 Okay Thing is on I had to call the meeting order at 6 30 Any additions? We need to discuss what if any obligation the town has to pick up flood debris Yeah, in addition Rosie asked me to include that Lindy Johnson has resigned as justice of the peace so we can I can read up to you later Yeah, that was the addition I had Debris Okay But that is you have something I do if we could just give you a brief conversation about clarification of When we need to what it's necessary to call a meeting Preview under other business I got a report from a townsperson on CV fiber Connection costs that I'll just share with you and see if you guys know anything more than what I got in this email Okay, anything else Review of minutes June 19th, and also July 14th 19th meeting I made some comments. I'm not in the record of being at the meeting On the 19th I was in the flesh No apologies necessary It made some motions to Remember I asked if you needed if you were on nervous about being alone up there, and I would sit next to you I was here you said you would be okay because Carl wasn't yeah. Yeah Okay Is that all that was at that meeting with just three of us? Did you 19? I mean that's four people in this like word Oh, you were there. Yeah, I was there There's a three of us there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah You doubt you're doubting me. Hmm. You doubting me. No, of course not No, I'm just looking at the list of people throughout the meeting. I realize the only one that was actually actually was Carl So we should add that in It wasn't a slight No, it was you know, it was a slight but it wasn't purpose. Okay I'll make the motion to accept the minutes. Oh wow, then you can always have You certainly have the discussion. We have things along Now we have further discussion about the minutes Nobody has any Corrections or comments on the Multi-page document that you're looking at Okay Comprehensive as usual. Yes very thorough and The problem is that your name wasn't mentioned enough We can change that Did you want to do that? No, seriously. This is the accurate. This is the public, right? Yeah Yeah, but you made some motions you said. That's why oh you've got it right here, right? Yeah, your motions are attributed to you exactly All right All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. No, I'd have it appear to have it. Did you have it? Okay, that's June 19th. Let's look at July 14th That's correct, that's why the ministry One page I'll make the motion to accept the minutes That's all you step up here. I'll second that Discussion about the minutes from July 14th. No, all the favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. The eyes appear to have it They do have it That takes care of the minutes Public comment. I see some people here. This could be public Did you want to say something under public comment? Are you here for a specific agenda item? Okay In here somewhere. Oh, yeah, that's our next item. So And on the screen there. Oh, that's Larry Gilbert You're gonna say something under public comment or you're just here for the county road. Okay. Okay. Let's move on to discussion on County Road event And a space laser in hand Brooks Veronica I live on the county road. Okay, good evening. Good evening We the residents of County Road had to present value tax against the road closure yet To select what only gave one point for the road closure to benefit the community Including Mr. Gilbert We the residents should not have to present value points when we clearly do not want our road to be closed for bicycles, runners, or walkers We have them during the day already now questions to select board members Have you not been selected by it residents to represent them and to wish and To act on their behalf and respect their wishes Why is a select what going against its residents who are impacted the most and clearly said with majority numbers? No, we don't want it closed Do any of the select board members reside travel daily on our roads? Mr. Gilbert, you said all trash would be picked up It was not picked up. I was home and I was watching Do you have permission to step on people's properties? Who is held responsible if one of your volunteers slips false and try to own properties? I do not give such permission to step on my property Mr. Gilbert, you are promoting more bicycles to use our road by a so-called road cries As shown on the country road street survey at our expense and inconvenience Who is the game you are selling bikes and more sperm was mentioned as well Including in the Times Argus. They cannot be blocked because they will lose money But it's okay for us to be blocked Also, it came to my attention that one select port member teaches bike safety. Is this correct? No, no answer to the questions as you Okay, so do the one of us teach like safety. I'm certified to teach bicycle safety for the League of American bicyclists So there's no agenda there. Okay. It was stated 70 plus bicycles were on the road July 9th we saw about Top end 20 and maybe three children two were going up the hill unsupervised and One car came down One hour from 11 to 12 o'clock. Nobody was on the road Two residents. I know drove the road both of them were given dirty looks and one of the residents was given even the finger If the select port is not willing and goes against its residents wishes, maybe it's time to step down or be reelected by somebody else We the impacted residents say again. No to our road closure Will our voices be heard today? If not, I propose that select port bring it before the East Montpellier voters to officially vote on it No one outside East Montpellier should dictate or demand to use our road This is a matter for the people of East Montpellier. Thank you I do okay, um I'd just be curious to ask You said that between 10 and 11 that you saw me three children No, there was nobody on the road between 11 and 12 o'clock before that I saw it three children two parents were going up the hill and The two children were way behind Maybe I'm supervised I'm living on the on the county road, right Uh-huh, I just curious because I was at the temple at the juncture between It was going up the hill where the forest starts and the parents were way out of sight They were not even to be seen and the children were going in the middle and then going up in the middle of the road and the car came down And I was curious Do you think it'd be more fair to pose this question to all residents of East Montpellier or just people that live on County Road? We are the ones who are getting affected the most. So do you think it would be road closure? This is affecting everybody on this road So do you think the vote should be put to people that residents of County Road? Instead of all these small pillars that might be more fair because Perhaps other residents of East Montpellier might want to go to use County Road What do you think? It's not it's not there back here It's our front yard and we're being impacted. I don't even dare go and pull out on the road anymore Because with the children all over the place, it's not safe. I'm not taking that chance Okay, I got a question You say we Residents of East Montpellier, how many people are you representing? On our road? A couple Okay, because I counted 44 houses Between Templeton Road and Barnett Road both sides of the road There's 44 households on that stretch of road At least four say no and one of these couldn't be here tonight. She's not Okay, so you've got four people That's just in our media here. Okay Yeah, I didn't count pattern horned line. I just counted houses on each side of the road Okay, but I'm just saying are you representing the 44 households until I stretch your road or you representing four people? As of right now The people who live near us. Okay. If it continues We would have to take no thought door to door and go get more and more if this is going to be an unknown Fantastic. Well, I just wonder who you represent I mean before it was you said we the residents that means more than yourself Right, and the problem is a lot of people apparently nothing's going to happen Nothing's going to change you're going to do this anyways They just kind of put up with you to try because you didn't listen the first time when you rode in Okay, so what's the difference here? I just wondered what you're who you're representing Yeah, you talked about uh, you're the ones who are experiencing the impact of this. Could you describe the impact, please? We're at the house and people walk in the road. So that they said two people gave very low and one gave the finger We didn't just sleep We don't represent that but some of the residents And pull us up this so the impact on you guys directly. What was that? Down at the end of the road, we have people in the in the road and if we go out there They're kind of like you shouldn't be here that type of thing And it just makes it very uncomfortable for us to interact with our community members Where we're being chastised because we're not doing what they want. Did you go out there in the car? I I won't go out there now. I will not go out there again. I will not drive in that road I am I am going to stay in my house. I'm going to stay away from these people because they are They are very very very Unpleasant to be around you go out there and they're not following what they want What do they want you to do? Get out of the way and don't drive on the road We don't belong on the road. Yeah, we don't belong on the road. The road's closed. You're not supposed to be here This is the road. What is the definition between a road and a bike path? We have a bike path. We have places for bicycles to go. This is a road It's not right to have the bicycles on there and we have to pay attention all over the place Yeah, we do it during the day. They're already there So, how did you experience this sense that they didn't want you there? You walked on your driveway to the road and people give you dirty looks no drive. We tried to drive out You tried to drive out on July 9th July 9th was the last one wasn't it? Yes. Yes. That was something that's what David we're talking about You tried to drive out people gave you dirty looks so you went back into your warehouse I did my business came back, but I don't like it. I went the other way though. I went towards Was it the orange one? Not orange, not orange, but the other way. What's the difference between the district guards or the town guards? So I'm confused. I thought at the beginning you were saying other people told you the drivers that they got dirty looks, but you I did too. You did too. But I kind of associate that. I get all five driving on the road even during the regular days when you're out there in bicycles We're in the middle of the road so let me try to go around and I can get the work done Okay, let's give someone else a chance Okay, would it be okay if I address you over there? Sure. Yeah, that'd be great even better. Yeah Could we give them a state their name for the record team, please? Yes, David Pope And I live on 2543 county road And I have been on county road for 43 years First I want to thank you don't want to block Larry. Yeah, you're good. Yeah, that's perfect Okay, I I want to first Thank Carl because and Gina because you've both been very generous with your time and I learned a lot and I appreciate Our conversations. I enjoy your conversation too. And I appreciate all of the work that you do for the community I've been in the community for a very long time and I was one of four people who started the first neighborhood watch in the area that were We're discussing There are so many reasons why this road is inappropriate for This kind of event I I need to tie a few things together first off I don't want to confuse a sense of community and convenience with safety So one of my points is going to be safety Living here for so long I can put you in touch with my neighbors, particularly across the street who have had three cars in the time period of the year end up in their Front yard and what stopped the cars from hitting the house was some of the landscaping that they had to redo three times The road also within that same year and the same eyesight distance in both directions Were two other cars that went off the road including Your shaking your head you're familiar with these Accidents because you've seen them going by I spoke to another resident of county road who is hard to similar And and it's The road also is unfamiliar to a lot of people because we have a lot of tourists We have people going to woodbury campsite to Curtis pond and and obviously moors farming They're unfamiliar with county road because they come from other States along with When carlin and I were talking We were talking about A place in what kill you where the roads could be closed down That's very convenient because the roads are so close together that it's easy to make detours and bypasses around Some of the roads in a city This is the main road It's a main thoroughfare that connects the communities and I have heard from them One in plain field and two separate people in booster who Are not liking this idea the path about safety. I need to connect Because you might be asking yourself So what does this have to do with the road closure because when the road is closed it is much more safe It's true, but now the door is open It's no longer that situation. I'm already seeing the difference. There are a lot more bikers On a road that's fast and it's narrow. It has curves That has hills. I'm I'm on the top of the hill in a curve. So I see a lot of things I would be happy to invite you all over to my driveway. I have all kinds of parking space I will be the proper hoax Just tell me what your favorite drink is I promise that I won't give you dirty looks or flip you the burger Um and and the might not even need to be any words If you just see what's going on there if you can imagine bikes there Carl informed me about part of this safety, you know a conversation about That if a road is too narrow and correct me, Carl if I get this wrong If the road is too narrow then part of what's safety is to Have the bike or drive in the middle of the lane And my comment after that one I can understand that that makes sense If you're going 30 miles an hour But when you're going 40 50 60 80 and now there are people on the road That are passing other people that are going a little bit beyond the speed limit They're passing and it's not safe to pass That's still what does that have to do with the road closure because when the road is closed It's safe But it isn't anymore Because what we're doing is encouraging people I I think you all know this It's primal. It's instinctual. It's natural and when I say it you're going to agree For every act where the good or evil paves the way for its repeat If I ever forget that all I have to do is watch my cat for an hour That's what's natural Advertisers love to get you to try something the first time try Kellogg's complex Again for the first time. Do you remember that commercial? We're conditioning these people and what I was trying to make a point with Carl about We we could probably have a bigger spance of an opinion that could Be over a greater distance of the community If the road was closed and I gave the instance of Vincent flats I was saying to Carl. Well, it's straight It's flat. There's a place to park the cars at the at the school And then he reminded me that But it's blurry And then in closing We realized because of the speed of county road that some of what's enjoyable Is the ups and downs and the curves and that's what makes it interesting That's like giving them not just the peanut butter but the chocolate too What when we encourage people like this I really need to understand How it's not going to keep bringing more and more of them To the county road when it's open I know when I bike That if I'm familiar with a path That I've enjoyed I'm going to remember it and I'm going to go back to it when the opportunity presents itself with The right time temperature The distance whatever is the most convenient And because we're tempting them with such a nice road to bike on They're going to be coming back When the road is open. I'm already seeing it I've been here for 43 years And I just don't want to conflate Convenience And sense of community that doesn't seem like it's going too good with the looks and the gestures And I have more questions, but when I look through the information that was given To be in email about the participants on county road, I added up the adults and children and there were 50 adults and 26 children Two of those adults really should be children particularly because of the gestures I feel as if a lot of times we get involved with Unforeseen consequences and That's what I'm concerned about If you can convince me If you can persuade me because by the way, I don't want to be right about this I would rather be wrong And so if you can convince me and make me feel better about encouraging these people And be seeing the increase in speed and danger and inconvenience to the community I want to know about it. I I want to understand how you can take this point of marketing Basically encouraging this to happen and not Knowing that part of the Consequences is going to be that we're going to have more people on county road When it's open So I don't I don't want to interrupt you but We do have other people that need to talk and maybe you've talked for six or seven minutes Okay, so if you could wrap it up so we can ask you some questions and also have Larry talk that'd be great. Okay I I just I just don't want to be in denial I'm here not because I want to be because I have to be because of my conscience I can't imagine me not saying this and then something happening not Whence something happens or if something happens when something else happens I can point you to all kinds of people that can tell you about their experiences with With cars if you want you can come and look I just don't want this to be the unforeseen consequences. I don't want to change this road's name to asbestos or lead paint road and That's what I'm concerned about So I would really like your help and understanding how we can ignore what's going on I think we can't ungray that bell. We can just tone down the volume Okay, thank you for your well, thank you. So do we have any questions? I have a question. Okay, good. Um, so are you concerned about car speeding in general on captive road? Yes, yes And yeah, yeah, how long have you been noticing the speeding? Um, it seems like it's been increasing in the last three or four years It may be a little bit before that And I think one of the things is the concern of passing when They are going a little bit above the speed limit I think that we could probably get the sheriff's department to Not only Find out how many people are speeding but what the average speed is they're coming from callus Where the speed limit is 50 and they're not changing their speed I've heard that from another resident that there's been a lot of people passing a lot of A lot of speeding They're passing so fast they're passing two cars on the curb Just before this house people watching It's an enforcement issue. I guess I know it's not the town. I understand that it's an enforcement issue But it's definitely something that if you're in the middle of the lane, this guy this guy's not these people Bumps it's got these people aren't going 50 miles an hour. There's some of them He's in there blasting by everybody. It's unbelievable. It's got these things. It's got a lot worse Silly, if somebody's in the middle of a white corner on a blind corner So your primary concern is with safety for bicyclists and drivers And I think because it's a main thoroughfare a lot of communities in its rural Versus it being in a city where you can just detour easily. There's a lot of people that depend on that more so along with He also the fact of a lot of Outside visitors from other other states And they're not familiar with the road Any more questions for Dave? Because I like Larry to have a chance to talk Well, thank you. Okay. Thank you very much. Yep, point's well taken So Larry you Wanted a chance to speak I imagine Thank you. Thank you very much and Thanks for Having taken up this issue once once again. I know you guys have We can't hear you now Larry I think it was something on there and Can hear me now just hold on. All right, you shouldn't be now test test. Can you hear me? No, no I'm sorry. Can you hear me? Yes or no? Yes, we can hear it now. Very good. Thank you. Thanks for taking this issue As long as you don't say anything to the audience Would you like me to continue or wait? Maybe now Can you hear me now? Yes. Yes. Okay All right, so somebody somebody give some kind of sign if you cannot hear me. So, um, thank you for taking this Very good Thank you for taking this up again. I know you have really important issues to address this evening I will be extremely quick We believe we had a very successful event on july 9th As mr. Pope said we had about 75 or 80 people. We believe in attendance All of whom were participated We got nothing but raving and positive feedback and I believe that is part of your Record car. I think Carl's a scan scan the surveys that we had into into the town The town website so you can read those so I don't need to repeat those What what I want to tell you is that Given the circumstances that our broader community is facing because of the flood we have decided as a group to hip pause and Not do the july I'm sorry the august event We just think it's kind of inappropriate at the moment to Be closing a road and asking people to detour around on roads that aren't 100 100 percent and so We are not going to be Asking for your permission to do this in august. However, we would like to proceed with september and october as planned However, the purpose of my reporting back to you tonight Was that you wanted to hear from me and from the community about the event and its impact and You had the option then to decide whether to approve any future Events and so those future events would only be september and october but We do recognize that any return to normalcy May take longer than any of us want and so as a group We are going to get together in august and decide whether we believe proceeding in september and october Our our our good is a good idea That that said i do believe the event was extremely successful And a replicable Obviously you've heard some concerns tonight and i'm not going to address those individually unless you want me to But i'll i'll just leave it at that and answer any questions you may have Okay, who's got a question for there? Scott i don't have a question for a for you larry, but If i can i read through the surveys and obviously I highlighted the east maupilier and they were positive My concern is The surveys that we got back are they from people that live in the county road Is it possible since we're now talking about september to do a targeted survey of those residents that live on county road? I mean i know a couple That live on county road and they loved it. They had a reception for anybody that rode by yeah so my concern is Are you the majority the minority? and I'm not as concerned about as people from callas or Maupilier, but i am about those that are directly impacted like yourselves that live on county road and normally as i think we discussed last time You only hear the negative you hear the people that are opposed to it We don't know whether 80 percent think this is a great idea and if there's a way that we could Survey all 44 When i posted on front porch forum i did not ask for only negative feedback So i just want to state i think we keep saying that yeah, but it i didn't just ask for negative feedback That that goes to an argument that any election that's ever one right? That's the point. It's inherently wrong Right, so you know i just want to say that there was an open request. I put without a doubt. No, no, no I also think that that It's situational either you get a lot of positive or you get a lot of negatives But you don't always get negatives first you get everybody depending on the situation Will will rise to the occasion and need to be very positive or very Or could be very negative So i don't think we need to lean that way and and i know that the the emails that we got last time When we sent out those emails were on the majority were negative And i'm not saying that people just jumped in and and i just don't i don't agree with the fact that You always hear the negative first. I don't i guess we'd have to take a poll on that But yeah Yep, what i would like to know is on the questionnaire if it could be if it could be asked Whether the people who have arrived will come back when the road is open I would like to know that Okay Was something else patty g of patty g of aura. I whenever it's appropriate. I'd like to jump in i'm on the phone Okay, what's your name? This is patty g of aura Okay Yeah You can speak Okay, great. Thank you. Um, I just you know, I One of the there were a couple of questions that I posed to larry and carl um After the event and I I'd like to I didn't get an answer to those so I just wanted to ask them again Um, because I know one of the things that was important to the select board was that the people who were um You know stationed at the road closures that they would have flagger training So I am interested to know how many people were volunteering At the end and how many of those people had flagger training Yeah, so um, two of us took the flagger training That's and obviously that's a minority of all the volunteers that were working I did meet with every every volunteer And told them what I I believe their responsibilities were We had some difficulty arranging flagger training And it really wasn't until the last two days prior to to the event itself that that we were able to jointly arrange a time a time to do that. So Notice that answer your question patty Yes, thank you. I mean, I just think that's an important, you know, that was something that was important Um, you know to the select board. I just think it's important that that Yeah, I'm also, you know that that's be shared and the other thing is my understanding was that there was going to be Sheriff presence and I did not observe that I was probably at one and For an hour and 20 minutes ish Throughout the event and you know, I observed that a sheriff stopped at about 9 10 a.m on the barn's road and where I was and Didn't get you know, didn't just stop talk to one of the volunteers and then moved on and that was the only Time that I I don't know if you know If anybody saw that person anymore But for the about at least for the hour and 20 minutes or so that I was at the end of barn's road There certainly was not a um a sheriff presence Um at the event that that I observed and the third thing is I'm also I'm curious I'm there is this count of how many people um Used the road. Um I'm guess anyway My observation and I noticed there was some data being collected was that there were more cars Diverted than there were you people using the road and that was at least in the time that I was observing And the data that I noticed so I'm just curious larry if you had the count of how many cars got diverted um At each end of the road Yeah, patty, I do not have I do not have that number and and my guess is probably you're absolutely right It was more more cars diverted than participants using using using the road. Absolutely. I think that's that's legitimate fair observation I would I would I would say that I believe and this is subjective that that most of the people who were diverted Who stopped and and talked to our flaggers? Asked what was going on and when they were told they said okay fine And drove drove on some of them clearly were not happy about it But I would say the most most people seemed to think that was a fair and legitimate use that again is the subjective my opinion um And but I will say that a number of people said oh gee, I didn't know this was going on Is that you're going to do this again? Great. I'll come back next month or something. So Okay and I do I do share your concern about the sheriff and I expressed this to carl also We were supposed to have a Sheriff present the entire time. I had a long conversation with brett mires the washington county sheriff about this He was all all over it. They're very excited He assigned somebody to it assured me that they would be there for three hours be at both ends be patrolling The thing back forth doing the loop I felt really good about that and then when I also never saw the sheriff the entire time I was a little bit concerned Okay So so patty do you have more questions? No, no, I don't I you know, I guess my you know just my you know kind of summary on this is I'm I I guess I'm just like have this sense about Why are we trying to convince ourselves or why is the select board trying to? I convince themselves that That we should be doing this. I guess I'm just missing the point here about You know, I mean it just seems like there are some valid concerns I'm not sure the other dissident didn't go As planned from a safety standpoint, which was a key concern And I'll just say that it didn't go as planned from a flag or standpoint from having the sheriff there At least as two points. So I guess I'm like I'm just kind of well, I mean now that I haven't heard the select board talk Okay, but but I just want to say like like I'm not sure why I just consider like why you're trying to convince yourself This is a good idea. I guess is my would be my question. So anyway, that's that's all I had to say Okay, well we can answer that Yeah, I briefly like to address that. Um, I don't have an opinion For against this event. I'm trying to figure out just like everyone else I did attend from about 9 50 a.m. To Maybe a little bit after 11 a.m. near Templeton and county And it was my observation that Actually it seemed like Maybe 40 of the cars diverted We're very interested in the event Several actually said that they were going to be coming back later that day and I think I mean cars were constantly showing up to park and then people were leaving with stuff and walking on the road So that was just a little I just needed to add this slightly different observation than what had been put to the record Um, I do think that the matter should be put to the residents of county road. Like I said, I don't have I think that's the best way Um To gather more data on it. I don't like I said, I don't have an opinion but to address your question I'm not trying to convince myself of anything. I'm going on what I've observed and The best that I can make sense of what's been given to me because it is It's not black or white yet to me Okay, and I also spoke to a resident at length who didn't care He was like the chief concern to me being there speaking to residents was the speed of county road The event was oh, I don't care. I can get in and out if I need to But please address the speeding. That's what I heard the most of okay, so you want to um address patty at all or for Concerns it should have been kind of the lead Sure Yeah, um No, I mean larry and I share your concern that the the sheriff didn't show up and larry wrote brett meyer and email afterwards and said hey, what happened here? And I joined the thread and said yeah, please please Keep me informed about this and I have and I haven't heard anything back from that and I don't think you have either. Have you lair I am not no, so that's that's a problem with the the sheriff and and we need to be talking with him about that I was disappointed with that as far as The the flagger training. I mean I wasn't at the event So, uh, I can't you know speak from personal experience about what it was like at the barricades but uh If larry and somebody else went to the flagger training and then briefed the people at the barricades and the essentials of it Then that that uh, that to me is not a failure of the flagger training That's somebody in the town getting the training needed and passing it on to to the folks who are going to be doing it How long was the flagger training larry? It was the last four hours, so we got through it in three though, so Okay, so to stand at a barricade and and talk to people about a row closure Three or four hours of training seems kind of excessive And I think that's a lot to expect of volunteers But for somebody to get the training and to explain the essence of it to people seem to have to be fine In terms I was just going to comment on flagger training from what I understand from larry smith and our road foreman There are some pretty specific requirements that if you are considered a flagger There's a reason people are supposed to in fact the road foreman had some concerns of releasing the signs Upon repressing his concern flagger training suddenly occurred, but um, yeah He was concerned even about passing those signs over because you are supposed to be trained to use those signs any signs that they're using So just wanted to mention that. Okay, so um as far as The folks on you know getting more information from the folks on country road I I think yeah, it's great to have more dialogue with the folks on county road We got to remember that this is a town road and everybody in town pays taxes for this road and Everybody in town has a right to use it So, uh, I I think that we also need to take into account the 75 or so people who enjoyed it this time We got surveyed back enthusiastic surveyed back from 28 people who used it Um, apparently in november there were a couple hundred people Who who were there and it was it was quite a fest So I think we need to be thinking about all of that. Is that is that a positive comment? I mean are you saying that? It's a public road. So the public that used it it was appropriate to have 70 people using the road Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, I guess I'd go the other way and say it as the public road is meant for They public not a public It's meant for all the public And we pay taxes on that road to keep that road open 24 seven Every season of the year. I think it's even a requirement in the Road and bridge standards that the road be open and available And just arbitrarily closing the road for four hours Inconveniences people who live on that road it scares some of the people that live on that road um, it impacts the people who are driving from Cowish woodberry or hardwick or a mott pilliard that want to go that way um Those that public is is not experiencing and not benefiting from the taxes that they're putting to that road during that period of time Yeah, we're talking about one percent of the time a month something like that They have a special event. Wow. Yeah, and I can see it being done on a on a class one road Which a class one road is a road that's shared by the state in a town and it's maintaining the majority of the time by the town You're usually in a quiet area. You're usually in a village setting or a town a city setting But they're not a class two road, which is that one is probably even a federal highway That's you know, I don't know. I don't think you know either Kind of yeah No, I know that but for instance There's a road that goes from hardwick to greensboro. That's a that's a class Wouldn't it so that's a that's a class two road, but it's a federal highway as well So there are federal highways here. You just don't know which ones they are but but the point I'm making is that is that um I think the road should be open available to everybody Can I make a quick comment? Yeah If if this was in a place else that we did have this over on vincent flats I probably wouldn't have a voice in it because I would think that it would be up to the people who were directly impacted So I think that skews how we interpret how the community Um understands this And then my second question is how can we say no to anybody else who wants to have events? We're not going to be able to say well That's just we you can't because the road's too fast. It's inconvenient because of all of the things that I said How are we going to say no to that? All right, because you're you're going in the precedent One of you yes, this is a precedent that we're establishing and then we can't say no to that person You're all good points So I have one question for you Larry So the rumor has it that you are selling Some sort of bike at the event Is this a promotion a promotional event? No, no, not at all. I just I'm not saying that that's something I think it's just been passed on to me is that you're selling bikes That is incorrect. Okay Thank you We just have a resident giving away food Yeah, whatever. I just heard that about the bike thing. It's like I don't know. I know nothing. Yeah, this gentleman has his arm I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't go down there. So where do you park at these events? Some park at the lower parking lot at Morse Park Why I understood so is this going to become a circus now people come from all around Come get greenies and going up our road where we're Kind of parricade in our household for this event to get over with because we can Know the 1% of the time we can't use it like we're a public but we're not allowed to use it because Tell me from eastbound player of washington's Washington state Whoever's here just happened to be visiting once you go to the circus on the county road I'm just worried about that how this is going to impact, you know, even worse Is this gets me more and more of an event? Is it going to be more often? Is it going to be longer? I have relatives that come up here from you know and visit and they come and they see this they're going to be told But you don't live here obviously go somewhere else. They wouldn't know how to get to my house Well just to be clear I never would have voted for something What I thought that you wouldn't be allowed to use it because this is my understanding that you are allowed to use the road To get in and out of your house. Well, that's all good and nanny, but when you have the children there It went all over the place This was not just this was not this is for me. This is for everyone else that It's a public road. It's a public thoroughfare. I understand that. I understand they could write the bikes Any day of the week they can walk me to the week but telling me that I can't drive 40 miles an hour on the road with because there's something going on and we want to have They didn't want to have this when it was the road was all a mess We're gonna get paid. Who's gonna get paid? Now we want to use it I have a question for the residents in our on county road Did you receive or were there signs out letting you know an event was going on in the event? I believe a postcard was sent out in the event someone did And was there And did you know what to do if you were leaving your home because that was one comment that was made to me by one resident They weren't sure they were slow. Watch out basically. Okay So there were signs There's no signs There's nothing on our drive We said we just happened to know because we were here the very first time before the cement took place that What was what was going to be how it was going to be handled? That's how we know I don't know how else knows they go the road. They see people in the road. I take the on man natural Did go slow because there's something in the road. I think that'd be a natural instinct to do that But I can't hear it. I can't hear it. I can't speak for everybody So you're saying there wasn't any signs I didn't see there's no signs of my drive. We hadn't seen it I haven't any signs in my driveway. Yeah, I can't Well, I don't think they're going to put signs on every driveway. I think there's going to be some signs on the county road Oh, maybe that maybe that work. I don't know that was my understanding With the signs there What's that? I was just asking there if there were signs pretty hard to see signs on county road out of your driveway What? Well, jean asked the question whether signs correct. I just was curious what and I don't know if there were signs I haven't gotten a clear answer whether there were signs Would you would you describe the signage used for the event please larry. Yeah, so um, so Guthrie gave us a lot of signs, which we had at each end warning people that there was An event upcoming. We had road closed signs. We had slow down signs. We had the detour signs We had we had some cones up in different places at powder horn glen and that cassavent road Could we have used more sure That was certain when our team got together and we talked about what would we do differently We um, we talked about some additional signage that we think would be helpful to to the event But um, there was signage at both ends warning cars Yes slow down event in progress ahead okay So if a resident had not received that postcard For whatever reason there was no signage indicating that was my question If though if I were in my home did not receive that postcard. It's mailless mail How would I know an event was going on when I went to leave my driveway? To know to drive slow unless there happened to be someone on a bicycle that I happened to see right when I went out in the middle of the Right. That was my question. There was a question larry from patty Indicating that she thought last year there'd been more use of cones in the middle of the road During the event What are your recollections on that? Yeah, no, that was true and the reason there were cones was because the sheriff put them there The Vermont state police last year Vermont state police. Yes Okay, okay I do think that there was some confusion about the signs And one of what reason that I see that was because I think that some of the people that were on come to look at I observed were not aware that there were going to be residents that were traveling because two of them were um Uh frowned upon with the looks and the gestures, but also I saw um A family of four two parents on bikes and the two children were very far behind them And then they realized that a car was coming heading toward callus And I don't think that they were expecting a car And so I think that when when it says road closed through traffic I guess doesn't compute as paid to do decent cars Because they weren't prepared Totally and this is really anecdotally. I asked a handful of people who participated in the event Did you encounter cars when you were riding or walking? And all of them said yes, and I said and what was that like and they said oh, they they were all driving slow So it was great. No problem Okay, so we're going to have to end the discussion on this because we're out of time but um I don't think we can make the decision Tonight about the september event without a little bit more data gathering I think that we really need to do that to make a better decision Um, so we're going to have these guarantees from From the sheriff. Yeah. Yeah, we have that's a major concern. I have to The safety concerns and also we should gather some data from the people living on the county road So we have a better representation of what's going on because we don't really we don't really know We've got some folks here. They're not happy. Are they representing the majority of the people blah, blah, blah So we do know that we have one select board member that's not in favor of closing the road because you made some good points No, you that's fine. I'm not trying to put you on spot. No, you're not Well, you made good points. I'm looking I'm looking out for the liability Yeah of the town because we own this thing now. Yeah And and complacency kills people And when you're doing flagger training, even if it's three hours long is three hours long for a reason and There are more people killed through being complacent than there is through acts of god and um And I want to and I take that seriously because you know who's going to pay for that price It'll be us to pay the town paying deeper pockets and um and I also have have individuals who Are along that road who has spoken to me and I feel like I represent everybody but I do represent them too as well Oh, yeah, so I think we all feel that so I'm not changing my opinion anyway I'm not asking you to I do know that one of us Is against this the against the whole idea Um, which is fine. I understand your points Um, but I think that we need to gather a little more data before we make the final decision And the thing is have been kicked off for two months. It's a good thing Um, and Larry's also going to meet again to find out if we're even going to do this September then So we've got a lot of uncertainties before we make the final decision And we've got some time so um because we have a lot of other things to get to tonight We're going to close this part of this agenda item and we are going to gather some data and we'll set a date for a meeting So Larry, when are you meeting again with your group? Yeah, so we have um two meetings in Laudicus. Is that it Gina? And what's the later date in the august one? August 21st is that Yes Is august 21st? Yeah Um, so we'll put that on our agenda for august 21st. So make a final decision then And you'll let us know if you're even considering the September D And we'll work on the data gathering you want Okay, and just just one last thing uh select board as as I mentioned to you right at the very beginning the whole point of this was sort of a Community building sort of activity. I'm trying to bring people together have some fun. Um, yeah Not at all interested in pushing people apart and and getting people upset with each other I'm sorry that it has happened to some extent with with that Um, I would I would like to push forward just a little bit and maybe maybe in the end We'll all go, you know, I'll agree that it is a allows the idea and we should bag it. Maybe we'll get there Well, I don't think the experiment has been been completed. I think we should complete the experiment and then decide Yeah, I don't think it's a bad idea. I just think there's some Aspects of it that bothers some people and it's getting to a point where it's almost too much effort You know, it's a lot of acrimony going on and a lot of effort by all of us For something that was not supposed to really take this much effort But as we get it further into it, it's like wait a minute. This may not be worth the effort So I think that's what you're saying also Yeah Okay, so we'll be in touch And we'll put it on our august 21st meeting. Thanks. Thank you folks for coming in. Thank you. Yep Okay, so let's move on to The next item, which is a town treasury report And what do we have on that? Well, this is more just providing you the official report Okay The budget status still has a lot of journal entries and whatnot that the treasurer is working through So I can't really give you a good feel yet for where the general fund will end for the year and then Michelle also completed the internal controls Internal financial controls checklist. It's an annual document The only piece that I questioned after she provided this to me today was the question of do elected town auditors attend financial training I believe one town auditor did attend a training this year So I just asked Michelle to ask that question And if we did not get the answer to that question, then we should check don't know instead of no Because I'm not sure that no is the right answer. So That's the only thing that may change on this document after my review Are there any changes on this checklist from last year? No Except if if this one shifts because If we don't definitively know the answer then I don't think yes or no is appropriate I think we need to shift to don't know With the budget status Um I was speaking with the external auditor last week. So there's At least one item. I think that may be a positive impact to that right now. It's essentially showing us flat with or with a $3,000 deficit For the year now keep in mind that includes $177,000 revenue for ARPA for salary costs That's offsetting the costs But based on my conversation with the external auditor, I Think we may have a rather significant journal entry that still needs to be posted That may swing this No, that would be a positive. It's a good entry But I just I just have not had time to pour over those the financials. Um at that level of detail It's you know, nothing going on the last couple weeks. Um, so Right now and really that's a treasurer function more than its mind. So, um, I'm kind of letting the treasurer have her time with the numbers and I'm fielding the pieces that I need to deal with I'm circling, uh, since there's some quiet Or I'm just studying the uh Documents, but okay anyway Um, just circling back to our minutes. I believe the july 14th select board meeting actually took place on july 17th Monday july 17th Yeah, what's the 17th? Yeah so Without Objection I'd like to amend the minutes in that way as well I was at that meeting So for taxes you have the calculation as it is based on the budget based on What we've been provided by the school etc Yeah, and then you have a version where I reforecasted the current fiscal year based on the latest employee Employees um that we have and their elections as it relates to health plans huge caveat on that anyone can change their mind in january so Those figures could change. Um, but you know I think mostly chair Gardner has been very focused on trying to find some savings that could Mitigate some of the tax rate increase. So this is One option if you are comfortable rolling that I mean I'm comfortable with the figures because I know what everyone has picked today and we have had some changes since that budget was set right, um, so Assuming everything stayed as is I'm coming and and they don't surprise me with a 30 increase instead of the Average that I've seen a 14 percent that I assumed in these figures So I did assume a larger increase in the cost of medical insurance as well That's it was a range, but that was the middle of the range So if that comes in higher again, it could ding into this sum too. I don't think that should be significant though. I mean So the 5.9 percent is where you sell that so that's well that's It depends on what the select board wants to do This is your decision not mine Yeah, I was just trying to nail down your final figures Well, there's two options wasted one based on the budget as it is I'm one based on an adjustment that has a 34 thousand dollar decrease in the cost for The fiscal year that we're now in yes So it's pretty good word. Yeah Makes sense logical I mean you'll be looking at this again at the next meeting. This is just where we are today And the next meeting would be some yeah I mean, I think the question is I don't know if the select board has a targeted number that they consider palatable for the Tax rate to change Then that can drive. I mean, yeah In the company world, it's not uncommon to lock down a budget with a top side adjustment And you find the savings later um We could certainly find savings as it relates to ARPA. Um, however, that's been highly cautioned against taking that approach So, let's see. Um, how was the total homes at tax rate last year? I don't see that on here You have the actual calculations. So last year that you have spread. Oh, you have that Yeah, 2022 is on there. Yeah Oh, I've got Oh 23, right? Yeah 2.38. Yeah, I got it Yeah, I've got so that's 14 cents. I got a question Sure Um, you know, you put down here municipal grand list and and you show 3 147,000 whatever. Yeah When I look at think about grand list, I think of the entire grand list of town, which it should be like 300 million or probably Yeah, they divide it. But what I'm just saying is that's the grand list Oh, and then my question I'll be that was a question kind of a question But my real question is how much did the grand list change from this from Last year to this year I didn't see it though Oh, right there So that so that so that 8% would be is going to be it's going to be added to it's money that we have available to us Yeah, we we have a little bit of one money than right. It's 3 million 147 and it was 3 million 121 Right, so we have so that can question our budget a little bit Well, that's all right Yeah, so that's kind of what would have been a benefit. Yeah, so I figured in yeah, okay Ignorant question. What was the grand list divided by to get 100 100? Yeah So I do zero so But um, you know the hard number is Now wait, what was the tax rate In 22 because I think I went down last year. I'm sure it did go down. And what was it in In 21 21, um, I have to look well at 23. It's fy 22 and we're talking calendar year 20. Yeah 21. Yeah, but Whatever Without any two Here It's perfect So the year before it was If I can get my files to open And then I want to ask any one question. Well, it is important The residential was 2.4808 Non-residential list 2.3709. So 248. So we're sort of In the ballpark at 252 It does seem like a significant jump but if taxes the tax rate was higher two years ago to a lot higher than 238 All right And you know one time, you know, if you shake 2 off This year that 2 is going to be there next year. Oh, I know Yeah, and it might be added to 4 or 5 percent. So I know that I was just concerned about the education tax But you know that education tax went up 9 cents From last year because and now it's going to keep going up and control I know And that's why the total the non-homestead tax rate is actually less than the homestead tax rate, which it was initially designed The way this restructure was initially designed was that the the non-homestead rate would be more But the non-homestead folks don't have a vote on the budget for the school So when the school goes over a certain percentage on their budget, that's added to the homestead tax rate I'm not sure about that. Well, I can't correct you because I don't know But if it's 2.48 a couple of years ago and we end up at 2.52 Then that's an average of around 1 percent a year over the last two years It's not really that it's it's palatable in my book Yeah, okay, the tax rate bounce around a little bit. It's up a little bit higher But considering all that's going on That's really not that bad. It's less than inflation during that time. Yeah, that is Okay, so let's Let's um since we're going to look at these figures again in our next meeting And when we set the tax rate at the final So I think um, does anybody have more questions? What's the meeting that we set the tax rate at? It's usually in august. Yeah, this is the first the first first of our next meeting in other words. Yeah, okay If we don't have any more questions on the town transit report, we probably ought to move on Um, the next thing we're behind is review draft of 2023-24 probably tax rates. Oh, I guess that's what we're doing Where I did that very good Yeah, I thought we were doing the town transit report, but I guess I inadvertently moved on to the next gen item You're so Yeah, um review technology quotes Reuben Bennett owner and senior network engineer rb technologies llc Replace town office network server Implementation of cyber security user suite one Hello, ruben ruben you have the floor Um, well, I honestly I came prepared to answer questions That's good because we don't like people to run on and on and on but you can run on a little bit Your server is up for replacement. Yep Landscape has gotten worse and worse and worse and so we're having to do more and more as businesses and to you So that means that we're having actually formalized practices all over the world so so spam filtering and Link sandboxing So if you get an email instead of just clicking on the link that came through it actually Transforms it it sends it to a server Does remote detonation of the link to make sure that there is a malicious code right in the email link itself That's layers of protection around user practices and then there's a security training aspect so The folks that are using the email system Have a better awareness around what to look out for And then the third component of the user security suite is Credential management, which was frankly something that we've done for years And it was a complete white spot and we realized that We could security even sort of chatting clients about having their excel spreadsheet full of passwords Or worse the milk pad full of passwords in the middle of the folder And have been running our own highly secure environment for the password and credential management and Realize that we should really be helping our clients with all of those things out So those three services stack together and they integrate with your office 365 environment To integrate all of those services for everybody I can get a little bit from the town office perspective so one as it relates to the network While our purchasing policy states that we should get multiple quotes for this An important factor that doesn't that that policy doesn't take into consideration is no one else knows our network and our system Like rb tech so in order to get a quote One I wouldn't even know how to do that Because I don't speak it Number two, I honestly wouldn't place a lot of faith in a quote that we received because they don't know our system and The odds of something missing in a quote that would be slower I would probably say that there would be reasons for that that we would likely end up uncovering over time So it makes sense to keep this with one Organization or company that we trust and does provide us with exceptional support As it relates to cyber security. I think I get more than anyone else in the office At least one to three to four a day. Am I receiving an email asking me to click a link? Yeah, we are having a problem with your order. Here's your receipt. I get more than anyone However, everyone in this office has received them I sent out we had someone that did as you all know I think at the last meeting someone that did click on something that thankfully Realized they shouldn't have done that called RB tech immediately RB tech went in took a while But cleaned out what was starting on that person's computer. Luckily had not gone very far yet So it's just so easy. I'm I am pretty good about deleting. I deleted two of them today But I'm also human you get busy I'm getting a lot of more emails right now With a lot of links and connection to different things. So it's very easy to not think and click something So it just it's going to get any of us Michelle probably gets them second most in the office and then it goes from there Rosie has gotten them as well as I know the municipal coordinator has and Tyson did as well How does this relate to those of us who have town email addresses and are using our own computers for them Throughout The problem is when someone in here clicks something like that you're we are actively on our network So anyone that gets in can access our network. No one's going to get to the network Even if they went through one of the other emails Yeah, and don't war it's it's sort of a layers game Right, so, you know, no, no one of these tools are going to protect none of these tools Collectively can protect from all different threats that are out there, but The proper tools properly deployed And then when you add the user security training that's with awareness piece That we use the term healthy dose of paranoia a lot around the office Now you're in a position where you're You're being sort of reminded so if you get one of the phishing emails and click the link it goes, haha, you know gotcha But here's you know, here's what to look for in an email that you just got that Okay This would be my need question Contact person Why are we having an internal server Rather than being on the cloud and is this typical for Towns of our size to be going through This type of hardware It's money Is the bottom line reason Generally speaking it is less expensive to learn your own hardware than to farm it out with somebody else So you're you'll see in the headlines that there Is a bit of a feeling of cold feet about the cloud right now Everybody's been on this like relentless march to put everything in the cloud and now they're getting the bills Yeah, and as it turns out the cloud actually means not your computer And that means somebody is aws, but we could be more expensive. It is often in the fact usually more expensive than your own when you know if you If you advertise it out over the lifespan of this piece of gear And you look at the maintenance costs and the support costs and the Different pieces and you sort of roll it all in together It's generally more expensive to run it on somebody else's gear The Question the next question is there why um We're buying refurbished equipment. Is there a reason why we're not buying new equipment? Uh cost well, obviously cost, but Is there a legacy or issues with buying refurbished? No, and to be frank, I I hate the word refurbished because what this actually you put it in here I know So I was just being honest I'm being honest. So it is technically refurbished gear. What it actually means is gear that was It was mis procured. So it's brand new gear that got returned Because it was ordered in huge volume and ended up at a portable refurbisher This is a company that we've worked with for five years. So Um There's no other dad on it. It's brand new. Absolutely not. Okay. That's an answering question. Yeah, okay So Ed, you had want to say something? I just gotta say with the cloud you're losing some of your internal control when you're when you're out there because somebody else and you know That's being managed down in south taryland or texas or someplace on these farms I feel yeah, I personally just feel more secure having it Yeah You guys are finding a decent balance between money and your own stuff. You've got numeric in the building. Yeah It's it makes sense to run that in the building Um, the cost for running it in the cloud is significantly higher. Yeah And again, you know when you sort of map it out or yes or whatever Generally, you're you're in the winning column. Yeah by running this gear yourself. Yeah It's amazing too. It seems like there's so many people out there or companies out there They're trying to pull you into the cloud. Yeah, norton is trying to pulls you in Google tried to pull you in apple tried to pull you in they all try to get you to go in And it's our paying them at the feet and I resisted that Well, they like they're really like but I've never seen a why no I've gone to yeah, so we looked at quick books Quick books is a perfect case in point. So it used to be like 700 bucks or 800 bucks for a three user license that was good for about three years until they Need to do a four-stop upgrade to the next version and they have been relentlessly pushing people to Cloud service at Dolby Microsoft is saying yeah So the you know now it's a thousand dollars a year or 1100 bucks a year And if you have multiple company files now you need an online subscription for every single company file So we mapped it out. It was $9,000 a year for a quick book. It also doesn't work because that's what I was thinking doing myself If you have one company file and it's one user then you can Okay, it might be okay, but what if I have two you have two company files? Yeah Now you need to test too much There's lots of new times in the cities obviously In the whole system the server goes down. You have You have a backup that is here in the building you have a backup that comes to our building as well And that is what they call a beautiful backup which means that if something happens to this network It can't affect the backup that's out of the building It downloads every day overnight Where is the server here? Okay, is that climate control down here? We have to kill them We have to kill them Yeah, the reason I'm seeing is especially where climate change the way it's going I I know I dealt for years with a company with a little big server room And they had problems. They had to do several servers running, you know for multiple states operations, but We had problems with the climate control because the units were overheating at points. I mean luckily it's cool down there Humidity, there is a dehumidifier down there. Honestly didn't think about going down and emptying the bucket this morning It's low tech when I think about that the dehumidifier gets empty. Yeah, well, we need a new building in life here So I think then you put a server room You can charge Yeah, so what is the expected lifespan of the server? So you're the select board. I can tell you four years How many four years Four years, but for four years. Okay. If we weren't the select board, what would you tell us? Um in year four we evaluate how the machine is running. Okay, and we may say you're going to go for another year Okay, and you get really uncomfortable after Really? Ours is already they've already spent significant time on ours We were I was that worried one day as were they that server was no more How long has that one been in here? It's four years four years And the cyber security user suite is that an annual cost or is that a pardon? So we're being asked for the 3600 is a one time setup fee and then what's a monthly cost after that It's 100 So what's the increase in costs that we're looking at per year With everything added up new server the new service a one time. Well, that's one time Yeah, that's like a capital cost the cyber suite which would be 105 per month And that's something we haven't paid anything for in the past This is new yeah, and then we we set aside money for Costs for the server like if we had to replace it four years, we should be setting aside money The server is not included on the capital plan. Well, it needs to be though. Well, I know but it hasn't been Yeah, no, there's no that's kind of why I was asking. Yeah, there's no plan for it infrastructure in the capital plan Well, there's no plan here. Yeah It's on the agenda to add the technology line because I want to point it out that these cost telephone systems and When you edit all up And the end software coming up maybe a major software thing as well, I think that same as another 40 50 000 dollars software So we do have the utmost trust, but we do not have Any comparisons correct? So Just bringing up that point clarifying that's exactly professional services you generally don't have to go out for a bit And what you want to I'm right. I'm just talking about it's like you don't go to the cheapest lawyer. You don't go to the cheapest doctor You don't go I understand the 75 $140 refurbished is that Should be 10 grand should be five grand. We we don't have any reference other than I'm not it's a total integrity. I'm not but from my Our position my position and my spending wisely I'm gonna have to assume. So I understand, you know, I'm just bringing that with the information that we have in front of us We're not putting out to be we don't we're not obligated to go out for a bit I understand. You just yeah. No. No, I understand the whole thing. Yeah I Our faith in a town resident has served us well in the past. Yeah It's the only one concerns I know Yeah, my full faith in rubens. Yeah, I had no clue. We are handcuffed to rb technology. It's like the protagonist And like the protagonist in the defiant one is at the end of the movie. We're we're in a good relationship I just feel like we're in 100% An agreement that we have someone that's served us well. Yes, we trust them. I think it's good I mean, that's kind of how I work. It's like, hey, this is a good person. I use questions. Scott. Yes I think we should establish a corporate technology tax in town for corporation Since we're talking about taxes and tax rates, there should be some sort of special tax rate Oh, not a low tax. I'm hovering behind you that you're on record saying that We did this recording. Okay, I retract that. I think Roman wanted to say something I will just to Gina's point You could go out and you could get a bit for a server that's $3,000 And you could go on and you could get a bit for a server that's $25,000 And the reality is that what you need is a bit for a server that is scoped And we'll do what this organization needs for the next four years So I can comfortably and confidently say that this is a server that would do those things for you in a cost-effective way So We'll just spend $12,000 on this server. Yeah I don't I don't your questions are completely valid Yeah, I don't take any exception And what was that comfortable when we don't have comparisons in case that's totally understand. Yeah The challenge is that if you go out and get bids, it's going to be an apple store Right as Gina said we that's what james. We have no clue That's fine. Honestly to go off to bid is to my opinion. You're bidding your entire IT relationship Because likewise can't get a server for someone else at rbt I agree. I just then take care of it. Oh, thank you And you're at the meeting and we're going to note that Yeah, no Okay, so Ed, do you want to say something? Just I'm bidding you never take the most bid as a general principle that I've learned from my lessons in life because You're under the problems, you know, I know I know from from the accounting world I've seen people They hired the cheapest account the guy shows up on a motorcycle from Palo Alto wasn't licensed so the report was never accepted And and that's you know, that's a true story, you know The point we don't tell you this and you pay the guy and you submit it and it doesn't go through because he's not certified The point is we don't have any other bids. Yeah No, no, I I'm just Running out of time That's fine. It's almost my bedtime right, so The next step. I believe in this item is to make a motion to accept the bid I would like to make a motion to accept the bid for our And the implementation of the cyber security user suite one I second that And I guess all is a favorite to sell. Hi. The eyes appear to have it. They do have it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you I appreciate you coming in we appreciate it Well, it's important part of our world unfortunately, so that's the way it goes. I gotta do it Um, so let's move to the next item It is I believe the motion also authorized the town administrator to sign that the quotes Yes Sounds good. Um, the next item is consideration of employee laptop purchase. So I have a quote for a laptop um Probably Yeah, 3089 I had that number in my head This is really to facilitate remote as you all know and every interview remote is an option that is discussed But we really don't have a means of doing that without having a laptop so and as we know we just had a weather event occur and It would be helpful if people could work around so as the laptop something that people are going to be taking home Or is it something that's going to be here? It would be the computer here, but it's available to take home for remote work. Right I just priced computers Just I just bought one a week ago. Why $3,000 computer versus the thousand dollar one that I just bought It expert I I know some things in my head I mean, I just literally bought this a week ago The short version is that you can buy a cheap computer for a lot less money The longer version is that there's been cost like it's getting it set up and So it's ready to go for the organization And if the machine only lasts for a year because a lot of money a year Then you're at risk of having to do you don't get to spread that out over the same basis, right? So you want to get a good machine that's going to last for a longer time Um, the other reality is that our supply line is difficult So we can get a couple machines. That's this crazy forest race right now still Um, and a lot of the machines that we can readily get our hands on are the more expensive high-end machines Which is frustrating and annoying and Like I we can we can there'll be like A $2,000 machine or an $1,800 machine and there's 50 of them in stock and by the time that we've Gone through the order approval process in a day And so it's just a frustrating Yeah, I went I wasn't best buy and keen in whatever in Lebanon because we were in New Hampshire Best buy had 100 I said, you know, whatever they had tons of computers My only question is just other if this is not an apple Just since these things last three or four years. It just seems like a lot of money $3,000 for a computer when I could bought a better computer for $1,700 and we're using this for zoom and email We're not doing graphics, right Doing other just it three thousand dollars still seems like a lot of money Even with $150 for microsoft and whatever I can tell you one thing this computer that we're currently using for zoom Was crashing under everything that I was trying to do on a work basis, which is why I now have this laptop so The computer is 2568 and installation is 522 And And people will be sharing that computer when they're out or would that be one individual's computer? Um Likely one individual's computer, but it's possible it can be shared as well technically any of us can log into and It's not configured for you, but you can do basic functions I was just thinking sharing generally reduces the life of the computer too But sharing a car Yeah, I mean all of the machines that we sell are the the mid to high end We know of like that So they have these space frame and they have like some features inside of them that make them more durable and tougher And specs that you've got more memory and they've got better CPU and We've got sort of internal horsepower to do what they do better for the longer Hinges like there's you know, there's a whole bunch of those aspects to them It's a significant price difference between a What you can walk into this buy and get And So scott your machine good luck scott is yeah, good luck I've learned two or three trading systems That works really well and it's and it's all metal too, by the way. Anyway, okay The fair question is scott, I'm just like you we buy Laptops that are inexpensive Yeah, and this is not going to be useful and this is going to be not used every day Clearly just what it is Well, is it going to be used every day is going to be used as the every day It will likely become the replacement of the desktop, correct? Yeah Yeah, ideally Everyone will shift off of their stops to a left side. It's the only way you can really work for most things All right I was wondering what how long The lifetime is projected to last just because so many machines are just becoming obsolete The turnaround is becoming so much That's a difficult question to answer If I understood the question it was how long should we expect a laptop to last? Right so budgetary four years and reality about four years And just to back off of a step We don't worry too much about the warranty status of machines So as long as it's performing and it's doing its job It's fine When it starts to slow the person down behind the keyboard. That's when we start to Encourage folks to replace them because as expensive as a machine is the person behind the keyboard is way more expensive And as soon as you're starting to sort of lose efficiency of the person Than now technology is not doing its job. If it doesn't work, it's not useful Okay, I think we're good on this. Okay But I appreciate your do you really want to just no This is not enough bullshit. I'm not I moved to authorize the town administrator to sign the quote for the laptop for the municipal coordinator in the mount Yeah in the mount stated All in favor, please say aye Guys appear to have or they do have um I'm not meaning to rush the discussion, but we have a lot of things to go over Okay Consider consulting to draft requests for proposals on town garage replacement. I believe it's kath Catherine or kathleen kathleen gent gent She used to work. Did you still work for So she retired. She was running it or something. Yeah, general manager. Yeah So I think that's in here you have it in our packet Oh, we got her resume. We have a resume um So What's the cost? Oh terms three to five thousand I I think it's a good thing Yes, um We are hiring her to draft Are we missing does she have drafting experience? I read through well, it's really drafting a document It's not it's it's right. It's yes. It's writing a document. She's making a proposal and not Does she have enough experience? This is the person this is someone with experience skin that can speak The language I read through the whole thing. I was wondering whether she had experience with bricks brick and mortar For a proposal for a building Rather than her experience. Okay. That's she did this process for central Vermont solid waste Yeah, so yes in buildings rather than in Collecting garbage So A more she was involved in drafting the rfp to seek the architect designer to design the building So she Participated or or led creating the scope then that answers my that would be included It has the expertise correct in these rooms to drop an rfp for a building Okay, yeah, that was my concern. Can I attempt to make a motion? You know, there's only one thing that um, I guess that's just That I didn't So the next item is the town ARPA spending plan. Is that what you're here for it? Yeah So it's all of these items that we've just gone through this one and the next one are all connected, right? so So the thing is that we move we're moving ahead to hire Kathleen jen for this Proposal means that we are spending some ARPA money correct and Ed is here because he was on the committee to talk about spending the ARPA money Correct. Yes. Yeah, but we're also have already sort of Made a decision on spending some of this money. Yeah, that's that's your priority. Okay. Yeah I just wanted to clarify that Okay, okay Okay The next discussion really is That we need to get moving on spending this money. Yeah, I'm very concerned that we have less than 18 months left to go Well 18 months to target the money Committing the money is very risky if anything falls apart with that committee that or with that commitment that money is gone The vendor can't fulfill the commitment Yeah The the overall Recommendation is to try to spend the money Or have a very very sure commitment. Okay Anything you change with that commitment. It's gone. Okay. I'm just I I'm not all I'm saying is we're committing the money We're starting to commit the money by hiring somebody to Put out the RFP for our town garage, which is fine with me I just don't think that we've been completely clear about the direction that we're headed With everyone that's been involved with the town committee. He's talked about the RFP money We're moving ahead and uh, we haven't really said that And we are saying we are saying right now Okay, so I'm fine with that which I was there um What is she going to execute this is a time frame that she said within 20 30 days. Yeah 30 She can really just get started. I mean 20 or 30 days. Didn't that's fine get the contract drafted for I've had experience with this lady. She's professional and I think she's a great job I I've been to meetings that she has headed up Okay, so her proposal is for terms of 80 dollars per hour with the establishment of a not to see to exceed dollar amount likely between 3000 and 5000 depending on project parameters So how are we going to set the not to exceed? amount Just say five Okay, and who will who will set the project parameters? Who's going to work with her and that would be all in conjunction. She will need to be speaking with likely Yeah Seth Yeah, potentially john given his experience and certainly guthrie. Yeah, okay guthrie would be the Main person for project parameters. She is also going to look at those And anybody else who might be interested. Yeah, there's other people who are like You know our first kind of circling around the Conor Oh, but that's that's besides conor would would come into play remember this is to draft an rfp conor I think would come into play as a potential But it just seemed like you could have some input But that would make it to post This is where having a Kathleen the point in that is she has the expertise to know the questions to ask So know what needs to go on this document. So Me being in the room with her guthrie being in the room with her you being in the room with her answering those questions I think we'll get us where we need to go Yeah We don't need to make it too complicated. No, we don't I think it's probably less. It's going to be less than 3000 personally at the end of the day I don't think she's going to spend a huge amount of time unless you probably already have the template that's going to work So I moved to authorize a town administrator to draft a contract for Kathleen jen to perform The services as outlined in her proposal With a not to exceed dollar amount of five thousand dollars and to coordinate the Kathleen jen's work with the town How's that sound? Sounds good She's second. Oh, shall we second it? All those in favor, please say aye. All right. All right. The eyes appear to have what they do have Um, so that takes care of that We're going to run alone Discuss town art by spending plan Right Yes So this is really to define next steps. We've had a lot of discussion, but We really need to start getting pen to paper As it relates to this so One thing we didn't specifically call out in the motions of the Acquisitions or purchases that have been approved Or contracts in this meeting is that we would be using ARPA funds For those so on page three of four of your select board annotated agenda You will see where I provided kind of an update of where we are. So assuming the select board concurs that The network server cybersecurity laptop and Kathleen's on on this thing on this list But then Kathleen jen would then come into play here So with Kathleen 354,000 remaining so We're on that On that total ARPA funds You have some total 735 If you go to the milk committee I don't know where this is. Where does this have that? That's a bad formula. Sorry. I was doing this quick today. Okay That was last minute change I personally fully So we've estimated or we Essentially committed 403 at Kathleen 408,000 of our 762 I have honestly no real frame of reference of what the design of the town garage is going to cost. I don't I don't know I don't know enough about the project to even and I don't know enough about the cost of these things in this area to estimate that I could say 30 grand. That's what I had in my head. Ironically enough That's what I would have guessed Well, and that's and that's pretty much what it's it's going to cost to design the central moss always management Oh, how does materials facility? What what is the building in coast? We're getting 200,000 dollars construction Probably probably a million Yeah Or more well probably 1.2 Okay Fortunately, you don't have to buy any land, but you do have to modify the land is there Yeah, okay Thank you. Yeah, I mean The town I have to take off a bond. I mean we do have a little hyper money We can tell at it that works and that will reduce the amount of the bond I've always expected we were going to have to do that anyway, right? Yes, take a bond. Yeah, it's just we have some Our money to soften the blow a little bit. So it's Yeah, um, and that's why the town off the building has been On the back burner for a number of years because we already had a bond with paying off the fire station We have about 10 more years So that's why you're there on tour still paying for it You're 30 Tuesday, huh? Is that finished? Yeah, you're 30 Tuesday. He's popular. He's popular. You're not interested in this We all know where you are from all that change. Yeah That's true. Okay. No, anyway. Okay. Thank you. So um I think we're moving along with the our perspective plan but you still nervous Yeah, so I don't know how we move forward on continuing to identify I need help from others now. I mean, I've managed to It's That has to be clearly defined until we see that moving I think that's a very risky thing to put all of this thing all of this money is going to go there So one thing I've thrown out here is the um ash tree project Uh-huh. So we could look at the 31 000 that was spent this year. We budget 15 for that effort Yeah, over doubled that budget in the current year Yeah, so we could take a portion of or all of that and consider that a use of arpa funds That is an appropriate use So the thing I would say is keep in mind if we can utilize arpa funds for some of our spending such as Ash tree management that we are going to be doing anyway And I believe when you spoke with that with the resilient roads committee about that Even discussed doing more than was done this year in the upcoming year We don't we only have a $15,000 budget. So if we're going to exceed that right there So if we're trying to monitor budget Arpa gives us an ability to use those funds to fund that project That may free up money in the future then That could be allocated to other items exactly so I think there needs to be some creativity But it needs to kind of be not just me Thinking through some of this so we can use these funds I'm personally concerned about just committing funds with the intent to spend by 26 Your contractor for some reason has something to wrong and they can they cannot fulfill your contract. Those funds are gone On 23 Yeah, the last year the last year feels like a week. Yeah, I understand your concern But I don't think that we're at the point where we have to start committing arpa money to add to things At this point, I mean, I do understand the concern But it seems like we have some time frame here if we're going to have higher cathletes then to come up with that RFP Within 20 to 30 days, we're moving along We're relatively quickly and then we can go to the design phase And maybe we'll have some hard numbers fairly quickly By the end of the year, I would think Where are we with discussions on the arpa committee? Well, there is I'm the arpa committee with jenny town Like two people I did reach out and I got some feedback from a few people in town that were interested But not necessarily committed to it and I said basically it's a very short term committee. We want to get in Good idea Jenny would brought up the thought that we should be considering some of the non-properates Money in particular the benefits of town I don't know if that's This money is restricted And I don't think that was the intent Of the money myself We can use the funds to support local I'm on the capital budget committee also as the chair. So I'm looking at this from, you know, I've been doing this for a while That item I've been trying to get more money into the budget For several years Because that has to be done. I mean for the grant. Yeah. Yeah the garage And so it sounds like you're Someone committed to putting the proper money to the garage. That was kind of my point in the beginning We know we have not taken one. Okay. Well, I don't know if I'm voting or not But we are gonna I guess we've already reached out to the town and jenny's involved So I think we should do a public meeting and just get ideas and thoughts The risk with that is you may get a lot of ideas that, you know Don't fly. Yeah a couple of people that that reached out. I have a feeling that thoughts that aren't going to be Conducing to this and there was a purpose for this money and that garages Really falls into the purpose of that money Yeah That is one thing I also wanted to mention that I didn't right here was if we wanted to I believe twin valley senior center has already come before the select board but it was premature The select board had not yet moved forward with this. So the question one question for the select board is Do you want to engage with local nonprofits about a potential contribution to any of those Well that jenny's one enough So I think we have one public hearing and I want to do it like early september the first week Set a date and just say come and let's talk about it. And then night we can give you feedback What people came in but the nonprofits and she also just sent me a thing saying with all the damage from the storm Maybe that we could use some of the money for road repair, but I pointed out With email going back I think you know it was involved with the email too. Yeah, that you know Just fee more money for this that we're eligible for State's got to fix the roads and we you know and summer it got washed out My role got washed out a bit as you know, Seth, but yes, it's that's normal. I happen several years So that's part of the operational budget. So We were lucky in some ways We're covered on that. Yeah, I don't think that's a good use of the money I'm not sure about the nonprofits. I I know I'll give you my house all my wife does not think it's a good idea to give money Into the nonprofits. I could use it on that bad thing. Well, whether she would show up at a public meeting or not is Not debatable, but I think that where you're heading I mean full endorsement Well, we could reach back out to twin values seniors We probably should because it came in last year and asked us about Some work they want to done, you know in the article money would have called Would be able to be spent on that. Yeah So we could just reach out to them and say hey, are you still thinking about that? I mean And a small contribution to that or redoing it Gina's been really a great asset because she's On top of this and funneling the money like she said is ways of funneling it to make sure that it gets utilized Yeah, and and the I know what you just said I'm in agreement with we can do this and get it spent within two or three years But well, we remember we have to go to the town meetings with a bond proposal And so it's a bigger project than you you might think in terms of getting this out there Especially if one goes down. Yeah and construction right now Um, I don't know what the you know the big commercial construction companies I mean we have kind of taxes in the town for kind of who's one of the bigger ones So that's a big help. We have large in us too, but yeah, I do that. Yeah, but I'm just saying that you've got For municipals, I think it'd be right, but right now it's hard getting contractors, you know Great for doing jobs. So you want to have a public hearing in september? Well, I think it's I think it's important that at least you give the opportunity Yeah And so our responsibility Well, it's not okay. So it's not our responsibility actually to reach out to the public No, you think about it a couple different ways in many towns have many towns have decided We just like boarded or elected by the public We are an expedition to know where to spend money and so they've elected just to move forward We could go the other direction where we go out to the public and and vet ideas Not a terrible idea But i'm saying that We we could choose a different route in this okay Yeah, well the committee like I said, there's only two people that signed up so there's not much of a committee Now we could run a public hearing in one of our slates But yeah, I think that once you've done it and I also think it's due diligence Yeah, so Do it this way. Yeah, we could devote a certain first part of our September select board meeting. Yeah, we want to get the night. Yeah, it's a nice September thing And uh, you know from 637 30 and see what happens So you can we do that with public hearing? At the uh, yeah Then we can start our slight board meeting. Um as soon as the hearing is done We don't even have to do that We'll set a time for the beginning of it Like I said, I think three people September 11 11, yeah, okay three people responded to the front page for the post. Yeah, I mean It's fine. We'll just do it. Yeah, so and we'll make a part of our meeting if we can I think we can Yeah, so it's goes the flow so to speak And you're pushing and you know, I think you're pushing in the right direction by doing the contract Post yeah, that's good Yep, okay Everyone okay with all that? Yeah Uh, next thing we're right on time consideration of Northfield series bank town investment account Oh, what you have front of you. We had a second meeting Gina, michelle. Yeah myself. Yeah, and Is it cody and megan Is it cody? I'm drawing a blank on the paper. I think cody's an investment banker. Yeah clay clay Hey, I'm supposed to play is Northfield has a kind of chinese firewall meaning Megan is our rep That northfield handles our banking responsibilities and then clay Is in charge Have our account for brokerage Meaning if we wanted to buy a suite of cds T-bills as we discussed in the last meeting he would be the one that we would deal with This is the the document playing simple We this is a highly red-acted version because yeah, there's a lot of my personal information The other that would not go on the website. Exactly. Um, it was very positive conversation While we were on the phone. She kept going back and forth our major checking account for A major part of our assets. We are now what we are now earning like 300 basis points three percent where we were And we are actually not at the threshold The two million in that account but she was able to You know They want to make us happy. We just move them in any case. She did us a nice favor and we're earning Basically three percent Currently we could be earning close to five and a half percent Which is a million dollars, which is $25,000 a year More than we're earning now roughly Right. Once again cash flow With um with jean and michelle. It'll be all short term If the t-ball goes out of business We're all fucked You can quote that um So basically the continuation of the last conversation we've had a couple times before We think it's prudent to go forward and start investing this money And so would the money be I mean, we have a lot of money in that account It would be transferred. What is our next Big expense that's going to matter Well, it's ongoing with the road repairs right now. I don't know. Remember these are very these would be very very short term They look very school paying Oh We're buying it through a broker. Yeah, meaning you could buy a t-bill that is doing a month in two months And in two days you could sell it. Okay Would you be losing money? You would technically be losing money if interest rates went up. Yeah But if you hold to maturity, yeah Majority is the money the money that we're that we're going to invest. Yeah, we are not going to Anything's possible. Yeah, the chances are having to um Cash in these instruments early. Yeah, I would say is close to zero. Okay, because we're going to be We're going to be very conservative on the short term interest A short term instruments We're going to know that in three months We are not going to need this half a million dollars. Okay, so we may buy one month two months three months Whatever or one month and keep rolling it over. Yeah, but it is highly likely you can get Almost everything back the next day if interest rates go down your principal is worth more money If you if you cash it in before maturity, okay The other reason that megan increased the rate on our current account to match The discussion there was a certain account structure that could give us this rate, but There's a lot of reasons why it makes more sense for us to stay with our current account They're working on some improvements to that other type of account So she basically gave us the higher rate that goes with another account on our current account As it relates to this investment account, although we are setting it up today until we have a defined process for how we are going to Facilitate these investments how we're going to manage cash flow We're not pulling a trigger right on actually using this this account. Yeah, this is just getting it set up It's ready to go Once we get a process defined once michelle has time to think through that get her head around cash flow And figure out how to handle this then we will move forward. Okay That was taking very very slowly with deliberate steps, but it sounds like it's a positive move for the town Once we get into the habit of this I'm going to physically doing this with community harvest the center of Vermont. We have $90,000 Yeah, figuring out our cash flow. We're doing it. We're going to be doing this with the Unitarian Church of Montpelier It's and through Northfield. Yeah, it's It's a no-brainer meaning if you have a hundred thousand dollars sitting in your checking account The no-brainer would be to buy T bills or CDs At five percent instead of earning no percent. That's the no-brainer i'm talking about Yeah, as long as you're having a conservative cash flow and you know exactly what it needs. All right needs needs a pretty well spelled out Yes, yeah, so that's that's So Gina, what is the process of developing the process for this investment? I am leaving that to the treasurer Okay, okay, and will that come back to the select board or is that something that you could I would prefer that we completely revise the investment policy That is on the website and we have a new version of the investment policy that is published before we implement this So it's gonna be a simple cash flow That's David saying but I want to process the money. This is what we have. Yeah, it's the ups and downs Yeah, I have to make sure you have enough cash right Yeah, like you would do your own home Yeah, and I would want to build that into the policy because it needs to be all expectations You need to be clear not only on what staff is doing inside the office But also so every resident is clear on what is happening with their money. Yeah, yeah, absolutely I moved to authorize a town administrator to sign documents to establish the investment account with northfield savings bank Or within finance Well, now I can sign the documents I'll second that Do I need to take away with northfield savings bank from the motion? Okay to establish a town investment together. Oh, yeah, you're right. I kept calling it northfield. Yeah Anybody have any with infinite expansion? Any further discussion? Any more questions? All those in favor, please say no. All right Y'all, you're clear to have to do that Thank you. Thank you. Um The next item is vcrd community leadership summit attendee nomination. I have a nomination We have on our very select for the young community member who is jumping into town service and they said benefit to greatly from rubbing elbows with people at the vcrd community leadership summit attendee And uh, therefore I would like to put forth uh, zoe christianson What is vcrd standpoint from out to council on rule development? Okay Do you need some background on them? No, okay It's simple though. Well, does can zoe attend? I could attend Unless you think that someone else would benefit more from all the information or benefit from the select board It's a great opportunity for you. Yeah, and it benefits the select board if you go Yes Especially nobody else wants to Well, she's the best you didn't say young person so it's good At least on this side They specifically said in their invitation They specifically said, okay, we have motion on the floor. Do we have a second? I'll second it I'll step down Is on record do you do it? It's in the minutes. Thank you. I appreciate it. I was a favor. Please say hi. All right. Congratulations Congratulations Oh The next item consideration to FY 2024 grants and aid of remit This is an annual Grant that is done. That is specifically targeting hydrologically connected roads in town So this is we've already applied for this grant. You approve the application. This is just authorizing me to sign the grant and we are So so second And just so you know road form and parry is already in discussion with uh, in fact, I need to text him right now. Um is uh Already in discussion with our contact at the trans um about identifying Obviously, we have plenty of hydrologically connected segments that we can point to right now that can use some work Yeah, you certainly know where they are now For the big ditches are Yeah, okay, so let's not kill any more time Let's go. Let's get moving here. Okay. I'll take it. I'll go over here to storm damage So I forgot to text road form and parry earlier. Um, so hopefully he can join in. Um, but You can read chair Gardner. If you would like the first statement First chapels requested that something be read into the meeting. It's an update of overpairs of storm damage Yeah, if you read the first the first yeah, read it First chapel as I provide the statement to the slack port to be read during the meeting The Friday after the flood I was at Shaw's a month later. I ran into a member of our road crew. He was volunteering a month later He had to break the businesses I thank you for all the road to his efforts needs my player father that flooded explain many residents in town We're very pleased with all the work He wanted to say that the road crew is very proud of Guthrie's leadership In dealing with all the storm damage and getting so much done in such a short time I feel this is very telling about the quality of our town employees The recognition of Guthrie's leadership skills. We were very blessed to have such a dedicated road crew He's a superstar. There you go. Yes, he is Um So the rest is about to come in now. We probably go to blush He knows I forwarded Hello Guthrie. I got pretty good. Good evening So I've got I've got two or three potholes on north street in front of my house I'm waiting for them to be Filled in. I'm just wondering when this is going to happen. I'm You know, I need an answer In three weeks In three weeks. There you go. No, okay. Maybe longer now you've now you've asked me You're on mute Guthrie So is there anything we need to know besides what we already know? Probably not really Sanders circle looks like it's going to be very long term I don't see a point in putting a temporary fix in there for the two minute deeper to get around it The horn of the moon is gonna be a progress to get down through there. It's gonna take some time to do it right and We should be over there on possibly wednesday afternoon. We want to get fitch open back up tomorrow they've been They've been getting by with very little for the last couple weeks so The part-time person the the driver has he started already? Yeah Is that working out all right? Yep. He's he does great. He's very gentle on the equipment the trucks and Yeah, he was great today. He worked a full day today. So great So just to recap what we have in here number one Guthrie and I met with a river scientist last thursday to view it a few different locations But in particular two permits temporary permits came out of that for sodom pond road and for sparrow farm road Because those particular areas require work essentially in the in the waterway So we need to have a temporary permit for that we reviewed a number of areas with her But these were the only two that were required a temporary permit Guthrie already mentioned sander circle decision was made to just Kind of put that one on the back burner for right now Sodom pond road hopefully will be open by the end of the day tomorrow Yeah And yes the horn of the moon I can tell you from Seeing it with guthrie Has challenges from beginning to end so Some of them more significant than others but that Road definitely definitely needs some somehow And then essentially they're just continuing to clean up the roads and Get them back to the standard we all know and love So I'm sparrow farm road the um the place in question I assume is where the creek is by the trail entrance. Yes Are you And the temporary permits essentially give us five years So it's a temporary fix That particular location in particular Guthrie we as soon as we walked over to the edge and guthrie and I looked at the pipe She hadn't the river scientists hadn't walked up yet and we're like, whoa She's going to say about that little pipe. Um, it's a pretty small pipe for the amount of water that needs to go through there. So That's the reason why temporary permit And then I The other end So say that again, please It's a concrete culvert on the inlet and it has this piece of steel pipe stuck in the dump end of it and that Conquer the steel pipe the whole bottom that's completely gone. It had to have been used pipe when they put it in there Wow, yeah, wow, okay And then I had a question about Lower north street the steep part right before the Montpelier line That's been a problem area for years And I've gotten complaints from Montpelier about all the gravel that washes off in Regular lath storms and ends up on their paved part of north street now There's and I believe it was you that that I talked to about about this Once in the past maybe the previous road foreman and they heard that There were objections from residents there to putting in to winding the road to put in a ditch That would help take care of that now we have a ditch there What are your thoughts about using the new ditch that's been excavated for us and You know making that a stone lined ditch with that would that be helpful? Yes, uh I've been in contact with a couple of the residents down through there. One of them specifically was uh, Jessica I don't want to say it's cob possibly Yes And we've been in contact for like the last two weeks. I actually was over there before the rain and mark some things out and Because they've had concerns about water running off near their wellhead And then another spot where it was running off towards the pond pretty significantly So we want to modernize some of the drainage on not even on the side. You're talking about but on the opposite side And probably above where you're talking to But that down through there on the Montpelier side. I am in hopes that we will be able to Like you're saying I don't want to use the word widen the road But we'll be able to put in a ditch that will better manage the amount of water that they are seeing down through Yeah, because that's this for me. That's the second time in five years that that's washed out So it's obvious that it I mean, I know this both of those were significant water events, but at the same time It seems like five to ten years you have a significant water event Yeah, okay. Thank you Any other questions for gossiping Great job. Thanks Thank you Really your support makes my job so much easier But you know, don't worry about pressure from us because we know you're all working hard No one here is in a big yank to get stuff up to perfection And the town appreciates the citizens appreciate it for sure Yeah, the ones that don't to heck with them and if you have some spare time and want to dig some potholes in front of scott's I've way go ahead and do it Come up on a nice rainy day. See if we can help out by the end of scott's drive All right, we're good. Thanks. Thanks again. Thank you Uh That's the personnel matter we should push to the end and we should get rid of some of these extra items that we have So we've got the flood debris The emergency meeting or when's the meeting scott's question and then cv fiber for extra items on so on the flood debris I'd like to address that because I did talk to somebody from state today um, and I did see an email from rosie it kind of Said we weren't responding appropriately or she didn't know what to tell town residents is what she said to even um, so I got the text from jena last friday and um She said that she had a text from our town rep That said we are supposed to be should be Providing a place for household hazardous waste So that was from alechepin who is our town rep or a state rep. So then um, I called The number that was in her text Was mia at the state office for um waste management talked to her today And um, she said that we don't have to do anything The state's not telling us we have to do anything what we could do if we chose to is Call the number that Mia gave me a number today. I could call a sustained number And they would coordinate Getting us a dumpster that we could set up somewhere where people could put some of the stuff or their damaged household stuff or debris or whatever they could put in their dumpster But if we do that then we have to make sure we provide a place for the hazardous waste products Which could be paint and stuff that they had in their cellars, whatever So it's kind of a twofer if you do nothing we don't have to do anything If we do something we got to do something two things But female will reimburse us for the cost of the dumpster if we contact the right people in the state And a waste disposal as well They're going to deal with a waste disposal the state will through something. They will collect that But we have to provide a place. I texted gar three the other day. We have a place. We could put it in a template and Fire station which is empty our day and there's empty the fire station probably wouldn't be happy with it But we own the building so we could just tell them we're going to do this. They'll they'll be annoyed But we can push back So we could do that the problem with that is They're going to show up with all kinds of stuff and Someone no someone has to be there to reject We could have a day a week With like one to six on a certain day And you can bring your hazardous waste to here But somebody has to be there because they're going to show up with dump trucks full of stuff I guarantee you and all in black bags We're discussing how only a few households were affected in East gondola That was the next question is how many households do we have? I mean we do all had I mean I had two cellars of my houses that were flooded We dealt with it. Um water was coming in fast so we could get it out But um, I'm sure other homes in town had the same thing But how many houses actually sustained a lot of damage the two on coburn road and 202 Rosie gave me a list of the people that have actually contacted me on this Uh I think the only one that's home flooded was on coburn road all the rest of these addresses are county road Taylor road us route two It says basement us route two could you know, um, definitely flood bliss road coburn road Well coburn is the flood murray comings bliss and fish So it's basement. Yeah, so the only I know home on here. I mean any one of us that has driven by coburn road can visibly see that We have a home that's at coburn and route two that was destroyed. Um, so And that person is on that list. Um, but the rest of them are basement floods. Sorry, I had two basement floods. So That's the so that's one bit of confusion and I have not had time to match this up I reached back out to the state because the only list I had received of people calling 211 Which is where you're supposed to call and report your flood with one person on the list Yeah, so I've since gotten three documents from the state that I just didn't have time today to look at the names How these names are on that list? I may ask rosie to help me with that tomorrow to I sent her all that information late today um So that that's part of my the the problem is everyone got a message on for a porch forum that said pile your trash out The town's going to come pick it up. So it affected all of our I mean callus But a post on for a porch forum on friday that said we're not becoming and picking up your trash The roaker is cleaning fixing your roads, right? So, you know, I think a lot of smaller rosie got a call from the middle sex town clerk on friday. That's what started all of this Because middle sex residents everybody kind of got that same message. So are we taking the middle sex? Can we take our stuff to message? Okay, so they're apparently not doing anything Here's some additional information. I talked to mark basma Who was the person who put that post on front porch forum for month emergency management? And he said that An additional option for us is to have if I understood him correctly to have people Put their stuff out and we could contract to somebody if we could find somebody now to do it To go around and pick it up. So we wouldn't have to manage it ourselves. But um, Yeah, I mean we may not we may want to go with the original decision from last week to just not do anything Is a town because we have so few houses that were affected and if a house was destroyed Uh, then they're going to be eligible for some FEMA funding to Reparadise it. Well, the problem with the FEMA stuff is after you spent the month you get reimbursed That's the problem the FEMA funds a lot of people don't have the money. But I mean that's Just a comment. I'm saying is everyone says oh FEMA. Well, you know, first you gotta spend a hundred two hundred thousand dollars You get the money back. They may not want to rebuild it just to rebuild in the same place either So it's anyway, I think the issue if we put a dumpster here Is it just me small pilly residents or you're gonna just all of a sudden there'll be right they're not cows is not doing Sounds like a bad idea. I think it's a bad idea. It sounds like mayhem. I mean, how are you gonna? Well, you have to monitor it and people just gonna say, oh, I'm gonna bring my drivers It got wet. I'm putting in there It's surrounding towns. It's one dumpster. I could easily, you know, Yeah Yeah, thanks. And the hazardous wasting is a nightmare. It's like it's a nightmare in monthly right now I know because everything's hazardous waste because everybody put everything in black bags And now they're saying to the center monster all waste. Hey, can you guys come down and check through all those bags? I don't know much but I know about garbage and I know that no one puts in garbage what they say they do I used to work sorting through garbage and I know it's in there and it's I think you don't want people showing up If you know what's in there, that's a good thing. They're gonna hire you You know what's in there I think I just want to so I think that I can put something on front porch for him. It says we are not picking up trash and Unfortunately, we don't have the resources or something I We emailed that I received a call Well, where is he transferred a call to me today from someone from the state? And they said that the word he used was a ticket had been open About debris removal for your town and I was like I don't know what you mean. I told him I said I know but our Emergency management AMD Management director had contacted the state. I said so perhaps that's what opened the ticket I said, I'm not sure how we had a ticket open and he he said to me well Tickets are getting opened if towns can't handle picking up the debris on their own if the road crew can't go handle that I submit I chuckled a little bit because I'm like I don't think any of the small towns around here have available road crew to go around to pick up trash right now And general at least to the best of my knowledge at least I can say that for middle sex and callous um And I said we would be in the same boat. So I just told so I gave him your number because I said I don't know if that's what all I could guess was that's what prompted that phone call today But I'm not I didn't say one way or the other to mia that I talked to I just said well Thank you for responding and now that you clarified the fact that We don't have to do this and then she gave me the number to call if we decided to do this So I'm like, okay. Thank you so I think we're I think we're okay with doing nothing I mean I hate to say nothing because it sounds bad, but on the other hand, we're not taking action Exactly. Very good. That's a good way to put it So I think we're okay Now rosie sent a long email that I got well now that we have an answer that solves that I think we the calls started coming in the second Basically everyone got here on friday morning. Okay. So so We're okay and people know about Um, the berry backdrop now too, right? I think yeah, she's yeah, she's given all that information. Yeah, okay So she would put something if I push one Okay, you want me to I think it would be nice if the select board chair does that. Okay. Yeah No action taken. Okay sounds good. Um, so that takes you to flood debris. What now your question about the meeting Yeah, we had we had this emergency quick meeting And I know carl wanted to have a meeting person It just seemed that The email was well spelled out. Um And any questions could have been answered It just it's we're in like a crisis stage And you had to take an hour of your time got through had to come in We're just curious on why we had to have that meeting And and at what level because it seemed to be no brainer to me I just thought it was an emergency and we should just do it. That was what I said, right That wasn't what everyone else and I guess you didn't Yeah, so I could I think an emergency Because I'm I'm new to this whole process and yeah, so that's The select board members do not have any Individual power We have delegated some power to our emergency to our chair in emergencies to spend some money But in terms of making decisions for the town Then it's only the select board as a whole that can make that that the so quorum of the select board So it needs to be three people. It doesn't have to be in person. It can be our you know our online President that's that's perfectly, but see I thought it was an emergency. That's how I take them Well, it was a it was a hiring decision That's where that's where they work for me. That's why I thought a meeting needed to occur But it could have been done in email it had to be done There's no meetings can happen by email You have to be properly warned. Yeah Well, it doesn't have to be proper. I mean properly warning in an emergency can mean calling up the select board members and saying Yeah, but I mean staying on email asking people make decisions on it. No, you can't That's that's that's how I'm asking. Yeah, I'm asking for clarification because there's no opportunity for anybody else to be involved in those email And I agree with Carl that because it was for a hire I think that The select board needed to make that decision We're learning here Okay, so that takes care of that now the cb fiber thing. Yeah, so I got an email from glenn moore. He was asking About a seemingly sudden realization that the cost for people Connecting to cb fiber has gone up that For example Yeah I thought I would have either a 70 foot or the most of 400 foot drop now if my measurements are correct It would be 900 feet plus or minus that I would have to pay to connect that'd be 500 dollars Some on the system may be looking at a thousand or two thousand dollars to connect And and then in a follow-up he sent during our meeting. He said there's information Meeting tomorrow at maple corners and he's going to ask about, you know, we had contributed a hundred thousand to cb fiber And my understanding was we said we want you to use this money to make the connection fee lower for east mob failure residents Um, so he he's going to ask about that but I was just Didn't they say in that meeting no that they couldn't that that money would be spread across everybody in the area I mean they could not identify target target. They couldn't target east mob failure. Pretty sure. No. No was east mob failure Okay. Oh, no, it's east mob failure That was east mob failure. I thought that's what I thought and we were trying to target the drops Yeah Now the thing is though was it up to so many so many dollars per drop I think we may have played out I think yeah So I just wanted I can look into our history on this and more But I just wanted to check in to see if anybody else had heard anything about this I think there was a limit. I think there was an average cost per drop But I'll I'll check into our language. No, that would be good because I don't think we're paying the whole thing more We're not subsidizing right 500 bucks is a son that bad That's why I thought the fee is normally goes in conduit. It's underground It's what? That's right. I think even if you can get them to do it. Yeah Okay, thank you. My curiosity is satisfied. I'll follow up with it. Well, no, I'm curious to know What happens at the end of the day? How are mice being spent? Yeah on how that's being spent how it's being divided up per drop Yeah, and so Good question. Are you still working on getting it to The access to more residents? Yeah, yeah, see it's supposed to service the disadvantage residents initially Uh-huh and then work back from there Service those who don't have broadband. Yeah, but they said it How did word that we'll look at it It's really people that have low speed that's not necessarily on income. No, I know no, no, no, no, but they had a word for that Yeah, they did it wasn't underserved underserved underserved Yeah, and horn of the moon is one place as I recall correctly is underserved. Well, they can't get there now Oh, that's right. Okay. Um, so that takes care of the extra stuff. We've got warrants town administrative report And we've got the personnel matter. So one does warrants or short That's the one I think shockingly or glaringly questionable That board set that you have is to kind of check out To just essentially move Kind of all the money. I mean a little bit slack There's a couple of the banks, right worth country or Well, those are yeah Yes It's pretty short and sweet. There have been two zoning permits issued since last meeting and then the upcoming schedule for the select board meetings Yep That's pretty short Everybody remember the august 10th fire Yeah That could be a juicy one It could be a few times a year It could be juicy stuff Except trying to make it juicy, but Because I'm complying a list of questions And this will be the first time if callus sends somebody this could be the first time that Oh, you think they open? On the meeting is where it's at So They might be there You always promise to to ask all these questions You're usually pretty general, right? Oh, okay We'll see what happens. Yeah, I might watch it on tv Well, you're taking that one I bought a whole bunch of times Four times that I want to Oh You've never been thank you Thank you I appreciate you coming in talking about personnel. Yeah, you live in town. Yes. You want to be on this life board someday? Yeah So we're done except for the executive section percent So we could go home you're just gonna be able to get out of here And then we can tell you what time we are in the baking house I'll look forward to it Don't you don't have to stay up for it Uh, she's just gonna go back and watch it on tv. No, he can't because he's gonna be out. Yeah, she wants to end me That's what you guys are. Or I say Motion to adjourn Okay, so, um, I guess we need to make a motion to go in the executive section I Move to go into executive session for the purpose of discussing a personnel matter under Second