 Public comment, this is for comment of anything that's not currently on the agenda. You identify yourself please. Okay. Thank you. Is there any other public comment? I can't hear you, Pat. Yeah, I was going to say the same thing. I really can't. Could anybody hear that? I couldn't hear it. Michael fine, but I can't hear Pat. No, I can't hear pat either. No, you're both kind of weak. It's a little better. That's getting better. Yeah. How about that? Much better. Yeah. Okay. All right, Pat, start over. Three times. Okay. What I was suggesting, since it's not on the agenda tonight, could we set an effinite time when it was going to be on? And I would make a motion. The Davis road solar issue be on the agenda for our regularly scheduled April meeting. April 14th. Well, I'm not hearing it get seconded. And I had a little bit of difficulty hearing Michael, but if he could repeat the, and maybe get closer to the mic and doing so. His assertion of what was said at the last meeting. That led him to believe that it was going to be on the agenda for this meeting. I don't recall that we agreed to put it on the agenda for this meeting. But the only thing that we had to do in the last election is that we. With Larry directing the meeting that we just. Let the issue go essentially. That is correct. But Larry Sack, which did say at one point at one hour, 21 minutes and two seconds. Into the meeting that he wanted that he wanted to get more legal information as Pat had requested. And that it wanted to put it on the next meeting's agenda, but you are correct. I don't know. I don't know. There never was a vote or agreement to do that. And what, what was the legal opinion that you were seeking? Pat. The attorneys opinion. Development. And what his opinion on the issue was. Not whether we could. He certify it. But what his opinion on the actual issue. The issue of building on slopes greater than 25%. Or the overall issue of putting a. Solar array in that given location. I'm not clear. The overall issue of whether. This project meets our. Maybe somebody can clarify, but I don't think we asked the lawyer that. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I'm going to ask some pretty specific questions to give an opinion on. I don't know that we could ask the lawyer to tell us whether. The zoning. A zoning permit should have been issued. Actually, if I may speak, it's not a zoning issue. It's a town plan issue. And I think the legal question that I thought you were struggling with at the last meeting. Was what is the definition. Of the city's infrastructure. And the city's infrastructure. And the town plan that an energy facility development is prohibited on the slope, straight. That they also mentioned in the town plan. That this principle structure. Of the energy facility. Must have setbacks, the 50 points setbacks from side to rear. And that's the solar panels. We all agree. Those are the principles. It was a board. Whoa. Whoa. This is a board discussion. And the question that was being raised, we were addressing what Pat wanted a legal opinion on. So. We're trying to narrow in. What he feels the question still is. And it was on a zoning thing. So we were trying to, you know, a lawyer wouldn't look at a whole. A zoning. A zoning. Packet that came in for any application. I guess the question is, and well, for the record, my family doesn't own the property anymore. I no longer have a conflict. So I'm not recusing myself with this discussion. The. I guess the question is, does the board feel there's more to be discussed with this? Or are we done with the topic? I. I think we got you. Sorry. All right. Sorry. I got my buttons mixed up there. I personally feel as if we need to get finished with the topic. And if. Putting it to rest. Would benefit from having a motion. To reconfirm our previous. A motion. To approve. Authorization or endorsement of the project, then I would be willing to put that motion forward. If that would. Be that beneficial. Otherwise, I think we should just let it rest. As it is. I feel like I've heard enough already. I'm not sure what else I would learn from additional meeting. You might learn the legal definition of an energy facility development. I think we have a motion. That's been offered by Tom. At this point, which is to. Maybe he wants to reword it or do whatever. Tom's willing to motion forward. I move that we. For lack of a better word, reconfirm our previous. Authorization of the project. I think we should just let it rest. Whatever language you want to use there. As previously moved. Two or three meetings ago. I don't know if that's. Adequate wording or not. I'm happy to. Let somebody word Smith it if they'd like. I think it's important that we send a message. Forwarded that we have. I think it's important that we have the, the actions of, of the planning commission with regard to this project. And we've already taken that step. But if it. If it serves the purpose of moving this along. I would move that we reiterate that support. I'm not sure that. That. Well, I think a couple of things. I think one is that we. We approve this. I think quite a long time ago. I think it's been a long time. I think it's been a long time. I think it's been a long time. As a board. And I think the, you know, the planning commission has, has. Requested that we, you know. Basically do nothing. And. That we keep, you know, that approval in place. And I think we should keep that approval in place. And so I think we are, we have affirmed what the. Planning commission has done. Already. Okay. So. I think it's time to move on. So I'm fine with that. If, if, if that's sufficient. If that's sufficient endorsement moving forward. I just think it's time to move on. So I'm okay with that. Fine. Okay. Any other comments on that topic? Seeing none. We'll move forward to approving the agenda. So moved. Second. Motion and a second. All those in favor. Hi. Hi. Hi. Carrie's consent calendar. We have a meeting minutes from February and warrants. Motion to approve the consent calendar. Meetings and warrants. I can't. All those in favor. Hi. Hi. Motion carries. Next step is business. First up is select board reorganization. Hey, so. I'd like to make a motion that we retain Trini as chair. Second up. Any other nominees. You're funny. Assuming you choose to accept training. Yeah. All right. We have a motion and a second. All those in favor. Hi. Hi. Opposed. I'd like to, I'd like to move that we retain Larry. Sackowitz as vice chair. Second that. All those in favor. Hi. Hi. Opposed. Stained motion carries. And sticking with the same slate. Where is it much? I don't know. Secretary. I didn't quite catch that. I'll move that Tom Ayers be the secretary of the board. You good with that, Tom? Yeah, I'm fine with that. What does it entail? I know you've done it previously. Oh, basically nothing. I'm okay with that. Not too hard to do that job. Pretty much, you know, staff is taking care of the notes and. Might be my signature on occasion or something like that, but I'm okay. Yeah. I'm okay with that. All right. Good. And I'll second that. Wow. Changing in the guard. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. All those in favor. Hi. Opposed. Motion carries. Next up is a committee appointments and reappointments. We'll just start with the first committee and our way down the list. Okay. The revisions earlier today there. You've got the color copy. The folks in blue are the ones we've heard back from everyone in yellow is someone who's up for reappointment, but that we haven't confirmed. They're willing. Or maybe the arts. I have all of the arts and culture. Information when we get to that. Hang on. I gotta find out. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, it came in. That's why I didn't come up. You can search Trevor. I got a search. It looks like that one's from Kim. So. All right. So. Starting off with the economic development. It looks like. You know, there's a lot of people who are doing the same as you. You know, Jackson, Bethany, Sillaway and Jay Hooper looking to get reappointed. He will join Mary, Victor, Josh and. And Perry is a select board liaison currently. May I speak please. I was wondering. I thought I was still a council member and then be the chair. Am I misunderstanding the position. Oh, you're fine. You're still a council member. Okay. I was misunderstanding because I didn't quite understand what my name is mentioned and where it's fit in the categories. You're still there. You're there, but you're identified as chair. Yeah, I sent updates to everybody, so I'm not sure what happened, but that's okay. Okay. So any concerns with any of those? We do have a vacancy, so we've got to find somebody for that, so we'll work on that. Correct. Arts and culture. Okay, we have six people re-upping for another one-year appointment and one new appointment and two vacancies because it's been a nine-member committee since it was founded. The people who are re-upping are the following and some of them aren't listed here because there were some transitions during the past year that were previously approved. The re-upping are Jessica Wilkinson of the Craft Center, Jenny Albert of the Arts Bus, Vincent Freeman of the Underground Studio, Sonny Holt, Karen Dillon of Chandler, Chris Wilson, the dentist and sculptor here in town, and the new member who had sent us her letter of interest is a woman named Barbara Mills. She goes by the nickname Babs Mills. She's a relatively new resident of Randolph having moved here just before the pandemic. She is both a visual artist and a pop and jazz singer. And she basically just said that since she arrived here, she has been working with local artist Steven Samantha Augustus on some projects and has also been assisting Vincent Freeman in the operation of the Underground Recording Studio. So she brings a music and visual arts background to the committee. And with those seven, we still have two remaining vacancies, which the committee is looking to fill in the coming year. Tom, you have two stepping down then. The ones that have stepped down from the list you see highlighted here in yellow are Dave Hurwitz stepped down and Andy Mueller stepped down. And they were replaced by Jess Wilkinson and Jenny Albert over the course of the past year. Okay. Any questions on those? Nope, sounds good to me. Kim, did you get that list or would you like Tom to send it to you? I would love it if Tom would send it to me. Thank you, Trini. I will. I will email that to you tomorrow morning. Thank you, Tom. Okay. Energy committee. It looks like we have three up for renewal. Gary Durr, Susan Mills and Mary Ann Savas. And Jeff Grout, who is up for renewal, but hasn't confirmed. Can't take care of that for us, Kim. I don't want to speak for him, but I'm pretty sure he is not renewing. Great. And Pat, you was going to still be the liaison on that one. And just backing up, obviously, I'll still be the liaison in the arts and culture as well. So. Yeah, we'll just have to add that on, Kim. I would have brought it up Tom, but you weren't on the list. I'll add it to the list I sent to Kim. Okay. All right. Moving forward. So we'll need to find another member for the energy group. Recreation committee. Looks like we have Valerie Schoolcraft, Kristen Chandler, Larry Devignan, Ryan LaCroix, Paul Ray, Kristen Gage and Kyla Grace. And Larry as the board member. So it's my understanding that two of these members are stepping down. Valerie is one of them. And I don't remember who was the other one, Kyla. So I believe Valerie and Kyla are no longer available for this committee. Learned that yesterday. For both great folks, that's too bad. Other interest. Yeah, yeah. And Larry still want to be the liaison on that. Yep. Yep. I'm good with that. Okay. Water, wastewater. Looks like we only have two. On water, we actually have, I'm a voting member. So that's, that makes three. And then we have a fourth member who was approved earlier this year. Susan Pickett, who had been previously on the wastewater committee and has rejoined us. And so, so we have four right now. East Valley Community Group. There was a new list that came from them late, it wasn't too late. Probably late morning today. Did you get that, Kim? Yeah. I updated this to reflect that. Okay. Oops. I lost my. Okay. So we have Josie Crothers, Mark Kelly, Marcia Hammond, Allison, Lyle, and Bobby Kimberly. Going into the parts of that group that we're rotating. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. All right. Conservation commission. You have three members up. No confirmation on any of those. I happen. I happen to know that. TJ Riley was replaced by Emily Lewis earlier this year, I think. I'm pretty sure TJ does not want to live in Randolph anymore. Yeah, I wrote to Brandon to ask him. I haven't been back yet. We haven't heard from Chandler, Emily, or Ian. No. An element review board. Yikes. A little slim. Yeah. You haven't heard from any of them if they want to be reappointed. I have not heard anything. We haven't. Josh, I think I saw you step on. Have you heard anything from. Chris Matt Paul. I think their intentions are to continue to serve, but I was not aware of them not. Forwarding that request to you guys. So. Yeah, but I think their intention is all of them to, to serve. So at this time we only have three members of a seven member board. So we do not have a quorum to hear any permits. That's definitely a problem. I don't mind stepping on short term. Let me stress that short term. I did my 21 years on that board. But we need to find somebody to take at least one of those seats. So we have a quorum, but if you have. If there's no challenge against it, I will step on short term until we find enough to have a quorum just so we don't hold up permits. Hi, this is Julie. Chris happens to be here. And he said he would, if that is a question. Oh, good. And then that's one. Thanks, Chris. We do have two alternates. Yeah. We're the alternates. Yeah, Mary and Sonny. Yeah, we were, we were alternate. So I would stay in that position for a little bit. Okay. I would be, I would be happy to. I would be happy to step up. In a more permanent capacity either as an alternate or as a, as a full member, if that would be. I would be happy to step up to the select board's liking. Oh, golly. You're a full member. We just fixed that. That's easy. Put his name in there. Oh boy. Kim, I'll email you in the morning. If I wake up. No, I'm, I'm kidding. I'll happily do that. Development issues are of considerable interest to me. So. Yeah. I'm a glutton for punishment is what it is. Yeah. You hang on a minute. We'll talk about planning commission. Maybe he's like that position too. Yeah. Now on the planning commission, we have one position up, which is Paul raise. Any idea. Re-open for four years. Hold on a second. I think you should chat with Sunny about that because my understanding is that Matt has decided to depart. Oh, It's sunny here. I don't see him, but that's a, that's, that's, you know, that's a question. So we need to. Yeah. I think I'll just touch out the sunny on that one. See if he's at a course funds with Matt about that. I think. I think Matt had to resign. And I believe Paul said he was not going to. Re-up after 12 years. Yes, Paul, Paul is Paul. Paul is. I can't twist his arm anymore. All right. So we have vacancies on the planning commission. Then also. Yes, we do. This isn't all our committees. What's missing. Oh, budget. Oh yeah. Obviously. Can you just say who's. Who's on what. We have for the DRB. You say that again. Yeah. Chris, right. Yeah. Matt Morowski and Paul Plutney. And Tom. And Tom. Right. And alternates are Perry and sunny. And so. I just got, I just got confirmation from Matt Moroski that he will remain on the DRB. Hi guys, this is Chris, right. Yeah, how are you doing? No, the DRB, I hope. Yeah, I'll go anywhere you want me to go, but the reality is, yeah, I'm interested in continuing to serve. I think most of the other members are also interested in continuing to serve. Anybody who's up for reelection. I have not heard anything other than that. So if you've not heard from them. I would assume that they would be interested. And so, yeah, so thanks. I would, I, I welcome the opportunity to continue to continue. I did not, I, you know, I declined. I came back from the chair because I did think. That it was important for other people to step up and to have a more rotating chair than we had previously. So, you know, I served for a few years and now Matt is doing a great job as chair and I am secretary. So that all works. So if it's okay with you, I'd like to continue that. Sounds good. Now what about the planning commission, Chris? No, I'm not doing. Thanks, sweet. No, no, no, no. Great. Your time is up. I have another candidate for the planning commission that I'm going to reach out to. So we can leave that the way it is and see if we get a letter. I've been dressed here in a little while. Okay. Isn't there a bunch of others that we appoint and we have to appoint like the tack member to the RPC, the dog catcher. There's a list of them. Okay. So, we used to do at the beginning of the year each year. There was a whole sheet that came and there was some of those type positions too at the beginning. We can catch them next month. I'll see if I can find one of the prior ones that we used to do. Thank you. Okay. Given what we have now and what we've just gone through entertain a motion to reappoint those that we've identified. So moved. Second. Those in favor. Aye. Opposed. Motion carries. Discussion of Kimball library's H back improvements. Folks Amy grass McCare I'm the director of Kimball library. If it suits the select word, I'll just do a quick verbal recap of the information I've already sent. So, for those of you who don't know last November, the library trustees made the decision to close the library building to the public. Because if you cast your mind back. COVID cases were going through the roof. And the library's only ventilation. Is provided by opening windows and doors. So a combination of the. Situation with COVID plus the cold weather. Really required them to make the. The decision to close the building to the public because we could not. We could not close the building to the public. Because we were the staff or patron safety in there. So now we're faced with how to make sure that we never have to do that again. And the simple solution is to introduce mechanical ventilation to the building. As it happens, the central air conditioning that serves the main level of the library. And so this turns out to be one of those times when things actually, the timing is right. It will be possible to both deal with that climate control issue and introduce ventilation to the main level in one fell swoop. The lower level of the library is a different climate zone. And so in order to introduce mechanical ventilation to the lower level of the building, we're going to need to look at installing. New equipment and ducting. But once again, this is kind of nice timing because there have already been climate control issues downstairs in terms of adequate cooling. And so, like I said, it feels like the stars are aligning kind of nicely for once when it comes to this capital improvement to the historic building. Another way that the stars feel like they're aligning a bit is the availability of grants and potentially matching funds. Although, of course, matching funds are always a bit of a challenge. The. Cultural facilities grant that the Vermont arts council administers. Is an excellent match for this kind of a project. And the grant. That they award is up to $30,000. This has a one to one matching requirement. So then goes the hunt for the match, right? What I have found so far. As potential sources for the match. Is three potential pots of ARPA money. So one of these would be funds that the state will be administering. They have one category of funds at that level that will go toward energy efficiency projects. So that's one possibility. Another possibility is the department of libraries at the state level has asked and has been included in the governor's budget for $15.9 million of ARPA money that would be distributed to public libraries for improvements, repairs, and so on. So that looks like a nice possibility. And last, but not least in terms of ARPA money is the money that the town of Randolph will be able to make decisions about. How that those funds will be distributed. So yeah, let's hear it for ARPA. Two other potential sources for matching funds for that. Cultural facilities grant are. Town capital improvement funds. And funds that the library trustees have control and decision making authority over. So what makes this a little nerve wracking is. That in order to. Introduce mechanical ventilation into the building before the next cold season. We need to get onto a contractor schedule now. Just as an example, ARC mechanical who put together a proposal. Which, by the way, is just a preliminary proposal. They're scheduling nine months out at this point. And I don't imagine other contractors are have much more. Capacity at this point to do a project earlier. So what I am envisioning and what I think will work is to make the application to the Vermont, Vermont Arts Council. Cultural facilities branch. Which is due to them on May 2nd. And concurrently. To get a final scope of work. Developed for the HVAC improvements. Assuming, which of course I will, because I'm optimistic that Kimball library is awarded that $30,000 grant. We would receive notification on August 31st. And we could conceivably start the project on September 1st. So that would mean, like I said, developing the scope of work, bidding out the project and selecting a contractor. Ready to pull the trigger pretty much as soon as the contractor can get into the building. So part of this is just informational to you about the situation at the library. It has been. A real loss to the community for them not to be able to enter the building regardless of the many, many ways we have been able to provide low and no contact services. We really don't want to be in this position for another cold season ever again. And the other part of this is a request for the select board to approve the library's application for the cultural facilities grant for $30,000. And also to request that the select board keep in mind the potential matching funds that are out there. Those, whether or not they turn out to be available in the end, of course, is still a question. But at least there's a lot of money washing around right now that we might be able to leverage for the project. Amy, do you, do you have a sense of what the process is for the Vermont department of libraries, potential funding and what the timeline is for that? That seems like a pretty significant pool of, of dollars for library statewide. It is. And so I hope representative Satkowitz is listening very attentively here. The, the last action that I'm aware of was that the, that the governor has included the $15.9 million request to direct ARPA money specifically for those, you know, for capital improvements in libraries in his plan. So I think that's a good point. I think that the governor has included the $15.9 million request to direct ARPA money specifically for those, you know, for capital improvements in libraries in his plan for the ARPA funds. Where that is right now in the legislature, I'm not quite sure, but the, the department of libraries is still hopeful that that money will be, what's the word I'm looking for? Mark, I'm not sure that's quite the right word, but I'm not sure that that money will be available for that, for the purposes, for that, for those purposes. And do you have any idea, I know you're going to apply for the full, the fully capped $30,000 and the arts, arts council's cultural facilities grant, do you, and you may not, but do you have any idea what their pool of dollars that they're working with for that particular grant is this fiscal year? Yeah. Yeah. On the tip of my tongue. Yeah, yeah, I'm not surprised, but I just, having sat on arts council grant, grant making decision making groups in the past, applying for 30,000 and actually getting the full 30,000, depending on the pool of dollars and the number of awardable applicants they have, it's not necessarily a slam dunk that you will get the full 30,000, but you're probably aware of that. You could apply for 30 and get 20 or 15 or whatever, depending on the amount of dollars they have to allocate across all the libraries in the, all the cultural facilities that apply and are successful. So that's just something to be aware of. Sure. Well, I'm, I'm still aiming toward optimism and. Yeah, sure. Yeah. Very successful with the grants that I have written to the arts council to the division for historic preservation. So, you know, I can't promise that I'll be successful this time around, but I have a pretty good track record. Good. Good. Good for you. In the application. Do you have to identify the match? Maybe. That is a really excellent question. And I should have looked into that. The arts council is doing a webinar training. In a couple of weeks. So I will definitely have the answer for that. After the training, but I'm sorry. I did not, I did not think to look to see if they require identifying where the match is coming from. So we've set up a committee in Randolph to. Evaluate all the different use and come out with. What they think should be the plan for Randolph. I know in our capital reserve, we just went there. For the library and the next priority was the town building. I'm not sure that's a good. I don't know that that's a solid match source for this. Has that ARPA has the town ARPA committee, which we just, I think it was the last meeting or maybe two meetings ago that we informed that. Have they met yet? Yes, we have. What's the process for putting something like this before them, Perry. So Trevor is going to, he's getting us some resources. We're looking to not reinvent the wheel here. We'd like to see what other communities are using the funds for. And to get some ideas, we have some suggestions that have already come to us. So before we're going to. You know, tackle those requests. We need to know what qualifies and that's what Trevor's working on. So, you know, we've got, we've got some. We've got some, some thoughts on this, but I'd really like to be really crystal clear about where the money can be used and how it can be used. And, you know, there is a length of time on this and we have a pretty long length of time. So I'm not, I'm not. Thinking that we need to rush into spending that. But, you know, like in this particular situation, it seems like this is probably would qualify. I'm going to have to. You know, get that determination from Trevor. And now there may be something that says, well, if you're getting our money from this, you can't use our for matching funds from this. I don't know those things yet. So I'm still digging into this. So it could be a little while before we can answer some questions like that. Whether or not the matching funds can come from another ARPA pool. So. Amy, just sort of brainstorming here. You do mention Kimball library funds is a possible source of the match. Do you think the trustees would be. Amenable to pledging those in the interim, if the grant requires a match before May 2nd, when you file the grant. I'm wondering if the library has funds that you could pledge as a match and then continue to pursue the ARPA funding and other potential funding sources. And, and, and flip to those, but at least for the purposes of your grant application, if it is required, you could show a good faith effort to. Come up with a match, just a suggestion. If that's something that's going to be asked of you. Well, I won't speak for the trustees in terms of, you know, them, them making a. I'm voting on this. I will say that they recognize how vital it is to get mechanical ventilation introduced into the building. There's. There's, they have no illusions that we can carry on with the situation that we have now. So they're very motivated. Let me put it that way. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just suggesting that as an interim solution because it looks like the bureaucracy of. The ARPA funding, which may ultimately be your ideal source. It just feels like between now and May 2nd. The bureaucracy of that process might be a little daunting. And I'm just suggesting that as an interim. Possibility. For the trustees to consider. I do want to make sure Perry that. I do want to make sure that as I threw a lot of ARPA, ARPA, ARPA out there. Just to be clear. That the grants that I propose applying for is, these are state funds that have nothing to do with ARPA. So I don't know that. What you said, what you envision that there might be. A problem was getting ARPA money from multiple tools for a similar project. I don't think that that. That will prove to be a barrier. In this case, right? That's fine. We're just waiting on guidance here. That's one of the problems with the ARPA funds is. Having dealt with a lot of this stuff. And COVID money and all this other stuff becomes the rules keep changing. And, you know, interim rules didn't mean nothing until they make final rules. And then the final rules have changed in the past. So this is one of the reasons why. I don't think we're going to have this conversation in that committee meeting that. I'm a little leery to go committing any funds or taking on any projects. And saying, yeah, we'll do that. Until we actually know what the guidelines are. And having dealt with that problem in the past. I'm not interested in going down a path here where we think we're going to do something. And then all of a sudden they get different. So it's just been, it's honest to God, it's been a real struggle. I think we're going to have to do that. And then we'll have to do that. And then I think we're going to have to deal with any funds that I've seen, you know, idle money was dedicated to one thing. And then they changed the rules nine months later. PPP was dedicated to one thing. And then they changed the rules. Nine months later. I have a suspicion that that is what is going to happen here. And we may find that, you know, we may have more flexibility in the end. Once people start saying, Hey, I got this project or I got that project. And then they'll write their congressmen and their legislators. And then they'll write their congressmen and their legislators. And then they'll write their congressmen and their legislators. So Julie. Julie just put a good note out the USDA money. That's open right now. That's a good. A good avenue to research too. That might pick up half of it. You could use the state funds. As the match. Is a USDA facilities grant that's out there. Right now. And I see Amy commented on it. I think that's a good idea. Make them take a. Take a motion to allow Amy to apply for both grants. I'll do that. I'll make a motion for that right now that she should apply for both grants. I'll second. A motion and a second. All those in favor. Hi. Hi. Post. I think you mean the Vermont arts council and the USDA community facilities grant, right? Right. Yeah. God, I love him as a secretary. I'm not taking notes. I'm counting on you Trevor and Kim, but. Yeah. Yeah. That's my intent. So that was the motion. All right. We were looking for other funds. That might help with doing the film. Seems like there's more opportunities here. You say in the USDA application. I'm not taking notes. I'm counting on you Trevor and Kim, but. Yeah. Yeah. That's my intent. So that was the motion. All right. Yeah. You say in the USDA application should be the dome and the HVAC. Well, or any of these other ones. Whatever might be a possibility. I think that. Yeah. I think in the interest of keeping it just having a lot of experience with grants, especially with the arts council. Keeping it focused just on one. I think that would be a good idea. I think that would be a good idea. I think that would be a good idea. I think that would be a good idea. I think that would be a good example than trying to. To mix in other things. That's not to say that the. Arpa funds couldn't be a potential resource for the dome. As well. But I think in this instance, especially given the. The time constraints that the library is operating under. And the extended delay and actually getting the work done. I think we'd be better off focusing. On this, on this. The whole system in this instance. It's just my, my feeling. I want to see us succeed with these and not. Go off in a bunch of different directions. So. We can call it age back and weatherization and. Do them both. Right. That's true. If you can. If you can finesse it that way, but, but then. You know, does that commit a portion of the $30,000. A portion of the $30,000 from the arts council to a portion of the dome work too. No, they're two separate grants. Ah, you're actually suggesting filing separate grants for both things, okay. Okay, I wasn't clear on that. I thought you were talking about bundling them. I was talking bundling for USDA. Oh, okay. Go for the $30,000 for HVAC through the arts council. But bundle the USDA one. Okay, yeah, that makes sense. Absolutely. I thought you were talking about bundling them for both. Oh, no, I don't think you're gonna get more than the $30,000 so there's no reason to bundle and go higher on that. Yeah, yeah. All right, next up is consider authorizing an application for Salisbury Square. Hi, y'all. I sent through Trevor. I hope you all got it, a little synopsis and current site plan of what we'd be asking for. I don't know how much he'd like me to go through that, just summarize what's in there. What's your preference? So it's on the record, maybe just a quick summary of what the project is, Jolina. Sure. As you all know, we've been trying for a long time to find a way to complete the Salisbury Square project. And there's been a lot of movement in a lot of areas. We've already talked about price and volatility these days and also changing demographics and needs. But so we've had some changes in the site plan over time, but we've come upon a plan that we think has the best chance of funding and implementation. And that's what we're proposing to apply to CDBG for. The plan has changed, if you look at the site plan, the site plan now includes 12 units in three buildings of rental properties and nine home sites for reasons of some of the funder peculiarities that you were talking about earlier. We show one portion of the site in a sort of a gray green as phase three development. We can fit two or three units there, but because HUD cannot fund in that area, we're calling that a phase three, but we can put continuing with our 36 unit previously permitted total density. We're looking at one or two units there, depending in that phase. And on the plan is shown 12 units in that sort of pinkish area in the middle of rental. And that is the portion of the project that we're talking about today. So the project will that would go first, the part of the project that would go first and that we're talking about for the CDBG grant is the infrastructure, the road right-of-way sidewalks and the rental part in the middle. And the reason for that is that in addition to the Northern Borders funding, which we've already received toward the infrastructure, the best or possibly only way that we have discovered to pay for the infrastructure, which the housing folks do not like to pay for, is through leveraging tax credits, federal tax credits. And so the federal tax credit equity, we believe can cover the cost of the match to Northern Borders for the infrastructure costs as well as covering a lot of the equity for the rental. Once the infrastructure is in, that unburdens the home ownership costs of that additional cost and allows us to lower the cost, not have to include that overhead in the home ownership part, which would come next. We've talked to CDBG about this, they're anticipating us coming in with this request. They've indicated that one million is, I know it's hard to think of one million as a reasonable thing, but these days one million is a reasonable request for infrastructure in that they would need more than half of the rental to benefit households of under 80% median income, which this does. And they would also apparently look at it as if, it's benefiting the future development of the home ownership. So obviously no guarantees there, it's a competitive process, but we have had discussions with the staff there about it. And they are obviously also prioritizing housing these days and so that's to our benefit. The process is that the application has to go through the town and we are a sub grantee. And so we sort of do this together, we would be writing the grant and helping with the notices and everything, but the actual submission is made by the town. And then I just to sort of give some sort of reminder about some other things that we would need to do with or get support by the town to make this feasible. Obviously project support in these days, there's a lot of support for housing everywhere, but supporting this project in our area, if it comes to that with funders. Also we need to go back and re-up the water sewer allocation that we paid for previously. And just because the length of time has expired and we would go through the water sewer committee first and then that comes to the select board afterwards with that request. And then finally, we had talked about a request that we would anticipate making to the town to adopt the roadway. In this case, it would be just the loop road that we would just that sort of circular amount of the road, not the two dog legs. And that would be done after we had obtained obtained our local permit amendment approvals. So that's sort of the outline of that portion of the projects. The next application deadline is the 12th and this grants requires a hearing before application. It has to be noticed, at least I think it's 15 days in advance of the hearing dates. Usually the select board meets directly after that to vote on the question of applying and it can happen no later than I think it's four days before the grant application is due and hopefully a little more just to enable the town and us to finalize the application, get it in good shape and submit it in time. So what we're asking today is that the select board considers setting that hearing, which is the prerequisite to the application set a meeting directly afterwards to vote on approving that the application goes forward. And then in the meantime, we would be working to write the meat of the grant so that it's ready for application once that process is through. Does that make sense? If there's any questions, I'd be happy to answer them. Julie, in the past, we've held the hearing and voted at that same meeting instead of two separate meetings, is that not allowed? Yeah, I think the hearing has to be, it can happen essentially at the same time or sequentially, but I think it has to be a separate, the hearing is separate from the actual select board meeting that follows. I think I'm not an expert in these things, but I think they're supposed to be two separate meetings. They can be sequential. Yeah, I think that's how we've done it in the past. One of the questions that came up with this, do you have an image of what this is gonna look like a few years ago when the idea was floated of the efficient housing? A lot of people were all up in arms about they called them ugly houses and not wanting the ugly houses. So do we know what this is gonna look like? Well, we have a few different house styles in the home ownership side or the rental side, are you talking about? Cause this is the rental side, but I can answer for both. All you're asking to apply for right now is the rental side, right? Not the home ownership side. Yes, the CDBG funds, it's harder to apply those to the home ownership because they're restricted on the housing side to under 80% median income. And it's just hard to reach that without a lot of subsidies. So that's gonna be a separate quest potentially with different funders who are, I'm sure you heard the term, the missing middle. There's a lot of effort these days at the state level and the federal level to find funding for folks between 80 and 120% median income for home ownership. Which is not to say that you can't try to extend home ownership lower, but it's just much harder to reach those. And also there's been very little subsidy for people at or just slightly below or above median income. And so that's likely to be the targeted area for the home ownership and CDBG can't touch that. So we're trying to leverage their funds with this part because it will enable the infrastructure and the rental to be done at once. Yeah, I just, I'd like to see what we're supporting before we support just the flat plan. That's there today. Sure, I can send you the, I can send you or share the four plexes. Can you hear me? Yeah. Okay, yeah. I can either share screen or send you those. It would certainly be something we would have for the hearing and the application. They're modern looking, but they're a nice design for the four plexes. It's essentially two connected to story buildings with, you know, staircase in the middle accessing the two. And if, I don't know if you can't, I think you had a rule not to share screens, but I can certainly send that along before the hearing and we would have that incorporated into the, into the application documents that would be ready for the hearing. Okay. On adopting a rental, okay. On adopting a road, I think we have a policy on that where you have to meet a certain design and it has to meet certain criteria before you can even request the board taking it over. So I think there's a process by which we go through for that. So I would say on that front, you just have to follow whatever that defined process is. Yes, we've actually done a pretty deep dive into all of the road policies as state and local and fire marshal stuff and had a meeting with Trevor and sort of made up a memo that we reviewed what we thought was the process. And I think we were roughly on the same page. I don't know if Trevor's had any thought about that since, but our engineers believe that we can meet all those standards. And I will leave it to the Larry on his thoughts of whether the Water Waste Water Committee will extend the date that's expired on your other water wastewater permits. I would suspect that we would, but I can't speak to the entire committee. So can we get Josh to weigh in on this too because this is a significant deviation from what the original proposal was back 12 years ago? Well, I think Julie mentioned something about seeking amendments to the local permits when she was describing it, Julie. Is that what, did I hear that correctly? Yes. So the density isn't changing in that there's still 36 units. It's the type of unit and the location mostly within that loop road. The lot lines have changed. Most of the other areas have not changed or not changed very much. So we would be sticking within the infrastructure. Basically it was the same and the density is the same. So we would propose amendments to act 250 and the town. And I think also there are a couple of state permits, but their amendments not repermitting. Right. So in essence, it would have to go back to the DRB for them to review it based on the original memorandum of decision. Correct. Yep. Also, you might not have to be within the original with the act 250 piece because now we're no longer required to that. Are we, Josh? Right. That is a good question. I'm not quite sure how the neighborhood development area designation would affect an amendment to a previously issued act 250 permit. That's a good question. That's a good question to find the answer out. Unfortunately, I think it does not alleviate the responsibility for getting the amendment. They're proposing that in the legislature, but it hasn't passed yet. So I think, and we are double-checking this, but I think there's relief on the permit cost and there's relief on the permit timeframes potentially. So if you, you know, they have to respond in a certain period of time for NDA areas, but I don't think yet that we can avoid going back to them for an amendment. So you don't think that's, because it was an existing project already? Is that what you're thinking? Yeah. Yeah. And then I think there is a proposal to consider that, but I don't think it's a law yet. Okay. Well, I don't think it's going to be an issue. And I think most everybody fully supports what's going on here. So I can't believe that you've run into, you know, any huge hurdles with that, but it's just another. I don't think so. You know, we're sticking sort of within the spirit of the thing just changing times, but it would be awful nice if we could eliminate it, just spending money and stuff, but. It would be extremely beneficial if you could eliminate it because all those things are quite time-consuming and costly. Right. It does, I think, half the fee, which is helpful. So you're asking tonight for us to set a date and what date is your applications due April 12th? April 12th, yep. And then there has to be a notice, you know, you need to be able to get it into, I think it's at least a paper of local circulation, if not in and other, you know, we would put it in other, you know, digital notices too, but you have to at least put it in a paper of local circulation for, I think, 15-day prior notice. So if we assume, you know, the Herald on a Thursday, for example, that would be the 10th and then you'd have to count 15 days from that. And I think that would still leave you early enough, but I didn't know what your schedule, your preferred schedule would be, are you shooting for a Thursday, for example, because that's when you usually meet or would another day be possible because it's possible to do, I think, you know, Valley News or something that you might have more options for days of a notice. So if I'm not mistaken generally, and I don't know that this one, I don't know how much interest this one will pull, but usually these are the little five to 10-minute meetings. Right, because nobody shows up. We're gonna have to have a special meeting for this. Well, John, fine with. I mean, I think, you know, I'd like to see this move along. It's been a lot, I'd love to see this project completed. So, you know, if we have to meet, you know, have a special meeting to pull this off and get the grant application in there, you know, I think that's a plus. Right now, it looks like where the earliest we could do it is the 25th. Well, the latest is the 29th. I'm gonna be out of the country on the 25th. I'll just be returning that day. So I would prefer to do it on the 29th, if we could. 29th? Or the 28th, or over the weekend. But I won't be back in Randolph until sometime in the afternoon of the 25th. 29th is plenty of time, if that works for people. The 28th would be better for me. Fine with that, too. You know, I'm okay with that. Okay, so we need a motion for that. Not available to 28th. Not available to 28th. Uh-oh. Did I hear the 30th? Is the 30th soon in? Actually, that's a problem for me. Yeah, I think we can't, on the April side, we just can't get too close to the 12th. I think it's a four-day, I don't know if it's four working days or what. So as long as it were done, you know, kind of by early this second week of April, I think that would be enough. How about the 31st? You guys are booked that night. What's that? That's open meeting log training. You guys are already booked for a couple of hours that night. Oh boy. Well, we could do it at the same time, do it right before that. Yeah, yeah, that's 530 is the training start. Oh. 530 to what? 35? I would plan on probably seven o'clock total for that. Is that VLCT training, Trevor? Yeah, yep. On what, the 31st? On the 31st, yeah. Ill and Lee. Have there been substantive changes that require new training? I think that there's enough transition in new people and it's good to sharpen our practices so we can do the training from 530 to seven and hold this hearing at 715. Yeah, 715, 730? Sure. Let's back it up to 715. We should, it'll give us a reason to get out of the other one. I like the way you think. Well, if it's supposed to last till seven, it keeps us on track, right? That's true. And it gives us an excuse to leave if we don't stay on track. If we're already gathered and need to make time in our schedule for that, it's easy to add a few minutes to the time versus set another side. So, Julie, I think you're hearing March 31st at 715. How does that work? That's fine. That's the Thursday, the 31st. And then you would have this like we're meeting directly afterwards, right? Yes. Okay. And then just to be clear, we take action at the end of this. I mean, we take action at the select board meeting. Right, you sort of close the hearing, open the meeting, and then go on the question in the select board part of the meeting. I think parliamentarily, what you're actually going to do is open your meeting at 530 for the training. You'll end the training, then you'll open the public hearing. You won't recess the meeting. It won't be three separate meetings. Yeah, there we go. Could be. We'll open the hearing at 715, close the hearing at 7-something, and then you'll be back in your regular session and the way it will structure the agenda essentially will reflect that flow, open the meeting while training, public hearing at 715, consider action on applying for the CDBG grant, just after that. And so then they'll all link up. We'll be one agenda, one meeting, but you'll break for the hearing. We're fitted in, I shouldn't say not breaking. You just, we'll call that out special. Okay, so do we have a motion to set that meeting up? I'll move that we set up the select board hearing and RACD Salisbury Square CDBG grant consideration for 715 on Thursday, March 31st. Second. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Motion carries. Next up is local cannabis control board discussion and planning commission direction. Thanks, folks. Bye. Thanks Julie. Thank you Julie. Thanks Julie. This is a follow up from last time Josh prepared a bunch of information for you to consider from use charts, the flow charts to illustrate how things could work in different scenarios. Josh there. So it's, if you're trying to talk Josh, you're muted, but the, there he is. Yeah, I'm here. So what you're looking at here Josh is to toss this to the planning commission to fill in the chart where the question marks are. Right. Yeah, and I can, because the DRB met on Monday evening, some of those question marks have been filled in. If you give me sharing capacity, I can share the updated table. Yeah, we're gonna try that for you Josh. You're considered safe. Did you let him go? Okay, looks like I got. Given permission. Looks like I got permission here. Oh, you gave it to him. He must have permission sometime. I'm still this, I'm still the stable disabled. So, can I just say make co-host? Try it. Yeah, making me co-host would do it. Yeah. Yeah, I'm gonna say that might be the quickest way. Yep. My only option. Okay. So can, because everybody see that? Yes. Yep. Okay, so this is the updated table on, the DRB's meeting on Monday. So, you know, our land use regularly regulations have a clause in there where if there's a business type that's proposed that doesn't fall within a category easily, then the DRB can give rate permission. We talked about outdoor indoor cultivation because it didn't really fall into any of our use categories easily as defined within our regulations. And so they determined that indoor cultivation would fall under light industrial and outdoor cultivation best fit under rural industrial. They, the DRB felt that it's not a perfect scenario, but it's their best attempt to address the outstanding question. So, based on their determinations, this is the table that addresses the cannabis type of businesses that we would expect. The yellow cells are the indicate districts where there are limitations to all of the type or all of the cannabis enterprises. So, for instance, North and South Randolph villages, indoor cultivation, there's a limitation on the square footage. The state of Vermont has proposed a tiered cultivator network up to 25,000 square feet. And I think, you know, in that district, there's a limit on light manufacturing facilities up to say 6,000 square feet or 10,000 square feet. I don't know the exact number, but the yellow cell represents a limitation to all of the cannabis type of businesses regulated by the state. Jobs relative to size or what are some of those conditional? Yeah, it's all square footage. So the cultivating side is based on, so they have small cultivators at 1,000 square feet, 2,500 square feet, 5,000 square feet, 10,000 square feet. And then 25,000 square feet. Those are the different licenses that are available. And does that apply to any type of crop? Cannabis. Only the cannabis, okay. But, all right. And who sets those limitations? That's the Cannabis Control Board. Okay, all right, all right. I just was trying to clarify whether they applied to within the context of this discussion or whether they're applied to all types of crops or speaking strictly of cannabis, so. No, cannabis, this is all new. So like every municipality is going through this process because it's all very new. Agriculture in general is regulated by the state of Vermont. The zoning department, we don't see really, we don't process zoning applications for agricultural practices because that's all regulated with the state. You know, they inform us of what they're doing because that's part of state statute. They are supposed to inform us of what they're doing. But in general, it's all regulated by the Department of Agriculture with the state. However, because the state has deemed cannabis as not a farming practice, this kind of falls in this weird sort of bucket. Well. Josh, this is the work of the Development Review Board, right? Doesn't the Planning Commission should be the one filling us out though, right? Not them, they just kind of put in play. So I think the Planning Commission needs to do it. And I'm really concerned that we've knocked off all the interstate quadrants for growing outdoor hemp. We've got some great ag land there that's wide open. Yeah, so I think training your right, the Planning Commission has the purview of amending our bylaws and the DRB has the ability to weigh in when this sort of situation pops up, which is not often, clearly. And since we're working with the state, which this whole new sector, we're trying to adjust to it. So I consider this to be another baby step in the process of getting this sector fully integrated into our land use regulations. So because there are individuals who have inquired, multiple individuals who have inquired over the last several weeks about cultivating businesses, retail businesses. And I thought it was really important to be able to give them feedback on what their process was going to be because the state application portal opens up in less than a month. The pre-application portal opens up, I think, in about two or three weeks. So there are individuals in the community who want to put forward applications to the state and they're just trying to figure out what the local process is going to be. So this is one step. I can say that the individuals that I've communicated with because of the DRB decision, they have guidance now and they can move forward. Actually, I've received one of the applications today. They would have to go to the DRB for an indoor cultivation business. Retail does not open up until later in the year, so there's still some time there, but retail is retail, it doesn't matter. We allow retail in the districts that are indicated in the table and I would not expect that to change. I'm most concerned with the cultivation side because I do feel that there are districts that should allow cultivation, both indoor and outdoor, it's more importantly outdoor, that we don't currently allow based on the use category of rural industrial. So I think part of the conversations that we had at the DRB side on Monday was that we recognized that this is a first step in that the next step most likely is for the Planning Commission to look at this table and they're gonna look at this next week at their next meeting. And then to look at what might make sense to do by-law changes to allow more of the outdoor cultivation because I do think based on our current regulations in those current use categories that they just need to be amended to allow more outdoor cultivation. And so I think that's gonna be the next step for them in the Planning Commission and so that's where we are. And that would address Josh, the treaty's concern about the interstate corridor. Yeah, I mean, I think- That seems like a no-brainer to me. It kind of seems like a no-brainer to me too. I mean, obviously the state has some very specific requirements, their own requirement is that it can't be, you can't view the cannabis from a public roadway, right? So that's their restriction. That's not ours, that's on the state. However, there are many parcels in many districts that individuals could have a small cultivator, 1,000 square foot grow outdoors. And so I think it's important because even though the state doesn't think it's farming, it's farming, I mean, you're growing a plan. So I think it's important to recognize that and maybe the Planning Commission's role is to create another use category specifically for cannabis. And so I think, and again, on the Planning Commission side, they've seen this that I think they are aware of the opportunity and maybe they're willing to go out there and make the changes to allow that business activity to happen on as many parcels as possible. So can I weigh in for a second? So I actually think this is a good thing that the DRB has weighed in on this because for 12 years, as long as I've been on the Planning Commission, we've been looking to get guidance from the DRB and this is the first time I think that's ever happened. So I'm kind of happy about this. And I think, you know, next week at the Planning Commission meeting, we can, you know, chew on this and see what those members think. But I really think this was a good approach. I agree, Perry. I mean, it felt a little clunky at first because I think it's a new sector, we're all trying to adjust, but I really, you know, reflecting back on it yesterday and today I do feel like the DRB gave some guidance. Here it is, here it is in our land use regulations and now the Planning Commission can then assess that and make the changes that they think is warranted to allow this new type of business activity to happen in the districts that make sense. Yep, I agree. So, you know, I would be very anxious to, you know, start on this process next week, which is, this is kind of how I wanted, you know, how I felt it should have evolved right from the get go. And so now I think we've got a good place to start here from, so. I still think one of the outstanding questions to the select board is whether or not that they want to create a cannabis control commission. And I think part of the materials that were sent to you showed a flowchart of how applications might go through the town of Randolph if there was no commission and if there was a commission. And hopefully that explains some outstanding questions for everybody. It would be just like the liquor control board licensing, it would happen once a year. And so the examples that I showed in that flowchart in essence was to show what it would be like for the first time applicants, right? They go through the zoning process, they go through the cannabis control commission and then they end up with their permitting and then they can open up for business. The next year, they wouldn't have to go through the zoning. All they would have to do is submit a request to the cannabis control commission to receive their local license. And that says very similar to the liquor control board. Which I agree with you. Yeah, entirely. I thought we made the decision to do that and that it would function just like the liquor control. I don't know that we formally made that decision. I think we talked about it, but I don't recall that we... I think that was the direction we were moving in. So that the process would be very similar to what happens with liquor control and that way, annually you get an opportunity to review a situation and if for some reason somebody wasn't performing as expected, then we would have the right to rescind their license. Right. Right. And does the same thing apply to the cultivation license, Josh? Yes, yes it does. Yeah. Any cannabis related enterprise would have to seek a local license in addition to the annual state license that they would have to renew. What do the cannabis regs require, if anything, in terms of securing the properties? I'm just curious. It's quite strict to be quite honest. I can imagine it would be. There are some very strict guidelines laid out by the Cannabis Control Board. We're talking video surveillance. The Dobermans. Can't be seen from the public roadway. Roads. Right, it's very secure. So there might be a situation where the planning commission feels that even the DRB review of some of these is not warranted because the state process of review is so stringent. So. Don't forget to add your helicopter, just Tom. Yeah. Outdoor cultivation is an agricultural practice. I don't, my personal opinion is I don't think we should be regulating that as much as a lot of other practices. It's just like industrial hemp, corn, soybeans, whatever you wanna call it. There's gonna be a slight impact to neighboring properties with odor, possibly, but I don't foresee that being any more worse than the existing manure smell that individuals have to endure. So. I'm told it's a really sweet smell. I don't know. Well, I'm fine with kicking this off to the planning commission with these kind of recommendations from the DRB. So, and then I'm sure we will get our input from the state and no different than other zoning regs. There's a lot of things that our regulations defer to state statute on. So I think we can probably make that all work through this process. I would just like to add that it sounds like we should try and really be diligent about this given the timeframes for beginning to file applications that Josh spelled out, particularly on the cultivation front. We passed this a year ago and we don't wanna put people behind the eight ball on the application process by dragging our heels on defining where and what they can do. So I just like to see. The other side of that coin is I still wanna be cautious here. Yeah. Just taking all their application at that point doesn't mean that that's their window of opportunity has expired. Yeah, okay, okay. It's not like we have to rush into this. I really would like to do some due diligence on this. And I don't think we drag our heels but I think we wanna make sure that we've dotted our eyes, prostratees as much as we possibly can. And that's not to say that we might not have to make some amendments or changes down the road six months. Right, right, right. Because that's what we do is zoning regulations. We keep tweaking them. Yeah. Oh yeah. We've been document. As we're not, that's right. It's a living document and we're never right the first time. But yes, I think that... It sounds like we're ready to send this to the Planning Commission. Sounds good to me. Does that require a motion? No. No, I think not really. I'm at. I'd just like to thank Josh for that really clear explanation of where we're at. That was really helpful. That's wonderful. Thank you. Yeah, you're welcome. I think this is an important news sector with some opportunity in the community. So I just wanna make sure that everybody is on board and clear with how our regulations affect it. Okay. Kick it down the road. So when will be the right time for us to make our official decision about establishing a local board for cannabis? My guess is it's gonna come in with the new zoning regulations from the Planning Commission. Adopt it all as one. Yeah, I think reasonable. Send it off to Sonny and he'll get it done. All right. Next up is the EV charging station on Pleasant Street. Is this one yours too, Josh? Yes, it is. And I don't know. I think I sent Trevor everything. So I think I know what you guys are looking at. So I'll just give an update. This has spawned out of the state of Vermont's VW Settlement funds. And so Trini, you probably know about this. They had a program where they wanted to use some of this money to invest in EV charging stations along the interstate corridors. And so when they rolled this out last year, the state contracted with a vendor and that vendor then reached out to private business owners along the interstate corridor in Randolph. They reached out to McDonald's and they had reached out to the summit distribution up at the barn. Neither one wanted to locate the EV charging stations there. And so the state came to us to try to figure out an alternative location. The state really wanted it to be right off from the interchange, but because those two locations didn't work out, I tried to get them to come downtown. Eventually their committee accepted that and voted to approve a downtown location. And so they started to work with Jerry Ward over on Pleasant Street because one of the goals was to site the EV charging stations close to amenities. And so that has been an ongoing process for a long time. For a number of reasons, that partnership had to end. And so Blink, the vendor who's contracted with the state is looking for an alternative site. So their proposal to the town of Randolph is to site the EV charging stations in the Pleasant Street parking lot, which I see is up now. The power would still be coming from the pole that is in the southeast corner of the Farmer Huggable Mug Building. There's a green mountain power pole right there. And power would be trenched along their property, along the town's property, to this first sort of parking median in that parking lot. There would be three chargers, I think, well, three charging stations with four chargers total. And then the power banks would be trenched to the switch gear and the power cabinets right here on the edge of the parking lot. So Blink is the vendor. They're proposing to do all of this. They do all of the work. They do all of the trenching. They install all the equipment. And in essence, it's an agreement with the town of Randolph where people will access the EV charging stations. They have to pay for that. And that revenue would cover the expenses. And when the revenue surpasses the expenses, there's a profit sharing agreement. I think it's a 5% share. So that sort of in a summary is what Blink is proposing and a little bit of the history of where we are today. What's the speed of these chargers? Is that a curiosity? So yeah, the proposal is, so two of them are like normal dual L2 chargers, right? And then the other two are the fast chargers. So a fully charged vehicle and like less than 30 minutes. Well, that's an outstanding opportunity because well, I'm an electric car owner, so I follow these things. And right now there is only one 30 minute, maybe two in the entire state of Vermont. There's one in South Burlington and there's one in Waitsfield. So this is a real plus. The distance from the interstate is a little bit of a drawback, but on the other hand, it brings people into the village, right? I'm really surprised that both Summit and McDonald's turned this down, although Summit doesn't surprise me because they're bread and butter fossil fuels, but. I will say Summit last year, they went through an application, a zoning application through the DRB to do a site plan renovation. And part of that renovation was to install a couple EV charging stations. So that is in their business plan. I surmised that that activity will happen this year. And they want all the revenue is the story there. Right, well, I think it was more of, they already had a contract with another vendor. So that's why they couldn't be interested with this other vendor. Right, and the next closest, the only other chargers in town right now are at VTC. And they're not fast chargers, so. Right, I mean, bottom line is it gets some EV charging stations in the downtown, which we know individuals with electric vehicles are going to be looking at, that's an increasing demographic. Yeah. And so more, long-term, it will provide an opportunity for more people to also come into the downtown. And be able to use those chargers and then access the businesses that are down. Absolutely. And it's no cost to the town to install them. What's that, Trini? I think we got to look at this contract though. I completely agree. It's a great opportunity, but it's a terrible contract. You're signing on for 30 years. You're signing on to a maintenance responsibility. Signage, providing them a Wi-Fi connection. You are taking on some stuff. If for some reason you have them, remove them, you've got a liability for that. If they don't remove them, you're responsible to remove them. This isn't. Yeah. You're right about the 30-year renewal. I mean, we've just had a recent experience with these automatic renewals, so. And we don't like it on that one, so. Yeah, yeah. But you're signing up that we've got to, at our own expense, do some of this, which includes keeping all the wiring and all that in a state of good repair. And we don't keep the wiring to anything else. I mean, all of the infrastructure will be underground. So it's all through trenching. It's all underground, from the power pole to the EV charging stations, to the power cabinets at the edge of the parking lot. I think a lot of the responsibility for the town would lie on ensuring that snow removal is done in a way that allows customers to access the charging ports. So I don't believe that is a huge issue based on the location and just how they install it. They have yellow bollards there to protect the equipment. You know, and some of it is, some of the contract is, I think it says something like, you will have sufficient lighting in the parking lot. And I think that's just something that, in general, we should have sufficient lighting in the parking lot anyway, which might be questionable at this point. So Josh, if Summit does go ahead with their own plans though, and they put, let's say they put a pair of high-speed chargers up there, how much impact is that likely to have on the blink systems usage in the village? To be honest, I don't know. I don't know what they're planning on high-speed charging. That's not part of the DRB review. I mean, they could be planning on that or they might not be. That's just not part of the review. I mean, you have an electric vehicle, Tom, right? Right, yeah, I do. So I know other people who have electric vehicles, when they go out to eat, they go to communities with where they know they can charge their vehicle. Yeah, yeah. We don't have that in downtown Randolph. No, we don't. So I look at it as this market of electric vehicles is only going to grow over the next 10, 20, 30 years. Without a doubt. So if we don't have it, then what is the impetus for anybody with an electric vehicle to come into our downtown? Because the state of Vermont is covering the cost of installation. It makes it a pretty good opportunity. Sure, we are responsible for some of the maintenance, making sure the snow is not there, making sure it's not damaged. I'm not aware of any widespread sort of like damage to town-owned property in the downtown or the community at all. But in general, I think it's a pretty good opportunity to get some EV charging stations in the downtown, which normally we would have had to apply to the state for their EV charging grant and come up with a match. So in this case, we don't have to come up with a match. It's all done. Mm-hmm. I think it's a good idea, Josh. I just don't, I think this is a pretty one-sided agreement. Yeah, you know it. You know, I think the town's going to give up space in the parking lot. It does say we have to have it well lit. And it also does say in here that if it requires any maintenance or replacement, that the cost is on us. But we get 5% of the profit after all their expenses are paid. We are responsible for installing and paying the costs for signage that they'll provide us the sign. And it's a... Yeah, or after. I don't know who's... Somebody, there's a bunch of background noise. I don't know what that is, but... Yeah, it wasn't even good the last time we came up in the road. I think it's Trini. Yeah, it probably got too much going on at one place. But... You know, we know what the maintenance costs are and what the actual fees are from other municipalities or locations they put these in. No, I don't think there is available data because again, this is part of the VW settlement money this is a program that was just rolled out last year. I don't think any of the sites that were identified have actually even broke ground yet. You know, and clearly like we, you know, we haven't executed an agreement. I know there's at least one or two other communities that haven't executed an agreement because they're just trying to work through some issues. And so the other, I think there's 12, 12 or 14 total sites that they're trying to get these installed in. So I don't, there's not enough data to support any sort of ongoing expenses that might be incurred. If there are certain, if there are questions though from any of the select board members on the contract that's been proposed, I think, you know, it's a good opportunity to then, you know, we could take that back to the vendor to either inquire about clarity over a specific condition or indicate a desire to have it changed and see what happens. Yeah, I mean, for instance, looking at, I'm just kind of drilling into the fine print here and where it talks about maintenance and customer service that the client is responsible for carrying the cost of any maintenance or replacement due to vandalism. Presumably that could be covered under our insurance, could it not? As long as it was something in excess of it deductible. Right. That won't be the threshold essentially. Yeah, yeah. Trini, where are you seeing other areas of concern? I mean, I'm just looking over this in terms of the town's responsibility, the client's responsibilities. I think, first off, being in the 30 year contract. Yeah. You know, what is the maintenance? I know we've got problems now getting our staff out to do the shoveling. These are gonna require shoveling around them because we're not gonna be able to plow right up tight to them. Right. Given their location. So, you know, kind of what are we taking on? Then you got some indemnification language in here that's a little bit interesting, but yeah, that we definitely should have somebody look at. Yeah, you guys wanna have us send this to Mike Tarrant kind of as a next step and get him to go through some of those pieces and then at the same time we might wanna pull out some of the term but that's a condition questions to go back to the vendor as suggested. Yep. That's where I was going next. I think you really, I send it up to Mike and I'm not, my personal feeling is, is I'm not interested in a 30 year solid contract. I might be interested in maybe a seven to 10 or something with renewals as a starter. I'm just. It's a 10 with three, with two automatic 10s. That's why I'm thinking this is a shorter term because who knows, you know, technology could change a lot in the next five to seven years. Yeah. I agree with Perry about the technology changing. It's not hard to imagine that in 10 years battery storage will have taken a leap of some sort and these machines will be largely obsolete and what will be our obligation at that point. Exactly. I also would like to have harder numbers about what their requirements are for lighting and these other maintenance pieces and what our actual annual sort of costs are looking like. It does seem like we could be getting into something where we're like, oh boy, that sounded good but we're looking at costs which were quite a bit higher than we really anticipated. I also have to say, I mean, as an EV owner and driver, I mean, my primary car is an EV. We also have a gas car in our family that we use for longer trips and so on but I've never heard of this network. The two primary providers in the state and around the country are Chargepoint and EVGO and I've never heard of the Blink network so that's not to say they're not entirely above board but I'm just not familiar with them. Yeah, the original company that had the contract with the state of Vermont, to be honest, I don't even remember their original name. They were out of New Jersey and they were acquired by Blink, which is out of Florida last year which delayed the rollout of this. This has been a project at the state level that started, I think, actually at the end of 2020 but because of the acquisition by Blink, it kind of delayed the actual implementation. And I think the other question, Josh, on this or the thing we got to push back on this, there is a exclusive right clause in here which basically says if any property that the town owns, leases or manages, you wanna put an EV station, they get to put it in. Yes, yeah, that definitely stood out for me also. Well, I'm broadly... That's the idea. Yeah, I'm... Yeah, exactly. I'm broadly comfortable with this idea but I do think that Perry and Trini are right that we need to have the attorney take a look at this and just drill into some of the details. I think it could be a real boon to have this in the village and to pull people in off the interstate. I mean, that's the national strategy is to put these things within half a mile to four miles of the interstate nationwide. That's the Biden agenda. So this is a great opportunity but we need to make sure our butts are covered if you will on some of these details. Yep, fair enough, yep. And as the technology improves, you may find that there'd be other players in the market. So I would hate to see us locked into some... I think 10 years is way too long. And that's just my opinion based on the technology. Something else could evolve and we're gonna say, oh, wow, we're stuck with this for another five years and something else came out, so. Yeah, yeah. And they can walk away from it and then it's yours. Yeah, well, yeah, that could happen too, so. Yes, yep. They have the right to do it in the contract but you don't have the right to walk away from it. The town can't walk away from it, but they can. Yeah, it's nice. It's a little one-sided to me. I think seven to 10 is probably reasonable but this business of automatic renewals, forget about it. And I'm saying that as a passionate advocate for these things. I wouldn't have gotten one if I wasn't and I'm delighted with it but I wanna see this infrastructure everywhere but I wanna make sure that it's fair to all concerned too, so. Do we send it to the lawyer next or do we go back to them with some of the areas we're concerned about and see what their response is? Because if they're not willing to change the language there's no reason to tie up a lawyer. Order what you want and then we'll be in on that. What's your follow-up you want? I would say, you know, maybe Trevor knows what our concerns are, so maybe you go run it by and let me probably say, look, these are some of the things we're thinking about. Are you guys, is it negotiable or is that it? And if they say, well, no, that's it, then we're done. Yeah, yeah. You okay with that, Trevor? Yeah, we can do that. Okay. Great. Great, thank you. Fun. Gosh. Next up is sick leave bank policy addendum. Yeah, we've been trying to figure out ways we, we had particularly at the end of December and into January, we had a few employees as part of the Omicron surge. I ended up testing positive for COVID-19. And it was a mixed group and then we had some veterans who had sick time were able to be out sort of for the minimum amount of time under the public health guidelines. We have a couple that one employee who was new enough they didn't have enough to stimulate his time and other ones who just didn't have a sufficient store. And we don't have any mechanism in those cases. We need a couple weeks. Too much with regards to who asked them to stay out. It's the public health guidelines that we don't want them to stay out. But if people think to stay out, we don't have any tool to figure out how to cover that to kind of sure that not be available. And the sick leave policy is designed for some longer term situations. Maybe you have a little bit more notice as well. So the idea was we've gotten each case. There's a certain amount of folks who are eligible to donate will still stay well within the framework of the policy that's in place in terms of that component of it. We'll be able to donate the pieces to either fully cover the time in one case or to help offset some of the time in another case. We don't have a tool set. And I really didn't get that based on the policy. You've got about 31 calendar days if you've exhausted your other time or benefits. And generally that is a donation required to be eligible in sort of annual donations at the time. And so just in response to COVID, the idea was a policy then it's tacked on to the end. It's only there through the end of the calendar year. It would run through sort of a manner to approval that would allow us to kind of check all the pieces in terms of what are you doing to comply with any of the guidelines. And you set those pieces up rather than the committee. So it has a few differences. I don't even know that we'll put it in place and have to use it again, but it would be I think specific to help the pair of employees who were in the situation. By the way, everybody else who's had some little impact had some amount of time approved that they were able to use or otherwise offset. So it's just looking for a mechanism this is the one we hit on right now. We float it and see and just propose it a quick little longer. Essentially what we'd be asking you to do in that is to waive the eligibility section at the front end. And you're essentially keeping out of the other policy components in place other than having the application head of the manager's office rather than a city committee. We have plenty of hours in the party. Yeah, and the employees that would be able to donate specifically in one case. So they put them in and the draw would kind of come back out and then commensurate to do a number of hours. That's a mix of employees from the departments that were impacted to it. I think that's a good idea. And the folks who were talking about follow there and what we asked them to do, they did it. Thoughts, questions? Well, my guess I would say that probably we should take a serious look at this. And as it says here, the addendum would expire December 31st of 2022. So I would hope by then that the COVID situation has disappeared. So I'm all for moving forward with this. Seems like we could put something pretty simple together relatively quickly. So with that being said, I'm not quite sure I'm ready to make a motion but I'll listen to more discussion. Not hearing much more discussion. I know. Good job. Well, do we think it's needed or not at this point? I mean, you know, are we out of the woods or not? It's hard to say. Congress thinks so. Nobody was wearing a mask the other night. That's true. Yes, this would help us with the pair that have already been impacted and then would set us up. Should we have anybody else who falls in there? So it's a little bit of looking back. There wouldn't be anybody else in that timeline that would be eligible. Yeah, I mean, if we sunset it at the end of the year and we do have a spike again when the cold weather comes back with some new variant, we could always extend it, right? Yeah. Yeah. Is this ready to accept it? I think we could go with the language that's there. I could always find ways to think it was the word. So. Ha ha ha ha ha ha. All right. I think the question that we proceed with is amendment to the hours bank. I'll second that. You have a motion and a second. All those in favor? Bye. Bye. I was just saying motion carries. Thank you. Any other business? I just want to report that during the meeting, I got an email from Karen Dillon that she is not going to be able to continue serving on the Arts and Culture Committee. So when I send, that means we'll have a third vacancy. And when I send the list to Kim tomorrow, I'll pull Karen off it. She's just citing time constraints with everything she's involved with the Chandler. So. Anything else under other business? Manager's report? Nothing really to add from what you have in there for you. We are fully staffed here at the offices for the first time in four months. The four whole days now, it's kind of nice, so. Our new finance person is on board? Yep. Oh, yeah, has Lance and pictures on it. Excellent. Excellent. Yeah. She's great. Look, we don't have any guests right now. It's just the select board and us. Wow. Great. Next up is an executive session. Yeah, we keep it real quick. Just wanted to touch base on a couple of things that are coming up. OK. I make the motion to go into executive session. Second. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. So we will take a few minute break and come back.