 We may as well get started. I know Jordan particularly wanted to join us for the CAI presentation. So we can do the first things on the agenda. Guys, we're getting started. Dan, John, you're starting. Hi, we're calling the meeting to order. Oh, okay. Push it up. Don't make us push it back. We're on a really plane of commission over there. It's so hard to control. I'm busy. We're busy. Okay, so first order of business is to approve three sets of minutes. I would like to ask with our one, so I believe this exceeds the set or one with the East Montpellier fire department. Yes. Yes. If we could just, because there wasn't total agreement, I was in disagreement if we could just couch it majority agreement or majority consensus or something. And where are you now? You're the 16th. So just that, you know, when taking the 15,000 questions from them, I think it's the fifth. First of all, it's the 15th to be clear. Oh, thank you. And secondly, there were two drafts and Rose had sent some clarifying comments which Kari said were fine. And I looked at them and I thought they were great. So let's figure out where you're talking about. Okay, let me go get in there. So you're talking about where? Just very towards the bottom, at least the version that I read. Oh, the last paragraph said that there was agreement and just there was agreement and callus will reduce its proposal. Well, we didn't take a vote, but you want it, right? You want it recorded. Majority agreement, it doesn't even have to specify that I disagree by myself. So we could say, like, Kari, are you with us there? Yeah, I can make the change. Probably the last sentence of the second to last paragraph, the majority agreed that callus will. Yeah. Okay, that lead? Yeah. Others are fine. Okay. Anything else on any of the three sets of minutes? Can we move them all at once? It's not okay. Anybody object to that? Will somebody please do so? So we're moving all three sets of minutes for January 8th, 15th, and 16th. Okay. Oh, sorry, who moved? Dine moved. Dine moved. Dine moved. I'll second. And seconded. All in favor? Aye. Aye. So unanimous. Board orders. Kari, you have- There are three going around. There's the payroll and payroll tax from the 12th and the K.P. There's definitely only one that was on our room. No, there was a second. Oh, gee, I missed it. I did have a quick. There were two as of Friday and then a third was added today. Oh, I missed that. Okay. And the third is the AP. Counts payable. Okay. Which- So does anybody have any questions? I have a question. So it appeared that there is a payment for the courier's time dam association. Now is that money currently being held by the town or is that- I believe that's the annual appropriation that was approved at town meeting last year. Right. That was approved at town meeting for the handrail at the- Oh, that was a handrail. That was the handrail. So the CBA fronted the money and this is reimbursing. Okay. Thank you for that clarification. Anything else? Any other questions, comments on the board orders? Then I'll take a motion to approve and sign them. Anybody? Anybody? We don't have join-in here. Yes. I move that we approve and sign the board orders. Do I have a second one? I second it. Okay. All in favor? Aye. Aye. And you're sending those around. Kari- Yeah, we're going around. Oh, Donny's got it. I was just going to go around there. Okay. Resolution establishing, is that next? No, sorry. Rules of Procedure. Kari- You've already approved those. We just need your signature. We just need to sign them. Okay. So I'll skip Donny and do right thing in a minute. Yeah, Kari made the changes that we approved. So we're all set. Great. Resolution for purchase of the road grader. Y'all have- I have copies if anybody needs a copy of the resolution. I'll take whatever I'm ready to take. And this is what we need to do in order to issue the bond. This is the first step in the bond of the attorney drafted this. Like what you did with the boom mower, it formally establishes the need that you as a board see that there's a need to raise money for this piece of equipment. Okay. So we all have to sign this. So what do we need? We need a motion to approve and sign. Is that right? Yes. I would make a motion that we approve and sign the- Oh, I'm looking at the rules of procedure. Resolution. Resolution. I made a little bit greater resolution. The road grader project, bond vote warning. Do we have a second? Okay. All right. Any discussion on that question? All in favor? I have. All right. Okay. This copy doesn't have signature lines. I think it only needs to be recorded in the next. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Great. Moving right along with state equalization study. Yeah. That's pretty bad news. So does that mean that everything goes up 27%? I understand you have such a hard time understanding. It means, let's say- All in real estate. I'm going to check it out. Okay. Carried back me up, catch me when I say this, if I say this incorrectly. So this is only the education grand list. It's for purposes of state and I presume Washington County tax rates as well. I mean, formally we just taxed ourselves based on our own grand list, but now that we're part of, what do you call it, the Washington Central Supervisor Union, now they have- But it's town-based. Each town has its own cotton level available. That's right, but we didn't use to equal in the circumstances of that. It's essentially a true up. So the state is estimating what the value of your actual grand list is in between the free zones. The imaginary. Well, they do that by looking at what properties actually are selling for or have sold for in Dallas. But again, it's a per-inflated, if they're selling for way more than they were in two years. Yes, but I think we have to assume that's probably happening in almost all the- No, no, that's happening in the same amount. But the idea is that we're all playing on an equal field, so one town isn't low balling in there for- Is there any audio available? Oh my God, Scott. Oh, we're muted, Kari. You hear us now, Scott? Can you hear him? Yes, now I hear you. Thank you, that's- Sorry about that. Sorry, Scott. Thanks for catching us on that. Thanks for calling, Matt. All right, and so it turns out that in the last year, our property sold for 27% more than we were actually appraising them for. And therefore, we're going to be adjusting the grand list by that amount, or at least the education portions of the grand list. So that if your property is worth just to round out, let's say your property's worth $100, or we listed you as $100, you'll be paying taxes on $127 for that. That's because it was sold that way. It's the ratio of what was sold and what our- That's right. Yes. It's the ratio that they buck up. Yeah, and so that's a very high level, that's a very high difference, but I think it's happening all over. In fact, Kari, I think you told me it's worse in some other towns, isn't it? Yeah, so the budget that the school board approved last week will have calluses, tax rates going up 16%. Berlin's is going up 25%, each month that they were coming for. And that's if the cap that was put in place holds, it'll just like you put a cap on tax rates. Yeah, but they might choose that because everyone's- They may have to pay. Jumping waiver over it because they're like, free money, we're capped at 5%, so let's all build any building and stuff. Okay, so that's just for your information. Anybody- You're paying full information. Yeah, anybody have anything to add or say? Yeah, okay. Next, we have the mileage certificate, which was in your folders. So this is, we have to do this every year. How many miles of class one, two, and three roads and four? We have in town for purposes of state aid. They give different amounts for the different classes, including none for class four. And you'll notice that because of the little change we made over at the intersection of George and Leonard Road, you'll all remember that one. The amount of class four road has gone down by 0.08% and the amount of, I'm sorry, gone up. And the amount of class three road has gone down by 0.29. So we'll get a tiny little bit of less of state aid. Any questions or comments or- Yeah, I'm back. So you need to approve this one. Oh, do we have to approve it? And then sign it, actually. I have the letter here. Oh, the letter that you're talking about, the next item. The certificate, I'm sorry. We have to sign the certificate? Yeah, and TUN has to sign it as well. We all have to sign this. Okay, so will somebody move to sign this certificate of mileage that we should accept and sign this certificate of mileage? So moved. Okay, second. Second. All in favor? Aye. Thank you. That's done. And finally, we have, oh, we've got a lot of administrative stuff this time. We have a letter from the, for the agency of transportation because it turned out that the culvert over here was gonna cost- This is loose road, actually. This is loose road, I beg your pardon. It was a grant that was obtained in maybe 2021 that we were not able to follow through on. And so it expired at the end of the calendar year. We're just formally withdrawing it and we'll reapply. We'll use it. And hopefully we'll get money to be able to do that project either in this calendar year or not. So I need a motion to authorize me to sign this letter. I authorize and to sign the letter. You moved. I proposed me. So moved. Second. I go second. About the peace resistance. You may. And Jamie seconded and all in favor. Aye. Thanks. And hand that to Carrie. Yes. Okay. Public comment. Does anybody have anything that's not on the agenda that they wish to comment on or talk about? Barbara. I will. So I just want to let you all know officially that there were no petition requests to put any articles on the warning. So your warning is as it has been presented to you and you don't have to worry about any other articles from the public. Thank you. Anything else? Okay. I think we're ready for Franco Rossi Franco. You are your president of CAI Technologies and you're going to be showing us the map that's going to give us all kinds of powerful tools for figuring things out that you're going to tell us about. Is that? That's a plan. Okay. What? Take it away. Okay. I'll share my screen first. Everybody can see. I'll be sharing. Could I just make some background information here? Yeah. Please do. We currently have an interactive map which is on our website, which is taken care of by the planning commission regional at Chittenden County. And we have to go, John has to go through the regional central into Chittenden in order to get anything done. And every time we have wanted in the past to do anything different, we can't get it done. So, John saw this and this is where we would really, the town would like to go. I should get rid of the weed because I'm not working at it anymore. Jen, does that mean every time you want to update it, like if it changes hands or there's some change to the boundaries, you have to go through this cumbersome process? Is that what you're saying? And this would make that easier. Something from our regional planning has a sense that they can do so many hours of work because we pay them so much. And the last, at least the last time I talked to them, they said, sorry, we were already over our central of my regional planning budget, so they'll take care of those map changes next year. It's gotten to the point now where our online map has data and it's like two and a half or three years old. And it's actually kind of embarrassing. Franco, you ready? I am ready. Thank you. I want to respect your time. I know time is limited. I can dive in and start showing what the application is and talk about what we're doing here or I can start with questions if anybody has questions already. Would you like me to just dive in? Does anybody have any burning questions they want to ask to start? I think diving in. Okay, I'll just razzle that one first. So I will dive in and show you, first of all, this is an online, a web-based GIS service that we provide to over 500 local regional governments, including 71 in Vermont. I'm going to go to East Montpelier to start just because it's close by. And I can jump around based on questions and other things you might want to see because different municipalities use the application differently. GIS is simply map data that's linked to attribute data. Usually you start with your camera, your assessment data, but any database can be linked to it. So this is web-based. As long as you have internet access, you have access to these data. And these are all data that talent have. You're currently being maintained by, Nemerc's maintaining your maps? No. No, Christine. Yeah, Christine Chamberlain's maintaining your maps. So the process would be, Christine would provide the data to us, we put it online, link the databases, the camera data, and then whenever she does updating for you, get it to us and we refresh it, okay? That's updating the parcel data. The ownership information, you have complete control over that locally. So when you make changes to your assessment data, you have a data processor, run the data processor, and you update the web with the correct ownership information. So if you're doing a butterslist in the middle of the year, you always have current information, okay? So that hasn't been said, again, it's very brief. Again, I'm trying to respect your time, but I'm gonna dive in and just show you the application. You've got till seven o'clock, so you're... Okay, we're ahead of schedule. Yes, we're ahead of schedule. Well, I'll get as in-depth as I think, I wanna give you time to ask questions, and please ask as we go, it's a lot more effective when it's interactive than answering questions, there you go. How do you set up the backend people being able to update the parcel information themselves? The ownership information? It really sits in one place, so wherever the camera is being maintained, whoever's doing that, that's where the typically the, what we call the data processor is installed. We do our remote installation of that, and essentially what's done is when changes are made to the camera, you run this pre-established extract, place it where the GIS can see it, and then run the data processor and it goes to anything that's new, it updates on the level. It's not automated tool. We can't automate it to run automatically or run it whenever you choose to run it. This is our web master. So glad. I'm a GIS person. Okay, well, you're gonna bury me real fast, so go easy on me, all right? You're gonna feel like how you do the backend though. In case people wanna know what camera is, camera is the, it's the data collection part of the Lister's work, of all the processing information that tells you whether you have 10 faucets versus whatever, right? So I mean, it's the detailed data that goes into making the appraisal. Okay, so I'm gonna dive in. First thing we do, I've got East Montpellier opened here. We're gonna dive in and look at, this is all public information. We're live on their site right now. Nothing's canned. I apologize in advance for what's, for something that doesn't like, that the data they may not have. Okay, so unless you wanna go to a specific site, I'll normally put in Smith because that probably exists everywhere. So you can search by owner's name, you can search by address, and you can search by parcel ID, okay? So let's just say I was looking for this one. So you'll see, you will see, here we go, here we go. Okay, I just randomly selected that lot. It zooms to the parcel in question that's highlighted. And you see here is the information coming from your cam, from the camera, the assessment data. Now this can consist of everything that's in your camera or just the field you choose to display. And that's established when we set the site up for you initially, okay? You see there's the CAI property card. Now they don't really use this much, so you'll see it's very sparing, and there's really no information there. They actually use the NEMRIC web data property card, and I don't know if do you use the web data? So we have a link right there, it goes, opens, you can see it opens, goes right to the NEMRIC site and opens that record for their property record card. Okay, so if you're using their web service, you can do that as well. We don't yet. You don't yet. Okay, so let me show you a solution someone else uses. I'm gonna change this screen that I'm sharing. Let's go to Highgate, okay? So this is Highgate. Again, I'm just arbitrarily selecting a parcel, and you see they have other documents linked. They've got the actual, because they don't use NEMRIC's web service, they create PDFs of their property record cards, and they link the actual property record card, okay? And a lot of communities like that better because what you're getting is the same card you get if you came into the office to get it. The idea is not have to come to the office. The data are the same. I mean, most, a lot of towns are going to the web solution anyways, because it's easier to maintain. You'll notice they also, they happen to have their tax bills linked as well. So, and I point that out because you can link any documents you want to this. As part of our initial proposal, we included the document upload tool that allows you to link whatever documents you want. So for example, again, I'm gonna jump to- And the listers can do that, we don't have to. That's correct, we don't have, if you have the document upload tool, you don't need to, we don't have to do it. So I just jumped to Waterford Vermont. So if I select that parcel, they actually link the surveys so you can see the actual survey. The document upload tool allows you to link whatever documents that you think are appropriate. Building permits, septic system approval, septic system, whatever makes sense for your community. So now I'm gonna go back to, oops, I'm gonna go back to East Mount Prair. I'm gonna find it. Okay, so that's a simple find parcel, right? Now I wanna look at that parcel, I wanna look at it with data in the background. So over here, I've got all these base maps available to me. We're an Esri business partner, so all of this Esri imagery is available. The primary nice thing about the Esri imagery is that you have this eye button here that shows you exactly the date of that flight. That's the only imagery available to us that we know what the specific date of the flight is. There's local imagery, which is really the state imagery. However, if you had a project for which you had local imagery done, we would add that there. And then there's others where we put most of the Google imagery. I'm gonna go to the Google imagery because most people are used to looking at that. So now I'm looking at the parcel with the imagery in the background. So you can see how parcels relate, how proper lines relate to physically because when you're looking at a map, you don't really know, it's hard to tell, is that accurate, is the line in the right place. This gives you a point of reference to do that. Go back to the original base map and continue on with layers. So this is where all the layers are, okay? So different towns have different layers. Whatever is available, first of all, and you want on your site is what would be in your layers. Now, first of all, the property map date, of course, will be there, those property map layers. E-9 on one points, those are all coming from E-9 on one. All these layers that you may or may not want, floodplain. Let me just zoom out so we can find some floodplain. There we go. So now I'm looking at the parcels. I have a relationship between the parcels and the floodplain just with a click of a button, easy to make more informed decisions for all kinds of reasons. I can also use these very simple to use measure tools and say, all right, how much of this parcel is in fact in the floodplain? Now, I'm not gonna be very careful, so I'm just gonna bang around. So now I can say, all right, 0.34 of that 0.44 acres is within the floodplain, okay? Very point and click. You don't have to know a thing about GIS. Just point and click and you've got measure tools available to you with this. Frank, have people used that for flood insurance? How's the data used? Well, first of all, you have to keep in mind the accuracy of the FEMA data. Some communities have very accurate data, some don't. But it's really used for planning and purposes and to show if there's a, is there something we need to be aware of to check out? You can't count on that floodplain line being right there, right? We're gonna just comment that through the state's map, parcel map, you can do that over lay as well and we use that to check when we're looking at purchasing properties. Because, yeah, because that was very important to us. But I guess that relates to my question is, so there is a state parcel map and then each town has a parcel map and so what you're talking about is a town parcel map where the town can decide what specific fields we want to display because I know that some of this functionality that you're showing is available on the state parcel map and I was just wondering what's the sort of combination between state and national? There's a significant amount of functionality here that's not with the state and that's intentional, I think, on the state's part. And, but the real primary difference is the local control over the data itself. So the town, it's as current as you want it to be, right? A lot of our clients send us data throughout the year and when there's map changes, we push them straight to the web right away. That can still be done. I know the town wants to continue to work with Christina. I don't, Chamberlain, I don't see any reason why we couldn't continue to, if you want changes done throughout the year, she would send us data periodically. But also the attribute information, the ownership information would be as current as you want it to be and more robust. In your case, I can't talk about the mapping because most of our clients, we do the mapping as well and update the parcel data. So it's whatever that turn on, from the time we receive the data to push it up there, in that case, it's usually within a few days but it might be as much as two weeks depending on the circumstances. Are maps are done annually? Yeah, I can say, the parcel maps are done annually or it's tried to be done annually. Those parcel maps, when they're done, is what goes to the state. Now, during the course of the year, there's a lot of property transfers and everything in the grand list gets changed with all these property transfers. That's the kind of thing we want to have immediately into here because for billing and taxing, the tax bills and all that kind of stuff, that's the kind of immediacy we want. I have a little more question. Is there any limitation to the layers that you have or will pull in for the tax? It's a little bit, you may find at some point they need to be grouped appropriate, otherwise it just gets lost. But I see a lot of different layers up and it doesn't matter. As many as you want to have, there's no difference. Further, if you want to add new layers, there's no charge, as long as the data exists, you build a map for the town and you want that layer added, there's no cost to add that layer to the site. So I presume you can use state level data like the biological information, wildlife quarters and things like that. But then if we, let's say, have a DRV hearing and we bring in a biologist and we change the boundaries for our purposes. But the state won't be changing them. How does that work? Yeah, well in most cases, in a case like that where there's some specific cases like that and I'm trying to think of the last one on the top, I'll exit her to answer that. They have a soil scientist come and do a wetland study for them. We actually create two layers. One is the state layer and one is the local layer. And I don't know what they're named but they're defined that way because if we don't, the next time the state layers out there it's gonna blow up what we did anyways. We have the same thing here, the state wetland map and we've got Kalista natural resource inventory. So we've got two different wetland data. For the most part they lie over each other well. I think that's only a real reasonable approach to a situation like that where we can't maintain the state data. Oh, we could but I don't think it wants to. Okay, so again the layers, they're unlimited. This is what East Montpellier happens to have. If we want to go to other towns to see their sites they'll be different layers potentially available. So if I, you notice when I have this eye activated I can hover over any part so it gives me a quick snapshot of a lot number of the address and the ownership information. So now let's say, okay I found the parcel, that's the parcel I was looking for. I wanna do a butterslist, okay? So I click here, it defaults to 100 feet but the butterslist is typically, oh I don't know, what is a butterslist here? Oftentimes it's direct butters. That's what we do. Okay, so I'm gonna put zero in because that will give me direct butters but it includes across the row. So now I say, I use my add remove tool, I say I need to add this one, there we go. So now I've got all my butters, I wanna list, I can export that to Excel, manipulate it or I can just print the PDF with a subject parcel and all the butters. I can print mailing labels. And I can say start printing here because I've already started my sheet, print, and I've got my mailing labels and you're done with the butters. You're making our zoning administrator really happy. Yeah, well that's the value of being able to update the data throughout the year, the ownership information, right? So you have the current owner that you're sending that, any notices to. But again, point and click. We developed this to have as few clicks for functions as possible. So that's the butters tool, okay? I wanna, if I can see if I can define the one, if I select this parcel, right? You notice I select that parcel and it says abutting properties, the owner has five other properties. Okay, so you'll notice it's highlighted, the other five properties they own. So if I'm doing a butters list on that, I wanna do the abutters list on all of it, right? So I use this tool up here and change my subject features to include all of these. Now I'm doing the abutters to all of those parcels. Okay, so now I'm getting a complete list because they own multiple lots. And sometimes those are one lot. I'm not sure how yours are treated on the maps. And sometimes, like East Lawn Player, those are, they keep on the set of lots, even though they're assessed as one. The value of that is if one of those lot sells, there's no map change. All they have to do is make the name change and they can go. In other words, there's been a subdivision, but no real. Exactly. Yeah. And then our GIS will be set up, the intelligence will be set up in whatever manner you're treating your parcels. Oops, I guess I just trashed when I was doing it. Well, let's jump over them. Any more questions on the layers before I... Might be fine to show them some, like, I don't know, two or three layers just so they can see what's in under the land. Yeah. I don't know what's a protected lands map. Of course, we'll probably have to zoom out to find it. Residential districts, do you have residential districts for them? The zoning map? Zoning and flood? It's hard to see because of so many... Oh, we can make... That's a... By the way, if you have zoning on, it shows you what the zones are. Okay. But I don't know. You can play with this all you want. That's fine, thanks. Go ahead. I have a couple of questions, but they're not related to parcels and zoning. It's on a different level. Are you going to go someplace else in a bit or something like that? Maybe you might just ask a question. Okay. That's where I will go. So outside of all the work that these folks do related to tax maps and zoning and everything you've been talking about, my understanding from the first time that John and Jane brought this up for discussion, there was a possibility of lots of functional abuse throughout towns. So for example, Inca Track, where all of our culverts are throughout the highway department, the conservation commission could work with this to identify a map where all invasive species have been found. We have a recreational trails system throughout town. That could be mapped here. So that's correct. All of that is correct. Absolutely. And there's a lot of those data already available, like culverts. I think the state's probably already done a lot of that. And in fact, you look here, there is a layer that's bridges and culverts. So that brings me to my second question, which is if we get this, does the town need to look at its budget hiring somebody to manage this? Because if the Listers or the Planning Commission, whatever, we are all these other entities that's not associated with what they do, who does all this work? Yeah. So what's the going right for it? Well, yeah. Well, as far as managing the site, that's part of our service. So the site, the data, that's really... But we have to get all the information to you. Right. So typically, well, the answer is no. I'm not sure of any larger cities may have someone that they do that. But usually it's in the course of the work they're doing anyways, right? So I'm going to show you an example of what I'm talking about. I'm going to jump to a different site, Hartland. So Hartland, Vermont has a staff site. You see there's their layers. That's their public layers right now. I'm going to log in with the staff user and you're going to see their staff site fire up. Okay. These are their staff layers, hydrants, culverts, conditions, et cetera. So they do work, they're doing work like a digit. See those red lines? So they've got their road crew out doing ditching on the sides of roads for one reason or another. They've got road conditions here. I don't know how that was generated. There was a project they had done for some reason. Once they got the data together, they got it to us and we put it up there for them. But this ditching stuff they're doing from time to time, they're actually maintaining that themselves. We created a ditching layer. They've got editing tools and whatever they're doing, they map it themselves with these simple tools that we gave them. Now, the editing tools are not included in what I'm talking about. Harkins had this for a while and they're building upon it. But I guess I'm trying to get to your answer of usually those data are added and built around projects that the town's already doing. So if the conservation commission was working on it, someone from the conservation commission would be responsible for simply giving your company the information that then your company applies it to the map. Correct. What would be an example of what you're talking about? Pardon me? An example of what you're talking about. Well, if the conservation commission wanted this map to show where they have identified all different kinds of invasive species or the Shade Tree program or something. Or a common one is they go out of the GPS. It's not the conservation commission necessarily. They go out of the GPS and trails. And they want to put a trails map up. That's just to provide us the data. Okay, thank you. Just to follow up on that. Do towns usually set up a gatekeeper? I mean, we don't want anybody in town being able to call you and say put this data in. Yeah, so in some towns, everything goes through maybe planning or the Listers or whatever the case may be. But in many towns, the Listers call for one reason or the Planning Zone calls for another reason. Don't mess with each other's data. They want, Planning Zone wants a layer at it and Listers don't care. So it really is a kind of a local, kind of a whatever works best for you. From our perspective, if it always came from one place, it would be safer from our perspective. But it's not, we don't have to work that. Or we can provide you with a list of these five people are authorized to make changes. Yeah, okay. So what I saw you do was there's some layers that are publicly available to anybody that goes onto the website. And then there's some layers which you have to have a town administrator login to be able to see data that might be sensitive for that you don't want necessarily to share to the public, but it's equal for town administrators, right? That's correct. So the proposal we provided includes setting up a staff site. That staff site includes data that you can have that the public can't see, but also includes some functionality that the public doesn't have. For example, if you want to use the document upload tool and start linking documents to parcels, you don't want to have to be able to the public because I assure you, you wouldn't like what got linked up there. So you need a staff site for that. But. In July, we made a road closures map. It's also Ezri's web app stuff. And that's just something that I put together and was updating. Is that something that you could absorb? Yes. So are you using, are just online or are you using? I have pro and then I push you. So if you provide us through the link, we can access it and important. But if you want it as a layer that's permanently available, we need to get the data in it better. Otherwise you can add it on the fly and it just won't stay there, right? So if there was, because floods will happen again. So if that road closures map is then ingested into that and we're having to update road statuses every day is that something that is actually feasible that you all could do on a quick turnaround time and emergency situation? Yeah, sure. Or even. I mean, it's not something. Right, it's not something you do every day. Every year, all year. But yeah, certainly in emergency situations. During the floods, you know, I get like, the text or email, because here's the roads today and then I have to go ahead and update. Yeah, we can definitely arrange to have that shoved up there whenever you. Or again, you can have it there on the fly. Although that wouldn't be available to the public if you did it that way. So yeah, you have to go ahead and get to us. But I'm thinking about mud season. What if we wanted to do it every year for a couple of weeks? Is that? A couple of weeks. Well, you're starting to get into tools. If you had, for example, our editing tools. That's an add-on. But if you had our editing tools, we could set it up that you could maintain your mud season roads, whatever you want to call it. And you could edit it and change it and move it whatever you wanted with the editing tools. But then, do you train somebody to be the editor? Yeah, it's in their simple-to-use tools. I told you, like, how can they do the good changes? So somebody in the town would have to be the editor. Right, that's one way of doing it. The other way is sending us the data to update. Is that an expensive addition to the contract? Yeah, pretty expensive. Well, actually, with the new service, editing tools will be built. Problem, do you have RGS online here? We do right now, yeah. Yeah, so it won't be bad, it wouldn't be bad at all. You can do it at RGS online, give us the data, and you're good to go. Do you need an organizational account for that, or can you do it with a free account? You need an organizational account. Another question, back to the word. So I had a question. We'd like to ease Montpelier fire department. Wishing that at some point, like we had had during the flood, but that it would be Calis and East Montpelier and Plainfield and Marshfield. Is there a way to partner? I don't know the other town surrounding us. I'm guessing East Montpelier has you, but that there'd be access to a larger, you know, like they should be able to look at the overall map and being able to, this route's gonna be the fastest way to get to that fire. Yeah, so when we do have one instance in New Hampshire, where it's a tri-town site, so Sunopee, New London, and Newbury, New Hampshire, it's one site with all three towns, and you can search one town, or you can search all three towns for data, et cetera. So the short answer to your question is, yes, we can do it. The longer answer is, number one, we'd have to be serving all the towns, which we're not. And two, there'd be additional costs. Yeah, yeah, we don't like that. The answer to almost anything is yes, and I asked the question, what's the cost? So if East Montpelier gave us their login or agreed, then we could look at their... Staff site, you mean? Yeah, I don't know. It's public, we can get into their public site any time, but the staff tools are inside. They'd be working with them and get them there. So similarly, if I'm just online perusing at East Montpelier site, and I'm looking at a property along the callus border, and callus has the service as well, you have to open two sites. You have to open a separate site. I want to set up one of those tri-town border, dual-town things, but again, there's additional costs involved with that. Because you got to normalize them. There's additional costs, and I got smart people that do it. I'm not sure where we... back to East Montpelier. So there's layers. I briefly opened this to show you some other tools. So I ran them through the base maps unless you want to. I'll skip over that. Areas of interest, that's pretty simple. It's just... Those are just shortcuts to specific areas. So if I want to go to the town halls, I don't have to search for them. It takes me straight to that area of the town. And I can use this back button to go back to where I was. Measure tool. I showed you quickly the measuring area, but you can measure the lengths as well. So if I want to measure in feet, I'll be careful. Draw. I can draw lines. So let me turn the base map on. So let's just say for toxic... Let me see if we can find a reasonable example. Oh, it doesn't matter. I'm making something up anyways. Let's just say for toxic, if you're thinking about selling this piece of land. So I'm going to draw a line here. I got this point and clip. I'm going to draw a line from here to here. And then I'm going to say, okay, how much area is in that? And I can say, all right. 1.06 of that total acreage. This is what I'm looking at. So come on. Why isn't it closing up? Thank you. So that tool allows you to draw lines, polygons, you can create a form. I can say, okay, I'm going to make this up because there's not even a book here. I'm going to say I want to put a point right here. And I want to add some text right here. You can see that. It's a broken culvert. I can change the size of that text if I want. And I can... So you're putting in... Just a note. And then I can say that. I can make that look better if I edit it and make it larger. And then I can print an email to my little agent or to Clog Culvert, whatever. I'm making stuff up here. I don't know how you would do. One of our clients used those tools. They had their... They created a map of points of interest and posted that map on their website and then posted it around town for where the parade was going to be. So you can use it for all kinds of stuff. Are just online so you can import data from their staff access. Let me... So I'm going to log into the staff site. So you see some tools came up. Some layers came up. So they've got sensor remote regional planning commission assignment. So they've got their sign inventory that they've got from the regional planning commission. That's data that they have. But they also have these tools. So Canada and GIS, this is a great tool to keep your data clean. What that essentially means is I'm going to run a report and I want to see what records do I have in my camera that aren't finding anything on the map linked to. There could be legitimate link errors or it could be a typo. It could be all kinds of reasons they don't link. But they've only got an handful of them. This is pretty clean data. And some of them may be legit. So you're using it for data correction? Yeah, I've got to find where there's errors in the data. And it could be a map error or it could be a camera error. But it helps you keep the data clean. Analytics so you can see how much traffic the site has received. Printing, I do want to definitely show you that. I'm zoning just so we have some different colors. Okay, so let's say I want to print that map. Print? I can just do a plain map. That's like taking a piece of paper sticking on a photocopier and printing and copying it. It's just a dumb map. Or I can do a map layout. And I can say, all right, I want it to be 150 feet. I can, if I have a block in my printer, I can put whatever title I want in it. I want to show the legend. I'm going to leave it portrait. You notice down here the lock next to these measurements. When you have a staff site, you can actually print 24 by 36 or 36 by 48. If you're on just the public side, you get a letter or 11 by 17. I'm just going to leave this letter right now. Print the map. Now it's going to take a little bit longer to print the map because it's creating a border in the north arrow and the legend and all that fun stuff. So now you'll see you've got a professional looking map. It's got a legend showing what those colors mean. It's got the title I just stuck in there and the scale, et cetera. So you just fill out that form and you might do it on a butter's list and include the map of the butter's list in it and whatever you want to do. I can email that to someone. So it's really robust printing capabilities. Help. I can click on that and it's going to take me to this document that tells me how to do things. I can't remember how to do it on a butter's list. I click on that and it takes me right to how to do the butter's list. I could print it out and do a hard copy. I can move that to another screen and have it with me. But it's a really useful help tool. So Franco, we've got about five minutes left. Is there anything else you're dying to show us? I want to identify one more thing in particular feedback. So right from the site, you have the ability to give feedback to our support staff if you're having a problem or a question or if something's wrong with the data or whatever it might be. You fill that out. You can identify who you are, you don't have to and put your note in there and send it and it goes straight to our support staff who are on top of it for you. Those are the highlights of what I wanted to show you. Well, somebody's going to have a lot of fun with it. Do you think it's an proposal in October? Yeah, I don't remember when. Yeah, I looked at it today. Is there changes now that it's January of 1984? I mean, 2024? I'm back in college. No, it's all still good. Jan forwarded that proposal to us this afternoon. So I did post it to your Google folder. I don't know if any of you had a chance to see it this afternoon. If you didn't, it's in your Google folder. You can go back and look at it. Okay, that's Sarah. By the way, there has the document upload tool annual price has increased to 750 by going to honor the proposal I gave you. So I'd leave it at 500. One other question I had, it's part of that road condition thing that we set up. We also have a survey 123 that falls in directly to that map. Is that something that you could support in your platform as well? So it's pulling in the attribute information from that? Yeah, it's set up on the website so people can go to the road closures map and, you know, put it on the link and go to submit a condition before it's set up. So, you know, they mark it on the map, give it a description, they can upload photos, and then it goes straight into the road condition map as a. Yeah, I want to say yes to that, but I'd have to confirm that with our technical staff if it'll work straight through or if you have to get back to your, I don't know if you can do that through the access site. I know we do it with our lighters when we sample the editing tools, but I don't know the technical issues of going back the other direction when we consume the data from you. Yeah, we set that up so that because at that point it was so chaotic if people could, you know, they're going down a road that hasn't necessarily been gone down yet, they could mark something like, hey, there's a giant hole here and that way people didn't go suburbition. Yeah, we've set things up where the public can click on potholes or, you know, identify different features that they just want to keep maintained. I don't know how it works going through back into your agency. Yeah, it's just that functionality. Just being able to have, like, community markings of things without having to log in. Yeah, the functionality's there. I just can't promise you how it's going to happen. So what's the next step? We have not signed a contract with you. Is that right? The next step is, you write me a check and I leave. You've seen me 12 months now. So once you've approved, if you want to go forward with it, I think I've already, I included a contract, I think, when I sent you the proposal. So that's still good, as far as I'm concerned. Ex-use the contract and email it back to me and then within, I think, 90 days, I think I had, oh wait, I'm looking at it right here. Let's see, timing. So schedule is 90 days from receipt of a contract. The site would be up, password protected. So the first thing we do is work with whoever your liaison is to get things, the details worked out what layers are going to be there. That fun stuff. Get it set up, send you a link to it. That's email protected, I mean password protected. You would set up your own access to it and you can keep it password protected as long as you want. Typically within 30 days, a town will have played with it enough to say, we want to change this, we want to change that, oh we're good to go and you let us know when you take the password protection off for the public facing part of it. The staff site tools obviously will stay password protected. And you can assign passwords, different passwords to the people you want or usually it's password for a department but whatever you want to do. So that's the process. So who has the contract now? I don't know if there was a contract with it Franco. I think there was, I've got a paper copy. I can check but I can forward one. I think it gave to them what I had and I thought it was only a proposal but maybe the last page had a contract. I don't recall seeing anything that was detailed like the contract. Yeah, I said not Franco, you have my email address, just like where I'm in and I can get it right too. I'll send it to you. I'll email you either way. I'll email you the contract. That would be great. Thanks. And then you need us to appoint a liaison who's going to work with you. Yeah, yeah. That doesn't mean we can't talk to other people but usually in the initial setup it's easier to have things going for one through one individual. Right. And is there a timeline by which we have to, after which you would not honor that contract? No, it's months out. Yeah, okay. If you're waiting for a town meeting for budget to pass, that's fine. If we're getting to next December, probably we'll... Yeah, okay. Other questions? Yes, Jake. So with the administrator login, are there different layers or tools that can be available to different logins or different groups or permission level within the administration? Yes. Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you very much, everyone. Thank you for your participation and I appreciate the time. Any other questions come up? Don't hesitate to reach out. You've given us your card here, yeah. Thank you. All right. I'll try to be as quiet as possible shutting down. Oh, it's okay. I see Gus isn't here, but Nick is. So maybe we could hop over to that for the next agenda item. Thank you, Franco. Thank you very much. Can we... Let's jump to the 730 item that won't take very long in which the Emergency Management Committee would like to be created as an official committee. Yes, and I guess that proposal is pretty self-explanatory. There were that group of people who are listed as candidates to be appointed by the Select Board to a committee where all confirms that they would like to be on the committee and likewise would be initial length of term. But of course the Select Board can make recommendations or change that list as you see fit. But yeah, the Vermont statute that's quoted there in the agenda item not only encourages but directs the town to create some kind of committee for local Emergency Management. A local organization which up to now has been you. Well, instead of other people. Well, yes, but we only appointed you officially. Right, and then Betty Copeland was appointed by the Select Board to represent the Carolison Regional Emergency Management Committee which is a collection of a dozen municipalities. Right, okay. And I'd like to add to what Nick said that not only did everybody who was suggested tonight nominated to be appointed gave permission. They've been actively participating for a long time. Denise Wheeler and Rick Keen especially have been serving with Emergency Management Services for years, Betty for years and others more recently but for at least a year everybody has been already working which means meeting monthly and sometimes we're often as needed. Do we need to go through what this is or does everybody understand this? You're all set? Yeah, that's a yes. You're good, you're good. Yeah, okay. Do I need to be... I just saw I was on there. Do I need to be appointed? But I was thinking you probably don't. You can be our liaison any way you want to do it. I just didn't know if that was customary or if I would be an liaison. We can do it either way. Okay. Whatever you're comfortable with. And Nick, I also noticed there's a vacant one. You'd have somebody in mind for the vacancy. Oh, yeah. That's been a very early discussion which I don't think we're there. Yeah, yeah. Several people that were going to kick around among committee members to discuss and decide. I don't want to kick them. Exactly. So if you guys want to just keep appointed as the electoral liaison that frees up two spaces. Do you want that many more people? I think there's other people that we talked about that would be that their particular brand of expertise would be incredibly useful to have on the board if they were amenable with joining. Okay. You are the liaison. I am your liaison. Yeah. So do I need to be appointed too? Oh, I see. You know what I mean? Or am I... So I would say we would look to Nick to make this a call because we're also concerned about we don't want it to be so large of a group that meetings become unmanageable. So... Well, we thought ten would be a good maximum number of appointed committee members and that everyone is welcome to participate in the public meeting. So... And we welcome... All right. Well, it sounds like we can go ahead and take Anne off and then you'll have two terms that you can fill if you would like. How about that? I'll still be there for you guys. Great. So... can you create... can somebody move that we create a callous emergency management committee which shall consist of ten members one of whom shall be the director, the emergency management director who shall be the chair. And the purpose of the... Rose, we can work on this later. She has everything on your agenda. Yeah. Why don't you just do that? So... I probably already have it here. Thank you. This will be to carry out the... the statutory directives of this law that's cited for state emergency... for local emergency management and we'll create the terms. So you've all got it in front of you there. Would somebody like to move that? So move. And it can include that we're going to appoint the members enlisted in this minus Anne Toolen. And we're going to leave two positions. So all the language in the agenda and to appoint the... we're removing Anne Toolen so appoint the eight members enlisted in the agenda. Okay. Does everybody understand the motion? I was a little garbled there. Do we have a second? Hold a second. Donny's second. All in favor? Aye. Okay. Thanks, guys. Yeah, there's three, four members here. I'm just curious, does the meeting position need a term enlisted? I think it does. Doesn't it have a term enlisted? Enlisted. Enlisted. Yeah, there's two vacant ones now. One is a two-year term ending in 26 and one is... to be appointed. Oh, it doesn't have a term. It doesn't have a term. I see. Yeah. Oh, thank you. I thought it was... Yeah, well... At the time we do the appointment to sort that out. Yeah, cool. Okay. Thank you. Now, let me do identify these numbered seats instead of by individual at some point so that there's no confusion. You know, now seat four is vacant rather than right now. Okay. All right. Thanks. And Gus is here now. Right there, I guess. So, we're going to talk about the warning and you have a copy. Let me see. We're going to... If you want to go through with us, correct me if I'm wrong, we're going to go through the articles and talk about who will move them. Or who wants to speak to them. And speak to them. Yeah. We'll leave the cities and tabs. Can we go to moderators? Oh, yeah. Thank you. We should always... select the moderators. And I think it's mostly because sometimes the article is not constructed well and the fact that I think you come through this with your legal counsel and the article should be closed. Okay. So, I think they're all in good shape and I think they ask questions that people can't bring back. But it is being asked to them. So, the other thing I've usually done before is to ask just to know who to call on to speak to various articles. Oh, you need to know that. It just makes the meeting go a little bit easier. If I know who's going to speak generally to the town's biggest article or if you want somebody in particular to speak to high-level questions or other questions. And you may know and I know, for instance, who the current rep is or if there's anybody who's going to be speaking to all the social service requests. Some years there's been a committee. I don't know if there was one this year. We didn't do that this year. We should have because we were asked to at town meeting last year but we kind of didn't catch that until it was too late. So, we've got to remember to do that next year. Do the committee. Yeah. Do you need somebody, one of us, to nominate you? Is that...? I'll make you one. Yeah. Well, that's not a question. I just didn't know how it usually worked. One of us... Usually to the chair. Usually to the chair? Sure. I can do that. I'd be happy to do that. Should we go through these then, together? Sure. So, starting with article 5, didn't any of you want to speak to them? This isn't just about your reporting to town. It's all their reports. So, people can ask about anything they want but does anybody on the slide want to speak to your report at the town report? That's our... Oh, you don't have a good copy, do you? Wow. Sorry. It's the latest. I meant the latest. I mean, the final review. You put the update. I mean, sure. It's sweet, yeah. So, article 2 is now the town reports. Okay. Sorry. I don't want to speak to them. Yeah. I don't want to speak to them. Yeah. Yeah. What do you mean, answering questions or are you saying we present the report? Um, not to you. If you want somebody else to get up and say in your report and talk about the highlights this year and then there's 20. I see. Thank the broker who were... I want to point out we did this for that. Okay. We don't do that for all the reports then, do we? We don't do that for all the reports. No, we just... You don't need to... You don't need... You can just say... You guys have to use the public hazard report if you have questions. If you can't choose to highlight something if you want to. All right. And Anne, you'd like to do that. I'd be comfortable doing that. Yeah. Okay. So, we're going to select the report. And then I think you were starting to talk about article 4. Yeah. Well, to elect the following town officials from the floor, we're not going to make those elections, are we? No, I'll run that election. So, all I need, though, is to know who will be the commentator. Barbara can help you with that. So, I'd like to tell you what I have said to both of them. They both want to run again. So, I tell them it's their responsibility to have someone there to nominate them. Is that correct? Yeah. Usually what I do is say someone sews the incumbent and somebody should... Are there any nominations? And somebody... Okay, perfect. Okay, I'll get that to you. Okay. Okay. What else to speak to article 4 or do you want to write that up in somebody? So, the idea there would be to just talk about the highlights. I mean, we don't want to... You could, or you could just move the article again. It's up to you. But how much do you want to say? It's a little... This is the one we were talking about doing maybe a five-minute presentation that would be practiced at the informational hearing. Yeah. Think you'd meet Jordan, maybe? Yeah, I'm a little uncomfortable. Jordan never did join us. It's tradition to make him do it, then. Oh. The idea... What Kari and I talk about is is my talking a little bit about the process that we went through and then asking Jordan to speak to the highlights. So, we would do that. And that's... We would just do the general part of the budget. And then I was thinking maybe Donnie and Anne could think about doing the highway portion. Either one of you or if you wanted to divide it up. Maybe one of you wants to take more of the capital stuff, for example. There's going to be a lot of talking about the capital highway budget. So, we can come back to that, but that was my thought. We will both be comfortable with... Yeah. All right. We'll sort that out in the details of that a little bit later. We'll see how that goes. Our rest will be with you. Yeah. Sure will. I will. So, Article 5... I assume Juanita would do that one. Wouldn't the Cemetery Commission be the one to move that? Yeah. Okay. Library Services is... What's his name, Kari? You told me the other day. Jeff. Jeff. Jeff, that's it. Okay. You got that, Gus? Yeah. Okay. Okay. So, Article 7, there's no way to speak for that. Well, is there much to say other than it's exactly the same as it was last year? Yeah, that's right. There is to say and I can say that. Okay. Oh, okay. But you won't want one of us to move it, won't you? Well, this is the article that usually somebody... Yeah, you can move it. This is the article that usually draws, why is this, or can we take 30 bucks away from these guys? We spend an hour on it. Oh, so somebody actually has to be prepared then to deal with that. Yeah, this is one where there's really one or more on something. Are you talking about the social service not part of the general value of our needs and social service? Yeah. Quite frankly, it didn't matter what we had it to be. And I think it's part of the reason that the video all quit is because they made a recommendation and people still wanted to know about it. Yeah. Why are we spending all this time on this? I remember that you were arguing about somebody wanted to add to the food shelf and the food shelf said, no, we don't want anymore. We gave it to them anyway. So, would anybody like to take responsibility for that piece? I certainly could. Okay. Just be prepared. Yeah, yeah. Okay. I was on the committee for a number of years. So why don't you... Do you want to move that one? Sure. And speak... Well, maybe you can just be prepared to answer questions without speaking to it. Okay. Now we come to... Here's where Nick's going to help. We're on the reserve fund now. Do you don't have it in front of you, Nick, or do you? The warning. I do not. Oh, okay. I mean, I have the... Okay, so that's... Yeah, eight and nine. Yes. I'd like to speak to eight and nine. Yeah. And we've got to also be in appropriate time to steal two minutes to pitch some of the volunteer opportunities for things like the shelters, you know, overnight shelter. Sure. Yes, it would be very... Okay. Yeah. There are a couple of things that we'd like to recruit folks to step in and do the training and be available first. Oh, great. That's awesome. Great. So does Nick move those, or do we move them, and then he speaks to you? He can move them. He can move them. Okay. So Nick, I'll do this. Okay. All right. You'll sit on that one. That includes creating this emergency... this reserve fund. Yeah. And you understand what that is. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Then we got a whole bunch of property tax ones. Yes. And you know, one person can do each of those? That's what I was thinking. One person could take responsibility for that. Anybody? There's going to be... several of them will be completely non-controversial. Article 10, people pay in two equal installments. Article 11, they have various options. Article 12, the interest per month. But then we've got the delinquent tax penalty, which will be controversial. And we'll have some discussion. Is it different than what it was in the past years? It's set right now at 3%. We're going to propose going back to 8%, which it has been in the past. Would anybody like to take on those items, which would mean that that person would be speaking to the delinquent tax issue? Okay. I probably could. Would you like to? That'd be great. Sure. Okay. I'm happy to help prepare the tax one. It's going to take a little while. That would be awesome. And jump in if there's a question. Yeah. Yeah. Car, you'll be there to help us when we stumble. Okay. I have several that have to do with the fire department, the two fire departments. James Daly will be there to help. And I imagine Al Patrella will be there too. But somebody needs to take the lead on it. I don't mind. Yeah. That's what I figured. I knew you'd want to do that. I like the fire department. That's so best. I don't know. So you're going to do both 14 and 15. 16. They're going to be speaking to it primarily. 17. 17. That's okay. I'll be there. I'll be there. Okay. Now article 18 probably will not be controversial except for that last bit because somebody will get up and say, no, we want you to do this every year. This is the one where we're going to ask that any fund balance that may be left, which there may not be at the end, shall be rolled over into the, put into the highway fund. And then it adds a clause that says, and this will be a permanent thing. We'll do this every year. Anybody want to take that one on? If he's willing, this could match Jordan's comments on the budget. Agreed. Agreed. So let's assign that one to Jordan. But make people try to set it up beforehand. They're trying to be very responsible and mindful with the highway. Activity. Yeah. So that if there is money left over would be. Do their careful. That's my question about article 16. Yeah. That's the wood grief. I volunteer fire department. It'll be paid on July 1st 2024. Isn't that the start of the new financial fiscal year 25, right? Yes. It'll be paid out of the new budget. The new budget. Immediately on July 1st. Yes. Apparently. Sorry for you as treasurer. Speaking of that, Gus, when's the appropriate time to introduce you to everybody? I do it right at the beginning after the election for moderators. And you know, since we sort of talked about all this, we've now decided that Kari is going to be treasurer and road commissioner. And somebody, maybe Kari could talk about that. Maybe right at the beginning. Okay. We should also probably acknowledge Sandra who will be retiring. Yes, definitely. But I'm wondering, should we, should we make a statement about how we've kind of reorganized our town governance, government? Sort of part of the town report, isn't it? Except that, at that point, we had not appointed a road foreman. We did say that Kari was road commissioner, but now we've decided Kari's also going to be treasurer and have an assistant. So we could update it a little bit. It seems like we ought to just say something about that. And I can do that. I think you can do it on the top, maybe after you get Gus. And you can refer people to the, or the residual chart that's on the back of their town report. Yeah. The only other thing I'm going to say to all of you is that sometimes I've been navigating this time for everybody to have their say. And I found sometimes your predecessors felt like, and this is sometimes true, that they had all the wisdom and they would often jump into the debate before they were called upon. And that's just a, you know, sometimes people are asking a question that they really want you to answer. And sometimes people ask a question to make a point. And so just, I know, and we'll just feel our way through that. But sometimes that's how predecessors need to weigh in that. Okay. So would you like us to ask to be recognized? I think that that's good. And I will try to recognize you unless I think really somebody was just making a point. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And you will have mics. There will be one mic. There's usually one mic at the table. You're not going to have to. There will be mics at the table. There will be roving. I assume there will be roving. There will be at least two mics at the table. Yeah. Barbara said that. Yes. I think my brothers have done it the last several years. We're still doing it this year. And the mics at the table. Thank you. Your sex is a hand up. Oh, no. That's the, that's the. Oh. What about the last game ballot items? Is there an opportunity to speak to those? Or is that? Um, you know, I think we'll get them. The first one that doesn't matter so much 20, 21 might come up. There might be questions about this. 22. I would, I would guess that we would benefit from saying a few words about why that. That's a good idea. Um, I think you can probably do that right at the beginning with a 10 report article. Um, and so, um, I think you're not supposed to election here. Okay. So, um, in terms of the seats that are being voted on for Australian ballot, I'm not supposed to be campaigning, but I think it's, I think you're now allowed, you used to not be allowed to discuss anything on Australian ballot. And you are now allowed, for instance, to talk about a bond if we had a bond on our. So, so if you introduced me as road commissioner and I say a few words about what the focus is, I could slip in that by the way, we're proposing, you know, put this bond for a new grader and here's the resource. Good. And if people want to talk about land use and development regulations, and I suppose they, I assume that's going to be mentioned in town report and people could ask questions then or ask questions under other businesses. You should ask questions on the informational meeting. I personally, we've had five hearings for this thing. As far as I understand, I didn't ask the question. Okay. But if somebody asks a question, we're going to call on you. So, somebody moved into town and missed all five of those hearings and they're showing up in your first town meeting. So try to be patient. That's all I can say. I said, somebody moved into town. The whole five of your hearings was already irritating you. I'm not going to tell you to be patient. So, I have some other, we're probably done with the warning. I want to talk about the informational hearing, the budget message. You don't need to stay for those, I think. Not unless you want me to. Or if you have any feedback for me about how you, if I've done something that you guys don't like in being your moderator, tell me now, tell me this thing now, and it's how I need it. Okay. Not when we need to change. No, we all think you're perfect. I'm not. Well, Mary Ann directed me to get you home by eight o'clock because she's got dinner writing. Yeah, well, I'll take her home. She said, what's for dinner? She didn't say it was going to be a candlelight. She didn't tell me why. Does anybody have any other questions, comments, things you want? So you will move to approve as an assignment. Oh, should we do that right now? Please. Okay. I'll take a motion to approve the warning as presented and sign it. Okay. Ann has moved it. And Donny's seconded. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Okay. Thanks. And then we're going to continue talking, but I don't, I think we can let you go home. Okay. Well, thank you for what all of you were doing. I know you had a way when we do this here, then we just signed up for it and then we're going to go. And thank you for that. Thanks, Gus. See you in a few weeks. Thanks, Gus. Thanks, Gus. All right. Let's see what's next. The informational hearing. I think we kind of have a plan. I mean, we're going to be presenting the budget and Australian ballot items. But I think the only Australian ballot we need to budget, Australian ballot item we need to present is the greater. Is that right? Card. I don't think we need to act. That's one of those. Because it's a bond. Because it's a bond. So we're going to need people to speak to the budget and somebody to speak to the greater at that hearing on the 26th. Now, I've been thinking about how we're going to do the budget at the informational hearing. And I think we're going to do the highlights at the town meeting. But we should probably be sure that each of us takes a piece of the budget and knows it really, really well so that if questions come, we can field them. And I was hoping. I did send you all out an email, but I apologize. I didn't even get thinking about this till this morning in which I took all the different budget items. Did any of you see that and suggested a breakdown? So I made copies because I suspected many of you wouldn't see it. And I have some more if anybody else wants to see it. Sure. And what it did was first I just went through and took all the topics in the budget. You know, the ones involved. There's like board budget, the town clerk budget. Those are all listed in the order that they appear. And then I tried to break them into groups that I thought made sense for somebody different people to become really good at. Like, and you can see that I made six groups. They could have been done a different way, obviously. But I just was trying to make something up to get a handle on it. You have a comment, Kari? There's seven. There's seven. Oh, capital spending. Sorry, there's seven. Yes. I was thinking it might make sense for somebody who takes volunteers and committees to maybe also be the central services, I mean the services person. Maybe the person who takes running the town office also does town buildings and equipment. One person does salaries and benefits. We got a person doing, I broke, well, we got highways and then we've got capital spending. But if you can think of different ways to organize it, that's fine. And maybe you don't want to pull it apart that much tonight. Maybe you want some time to think about it. But if you like this idea. I think you broke it up. I think it's a reasonable separation. Okay. Because speaking for myself, salaries and benefits, I would be comfortable. Highways. I could be comfortable. Some of these things I probably would not be good at. Well, whichever one you take, you might do a little homework. Oh, no. If you do homework, we go with the staff, I think. Like whoever does running the town office might want to sit down with some of the staff for a bit and just make sure they understand all the different items. Salaries and benefits, that's, yeah, okay. Committees. That's probably, we've got that one because they all came in and talked to us. Highways, that's got to be somebody not me. And capital spending. I don't know. Jamie, do you like this and do you have something you'd like to noodle on? Flexible. I generally like the categories. I feel like I could take a stab at, I forget exactly which ones you linked together, but some combination of volunteers, committees, town office or town buildings and equipment, although it seems like buildings and equipment and highway might go. Oh, I was actually linking running the town office with the town buildings and equipment because that kind of made sense to me. And volunteers, I linked with the services, the police, the library and stuff like that. But it can be done a different way. I'm flexible. Ann, were you saying you wanted the volunteers and committees? Did I hear that? I think that I would have a capacity to be like the salaries and benefits because I'm like behind living wages and speak well to those two different areas. I don't want them both, but I'm just saying as far as things that I could speak to. And that would also be talking about the new structure a little bit, too, as we did that whole thing. Donnie, you got anything you want to work on there? I mean, what's left running the town office and services and capital spending? Well, it's the capital spending. All the debt. Debt. I like the spending. Well, you can certainly talk about, I mean, you probably may have the best knowledge of all of us of what all the equipment is and how we set up the capital budget so that we keep things running well. I suspect you're the best person to speak about that, but... Sure. I'm fine with that. So if you did that and Ann, should we start with you on highways? What does that leave Jordan doing, maybe, salaries? What are you doing? What are you doing? Highways. Highways where we can probably combo it some way with the capital spending. And, Jimmy, that leaves you and me splitting the other four. And I don't care. Do you have a preference? But you're the overlaps, we'll talk. What's going to say? No strong preference. We can do volunteers and committees and services. Okay. Yeah, good. You do those and I'll do the other two. No, I'm doing this. I think she's planning to sit in there. Oh, okay. What's going to say? I would do salaries and benefits as well, or... Well, we didn't leave anything for Jordan there. And I was thinking that would be a good one for him. And what are you doing? I will do running the town office and the town buildings and equipment. Okay. Does that make sense? Let's try that. We can revisit when we've had a chance to think at the next meeting and then showtime will be the meeting after that. And what kind of late of time do you have a general idea? I just want people to go on about their section. Well, the idea was not to have anybody go on about their sections. The idea was to be ready to field the questions. Ah, to field the questions. Okay. Okay. Better. And so, part of your job as you prepare for this will be to think about what questions might come winging out at you. Oh, yes. Oh, boy. Maybe we could do that together. We could create a Google Doc. And for each of these sections, we could just suggest questions. And then if we look at them before the next select board meeting, if someone doesn't know how to enter it, then that would be a good opportunity. Oh, I like that. Sorry. Thank you. I'll put that together. Please. Yeah. Great. Thank you. We'll see if anybody comes. She said, would anybody come? She said, we'll see if anybody comes. We'll see if anybody comes. So at that meeting then, we'll just, we'll present the budget a little bit. We'll just give the overview and then field questions. And then we'll talk about the grader. That's all we're going to do at that informational hearing on the 26th. And Donny's going to talk about the grader. Sure. I think you sent that the last two weeks ago. The information about the grader? Yes. Yeah. I can put together some bullets for you. And then you can go from here. Sure. I just want to know if you need more. Okay. We have a plan. Anything else on there? Then let's go on to the budget message. What about, yeah. Oh, sorry. Yeah. Yeah. That, um, Kari and I were ready to print, but you guys wanted to look at it. Now you've had your shot. Make your comments. Anybody? Oh, I said anything about the same thing. I thought, like, fine. I didn't want to intervene today. I think Jamie, Jamie sounds like she's got something to think about. No, I was racking my brain, but I don't think there was. I think I thought you did a great job. It was a week or more than I had it ago. I didn't think it went on. I think you hit all the key points. And I thought it was really pretty. Does this stand alone as a front porch forum post? Barbara, it's not, I don't know. You said 5,000 characters. Characters, not writers. I'm not going to count letters. Yeah. I personally think that that's probably not too long for a front porch forum post, but once we try to post it, we'll find the letters know if we're run short. It's 4,132 characters. Yeah, we made it. Oh, you got to care of your counter, not just work. Oh, perfect. But I guess more of my question is, without having the budget to look at, they can go to the website. That's what the first sentence says, but does it do anything for you if you're not looking at the budget if it's just a, I don't know, without that context? Well, it does. Without that context. Well, it talks about priorities, which I think people will want to hear, and explains what the increase is. That's what most people do anyway. They go right to the bottom line, right? What's my, what's going to do to my tax rate? So I think it gives them the information to get them thinking about it. Yeah. And it serves as an announcement that the budget is posted for them to look at, and that we're going to have an informational hearing. So that's all the first paragraph. And then if they keep reading, they'll get more information. If they keep reading, they get more detail. And people, line by line, can go look at it. Is it on the website yet? You sent it to Tegan, right? You were going to send it to Tegan, and Tegan was going to post it as of last Thursday. It's on my list for tomorrow, I think. I just want to make sure everything got approved. And then as soon as the car gets into Tegan, Tegan will get it on the website. And she's online if you want to unmute her. I think she can unmute. I need to unmute? We can hear you. I think Barbara just wanted to confirm. You haven't posted it yet, have you, Tegan? No, I have not. I was waiting for you all to finish. Yeah, okay. Thank you. I might just be missing it skimming, but I don't see in the beginning where it says, specifically where to find the budget. So you should have a URL there. Once Tegan actually posts it, Kari, then get it. So you were all part of it. And then I don't have to go in front of me, but if it's going to be on the front porch form at the very end, maybe just say questions, call or email and put your email address and the phone number with what people call any of the questions. Okay, I'll do that. So, Ann, you probably printed an older draft. I added a sentence on Friday. Okay. That reads, the select words for both funded for fiscal year 2025 Thank you, Kari. is now available on the town website. In the town meeting section, we'll put an actual URL there. Okay. Thank you. Okay. That's happened before. Can you come up? Yeah. Thank you. I think this is just delightful. Okay. I appreciate having a story and an explanation. Like, if you just said, go look at the budget yourself, you know, am I really going to take the time to go line by line? You know, of course I did. But, you know, I think most people, I think appreciate like you telling us a story. Yeah. Right. So I appreciate this. I like this budget message. Good. Good. Good. Anything else on that? I think, oh, so Kari, you'll post it in front porch forum? Sure. Or unless you'd rather. Doesn't matter. Who's out for getting the questions? That's what you posted. Oh, all right. Do you want me to post it then? No, no, no. I'm happy to do it. I'm just... Mr. Treasurer. It's... Yeah, it's fine. I'll do it. Okay. Thanks. Other related thing, an idea we bounced around, I think at the last meeting, was if we're also going to post it in all the places we post agendas. And if we're doing that, we theoretically could post a copy, a physical copy of the budget with it. I have mixed feelings. How would you put that on a bulletin board? I mean, we post them on bulletin boards. Right. I mean, in Maple Corner, they're typically on the counter. You could do that. But... I mean, we get a hanging budget post off it. And how many people are going to stand there? Right. And slip on my little leads? They're not. I mean, I'd have to go inside. It's cold out there. No, we have one on the inside. Isn't that like, or is it the town report that... It knows the voter information. The voter information is what we have hanging in there. Yeah. What will they be getting their select board... I mean, their town meeting reports? They are scheduled to be mailed February the 14th. Okay. Yeah. So they will have those. Should I include that in that piece of information? Yeah, I'm wondering. Or is that just understood that it comes and makes everybody... Include this memo? Include that date. The mailing date is on the 14th and you can start to see... Yeah, I'm going to have to see that. I'm going to be asking that on the context for now. I think that... People will always say, well, where is it when I have to get it? I mean, you could... We have a mail. Right. But you could say something like, the budget's available now online. Yes. And you'll expect to receive your town report. You know, by the third week of February or whatever, a little bit vague. Yeah, that's a good idea. Okay. So what are we going to do at the posting sites? By the way, we've worked out with Jess at the callus store that she's going to have a bulletin board devoted just to town announcements. And because we are doing that with the East Callus General Store, we're operating it to the Maple Quarter Store and out of that co-op, the Maple Quarter Community Store. Oh, you've already done it. Yeah. I think it's a great idea. Yeah. And I like the idea of it being a designated bulletin board with the same sort of sign at the top of each store. Yeah. Town notices. Yeah. Now, technically, the one around tucked in the post office was for the town, that little one on the other side of the parcel locker. I don't know. Oh, I never knew that. No, we were talking about Barbara's going to make a little sign on the tops of the bulletin boards that say town notices. And hopefully we'll train people to go and look at the bulletin boards. So, I'm going to go back to the last question that I thought Harn was asking me that I misunderstood. You were asking about putting town report information in this message. But then it makes me ask the question should this message be in the town report? No, I think it serves a different function. It's the late January notification that the budget's now available and here's how you can learn about it. Okay, but if it's explaining a budget increase, is there a benefit to this message being in the town report? Much of that message is already in the town report. Yeah. Okay. In the select board report. Okay. Anything else on that one? Okay. Let's... I think we have a plan. Did I forget anything? So, Kari, you're going to post it and that's really all we're going to do. Okay. So, Kari suggested we have a budget process debrief. What worked well? How could the process be improved? I thought about it. I thought we did great. Kari, did you have some things you wanted to tell us? Well, I came in midterm and... seemed to go okay. I missed the first... when the commissions came, I think, and presented it. I didn't see much of that. Clearly, the fire department, the East Montpellier fire department is the place where... that was just confusing, I think, and frustrating. So, I already have it in my calendar to prompt them to have time. Well, then they had a major turnover and so all the guys doing it now were not privy to how it was done in the past. So, they were really kind of feeling it out in the dark this year. Probably be smaller than that, too. It felt like that meeting last week, ideally in my mind, we would have avoided an extra meeting like that to finalize things. So, like, county tax and... what was it, the interest payment on that piece of... those are the kinds of things I'll know better in the future. I don't really have a good context for this kind of budget. Well, the process was we... we broke it into groups that we wanted to hear from every week, starting sometime in the fall. And they would come in like Jan came in and presented the Planning Commission budget and so on. And so, we spent, what, two months about gathering information, just gathering all that. And then you came in about the time we had it all gathered. And it would start time to go through line by line and make some of those physical decisions. That seemed to work well. I don't know what else we would have done, really. Right. I think it worked well. I think, from my understanding of previous years, it's been more done in... like, we were able to fit in short presentations in each of our regular meetings over the course of a longer period of time, which seems better to me than, you know, some previous years where there's been very specific budget meetings, extra meetings. I think we did a good job of not having a lot of extra meetings. As an interviewer to that, I would agree with that. Why would that have been better for you? I mean, why do you care whether you went on a Saturday morning or... I felt in the previous ones that we would kind of do whatever you guys had done in a hurry because they were compressed for time. Whereas here, you gave us an opportunity to explain better in, I think, a much more comfortable way. Yeah, Barbara. So, if I could speak for the treasurer, the current treasurer, I think, first of all, I think you guys did an amazing job. Your plan and your layout was ideal, and agreed starting early in those interviews with each committee was awesome. Here at the end, though, the budget was about three or four weeks later that anticipated, and that created a lot of stress for Sandra because, once it's finished, she has days and days and days of work that she has to then create all these Excel spreadsheets that go to the graphic designer. So then it's been very stressful for Sandra that it came in so late. So I will just say, on behalf of the next treasurer, you might want to try to not let it go so late. So why did it go so much later? We had hoped, I mean, our schedule had it coming sooner. Tell me, remember, why did we not, will we unable to meet that schedule? Well, there were still a few items that were undetermined, including East Montpelier. We just had that meeting on. That's what I thought. Didn't it more have to do with things that are controlled? But why does that not happen in other years then? I'm not saying it didn't. You're a big, big question. I would say for the first three months of this, you guys were way ahead of schedule. But that last month, it all caught up to where it's ended with previous select boards. Yeah, there's not a lot we can do if they don't give us the county tax and East Montpelier Fire Department doesn't even give us a budget. Yeah, no, I'm not going to say a word. I'm just sharing that at the end, when you think it's done, then the treasurer on the back end of all of your work has to do all this work to get all those pages and pages and pages and pages and pages of Excel spreadsheets ready for the graphic designer. Yeah, and that's something that both fire departments had known when I reached out to them very early on, told me, well, we don't do our budgets. Back this time, and this is how it's always been done, and this is when we present it, and this is when we approve it. That's what the county tax people say. Sorry, we're not doing ours till December, so you'll hear about it in late December. I don't know what we can do about that. Yeah. Anyway. Yeah, Rose. I, again, reiterate what Barbara said, that I think you did a great job and from my years of experience at these meetings I can recall that we used to meet once a week starting in October and once a week and then closer to December we used to meet twice a week, and so whatever week Christmas was on, like this year was on a Monday, we would have met like Tuesday or Wednesday, you know, and so I really wanted to say I really liked your process. I really liked your style. I think you did a great job with your style. I think you did really just overall a good job, and I think one of the things that might have dragged it on at the very end was once you plugged in all the numbers you realized that it was such a big increase, percentage increase, like wasn't it like 13% or something? Yeah, that was the first one. So you had to like just keep going back and sharpen your pencils and sharpen your pencil, and you did great not having to meet once a week, but I just think all in all I think you all really worked well. You reached out to the commissions and I want to thank you for that. Anything else on that? That's why you guys are still here. Select board role in development of a town plan. I'm sorry you had to stay so long for that. That was just something I wanted to talk a little bit about just we've had a heck of a year. We have worked really, really hard. What we've accomplished is we have created a new governance structure that seems to be working pretty well and the town seems to be running pretty well without us being there all the time having to respond to things as they come up as we had to for a good chunk of this year. That's kind of what we did for the first many months. Given that, I think this is an opportunity for us now to step back and think about so what is our role with the town? If the staff, our amazing staff can handle all the day-to-day stuff and we don't need to be so heavily involved anymore what is it we should be doing? I mean we could just be sort of responding, managing the budget and responding to requests for money but I tend to think we ought to be thinking a little bit about managing the town setting priorities what kinds of things should the town be putting its energies into? We have, as we all know now, a huge a number of volunteers and commissions and committees all doing things to help us run the town. But nobody is coordinating the work of all of them. So I'm starting to think of the select board role as being the place where we really set the major town priorities with a lot of input from our commissions and committees and then make sure that they're all being coordinated so that the conservation commission and whatever other historic preservation and so on they all understand what these priorities are and we're all working together towards them. And so I just wanted to have a conversation about that because we have a great opportunity, the planning commission is about to do a new town plan these are agreed on every five years so this is going to be oh it's eight years now? With an update after four is that right? It's required So this is an opportunity when are you planning to how long do you expect this process to take? 10 months I had to do it well That's what I was thinking, to be about a year a little bit If you can get it to the Central Vermont Regional Planning Commission by November and approve it in December within 2024 So that's you're asking the planning commission to work a lot Well the state actually is making you do that aren't they? In any case I see this as an opportunity for us to work together these two commissions, the commission and the board and maybe the conservation commission I'm not sure yet. You guys already work well with them, I understand that. But depending on where we go to really think hard about what the town priorities should be we really have some meetings with townspeople and try to get a sense of what the town would like to see as priorities for the next five or six or eight years So I just wanted to have a discussion about that and think about how we might have input into this town planning that's about to happen And Jan, do you want to say anything about that? Or John Or would you rather just hear us talk for a bit? I think I'm not sure what the word should but it would be nice to have alignment but I think first off I was shocked that the Select Board wanted to work with the planning commission because that didn't happen before and so we would look forward to I think working with you. The thing I would recommend and we all recognize is that by statute I think there's nine items that we have to write on as we're working through our first townwide meeting on the 18th if we use the post-it notes brainstorming I call that brainstorming he calls it flower showering or whatever it is it's now each nine, we have nine items each of those nine have three top priorities and out of the 27, we've got three priorities on nine things, out of the total 27 priorities the planning commissions go to find nine or ten that are going to be worked on for the next eight years. Now that's a big thing so it's important that if people will please come to these whatever meetings that we have on the first month of February 18 and I think it's important that the select board be there because maybe you're going to have whatever else you want and you're going to put your own little sticky on it that's your citizen and you're also part of the select board you're talking about the planning the townwide planning meetings what you call the listening session well we initially some of us are comfortable doing the loosey-goosey but no, the whole point today of planning out is that we have a post-it and up things and we do and the three colors one, two, three priority type of things so we're laying the groundwork and fortunately the planning commission is meeting on February 6th before all of this so I kind of dropped this on you but I fully concur with what you said like I know personally for myself being on the select board is not necessarily because I love them you need my new show budgeting but it's a broader vision of how the town can function and run needs of everybody in town and I know as soon as I saw the announcement about the February 18th meeting it went right on my calendar because I'm excited to participate in whether that's as any other citizen or if we as a select board decide to have some more specific role I know I'm excited to be a part of that process I think to give you some kind of question John and I were just having a discussion tonight what would it take if why do we have an historic district what would it take to get rid of the historic district make that all a new village and make that an area where you're going to build affordable housing it's a big white plan oh my gosh Jim hey that's not me that's true those are the kinds of questions to put out to people yeah people are going to react but we have no other I know you're coming down here right now we have no other place to grow every other I know that's a pragmatic because that's always a thing everyone's like well don't abuse college village we can't put anybody else there we don't have the water system I mean those are the what if questions that some of us have thought about the other main one that I have always liked is people don't realize that your revenue for operating the town comes from the properties how many properties are they willing to increase in the next 10 years 10, 25, 30 30 by 50 100 who knows okay then this means what in terms of budget and people have got to start understanding the inner relationship and they don't so would that also include things because these are things that I don't have a solid grounding on but I know I've talked with several residents about the idea of someone who has not a humongous pot of land but to do tiny hogs little clatch of tiny hogs in an area where there could be a shared water a shared septic I mean is that something that we can do or do we have to change we can do it in the village yeah so that's another what if question and these are things you would pose on the 18th and ask people to talk about it at least that's my idea yeah but you use your questions to begin the discussion and then after our discussion let's do the post-it note things what do you want for a priority and go from there I think it's an important discussion to have because I certainly hear more and more people in our community that are feeling like they've got to go like they're not going to be able to stay they're not going to be able to afford it deeply involved in the community they're volunteers it would be a great loss I think the sad fact is on the tax issue unfortunately so much goes to the schools and so in 75 or more percent of your tax bill is for the schools you have to tell people by only 25 percent of your tax bill is going to the city and so that whole issue about the school has to be directed to the state legislature how are you going to change funding schools I actually wanted to discuss process these are all discussions that we want to have and the question is how do we have them should we just have a joint meeting sometime of the two boards should we come Johnson yes we could do that should we do it before the 18th should we go to the 18th and then have a meeting with them afterwards it might be wise to see what the general public says and then we have something who's the suggestion isn't the next board meeting the one that the central people want the regional planning commission yes and you guys should know this we invite to the planning commission to come and hear the speaker and then afterwards maybe a continuation of this like are there more ideas about how we could work together yeah, Sam Lash from the central Vermont regional planning commission is going to come and talk to us about pots of monies that might be available for projects in town particularly things like climate resilience but I did ask her to talk about affordable housing I mentioned sewer for example she said yeah I think there is money for sewer and she promised she'd talk about that if you had some particular things you wanted her to address let me know and I'll ask her to talk about those when is she coming I think she's on the next meeting isn't she Karin is that today yeah I think that's our next meeting yeah I'm pretty sure alright and then we could put it in the arts yeah yes here it is I haven't set up a time for that yet but I'm thinking she should probably be right at the beginning of the meeting so we can have a good discussion about it can you email me something about that so I can make that a real agenda for this planning meeting okay is the 18th is it the 18th of February the 18th of February yeah that's it we're holding a community what we did and we specifically wanted here Calis as opposed to Adam at one of our east Calis and we decided to do it on a Sunday because there's a lot of us people that don't like driving in there we'd be happy to know that we had a town's person show up on January 18th ready to go really? I'm sorry to not change you to one o'clock I have to buy the sandwich any more you anybody if any other ideas or thoughts that you want to express about this so where we are is you'll come to our next meeting at least and we can have a conversation then although it won't be so much about the priorities and then we'll come on the 18th I hope most of us will try to come to that we'd be a really good thing to participate in and then maybe we should try to get together shortly after that okay when on the 18th one o'clock here we are making it hybrid but I was asking how would we do post-it notes I'm zoom I'm not sure people can talk in the chat oh that's right the chat box the planning commission will be mourning the 18th right if more than three of you or if three or more of you are there does the select board also need to mourn it? not if we're not doing any select board business they're going as citizens well well no I mean none of us can speak for the select board without getting everybody else to agree I don't even know if we have a meeting that we're asking for for information if we had hired somebody to come in and facilitate a meeting I don't know if we'd have to mourn it but anyway we'll mourn it we'll mourn it my understanding of joint mourning would be we're holding joint meetings but this is their meeting and Jared is going to facilitate thank you for that discussion I'm excited I'm glad you're excited okay Tegan do you have anything you want to report to us? one of the same Barbara and I are mailing out our first presidential primary ballots tomorrow so that's gearing up the school district has the voter checklist but they can't mail anything out until they have their ballots and we have our ballot so that one happened until February we finished up the dog licensing year with our software and we're starting the next year I'm sure there's something else I could think of if I sat here long enough but that's most of it Barbara has been working her tail off on the town report we've been reading it line by line looking for typos looking for spelling errors looking for any sorts of little mistakes so that is slow but very rewarding when we find things our graphic designer has been doing a wonderful job he's been prompt he's been a great communicator he's been a great choice I'm so glad that we found him yeah Barbara do you have anything to add as news from the town office no I don't think so it's a busy busy busy at the town office busy time yeah alright thank you Tegan Kari you have anything to add? yeah so I wanted to update and heard a little bit of this but you know the model that we're working on for Santa Cruz retirement is that I will be appointed the treasurer and then you approved an assistant treasurer job description we don't have any applicants with the necessary qualifications and that's got me to thinking that I really need to learn the mechanics of that job just because that's what's going to be needed to I'm going to need to know it anyway to train and oversee the person in the future and thirdly I also want to I mean I don't really know what model will work best I don't know we're thinking about 20 hours that's what we put in the budget for the assistant treasurer but it may be something different than that I'm not really sure and I won't be able to know until I know that job better so I'd really like to devote a good chunk of time in the coming months to learning the NEMRIC which is the accounting software system I think it's going to be a combination of Sandra will teach me certain parts of it and then Wendy Wilton I don't know if you know Wendy she served as a treasurer last year for the town she works for NEMRIC so she's an expert in the software she can teach me other components of it and you know they both say the same thing is let us just get through January we're looking on the reports and all the things you know tax prep and all those things but then I basically want to put together a calendar and devote a substantial amount of time which I want to make sure you're comfortable with because time spent on that means that time is not available for other things but I do think it's an investment that's going to need to be made eventually and Toby let me know that we got approved for the very first FEMA reimbursement today or yesterday it's for the Curtis Pond dam which was the one emergency item so it had to go first oh I thought it was the Moscow woods that one hasn't been approved theoretically that will be next because I was submitted next but we had to submit the dam first and they approved it it's worked its way through we don't have a check but it's worked its way through all the very small ones $30,000 that we paid for the pump and everything well the 75% I don't even know the and the state will give us more on top of that yes in theory Toby attended a training I missed it but we know what we need to do to apply for the state portion which is an additional 12% or more depending on how things should go so thank you Jamie you got anything? to report not a whole lot things keep plugging away it's one delay after another I think there's still pieces of this MOA between the town and the historic preservation and the Army Corps of Engineers has been a document that's been in flux and highly negotiated over the last three months I was hoping to have the final draft to present tonight and we yet again had another delay but hopefully by the next meeting I think it's three weeks till the next meeting so I'm sure we'll have it by then the I've been playing phone tag a little bit with trying to connect with the woman who's in charge of the state recreation grant that we applied for for $500,000 my current tack is hoping to get some information out of them about specifically when will we know and see if we can edge like I really want to explain to them the situation and I think that if it's a reimbursable grant I think that there's some folks who would help us front if we knew that was a sure bet but we need to know more about that grant process before because if we got that money it would definitely be a boom yes yes so and without that money it's super much and go and when you have it's large donor conversations are hard when you have a pot of potential pot of money sitting there so I'm sort of threading that line but I haven't met with this woman yet so I can't say firsthand the folks who submitted the grant and have worked with her feel optimistic we're a very good fit for the grant and we're just the type of project they like to fund so and Larry's staying with us yes thus far thus far Larry is sticking with it he and Michael of DNK have still been going back and forth on some of the finer points but so far everything still aligning and hopefully on track but there's moving pieces out of our control thanks alright Jordan isn't here is there anything on the shed situation thank you open session I don't know it has to do with the borders requests nope we don't talk about that that would be that I can talk to you about that afterwards but that's better constant is it worth going into executive session tonight or should you say that I think so I would like to because I think we need to do something I just want to make sure before we do that let me make sure is there anything else anybody I will be here in the next meeting okay are you going to go do something fun I'll be a wedding where it's warmer I hope oh nice just going to tell me whether it was for Virginia for a couple of weeks nice good is it like Karen oh yeah oh what's that like Kari are you comfortable taking minutes and participating this way so you could do that next time take notes in the next meeting cause Rose won't be here I'll do my best by the way I appreciated your comments on the fire department meeting Rose thank you I was there administrative assistant yeah it showed you clearly knew what was going on yeah with that let's take a motion to go into executive session for the purpose of discussing pending or probable civil litigation under one VSA section 313A1E so moved okay it's been moved and seconded and Rose you can just say we went into executive session and do the usual