 I'm going to say it's time to kick this off. It's about three minutes, three minutes after six. I'm Peter Hood. I am the chairman of the middle sex select board and I will be the facilitator of whatever of this meeting. Behind me backing me up, I have Delia Clark and Sarah Berger to provide technical support and background for the Zoom call. So you can blame me for any problems, but they're going to be here to try and help us solve problems. At this time, I'd like to just quickly ask the select board to introduce themselves and light themselves up if they block their video. So Liz, would you start please? Sure, hi everybody. I'm Liz Scharf. I am a, I think I'm on my sixth year as a middle sex select board member. Thank you all for coming. Mary Skinner. I'm Mary Skinner. I'm a select board member and I have been for over six years, maybe over 10 years, a long time. I'm Mary Steve. Yeah. Hi, I'm Steve Martin, a select board member. And Phil. Phil Hayek, I'm the newcomer on the select board. I think I'm finishing my third year. Thank you, Phil. So just by way of introduction, I need to say a couple of things. First of all, this is an informational meeting. So we are here this evening to discuss and answer questions pertaining to the articles on the town warning. This is not a candidate's forum in any way, manner, shape, or form. So please keep that in mind with your questions. Some of you, have any of you other than Steve Martin received their town reports today? We love you. So unfortunately, fortunately or unfortunately, we were afraid that no one was gonna have their town report in time for this informational meeting, which is unfortunate. And I apologize for that. Although I take no responsibility for it. Sarah did her usual good job and got the proof off to the printers way early, but they've been so overwhelmed. They're a little slow getting the town reports out. We will do our best when we get to the budget discussion in a few minutes to put the budget up on the screen. So if we want to see it, it's also available online, but I have two screens on my computer, but for some reason I couldn't get that up on one screen and look at you guys on the other screen. So we're a little bit hampered in that regard and I apologize for that. All of you should have however, received your ballots, which can give you a little guidance in terms of what we're talking about. And you may have had a chance to go in and look at the town report, which is also on the website or if you have an iPad or another device, you can go in and bring up the town report in that way and look at it. I would remind everybody that there is going to be a second informational meeting, February 23rd at six o'clock some time. By then, everybody should have their town report. So this is, to a certain extent, a dry run for all of us to try and do this in the best possible way. We will improve as we go along to be patient with us. At this time, I'd like to turn the meeting briefly over to Delia Clark, who happens to be our own Susan Clark's sister who is helping us with this meeting. Delia, thank you very much again. And she's gonna give us a little pep talk on how to use Zoom this evening. So with that, Delia, you're on. Great, thanks a lot and thanks for having me, everybody. I really enjoyed getting to know Middlesex a little bit during the what's next Middlesex event. So I was pleased when I got invited to come and help. I just wanted to offer a couple tips about Zoom. I don't know about you, but I spend all day, every day on Zoom. And so it seemed as like a natural way I could maybe help in this meeting. First of all, I encourage you to keep your camera on if possible because that will just help us all communicate more effectively if we can see each other's faces. Understand if you have bandwidth issues or whatever. You might notice some of you have been going around and muting you because of all the background noise. It's better if you just stay on mute except when you're speaking. So on a lot of computers, if you press the space bar, it'll unmute you or you can just unmute yourself down on the bottom toolbar. And that will allow you to speak and then be quiet the rest of the time. I encourage you to rename yourself. If you hover over your face, you'll see three dots in the top right corner. And one of those choices is rename. And that allows you to have your first and last names so that we'll know who's speaking. I also encourage you to use gallery view, which again is up in the right. And that's a chance to see everybody instead of just seeing whoever's speaking. So a couple of things to think about. If you would like to ask a question, here are a few things to know. First of all, wait for the article at hand. So wait until Peter introduces the article that's gonna be discussed and then just put your name in chat and address it to everyone. You'll see that you can address it a private chat to anybody in the meeting. Don't do that, send it to everybody and that way we'll know who wants to speak. To find chat, if you look at your toolbar along the bottom, you'll see the chat option. And if you click it, it lets you type in. So don't do it, don't sort of jump the line. Wait till we're talking about the article you wanna talk about and then put your name in there and Peter's gonna be monitoring that and he'll call on you. And if you can't access chat because of the way you're joining or if you have any other tech issue during the session, Sarah Bourget is gonna be standing by to help. So here's her phone number. I encourage you to take a pencil and write it down right now because it'll disappear in a minute. Oh, actually I'll do it. I'll put it back in the chat as well. She's gonna be sitting there to help with any tech questions, any tech problems, or if you want her to put your name in the chat, she can do that for you. So that's all I've got Peter. And back to you unless there are any questions. Questions anyone? The other thing I would say is- There ain't none. Right, good job, good job, Delia. So we do not have an overwhelming number of people. I was afraid my screen was gonna be filled with little dots who really see who was here. If you don't wanna use the chat, please wait until the article we're talking about. But if you wanna be recognized, wave your hand and I will try and pay attention. And- At the top of your screen, as they join, make a breakout point. Well, hello. Yep, just a reminder to mute yourself when you're not talking and that way we won't have so much background noise. Thanks. Yep, so with that, I think we are ready to begin. We decided to warn the budget for 6.15 since we thought that would be most of the discussion and it's not quite 6.15. It's, I make it to be about 11 after, so I wanna wait to discuss the budget. We could, let me see here. What do we think? Should we talk about the greater quickly? Does that make sense? Select board members? Peter- Yeah. Sarah- Merriman has- Yeah, I hear, yeah. Yeah, Sarah, you need to unmute yourself. Apparently some people did not, voters did not receive a white town meeting ballot. There you go. So if possible, could you just check your ballot, ballot packages to make sure that you got all your ballots. If you haven't, just give me a call. We just think it happened in a handful of people. It was mailed during the mailing from Jet Service. So don't know how it happened. I apologize, but there we are. Okay, thank you. I had that on my list, Sarah and I forgot it. Thank you. So Steve, you want to give us a little, what for about the proposal for a new grader? Sure. Our grader is 23 years old and we need to replace it. So what we placed on the ballot is a price of not to exceed 290,000 and to finance that no more than 15 years. Our grader does need replacing and we would end up replacing it after July 1st of 21, with our first payment would be due in July of 22. And I would just add to that. How many years ago did we do the rebuild of the existing grader, Steve? I think it was, pardon? Roughly, approximately. Roughly, I think it was eight, 10 years. Yeah. It was quite a while ago. So this grader came up for replacement in our normal schedule 10 years ago and we were horrified at the price and made the decision to spend quite a bit of money on our existing grader to do repairs and make it last for another period of time. We have now gone past that period of time. At this point in time, our grader is worth somewhere between $35,000 and $50,000 as a trade-in as an operating grader. If we have some kind of catastrophic mechanical failure, it's likely that it would be almost valueless. So we don't want that to happen. We also don't wanna get ourselves in a position where we don't have an operating grader and have to rent one because that would likely be very expensive. What would we pay, Steve, for a grader a week roughly? Again, you're muted. There. The way they, at least one of the companies like to do it, they like to lease it by the year. So you could lease it by the year for five, six, seven, eight years, whatever if you wanted to, or just lease it for one year. But what they do is if you do it for five years, they would take the price of the grader and split it up in five years, but you're paying a two and a quarter percent interest. So we would end up, if we had to lease a grader for this year, we'd end up paying $55,000 roughly. Right. So it's not a viable alternative. And if we had, if we got caught and had to short-term rent a grader, that would be very expensive also. That would be even worse, yes. So it's a big item. We know that, but it's really important. It is the one crucial piece of equipment we have, which if it breaks down, we have nothing that can replace it or substitute for it. And that's what's responsible for taking good care of our roads, not only in the summer, but also in the wintertime. So anybody have any questions about the grader? Okay. Thank you. So I do make it now to be 615. And we agree that this would be the time we would consider the budget. And Delia, you're going to put the budget up on the screen share? I am, but I'm just waiting to get it from Sarah Merriman, who's sending it to me right this minute. I believe she's trying to, okay, she's working on it. So maybe you want to say some introductory comments, Peter. Peter, Randy had his hand up. Okay, Randy, Randy, you're muted. Sorry. I just had a question about the not to exceed for the $290,000. Is that based on figures that we've been shopping around currently, or what is that based off from? The answer is yes, it is. We built a little, so to speak, pack in there because we're not exactly sure of what grader we're going to decide to buy and what options on the grader. And also there's some back and forth in terms of what the trade in on our grader is going to be. So the way we warn that is not to exceed just to say no matter what, no matter how we can't exceed that amount of money. Hopefully it can be less. Got to answer your question? Okay, I see you nodding your head. Thank you. So Phil, if you wouldn't mind, Phil did a nice summary for us, which will be in the town report, describing what happened on the budget. If you could give us just an overview of that Phil, that would be helpful to start off the budget discussion. You're muted. I was too quick on the draw to go to the document so I could refresh my memory and then got everything minimized and realized I was muted. So I'll do that. Now I did post this at the end of last week on Front Porch Forum. So some of you may have seen this and something we've been trying to do for the last few years just to kind of go over the budget with some broad brushstrokes. But again, I'll take a look at it and talk a little bit about it. So the overall increase is 4.45% over last year's budget. It was, you know, we had a pretty hard time working on this to keep it at that level. We really wanted to bring it in less, you know, knowing that, you know, some people certainly have struggled during COVID and that that's had a financial impact on everyone. It's had a financial impact on our town and town government also. But just quickly, general government decreased by 1.09% basically due to the cost of property and casualty insurance, election costs and county taxes. So those are the main things there that brought it down a little. Administration is one of the big jumps and it's showing as 41.35%. And again, this is primarily due to a reorganization in personnel. We have to hire a new bookkeeper. We've had temporary help in there for a while, but one of the things we came to realize probably even before we needed to change this was that we really are in desperate need of some help with managing our grants. We get funds from several different sources. It seems like with COVID, there's more opportunities out there. For us to apply for grants, but one of the problems that we have is that we really haven't had coordination of those grants. Various committees or commissions are applying for grants and Sarah's town clerk has tried to do as much as she could in terms of helping people. But it's been very, very difficult for us to track this through financial management and certainly Dorenda, welcome to chump in any time that you want. But what we're hoping is that the person who's gonna take the bookkeeping position, and we did earlier tonight have a meeting and appoint a person who'll be coming on in the future. And part of that person's responsibility is gonna really be as a grants officer so that they are going to be tracking all that information and working with Dorenda, working with Sarah to coordinate that so that we are pulling down money in an appropriate time. We're applying for grants. We're not missing things that may be out there. So some help for the committees and commissions in going after those funds. And I think that our thought is we're gonna have just a lot better control over those monies as far as coming in and what we can do with them. So we're excited about that happening and feel a lot better about the kind of financial controls that we're gonna have over that system. Another fairly big increase, again in general or in administration is that the state has mandated that we acquire some new software that's gonna be compatible with the state's software for the system that we use for property valuation and taxation. And I'm sure as most of you know, this is really critical. This is how we're able to get money to fund the various services that we're able to provide through taxes. So we need to be tied to the state system and with them making changes to their system we've got to be compatible. And so that's one of those situations that we don't really have a lot of choice about. We need to do that. The transition to a new system is in fact gonna cost a significant amount of money. It's not just the acquisition but there's gonna be training. And at least for a while we are most likely going to have to run parallel systems so that we make sure that things are working out right as we transition to the new one we're still running the old system as a backup and make sure that we're not having any difficulties there. Expenses related to the town hall have decreased by about eight and a quarter percent. And really that's just due to reduced use because of the pandemic. So it's just not costing us as much to run it. Public safety decreased by 3.7%. Again, a reduced need for at least those services. The fire department had a minimal increase at 1.21% basically due to a decrease in their debt service on the fire station and the tanker that we purchased back a few years ago. They are our expectations that's gonna continue to decrease over the next few years. Although I believe that they are going to be in need of another vehicle here shortly. And they did come to us, I guess it was earlier this year but we really didn't feel that we were in a position to be able to fund that. It was an unbudgeted situation, a good circumstances. It was a used vehicle that came available but we really felt we didn't have the money to do that. But so that's something that's gonna be pushed out into the future. Public works decreased by 0.01%. Winter maintenance decreased significantly because we opened up our own sand pit. And that's something that Steve can talk about if there are questions, he knows a whole lot more about that than I do. Also debt service on trucks decreased. Zoning, board of adjustment had an increase of 6.8%. Basically this was a realignment getting workers compensation and mileage reimbursements in line with actual spending. And again, some of these are not very big amounts of dollars and percentages kind of skew some of the ways these things are presented. But planning a fairly large percentage there in terms of an increase at 88.89. Basically because we have a match for VTrans grant which is to study the scope of bike paths. Additionally, there are consulting fees increased for more support for the planning commission on the town plan. And again, I think I noticed that Sandy Levine was on the Zoom call. And so if there are some other questions about that, I'm sure Sandy would be glad to jump in and then provide a little bit more. And I guess those are the high points. Again, there's a lot of movement, a lot of things going on. We feel we tried to prepare a reasonable budget that addresses the needs, continues to provide for the services that our community needs. And that's about it. Peter, you wanna open for questions or? Thank you, Phil. I would just like to emphasize that this budget was developed in collaboration with our town budget committee. Their report is also in the town report. They supported our conclusion on the budget which is important to us. That's a whole other group of people who keep an eye on the money. And my other comment is it's an ongoing challenge to keep our town expenses under control and keep the services going that everybody wants. Obviously a huge percentage of our town budget all has to do with the maintenance and construction issues on our loans. That's the thing where all our money gets gobbled up. Steve's scowling at me. I could see you scowling, Steve. With that, I will open it up for any questions. Delia has the ability to put the budget up on the shared screen. If that's helpful, I don't know whether people would, whether that's gonna confuse people more than help but at least it will show you the individual items and maybe cause some questions. So Delia, if you wanna put that up, let's try it and see how it goes. So what you see here is our budget for 1920, our actual for 1920, our budget for 2021 and our budget for FY21-22 and the increase in the percentage. So again, I would encourage you to look at the dollar amounts, not the percentages, because sometimes the percentage number is a big number but the dollar amount is a small amount. So I don't know the best way to do this. I guess the best way to do this is scroll down page by page and see if anybody has any questions. So why don't we deal if we could go back to the top and just see if anybody has questions on any of those items. And of course, now I can see you. So you'll need to put your question in the chat, I guess, if you wanna be recognized. Okay, let's go on down to the next screen if we can. Again, this will all be in the town report when you receive it. Questions, anyone? Why don't with this group, I think it's small enough that if somebody has a question, they can just speak up and ask the question because I can't see if you wave your hand and you may not be familiar with the chat function. So don't be shy. Okay, let's keep going. Questions, let's go on to the next. Let's, why don't we, unless anybody has a particular question, why don't we scan down to the highway budget, which is where most of the money is? Susan Clark has a question, Peter. Okay, Susan. Yeah, I was just curious about the elections line item. I just wondered what the story was with getting any COVID money for ballots this year. I know we've been doing a lot of mailing and whatnot. Sarah, could you answer that? I can answer that. Well, remember, Susan, this is for the fiscal year starting in June, July, July 1st. So let's just hope that COVID isn't around. But we are also looking at a, we're not really looking at, I mean, I don't know. We're not, we can't predict but we're not gonna have the cost we had this year. We hope. Does that answer your question? Susan, are you okay? I think we went past the... Where's the highlights? I'm not sure. You need to go back up, not too fast, whoop. Here we go, I think. Up a little more. Okay, whoop. Go past the fire station. Pass this way? Yeah, public, public works, up or down? Oh, right here, oh, right there? Yes. Okay. So, here are the big dollar numbers. Right away you can see the reduction in the sand cost which we already discussed. I don't know, Steve, if you have anything else you wanna point out in here? No, I guess I don't have anything that I need to point out other than we talked about that winter maintenance. Winter sand, we're getting our winter sand from our own pit now and that should be saving us several thousand dollars a year for a few years. So, with that, that helped our budget to go down a little bit. We also want to, you know, and that money that we're saving, it isn't gonna be like a budget will go down. We really need to buy more gravel every year. We really don't spend enough on our gravel budget. Just let me interrupt you for a second, Steve. We have a question from, is it Johnny Krasinski? Yep. Is that you? Yep. Does the road maintenance budget include plans to correct the asphalt corner on Center Road by the Martin Farm? There's a good one for you, Steve. We don't have money in our budget to replace this asphalt out here on Center Road. We really need to do something with that. We've been applying for grants every year, but without success, we can't afford to, on our own, repave that entire road. That would be quite a bit of money. There's a likelihood, if we don't get a grant, there's a very likelihood that we will pull up the asphalt and that will be a gravel road for a while. That gets my vote. I'd rather have gravel than what we got there. I can tell over the years that asphalt's been tough to maintain around that corner. Yeah, you can't maintain those ruts. And so that's probably what's gonna have to happen. So if my vote is to save the money, don't buy the asphalt, turn it back to gravel, at least like up to the McCulloch road, turn off there maybe. That should slow people down, go and pass your door yard too, Steve. That would be good. Yep. I would just make one additional comment on that subject. Years ago, before my time, we made the decision to create a couple of town paved roads. And for a long time, for a long time, we were able to get periodically get state grants to resurface and repair and repair those roads. In recent times, as Steve said, we haven't been able to get that money and we've been unwilling to increase the budget and amount equal to take care of that. So we're between a rock and a hard place, but if we don't start getting some grants, there's likely to be more gravel roads and more paved roads. Let's put it that way. Well, that gets my vote too. I know the condition it's in now is particularly perilous for motorcycle operators. I've had my scares going through there, with especially of traffic's coming the other way because you don't get to pick your way between those ruts. It's pretty nasty trying to get through there when you got traffic in the other lane, no matter how fast you're going. So yeah, if it'll go to gravel, I'm good with that, Steve. Thanks. Building up some activity in the chat here, but we're with me a second. Peter, can I ask a question? Is that vague? No, this is Michael Levine. Okay, go ahead, Michael. This is related. For some reason, I had in the back of my head that there's a certain distance from the highway interchange that the state is required to maintain. Is that something I made up or is that used to be true or? You mean the interstate interchange? Yeah, like a certain portion of that stretch, I thought they were responsible for. There is, but it's pretty short. Steve can probably answer that better than I can. Yeah. They maintain right up to that turnaround where the state trucks turn around there and we turn our plow trucks around there. That's where they maintain. That's as far as they have. Okay, and we have a question. Doesn't the town plan show asphalt work to that or a few years old? I'm confused by that question. Can you clarify that, please? Yeah, the town, it looks like summer of 24. You guys list out pavement work on Center Road, June through August. Yes, and your question is why didn't that happen? No, it was just a statement to John's question. Oh, okay. Okay, thank you. And we have a question from Peter Brown about tree service line item. Yes, it's not so much from line, you can type it in. But it's more of what's this tree service that was completed or needs to be completed? I think I can answer that, Steve. If I've got it right, let me know. If I'm wrong, let me know. So from time to time, there are trees that are too big for our road crew to deal with and we have to hire outside contractors to take down and remove the larger trees that are overhanging the town roads. So I believe that's what that is. Okay, and the other question that I have a comment, but I've seen in the last year or so, the work that's been done on this, it looks like someone just took an arm of a saw and then just went down the road and cut the trees at a certain height. And they're not the big trees. They're the four to six inch trees. And then the cut is splintered and it just, it looks terrible. And I just wanted to know if that is gonna continue to happen and I know it'll grow back, but it just really looked bad. And I just wondered if anybody else noticed that as well. So again, I'll take this one unless you want to, Steve, we tried an experiment with a, what do you call it, Steve? What's that machine called? Well, it's got a brush cutter on it and it's what we use to do the roadside stuff. But we tried to experiment with that a little bit to seeing if that could cut that brush down, but that is not a viable solution. So you won't be seeing that. Great. Thank you. It really did not look attractive for the time. It made it look like a railroad right away. Yeah, it did. And I'm surprised we... I see you, Sarah. Hold on. I'm surprised we chose a high traffic area to experiment. So I would just finish that up by saying our challenges in the good old days, we were able to get prisoners to come and cut brush for us in the summertime and they would come accrue with them and we would move them around town and cut brush and they would have chainsaws and all the associated equipment. In recent times, and certainly because of COVID, those prisoners have been unavailable and we just do not have the manpower with our road crew to keep up with that roadside clearing. So we're going to challenge, yes. I understand. It is a difficult situation. I was just curious about what the story was behind it. That's the story. We're looking for creative solutions to a problem. Yes, Sarah. Peter, so I could not hear Lisa Parrish's question. And so I wondered if in the future, if you could answer something or if you could just rephrase their question because I don't know what road Lisa's talking about, where that happened. Well, the area that is most noticeable is the center road. Okay. All right, and did you give a time for that? Was it last summer or? Yeah, it's been between last summer and now, of course. It's not as noticeable now. Yeah, you were just breaking up, Lisa and I couldn't hear what you were saying. That's our internet connection in middle sex. Yeah. Okay, thank you. Sorry. Peter, can I say something? Those folks too, yeah, there. Back on the asphalt thing, we're gonna put in for a grant after July 1st with the Agency of Transportation to do that. I've also been in contact with, and it might help if more people did it to check with Senator Leahy's office and they're gonna get back to us and see if they can help us out on that. And, but if more people, maybe a few more people called in, it would be helpful. And they had a very nice conversation with them. We had a very nice conversation with them and they said that we're gonna get back to us, but I think he's been busy in the last week, so maybe not sure. I just wanted to add in, that's all. Okay, yeah, the other, just another, I don't wanna spend all the time talking about our asphalt, but the other challenge with that whole section of asphalt, right down to the interstate, is there is such a groove now in the asphalt because of heavy trucks traveling over it that when that gets wet and then freezes, which is probably happening right this minute, it becomes very dangerous in the wintertime. Because the water can't run off the road, it sits in those grooves. So yeah, it's a challenge. So any other questions about the highway budget or the budget in general? Can we continue to scroll down through it? Sure. If we could slow down, that'd be wonderful, sorry. Sorry about this, I know it's very challenging to. You guys tell me how fast to go. I didn't know if you wanted to just see the headings or really read it, here we go. A page at a time when we do. A little bit of time and then stop. One thing we might comment on, Steve, that we're looking at right now is specialized services, a line item where we're so underspent and what our plan is. Yes, excuse me. So on that specialized services, we haven't spent any of that money for any of that ditching and stuff. We do plan on doing as much as we can do with that in June, before our fiscal year ends. So the hard part of that is it's nice to do the ditching when it's a dry time of year, but that's our plan for that. And then as far as for this year's budget, I put some money in there for hiring equipment only or hiring services to do a little bit of more of the mud mitigation. I don't know how far we can go, probably not very much. Maybe a couple of small sections, but that's where that money is right there. Thank you. Okay, let's keep going down, Delia. I'm just sending in how you look at it. Peter, you tell me when to move it. Okay, I would say keep going unless we have any questions. Can you explain the gas and diesel? Gas and, I may be looking at this thing correctly. The minus $55,000. Looks like they just split it up. It was one lump sum line item before, and it looks like. Okay, I see it. Yep, thank you. Yeah, when we change categories and change the way we post things, it's a little confusing. We're trying over time to make it clearer, but in the short term, sometimes it's confusing. I apologize for that. Can I ask who asked that question to explain gas and diesel? I can't, it's just not popping up in my screen. Lisa Parish. Okay, thank you. Let's keep moving, Delia. Okay, so that, and that shows the end of the line there is the debt service on the town equipment. And that takes care of the total highway. So you can see how that budget has grown and is now shrinking a tiny little bit when you look at the total. But that is almost what is 66% of our total budget, Brenda, any other questions about the budget? Okay. Randy Drury. Randy Drury has a question. Oh, okay. Randy? I tried to catch it before we moved off from the other stuff, but since how I have the opportunity. So Steve was mentioning that we were gonna try to administer most of that money from the special services line item this year. I'm just wondering about opportunities around stockpiling materials like the gravel that we're purchasing. If you don't have an opportunity of whether it doesn't permit to ditch what we need to out of that special services line item from this year, maybe purchasing some of the materials, pre-purchasing some materials for next year. Do we have the capability of stockpiling that? Yeah. Randy, that's an excellent point. And I probably should have brought that up, but that's exactly what our intent would be to do is to stockpile some gravel for any of that unused money. We need to have a stockpile of gravel and we just don't have any. Thank you. So the answer is yes by buying, we can't, this is a recent accounting issue, but in the old days we could pre-buy, meaning we could give the owner of the pit money and then they would deliver the gravel to us when we needed it. We're not allowed to do that anymore. If we buy the gravel, we have to really buy it and have it delivered and pay for it. But that said, stockpiling it would be a great thing to do even if it means potentially a little extra trucking. Having the gravel nearby is a good thing. And there are a few places around town where potentially we could stockpile some gravel if we knew we were gonna have a project going on in the near future. So good thought, Randy. Okay, so with that, unless there's another question, we're gonna move off the budget and I'd like to focus your attention on Article Two and Article Three, which I don't think there should be much discussion or questions about those of the standard articles you've seen on the town warning for a number of years. People really seem to like the quarterly payment of taxes. And I think we're past the confusing transition we had when we were going to that. But we plan to and recommend continuing that method of collecting our taxes. Any questions about any of that? So we are now ready for the special articles. The first special article is shall the town of Middlesex appropriate the sum of $2,500 to the Middlesex Conservation Fund? Is there somebody here from the Conservation Commission? And then I would just say what we've been doing typically is putting $5,000 in a fund to pay for projects supported by the town but recommended by the Conservation Commission. And the biggest example of that is our town forest. This year, they are only requesting that we add $2,500 to that fund. So that helps out our budget a little bit but it's a useful tool to have in our toolbox when we have a town conservation project, we want to address. Any questions? I'm sorry, I'm having a hard time following this and looking at all of you. Article seven, shall the town of Middlesex appropriate the sum of $600 to the Central Vermont Economic Development Corporation? I do serve on the board of the Central Vermont Economic Development Corporation and many of you have heard my little speech over the years. The Central Vermont Economic Development Corporation is an independent nonprofit organization which promotes economic development in our region. The lion's share of their budget comes from a state grant but they also collect dues from members which is another source of revenue. And the last thing that they do is ask for small contributions from participating towns. This year in particular, a lot of the activity of CBEDC has been related to helping businesses through the pandemic, helping them with all the grants and loans that are available and in some cases, actually doing the paperwork for them to apply for the grants and loans. So as much as and I've said in the past, there aren't many, if any, projects that CBEDC has been involved in in Middlesex, although I did believe they were involved somewhat in the red hand transition but they certainly have helped a lot of businesses in the Central Vermont region and many of our residents work for those businesses. I think it's an organization that's worthy of our support. Any questions about that? Article H of the Town of Middlesex appropriate the sum of $4,050 to Central Vermont Home Health and Hospice. And I believe we have a representative to speak for them. Hi, Peter, I'm Kim Farnum. I'm the Director of Community Relations and Development at Central Vermont Home Health and Hospice. And I've got with me here tonight, Mary Hood, who has been on the board for a number of years. You're here to fetch from CDH. I know she wants to say a few words. She normally talks at these meetings and I wanna give her the opportunity to say a few things too and answer any questions that you all may have. I think you're on mute still, Mary. You have to unmute there. Hi, I'm here. Kim has been a valuable help to me. We've been working on presentations for many of the towns, all of the towns in our service area. I'm sure you all know that we are a nonprofit visiting nurse association serving 23 communities in Central Vermont and we do skilled nursing, physical speech and occupational therapy, medication management, social work, support and personal care at the center of Vermont is of all ages in the comfort of their own homes and regardless of their ability to pay. We, especially this year with COVID, we have been doing quite a few things to help our patients and we've been doing testing, going into the homes and testing, wearing appropriate, the appropriate garments that to protect themselves and their patients. And now we are delivering services to patients who are homebound so that they can have vaccine, the vaccine start, do the vaccine shots too. So I have in front of me, we are as able to get hold of the town report and print out the things that are Central Vermont Home Health has done for middle sex residents. And the numbers are pretty impressive. I'm always completely pleased with how well our community, not to have people sick, sorry to say that but unfortunately, these numbers reflect how much help Central Vermont Home Health does for us. Home health care, we have 942 visits, hospice care 21, long-term care, 466 maternal child health, 14. Our total visits and contacts this year are 1,443, our total patients with 50 and our total admissions with 59. And that's just real sex. And as I said, there were 23 communities. We are asking of the same amount we've asked for the last couple of years in our funding, our request and that's for $4,050, $4,000 comma 050. And we also want to thank middle sex for taking the lead really in not requiring us to do petitions this year, which would have been very different colors considering all of the social distancing and using pens and writing names. It meant a great deal to me for one and Peter used to help me too. So I know I meant a lot to you. I do like meeting our members of our community when we're collecting signatures because we're able to tell them what home health is doing. But unfortunately this year, this was not going to be possible. So pretty much unless you have questions and for Kim, she's from Center for Home Health and she is here tonight too if you have any other questions. I don't know if anyone's raising their hand. It's hard to tell. I don't see anything you're saying. I don't seem to have a chat questions on there. No, I don't. No, there are no chat questions. Well, we certainly appreciate all of your support. Thank you guys for coming. Thank you for the work you guys do. So I would just, I should have said this at the beginning of the special articles, but I think most people are aware that we've made the decision this year to allow organizations to request the same amount of money that they asked for last year without submitting a petition. It was a very popular decision and many other towns followed our lead in that regard. It would have been impossible flash interest to be outstanding on street corners, collecting signatures on petitions. So these amounts of money do represent for the most part the one petition that we'll get to in a few minutes but other than that, it's the same amount of money that they were requesting last year. That's right. So with that, we are on to... Kim, thanks. Yes, you can. Thank you. Thank you. We're getting some feedback here. I don't know if I... No. Okay. Shall the mental sex appropriate to some of $3,000 to community connections? Is there someone here from community connections? Is it somebody who can speak for community connections? I can, Peter. Okay, Lois, that'd be great. Thank you. The community connections is an after school program and during the holidays, school holidays, and they also offer summer camps for children who need before and after care at the schools. And it's a very valuable service for parents. They can drop their kids off, I think like as early as something like 730 and pick them up as late as like five or 530. So it's great for working parents. It's affordable. It's done on a sliding scale for incomes. And plus it's just a great opportunity for kids who might want to do some enrichment after school. So it doesn't necessarily, it's not just childcare. They might have something like skiing or Legos or computer. And so I would, I think it's a great program for working parents. Any questions for Lois? I was going to walk you here. Especially small 10. Shall a town of Middlesex appropriate the sum of $1,500 for girls and boys mentoring? So no one here to speak for them? I can also speak to that if you want, Peter. There's no one here. Well, just to say quickly, it's a fail, because we don't have, all but two of us don't have our town reports in front of us so we can't read the reports or any of the supporting material. So yeah, that'd be great Lois, thank you. So it's a program for Central Vermont. It's like the U32 school kids that can be paired with a adult mentor. So they do it from very young age up through high school. And I don't have the statistics, but I can say that mentoring can make a huge impact on a child's life, especially if they come from maybe a single parent family and maybe don't have a mother, so they have a mentor that's a female or vice versa, they don't have a father, so they have a mentor who's a male. And it's proven to sort of reduce crime and increase access to college. So it's a really good program that is always, and during COVID they haven't had it, so that's been a problem because we need mentors absolutely now more than ever. And if you are ever interested in being a mentor, you should look into that program because it's a really terrific way to give back to your community and spend time with a young person. Thank you, Lois. Questions, anyone? Peter, all of these are just carrying over the amounts from last year, except for one you said? Yes. And which one is not carrying? I'll point it out to you when we get there. Thank you. It's about, anyway, let's keep going. So the next one is the Kellogg-Hubert Library, 29,000, for some reason, I don't know what it is with this light, I can't read this small print. 29,801. There you go, no wonder I can't read it. Is there someone here representing the library? There's two people. Two people, okay. So I'm Carolyn Brennan, I'm one of the two co-directors of the library, along with Jesse Lin. But here with me tonight is Sarah Seidman, who is the middle sex representative to the Board of Trustees. And I'm happy to answer any questions about the library. We're requesting the same amount this year that we've requested for the past, I think we're up to four years requesting level funding at this point. Middle sex pays for just over 3% of our annual budget. That amounts to about $17 per capita, which is about half of the state average tax support for libraries in Vermont. And last year we did over 350,000 circulations of the library. We had 431 public programs that were attended by 11,207 people. We still have public computers, of course, that were available for most of the year. Of course our operations were pretty significantly interrupted like everybody else's. But at this point, we went from doing about 48% of our circulation, regular pre-pandemic circulation last May, and now we're up to 78%. So we're hopping right along. We're seeing more people attending our digital programs than we saw even attending our in-person programs. Some of our children's programs, for example, are getting hundreds of views. You know, it's been a hard year for us, like everybody else. We reduced our overall budget by 4%, which is part of the reason that we're able to ask for a level funding from everybody. And I don't know if Sarah wants to say anything, but if anybody's got any questions, I'm here to answer them. Thank you, Carolyn. I think I would just add to that for a community of our size to have access to a library with 70,000 books and 80,000 e-books and audios and an outreach program, it's a pretty good deal for Middlesex to be able to have access to a library of that caliber with our, you know, many other communities have their own little tiny library, but we have access to one of the best libraries in the state. Yeah, we would be happy to answer questions. I don't see any questions. Sarah Merriman has a question. Okay, Sarah. This is just for the minutes. I know Carolyn Brennan, but Jesse Lin, is that your co-director? Yep, Jesse Lin is my co-director. So I'm the library director, so I'm in charge of anything service oriented. And then Jesse is the nonprofit director, so she manages the nonprofit end of things. Okay, sorry to be technical, but thank you. No, not at all. And I would just like to thank the library for allowing me to read the entire Harry Potter series during COVID on my Kindle, and all for free. So thank you. Okay, thank you all very much for being here. We appreciate it very much. Thank you. Article 12, shall the town of Middlesex appropriate the sum of $7,000 to the Montpelier Senior Activity Center? I'm here from the Senior Activity Center. Okay, Jana Clark. Yes, Jana Claire. Claire, okay, I'm just gonna break. Okay, Jana. Hi folks, nice to see many of you again. It's been a while. We've really appreciated the town of Middlesex's support for many years now. We are also seeking level funding for FY22. As you can imagine, we've had to pivot our operations a lot during the pandemic. And what that looks like right now has, it's evolved a lot from our initial closure a year ago. But at this point, we've really been responsive to the community demand for our lifelong learning and healthy aging programming, which is for most people in the form of the weekly classes that we offer. And so at this time, we're offering two dozen weekly classes. A little over half of those are in the categories of various movement like Tai Chi and yoga and Pilates and so forth. But there's also some fine arts and humanities classes. And we will be offering about 35 weekly classes in the spring. We've also pivoted our meals program instead of having meals in a community setting inside. We have curbside to go meals twice a week, which have been popular and important to many people. We don't deliver meals on wheels in your community, but that's something we've focused on a lot in our operations. We've also brought on an AmeriCorps member this year who's focused on helping us support our senior meal program as well as developing collaborative village services to support older adults at home. So one focus has been helping many folks get connected with technology. So for example, Zoom training. We've also initiated wellness calls reaching out to all of our 1200 or so members. So we have in the past year actually served about 70, at least 70 residents from your town, which is down a little from the previous year but not too bad considering that we were, our doors were closed for many months. We look forward to gradually bringing back more of our popular services. And I'm happy to say more about our operations right now whether in COVID or field any questions you might have, but that's a little snapshot of how we're doing now. Thank you. Questions anyone? Okay, thank you very much. Thank you for your time. Okay, so here is the one you were asking about, Randy. Shall a town of Middlesex appropriate the sum of $2,000 to the North Branch Nature Center? And that was done by petition. That was an organization, which was not here last year, ship Darmsted. I believe I see you on the Zoom here. I don't know if you're here to speak for the Nature Center. I hope maybe you are. I am Peter. Okay, Jeff. Yep, and Jan Turan is here as well. Jan is on the board. So Jan, feel free to jump in as well. Hi, everybody. Good to see you virtually here. So the North Branch Nature Center, this is a slightly unusual situation this year because we haven't requested funds in maybe two years now. We did have to do the petition. It was great to be able to do that electronically this year. But anyway, we are asking for $2,000 to support programming at the North Branch Nature Center. It's been a very interesting year as it has for everybody. We weren't able to offer summer camps last year. We had to shutter our forest preschool program. But I'm pleased to say that we'll be offering summer camps this year. We'll be reopening our forest preschool and we are doing in-person programming outdoors in small groups. One of the big changes this last year has been really a blossoming of online programming out of necessity. So if you ever go on the North Branch Nature Center website right now, you'll see a couple of upcoming programs for February and then into March and the spring that are free and online. There's also a catalog of about three or four dozen free lectures and workshops that we put on during the last six months or so that are also free and accessible to everybody. So there's a lot of great online content and we never anticipated going this route. We're all about being outside and getting people outside but we've had to embrace the online format and it's actually increased our reach quite a bit and we have people tuning into our programs from literally all over the country which is really exciting. As for middle sex, it's always hard for us to know how many residents we serve exactly but we estimate it's around 250. That doesn't include people who use our trails. Our trails are open 24-7, many people come to ski and snowshoe, our trails are groomed. Since you don't have to sign in, we don't know how many middle sex residents use the trails on a regular basis but I assume quite a few. One thing that we're really excited about this year is our ECO program is expanding to Rumney. We serve a lot of different towns in central Vermont with educating children outdoors. That's our ECO program. And it's been slow getting it off the ground at Rumney this year with COVID. So we anticipate really getting up and running next fall but we're really pleased to be working with Rumney through that program. So that's just a snapshot of what we do. I do encourage everyone to get on the website. If you're not all zoomed out, check out the programs that are coming up. There's a lot going on. We hope to get you all involved. Jan, was there anything you wanted to add? I'll just say that, especially during COVID, so many people have wanted to be able to experience nature and so North Branch is such a valuable asset and being able to have the kids be outside during COVID and learning about nature. We had 10 set up and all sorts of programs that it was quite fun and I think very appreciated, especially now. And please let me know if anyone out there has a question. Looks like we're good, Chip. Thank you. Thanks everybody. I appreciate it. Okay, Article 14, should the town of Middlesex appropriate the sum of $10,000 to support the Waterbury Senior Center Meals on Wheels program? We have somebody here from the Waterbury Senior Center. That would be myself, Justin Blackman. Hi, Justin. Good evening. Welcome. Hello there. Thanks for the opportunity. Yeah, my name's Justin Blackman. I am the chairman of the board. And like others, I've got some numbers for you. I'd like to let you know that currently we have eight Middlesex residents who are receiving Meals on Wheels. Most of those get meals seven days a week. That means that delivery-wise, approximately 260 times a year, our drivers have come out and done a route around Middlesex. And that means just over 2,500 meals for Middlesex residents. So we are funded partly from the federal government and they give us $3.76 towards each of the meals we are able to provide. And of course, that leaves all those extra costs need to be fundraised for, especially difficult this year because we are unable to use our own meeting space to hold fundraising events, things like that. So we are especially thankful for the support from our towns, from our local area. And so again, with asking for the level $10,000 in support, we'll go a long way to helping us in not only delivering meals, but also able to give a brief welfare visit for each of those people five days a week as well. With that, I'll ask any questions. Questions, anyone? Okay, Justin, thank you very much. Thanks for the opportunity talking tonight. Thank you. Thanks for being with us. Okay, Article 15. Shall the town of Middlesex appropriate the sum of $5,017 to support the following organizations? And I will quickly read them off. American Red Cross 250, Big Heavy World 250, CV Adult Basic Education 250, CV Council on Aging 250, the Children's Room 250, Circle 199, Community Harvest of Central Vermont 250, Family Center of Washington County 250, Good Beginnings 250, Good Samaritan Haven 250, Green Mountain Transit 249, Green Up Vermont $100, Montpelier Veterans Council 250, the Sexual Assault Crisis Team 250, our House of Central Vermont 250, Vermont Association for the Blonde 249, Center for Independent Living 195, Vermont Family Network 250, Vermont Rural Fire Protection Task Force $100, Washington County Diversion 250, Winooski Natural Resources District 250, and the Service Bureau of Washington County 175. So the way this works, unlike at a traditional town meeting is, those are on the warning and you can't individually vote for one of those or amend the article to remove one of those. That is the article as written. So we will need on town meeting day to vote with our Australian ballot up and down on that whole article. I don't know if anybody has any questions about any of that. Here, I'm sorry, but we vote once, right? On those questions, those are all one question, right? Vote for that article. Either vote up or down on article 15, yes. And I just wanted to just speak to the, sort of these low numbers and some people's comments, like why do we have all these various programs asking for small amounts? As someone who works for a nonprofit, and we actually don't ask for that money anymore because it was a lot of work to get on everyone's ballots, but for a lot of those organizations, when they get support from the towns that they service, it actually has a meaningful impact on their budget. But more powerful is the fact that they can use the fact, they can use the information when they're looking for larger grants to show that their community supports their program. So they can say that 25 towns support our program and therefore you should as well. So even though it's a small amount, it actually has a more meaningful impact in their ability to leverage higher dollar amounts to support their programs. Okay, thank you, Liz. Questions, anyone? Article 16 is a petitioned article. That means that a petition was received by the select board. The select board puts the article on the warning and the select board doesn't take a position one way or the other as a board on the special article. And the article reads, shall the town voters authorize that all special articles requesting town taxpayer funding except the annual municipal budget be voted on by Australian ballots starting on March 1st, 2022 town meeting. Is there someone here who would like to speak to this article? Eder, can I ask a question? Yes, Sarah. I am one of the lucky few that has my town report and I don't see it in here. Is article 16 in the town report? Should be. I don't have the town report in front of me. It's on the warning, I believe. All right, Alias, out. Sarah, it's just something to clarify. It's on the warning, but we didn't receive any information. We didn't receive any report from that for that. So it's on the warning, but there's no report or discussion of it in the town report. Okay, thank you. So let me explain what I think this means. And someone disagrees with my interpretation. Please speak up. I did not draft this petition. So this would mean that on the Australian ballot next year, all these special articles, with the exception of the town budget, would be decided by Australian ballot, which would mean they could not be amended or changed in any way at town meeting. Just like this year, they would be Australian ballot items and would have to be voted up and down. That couldn't be amended or changed. And what it would mean is that our town meeting would be the articles that we normally pass over that are on the time warning, which are all the candidates who are all determined by Australian ballot. And the articles, I believe I'm correct and help me if I'm not correct, but the other pro forma articles that relate to the town like how we collect our taxes and what interest rates we pay, those kinds of things could be discussed at town meeting. But other than that, it would only be the budget. None of the special articles, whether they were presented by petition or presented by the select board would have to be, would not have to be, would be decided by Australian ballot only. So there's been quite a bit of chit chat back and forth on front porch form about this. I don't know if anybody has any questions or would like to say anything with regards to this article. Any- Peter, I'd like to say something about it, but I wrote in the chat, I'm not in favor of it. So if anybody would like to speak in favor of it, but they should go ahead, but I do have some comments I'd like to make if that's possible. That's fine, go right ahead. Thanks. I don't usually speak on issues because I'm town moderator, but I feel like this issue is different for me because it affects the process. And yeah, Peter, I think that your description of what we could and couldn't talk about if this article passes is right. My concerns are, I have like, I don't know, a few of them. I'm really concerned that passing this article would give the voters less power because it eliminates our ability to act as legislators on these items. You know, if you can imagine, Pat Leahy going to Washington, but only being able to say yes or no, that's a legislator should be able to talk and you know, at town meetings, we can amend money items and this article would replace, you know, the complexity of our voice with the yes or no. I'm also concerned that, I'm concerned that if we pass it, more people in our town become invisible. And because I think that people, when we think about our schools, like many years ago, we switched to Australian ballot for our schools. And I think maybe some people felt that, you know, schools cost too much this way and more people might vote no on the budget. But in fact, the school budget continued to pass. You know, middle sex has never defeated a school budget when we switched to Australian ballot. But what we did lose was any meaningful way to express our concerns about school issues. And informational meetings are not going to take the place of town meeting. I don't think they don't have any power. And so they usually don't get much attendance. You can ask the school board about that. And just two other things, I'm concerned that town meeting attendance will drop. And that's, we've seen that all over Vermont that if you take the hot issues off the morning, then there's lots of data that just shows except for town size issues are the single most important factor that draws people to town meeting. And then finally, I just think learning. I know it's frustrating to go to a meeting and be in a minority. It takes great courage to speak up. But even if we're in the minority when we say things to each other at these meetings, even if it doesn't change that specific vote, I do think it changes what happens in our town. And a few examples, because of the money discussions we had at last year's town meeting, not just the budget, but discussions on a lot of spending items. The select board has now launched a capital planning committee. And it was because the folks at town meeting asked questions and asked for that. And so I think it's a direct outcome of town meeting discussion. I think the fact that the conservation commission is asking for half of the money that it has in the past years, like it just can't help but think that it's partly because we're sensitized to the variety of economic situations that we find ourselves in, because we hear from each other at town meeting. And so I'll just, just a quick story. I'll end with a few years ago, well, several years ago, middle sex debated whether to switch to Australian ballot. And when we were walking in, I asked my neighbor, what do you think? What do you think about Australian ballot? Are you gonna vote for it? And they said, I'm not sure. I think I'm just gonna listen to the debate and I'm gonna decide afterwards. And it just made me laugh because I said, there's your answer, my friend. You've wanna hear the debate before you have the decision to make. So every year I learned something at town meeting. I think we have way too few opportunities to hear people who are different from us and learn from each other. I think this is an important one. I hope we keep it. Thanks. Thanks Susan. Any other comments on article 16, Chip? Was that? I think the fact that it's on here generates some conversation in itself. Whether it passes or not, I think that just getting it on here has been a good step in the right direction and generating some conversation. I know I've talked with a few folks that I would never normally talk to about this issue. I'll be completely honest. I support it. I think that it gives some folks that may not necessarily be able to go to town meeting a bit of a voice and it gives them another tool to express their voice. And I think that, for me, just getting more people involved is really the big piece of what I support here. And if more people showed up to town meeting, no, I probably wouldn't support something like this, but there are folks that have to choose and my family, last year's town meeting, we've got folks at work in the evenings and can attend town meetings. And if they can't, it's just tough. So I encourage the continued communications. Thank you, Randy. Anything else, anyone? Yeah, Peter, I'd like to say something. Sure, Vick. Yeah, I've read the stuff in the front porch forum and stuff. Although I brought the petition around, as you know, I asked you whether you wanted to sign it or not. I think that I did not generate, I did not write this, I did not, it did not originate from me, but I've been thinking about it for a long time and it's the same argument. I realized what Susan is saying and she's very passionate about it. And I understand that probably that, about our town meeting may well, but when you have 150 people out of 1,400 voters in town, deciding 100% of what is spent on these articles, it just does not look like they have much power. Now, many people can say that everybody has the right and opportunity to go to a town meeting, but in fact, that is not true. Because if we had 1,400 people, I do not believe that they would fit in the Romney School. So by doing that Australian ballot, it gives everybody in town the opportunity, I believe to vote on town meeting day for 12 hours, I think it's 7th to 7th still. And that gives them a lot greater opportunity, a lot more flexibility if they do have something they want to say. And I realize that you can't amend and you won't be able to talk up or down about, but in essence, I think most people have their mind made up before they vote or before they go to town meeting. And I think the biggest point is that the fact that 150 plus or minus people every year pass the, all these articles, I think it causes a great division in our town. As you can see by the back and forth of no, we don't want to do it. Yes, we want to do it. And I think I also think in this time of where everybody's talking about social justice and equality, I think the fact that everybody doesn't have a chance to vote on Australian ballot gives the poor people the less fortunate people, the people that don't enjoy speaking up and aren't as well versed in the English language, a disadvantage. And so from that aspect, I think it's a good, and that's how I feel tonight. Thank you. Victor, that all said, I'm going to conclude our informational meeting for tonight. I'd like to thank everybody for participating. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'd like to thank everybody for participating. I appreciate everyone's patience and understanding. This has been a little bit of a challenge. We'll get better at this as we, as we go along. And if article 16 passes, we may be doing more of this in the future. We will see. So with that, I'm going to declare our meeting close. I would like to thank again, Delia for your help and Sarah. Burge. We couldn't do this without you. So thank you very much. There is another informational meeting. February 23rd at six o'clock. If you hear from anybody that they weren't able to attend this meeting and they'd like to attend that meeting, or you'd like to have the fun of hearing this all over again. We can see you next week. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you again. Everyone should have their town reports, which I think will make things a little smooth, smoother that it was, it was helpful to have Delia put the, put the budget up on the screen, but I think the scrolling up and down was difficult to follow. And I apologize for that. I, I do thank you, Phil for your, for your overview of the budget. That was, that was extremely helpful. Thank you again for doing that. Thank you. Thank you. I'm going to close the meeting. Everyone enjoy their evening. Thank you very much. Thank you. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye everyone. Thank you. Do you need me to stay on to do anything or are we all set? I think we're all set. Okay. Okay. I think we're good. See you next week. See you next week.