange County Sheriff's Department to include an additional 40 hour shift at the same existing rate of 46 dollars per hour so that we could cover all the shifts. The ones that will be, very least the ones that will be no longer coverable by our Department of Police Officer. Make a motion. We adopt the police district Orange County Sheriff's contract to add 40 hours at the rate of 46, 40 hours per week at the rate of 46 dollars per hour. Amend or adopt? Amend. What did I say? Adopt. Amend to amend. I think you heard me wrong. Let's rewind the tape. Motion and second all those in favor? Aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstain. Motion carries. Thank you. Tax anticipation agreement. This is part of the continuation of tax anticipation note that the select board has previously approved. The bank has returned and asked that we have the appropriate agreement document signed, which are in the warrant folder that will be circulated before the end of the meeting. It's just confirming that the select board has authorized down to apply for a million dollar tax anticipation note. We will also share with them minutes of formal meeting saying that the board has authorized it and now we're going to have signatures to go along with the actual paperwork for the million dollar tax anticipation note. We don't need any further motions or anything. No further motions. Just signing. Just signing. Great. Other business, we have a dry hydrant grant. Yes. We received a dry hydrant grant from one of our community members, Troy, there. If the board continues to support the dry hydrant pass through grant, if the board could motion for the town to accept the grant. Is this the repairs? This is for the repairs. Yeah, where? I'm sorry. This is a dry hydrant that malfunctioned to be installed near... Oh, the silhouette road. The silhouette road. The silhouette road. Oh. Yep. So the town will not lose out on any money. It would be payable by the person that installed it. They just wanted us to help. Come on for it. Make a motion to accept the dry hydrant grant application, is it? It's a grant application. Oh, grant... Did you accept the grant agreement? Grant agreement. It was. Exactly. Those in favor? Aye. Aye. Opposed? Stained? Motion carries. Thank you. Any other business? We have the managers report and I have a feeling we have an audience for the managers report. At least one item on it. Yeah, we're all... As I was going to say, before we move on, was there a specific item that you folks came in for? We just cut down on some other meaning or just had sort of pride. It's bubbling over, I can tell. And you didn't bring coffee? They're muffins. They're muffins. So one of the items on my managers report actually works well with three of our attendees tonight is conversations that I've had with members of the conservation commission. The commission has requested that we could potentially reestablish a select board liaison to the conservation commission to have a more strong connection. I know we've had this... We've had this request relate to the board in the past. I've continued to work with Michael and attempted to attend the last meeting, but I think it was no form? I don't think that would happen. That's a good answer. About an hour and a half ago. Again, this is... Oh, okay. The second one. Do you want us to come? We won't. We don't count. So that is... That was a request from the conservation commission in addition to the request for the EAB report and the ML-ASHCOR report that had been spearheaded by the conservation commission. So I'm going to make more of a point to work with Michael, to work with the commission to review the report itself to become more familiar before bringing it back to the board for recommendations and actions. See, I did share. Information of the report. The part that was missing on that was like a recommended plan. Because it went from zero to a million dollars, right? We could do nothing or we could give you a million bucks. Well, I think that... My impression of it is that it's the kind of thing that needs some kind of subcommittee or organization to decide what to do with it. Like, it's a pest management plan specifically for this forest pest of the ML-ASHCOR that is not prescriptive, but it provides options and lays out some of the pros and cons of those options. And we use it up to a group of town decision makers to decide, you know, what we want, you know, people with burst strings, probably, to decide how we want to mitigate this risk and what we want to do with it. So it's a management plan. It's not a prescriptive step-by-step, you must do this kind of plan. I believe that we had a presentation in America. It was looking to accept the plan and move into action on it. I think the last one was when I came, that was last June, there were certain recommendations. There were options and then there were recommendations. One thing being establish a budget for some tree removal and that is, you know, and the plan offers amounts from zero to, like, like we said, a huge amount, but it's up to town planners or you all to kind of decide how much, how far you want to go and how much of a budget we want to create for it. But there's some other steps to take also, like just having, like, a place to put debris once it starts coming down, area, it's going to be in combination with another town, like they work with Rain Trees or another town to have a common area, but the idea being not only mitigating the effects of the past, but perhaps even more importantly, preventing, you know, future extreme costs due to, like, weather when these trees that are dying and you have a windstorm and all of a sudden you've got tons of limbs and roads that require a lot of talent and voice and if limbs have been taken down ahead of time or trees that were half-dead ahead of time or that, you know, step into the process rather than through years, a few years, or working with electric companies finding out how they'll take down just to kind of have some thought for what kind of things we can expect. I think the issue is basically you're going to have to deal with it now or you're going to have to deal with not having dealt with it now later and we just wanted to make sure that you guys, because we can't make decisions that can only recognize but at least you know what things to think about and maybe partnerships you can create now so that, you know, we know it's in Orange County and so now it's a little bit more urgent maybe than when we were talking last summer. Yeah, and if it doesn't feel like it's at a boiling point yet like, unfortunately, at some point it probably will feel like, okay, this is like an urgent thing that we need to deal with if there's questions, you know, in the town management about like how to handle this the management plan is meant to be a resource to look to to tell you, okay, these are the kinds of things that you might want to consider and make decisions about. It doesn't tell you do this, do that, do this. It tells you like, these are the kinds of things that you may consider doing. And it's available on the website on our page for landowners who may want to step in right now with whatever their situation is on the Woodlots. And we'll just cut them. There's a mass cutting of ash in Vermont right now which is what the state told them not to do. Not to do anything. So, yeah. And Woodlots is different then, right? But if the plan is supposed to help landowners too it's a lot of them just getting the woods. Right. A lot of furniture and that's going to be made in a few years now. Yeah, as I recall some of that information was sort of late in coming too or really recent that they realized that some of the native ash population is showing some resistance because like when the conservation commission was first approached by the state and had presentations from the supposed experts we were initially informed that you may as well cut everything because they're in Michigan and in these other places there have been no natural resistance shown and in recent months and years I guess real recently they've found that there actually is so some of that information changes over time as well which doesn't help. We have better wood pickers up here than they do. Maybe that's it, yeah. More aggressive. That's not the best thing I guess, huh? They'll eat them. I think they have a 90% success rate with wood pickers, huh? It's good. Thanks, guys. Another different conversation that I had also in conservation commissions been all over my radar. Another conversation I had with Michael, the chair for the committee related to interchanging of information from our different committees and commissions which spurred the thought of two new committees that I was hoping to share with the board at some point to potentially create. The first is more germane to the conservation commission conversation that I had and that's to create a committee's chair, a committee chair's committee and this would be once a quarter. All the committee chairs could come in and share about the work that they're doing so if one committee's doing one thing that helps with the other committee that could kind of work together or at the very least keep each other informed of what's going on so if there are ways so they can partner with each other they could. The thought is more information sharing, the better and it's only a quarter of the meeting as opposed to a monthly meeting. The other committee that I was hoping to get some input at some point would be an arts and culture commission or arts and culture committee. Try to tap into the arts community that we have here in Randolph. Potentially also use them as a little grant application source of their arts related grants that we could apply for and that staff just don't have capacity to apply for them. We could go to our committee and say this would be a good grant that we could apply for for whatever reason but mostly it's just tap into the arts community that we have in Randolph and it was a strong community we just wouldn't have much involved with them at the time. We've got a long laundry list going on. One of the major things that I would like to share with you is the very visible item and it's our town report. I brought some samples with us to take a look at and the samples are here because of an issue that we had with our order for last years for this current year's town report. We ordered 800 and approximately 63 versions of this town report. We had reports of the books falling apart. What was happening is books were just through normal use were opening them up, people were cracking the spine and the pages started coming out. We've since learned that the company said to us that they've apologized. They didn't use as much glue as they would have needed. So they've offered to us this spiral bound town report and if the select board in the town were to go back to them this year they would offer this more expensive version at no increase in cost. So they're essentially giving us a $500 and change of credit. If we do go back to this version it would be $500 cheaper than it was this year which already was 50% cheaper than the previous year because we had gone with a different company through an RFP process. I brought these examples to see if the board likes the spiral bound version. Staff have reviewed them. They like it. It's just easier to open up and no spine to break. So the non spiral one $500 cheaper this year than last year. They're going to give a discount for credit. Will they use more glue? I did say to them that the board because it became a problem with the community if the board said fine let's go with the one we had it would be $500 cheaper with a non ring binder but if we go part again then there would be a bigger issue with the community because it happened again. So if staff were to make a recommendation at cost neutral if we were to go with the spiral bound version I think it would be well accepted by the community we wouldn't have breaking spine issues or pages coming out and it would be at cost neutral again but even if we chose to go with it it would be $500 or $600 more than this version of it with the one underneath it but even still it was still roughly about $1,000 less than we had been paying before so we still had a savings. How many complaints did we get when the page was falling out? I had two or three but there were also issues I think complaints were being made to other people people were talking and they just didn't get to me. So I decided it was two or three mine did also fall apart and I thought okay if I only had three people in my book out of $863 maybe we were just the only three or four bucks that fell apart apparently it had been a much broader bigger issue. So mine fell apart too. But you're saying that these weren't basically weren't printed properly like they should have been they shouldn't have fallen apart. That's right. So in the future we can say $500 and get books that work what they're supposed to and then it will just be like it's always been and then they'll be fine. It's still $500. Okay. I just brought it just to share the options of the books and if the board likes the spiral it's still overall a savings from the previous contract that we had. What part of his example would it be like? You know what doesn't fall apart? PDS. That's true. Can I get everybody in now? One more reading. BGP was reading it out of thumb drive. They wouldn't be. That's right. Thumb drive that would hold this is essentially pretty true. The button in the bulk put our logo on it. Don't need them. We have just a general update on the Idaho Police District Evaluation Committee. We have our next meeting scheduled for October 12th with a also a I'm sorry no the date is October 12th. Public hearing. September 20th is the next meeting. I think that's right. That would be meeting number three. With a public hearing slash listening session for October 12th I plan to start advertising for tomorrow. The process is moving along well we've had members ask a lot of questions and have remained involved in the process. We have a proposal at some point the initial stages of a proposal to reconfigure the intersection of Beanville Road and route 12 just to make it more commercial truck traffic friendly. Currently there is just a severe angle that prevents trucks traveling southbound on 12 to make a left on the Beanville Road which could be leading to the increase in commercial traffic on Maple Street and Highland Street as it cut over to stop pleasant. So as we work on the Maple Street project which we'll talk about briefly or shortly we also are considering improvements to that intersection in addition to trying to reduce the dip on South Pleasant Street as it travels southbound right by the railroad tracks. That's also a place where trucks don't like to go because they have to slow down for the bump and then speed up again. So it makes it a problem for them to take those two routes. It's making it more like Main Street which is a pretty nice crossing. So there are potential issues there that we're going to have to deal with but for the most part we're initial conversations for that. We have established or re-established conversations with the New England Central Rail regarding Railroad Street. They've sent to me an agreement that would allow the town to not take possession but to lease Railroad Street so that we could then maintain and fix the road make it more to a class 3 standard. I've expressed concern to the railroad saying I don't believe we need to pay you $365 a year to allow us to improve your property and do all these things and then install a guard rail because they're insisting that we install a guard rail and do three other items. So they're open to having a conversation. They're open to continuing the conversation with the town but they are insisting that they be allowed to remove themselves from an agreement within 30 days regardless of whatever investment we've made into Railroad Street and they also will require us to install a guard rail so that any snowplow operation won't cost snow to go onto the track. I reminded them that there's no guard rail there now and cars are using it. I took photos and sent them to them of the condition of the road but they're holding firm. The guard rail piece has been in the conversation from the game bill. Even a few years ago when we were dealing with it it was here. It's been pretty. So who's plowing it now? There's probably the landowners. Last year it wasn't plowed at all. It wasn't plowed at all. Which added to the frustration. There was a huge pile of snow in the middle of the road so someone plowed it to that pile. They plowed the road to make the snowplows and the carill state. I meant to say that the pound didn't plow it. So is Railroad Street from Main and Back to Pleasant? Is that the whole thing? Is it the entirety? It's the entirety of it. And that's the side where Al's Pete said. I just didn't know if they owned from the back of Al's Park lot to the CERN or if it was the whole entire stretch. Yeah. So it's also pretty standard in Railroad bring up. I haven't seen them exercise it but it's there. Yeah. They're willing, from my conversation with their representative they're willing to potentially waive the dollar a day fee for the lease. So at least it's a gift. I'll continue talking to them. How much do we think it costs to just fill in the potholes of gravel to get it to a passable or is there like a whole gradient thing and sloping and drainage? Right now the water all slopes right towards the building that the real estate folks are in. And in the middle of Pizza Place there's always a puddle there. Some of those craters there are like 8, 10 inches deep. Yeah, lost my trophy once. Lost my trophy. It did cost it could bear could be an apples to apples situation but on Railroad on Furnace Road that project costs over 100,000 dollars for that large segment. Well it was paid for by the state. That large project was 160,000 but over 100,000 dollars. Taking the same type of work and putting that on Railroad Street could be more costly because it's a smaller road but if we took just an estimate of the same distance of Railroad Street to the same distance of Furnace Street and say well it costs us 20, 30,000 dollars just to do like a shim and overlay and not dealing with stormwater but we would have to deal with stormwater and gardener. We'll keep working on that. We talked about the One House Roads we had a change in personnel assignments the duties of HR director have been reabsorbed by the town manager's office so now the Human Resource Department is operating on the town manager's office so I'm performing those duties now. So if you have any questions related please feel free to come and see me. Where were they before? In that policy it specifically separates town manager from human resources director. I'd have to take a look but I know by state statute the town manager is technically the human resources director and then also something I don't want to do is to delay from tax cuts but I'll revisit that portion of it about human resources. That was a relatively new thing to happen so I could have followed this track. Were we outsourcing it before? No, they were being performed within our finance department so I just felt it was just better to have with the town manager's office. We have a conversation tomorrow with for my emergency management about a proposed table top exercise I have been sharing information with the fire advisory committee the committee is open to performing a table top exercise and later in next year in the spring to conducting the full utilization exercise so that's moving along we hope to have more information soon we will include Gifford and the Ornish Consulate in the exercise to make sure that we're all on the same page. So that's that. We have a meeting scheduled between the town and RECDC this would be a gold setting meeting I received confirmation from Julie and we have a meeting time and date so we will be meeting with them very soon to have more mutually agreeable goals as we move forward and the last thing would be a good thing before speaking about the maple tree project is the town staff is working on potentially creating a softball team and challenging one of our three fire departments so any of the select board members would like to play or one of the members of their family on the town well staff make it make it members of the family so the where are you taking on well we're hoping to do like a round robin well we play we play two games we're going to have to play a fire department for each one of the games and the other three fire departments would play each other so it would be a round robin four teams try to make it a family picnic at one of our local parks try to just do a camaraderie if we don't all pull something so if there's any interest in joining the team please let me know it's very competitive so we gotta hurry up try to be Saturday they're gonna practice for a month call the fire department we only have three members on the team right now so it's gonna be a long haul the last issue is the maple tree project we recently had a planning meeting yesterday with the Boise King we reviewed the proposed plan for the project and understand that there hasn't been a final decision being made yet on the one way direction for the road but during the meeting that we had yesterday we found that there are size constraints that limit our options we recently learned that Green Mountain Power would be able to move the light poles within a relatively short amount of time at their expense which is great but the actual project itself because it narrows to some places down to 17 feet we would prefer to have it one way as opposed to have it in a dual way direction there are some constraints with size and the width of the road and this would just make it easier for us to be able to have the project but before we asked the board to make a decision the the goal would be if the board approved to have a meeting either a specially warned meeting or even at the next select board meeting where the item is either put on the agenda or a special hearing is held before the board meeting to invite all the members of the Maple Street community Highland Street so that they could come in and share their concerns and their views and that the last time something like this was held it's been I think over a year it's well before I arrived at the town so this would give them a new opportunity to voice their concerns with traffic for the town select board if the select board would approve to also potentially include speed tables on Highland to limit speeding on that street or commercial traffic so that's something that we would like to bring to the board at some point before you're already considered either a special meeting or a hearing before the next select board meeting we could definitely would need a decision now it's under the manager's report so we wouldn't be able to have them but a conversation that we could have and then forward but the project itself we feel very comfortable with with the relationship that we're going to have with three man power and at least the players involved in the planning process and that one last thing I might as well go the extra mile I'm going to do this earlier and that we do have our current vacant position with the buildings and grounds director position we are working on a plan to be able to reorganize the position break out cemeteries and have our existing cemetery crews just do cemeteries reclassify our laborer positions to not just be cemetery laborers and parks and rec laborers but just be laborers for the town so this way we can move them around wherever we need them if we need all our laborers at the cemetery we could send them all over there or if parks and recs needs all the laborers to set up goals or something that they need right away we could send them all without having to fall under the well I'm classified as cemetery so I'm not leaving as cemetery or I'm only classified as parks I'm not going to help at the cemeteries that will be a much larger process because it's dealing with reclassification of duties but on a more immediate front is we're learning that we could potentially do without the position of buildings and grounds director and if our conversations with Gifford or the school district go out we could potentially farm out the buildings and grounds duties to their maintenance crews they already have a full maintenance crew they have somebody who supervises them and our building and the ground position would essentially just be we can go to for an immediate problem our pipe at city hall or a town hall broke because we had a plumbing issue we would go to them and have them work with their contractors to fix it or if we have our emergency generators that need to be serviced once a year we can go to them and say this is the job this is what you need to do these are your checklists you need to do them for us it's still a preliminary conversation it's still in flux but if the savings are there we can do some activities that could be incorporated with the school district maintenance team or Gifford maintenance team then what I could then do is bring some options to the board and see if we can work something out with those agencies and that is it that's what I have for the manager's report so we intend to have an executive session which I'm interested in one BSA 313M Attorney Town Communities