 The meeting is being recorded. First order business is to call the meeting to order at 702. Yeah, there's Katie. Okay. Where's, oh, there's rose. Okay. Are there any public comments for items not on the agenda? All right. Hearing none. Are there any additions or changes to the agenda? So, um, Okay. Sandra, you sort of just gave us an update in our other meeting about. Um, Delinquent taxes and so forth. The next payment is due the 16th with the fight with the grace period. That brings us to the 23rd. So you probably don't have much other to report, but let's put it in the. Um, see what you have to report out. Sandra, are you there? Can you tell us Sandra's there? I can, I can see her screen presence, but, um, she's muted and her camera's not on. So she may have stepped away for a minute. Oh, so maybe she's frozen. Um, she was having connectivity issues. Gotta love zoom. Um, And Sullivan and powers is supposed to be coming on. At 715, I think Sandra had them come on at. Um, I'm just wondering if quickly, Judy, do you want to give us a town office update while we're waiting? Elections were done magnificently. Congratulations. Did it guys did a great job. Thank you. Thank you everyone who, who helped. Um, Make a really big difference and we have people helping out and it just, it did go very, very smoothly. Um, It, you know, everyone anticipated that the, that the general election would be much more difficult than any other election, but in fact, because the secretary of state sent out ballots to everyone, we were just basically doing address cleanup. Um, And who actually lives in town cleanup, which was just kind of an administrative task. The primary was much, much more difficult and much more stressful. Because we had to mail out every single ballot. There were three ballots, three envelopes, lots of confusion about all of how to explain how to do it. So I have to say this was much more manageable. And I think we've learned a lot. I'm hoping that. There may be some parts of this process that can go into the future. Um, I know we're going to talk later at some point about town meetings and COVID and how we may need to have all the decisions on, um, On the Australian ballot. And I think, you know, we can go into that. And I think that could increase in participation. So I don't know if anyone has questions, but, um, no, I'm relieved it's over and I will be relieved when it's much has greater clarity on the national scale. I mean, it's clear, but not everybody agrees. So, right. This is true. Um, thank you, duty. Uh, Sandra, are you there? Hi, Fred. I am here. I am here. Okay, great. So Fred's here. Um, thank you for joining us. Good evening. How are you? I'm good. Good. Thank you for your attention to all the detail and for doing our audit. We've worked with you guys for several years now and we really appreciate you. So let's get started with the, um, Review of the audit. I have, I'm assuming everybody's read. To me, the management letter was probably the most important thing from a big picture. Um, but do you want to start us. On the audit review, Fred. Sure. And what I can do is just a quick overview and. You can see if there's any questions, if that makes sense. Yeah, which one. Um, cause Cliff can call up documents. So are you going to have us look at the actual report? Yes. Okay. Yeah. So I'm starting with the financial statement. So there were three deliverables. Um, in any audit, one of them is the audited financial statements. The second is a letter of recommendation. And then the third is a report to the board that basically explains what an audit is and how it went. So I'll start with the financials. Our responsibility that the numbers and all of their disclosures are yours. Uh, what our responsibility because this is an audit done in accordance with government auditing standards. Uh, which is more stringent than just normal auditing standards is to provide an opinion on the financial statements, which is on page two of the financial statements. Um, and then a report on compliance and internal control. Um, which is in the back. So if you were to roll up to page two, you'll see that there's multiple opinions. In this audit. Uh, we talk about them. We've talked in the past is that under modified cash basis accounting investments need to be carried at cost. And you have investments that are in your cemetery fund. That are at market value. We don't know the difference. Are we looking, we're looking at not the management letter, but the financial letter. Correct. Yep. And that's up on the screen too, for those that are, that are, you know, that have the, uh, Zoom going. So what that means is that we have to qualify our opinion for the cemetery fund and the governmental activities. Um, but in terms of the general fund, the highway fund, and everything else, uh, we give a clean unmodified opinion, which means that you're following all the rules and regulations for modified cash basis. Uh, which is a basis for accounting that a little, that many small towns use it's, it's straightforward. Um, it, it provides you, you know, the information you need. And it really corresponds with the way you kind of budget the money. Um, I don't know how much detail you want to go through. Um, typically I started on page six, looking at the, uh, the fund financial statements. Uh, this is the one that really kind of, you know, where do we end up the year? What do we have left over? What can we use in the budget where we're going forward? So you're going to see that at the end of, uh, your total fund balance was 391,000 180. Uh, 11,503 of that was committed for, um, certain things based on the borders. Um, so, um, and that's for the swim program actually, that leaves you with 379,677 unassigned, uh, fund balance going into the year we're in now. Is that, is that considered our, um, what do we call that thing, the contingency fund? Well, you can look at it that way. I mean, that's, that's money that's unassigned. It can either have been used to reduce the next year's budget or it can help cash flow. And so, and you need them for both, um, because that's what carries all of your expenditures in both the general fund and the highway fund until you start getting tax money in. So, you know, your, your first taxes typically come in, you know, the first week of September. So you're, you know, you're running, um, you know, 65, 66 days with, you know, until the real tax money starts to come in. So you need certain money for cash flow to get you into that next year. Um, you know, we look at that, you know, and, and you, you've got about 80 days of cash in there when we look at the expenses for both the highway and the general fund. So you're in good shape. Um, in terms of covering that cash flow, having a reasonable fund balance, um, you know, the, the government finance officers and the kind of those that look at this thing, simply say, you know, somewhere between 15 and 20% of expenditures is a nice fund balance to have. And you're certainly right there with 22%. So, that's a lot better than where we started. Absolutely. So you're, you're in good shape going into this year. Um, it's, it's important for towns to have good fund balances going into this year. You know, there's lots of unknowns in terms of, you know, uh, extra expenses, what grants are going to come in, you know, how the taxpayers are doing. Um, and so, you know, you know, you can think of it as a rainy day fine. Well, it's just, it's been raining. So, uh, it's important to have it and you do. So you're in good shape going into the, you know, the 21 year. Uh, the highway fund zero because you always transfer any excess into a capital fund and it was pretty close to break even and but that, that's always there. And then your cemetery fund is another major fund. And then the back, we have a column that says other government with mental funds. That's just other special revenue and capital projects and they are detailed in the back. Um, starting on page eight, there's a lot of footnotes that explain who you are, what your accounting policies are, gives a lot of information on various assets and liabilities. Um, on page 16, we get a lot of information about all the various funds and. You know, what they're, how they're restricted in terms of, is it restricted by an outside source? Is it committed by the voters? Has the select board simply assigned it, which means that it's still under their control. And lastly, as we talked about the general fund is the only fund that can have an unassigned fund balance. And we, we talked about that number. Um, moving back into the audit on page 27, we're going to talk about the budget. Um, for about five pages is your budget actual report. And if you look about halfway down the page, and I'll wait till you get there. Uh, but what you're going to see is that you budgeted to take in 900, 2000, 948 you actually took in 964, 204. So on the receipt side, you actually did about 61,000 better than budgeted. You know, you did better than budget. And then if you skip to the fifth page on page 30, join the meeting, you'll see again, use that same number, the 902948, you budgeted to break even. Uh, you were going to spend whatever you took in. Uh, but in, but in actuality, you actually spent $7,400 less than what you did in total. Between doing better on the revenue side by 61,000 and spending less by 7,400. The plan was to have a break even year, but those two variances resulted in actually increasing your fund balance by, you know, $68,658. So a lot of it was on the revenue side. The next two pages are your highway budget. Um, so again, about a third of the way down, you did better on cash receipts. Um, a lot of that was grant income. You got a Moscow Woods Paving Grant for $23,000 that resulted in that variance in terms of the, uh, money coming in, but then you spent it. So if we look on page two, you're going to see that. While you planned on spending 826, 737, you actually spent about 30,000 more. But a lot of that again was that Moscow Paving Grant. So, um, that's money in, money out. But in total with the transfer of the reserve fund of 4641, right near the bottom, that was kind of your, had you not transferred it, that's what you, what your excess would have been. Uh, but the policy has always been to, to put that aside for highway capital. And so that's the end of the year. We did a good job of keeping it right on track. Yeah. That's really close. That's, that's really go up close. Um, the next schedule is three through eight are some of your other funds. Um, you know, your various other special revenue funds reappraisal, conservation, trails, uh, base of species, et cetera. And then on schedule seven and eight, all of your various capital projects. Um, you know, lakes and pond, Curtis pond dam, you know, various equipment for various projects. Um, so every fund is kept separate and track separately, um, in the accounting system. And so some of these aren't as large, but they all get shown somewhere in the audit. Uh, and they're all part of what we look at. And then going to page 40 and 41. This, because this is an audit done in accordance with government auditing standards, we're required to include a report on compliance with laws and regulations and internal control over financial reporting. And what we report to you on the second page is that there were no material weaknesses and internal control. There were no issues of related to compliance. We had one significant deficiency, which we believe is probably already been dealt with. And that just relates to the review and approval of general journal entries. What do you, what do you mean by that? I mean, it's normal to, from time to time, to have to make journal entries, which are basically either correcting entries, something may go in the wrong place. It may need to get allocated. It may need to be whatever, for whatever reason. Um, and when that happens, they're really just like the original transaction where, you know, all the invoices were approved by the board. So, you know, I think that these need to be reviewed at least by somebody who, a second person. And so, uh, Sandra, I think Nemerick's coming in now and doing that. Is that part of their normal routine? Nemerick's been coming in now. I think we've had Nemerick for like a year or more now. Okay. So that, if they do that and understand that, you know, that if they see anything unusual, they need to report directly to the board, then this will go away. So, you know, it's not going to go away. It's not going to go away. It's not going to go away with at this point in time. But other than that, as I said, no material weaknesses, no compliance issues. Um, and then that one issue, which we think has already been resolved. I guess I don't understand why it's not already resolved. If Nemerick's been doing this for over a year, doesn't that mean that it's. It was already resolved. It wasn't being done for the whole period under audit. Oh, I see. Okay. So when, so we need to, we have to report that to you that there were, you know, there's a lot of things going on. I mean, I don't know, I don't know if it was July to June that where that wasn't happening. But to complete the process, we do include your response as the final letter within this audit. So that response gets bound right in with the report so that they could see what the finding is. And then how you reacted to it. Yeah, I know. I get her. Cindy from Nemerick every month. I don't know if there's any other general or specific questions on the actual financial statements. Board members, any questions? I can't see everybody right at the moment. So. I've got a question to go ahead and speak up. Perfect. She flags. So it's dealt with. So if that's the case, then. There wouldn't be any issues at all. So next year, this will go away. Correct. Okay. Great. I don't know if there's any other general or specific questions on the actual financial statements. Board members, any questions. I can't see everybody right at the moment. So. I don't know if there's any other general or specific questions. Go ahead and speak up. All right. Doesn't look like it. Cliff, do you have it? You're all set. John, you all set. Pretty clear. Thanks, Fred. Yeah. So I don't know if there's anything else you want to go over or any other issues or I'm happy to. Are we going to go through the management letter? We certainly can. Yeah. Cause I was looking at that. And I had a couple of questions. Yeah. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Actually, some of your suggestions about policies. We've actually been working to. Review all of our policies. Katie, our recording. Assistant. Administrative assistant. It is putting together a spreadsheet so we can review all the policies and. Figure out what additional policies we need. So we'll add those that you suggested to our list. Great. Okay. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I probably get. Templates or something from. I don't know if you have them, but probably VLCT has some standardized. Kind of language. They do. Actually, if you go onto their website, their Mac page, the municipal assistant center. Yeah. They have a lot of these policies that are filling the blank. You can revise them to fit what makes sense to you, but most of these are there. If they're not, we can provide them to you as well. If they're not there, we can provide them to you as well. We can provide them to share what they've done. And do you, when we come up with one of these policies, do you need to review it or do you want to review it? We don't need to. I mean, it, you know, we'd be happy to, if you'd like us to, but, you know, that's, that's your call. We're happy to look at them. If you'd like us to, but we don't, it's, it's not required. If we're the ones doing your audit next year, part of what we do is go through any findings and recommendations and determine how they've been implemented. And that's what we're going to do. We're going to do that before you do it as well. Yeah. And on page. I don't know what page this is. It's not numbered. This fraud, fraud risk assessment. Who does that? That's something that can be done internally. That's just really a brainstorming session of sitting down and thinking about the, the, the areas and the ways that fraud could happen at your town. Do we give out receipts? Do we, do we get much folding green? Do we know all the vendors? How do we make sure that we're dealing with known vendors? How do we protect our IT systems? How do we make sure that we, we don't open up something that would cause someone to, to send money to somewhere? Do we know enough not to. You know, if, if the chair of the board says send a check to me, I'm. You know, I've lost my checkbook. Yeah, we've had that happen a couple of times already. And the office staff did a great job. They didn't. They contacted me and said, this doesn't sound like something you would say. Yep. It's easy to get to it. They just go on your website and they can see the names of the officials and they get your email addresses of the other people. And they change it a little bit. Unfortunately, this is public information. So I'm not telling tales. Tom Norwich got hit and some, they, they sent a lot of money to somewhere and it disappeared. So. Unfortunately, these kinds of things happen. So if that's, that's what's really in a fraud risk assessment is just, just understanding what risk you have and what you do to mitigate them. Well, and we're later tonight, we're going to be talking about cybersecurity training, which BLCT offers and a part of our risk assessment from them was that we needed to do some cybersecurity training. So this would play right into the, to what you're saying. Absolutely. Yep. Absolutely. Yep. Perfect. So I don't know when we talked about that one, the fraud policy, you know, the one, the first one on the top of the page is simply understanding how you, what you would do is if it ever happened to you. I mean, I hope you never need it, but it's really the plan of action. What do we do? How do we, how do we protect both the accused and the accuser? If it's something internal? Who do you go to? What do we do? Do we, you know, do we go to the state police? Do we go to the attorney general? What do we do? Do we? So that, that's what that is. And by there is, there is a good example, I believe, on the BLCT website on that. Okay. Perfect. The control, the documentation that controls is because you've got a good system of checks and balances is simply saying there's a certain required format that if you get federal funds and you may not, but it's also a good idea to just to do it that, that talks about the various segments of a control environment, the tone at the top, how do you assess risks? What specific things do you do? We already talked about one, having the journal entries reviewed and sent to you, bank reconciliations, you know, what, what kind of information do you get as a board? You get monthly budget status reports to you, you know, and how do you know that this, this is really happening. It's just a way to go through it. Investment banking policy is just an agreement between the treasurer and the board. What things will we willing to invest in? And again, there's good examples again on the BLCT website. Okay. Good to know. Yeah. We already talked about the investments in order to get rid of that qualification. There's two ways to do it. One is to research what the cost was, if that's possible. Say that again. You could simply research what the cost of the investments were or you sell them and buy them right back. And so in essence, because an investment until you, until you actually recover or sell them. It's just, you know, you don't realize gain or loss at that point in time, you know, there's that volatility we saw today on the good side. So that's one way to do it and then track it from there forward. So, and I don't know whether what you hold and whether there would be any costs to do that. Obviously you'd have to think about that. Why, why, why would you sell them and buy them right back? What's the. You would do that is you would do that to eliminate the qualification so that you take it from being cost to market. Now all of a sudden, because now you've actually got the cash in hand. And if you think good investments, then, and you want to hold them, then that's the reason you buy them back. If they're not the kind of investments you want, you may buy other investments or you may not, but it, it, I'm not saying you need to do that, but it would eliminate the qualification. And I don't know whether your broker would charge you a commission to do that. I, particularly if you're doing just a sale where you're going to buy it right back. But those are the two ways to eliminate the qualification and it may not matter to you to, you know, to have that qualification. So Sandra, what investments do we have that we would sell and buy back? I think I can answer that. I think you have some mutual funds in the cemetery fund. Okay. So this is, you're probably mainly talking about cemetery. It's entirely cemetery. Okay. All right. Cause I know our, our trustees of public funds have helped us with some investment strategies and not using the principle, but only the, I call it principle and interest, but I think it's really called something else, but they've been advising us. Yeah. So, and talking about that principle and interest, the very last point simply says that. When you sell a lot in your cemetery or over the years have done that, there was this portion of it that has to be maintained for perpetual care. And that's in that cemetery fund. You're also then moving property taxes into that fund. And spending. That's kind of opposite of the way that funds are really designed to operate. So the, the cemetery fund, the perpetual care fund is really designed to be a permanent fund where you can, where you can only use the interest earnings or the investment earnings to, to, to pay for that maintenance. So in most cases we're seeing where those earnings are being transferred into the general fund. And the spending is happening at the general fund level. So you're kind of mixing up an operating fund and an investment fund by moving the money into this fund. It's not wrong necessarily at just a mix of two kinds of funds happening in one thing. So we just want you to think about that. We think it makes more sense to move the money from the perpetual care fund into the operating fund, which is your general. So my question is the cemetery commission has its own budget. They're elected on their own. So I'm thinking that maybe a meeting, maybe they would ask you to come and explain this portion of the audit to them. Okay. So we can have our trustees and public funds attend at the same time. Does that make any sense? Yeah, we could do that. Okay. Yeah. And it doesn't mean they lose control. Right. So, you know, they can still, I believe, and this is a legal question. So we may need to get some clarification on that, but I believe. If they're already issuing warrants. To the treasurer for payment. Which they are. Then they could continue to do that. They would just simply be charged to their section of the budget. Yeah. Or they could have a cemetery operating fund. It's just the mixing of the two kinds of funds. That's just a little different because you're. One is a permanent fund by nature. And that's where the perpetual care money is kept. The other is an operating fund. Right. And they have, like I said, they get an appropriation at the town meeting. Yeah. So it may be, and I hate to add more funds, but maybe that's a better option than the general fund. I think that's a good option. I think that's a good option. I think that's a good option. And that way they would, they would feel like it's really their money to spend as they see. And it. Cause sometimes there's that concern that it's being. Used up by the general fund when it, when it's really a true appropriation to them. We see that in other places that have libraries too, where they get a separate. The library trustees will want to keep their money separate. So there's some options in order to do that. Okay. Board members, comments, questions. Sandra. You're on mute, Sandy. Sandra, you're on mute. There I am. When the checks. There I am when the checks come in for. A purchase of a plot. They go directly into the T row price endowment fund. And no money comes out of there. Right. So what you're saying is create, you're suggesting we might want to simply create a cemetery fund as we have created. A conservation commission fund or trails commission fund, as opposed to leaving it. Yeah, that's, that's doable. Okay. As it's, I don't think they would care really. Right. Yeah. And that's all we're suggesting. Okay. Cliff, any questions. John. No questions. Rose. No questions. Thank you for your work. You're welcome. Anybody else, Judy. Maureen. Alfred, any questions. Nope, I'm good. All right. All right. Thank you again. And you know, our office staff, I'm sure you've noticed is one of the best to work with. I agree. Thank you. All right. Take care. Have a good rest of the day. All right. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. What? You're so funny. You're so funny. Gotta give you guys credit every chance we get. You work hard. It was a good audit. It was very good audit. I mean, the stuff. When I was reading the management letter, I thought. Oh, what is, you know, this doesn't sound good, but it's really not the way they word it sounds worse than it. What it actually is. Yeah. Cause they talk and they talk in audit language. Yes. So the next thing on the agenda is we need to get cracking on our. Working on the budget. For. FY 22. And I know those notebooks, everybody. Just thought they were the most wonderful thing. And I think what I heard from board members is, is if they got. Document, if the documents got printed off at the town office and three whole punched, people would be willing to stop by and pick it up. Rather than trying to do everything on the computer or. Printing them off at home. I don't. Have a favorite either way. So. But I just know we need to get started because we're behind already. And you had sent something Sandra. Earlier today, and I think I forwarded to the board and you were going to send it to the board. Just to get us started. I sent. I sent a, the, the alpha. Budget for FY 22. And to be clear. The FY 22. The budget sells are filled in with the same numbers that we used for FY 21. Just to, so I can put formulas in. So if you scroll back. Into the beginning of that document. You're going to, you're going to see that just so. We want to get the formulas in as best as possible. And we want to make sure that we don't have to change or. What were the debts? We, we know what actually. Only seeing this one page. The page that Cliff put up is all I seem to be able to pull up in our safe documents here. Yeah, that's all I could. That's all I could pull up too, Sandra. I don't know what I, I just, it's just that page 12 in the document. I looked at it in Google. And it was a PDF and it just didn't download complete Sandra. Yeah, there's only one page, which is the. Oh, for heaven's sake. Yeah. So if you could just re-send that again, that would be great. And then the board can make some plans. I will re-send that. And that is a document that you can work on. And what I thought we could do is. Send everyone a PDF of that. I thought it was. And, um, and at your budget meetings, Cliff would be able to scroll through it with a live spreadsheet. So that you can, um, Work with the numbers in real time. That changes to the document. Would, would need to get to me in some way. And I'm thinking that, um, Denise, maybe, I don't know. You could drop them off at the office and I could pick them up. Yeah. The office can simply print off. Each budget sheet as it is developed. From meeting to meeting and. And provide, you know, and put them out in the best fuel for pickup. If that, if the select board wants us to do that, we can do that. Um, Judy does do with Barbara have time to make copies and that kind of stuff. Yeah, I think she sees this whole notebook pro project as part of her assistant treasurer duties. Okay. Very good. And, you know, there may be board members. I'm thinking John doesn't usually want paper. You know, it might not be everybody. Um, that is correct. Yeah. Okay. I know I like paper. I think Rose likes paper. Yeah. So, okay. Good. So if we can get that started, um, I was just confused when I only saw one page. I wasn't sure where we were at, but once we get that, then we, the board can plan a meeting. And does the, what you're going to send us, does that include the payoff? Did we pay off that one loan or is it paid off next year? Uh, There are a few loans that are going to pay off in FY 22. The land records digit, the digitalization of land records is going to be paid off. And FY 22. Hang on. The deficit loan is going to be paid off in FY 22. Uh, The server loan and the town hall renovation loan will be paid off in FY 23. There's one highway loan that fell off. I couldn't hear what you said. Two highway, what? Two highway, uh, look, one, two highway loans are going to fall off one fell off last year for the 2015 Ford dump. And then this year is the last year for the, uh, 2016 West star. Uh, FY 22, we'll see the 2017 West star and the excavator paid off. So we're knocking down, um, highway. Loans as well. Okay. Cause I mean, I think. Go ahead, Sandra. Can I, can I like just minimize zoom and try to resend that PDF? Is that. I don't think, I think we can get it after the meeting. Don't worry about it right now. Okay. Yeah. Cause I think we're going to need to commit to a couple of meetings, just focusing on the budget. I'd like to see us. Not make substantial increases. Look at maybe some level funding. And if we have some loans that are going to be paid off, that will help. Cause I think next year is going to be really tough for people. Board members. You want to weigh in? Agreed. Don. Yeah. You will also notice when you get this full spreadsheet that $50,000 that was voted into the budget for town hall painting. It is all, it's not on your budget for next year. So. This level. This basically this level funded budget is. At a negative 6% under last year's budget. Just. If everything were to stay the same, it won't. But. No, it won't. Cause there's certain things that we don't have. Starting there. Yeah. We don't have control over some of the costs like healthcare and. So we don't have a lot of resources. And we don't have a lot of insurance. And workers crump in those kinds of things. We don't have. A lot of control over. But John, you were going to say something. No, I said, I said, I have no comments at this time. We will. We will. Huge savings on fuel though. I just got a. Phillip of my oil tank, $1.64 gallon. Wow. So that's crazy. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I don't have any comments. Without seeing it. I, um, I have every. Um, idea that Sandra did a fine job putting it all together. Um, and look forward to seeing it. And, um, you know, thank you for all your hard work on behalf of the town. Thank you, Rose, Judy, Alfred, any comments? Uh, no, I looked at it. Yeah. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I thought it would be very helpful to get a budget together. Yeah, I don't, I think, yeah, this, the budget that Sandra sent for you and Toby to look at that one. I did get all the pages. So. Oh, that's something separate. Something different. Yeah. Do you sent it? Right. Sandy. You're on mute. Sandy. My, my dogs are. Really noisy tonight. I'm sorry. Um, it was. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I sent the high, just the highway part of the budget to Toby and Alfred to help them get started. Okay. Great. And I forgot to ask Mo. Do you have any questions? That's not. All right. Anything else for Miss Sandra while she's here. Any other updates, Sandra? Um, I don't know. I don't know. So. 2019 delinquent taxes are coming in. I'm hoping they'll all be paid by. November 23rd. And we still have. A ways to go. But I think we're, we're not, I think we're going to be okay. I do. We have a good fund balance. We do. And Fred, do please see like that. Yes, he did. We have a very large pile of. Tax payments from the mail this morning. Yay. Oh, good. Very good. Okay. Um, Credit going to where credit students. Sandra, you've done just a wonderful tax collection and it's just. You blow my mind every year. This is the new normal for us. And we're, we're, you're spoiling up. It would be a problem if you ever chose to leave. And go elsewhere. She's not allowed. So, uh, Oh, well, I have a kid about to go to college. So. As long as you'll have me, I'll be here. No, I second what John said. You've done a great job. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Anything else, Sandra? Or we can let you go for the evening. I have a question. Or just a thought. I see the board. Is looking at, um, a different health insurance plan. And I'm so thank you for sharing that. Piece of information with me because I was about to, um, hook us up with blue cross blue shield. The enrollment period is open. So please continue to keep me posted. I'll be there. Thank you. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Sorry. The enrollment period is open. So please continue to keep me posted. I'll do nothing until I hear from. You folks as to, um, What my direction should be. Are you talking about? Are you talking about the email I forwarded MVP? Yes. And that is. You haven't talked about it yet. And it also is very time sensitive. If there are gonna be changes to that, that needs to actually really be done sooner than later. Is there any preliminary work you can do on that piece? The comparison between Blue Cross and MVP for, you know, the same similar coverage? Is there any work that you could do ahead of time? So we're not doing you at the last minute? Other than the representative, I'm not sure who sent you that information. I don't know. He did the comparisons, but he used a number of abbreviations that were meaningless to me. I'm sure they met a lot to anybody in the industry. I also could not discern whether or not it was HR, those MVP's policies, or plans rather, were amenable to HRAs. I just didn't see that. And that's kind of a big deal. So- You mean whether or not they, you mean Sandra, whether or not they offer an HRA? Yes, yes, not all plans do. Ah, good point. So I couldn't see that. And I did not, I just couldn't make out his abbreviations. And I'd have to talk to him to see what he has to say. Okay. What are the deadlines for them and the Blue Cross? I don't know what the MVP deadline is. The Blue Cross Blue Shield deadline, we need to be online with them probably by December 15th at the latest because their third party administrator of the HRA is going its separate way. And Blue Cross Blue Shield is taking that on in-house. So we need to enroll with them because it is no charge through Blue Cross Blue Shield. So there's a number of things to consider. MVP, I do not know. But if they have an HRA, if their plan is, it can be used with an HRA. We'd need to find a third party to administer that. And I'm sure they have one that they use. Do you feel like you have time to investigate that? That, I mean, actually maybe not, not thoroughly because we're right, I am now finishing up tax collection between now and November 23rd, the checks are rolling in that. And most of my day is processing those. We also, I send an interim bill out, the first or second day in November to flush out problems such as data entry issues. A bank didn't pay a tax payment or a bank shorted a tax payment or a person mailed their tax bill and we didn't get it. So it's lost in the mail. And those issues, I mean, there are a number of issues that I'm putting out fires, a lot of fires on that. All right, Katie, can you make a note in that to do that we need to circle back and I'll see if I can, I'll have to find that email again, circle back with MVP and see if they have an HRA. And I'm sure they have somebody who could discuss their policy with us. I would not, you know, I would want somebody to take that policy and actually tell me in layman's terms what it does. That's what I did to learn about the Blue Cross Blue Shield policy that we're in. I spent an hour or two with the Blue Cross Blue Shield representative to learn what it meant, each, what that policy actually provided to the employee. And I just, you know, obviously you need to do the same with MVP. So what would be the best way to do that? Would it make sense to schedule that for an upcoming staff meeting or schedule it as a board? Full board. I think, I think, and then we could report back to the board. I think you want to talk directly with the, with MVP and perhaps that broker, although the person who say that email thought you may have had a broker. I'm not sure who that person was, but I think we should talk with the MVP directly. Well, that's what I'm talking about, scheduling them to see if they can do a staff meeting or a board, a select board meeting. I think like myself and somebody from the board who might be interested enough to do that. It's a time, it's a bit of a time consuming process, but if you're really thinking that you may make a switch, if you're really thinking that needs to be done pretty quickly. Yeah, I don't know what we're thinking because we just got that. Okay. Yeah. Because that's an, I mean, that's an investigation. And maybe if you decide you want to take that on, that's your decision. And if you decide that that is just one more decision you don't want to have to make this year, we can let it go for another time. I mean, I think everybody's happy with the Blue Cross plan. And I wouldn't, you know, maybe it's something that we don't do this year, but we start investigating maybe for the following year, just to have some options. Denise, I'll be honest with you. I'll speak as your treasurer and the person who administers these plans. I think it's, it would behoove us to start earlier and not right as we are diving in to budget. I also, I can speak for myself now as an employee. I'm very happy with Blue Cross Blue Shield. All of my providers now are except Blue Cross Blue Shield. So when you start to change providers, there's a question as to whether or not they take MVP. So your employees have been on Blue Cross Blue Shield for many, many years. I looked at the, gosh, maybe six or seven years, maybe more. And so that would be a conversation. Yeah. Judy, what do you think? Yeah, I mean, I'm, I don't know about other board members, but I'm happy to just continue with Blue Cross and maybe do some investigation. It seems like if they were serious about people changing plans, knowing how towns operate, they would have gotten us something way sooner. Yeah, you're kind of, you know, I wouldn't want you to, we wouldn't want to rush to that decision. Right. I mean, there's many layers of the plan to look at. It's not, if there are many layers, you know, we all know that. Right. So Judy, you wanted to comment? I'd suggest that we do it with a, like a three or four month lead at the very least. Yeah. To really do apples to apples, because they present in different ways with different graphs and different charts. And it takes a long time to sort out what you're really getting for the money. Okay. Duly noted. Board members, comments, Cliff? Me too. Yeah, I think it makes sense to stick with Blue Cross and start sharpening our pencils and look at other options for the next go round. Okay. Yep, I'm good with that. John? Yeah, I second that emotion. Can you sing it? Can you sing it please? Or play it on your guitar. My guitar needs a new song. Okay. Rose? Yes, I agree. I think it's kind of too late in the game this year to weigh it all out. Yeah, I just want to make sure we look at all our options. So if it sounds like everybody's happy with Blue Cross and they really didn't get us ahead much ahead of time. Alfred, your thoughts? I'm happy with Blue Cross. Okay. Very good. All right, is there anything else office related? Judy, Sandra? Hang on. Okay. So when I sign off tonight, I will see what happened to that PDF and resend it. And then once you get your budget scheduled underway, we can talk about, I think what we'll do is send the live spreadsheet to Katie and Cliff. And then we'll print off the spreadsheets that you'll be working on. Folks will pick them up at the office, and then as changes are made, those changes will need to get to me because it's kind of the sacrosanct document. This is a document that will ultimately be in the town report, and we don't want anything to get corrupted on it as we go forward. Isn't that what we did last year? That's what we did last year. And it worked out really nicely. Yeah. Yep. Anything else for Sandra, or can she get back to her barking dogs? Thanks, Sandra. Thank you, Sandra. You are so welcome, and thank you all for all of your work. This was, yeah, thank you. Congratulations on a successful audit, too. Yes. Hold on, so I'm very pleased that we're gonna keep that up. No, I mean, we've really come a long ways in large part due to your good work. Thank you. Thank you very much. It's been a pleasure. Good night, everyone. Good night. Hi, Sandra, thank you. Thank you. Okay. Cliff, did you get the map that Alfred sent us? Yeah, I can pull it up. Okay. Where's my giant magnifying glass? Oh, there we go. Okay, so Alfred, thank you for getting back to us with the work that we asked you to do. Before we delve into this, is there anything on Highway to update us on that? Did you know that? Nope, not really. We've had our first full-blown rodeo last Tuesday night. And then it all went away. And then it, yes, yes, very, very thankfully went away. All the equipment was working okay? Yeah, yeah, everything held up. There, of course, there's always a couple of things that we gotta tinker on after any storm, but we've got everything back together and yeah, we're ready for the next one. Well, that doesn't sound like it's gonna happen for a while, maybe. That's okay with me. But yeah, we'll be ready when it comes. But yeah, no, everything worked quite well. We used the same root pattern that we have been. And it seemed to work okay. Let's see, other than that, I think, as far as I know, I didn't get any complaints through that storm. I don't know if you guys did or not, but. Not a peak. Yeah, yep. We were out early in the morning and plowed it off and put sand down and then the next day or so, it melted right away. So we've been out grading the last couple of days, trying to touch them up before they ground freezes and been using a fair amount. Different employees have been taken, had a sick time and whatnot. Paul is out this week because his mom is close to passing away and he wants to be there. Oh, wow. So I certainly granted his time for this week. And so Ed will be in most part of this week and. Is his mom local? She's in a nursing home, I believe. Then Barry, my employer, I'm not sure which one, but fairly local, yes. Yeah, well, if you could let us know when the unfortunate event happens, I'd like to make sure we send him a card and stuff. Yep, yep, I can do that. I'm sure he'll keep me informed of that also. Yep. So yeah, other than that, things have been going pretty smoothly. Okay, very good. Board members, any questions for Alvin? All right, so we have the map caught up. Thank you, Dan. Did you guys also? I have a question. I have a question. So let's go route five. When Paul's in, route five, the new route five is what Ed is covering until we get a permanent guy. Is that the idea? You mean highway number five? No, you have up in the left-hand corner. Mark in red. Oh, yeah, okay. New route would be Ed, yes. Or whoever, okay. I mean, Ed knows every route that there is, so every road in town. So I can put Ed on any route at any time. It makes my life very easy. But yeah, so the new route, if that materializes would be Ed, yes. And how many hours compared to, I think the average right now is six hours depending on the storm, but isn't it about four to six hours? It is, yes. It's close to six hours, of course, depending on when the storm starts and when there's a lot of factors in there. But, and I didn't do a lot of calculation as far as how much time this is gonna save, but I'm thinking it's gonna get us down to closer to the four hour mark that we wanna be because that red route that I drawed out takes some miles off of both Paul's route and Bruce's route. And that's the red route. I just wanna make sure I've got my colors straight here. The red route would be North Calus Town Clerk. Yeah, it's all of Peek and Brook. Peek and Brook, Jack Hill, Foster Hill, Bain-Kamalee, number 10 pond, Nelson pond, Valentine Road and Batten Road. And that way you would end up right back close to the garage. That's correct. That's right. Good. And so that also takes a little bit from Jacob's route which would be Batten and a lot of times he does Valentine also. So that will help out on Jacob's route also which is all of East Hill, that's that side. So then if you notice down below, Alfred's route is black. So usually I am doing Lightning Ridge Road. So I am suggesting to put Lightning Ridge Road on Jacob's route. He's got a little bit bigger truck. It's a bigger road. He would be taking care of that. And then I would take over some of his smaller routes like Peck Hill, Pfeiffer's Ride. And don't you do Maple Corner too with the small truck? I do the County Road, just the black top part of the County Road. Who does the other part of Maple Corner the dirt roads? Well, Paul does West County Road. Paul is route two, route number two. So he does West County Road, Worcester Loop. Oh, I see. Robinson Cemetery Road. Yeah. So I mean, unfortunately the map that I have does not give the names. And I am searching for one of those maps that give us all the road names. I've sort of cheated because I wrote some of the names in on my map that I'm looking at right now. But that's why it's a little bit more of a challenge to know where all the roads are because we don't all know them by the town highway number. Right, I mean, I know places like Sodom Tarned and Mirror Lake and those kinds of things. Right, right. Now did you go, did the road crew help you with this or did you just take the rain? Well, that's my handy drawing, but we definitely talked about it. Yes, we absolutely talked about it. And they all thought it was a good idea to change the Lightning Ridge thing and to add this new portion because it takes, like I said, that red portion takes out a fair amount of miles from both Paul's route and Bruce's route. Yeah, and that's provided that the spare truck doesn't break down or one of the other trucks doesn't break down, right? Well, that's right. And we may have to think about replacing that truck sooner than what we thought because that spare truck is a 2009. Yeah. And right now it needs a bunch of work for inspection. So I'm trying to get that scheduled in between. So I just took it to McLeod and had it inspected and they gave me a list of things I need to fix. So, but like I said, that's an old truck. It's a 2009 that's, you know, that's been around this town many years, many miles. So something to think about, you know, with three years. What's that? Alfred, that McLeod's gave you, is it mechanical mostly or is it rust and that kind of deterioration related? It's a mix. It was the front drive axle needs breaks. He said the horn didn't work. There was a light, you know, a bunch of smallish stuff. It's not huge stuff, but it's still, you know, stuff that we need to get after before inspection. It kind of, I wasn't planning on that truck going because I made an appointment there two or three weeks out anywhere you go to get a big truck worked on. So I took an appointment. It was actually for Jacob's truck, but because we had the storm, I couldn't let Jacob's truck go. So I sent the spare truck and that was the list that came back. You know, I didn't wanna lose the appointment completely because of the storm. So I just said, I couldn't hear you. What's that? What about the rust in terms of the condition of truck from a rust standpoint? Well, the bodies are getting tender, you know, they're in the salt every year. And you know, the rust, most of the cab parts are fiberglass, so that's not an issue, but the frame is, you know, they get flaky and the body starts rusting. I mean, they're just, they're in the salt every year, and we try to keep them up by painting them and whatnot, but, you know, that's a 2009. So it's, you know, it's 15 years old almost. So anyways, that's, go ahead. Do you guys remember, see, I know Roger does this to our vehicles every year. I can't remember the name of the stuff, but he sprays them every year with this stuff that's supposed to... Yeah, they use a fluid film. That's it. Yeah. Yeah, land on it. Yeah, and we do, if time allows, we get in there, but you gotta clean them. You gotta get under there and pressure wash them, clean them, get the loose stuff off. Yep. Otherwise the stuff just don't work, but yes, we do. And actually, when we buy the new trucks, we get this even heavier duty coating put on the frames, and that's been helping a lot. Yeah. So is your plan then to implement this new route? Well, I guess I'm asking for your blessing if this, I mean, I think this is gonna cut down our rodeo times, but it's gonna be five guys on a typical storm. Yeah. And I just, you know, I guess I need your blessing for that because I have... Well, we asked you to do something like this, so thank you for following through, nice job. I think in my opinion, we should give it a try to see if we can cut down on the amount of time that it takes to do a route. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Another cliff, Rose, do you agree? Absolutely. That's fine. Okay. Okay, great. I mean, I don't think it's gonna affect our budget a whole lot as of right now because of the, you know, it's the third person is only regular time. I mean, the fifth person is only regular time. He's not gonna be getting overtime for those times. And you would only use him when we have a snowstorm for this. Right, that's right. And I've talked with Ed Rao and he's fine with that. He likes to be busy. If we're just working in the shop, he don't wanna be there, he wants to go home. You know, he wants to be doing something. So if, you know, when the storm is done, he'll park the truck and he'll be glad to go home. So he's off the clock at that point. So I think, you know, that's why I don't think it's gonna harm our budget greatly. Now, did the UVM study, did that help you with these routes at all? You know, it really didn't because their idea was to have starting points like down by the school. Right, where we can't have a sand pile. And that's impossible. You can't start a route there because the truck can't be there and it can't be, can't get loaded with sand there. Right, and there's no place to keep a cover either. Right, right. And, you know, these routes, I tried to make them so that they are, there's not so many, what they call hotspots. They're not traveled, you know, one truck's not traveling the same road as much. However, Moscow Woods, that gets hammered because our town garage, there's two trucks that have to go over there, three trucks that have to go over there to get to the other side of town. Paul has to go there to get Douga Brook in West County. Bruce has to get there to Duke Kent Hill and Robinson Cemetery, Old West Church, Adamat. So, you know what I mean? So some of that hotspotting or whatever their term was, can't be avoided. Yeah. And by putting Jacob on Lightning Ridge, that's two trips that I don't have to run up and down Route 14. Right. I mean, I still have to go there to get the black top and whatever, but I'm not shooting back there with a load of sand because Jacob will have that done before I'm done with the black tops. Yeah. Well, you know what? It's something I think, you know, maybe their study didn't help with pulling up with some exact routes, but I think it's spurred us to be more creative and look at alternative. So thank you for doing that. Right. Right. Okay. Well, let's give it a try. All right. Let me just see if anybody in the audience, Judy, Cindy, Maureen, anybody have any questions about the routes? No, thank you. Yeah. Oh, I have something. I just wanted to say that I think it's a good idea for a bigger, heavier truck to be doing Lightning Ridge. I know over the years, we've had like some washboardy stuff or whatever. And I asked Greg, I said, why does the road do like, you know, go like that? And he said it's because there isn't, it's not a heavier truck that could really dig the blade in. And so, you know, so I appreciate that you're gonna try a bigger truck doing Lightning Ridge. I think that's great. So, but I, Alfred, I want to say that, you know, I appreciate the time and effort and thinking outside of the box to come up with this. And, you know, let's give it a try. I think it's definitely worth giving it a try. So yeah, good. And then, you know, and then you can report back to us when we have our next storm, you know, how it worked out. So we'll just keep on top of it. We'll just keep on top of it, continuous improvement. Yeah, yeah. Well, I think that you'll notice the difference because it'll, you know, the routes will be getting done sooner. I mean, I think we'll stick with our start time, you know, in the morning. And, but because of this, they'll, we'll be done sooner. Good. And we won't be getting calls, calls from people that, you know, they didn't get their road cloud until nine or 10 o'clock sometimes. And that's the way it is sometimes. It's, you know, like Paul's route, for instance, used to be he would get all the Worcester loop in West County and all that. And then he'd have to come back for Nelson Pond number 10. That was the last, that's his last portion of the route. There's no buses out there. And that's why it's the last portion. But sometimes it's later in the day, you know, later in the morning. And so I think that's going to cut, alleviate some of that, it's going to cut that down. So I see Cindy took her mic off of mute. Cindy, did you want to comment? No, no comment. I was curious about the County road discussion that you're having later. Okay. Alfred, anything else? We should know about, when do you think you're going to have a chance to work on the budget numbers? Well, I will, I just got that thing today. So we can, we can start working on it. Okay. You know, I'm sure in the next couple of weeks, are you going to, are you going to do the meeting every, every Monday night again this year, like you normally do or? We have to figure that out yet. We might ask you to give us a budget by a certain date. And I don't even know what that would be yet, but. Yeah. Well. Saturday, Saturday morning meetings. Or something like that. And to vote it just strictly to budget. Right. Yep. I can do whenever, as long as it's not snowing, I can, I can make it work. Okay. Well, thank you for your cooperation. We appreciate it. Yeah. Yep. Do you want me there for the County road thing? Or can I go? Well, I think it's only, this is only going to take a couple of minutes because I didn't think we would have time to get into all the details. I just wanted to acknowledge the, I just wanted to acknowledge that we received the petition and that there's several steps that we need to do. One is to have central Vermont regional planning commission do another traffic study, which they said they could do the beginning of 2021. We have to, I got the information from the sheriff and the Vermont state police of speeding and accidents and things like that, which is in the Google folder if Cliff wants to call it up real quick. We had a traffic study done on the County road in 2014, but it's likely that it's changed since then. And then we have to look at the process of what it takes to go through to reduce the speed. And some of that is contingent on the traffic study. So it's not going to be something that happens overnight. Anybody else want to weigh in on the petition? Maureen, Cindy, board members. Well, I was curious to know why the, why you think the traffic study would have changed since 2014. That's not that long ago. Well, it's six, six years. And I think that probably the amount of traffic has increased. That could be true. I think it's decreased, at least in the spring with COVID, it may be back up to what it usually is. Anyway, I just wanted to speak to what it's like to be out biking, walking, we're driving a pony cart. As the car is speed by, I think it'd be a lot better if it was slower, the speed limit was slower. And there's a number of children that are walking back and forth between a house, a couple of houses down on Bliss Pond Road up to Wheeler Road now, like elementary school age kids that I see walking a lot because they're friendly. There's three families that get together. So I'm just concerned about that. Yeah, no, I hear, we hear your concerns and appreciate, you're taking the time to do the petition. Thank you. Yeah, Maureen, did you have anything you wanted to add? You're on mute, Moe. I think you pressed the space bar. Cliff, can you take Maureen off of mute? There you go. Okay. You hear me now? Yeah, we can hear you. Okay. I understand because it is a town highway that the state does not have to get involved and you don't have to do a traffic study. East Montpellier didn't do a traffic study years ago when they changed it from 50 to 40. Okay. Noted. I talked to someone in East Montpellier when I first saw it about starting or working with this and they said that they didn't have to go through the state unless you wanted the state involved, but you don't need to. Because it is a town highway. It's not a state highway. Yeah, you're right. It's a town highway. Yeah. And that would eliminate going through a traffic study. It's a class two road, not a class three, which class threes are the dirt roads. So sometimes that makes a difference. Yeah. But I think, I think the statute is that you have to do a traffic study. I think it does say that because this is a class two. But East Montpellier paid as well. We'll check it out. Yeah, East Montpellier, right. They didn't do a traffic study unless they changed it before it was paved, which would have been in the like 56 or 57. I mean, I've never understood why East Montpellier was 40 and Calis was 50 other than it had to do with the number of dwellings or something on the road or something like that. As I remember, because I remember I didn't agree with it at the time, but I'm older now. That's a resident had complained about the speed. And so they did change it from 50 to 40 without a traffic study. You know, when they did that. Do you remember when that occurred? Well, I was still living at home, so it was a long time ago. Yeah. So things may have changed. So like, Well, I don't think so because I know people that work for this, you know, and I've talked with them and they said, no, you don't need a traffic study. But I mean, you know, you can double chat, but I'm pretty sure you'll find you don't need for this town highway. You don't need a traffic study. Yeah. Well, we'll have to investigate that. I think that would be our preference. I think that would be our preference not to do a study, but we just gotta make sure we follow the law. That's all. Well, right. Yeah, I understand that. It's a good idea to follow the law. But you know, they get by my driveway and they pass and they're passing two cars at a time. So you know, they're going over 50. Oh yeah. And it's scary. It is scary. It is scary. It's scary for me to cross the road to get to my mailbox. Yeah. Yeah, I traveled. If I'm going 50 on the county road, there are people tailgating me and the ones that don't pass me, I think it's because there's not an opportunity. It's not straight away. Well, exactly. I know a lot of the people who are doing that. I recognize them. Yeah. I just find that really discouraging. Well, you know, maybe a couple no passing signs would be good too, because the double aligns, the double yellow lines is advised that you don't pass. It's not illegal to pass, but it's not, they're telling you that it's really not safe to pass, but they're doing it anyway. Well, the way the law works with double yellow lines in Vermont, it's advisory, but you're not allowed to pass through an intersection. So if anyone's passing a double yellow, say they did it at the intersection of Templeton Road and County Road, they can get a ticket, even if they're not exceeding the speed limit because that's considered an intersection. Yeah. Yeah, that's true, but my driveway is not an intersection. So if we do have to do a study, would the study include pedestrians and runners and how much foot traffic the road gets or bicycle traffic, the bicycle traffic is very heavy now, which is good. I don't think it, I think it doesn't, but I'd have to check. So Katie, could you make a note for us to follow up about the traffic study and whether we actually have to do one and is there a way, because I think it goes by, and maybe Alfred actually knows the answer, I think it goes by tires or, I think the counter things have a way to say, whether it's a truck or a car or whatever. So maybe there's a way to tell if it's a bicycle, I don't know. Do you know, Alfred? The study, Well, go ahead, John. Well, I think the study is- Who's going to talk for us? Go ahead. Okay. I think the study is, they put these rubber things across the road and it counts the numbers, number of times that the car goes over it or a wheel goes over it. And it also has to do with the amount of time between each one. So they can determine whether it's a full-size truck or if it's a small car or I suppose they could probably tell if it's a bicycle too, because it's shorter wheelbase. Yeah. So we can double check with CBRPC because they're the ones that would do the study. Right. So I wanted to add is, and this is what we've learned through Toby at Al, that it's, I think, buddy parameters are rigged, AOT designed it and I don't know where they got it from, but it has to do with the level of comfort of the driver to drive at particular speed. So they put these counters down and they can calculate vehicle speed and they have this thing like 85th percentile thing. And if 85% of the cars are driving at or above a certain speed, and that means that's a safe speed, that people, there's a presumption. If there's an assumption that people drive at the speed, the average person drives at the speed that is comfortable for them, which equates to safe, I think is the greatest bit of nonsense. It's not true. I mean, people drive on lightning ridge morning at the speed they need to get their kids to school on time when they have a minute to get there when the school starts a minute from where they're at and it takes two minutes to drive there at speed limit. So they will go over. I don't like to study and I'll tell you, if you don't have to do it, I would welcome hearing that. So we don't have to deal with this nonsense. Yeah, I mean, the whole fact that somebody's doing it. But just so you know, that's what they do. The whole idea that you're- Just so you know, that's how they do it. Just because that's- Go ahead, Denise. That's just because it's the comfort of one person. Doesn't mean it's the comfort level of somebody else. Well, or the safety level for them. Yeah. Right. That's nothing to do with safety. People go past pedestrians and bicycles and horse carts, you know, and farm tractors too fast. Yeah. I don't know what you want you to do. Highway workers in a construction zone. Yeah. Same thing. They hit you. We feel it. We feel it too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that 80 percentile is nonsense, Alfred, right? Yes, I don't think it's a very accurate formula. So I think what you're hearing is the board hears and agrees with the council. If that helps you for tonight and we'll do some more investigating and see what we can come up with or how we might reduce the speed limit. But I think- It's understandable to me. You know, we'll probably have to have another public informational meeting about this and let folks know that it's going to be, there's going to be a meeting about it because there's always, I've learned not only two, but three, four, five, six, seven different sides to the story. So we would want to make sure we offer an opportunity for everybody to be heard. Thank you for taking it up. Yep. You betcha. All right, let's go. So one other item. But Denise, before we move off this subject matter and for people to run over. So there's the issue of posted speed. And by the way, I always like to underline, that's the limit. We all as Americans like to drive the limit, but it doesn't mean you should necessarily be going that speed all the time, right? It's based on conditions or, you know, your age and whatever you condition your car or whatever. But we can post and good people will slow down and maybe slightly exceed the 40. That's usually what they do, but maybe that will slow down. But, you know, if the road is designed for speed like this road is, that's how AOT designed them. And this was an AOT designed road. People are gonna go that speed unless we also start thinking about, and I keep beating this drum, employing traffic calming measures and there are tricks you can do that encourage or cause the driver to react in certain ways, like slowing their vehicle down. And I always bring up as the example, they had a speeding problem coming into Danville Village. And so what they did was they did an optical trick. There are a number of tricks you can employ. And what they do is they have the curbing on the side of the installed curbing as you come into the village. So that sends a signal to people where something's changing. And then they have the curbing kind of funnel inward. The lane width does not change. One iota, the curbing funnels inward, it narrows the width from curb to curb. The lane width is unchanged. I believe the shoulder makes slightly narrow and it makes people put their brakes on. It has that effect. There are other things, if you ever go past the Montpelier, this is not necessarily a county road application, but you go past the Montpelier post office, nobody even goes to posted limit, which is 25 past that post office when you're heading westbound because the cars are parked perpendicular to the curb and everyone's freaked out that someone's gonna back into their door. So everyone creeps. That's a traffic calming trick. Having diagonal parking as opposed to parallel to the curb parking. There are other things you can put shrubbery or center medians if only painted. Maybe with a chamfered curb, the center being painted and it may not, in the end, narrow the active driving lane, but it causes people to slow down because it's that visual constraint. So there are things that we might, you know, going forward after, if we are successful in lowering the speed limit as requested to 40, we may see you folks again with complaints at our future meeting that folks aren't in fact slowing down and everyone continues to pass. So we might wanna start putting our thinking caps on now in anticipation of that circumstance. So, thank you, John. Maureen, can you email me the person you talked to at AOT and the contact information? Well, I didn't talk to anybody that at AOT, used to work at AOT. Oh, I thought you said you were talking to somebody. Yeah, they just, they wanted to stay out of it, but I know he knows what he's talking about. Okay, I'll have to, I'll find somebody at AOT. There's plenty of people at AOT. Okay. I've been gone so long, I can't think of any names, but. I can't remember names either. Yeah, yeah, a lot of things I can't remember, but. All right, well, thank you. We won't forget about this. Okay, well, thank you very much. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you, everybody. It was one thing, John, I was gonna ask you about under the road commissioner stuff or maybe we wanna wait till executive session. Any update on the chipper that you can tell us about? None. I'm kind of trying, I feel like at some level we're at this guy's mercy. So I wanna give him time, but it is on my tickler list of things to do. I just think, I know taking a motor apart and putting it together takes a little bit of time, but my plan is to get in touch with him maybe next week and get an update. Fair enough. All right. I think you all saw the emails about our approval for the LGR fund stuff. And one of them we talked about, or I talked to Cliff about was this Zoom Enterprise account and what the cost is for that, Cliff, do you wanna talk about Zoom Enterprise? Yeah, I can actually talk about all the Elger projects. So basically we were, let me pull up the document. Yeah, the email from Nick. Yep, we got more money than we asked for, so that's a good thing. It's not a block grant, so we would have to spend the money initially and then get reimbursed. Initial request was for 10,982 and we actually got a little over 35,000 approved, almost 36,000. What we imagine we could use these for, one would be an upgrade to the phone system at the town office that would run us, I think our quote on that was around 9,000 plus. Is that the integrity quote? Yes. The other items we had in there were to get a new computer laptop system for the zoning administrator as well as a printer. That would be very similar to the one that Sandra is using so that he could perform his function a little better. The big issue that we are dealing with as we've talked about in other select board meetings is the need to increase the speed, the bandwidth of internet service to the town office. Some of this money could be used to help offset the costs involved with that. Denise and I will be meeting with the office staff to talk about some possibilities. We do have a couple of quotes that are pretty outrageous to plumb lines that would provide high-speed internet service to the office as well as the town hall. They are in the range of anywhere from on the low end, $95,000 to spend over a five-year period. There was another one I think that was 90,000 just on the lines didn't involve getting the service. That would be a separate issue. There are a lot of things happening with regards to internet options, not just what's happening here in Vermont, but other programs that are not just nationwide, but worldwide, people are working on systems to implement that would provide rural areas with much greater service. So what we would like to propose to the board is if you're on board with this, to give Denise and I some latitude to explore these options with the office staff, come back and tell you how we think we can best utilize these grant monies and make sure we get a solid return on our investment. And some of this grant money, we have the work has to be done by the end of December, right, Cliff? That's correct. The Zoom part of it is basically it would be $2,000 for us to get a business account Zoom. That would give us 10 licenses and would give us some other features as well that would make life a lot easier as we face the likely reality that we will have to conduct a town meeting via a hybrid of in-person and remote systems. So would the board be okay to grant Cliff and I some latitude to check some more stuff out? I'd be fine with that. Okay. John looks like might have stepped away for a minute. No, he's there. Absolutely not. Okay. Then I would propose that we turn this all over to John Braeban. There you go. Oh, thank you. Absolutely not. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Are we? To be continued. But do we need, are we in agreement that we want to have or need the increased Zoom account? Yeah, I think it's something we- I mean, we should get that one off our plate if we agree. I think it makes a lot of sense. I don't know. We're just now, now that we've gotten past the election, Judy has started doing some research into what is going to be recommended towns do with regards to the meeting. But Judy, I don't think you've had time to really find out a wealth of information there. Maybe you've got some input for us here. No, I think the election was really preoccupying people, but they are turning their attention toward town meeting. And I think what I'm hearing and imagining will happen, although I'll fill you in more as I learn more, is that most of the towns will put all of the decisions, even the floor decisions on the Australian ballot, and that they'll be, I think a series of info sessions about each part of the warning, rather than a 200 people on Zoom for eight hours. I think it'll be broken down. So I think we need whatever Zoom platform would allow, maybe up to 100 or 200 people, but probably it would be more likely to be more like 50 or something that would show up around a particular topic that they were interested in. Yeah, that's what I'm imagining several public informational type meetings and stuff being on Australian ballot. And I know Gus was gonna check with VLCT too. And Gus and I are playing telephone tags. I just wanted to get his thoughts as, how could moderating a full blown town meeting on Zoom could be really challenging, although it does have a mute button. I know there was a town, I think you, Denise saw the article, there was a town that did it. Yeah, it lasted something like 16 hours and it just sounds like something we don't wanna do. Yeah, and then there's no way to have lunch within 11 and a half hour meeting. All right, so. I think I don't know that we're absolutely ready to pull the trigger to get this full blown account. But after further discussion with Judy and the rest of the office staff, we can better position ourselves to determine what we're gonna need from Zoom with regards to town meeting. And that will inform our decision. And I'm sure we can make that decision before the deadline that we're required to spend these funds. Okay, sounds good to me. And we would normally be meeting on Wednesday, but are you guys off on Wednesday? No, we're going to work Wednesday and then take the day before Thanksgiving. Okay, that sounds good. Are you up for meeting this Wednesday or do you wanna put it out a week? I'm not sure I had it on my schedule. I might have a researcher schedule. Let me look at mine. Oh gosh, I don't know. I have to, I'll email you. I have to, my other calendars at work with the researcher. You will make ourselves available, whatever best suits you. Okay, thanks. I do have a question about the phones. If they have to be implemented by the end of December, who's sort of the point person or making that happen if that's going to happen? Well, you had contacted Integrity and got that quote, is that correct? Well, I think it was a mixture of people and Nick might have actually, you know, hunted him down at the last minute. Okay, let me make a note to talk to Nick and see if he can find out how soon they could do this. So that means that we would have the phone system that we've talked about meeting and wanting so you can transfer calls, access voicemails from home, those, all those good features. Right, and now I've noticed that the elections department has a system where phone calls can go to your email. So if you're working at home and somebody calls, you can get your, you know, there's just a lot of features that I think we could use. Yeah, yeah. All right, sounds good. So Cliff, are we done with these two topics, LGER and broadband? Yes, if anybody has any more questions. I think I might sign off unless there's another topic that you'd like me to participate in. I think the only other thing I can think of is this cybersecurity training, which was mentioned as part of VLCT's passive review and then you just heard about it through the audit. And it sounds like VLCT has some options that are more affordable. Barbara and I have done online trainings on that that were, I can't remember, it was a couple of years ago and it was, I think, free. But if there's some advancements and it's worth paying for, you know, we're open to doing it. Yeah, okay. All right. All right, Town Hall, any updates on that? Is he done with the painting? No, he's got a few more things to tidy up and finish up. The weather kind of threw him back a notch, but now it looks like we've got another spell. We're going to get a rainy day this week, but we're going to get some more days where temps will be above 50 and he can continue to work. Okay, good. All right, that leads us into friends. Yep. So during the election, we noticed an issue where when people were leaving after voting, they were using the door towards the rear of the parking lot, which is also the handicap accessible door. And it wasn't always being closed. Yeah, we'll be right back. Okay. So some of the volunteer members of the friends looked into whether we could install automatic door closers. There was concern that if we did, that would not be ADA compliant. What we found out is you can get ADA compliant door closers and John had opted not to do that because he found out that they weren't required to get the certificate of occupancy. And in the interest of getting that as soon as possible, he opted not to install them. But he has given us some recommendations and he's also willing to install them once we purchase them. The money would have to come out of the general fund since we've spent the town hall fund down to nothing. We've gotten several different quotes on these at the low end, they're about a hundred bucks a pop. At the high end, they are running more like 500 bucks a pop. We're proposing to get two of them. And I would suggest that maybe we try and land in the middle, say around $300 each for 600 total. Get ones that have a good warranty on them. And we would match the finish on the door closers to match with whatever finishes on the door handles and the push bars on the two doors. We would put one at the main entrance on the parking lot side and one on the handicap entrance on the parking lot side. Cliff, can you just explain what a door closer really is? I don't know. When you walk out your screen door and the little arm at the top there pulls it closed, is it like the pump thing? Yeah, it's for a commercial grade, it's fancier than that. But yeah, it's basically articulating arm. It's got a pose of bending joint in it. And it literally just pulls the door closed. And the ones that we're looking at allow you to adjust how quickly they close, how much pressure they apply. We want to make sure that they're capable of handling the weight of the door over an extended period of time. Okay. I know what you mean now. It basically ends up saving us some money because I'm sure we spent some extra money heating that coal there that was pouring into that building that night. Okay, I understand what you mean. I think it's a good idea. So the other piece of that is we agreed to use the funds that were remaining in the town hall fund to cover other expenses. So this would have to come out of the general fund. So what are we talking about for a price list? Well, as I was explaining earlier, we found that at the low end, they run about $100 a pop and at the high end, they run 500, 600 a pop. So we're proposing we try and land in the middle, get a couple of them in the range of $300 each for a total of 600. And John McCullough said he would install them? John said he would install them for us. Yep. Okay, and John, you had your hand up? So I got a couple of questions. How the, you said they're handicap. They meet the handicap requirements. I know at the state house on the men's room door, there's a, what appears to be a standard looking commercial door closer, but there's a button on the wall and it's motorized as well. And it opens and closes the door for those handicap situations. Is this similar, does this have, do you anticipate one of those? Yeah, no, it's just going to be a armature that sits at the top of the door. The handicap accessible door is, it's got the push bar on it. So someone in a wheelchair can open the door as well as from the other side, it's a simple handle to pull it open. This armature would have, we would set it so that there's a delay, which would allow person plenty of time to get through the doorway and clear of it before it closes it. And it would not require one of these push buttons like you've described. So there's no resistance to overcome? No. For the handicapped individual? That's correct. That's why you can get them in an ADA compliant version. So I guess we would need a motion to approve or unauthorize the expenditure to provide the door closures and it would be money that would come out of the general fund. I'll move to that. And can we have it up to, not to exceed what thousand bucks? Yeah, I don't think we need to go quite to that level, but we definitely would come in under a thousand. Yeah. I'd like to see the better quality if we're cutting price for quality, I wanna see the better quality. Yep. We would not settle for one that had anything less than a 25 year warranty. I'll second that. Okay. Ready to vote? I'm an aye. Rose? Aye. Cliff? If there is no perceived conflict of interest, then I will vote aye. Okay. I don't see any conflict. John? I think there is a conflict of interest for Cliff because I think there's a conflict of interest for Cliff because I think I might have seen him leap or open a few times on his own. So maybe covering his own side. Okay, other than that, do you wanna vote? Okay, very good. Thank you. Thank you. Did you wanna talk about the request for? I'm gonna say goodnight. Thank you. All right, thank you, Judy. Thanks, Judy. Take care. The request by a resident to use the hall. I'm sorry, what was that, Denise? The request to use the hall for some recording of some songs or something. Yep. All right. My mind just went blank as Brian Clark approached Artie about recording a couple of songs for him. And Artie said, yeah, I could certainly do that for you. And then Brian said, hey, the acoustics in the town hall are really good. It would help the sound quality of the recording. Do you think we could record it there? And Artie said, I don't know. Right now there is a restriction on use of the town hall and anything like that has to go through the select board. So he sent me an email and said, do you think this is something we could do? If not, no problem, we understand completely. So that's about the gist of it. They would be five people total, including Artie. They imagine being in the hall for anywhere from two to three hours. And they're hoping to do it sooner rather than later because they want to use the upstairs and the cooler weather, of course, is coming up on us. And musicians like a warm room. Brian needs to go up there with his guitar and amplification equipment on his own and check it out because the acoustics are absolutely the worst up there right now. But there's no draperies. It's all hard surfaces. It's horrible. Yeah, it's a bright room. It's bad. Well, assuming they're okay with the acoustics, is this something we would want to entertain at all? I have my reservations as to are we gonna, if we do this for them, what are we gonna have to do for somebody else that asks to use the town hall? I mean, we made the exception for the tours. We used it for the election because the election, there really was no other option. So Rose, you wanna weigh in? Well, I don't know. Yeah, I mean, I do have some reservations as well because if it's for five people and then what if, you know, say five people wanna come to watch, that's 10 people. And right now we know, especially here in Washington County, we're definitely seeing a spike in COVID. And like what John said, it's empty. And I can't imagine that the acoustics would be any good there. And then what Denise said about, if we do it this time, you know, which this really seems kind of benign, you know, use it for two to three hours to record a few songs, bum, we're done. But then I think we might see these requests for permission, you know, can I just use it for two to three hours to do something? And so I don't know, I don't know. Let's hear what everybody else thinks. Katie looked like she wanted to weigh in. Katie, do you have anything to say? I think it's tricky to, singing is concerning to me that you can't be wearing a mask in the building and we know that singing uses this deep lung stuff. And I think it's tricky to have to say no to, like what if a bunch of people wanna come that? I don't know. I'm not gonna ask to come use it with my kids, but gosh, kids breathe all over everything and then are we gonna disinfect it afterwards? Yep. John, any further thoughts? Well, I was gonna suggest, I know they're in a hurry and this is separate and aside from the COVID issues, I'll get to that in a second. But if they were away regarding to deal with the COVID stuff, and I'm not sure that it is, I just was just reading the advisory that we shouldn't have any more than 10 people. And then I actually advise, don't do anything. Don't even socialize with your family. But that being said, we meet, it seems like every week, I would strongly encourage Brian Clark to go in there and go in there and start yelling. Because he's gonna quickly understand that he does not wanna record there, I can guarantee you. I think they have a memory of the acoustics being better there when it was a room full of people. And I think there were draperies, there was something on the windows, I can't remember. But right now that room is what you wanna avoid when you're recording. We ever go in a recording studio, they have all this sound deadening material mounted to the walls and the ceilings. It's bad. We were at Cliff, Denise and I were talking about, we were six feet apart from each other. I had trouble hearing or Denise had trouble or Cliff, each other when we were six feet apart because it was so much reverberation. So I would suggest Brian go take a look. I think it would be, this would be a mood issue if he did, unless he has some draperies he planned to install and that might be different. Now on the COVID side, I agree with Katie and Rose. And I think, I don't think we wanna be a part of a super spreading event as a town. I just think all the stuff where they're calling it COVID fatigue really were in a similar situation to where we were in March. And yet everyone's on the road and everyone's going about life, like there's nothing going on. And thus we're seeing upticks. And as people go inside and people holiday travel, they're gonna be moving this stuff around. I think we're asking for it. Yeah, I think- Those are kind of my two thoughts. Yeah, I mean, I think that this opens the door for other people to be asking for a special thing like this to do. I mean, it's not up to me to decide about acoustics, but it does concern me with the idea of people being in there singing, as Katie mentioned. I don't want us to be part of opening the doors for people to spread anything. And I think it's sad that we can't use it, but that's my feeling on it. And I don't know, Cliff, if you wanna weigh in a select board or friends or- Yeah, I think that probably already and Brian knew it was a long shot that it would get approved, but they just wanted to ask the question. And I don't think it's gonna be an issue if they find out that they can't use it for the reasons that have been stated. And of course, there are other venues available to them to record in with some that are even designed specifically for that purpose. So yeah, I mean, I can certainly take the word back and I'm sure everyone will accept it. Yeah, I mean, I feel bad because people, it's nice that people really wanna use the building. That's what we want. We want people to use it, but I just think being airing on the side of caution, I would say no. Okay. Do you need us to vote on it or can we just send back that message? Yeah, I don't think we need a formal vote here. Okay. All right. Maybe, maybe, Denise. Yeah. Maybe we should just, I mean, we don't need to vote on it, but maybe we should just state now that we have a blanket policy against use of that hall other than absolutely essential use until the COVID thing breaks, if and when. I mean, elections were essential. Yeah. We're out of it, but I think we should just put that blanket policy out there, maybe notify it on front porch form so people don't keep asking and then get disappointed and I think we just need to do it. Yeah. And I think we, as things have spiked, we want to be really, really cautious. So I think we have the policy in place right now about not using the town hall for anything, but essential needs. Yeah. We did do the guided tours. That was because we had a lot of requests for multiple people within the community who wanted to see it. Well, and that was before things spiked too. Right, and that was before the spike and we, of course, took lots of precautions there as well. I mean, after each round of tour, all of those handrails were wiped down, all the door handles were wiped down, anything anybody could have contact, it was wiped down before the next group came through. That was a lot of work. Yeah. Okay, so it sounds like we've covered that topic. I think we already covered the phone line issue with what we're looking into with regards to the town office, correct? Correct. Okay. We already talked about cybersecurity. I don't think there's, I think that we've got to really see if there's something out there and ask not only the office staff, but Alfred as well, to take the training. Yep. Okay, John, can John, you want to give us a quick update on some of Vermont's all-waste management? Yeah, just first, I got really bad internet. I don't know if it's everyone else's end and I'm not hearing everybody or if it's so this is a CWSB, I'm sorry, the Chittinous All-Waste District Glass Issue has applied to the Central Vermont's All-Waste Management District meeting. So just by way of quick briefing, Denise and I attended a meeting last Wednesday of the Central Vermont's All-Waste Management District. That's our Central Vermont's All-Waste Management District. Calis had been placed on the agenda and with specific regard to the glass issue and there was a lot of discussion. It went our 10 minute item, one of being an hour and change discussion. And it was, I think, very productive because the Calis folks wound up educating the All-Waste District about stuff that I really feel they should have been up on, but whatever, they're all lay people, volunteers and staff didn't seem to be attuned to what was going on for whatever reason. So in the end, once they were informed the smoke started coming out of their ears, kind of like Katie's ears were evidencing a few weeks ago and they were like, they couldn't believe it. The board was wondering why they just found out now and that was in us. But anyway, in the end, members of the board made a motion and approved the motion to send a letter to the State Solid Waste Program that is pushing the issue permits after the fact to at least in part, allow the Chittenden Solid Waste District to escape enforcement and penalties for a large portion of their dumping. And so they sent a letter objecting to that and requesting that no permits or permit amendments be issued till the case is resolved at the Attorney General's office or in court that only after the case is resolved should they even contemplate renting this entity, the Chittenden Solid District Permission or permits after the fact for this misuse of the glass that we had sent them to be recycled. So there was a lot of conversation about that people had no idea. I mean, I'm dealing with this every day. Today, over the weekend, I've been dealing with this in the course of my job because we help municipalities in my job with things like this. So I think that was productive. There was a letter I could send around the whole site board. Where's that in our folder? I think I sent it around plus it's in the folder. I did see it. Denise, you did send it around us. Let me see if it's in the folder. I think Katie put it in there. So there was a draft that was generated by Kathleen Gent, the executive director or the manager of the Salt Waste District. And they asked if I would work with her. And so I cleaned it up a little bit, tightened it up and made it address the situation a little better than hers. So, and it went out pretty much as I sent it to them with the chair signature. But I came away feeling really good from that meeting that they really wanted to do the right thing. And this is the outgrowth of it. So. Can I say something? Oh, means. Thanks. I didn't know if people were there. I didn't know if I got frozen or what. Hello. You're there Rose. I am like honored and humbled and in awe of the talent and the brains of John Braybant. I mean, I know this is your wheelhouse and natural resources and you've dedicated your life to this, but the difference that you're making, you educated me, you educated our board, you took the bull by the horn. I just can't thank you enough. I think this is phenomenal work. This is like so cool. And I just really want to say, you are just the epitome of a public servant. You do this for your job. You do it for your livelihood. You do it because you care, but you've educated so many people along the way. And what a difference you made by speaking out and having the courage to speak out on such an important topic. I'm just sitting here, I'm in awe. I mean, like I said, I'm humbled and I'm honored. This is phenomenal work John. This is great. And I have to tell you, he did awesome at the board meeting because those board members did not have a clue what was going on. And once John got done educating them, they were blown away that they didn't know and that they had been kept in the dark. And John handled himself in a very good way. Thank you. John, this is great. This is great. Thank you for that. I mean, we wouldn't know this and we wouldn't understand it if it wasn't for you. That's right. That's right. That's right. Thank you so very much. Thank you. You're very welcome. I have a very, very supportive boss who allows me to get out there on the limb. And, you know, there is a lot of politics involved in this and some bosses wouldn't allow you to do this because they're worried about upsetting the attorney general who eventually is gonna run for governor. He's the alpha Democrat that when Phil Scott gets tired of his current role, it's anticipated TJ is gonna be one of the runners and they don't wanna upset TJ. And so from what you have not seen is the correspondence I've been having between the attorney generals and myself. It's been very sparky, but I will say thank you for that. I really appreciate it. I do have a very supportive boss who backs me, but I am so very discouraged about this situation because they're at a committed effort by the attorney general's office and the agency and natural resources to hide this. And it's the most immense travesty that you can imagine. And like I said in my email to the attorney general's office I wrote this Saturday, they've spared no effort to do that. Dumb what is really a criminal case, a big criminal case and a big civil case. Dumb it down to mere traffic infractions in terms of level of seriousness. I've been working with the AG's office for a year and a half on this. A lot of the facts that they have in their case, I provided them, I did the investigating, A&R did not. In fact, the fact that A&R is even investigating is because I got it going. And the information I've given the AG's office, they've used to really undermine their own case. And I've actually, I got a lot more information regarding other violations. And I'm not gonna provide that information because my concern and it's real is that anything I give to them, they will then pull into their settlement agreement to further protect the Chittenden Center, I always say it's from legal exposure. So I'm going to wait till the agreement is over or issued, but my understanding the attorney general spoke with some reporters last week, saying that he's gonna issue a decision in a week. He said the decision's delay was due to the decision, the settlement decision, I should say. He said the delay related to COVID, the reality is, I know that's not true, the delay is they've been trying to write these permits to shrink the sphere of violation. And it's a game and the reason they've delayed the issuance is because we got, I got the public comment period extended and then we got petitions in from this good selector as well as Charleston, City of Newport, Northeast Kingdom, Salt Waste District and the VPUR got a petition together with a number of concerned citizens from the Chittenden County area requesting the public hearing that we attended, Denise attended along with me, I think the 29th. So that's delayed this rush to settle. But as soon as they conclude this process, I expect a settlement agreement will be issued and I'm bracing for it. I don't think it's gonna be very good. I've received public records. They tried to block them, the provision of them to me and not to get all the details, but I severely objected and pointed out that it limited my ability to participate in our town's ability to participate in the public hearing they had because I didn't have the same information that the violators did. It was amazing. So they did days before the hearing provide those records and after you read them, I mean, it was unbelievable what was going on behind the scenes to accommodate the Chittenden Salt Waste District and cover up their violations. And so it's clear why they didn't wanna provide those records, particularly before the hearing. So it's just real estate and it goes to, we're seeing this at the federal level. If you don't have checks and balances, it's in our DNA as people, all of us, to circumvent, go out of bounds, circumvent the proper process, what have you. And there are literally, there are really no checks on the attorney general's office or the agency and natural resources. You cannot sue either of them. And if they choose not to enforce the law, there are no citizen suit provisions in Vermont law that would allow citizens or towns that are impacted by their lack of interest in following the law or their interest in letting people off. There's no alternative, but for us to sit there and watch it all go down, I in my email to the attorney general's office, I made clear that whether we'll be successful in the end or not that we're gonna be pursuing citizen suit legislation to provide that check on them. If they know that they can be checked, they're less likely to do things like this. That said, this public meeting and the exposure and now the press that we should be seeing shortly on this, that will also give them pause, I hope. But we will see. It's very discouraging. No, John, don't take it as discouraging. Take it as you open to everybody's eyes and the call of select board is often on the cutting edge of being involved in things that other people don't even know is out there. So thank you very much. Yeah, thanks, John. I'm already proud of this board. It's great stuff, man. It's amazing. We do. Yeah, thank you all. Thank you. Okay, I don't think, I think the election stuff from my perspective, and it sounds like from what Judy said earlier, things went well. So I don't think there's anything much other than to say that we did well and democracy was in full swing. Yeah, go ahead. John, go ahead. Yeah, the anecdote that I think it's important to bring up and maybe you all heard about it. So a federal district court judge, I'm guessing it was the Washington DC court issued a decision ordering the post offices to do a sweep on election or two days election day for ballots and ballots found must be, must be returned to the appropriate jurisdiction before the polls closed. And there was, there were numerous reports that the post offices did not honor that judges edict directive. And it's back to checks, right? William Barr is the check and he's not a check. He works for Trump, but the good side of it is the good part of the story is it was like 530 at night. Denise and Cliff and I were at the polls annoying Barbara and Judy and not really helping out. And in walks as young fella, I want to say he was all of 25 years old, if that. And he said from a post office a ballot did not reach us. It got misdirected and he hopped in his car and drove it to callus and got it to us before the polls closed. And that ballot was a confusion around the ballot. The woman had a voter, woman voter had a plain field mailing address and that was part of the problem. And, but they was amazing, it was enlightening because she on her return address on the ballot, I think it might have been and maybe on the ballot envelope, she had her maiden name, but she was registered under another name and Judy did this cross checking. There's like a statewide database and she tracked the woman down and said, yep, she's legitimate, but at first she went out to the wrong post, a wrong town, maybe she's registered in plain field. Judy said, let me check and she can tell who's registered or who's a voter in what town and did count, she was a callus resident and it did count. I thought that was wonderful story. It made me feel really good. Yeah, no, that was really the highlight of the whole day I think is that young person taking the initiative on his own time to jump in his car and drive at the callus. It was pretty phenomenal. That's cool. Okay, Katie and I are working together to put together a spreadsheet, which Katie will do most of the work on the spreadsheet of all of the town policies. And now we have a couple new ones we need to add to the to do part of this spreadsheet. So we'll work on that and try to come up with a plan. And I think I had done something where I kind of highlighted who might work on what. So we'll put all that together and get it to the board. Shall we do minutes? Sure, we can knock them out pretty quick I think. Yeah, there's only two. And one was an executive session mostly. So let's do that one first. Okay, the executive session first? Yeah. Okay. No, to get us warmed up. Yeah, I didn't have any of my internet cut out there for a minute. I didn't have any proposed changes. It all looked good to me. Yep. So is that a motion to approve the minutes of November 2nd, Cliff? I move to approve the minutes of November 2nd. The only thing I would do is add Cindy, Cindy's last name here. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I just happened to notice that. I remember that I forgot it. Yeah, Cindy, Kenamin, Warren or whatever her last name is there. It's a K. Anyways, Katie can go back and fill that in. Yeah, here it is. I'll get it to you. There you go, Katie. Okay, so a motion was made and did we get a second or did I second it? I think you just seconded it. Yeah. Okay, Rose, do you want to vote? Aye. I'm an aye. Cliff? Aye. John? Aye. Uh-oh. Are you frozen? Oh no, there you are. Did you vote, John? John said aye. Aye, aye. That's aye. Okay, the next ones is, are they the end of? 10-12. Yeah, I think, I didn't put 10-26 in here. I had some internet issues this week. I don't know if it may have glitched out when I uploaded them, but they're not here at all. So I don't think anyone reviewed them. Sorry about that. I'll put 10-26 in for next time. Okay. So do we need to do 10-12? Mm-hmm. Okay. All right. Okay. There was just a couple of little typo things, I think, that I saw when I was reviewing. Yeah. I just put that in that I would contact CVRPC and the sheriff. Has the insurance policy matter been finalized? Do we know? Say what? Does the insurance policy matter regarding a hall been finalized? Do we? Yes. Yes, it has. Take out that policy. Yeah. Okay. There was an email that I think went, I think I sent it to everybody where we got a response back that it had been, whatever the issue we had with the insurance had been resolved. And it was based on an estimate. I'm trying to, here's the minutes with that. Well, the question was full replacement value, guaranteed replacement cost, vis-a-vis appraised value, which are very different numbers. I'm trying to remember. I know I sent. So we voted to go with the gap. Item four, Denise. Yeah. This one here, the standards report. This one here, John. Item four, yeah, in there, if you go down to the bottom of the first paragraph, we went with the better policy, which it guarantees the building would be replaced, i.e. with the identical building, same post and beam frame and all that, which is different than an appraised cost. Yeah, I have to go, we can hold off them because I know we checked it out. I think Sandra contacted the VLCT and we got a response back and I thought I sent it, the email around to everybody, but I'd have to go back and find that. So did we get the policy we voted on? Do you know? I can't tell you for sure, so I'd have to go back and find that, okay? So we can hold off on that and so we, so we want to prove these to it. Yeah, I'm just curious. Yeah. Well, no, that has nothing to do with minutes. Minutes still get approved. Okay. So then is that a motion? A motion whether we implement the policy? Yeah, I'd move that we approve the minutes. Okay, I'll second that. All right, Rose, do you want to vote? Aye. I'm an aye. Cliff? Aye. John? Aye. Okay, and I'll go back and find that email, John. Okay. Thank you, Denise. Yeah, I do want to go into executive session briefly. It's now almost 9.30, so I'll keep it brief if you'll go into executive session, discuss personnel matters. Is that a motion, Cliff? I can make it a motion, sure. I move we go into executive session. And I'll second that. Okay, Rose, do you want to vote? 9.26, yes, aye. And I'm an aye. Cliff? Aye. John? Aye. Okay, very good. The recording has stopped. Good night, everybody. Thank you, Katie. Thank you, Katie. I'll send you the stuff. Thanks.