 And this room is not very good. So try to do our best that we can as a large group to respect people when they're talking or listening. We do have, Teresa can go over it, but we do have Orchimedia, forgot one of their cables right now. So the sound that goes from here to the Zoom is only being done through the laptop right now. So it's gonna make the acoustics to people online. A little harder to hear until that cable shows up. So just make sure, it's probably not now, but on your way out, if you didn't sign in, just make sure that you sign in so that your name can be in the record. And so we will call the meeting to order and the first on the agenda is to approve or amend the agenda. I'd like to add a section where the select board chair addresses the public before public comment. And then I'd also like to, our typical public comment period for anybody that hasn't been here is usually 15 minutes. And that's in our select board rules and procedures. And usually we allow people of three to five minutes to speak during that 15 minutes, but normally we have about three or four people here. So what I would propose tonight is to double the public comment time to 30 minutes and to allow one to two minutes per person to talk, to make sure everybody has an opportunity to speak. And now we're not gonna sit here with a stopwatch and say, all right, two minutes, you're off, but probably just give you the Oscar thing when it's time to wrap up type deal. So I just needed a motion on that. Second. Okay, all in favor? All right. So I just wanted to start off. So I've been on the select board for nine years. During that time, I've worked with three town managers and 12 select board members. So I was kind of going back and looking at all the people that I've been on the board with over nine years. And I would say, overwhelmingly over the nine years, no matter who the town manager's been or who the board members have been, including myself, that we've all been strong supporters of the fire department. And I think everybody in this room could agree upon that. And I think we all can agree upon that the town's process isn't always perfect. And we've been working hard over the years to improve that process. I know, just starting it off, when Carl got on the board a year before myself, one of the big things that he started to tackle was we had employees in our town that didn't even have a job description. They didn't really even know what is it that I'm supposed to be doing so that we could even start to hold them accountable for their performance. So I know Carl started, some of those, those were just kind of things that most public companies have had for years. Here's your job description and your performance appraisals and things like that. I came on after Carl and we started to talk about the next step, which was performance appraisals and documentation of our workers. And we used to, at that time arbitrarily, we'd set aside 3% in the budget to give everybody a raise every year. And we gave it to everybody. Like, we didn't say, oh, well, you did a really good job, so you get three or maybe you didn't live up to expectations. So maybe you gave two. We just kind of threw it out like candy. So we started a yearly performance appraisal evaluation. The last couple of years, I think anybody that attends regularly, I saw Ellie here somewhere. She's, it's like, where's Waldo tonight? But Ellie's back there. She's here almost every meeting. And I'm sure she can agree that, you know, we have been working on our process for years on things that just outdated or were forgotten about, that should have been addressed years ago. Or just things change over time. The last few months, I know the town manager has been working with the fire chief and others on the fire department to improve the process that we have there. The, you know, one of those potential things that will come out of that is the adding an advisory board to help with, you know, bettering the process at the fire department. The, you know, tonight we won't be addressing any of the personnel issues at hand, as we normally wouldn't. But just, you know, we have to understand that personnel issues in general typically don't work out the way that most people would like them to. And, you know, lots of factors that play into that. And most of the time people are not happy with the way that things play out through the process. But I can tell you that, you know, that the decisions are always made with the intent to best favor our account. The, a few things I just wanted to address that's been going around for the past week, you know, and it's tough because people want answers and, you know, this is our first meeting that we've had. So, you know, news reporters, TV stations, everybody wants to know, you know, answer this question, answer that question. And, you know, we have a bit of a formal system. So, and we have to have the ability to speak amongst one of us ourselves. So we've, some of the things that have been out there that I just wanted to address, common things that we've seen out there is, you know, why didn't the town officials and the select board show up to the meeting last Monday? Well, first of all, the meeting was originally a town manager meeting with the officials at the fire department. It was gonna be held at the town municipal building. And then eventually the meeting got moved to the fire department. And then there was some discussions that were, were had that determined at that point that the town manager really didn't need to be there that night. And the select board meeting, our select board members don't attend those meetings. I don't think we've ever, I've never attended one of those meetings in nine years, nor were we invited. So, and I was kind of the first thing, you know, why aren't you guys there? Why are you hiding? Well, it's not our meeting. We weren't invited. If you can hear me, we cannot hear you if you're not in the intro at all. I know Jean, and we put a message in the chat twice. Orca media is missing a cord. I cannot hear you, please. If you got the middle. Turn your mic on in the computer. Yes, Jean. Sorry. Sorry. There, now I can hear you, thank you. There is a cord missing in Orca media's bag so that I put two messages in the chat that say the audio is going to stink for a while via Zoom. And we're sorry about that. You will be able to see it in its entirety once Orca posts it in a few days. So, we're hoping that cord gets here soon, but we apologize for the inconvenience. So, sorry. Hopefully that helps. The second thing that we have heard a lot of is, you know, the fire chief being pushed out or let go by the town manager. The fire chief gave his retirement notice on Friday, April 29th. Sorry, March. Why won't, you know, another one was, why won't the town address the personnel issues or talk about the process at the firehouse? I'm sure you've seen it all on Facebook and everything else. That was a big one. We've had lots of questions and emails in regards to that. You know, this is our first meeting. This is our first meeting since those events. We don't talk about personnel detailed information. But I will tell you that, you know, and again, the three town managers and 12 select board members over the past nine years that I've been here is that the practice of the town is to allow, the practice of the town in that time has been to allow the fire department to hire their own. So it's not a select board, it has not been a select board function to do that. How told that I can be sure. You're gonna have to wait until the public comment period. Sugar coated, buddy. Another thing that has come up is decisions being made behind closed doors and deep rooted corruption. We've seen that on many posts and many comments. You know, just to clarify those, the select board members are allowed to meet as long as it's not a quorum. No decisions are being made behind closed doors. This has been a common practice and doesn't violate open meeting laws. The town manager had to appoint a new fire chief per state statute as the current one had abruptly retired. The town manager has the... I'm... You are. There's a whole group. Sir. Two way streak, buddy. That's all I'm saying. I'm not trying to get mad. I'm just telling you. My eyes have been focusing across. I can tell. Okay. The town manager has the right and has exercised it. I don't even know what to say about the deep rooted corruption. I really don't. I think first you have to kind of look the definition up in Webster's dictionary to say, it's dishonest or fraudulent conduct by those in power involving bribery. I'll leave it at that. This board and the town manager has been probably the most transparent administration that our town has had. Again, I don't want to point out. Ellie, Ellie's here at all of them. We are very transparent. We don't hide things out in the open. We make everything available to people. We post the meeting minutes. We post the... Not just the meeting minutes, but the packet that we discuss is all out there as public. The next thing I wanted to address is there's messages that I sent to Derek. Now, Derek and I talk via messenger daily. It's been months. We talk every day, just like I'm sure all of you here talk with your friends. You talk things on messenger, whatever it is. Common things that are going on. Derek often will reach out to me with help in regards to something he's bidding. Most recently we talked about he was bidding some storage units. Hey, do you think you can help me out with some quantities or they've asked for some surveying with some GPS equipment. Could you help me out with that or do you know somebody that does that? Those are the type of comments that, were comments that we have back and forth with each other. My discussions with him have had no privileged information tied to him. All this information is well known from the public Facebook posts, talk around the community and knowing the process as a manager for 18 years and dealing with similar personnel situations. The last one I just kind of wanted to throw in here just because it just maybe give us a little humility is that the select board's likely to cancel the select board meeting tonight due to the eclipse. And that way they can hide and not face anybody in the community. So that one was kind of funny. So that's all I have to say. The public comment I just wanted to make short for anybody that normally doesn't attend the meetings, just kind of how the process goes for public comment. One, just make sure, definitely make sure on the way out if you didn't sign in that you did sign so that we can have you in the record. When you do want to do public comment, it's always nice for the note taker for the public record is to know what your name is. And we say address, but you don't have to say I live at 835 Pleasant Street. You can just say I live in Gilead or something like that. We all kind of know most people here. Let's just make sure that we're respectful and we're not interrupting, especially it can get loud in this building. And that we just stay from personal attacks and things like that so that we can be productive. And we'll try our best like we talked about to allow everybody to speak. And just know that public comment is an opportunity to have your voices heard and that it's not an actionary item on the agenda. So questions and be heard that way. So at this point I will open it up to public comment. The other thing I just wanted to say before we get started is there is a large amount of people both in person and on Zoom. So we'll let the people in person go first. And if there's any time left in public comment then we will take questions from Zoom because it's hard to go back and forth. So if you have a question, feel free to raise your hand and then I can call on you. It's probably easiest I'm assuming to use this microphone here, right? So that we can make sure that everybody can hear you. I'd like to go first if I could. Sure. This was not set up for me. So obviously I don't come in here with a five page written form. I'm trying to speak this from my heart. Another thing, I'd love the little speech. There was a lot of good points in there. I don't want any hate tonight. This isn't about hate. That's got to make that clear. Four of these board members knew nothing about this because I was sworn to secrecy because it's an employee issue. I keep getting told, well it's my fault because I don't have a fire department employee policy. Yet the person that was reprimanded six times in the letter to him, he said, it was said that he violated the beffle employee conduct policy. So it's been this double talk constantly. I've tried to diffuse the whole situation and all I simply tried to say from the beginning is this is a bad egg. I got a question for you. Have any of you ever been in a structure fire? A fully involved house and had somebody beside your side going in? You got to trust that person. Every firefighter and every person in here, it's a trust. This person we're talking about, we can't trust him. But none of that matters because it's all employee rules, employee laws. That's the way the world is going. I trusted everybody. I didn't get what I wanted, I get that. But you also threw the whole department under the bus. I'm not looking at you for it because you know nothing. So when I look up, Chris, you knew all about it. I'm sworn to seek to see you with trees, but you're saying, I love how you tied my son in there like your best buddies, but you also threw me under the bus to him. You said stuff in there that nobody even knew about except for trees. And so the double talk really gets me going here. I'm trying to be nice, I'm not gonna get dirty and when I'm done talking tonight, I'm out the door because what's gonna happen here, whether you guys all know it or not, this is just gonna ramble on, go away, and be done. That's the way the town politics are gonna go. Things have moved on, I'm not there. We got a new chief, Gary will do a great job. But it is the first time in the fire department's history that the members have not been allowed to vote on the chief or the assistant chief. The first time in VEPL history, okay? And I'm not saying trees made the wrong mistake. I'm just saying, I don't understand it and I never will, but that's the way the department's going. Another thing that cropped up recently. I don't know if you guys have seen, Richmond fire went through this, Putney fire right now and no longer has a fire department. The chief got done and everybody went behind him. Well, the same thing could have happened here and I talked everybody out of it. Yet, one of my officers tells a friend of mine, well, Bethel fire didn't lose anybody. Well, that kind of hurt me because everybody would have been gone if it wasn't for me, not everybody, but 99%. And I think of everybody out there in the town of Bethel that were covering that would never happen under my watch. And it wasn't my watch anymore. It wasn't. So I still got everybody in Bethel's got your bags. Trees, you're the one that hurt the most. I gotta admit it. We became friends through this whole years and years and years. And when this happened, as we say, crickets, I'm out the door onto the next. I understand it's your job. It's totally your job. But I think that the fire department was treated unfair in the fact that all you guys rely on is a lawyer. Now I've talked to two other select board, well, two other town managers and a lawyer, a good lawyer, and they all said this could have been handled completely different. We could have at least sat down and talked it out but none of that happened. From day one, all I heard was the lawyer said, the lawyer said, the lawyer said. Now, you accuse me of not vetting people very well. Well, I tried to vet some people and I was bluntly told I can't discriminate. Can't discriminate, it's the Bethel public policy, I can't discriminate. So how do I vet? We took a gamble on this person. I get it and he did well. But now, no, okay? But my word and the department's word doesn't matter anymore. That whole way of life is now gone. There's no more trust in the fire department that way. We're gonna run it like a board. I thought it was interesting about doling out the money. Huh, any Bethel firemen got a raise in the last 20 years? No, but we don't do it for the money. We get $10 an hour. I leave a job to pay $75 an hour to get $10 an hour, not because of the money because of everything you see right here. And everything that I work for and everything, the trust that I built, it's about the people. And all you had to do, you can blame it on the lawyer all you want. But all you had to do was at least come to us, talk to us, make us part of the conversation. That was never it. So I'm gonna tell you four, watch it. And that's all I got to say. The rest is yours. Thank you for your support. Thank you for that. Any further public comment? Yes. Or White River Valley Ambulance? Just, no, I'm fine. Just so the townspeople know that Dave also resigned as the Bethel rep to the ambulance service. So right now there's no Bethel representation. And I think that's something that the town needs to be aware of. The townspeople needs to be aware of as well. But that should be addressed sooner rather than later. I did a post on from porch forum the day that you sent. And we're looking for someone who's willing to participate, not just make motions and vote. Yeah, no, I put in your specifications about financial and the treasurer. So I did put it in the ad that went on from porch forum and there's also an ad going in the Herald. So I did do what you asked. And we're very sorry as before. Another hit to Bethel. I think I saw another hand that might have been over here. Was there somebody sitting down before Adam? No, Adam? My name's Adam Stearns. I'm from, live up on the Christian Hillway. I'm here in support of Dave. I have my own interpretation from what I've heard from posts and stuff that has happened. As somebody that grew up in a firehouse, I believe that a chief holds ultimately the highest responsibility of just about anybody out there. They're responsible for not only the people that show up at these structure fires, keeping their safety, they're responsible for trying to save the building, making split second decisions. They're responsible for saving the people that are in the building on top of all of that. Oftentimes they're being woken up from a deep sleep and being asked to make these split second decisions. That is a lot of weight to put on somebody. It doesn't seem like a lot to most, but if you put yourself in their situation, I'm gonna give you a specific one that's home to me because it's something I lived when I was a kid. Five-year-old kid, structure fire happens. Everybody in the family gets out except for that five-year-old kid. Fire department shows up. Where's the kid? House is burning. They have to make a decision. Can they go in? Is the house safe? Is it gonna collapse on them? Where's the best route to get in? Where's the kid? They have to find them. They have to put their lives in danger to go save this child's life. And they have no idea where to look. In this particular instance, I can tell you the kid was hiding under the bed and unfortunately they didn't make it. That was my neighbor's house when I was about 10 years old. And they found him hiding under the bed. So not only is he responsible for the safety of them, he now has to carry on the weight of what has happened, the decisions he has made, what his team has been trained to do or didn't do in that time. That's a lot of weight. And if you can put that amount of responsibility on one person who is willing to take it, I believe it's fair for that person to look to his officers and make the decision as to who it is entering that building, who's fighting for them. So as a resident, I am standing behind Dave on the premise that I think we need to change the way that operates here in Bethel and that our fire department needs to decide who fights alongside of them and who it's gonna be. And I realize at this point, this is a completely different situation, but moving forward, we definitely need to make changes to fix that. If you can trust that person to that much, there's absolutely no reason that he should not have the ability to decide who stands and works underneath him. They have to follow him blindly in the decisions he makes in split seconds and they can't question for a second. That's why I stand with Dave and I would encourage the board in future talks to try and make those changes to any sort of laws we have in this town regarding that and put the power back in the department's hands. Thank you. Okay. Anybody else? Yes, sir. I was fire chief before I left. I've been 39 years on the list. 13 years on the endless. First month that I was chief, I had a similar situation. I went to the town manager and the fact board and he went to the fact board and we decided that I would handle the situation. And I handled the situation and there was no problem. And that's the way it should be. I was the one that nominated Dave for chief. One of the proudest days I had, I'm afraid about him. And I had a lot of problems. I stick with him for every minute of his life. Nobody can get a better chief than Dave. Then I'd been through chiefs and assistant chiefs. I came up to the ranks and I've seen it all. A lot more than a lot of people have. Good fires together. A lot of these guys saved me and accidents I had. My wife's. And I just appreciate your friends and fridge. You've got people to count on. And you have to count on. The board has to stick with the chief. And when the vetting goes on and the department talks about somebody, somebody gets brought up. Everybody talks about it. That's a vetting process. Something happened. That's what happened to me. And I'm glad the board stuck behind me then. And it all worked out. And we were back to a great department after that. Thank you. All right, anybody else? Yes, Brian. How do you feel about not being included in the talks? Well, I'll speak. I think that as the process goes that we could not be involved because if it came to a head and someone had to make a decision, a legal decision with the town, we would be asked to make that decision. And if we listen to you or I listen to Chris or the general over here, I am no longer an impartial judge. So I didn't want to hear anything. As a matter of fact, I shut the Facebook stuff up. I've had people that have mentioned things to me but I tried to let that, I don't want to know. I didn't want to know. So I want to be able to be what I needed to be by being a dyslexia. Mike, that's me. Yes, sir. I'm John Davis from Darkville. Does the town have a plan if the rest of these firefighters walk out because you don't stand behind Dave? Do you have a plan if the rest of the firefighters decide to leave? We have to rebuild. Yeah. There's an intern. No, we haven't talked about that. Yes, absolutely. We have totally thought about that. And we don't think that it will, we're hoping it doesn't come to that. At least I'm personally not. There's an interim fire chief, Gary Coogler. And they already have an assistant chief, Greg Timmons. And that's obviously a benefit but I feel that the department is made up of great men and women. And they signed on to do the duties of firefighters. And I think that they will still, that they will still stand and protect the town because they're citizens and they love their community. That's why they do what they do. So it would be horrible and very unfortunate. But yes, I certainly have thought about it. Yes, absolutely. All right. Anybody else? Yes, sir. Rob Tracy. I've been on the fire department for better than 30 years on the day before Dave. When Dave resigned, I resigned. I'm going into a lot of details about we're good friends. And it bothered me greatly with what happened. My biggest concern is I think the fire department should be the ones saying who their chief is, assistant chief and so on and so forth. I don't think the board should be appointing people unless the fire department wants them. They should be the first ones to vote and then go to you guys. Thank you. Hi, my name's Derek Aldrigate. Dave Son, I'm sure as many of you know. So I didn't really know a lot about this whole situation when it started. Dad didn't even say anything to me. I mean, I kind of knew from hearsay and talks. And then when the whole thing blew up on that Friday evening, I kind of was messaging Chris since he mentioned me. I'll mention him. We do, we talk, he was right. We talk all the time. We kind of became close during the flood because we were working together a lot. And same with the town manager. But it kind of took a turn when I realized that he knew more information than he should have. And Dave said it the best. You know, Dave, you're 100% right. You guys are supposed to be the deciding factor when the stuff hits the fan. And I just don't understand how you knew where all this information came from. It only came from one place. And I get it, there's backdoor politics wherever you go. We all know how it works. But, and I said to you, I specifically said to you in a message that I know that you'll have our backs and I know you'll do the right thing. And I was wrong. You didn't, you know, and you shouldn't have known. You shouldn't have, you shouldn't have known all this stuff that was going on because you were the one that were supposed to make this decision, whether this individual goes or stays, you know. And that only came from one place. And we know where that came from. And everybody in this new room knows now where it came from. So I just, you guys should just be aware of what's going on behind closed doors. It's just, it's disappointing that it came down to this. I mean, I've watched my dad be on the fire department for merely my whole life. And the shit that all these guys see day in and day out would make you curl up in a ball and go cry in the corner and have nightmares. And it just feels like you guys are more worried about some lawsuit that is, you know it's not gonna happen. If it does, that's gonna fall on dead ears. And it's just disappointing that it had to, you guys didn't, it didn't need to come to this. There was no need for it. It's not just this issue, but it's issues within the system too that need to be fixed. So thank you guys. Thank you. So I just wanted to point out quickly, just a couple of things here. So one is, and sometimes it just might be, maybe thinking that the town and the select board sometimes are the same thing, but the select board in this process didn't have anything to do with the personnel issue. So there's been a lot of comments about we should have backed the chief and we should have went with what the chief said. The select board is not part of that process unless it becomes, so let's say a person got terminated and they appealed their process, then that's when the select board would hear the appeal process. So we have never weighed into this personnel issue. Now, just like all of us here or some of us more than others is a lot of this information in regards to this event was out there for everybody to know. And so it wasn't as well as Dave tried to distance himself from the information that's pouring out there publicly, you still hear it. It's kind of like being a jury and going to, you're gonna be on a jury and you kind of know who the person is in the information because it's been out there. It's kind of one of those things that you hear it even though you don't want to. And it doesn't mean that some of us are more in the know than others, but I can tell you that the board was not a part of the process of any of the personnel issues. And I will also tell you that the board is not a part or has been a part of the fire chief leaving or the fire chief or who might be the next fire chief or any of that. That has not come before the board. And I will also state that at no time in this process, and I even reached out to the fire chief twice, at no point in this process did the fire chief come to the board and say, listen, hey, I got an issue with this. Like, can we sit down and talk about this, right? We didn't have that opportunity. Tonight's the first opportunity that we could have talked about that. It didn't happen. No, anybody can talk to the board members. I'm the one that's in charge of the agenda that we put on. Everybody, and especially people that are in the know, like people that are department heads, if you're Wastewater or Public Works or Fire Department or back when we had a constable, don't have a constable anymore, but those public heads know the process that you can come to us, right? And now we might say, right, but you can come and gripe and say, hey, I didn't really like this process or, hold on, I'll save time for people, but we didn't get that opportunity. Now, all we got was, especially me, was slandering in the public eye. I mean, nonstop, slander. That's all it's been for a week, is slander and slander. Well, I haven't heard any of that, Chris, but the bottom line is- You can't interrupt. I will give you a public comment opportunity and then I would be more than willing to, what is the things that I'm in the know on? I will tell you that there is no secret backdoor meetings. I haven't been briefed any more than anybody else here has. I mean, there was one board member that made the comment to me. I learned more on Facebook in the last two days than I knew about what was going on. There was so much information out there. I had a fire department employee one day when I was getting a sandwich, they weren't happy about what was going on there. And they had more information than I knew about, about what the disciplinary actions was at the house for that individual and made comments like, just because we didn't write them up enough times. That information's out there. It's not information that I put out there. It's not secret information that Therese put out there. I will say, Therese and I work side by side a lot. And we have to. There's so much stuff that goes on in this town, the flood events that we had this July. I will tell you, if we did not work side by side and Derek helped out and other contractors, we would still be building roads out there. There are a lot of things that happen. We work side by side. There's a lot of communities that the select board chair or select board doesn't get along with the town manager. We're lucky that we have that cohesiveness that we have a good bond and a good relationship. Just like up until this point, I think everybody in this room could agree that the relationship between board, town and fire department in this case has been a great relationship. I don't think there's anybody in here that could say up until this issue that we had issues. This is not a Putney. Putney has had issues with their fire department for years, not their fire department, but the combination of their fire department talking with their town. They've had issues, they've butt heads. They can't get what they want. And then finally, people have walked and then the select board decided to close the fire department and go to mutual aid. And that's a disaster. And like what I said early, we know the process is not perfect and we want to improve this process. And the only way we can do that is by working together. And we had been up until this point going through that process and working with the fire department to develop a better process to employ people, to deal with the disciplinarian actions and things like that. Because we don't want to be stuck in this process, this position that we're in as a town right now. So now I just wanted to say that. I will get to whoever the next public comment is. You knew about this problem, town manager and head of select board. I don't care who. It's called an emergency meeting. We need to get things together. That is your job. Not wait until it blows up to all these wonderful people who support our fire department. Many of us have lived in this town longer than you have. And we've seen it go up, go down. As Mr. Forrest said, been here, done that. And it's worked out. But they've also called emergencies. Hey, we need to get this done now. And you get the fire chiefs and the assistant fire chiefs and you guys get together, town manager and or. Nothing was ever done. It's an emergency. It's not some game that we're going to sit back and wait for. And we lose a good fire chief and we lose somebody else. And I agree. I want my back covered if I'm going into a burning car, a building or GW plastics. Get back with our younger guys until they get, excuse me, age. And I agree with you wholeheartedly on everything that you said. One challenge that we have as a select board is we have to abide by the rules of open meeting law. And open meeting law only allows us to have other meetings based upon certain criteria. And even though something might be an emergency to us or to you, it doesn't necessarily allow us to do an emergency meeting. And we actually looked into that about doing emergency meeting last week, which I think we looked at Wednesday was the possibility. We have to look at open meeting law and then we have to, unfortunately, because it is legal, we have to talk to the, you know, can we do this with the lawyer? They said, no, you don't have enough grounds to do an emergency meeting. So, and then the, the students thing. So an emergency meeting, correct me from wrong, emergency meeting, we can have an emergency meeting within a 24 hour period. Now there's other things called special meeting, like you could have a special meeting worn by the select board, but you have to give at least 48 hours notice. Maybe it's 72 hours notice. So we weren't 24. So we weren't allowed to do, we were thought about doing one last Wednesday, but we were told that we did not have enough to do an emergency meeting. So the next option would have been to have a special meeting, which at the soonest we would have been able to do it was Friday, once you warn it properly to allow everybody to come. And obviously we know what transpired, you know, Thursday, Friday and Saturday was not fun for our community, right? Randolph and us and Burilton, we, you know, we got beat up pretty bad with the storm. So I do feel for you and we do want to address these things, but at the same time, we have challenges as a board on when we can meet and the regular schedule meeting was going to be the best resolved for this, unfortunately. So next public comment. Yes, sir. My name's Kevin Taylor, my loudspeaker. Is that against you? I'll close the mic, please, go over the lines and hear. Sorry. Hang on. Everybody out here will hear me. Yeah, usually the way it works, sir, is unless somebody says that they don't want you to, then you're allowed to speak. So, good. Go ahead. Go ahead. Volunteer fire service in Vermont, as everyone knows here is unique. It's unique to our area and it's unique to the people we serve. And it's paramount that we can trust everyone involved. It's paramount. That's all we got. We're not doing it for the money. We're not doing it for anything else besides serving our community. I've been a fireman in a neighboring town, a mutual aid town for Bethel for a long time. And to see what's been going on here over something that should have just been dealt with. I just, the social media stuff, everybody who has a social media account grows these, you know, they become heroes and they'll say whatever they want because there's no recourse, there's nobody right there to say anything back to you which is absolute belonging. And that goes for people in town management, that goes for people in the public, whatever. What was said was wrong, period. If you don't have a current policy to deal with something like that, you need one because most other towns have them. I went to the meeting last week. You saw everybody that was standing up there, standing around, talking, conversing. That's a pretty small group of people for the cross-section of towns that we serve. The population of people that get served by the few. It needs to be taken into account and those opinions matter. And their safety matters and the safety of residents and the other people involved also matter. Personnel issues are gonna be personnel issues. Anybody that's worked for a company for any period of time has had to deal with some of that belonging. It's half of it's ridiculous. As I'm sure most of you would agree on both. But all be it, if anything changes at all, you need to set some parameters, some procedures to keep things like this from happening and get the control back in the fire department's hands of their membership. It's very important because I need to know if we're coming to Bethel to help you guys out with all of my crew, that they're gonna be okay and there's gonna be some kind of sane leadership for us to follow their lead. And if that's not there, that's a bad deal. Thank you. Yes, sir. Charles Pizzo, Cushing Drive. I think I heard a couple things that have interested me before. But you know, am I getting here? I don't know if you're in Bethel or where. I'm sorry, there's someone yelling on Zoom. Sorry. Let me, sorry. Hi, so I'm new to Bethel. I've only been here about a year. I have experienced where you are. I've been a select board member and a chair. I've heard a couple things. I heard you refer to someone as an employee. If that's true, then I agree with this gentleman over here that there better be policies in place of how to deal with employees. I also think if there are employees, there's a process to go through that has to be outside the fire department, but that's not the case. The volunteer fire department is managed by firefighters and the fire chief and the officers on board who are doing that. Let them do their job or put the things in place where you can do your job to protect vulnerable populations. I'm worried about all the firefighters backs, of course, but the thing is these people are given carte blanche to go into and deal with vulnerable populations and we trust them, they trust us. If you're not gonna let them do their job, then do it correctly and put the stuff in place for you to make sure that the people you're sending out to represent towns as your employee are able to do that. There's a lot of things, if you go into public service as a paid employee, you have to do background checks, you have to do a whole bunch and you have to jump through a ton of hoops. If you're gonna call them employees, that's something the town better take into real consideration with your legal department and whoever else because that's a whole kettle of worms you may not wanna uncork. But if you're gonna take that responsibility, put the tools in place where you're gonna be able to do it and don't take the day-to-day operations away from qualified people that do it. It would be like the fire chief or police chief saying, oh, I don't like the town manager, they shouldn't be here anymore. That's not how it works. So at least put the tools in place, thank you. So we are getting to the 30 minute period but I will take a couple more if there's people in person that still haven't had the opportunity to speak. Okay, so seeing none, we will close public comment period. Wait, oh wait, Gene has his hand up, oops, I'm sorry. Tom, Tom, Harry, I'm gonna pass it over here to the United Church and I think it's okay to move my life commission seat. Tom, Tom, I'm not a citizen of Bethel, but I've been working with this department since it was in this building and I'm the pastor over at the United Church and if it's okay with the group, I'd like to speak. I'm not gonna try and get into your jobs, but I just want you to know what your fire department does, want you to know the type of things they see every day. I was the medical examiner in this area. I've worked with them on recoveries, I've worked with them on deaths in buildings that have burned up, but you know what, they all care and after the incident on the interstate involving the trooper, the notes that were written simply close this case and you have been blinded to it somehow. I don't know what your process is. Let me tell you this. If I was one of these guys and you did this, I'd be gone. I would just be gone and let you guys figure it out because you seem to be unwilling to figure it out. And even more, Chris, do you think it's okay what that young man wrote on the internet? Do you think it's appropriate? Would you stand down at Dartmouth-Hitchcock holding that man's hand like I have in that bed, looking across at his wife and say that he was a no good pig because it was written in an email. Would you do that? Would you like to come with me and read it to his wife in front of him? Well, he sits there helpless in that bed on the edge of death. You guys disgust me. Officially closing public comment period now. Oh, hang on, Jean. Just hang on, Jean. We're trying to deal with everyone in public that came to speak first. Do you want to talk to Jean now? Do you want to wait? No, go over. Now just hold on, Jean. Yeah. Okay, that's fine. Finally made it down the interstate. Yeah, because of that bright eclipse. Oh, I'm sorry. What's that? No, just here. We have that, but it- You can watch it on Orca Media in a couple of days. You can call Kelly at the town office, but in a couple of days, you can watch the whole thing on Orca Media on your television, I think, and you should be able to hear it or see it on the internet. Okay. Oh, I'm sorry. Oh, I'm sorry, Dave, you should have told us we would have moved you up front. Yeah, this building, the acoustics is not good in here. Well, as far as the personnel issue itself, we didn't make any comment on that. We can't. Whatever's happened has happened. Yeah, well, it's, you know, the process is taken through, but- Well, that's what we have now. So that's what we've got now. Well, we'll see. Hopefully not. But, all right, so you want to hear Jean? Oh, we appreciate you coming. Thanks, Dave. We appreciate it. All right, you want to talk to Jean now? Well, I need to get the, let it die down here a little bit. All right, we're gonna resume the meeting here. Just go ahead to Jean. Jean, you had your hand up, so I know we had some issues with the acoustics in here, Jean, earlier. So you may not have heard, but we were, we had extended the public comment period from 15 to 30 minutes, and we talked about how we were gonna go with in-person first before we go to Zoom, because it's difficult to go back and forth, especially a lot of people. But we did see that your hand was raised ahead of time, Jean, so I'll let you go now, okay? So you're muted, Jean. My comment has to do with the inability to hear. There was a working microphone in that room that could have been taken to the select board members and to any other person who wanted to speak. Because that was not done, I could not hear and hence could not participate in the meeting. That runs counter to the whole idea of having hybrid meetings, which was, trees don't just shake your head, you could have made it possible. I didn't realize, because we have a mic right here on the table. So if I turned my mic on, we got that wicked echo and feedback in the hall that you're aware of, cause you're a board member. But the hand mic that is sitting on the stand in front of the audience, that was also in the chat and that could have been taken, or board members could have gone to that mic just to set the pattern so that I didn't have to keep interrupting. Okay, I see. I'm sorry, I'm, I apologize, I didn't think. You got enough, I'm apologizing for my tone, but I am upset because I couldn't participate. Whether time was limited or not. Well, I couldn't hear. Do you have something you want to ask? I'm happy to tell you, and I'm sorry, I didn't, but is there something that you'd like to ask or say? I'm happy to answer any question or so is Chris or any of the select board members, Jean. I don't feel qualified to ask a question because I couldn't hear what Chris said at the beginning, nor could I hear, I think it was Dave said something, nor could I hear what Chris said later. I couldn't hear the other side. I don't know if my question was asked, raised, answered or not because I was not able to hear. Now, I understand technical difficulties, but there was a solution in the room and you were made a known of it. That's it, I'm done. Okay, thank you, Jean. I'm sorry that happened. It's all right. So we are moving forward with our agenda items. So the next on the agenda was to, we have a second class liquor license, tobacco license and tobacco substitute endorsement for the central market, as well as a first class and third class license for babes bar. So. Can you ask a small clarification on that? Sure. Don't we usually give babe bar an outdoor at the same time? Yeah, I usually do, but, and Paul brought that up. So I double checked with Pam and they hadn't submitted it. So she was reaching out to babes to have them contact DLC to submit their outside consumption permits. So you'll see that at the next select board meeting. Okay, all in favor. All right. Okay, it's happening. And we have the White River Valley ambulances requests to hold a coin drop on July 6th from 7.30 AM to 1 PM. So moved. Okay. This needs a signature. Okay. All in favor. So that was Denise and Dave. Sorry. I'm also taking the minutes. So. Sorry. I didn't, I didn't see that they had a, a drawing of the traffic thing, but I'm a. Yeah, it's the ambulance. I'm assuming they probably have the process down for that. Cause they normally send it to the town, right? Yeah. I'm sure that Sally either, maybe Kelly has it. I don't have it here. I just have this in their proof of insurance, but. The brother below. On the line. That's what the other one. Yeah. The fire department has a drawing with the, but I don't remember. Did the White River Valley ambulance do one here before. So that's why I was wondering if they knew the process. But I'll double check with Kelly that they submitted a drawing. All right. So that one's taken care of. And we have the Bethel fire department's request to hold coin drops on May 25th. And also on August 31st. From nine to one. All in favor. I'm assuming we still have a nice little calendar of all the coin. Kelly, I double check. We're not doubling any of these. Because the slide board or the fire department wanted to. So I made sure that they were, that yeah, that because the ambulance has one fire department has two historical society. So yeah, I double checked with Kelly before you approved any that we have them. Committee. Yeah. And then we have. The planning commission's request to appoint Allen Greensburg. To the planning commission for a three-year term. So you have your memo in there from Eric Webb, who's the new. Select. Planning commission chair. And he'd been to a meeting and he submitted a very, very nice letter to them. And he has followed the conservation planning commissions and he's a retired teacher. And has experienced. So they were happy to have them on board. Any discussion from the board on that? If not, just need a motion to approve. Second. Okay. And we had talked about our select board goals over the last two meetings. Last time we kind of dug in a little bit on. More of the. Particulars of what. Kind of each of us or some of us would like to see those goals be. And. And three said. Compiled the. Four, I guess. Which was. Update the. Traffic and trash ordinances. That Denise kind of brought up. I had talked about the gravel roads maintenance and inventory and maybe long-term planning of those roads. Paul had talked about the human services advisory process. And the emergency shelter container. And Jordan had talked about energy audit results review. That sound accurate. Did you have anything, Dave, that you wanted to add to any of that? Because he's working. He's going to try to do the state. Oh, that's right. Okay. I think that we have an additional goal. To try to figure out how to deal with the situation. And I think we need to make it a priority to try to, you know, Don our eyes and cross a T's and try to work to make things better over there because it's, you know, this is a horrible state to be in. It is. And you'll certainly we'll be doing that because, and your next meeting, you will be creating the fire department advisory board. That David Aldrigate, the entire chief now wanted to start, which is great. And, you know, he talked about that with. You know, Gary Cougler and with Greg Timmons was the assistant chief. And we've met a couple of times and I've talked to Dave, talked to Gary, obviously, and coming together so that, you know, it's a huge stress to be on the one person to be chief. So the fire advisory board will help with a lot of that. And that was why Dave was in favor of that. And was in favor of the fire department advisory board. So the fire advisory board will help with a lot of that. And that was why Dave was in favor of that. And was in favor of, of. You know, Gary helping, you know, to create that because there's just, you know, he's, they're volunteers and there's so much dumped on their families and they have jobs. And so you'll definitely will be working towards that at the next meeting. So we'll have a lot more information at the next meeting. So do we want to add it as a goal or do we want to use it as a, or keep it on as an agenda item until it's completed type deal. So it's more in front of us. I think it's, I think it's above the goal. I don't think it's just a goal. I think it's a project. Yeah. So we want to just, we'll keep that on the agenda and push that through here over the next few boards. Yep. Okay. So we'll keep that on as a revolving board. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So as far as the, the, um, I guess the long-term select board goals for this year, maybe even take longer than a year. Um, the four that we had talked about, are we good with kind of moving forward with those and, and start to take some action on moving towards on those or. Okay. And I, and I would say that it would be nice. Um, to have some opportunities to involve, um, Our citizens and maybe helping us on some of these. Like, I mean, the gravel roads thing is, I mean, there's just so many roads, 68 miles worth of roads to do. And, um, so anybody that, you know, might have an interest in wanting to do something with gravel roads or, you know, it could be, you know, working on. Traffic or trash ordinances. I'm sure there might be some way that we could do that. Um, I think that's a good question. And that or human services. All might have somebody that currently works on that might want to do that. Or, or, you know, George, maybe there's somebody that. Maybe somebody from the, um, energy committee that may want to be a part of the. That process. Okay. Yeah. Would it, would it be something that we may want to like put out there? Um, publicly, like, you know, as the, I think as each select board member is ready to pick that goal up, it would be a good time to do it then. So you want each one of us individually come to you and. Well, yeah, we could, I'm happy to put out a from porch forum post or reach out to people on committees, whatever, but he wants, but yeah, just get there. Just let me know. And we. Maybe, I mean, we're talking about a year. Take the time for whomever comes up with something. Put it in the agenda to publicly say, okay. I looked at 10 roads, 10 gravel roads. And this is what we're thinking about doing there. What's up with. Just picking things. Okay. We've got two things that we just not going to do anymore. Or we're going to broaden the scope. I don't know. Yeah. But as each person comes up with something. Basically anything. Yeah. And how you're going to. Yeah. Absolutely. That's a good idea. So being that we meet twice a month, would it be better if maybe once a month that we. That we will revisit this and we can update how. Where we're at with those goals. Sure. So put them on once a month. That gives a little more. Incentive initiative to. Keep working. Yep. Okay. When's the energy efficiency meeting? Well, the, the. Let me see. Look at my calendar. They. We do the, the 16th is the town hall energy audit at two o'clock. When is the meeting? When do they have their meetings? Oh, the energy committee. I don't know. I'd have to look at the. I don't know. So we'll get the audit results and that first. Cause they're going to come and do the energy audits. And then I don't know how long until we get a written. Right up. So one more thing. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know how long it goes because they're going to come and do the energy audits. And then I don't know how long until we get a written right up. So once we do. I'll let you know. And then I can look at, see when the energy. Committee. One or two people out of it. Sure. Okay. I'll. Once I don't know how long between the audit and we get the results. So, but I'll let you know. Anything further on select board goals. I'll let you know. I'll let you know. Thank you. I'm glad I just had that. We can put that in the town report and, you know, we can show what they were and where we, you know, maybe. Maybe we might even be able to add a page or two of the town report of, you know, this is what we did or. At with them or short. That's a good idea. Okay. And then last, but not least. We have Ryan was just going to kind of. Windsor County Sheriff's has been helping us out in town, as well as, I think he said he wanted to pay $20,000 for the cruiser he had, so that was really nice of him. He had a check, I think, a big one. Ryan Palmer, Windsor County Sheriff, can you hear me out there all right? Thank you. Gene gone? I think so. All right, so yeah, a couple of things. I think we started, and I can't remember off the top of my head, I forget to write down, but December or January, time frame, right? January, and so we've had in total calls for service. I think we're in like the 230 range, but most of those were directed patrols and traffic stops. So 131 of those were traffic stops, but we have had some, a couple of different serious cases, one of them involved some folks that were breaking into coming back to their mother's house and spurred a pretty in-depth investigation where we ended up seizing a gun and some methamphetamine in Berlin. And so that was pretty effective. Working with our local intelligence group, which is made up of all the different law enforcement in the area, we just had a meeting in Hartford. So there's some things on my radar that we're working on and we're very aware of those issues, so we're pushing forward on that. But overall, it seems like it's been fairly smooth so far. Still working on making sure that we have staffing in the right time frames and have people on, but trying to be very responsive when folks call us and get out there and help out when you need us. And then there is some discussion. I haven't actually seen the car yet. We were thinking maybe we might need it if you're gonna get rid of it. Oh, you didn't go see some of that you had to set up? Yeah, the schedules didn't line up and I had other stuff going on. Well, you'll set it up with Oscar directly that way you can mesh their schedules. I'm not 100% sure that we need it. So if you guys wanna put it out to bid or something like that, I'm not, I don't really need it. And so I don't know if I wanna spend the money on it right now. It's understandable. Yeah, and I appreciate it's a pretty good offer and stuff. I just don't know that I need it. But any thoughts, questions for me? Sorry, it's not a very in-depth update, but. So when you said that you had a bust, it sounds like a drug bust in Berlin, is that something you started in Bethel? Yeah, I started in Bethel. So folks were living and staying in Bethel that were involved in some nonsense and were continuing to create problems in Bethel and what they had been moved out to a hotel in Berlin by the state. And that's when we ended up catching up with them. But we seized a loaded firearm from two prohibited people and we worked with our federal partners, Homeland Security Investigations on that and some state partners, Fishing Game was involved for a different reason. But we were able to get one gun off the street from some people that shouldn't have it and 11 almost 12 grams of methamphetamine. So, and they seem to have not really been back to Bethel since then, but we're continuing to work a couple other angles on different places in town and we're certainly, those things are on our radar. And I had one comment and one question, but so I know one thing that is important for us, that we usually have a presence in the past. Either if it was Trooper Feeney in the past or if it was a gospel is having that presence in around the school, not just traffic enforcement, but just having that, see the kids when they get out of school or maybe once in a while see them go into school because I think it's really important to make sure that we have that connection between the school, not just school and town, but the kids and their interaction with law enforcement and things like that. And of course, kids are in the know and if they have a good relationship with it then there's obviously information that you collect from that. And then the second piece with, so now that you've spent a period of hours in the community, is there anything that we have asked for a service above and beyond? Like, have you seen something that we didn't ask for that maybe we should be looking a little heavier at? No, I think ultimately it comes down to what the taxpayers can afford. I wish that we had, right now we, it's not a ton of time that we have in town just from the budgetary standpoint that goes up a little bit on July one, which I think will be good. And on our end it's making sure that we can allocate time properly for that. I think with the limited time that we have I think we're making a pretty good dent, so to speak. My thing is I'm selling full service police, full service law enforcement, the best that we can. I think there is a considerable underbelly of some narcotics trade and all the nonsense that goes with that and several places in town. And that's tough with a limited amount of hours to really put a legitimate effort that's gonna make a dent when we, like I said, we've did a little bit. And in one of those cases, not a little bit, it was a pretty in-depth thing. But I think just hopefully we earn our keep and we're able to get someplace down the road where ultimately I think Bethel could use a 40 hour a week position, which is a lot of money to ask. Trust me, I'm well aware of what my taxes are gonna do down in Windsor. So that's a big ask, right? But there's been a couple of issues at the town hall and I think we've been able to respond to that in a timely manner, help the folks of the town hall feel safe. So no, I don't think that there's anything that I didn't expect. It's just we're trying to make the best we can out of it. Okay. Well, thank you. Thanks, guys. Thanks. All right. Town managers report. So I did hear back, as you know, that we appealed our CLA with the state. So Rick Benson obviously has been great about that. Just because there were some questions and since the listeners had retired, we weren't really sure about a couple of things. So they did. So we appealed successfully and our CLA is gonna increase a little bit. So hopefully it'll be about maybe a half sand or sent on the tax rate. I was able, well, with the small eclipse party at the school, I was able to talk to Jamie and he said that they were doing the calculation today based off that information. And it'll be almost a cent savings for the town with that CLA difference. Okay, great. So it was, you know, it's about, yeah. Yeah, the CLA went up by a half a percent. I think so. I don't have the numbers right in front of me, but yeah, so that was great. So we did get that news today. So that's something you'll sign off on next week. Apparently, once you appeal, so obviously we've appealed and then, but you have to accept the results. So that will be in two weeks. So Paul, it's, with that CLA going up a half a percent, if nothing else changes, that'll help our tax rate go, we were about two and a half cent increase. So it would probably bring it just under two cents. However, don't be the bearer of bad news. However, the yield still has not been set in the state. Oh, okay. So we're talking the school tax. The school tax, right? Yeah, not the town tax. Yeah, the CLA. Well, just both. You know, it'll adjust, but not, we'll see more significant difference at the school than we would at the town. Yeah, because that's part of their form. But we're still at the school, we haven't set that yield yet in it. I don't know. I don't think they have the comfort yet to promote the number that they had thrown out there. Yeah, so we'll have to see what happens there. So well, that just came in today actually. So that was good news. So temporary construction easement deeds, I sent to Pinellos and the Fairchild because the Pinello Bridge project, and today I also sent them GMP deed modifications. I'm working directly with a GMP with our project engineer, the bridge engineer, as well as just reached out to someone at the Vermont VTrans about getting, apparently we need, because GMP is removing the poles, we need to have a different modified agreement with them. So I'm working with GMP so that we can get that modified agreement so that the whole plan is that the Pinello Bridge goes in this year. It's been a huge process. So that's done. There was an amendment to the phase two water project. Obviously that'll get started pretty soon. J.A. McDonald is hoping to start the culvert replacement on Camp Brook Road. That's quite a little bump there now. I know, on the 22nd, but they're also, we're trying to put them in contact. I've been talking to Frank Severy at the town of Rochester, because the town of Rochester wants them to do some work on their side. So we can sign their side, we sign our side, and we kind of work it out together. So we've been trying to communicate about that. And I put Frank and in touch directly with J.A. McDonald, Buddy Bancroft, their foreman. So as the whole meeting has been talked about that sadly, that Dave Aldrigate retired on Friday, April 5th. So per state statute, as town manager, I have the right to appoint fire department officers. And so I did appoint Gary Kugler as interim fire chief. He had been unelected within the side, the department, the assistant chief for many years. And he's working with assistant chief, excuse me, Greg Timmons, and Greg will have full operational control of the department. And Gary will help with HR and policies, procedures. And so it was, I talked to them both. And so it's an interim, just to help, we have a lot going on with the total fire truck and a lot of other things obviously up in the air that need to be handled. So I appreciate that Gary was willing to do that as did the assistant chief. So that's it for the town manager's report. All right. And we had the select board meeting minutes from the 25th of March. Unless there's any amendments to that, just need a motion to approve. Okay, all in favor? All right. All right. There was the Bethel Planning Commission had their meeting minutes in there as well as the DRB. Of course I was reading through the DRB minutes and then I was like, have we gotten any further with the VOREC state permit that nobody knows is the permit that we need a permit then? I did speak to, I wrote to and then spoke with Jackie Dagger. She's the head of the VOREC grant for the state and just said, look, you know, we are getting put through the mill here for a permit we don't need. You don't have a permit on the state's website. She said she was aware and then she, she referred us to someone else. So, so Chris Forz is trying to set up a meeting between VOREC and the- ANR or something. ANR and DC. There's like, you know, several different people here who keep kicking the can and we're very clear that we don't need a permit. There's not one on the website that we're required but yet it's holding the process up. So we've even talked about either reallocating that money towards a different part of the project or just saying we're not gonna do that piece and giving that money back to VOREC but there's not a permit required for us to work there. So, and Chris Forz, you know, God bless him for, he's a project manager. He's hoping that just by getting people, they are from ANR, from that, that they actually can look at the area and see instead of just looking at Google Earth maps or whatever they're looking at, just trying to get them to actually come to Bethel and somebody's in South Royalton and so it's not like there's a big trek here. So hopefully we can get a squared away but right now, no dice. So, unfortunately. Okay. And anything else to come before the board? I have. Here and none, just need a motion to adjourn. So moved. Second. Okay, we'll have a good night everybody. Thank you.