 looks like 10 minutes after five. We have some guests with us. We have Christine. I'm sorry, I don't know your last name. Babcock. Okay, welcome. We have Matt, we have Matt Pelkey and Vic Dwyer. I wrote for him and is also here with us. And I believe we have an amendment. His Phil's here. Phil's now here. We'll see if his audio is working. Still, Phil. Scott Bowden is here too. Peter Hood. Yeah, see Scott. Yes, welcome Scott. Phil. I do not see Phil. Can Phil, can Phil read this? Is that backwards? No, I see. I had to use my phone. I couldn't get in on my computer. Because you're logging in on the town account. I wasn't though. I was using your link from the agenda. Really? Yeah. Well, you're coming up with the, you're the only one coming up as the town of Middlesex. Am I now? Yeah. Yeah. What? Yes. Guys, he just changed his name for another meeting, probably. Well, you did a ZBA meeting, you logged in as the town of Middlesex for the ZBA meeting and it immediately defaulted to that. Yeah, it must be. I'll have another time. I'll go back and change it. So it's, but anyway, we've got you now. Yeah, okay. Sarah, just to catch you up. He called the meeting to order at 510 and welcomed all the guests. Okay. So, Phil, you want to amend the agenda, correct? Yeah, for an appointment to the ZBA. Okay. Under new business or other business? Other business, yeah. Okay. Thank you. So, with that, we have a request from the Romney School for permission to use a budding town land for open classrooms in the upcoming school year. Action likely. Matt and Christine, I presume. Yes. So we did, we did receive the letters. Did everybody get the letters? Yes. Yes. Okay. Yeah, so we're hoping to use some space in the woods and then perhaps use the tennis courts to set up some tents. I also was wondering how the town would feel if we had kind of a a shelter for outdoor privy. It would be like a, we would have a portable bucket for poo and kind of shelter it in a very like nothing too fancy. Actually, Charlie is offered to help with that, Sarah. Yeah, are there any questions? We are just, you know, taking into account the virus transmission, how it's safer outside and just like the benefits of being outside for young children. It can perhaps turn what is a difficult situation into an opportunity for us, you know, to kind of reimagine how we deliver our learning outside. So I think if with the town's approval, if we are able to use those spaces, I think it would be a really a really benefit, a huge benefit for our children and our community. So you are proposing to use the part of the tennis court, which is not currently configured as a tennis court, correct? Yes. Or do you want to take down the net and disable the no one operational tennis court? There's no need to take down the net. Christine, if you want to jump in. Yeah, sorry, I got disconnected for a moment there, but I'm back. I would agree with everything you said, Matt. And our intention with the tennis court is not to take down the nets or anything. You know, we hadn't decided specifically on which of the courts to use, but definitely not the whole space so that others can still access that space. And I guess that's fine. I guess my other question is, how are you, you're not going to drill into the tent? How are you going to support the tent? Yeah, I think we'll depend on the tents we get. We won't, I don't imagine drilling into the courts. I imagine it'd be kind of with some extended rope attaching it either to stakes in the ground off of the courts or tying it to other, you know, some of the fencing or things like that. Okay, I just want, you know, usually, usually they're either great big stakes or these great I don't know what size tent you're talking about, but these screw things are big stakes that you're driving the ground and you definitely cannot drive those into the tennis court. They'll destroy it. 30 by 30. What they want, a 10, 30 by 30. We may adjust that size. We were, oops, sorry. Go ahead, Christine. We were originally looking at a 30 by 30. We found some slightly more portable ones that are 18 by 20. And so, you know, we possibly put one to two on the courts because 18 by 20 wouldn't fit a full class socially distance, but two should for inclement weather or hot sunny days. So it'd be like, you know, 36 by 20 or 40 by 18. But different classes. You need to talk to the 10 company, but I can just tell you, I'll bet you anything, they're going to want to drill into that tennis court and I think that's going to be a problem. You don't think it, you know it, right, Peter? I don't know, Mary. Maybe they have a scheme where they are going to tie them up to the fence. Oh, I'm saying we don't want drilling. We know it's going to be a problem, if that's what they want to do. Right. So, yeah, we would not ruin the tennis court if there was any that we would incur, then we wouldn't move forward. The other thing, the other thing that I've seen 10 companies use, which might work depending on the size of the 10, is they have things roughly the size of a car tire, which are filled with cement, just big weights. And those, something like that probably would work. That's a great idea. Sand logs. So, Peter, in terms of permission, if there's anything that the town does not want to have happen, like drilling into the tennis courts, could we, could you be clear on that? Just because I think it's, you know, it's probably a work in progress as to how best to secure the fence. Here's the problem, guys. And I want to be, and I'm just speaking for myself now, but other board members can pitch in. I have no problem with the school using town, land and facilities in this, usually anytime, but especially in this COVID time. So that's fine. But what I want to do is, I don't want, if you want to take down some dead trees, I have no problem with that. But don't start, don't start cutting down live trees and creating open spaces and leaving piles of brush around and making a mess. I'm hoping when this is over that you can restore whatever you've been using to more or less the way it was or better. I mean, if you're improving it, if you're creating trails, if you're doing things like that, I think that's fine. But we just, we just don't want a mess that we have to deal with afterwards. Absolutely. Yeah. Our intention, well, we won't cut any live trees. It was just the dead trees that could potentially, you know, fall and injure someone. And we hear you about keeping it, keeping it natural. And that's, you know, that's part of the North Branch course that both Matt and I have taken is really enjoying and appreciating, you know, the space as is and not, you know, other than taking down those dead trees, we wouldn't envision doing a whole lot of, you know, changing other than just the wear and tear of people being there. Yep. What size of the dead trees you're going to take down? They range. You're taking down larger. I mean, I don't want you guys or volunteers with you working, taking down big dead trees. That can be very dangerous. Very dangerous. Correct. Yeah. Some are larger than others, depending on the space. But that was something else we were looking for. If you guys had any suggestions of, you know, people who are experts any, you know, foresters, because we don't want to just, you know, do it ourselves or, you know, someone who has a chainsaw, but, you know, we want to do it safely in a way that will be good for the forest and, you know, the people involved. So there are loads of people in town, including one gentleman who was on this call right now who has more than has the ability to take down those trees. But typically, that's part of their business and they get paid for it and it's expensive, depending on the size of the trees. I don't want to sound like sour grapes, but I want everybody to be safe. I mean, the worst of this would be somebody gets hit by a dead branch and worse of all dies, but or seriously injured. That would be the worst. Have you reached out to any of the parents at Romney? There may be someone who does that for a living and might volunteer to at least look it over with you. Then you have Facebook post yesterday. Yeah, there was a, we put out a front porch forum post as well as it went out in our new school newsletter last night. I don't think we've heard back that anyone does it. And Matt, I think you've been getting those replies. I don't think we've heard that anyone yet could do that part. Is that correct, Matt? I mean, like you said, there's lots of people in our community that have a chainsaw and are willing to help, but we are wanting somebody who's, for the more complicated jobs, somebody who's heard or trained. Guys, here's what I would suggest. And I know you're right in the middle of trying to figure this out, but what I would suggest is we would tonight, and I'm suggesting this to the select board, give you the go ahead to work on a plan to do this, but then come back to us with the plan. When you have which trees you mark you need to cut, who's going to cut them down, how the tents going to be installed, all those unknown things just so we can be, just so we can be comfortable. And the other thing I would ask is that because there is, of course, liability associated with this, that you contact the school's insurer and add the town as an additional insurer for where you're using our facilities and our forest and our land, add it to the school's insurance. It should be very cheap, but we don't want to be, the town doesn't want to be at the head of the line if somebody gets hurt in there in the midst of your program. Of course. Yeah, of course. Yeah. Does that make sense? Yeah. Select board members? Absolutely. We appreciate both your support and your, you are, you're looking out for safety because that's really important to us too. Are there, does anyone, do you guys know names of people we could contact about the trees? Do we have a town forester? Well, we have people, you can contact me, Matt, and I'll give you some names of people who've been around town. Great. And when is the next select board meeting? The September... Third? First. First. Okay, so that, that, is there a way that if the plan is put together sooner, it can be circulated amongst the select board members because September 8th is the tentative opening for school. And I, I'm kind of guessing that Matt and Christine would like to have these since up and running by the time school opens, but you can correct me if that's wrong in terms of scheduling. That is correct. That is correct. We, we are ready to... We have, we have two things we can do and I'm looking for input from other board members. One, we can pretty easily be put together a special Zoom meeting just to discuss your, your final plan or we can appoint a subcommittee of the select board, which has the authority to work with you and approve whatever you come up with. Either one is fine with me. So do we not have to make a motion tonight? Yes, we do. We want to... I think we should make a motion that's subject to final approval by the committee or the entire board. We are encouraging them to go ahead and, and tune up their plan and come back to us with a more detailed proposal. This is just each class going out for one period and so it's kind of like the whole school uses the same limited facilities outside or... So I kind of want to update you what we've done and where our plan is that. We have each... Christine, Deanna and I have identified different locations in the woods for each class. So each class could have an outdoor space to use that is separate from another classroom going out there. So we've identified six spots in the woods that would work as long as we have some trees taken down. And we were hoping to hang tarps in those spots. But I've, I was ready to... I've got the tarps kind of measured out and ready to purchase once we have approval to move forward. So we have that, that part of the plan done. We've located the tents and what we're... The one piece that we don't have is hiring somebody or finding somebody to help cut down the trees or even evaluate like the safety of some of the trees. Because we don't have that knowledge. We can't look through the woods and be like, that tree is... We want somebody to do a site assessment in those areas to make sure that it's safe. So that's where we're at as far as our plan. So it sounds like what we need to do to come back to you is have that person lined up. And is there any other details that you need? If we had a map, we could just mark it out. Peter, can we do something that allows them to start purchasing their tarps and stuff like that? Like, I don't want this to be where everything's at the 11th appropriate time. Liz, they can purchase whatever they want. But I'm not willing to tell them they can do it until I'm comfortable that it's safe and they've got an appropriate person to take the trees down, etc. So, you know, they can... I mean, I'm willing to be as positive as we can be without us having a site visit and without you saying you have had a qualified person walk through the woods and say what needs to be done and have a plan to get it done, Matt. I'm not trying to be a jerk, but I'm really concerned about a bunch of kids running around in the woods and branches coming down or who knows what. So, may I say something, Peter? Yes. Julie Moore is the head of A&R and she is a former school board member and she lives in town. So I would start contacting Julie Moore. Have you guys contacted her? No. No, but I had her son a few years ago. Okay, so she would be an excellent person because there are such entities of county foresters through the state of Vermont, the state of Vermont. And I would lean on Julie to get some help that way, a state person, as opposed to going to a private forester. It's a busy time of year and I don't think you're going to get it, but the state should probably chip in on something like this. Yeah, and I would say that you could probably get a logger who can tell you about the, you know, what trees need to come down to. I mean, that's the business freeze. Have you ever known a logger to work for free? Seriously? I'm not saying that. You know, maybe there's a logger who's got a kid at school. Matt, how big in diameter are these trees at the base? Christine, can you speak to that? I don't know. I'm not. I mean, there's, we're looking at, you know, six different spaces. And so it's hard to, I mean, some are pretty big, like, I guess, of two feet a foot in diameter, maybe. It's hard to picture off the top of my head. I guess one thing also, though, and this is something that you had mentioned that you do not want happening. So I, for some of the spaces in order for the kids to congregate, there are, we would have to do a little bit of brush clearing, and that we're talking saplings. And so I don't have a problem with that. If anything, that's going to improve the watch. I just, you know, I know, I know we're up against a tight timeframe, but I just want it to be, want it to be safe no matter what. Yeah. Another thing that we've done, Peter, is we've had Amy Butler from North Branch Nature Center who does this for a living to site assessments. And she took the class, the class, the graduate class up there to help us find these spots. And she's trained in outdoor education. And she trained us in doing these site assessments. And she is part of this process with us. So she's been guiding us along. She sets up outdoor classrooms. She does safety protocols for schools. She would be part of the process in training teachers of procedures and protocols to be safe while in the woods. And she is like, before we set up, you have to kind of look and find all of the potential dangers there. So I've been in the Romney Woods for, I've been doing eco, which is a full afternoon every Friday of the kids being in the woods. And prior to that, I did a site assessment. I found barbed wire and had to clear the barbed wire. And there was a tree that was taken down as well. So I've done part of this work already. I've been in there for about five years now, teaching on Friday afternoons. So she has been part of the assessment part to kind of just make sure that we're doing this safely. And she's somebody that we really know. That's great. Well, here's what I'm going to propose. And let's see if we can all agree on this, that we will agree tonight that you can go ahead with the planning process. But before you take down any large trees, I mean, you can clear brush, you can order tarps, you can do whatever you need to do. But before you take down any large trees or make any substantial changes and certainly, you know, have a plan for how you're going to install these tents on the tennis court without damaging the tennis court, get back to us. And as soon as you do that, we'll schedule a special meeting with it as quickly as we can to hear what you have to say. And maybe we'll maybe we'll want to have a site visit. I don't know how people feel about that. But I just want to be I just want to be careful. And with that, you can go ahead. And within a few days, once you get back to us, we should be able to give you the final go ahead. And also do the insurance. Yeah, the insurance. Yep. Does that make sense, board members? Yeah. Yeah. Pretty willing to make that motion. Don't move. Second. All in favor. What's the what's the motion just that they may go ahead as long as they get approval at a special meeting. They they can go ahead with their initial planning process and doing doing light work to to prepare. But before we give them the final go ahead, they have a plan for the removal of any dangerous trees and a certification by someone like the person you described, Matt, that she's gone out and looked at these sites and she's satisfied that they're safe. And also subject to getting the town of middle sex on the insurance policy that the school has. Right. That was my motion. You heard that, Sarah. I'm still confused, but it's okay. I'll look it up. Just so that I'm clear on the insurance piece, I need to we need to contact this. Matt, I'll do that. I'll follow up with Chris is going to do that. I was going to but I knew we'd pick it up. Thank you, Chris. You're welcome. Thanks, Chris. You're welcome. So guys, we'll we'll we need to vote all in favor. Hi. Hi. Any opposed? Okay, so you've got the what I will call a provisional go ahead. Thank you guys so much. And he got some room to do. So yeah, if you would if you would get back to us through Sarah, when you're when you're when you're ready, we will schedule a meeting as quickly as we can as a meeting. Do we want to do a site visit board members? Why not? I mean, I wouldn't make a contingent on our site visit, but great. You could explain a saw and a chainsaw. Mm hmm. Well, what I would suggest is what I would and I'm just thinking about this as we go, but maybe we have an onsite socially separated site visit and special town meeting. I mean, it's like board meeting. Yeah, sounds perfect. So we can do it all all meet at the school. You show us around. Tell us your plan. And we can do it right then and there, right, Sarah? And maybe you'd have Amy Butler there too. You know, her hands up in the air. She doesn't feel like I just feel like I'm gonna work forever. Can I just ask one question at the at the recreation building? Isn't there a small bathroom inside disabled disabled disabled forever? Yeah, we filled it with sand or something. That's too bad. Well, it is kind of too bad, but you talk about a nightmare. I had my share of fun dealing with that thing. And I want to go back to that. I can tell you. Let me just ask you, Matt, how far from the school is the farthest site? Well, it's 1200th of a mile to 0.12 not. So going back to the school to use the facilities in the school wouldn't be out of the question, right? The challenge is if there's only one adult out there. But it's not out of the question. No. What about renting a port outlet, you know, a portable toilet? Yeah, we had talked about that too. The idea Matt mentioned is pretty similar to that. Just a little more kind of, you know, manmade. But yeah, that's something on the list as well. It's basically the same thing except you add water to it. The porta potty would be with water and chemicals. This would be just kind of a shelter area. You have a bucket that the teachers have to take care of each day. And it's a bucket, but it's like it's a portable. One of them is called a luggable lube. It's not just an empty bucket. It has, you know, bags in it that have, you know, for safe disposal and, you know, a small seat. So there's, you know, it's kind of like a camping or hunting. I've seen them advertised for. Guys, come back to us with a plan. We don't want to, we don't want to micromanage this and we don't want to get involved in your turf. We just want everybody to be safe and we don't want the town to be exposed to a problem, basically. But we're supportive of you using the town. Great. Thank you so much for your time and consideration and we'll get back to you. Anything else, anything else, board members? No. Okay. Bye. Say hi to Matt and Alex and Justin. I will. Yeah, I too. Okay, bye. Here we go again. It's the right thing to do. It's just we got to be careful, I guess. Okay. Highway report. Okay. So over the last couple of weeks, we've been ditching on McCullochill Road, doing some grading. We worked at the Notch Road pit to get it ready for McCulloch to do, to screen his sand. And we finished the, completed that slide that was on Brook Road. And both of those items right there, the pit and that slide was done in concert with Du Bois Construction and our road crew, which came out pretty good. Currently, we're, McCulloch set up for screening yesterday and they started screening today. So we're trucking from the Notch Road down on Brook Road to our town garage and then back on Center Road. So we're trying to alleviate the traffic a little bit. We've also been grading on those roads and we lucked out with a little bit of rain. So the stuff was moist. So we haven't had a problem with dust, but we are prepared for that. We've got chloride on hand. We'll make sure the road stays graded and chloride so that we don't have a problem with that. But that will be ongoing this week and probably well into next week. As soon as we finish that screening, we'll go back and putting up the sand. We'll go back up on McCullochill Road and continue that ditching that we've had to leave more than once. And we had to buy a culvert for up on Upper Barnett Hill Road. That is in. We've got it. So we'll be doing that also. And I haven't forgot the patch on the Wood Road Bridge. So that will be in the, but it's after our sand is put up. Then we'll get to those items. Can I ask a question, Steve? Sure. Somebody asked me today, why the bridge, the Middlesex to Moortown Bridge is closed. And I wondered if you guys knew why that was. I don't. They're replacing the bridge in Moortown. They're replacing the bridge on Route 100? In Moortown. Yeah. So it will be closed for quite a while then, right? Okay. Steve, I think I missed the last leg for a meeting because I was on vacation. Did the potholes, and I haven't been down to Center Road past near your house, did those get filled or not? Yes, they did. Okay. Great. Thanks. I'm sorry. Which bridge is it that they're replacing? It said the one in Moortown. You can go eight miles or something. So I think it's the one that, as you get into Moortown or something. No, no, no, no. This is apparently the one between Middlesex and Moortown. Right. But they're blocking people from going across that way because they can't get all the way through. Okay. So even though it's the bridges down and eight miles away, you cannot. It's the one on the other side of Moortown in those esterns. So what you have to do is you have to go in a single direction where the traffic lighters belong? I believe so. Yeah. So you have some Ducks Ferry to get over there. Right? Yeah. That's the bridge across the Mad River in South of Moortown Village, and it will be closed until at least October 17th. And the detour is the Pony Farm Road, which runs parallel Route 100B. And there's no big trucks allowed, but car traffic can go that way. And so it's going to be closed from Monday to October 17th for a pre-placement. It's an accelerated bridge project, which means they have all the components pre-stressed, pre-poured, and they just put them together. That's why it's so fast. Yeah. So can you get on, could you take the road, the three mile bridge road, could you take the road that goes by the Scribner Farm and then turn left to go down to the village, go down, and then take the detour that Vic was talking about? The rind of your head. Well, it depends where you're going. You can get across the Middlesex Bridge, but you're not going to get through Moortown. That's the whole village of Moortown, but you can't get to the south end. But I thought that Vic said that you could take Pony Farm Road. And then get back on to Route 100 below the bridge, right Vic? That's correct. But you're in Moortown, not over by Scribner Farm. No, no, I mean, yeah, but the thing is, you know, I don't, okay, I got it. Yeah, can we move on? Yes. Thank you. Anything else, Steve? That's it. Okay. Any questions for Steve? Board members? Treasurer's report. Action possible. I really don't have a lot to report. The one thing I wanted to bring up is in the warrant, there's a check for Du Bois and King, which is part of the Village Grant. I sent an email out last week to two members of the Planning Commission, asking them if the money had been applied for and what the status was, and neither one of them have responded. So I am not going to mail that check, but I don't know if somebody else can rattle their cage. Sarah. No, I don't think it's not Sarah's responsibility. No, it's not. I mean, I think the board should be responding when a question is asked. And certainly they had time. Yeah. Yeah, that's why I had asked that question because I know they applied for the grant. I thought the grant was approved, but it was in the last time. I know when that money is available. It's available now. I spoke to Mitch, I don't know, maybe three, four weeks ago. And he said he had not applied for any of the funds yet. And I told him at that point, because he brought up the fact there would be a bill coming in. And I told him that it would be nice to have the money before the bill came in. And I got no response. And I also sent it to Sandy. Some discussion on issues related to this in our executive session later. Can I ask a question about the warrants for you and maybe Steve? Was that the same chainsaw that we have repaired twice? I saw that there were two chainsaw repairs. I wouldn't know that. I don't know. I think it's two separate saws. Paul is on the call. Can you hear us, Paul? I didn't realize we had a chainsaw repaired. There was bar and chain oil, but that was that. Were there two chainsaw repairs? Dorenda, I remember seeing them. It could be how she entered it. That might be the number that it got posted to, the chart of account number under chainsaw repairs, that it went to chainsaws any of the oils or anything like that. There were two for that and then there was one for the oils too. There were three entries. That's all. I don't have the bills here in front of me, so I can't answer to that. I don't know. That's okay. I mean, I just thought I have somebody who would know. It was Doug Hanson. So that's the fire department, isn't it? The Doug Hanson one is, yes. That's a chainsaw repair. And where is the another chainsaw repair? There's one down toward the bottom. It's $288. Okay. That was the one at Tucker Machine. Was that yours, Paul? No. I mean, that's almost the cost of a chainsaw. Right. Well, I'll be glad. I mean, this is one of the problems with these meetings is the in-person meetings, we can actually look at the invoices and answer some of these questions. And it's challenging when it's the way some of that stuff is coded. I have a hard time figuring it out too. And it isn't anybody involved. It's just, if you can look at the bill, you can tell what it is. But other than that, it's a challenge. All I see is the bar and chain oil on there. But there's two repairs. One is the Haskell Bar and one is Doug Lombard. So we know one's, I guess, I mean, Doug Hansen. So that must be fire department. But I didn't even know they had a chainsaw. But there you go. You see the one for Tucker at the bottom, Steve? Oh, yes. Yep. I think it's Paul. Yeah, it's Paul. He's having trouble with the internet over where he is. So, anyway, I do see that repair on there. And I'll talk to Paul and figure out what that is and get back to the board. Great. Thanks. Can you guys hear me? No, no, no. You're just all broken up. Well, we'll have, we'll get all straightened out, right? Anything else, Dorisla? No. So, I guess, wait a minute. So are you in agreement for me to hold off some checks? Yeah. Yeah, I am. Okay. All right. Oh, and the one other thing is I am going to enter into agreement again for Bonnie Batchholder to start our audit process. But she went up $550 in her price this year. And last year it was $250. This year it's $550. So, I think that it might be time to go out and you know, see what else is out there. I don't know if you're in agreement or not. But didn't we anticipate that happening because she came in super cheap? No, she wasn't in any cheaper. I thought she was. All I would tell you is what I hear in the world of accounting is that the requirements to do these audits every year get more stringent and they require more work and more hours. And I've certainly seen every audit I'm involved in paying for for other organizations, they're all going up in cost. So, I'm not saying we don't, I'm not saying we don't put it out, but I'm just telling you, I think this is an across-the-board problem, not just her. This year they don't even plan on coming in. We have to send them everything they'll take and we'll have to photocopy. So, it's going to be more work on our end to photocopy stuff and send it to them. Well, and also it's what more challenging for them to deal with as well. I mean, I don't know, this is the hidden tax of all this COVID business. Yeah. That's basically all I've done. So, you're not suggesting, Dorinda, that we would go out for this year. We would go out for next year. It's too late for this year. And the other part of it is having a new person in, I think it's wise to stick with the consistency of a person who's audited our books before. Yeah, I agree. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Hey guys, I just, can I, trying to touch back here at the top of Nantro, can you guys hear me? Yeah, yeah. Whatever the bill from Tucker's was, was not the highway department. And if it is coded as such, it is incorrect. Okay. I'll check with Amy on that. It doesn't say the unfortunate part what I have here just is, doesn't give how anything was coded. Okay. Yeah, then it must be the fire department, I'm assuming, because we haven't brought anything there. Okay. Okay. Thank you, Paul. Thank you, Paul. Okay. You're all set, Dorinda? Yeah. Okay. So, extending or ending the moratorium on the 8% late fee that were suspended on overdue 2019 property taxes beginning in March until the end of August 2020 due to COVID-19, actually likely. So, this is just for the, for last year, no. No. Yes, it just pertains to August. So, we're not talking about anything moving forward. Well, that's the question I think this is asking is do you want to continue to extend that 2019 moratorium, which means people will continue to not have to, I mean, there's no incentive for them to pay their 2019 taxes if, well, we need to wait a minute. This is for the 8%. So, that you were going to, that was waived. I think that's a double-ended question here because you need to approve not charging the 8% for the late fees, which I thought was already done, Sarah, wasn't it? There are two 8%. One is the HS122 that the board decided we're not going to penalize people for late filing. That was 5%. 5%. And then there, but it can be up to 8%. The other one was the imposing a late penalty. You waived, you held off on imposing a late penalty. Those taxes, 2019 taxes, still delinquent as of May 21st. But you said, you wanted, the board said they wanted to revisit that at the end of August because you asked a question like, well, how long is this going to go? Are we just going to permanently lift those or are you going to lift them to December? And the board said, well, let's revisit this at the end of August. So, here we are. Right. So, I have a question. This is Liz. So, we have a tax bill due in September, which is from just our newest tax bill that we got, right? So, we're not talking about that. Is that correct? That's correct. So, when was the last tax bill due? I can't remember. Mine just comes out automatically. In May. It was due in May. So, we're talking about those payments, the payments that were due in May. And how many people during the didn't pay their taxes or paid it late? Was it above normal or was it on par with what we normally get? I believe we still had quite a few outstanding, but I thought the question was not continuing it. I thought we were waiving the 8% completely on the, because now you would have to go back and charge them 8% on the ones that were still due. I don't know if we can do that, can we? I don't know. No, I think we've lived it. I think it needs to just be waived for the 2019, but we are back charging the interest on the ones that still have not paid. We just didn't charge them that 8%. And I don't know if we can go back and charge them that 8% now or not legally. I thought the question was whether we were going to go ahead and do it for next wave, the 8% for next year. No, that's too early to do anything with that. Okay. So, I'm confused then because if we've already gone past the time when we would charge the 8% and we've waived it, what are we deciding on now? Well, I don't know. That's kind of my question. Did we waive it or we discussed this at the last meeting? And I don't think we took a vote on it because it wasn't warned. Do you want me to read the message? I'm just going to read the minutes from the meeting where you guys decided to waive those penalties. It's a very small paragraph. I said the board considered provisions under blah, blah, blah, which grants Vermont Select Board's ability to delay, decrease, or even waive penalties. So there are three options, delay, decrease, or waive penalties and interest on late municipal and statewide education property taxes until January 1st, 2021. Darynda suggested the board's stress this waiver should only be for 2019 tax bills and then extend for six months, March of 2020 through the end of August 2020. The board can revisit this order in August when COVID-19 conditions may have changed. Without such clarification, there would be no reason for anyone to pay their 2020 taxes. So under that House Bill S34, whether it's Senate Bill 344, the board has the option of you could impose, you could decrease, but you said you wanted to revisit this in August. You're going to do it for six months. You need to revisit in August. So that is where we are. Let me ask a clarifying question. Darynda, if I'm late, am I charged 8% every month on the balance that I'm late? What is it? Or just a flat fee of 8%? It's a one-time fee for not paying it by the final due date. It only comes when we're paying quarterly. It only comes into play on the final due date. That's right. And I think the last quarter, if you haven't paid all your taxes, you get the 8% penalty. And to be honest with you, I think my intentions when I said to delay for six months was to delay charging the interest and not so much the penalty because the penalty is a one-time thing. But Darynda, underneath this, according to this emergency measure, select boards have greatly way they can do whatever they want. So if you wanted to impose, I mean, it would be a stinky thing to do, but if you want to impose the penalties right now, you could. Or you could pose a lesser penalty. Well, I mean, I feel as though, I don't know, I think that I would have to go through the list now. I'm no longer the delinquent tax collector, so I haven't really looked at the list. But I'm wondering if it's the usual cast of characters who are always delinquent anyways, and not people who are really in a hardship. I don't know. But what would be, so if we said we're done, and we're done, and it's August, and we're no longer going to have the fee suspended, what happens to those people that still haven't paid? So if the people, I guess it would be the people who didn't pay their 2019 taxes, by now, they would get imposed the 8% or whatever year. But those may be paid in, when did you say was due May or something like that? It was due in May, so they could have paid in June, they could have paid in July. And you didn't impose the 8%. Okay, so our next payment is due September. So those who haven't paid last time are already in trouble because they have September's that they have to pay. So, I mean, I think it would be not a bad idea for you to just... Liz, you're breaking up. You're breaking up. Liz, get closer to your phone. There's no phone. You hear me now? Yes. So my suggestion is that if it appears that the people that aren't paying their taxes may be affected by bid and whether or not they're able to, I would impose 8% if they finally scraped their money together in October because they went back to work or something, even though we know they're already late on their September payments. But I also understand that if it's the sort of the same group of people that are always late, then maybe we say, okay, we're done. But the reality is that COVID isn't done, and a lot of people still aren't back to work. And so my recommendation is that we would, for those past taxes, I'd say let's just do it to the January 21st deadline. But that's just my suggestion. January 1st. January 1st? 1st, yeah. Yeah. And that was everybody else to be on. I'm all for extending that. So you're just saying, Liz, to extend that until January 1st. Just for last year's taxes, yes. Not for September's and not for this next. That's a whole separate. Right. We'll address that next May. I can live with that. Me too. Make the motion, Liz. Okay, I move that we extend the moratorium on the penalty, the 8% penalty and interest, or just the penalty? No, no, just we've already gone back and started charging interest. Okay, the B until January 1st, 2021. For the 2019 taxes. The 2019 taxes, yes. Right. Is there a, is there a second to that motion? All second that. Okay, all in favor? All right. Any opposed? Okay, guys, it is now four minutes after six by my clock. So we need to temporarily adjourn the select board meeting and start up the BCA meeting. I have a question to ask. Am I allowed to be in this and vote if I missed the first meeting? No, no, but listen. Okay, I'll listen. I have to, I have to go to the central fiber meeting a few minutes ago. So, Sarah, will you text me when the select board meeting is going to come back into session? Yes, we use your cell phone number. I gave it to Sarah. Oh, okay. I don't have it. I lost it. 279-6505. Now we can call them at any hour. Exactly. 279, I'm sorry, what's the last four digits? 6505. Okay, thanks, Phil. Okay, I'm signed in off. You're going into the... Okay, Phil. Okay, Liz, you're on. Okay, so we're resuming the meeting, the BCA meeting from Tuesday, July 28. Hold on. And so we're reopening the hearing. And so at this time, we invite the inspection committee who was me, Jan Theron. Is Jan on yet? I think yes. Yes, she is. I see her. And Chris McVeigh, who went to the property last Wednesday and presented our report last night. So Chris McVeigh is going to present our report to the meeting right now, to the BCA. So, Chris, take it away. Does everybody have a copy of the report that was sent by us today? Yes, I do. Okay, so I think it would be helpful if there's any questions along the way to ask questions along the way, just so we don't lose them. Okay? Sounds good. Okay, so the inspection committee went to the voting property on August 12th, and we spent approximately an hour and a half to two hours there, looking over the property, the house, the land, the outbuildings. And then we got together and prepared the report, which you now have in your hands. So we wanted to be very detailed in our report just because of the issues that are involved here. And based on the original appeal, there were four major areas of dispute involving the appraisal, which the Bowdoin's had done, and the Lister's assessment of the property. So the Lister's originally prepared a report from March, May 26th, 2020, which after grievance, I understand, was modified, and their modification appears in the cost update report of June 24th, 2020. And then the Bowdoins presented an appraisal that they had performed on June 19th of this year, and they presented that at the hearing on July 28th. So when we did our inspection, we paid particular attention to the areas that were raised in dispute, even though we know that once a challenge to the property evaluation is lodged, it opens up the entire evaluation, and it's not limited to the issues that are claimed to be in dispute. Chris, can I just interrupt briefly? Sorry. I just want to make a point that while Chris is presenting our report to, I think Chris, I would let you first do the report and then open it to the BCA for questions, because I don't want, and then Scott gets some opportunity to speak as well. So I just don't want it to be suddenly where everybody's asking questions. So if you don't mind. I'm with that. So I'll present the report and then so hold your questions until the end. Okay, so the outfieldings were in dispute, and the list, there are two outfieldings. One is a garage shed type building that you come upon almost at the very start of the driveway. It's on the left-hand side, about 660 square feet, and the other is a larger barn that is located much closer to the main house. And so the listeners evaluated the outfieldings at a total price of $85,300, $24,800 for the smaller building and $60,500 for the larger building. We reviewed and inspected the barn closer to the house. Fairly new construction, hard concrete floor, hard gravel floor for equipment storage, large enough to store heavy equipment like tractors. It also had an upstairs storage area that was accessible through a stairway that was located at the end of the building. It is not insulated. We didn't see any source of heat in the barn building, but large, well-constructed. It looked like a well-maintained building. And the same can be said for the smaller building that's located down the driveway some. It looked like it had some field type equipment in it, but a concrete floor, well-constructed. Both buildings had mechanical doors, garage doors that could be opened and closed mechanically. And the appraisal that the voters had looked to us. It wasn't completely clear, but given the square footages that were identical, we thought that the evaluation on page 28 of that report for garage, which they valued at $20,492, was the same building that was located, the outbuilding down for the beginning of the driveway. We did not see evaluation for the barn, which was the bigger of the two outbuildings that were the subject of dispute. There's a reference to a barn in the appraisal when the appraiser is doing the comparables, comparing the comparables that he used in the appraisal. And it's called in the area called accessory. I think it's called accessories. He mentions a barn and then another descriptor. So we concluded that that was the barn and also the other outbuilding, but we did not see evaluation on page 28 or 29 of the appraisal, the Bowdoin appraisal that dealt with the barn. So that was our findings in terms of the outbuildings. The lot, the Bowdoin lot is up on Zidane Road. It also borders Center Road for several, like I think 900 feet of the languages. But it's a nice piece of land accessible to the interstate about four or five miles away from the interstate. And up on Zidane Road, there's a nice gradual descent to the driveway and ascent. And it's a nice piece of open land. There's about 80 acres of rolling meadow that the house oversees. The house itself sits up on a pretty level building lot and has a very nice view of the surrounding forested areas and the mountains that are within view. It's southern facing. There are solar panels on the rooftop and just nicely situated piece of land. And in our view, based on our evaluation, we did not understand why the Listers reduced the grade for the five acre building area from a 2.2 down to a two. And our recommendation in that regard was to increase it back to 2.2 because the land is just a very nice piece of land. We also did not understand why the acres, the open acres that the house oversees and looks down on is graded at 1.5. And we'd like to have the Listers revisit that particular grading because it just seemed low to us as inspectors. The next primary area of dispute was the sun porch. And this is a porch that is an enclosed porch that basically goes across the front over there. We're losing you, Chris. What? We just lost you. You did? Do you have me back? Yeah. Now you're okay? Okay. So it's a porch that is 540 square feet if I'm recalling the number correctly. And it extends along the front of the house and then along the side of the house. It is fully windowed, although Scott Bowden describes the windows as being basically like storm door inserts, which is accurate. The windows aren't, they don't go up and down like you can't manipulate them so that you can move them up and they're halfway open. They're either inserted in or not. But it's a screen porch. On one end, there's a construction of a pizza oven, a cinder block construction, which is not yet complete, but would apparently provide a source of heat in the cooler months. We did not see any type of systemic or systematic heating system for this particular this sun porch area. It was nicely constructed to us and the dispute in terms of the listers and the appraisal is that the listers had the valuation for this particular area as $121,500 and the appraisal had it at $26,741. The multiplier that the appraisal that the listers used was $225 and what we were concerned about is whether or not that was a multiplier that may have assumed that it was a heated porch. Because I think in the original presentation Eric made some statements that he thought it was a heated porch, but when we inspected the vents that were on the floor, they did look like they were drains for any inclement weather that may have come into through the screening on the porch area. So we just did not see any type of heat source other than the pizza oven when it is completed. The valuation from the appraisal was $26,741, which is just a significant difference on this particular space. It is, we think, well constructed as is the entire house. So we need to have the listers just re-evaluate what the $225 or the $225 multiplier is based on in order to reach a valuation on this particular part of the house. Chris, if I could just say they also have glass panels that go into them as well. I agree, right. So it can be, it can be a three-season porch because there are glass panels that will go into the screened areas to keep out the weather when it becomes much worse or to put it in any time and keep out the rain. The next item that we looked at was the overall quality of the house. Chris, can I just back up there the porch? Just the actual front porch and just describe the, there's a slight confusion with the appraisal report? Yes. So with the appraisal report it seemed that it may have mixed up the porches because it describes this enclosed porch as an enclosed wood deck screened walls, which is not what we saw. And the front porch that is in the front, it's in the back of the house, but it's where the driveway comes. So it's where you basically enter the house is a long porch that goes across the front of the house. There are columns holding up a roof that shelters the porch, but it's open. There's no screening, there's no knee walls, it's just basically an open porch in the front of the house. And the appraisal from the bon appraisal described this as an enclosed porch knee walls with glass. So we think they just mixed up the descriptions for the two different areas with the descriptor of the enclosed porch knee walls really being the sun porch and not the open porch that looks out on the driveway. And so bear that in mind if you're looking at the appraisal report. Any other? No, just that the multipliers then got mixed up too so that the front porch was charged more per square footage than the enclosed back porch. Right. So in the appraisal report, the front porch multiplier, this according to the was at 59.09 as a multiplier, whereas the enclosed sun porch that was much bigger and went around the house was a multiplier of 43.93. So they just seemed it was there's some confusion there in the appraisal and I think it was mixed up on those two different items. So the final thing that we looked at was the overall quality of this home. And we just we thought it was a nicely constructed home, excellent quality throughout. It is there's some question as to what is the degree of completion. The appraisal report from the bones headed at 95% completion. The visitors report headed at 90%. The appraisal had the quality of the home at a 4.25 as opposed to and then I think in our summary of the meeting it said 4.75. But in in the appraisal report, it said 4.25 for quality, good slash very good. And but it rated the condition of the home as excellent itself. So we just we as a whole thought the house was an excellent condition being relatively brand new. It's only not even a year old and still hadn't been completely completed when we did our inspection. And we thought that the quality was excellent. We did not think it was good or very good. We thought the quality of this home was excellent. And with that we were recommending that the visitors who originally assessed the quality in their first report as excellent that the quality should be returned to the excellent quality rating of 6.0 as opposed to five. And so those are our recommendations. The conclusions that we came through in the recommendations in summary are that we we also deemed the pond to be a very good quality and very good size not typical for a middle most middle sex ponds. We believe that the grade of 1.5 for the 80 open acres is low and we recommend that the visitors revisit this grading. We recommend that for the five acres be returned to 2.2 from the 2.0 that it was lowered to in the second Mr. Report. And we recommend that the visitors review the value of the wraparound sun porch based on our confirmation that it is a three season porch. And with particular attention to that multiplier that they use for evaluating and the value for the for that space. And we also recommend that the visitors return return the quality rating to 6.0 of excellent from the 5.0 rate that they had lowered it to in their second report. Okay. Thanks, Chris. So now I can invite the inspection. I'm sorry. Final questions from the BCA. And again, don't forget that we're going to enter a deliberative session afterwards. So this is general questions on what Chris has presented to you that you need some clarification on. I can't vote, but can I ask a question? I don't know. Sarah, is she able to ask a question? I think I would think so. Right now it's a public portion of the meeting so anybody could ask. Okay. Sure. Yes, Mary. Did you come up with a new value or are you considering remanding it back to the Listers? I'm confused about your end conclusion. We did not come up with a value because there are certain items that we did not have the information to do the evaluation for. Like for instance, the sun porch. We didn't know what the multiplier meant for the Listers when they were using it. And if it was based on a heated space, we're assuming that that would be a different valuation than an unheated space. Suggesting it be remanded to the Listers and then come back to you guys. Right. Okay. Thanks. Any other questions? Peter, are you okay? You're muted. Peter. He's unmuting. Sorry about that. I was trying to black out some of the grandchildren noise in the background. I'm fine. Thank you. Okay. Okay. So if there's no other questions from the BCA, Scott, would you like to make some comments to the report that Chris just presented? Yes. Thank you, Liz. Liz, what's your pleasure here? I sent to Sarah this morning which she forwarded on some of my factual replies to the inspection report. Do you want to go through those or shall we assume that people have read those? Why don't you go through them, Scott? That would be helpful. Okay. So I'm just starting from the first page and just working through the report. All I was commenting on here are matters of fact and I omitted any editorialization. So the first is the report mentions that there's custom cabinetry. There are not custom cabinets. Those are catalog order cabinets. The report characterizes the basement is nearly finished. I don't know what that means, but I clarify that there is no finished flooring. There is no finished ceiling. There are no light fixtures, unpainted sheet rock walls, no baseboard trim. I'm not sure that qualifies for finished basement. There was some mention about a server for state-of-the-art internet connectivity and I wish that were true, but I have occasional DSL service from Consolidated, so I'm not sure what that reference was about. What you saw was a firewall. It was a security appliance. It was not an internet connectivity thing. The report mentions a two-car garage with radiant floor heat. There is no heat in the garage of any kind. So I don't know where that came from. The only radiant in the building is in approximately half of the basement. So it's in the basement main room and in the basement, the far right room and the attached bath. The office with the attached bath has a radiant floor. There is no other radiant floor anywhere in the house. Can I just ask that question, Scott? Yes. Can I just ask the question of that? Because on the list of reports, Eric said that he talked to you about it and you said there is radiant floor, but it's not hooked up in the garage. No, no. There is radiant heat in the basement home. There is no radiant heat in the garage. There is radiant heat in the basement, which in fact is not hooked up because we're using solar and heat pumps and all that. It's a redundant system in the event that we lose power for an extended period of time that will have at least some heat in the house. Okay, good to know. The smaller garage, I'm on the second page of the report. We're talking about the smaller garage which we call the shed. It mentions that you could store cars. I'm just clarifying that that shed, which is 800 feet from the house, is built on enrolled land and land that's enrolled in UVA current use. So the use of that shed is restricted to only being able to store forestry and agricultural equipment. It cannot store cars or personal property. Okay, the next item talks about we can't find the value for the red barn on the appraisal report. And Christy mentioned a few things about the appraisal report in general. And first, I think I need to clarify that the appraisal report reaches its conclusion of value based on two methodologies. So in the appraisal report, there's a sales comparison approach methodology and then there's a cost approach methodology. And those two methodologies are averaged, in this case 50-50, to come up with the conclusion of value. It seems as though all of the questions that you were asking about in the appraisal report, you were referring only to the cost basis method, the cost method on page 27, because it only applied to those questions only applied to that. There's, you may have missed the on page the beginning of the report where it's the sales comparison approach. So just that's just an overall comment. There are essentially there are two appraisals in the appraisal. They each come to their own sub conclusion, which is that average to come to the conclusion of the appraisal report. Now in the cost approach section where you mentioned that the barn is not there, you're correct. The barn was omitted mistakenly from the cost approach. So that part of the appraisal omitted the barn. And I also note in my email and I'll make note here that there are two other errors on that cost report. One is that the entire house, all 3,500 square feet, has radiant heat and heat pump heat and that's not accurate. There's only approximately 700 feet of radiant heat, which leads to an overstatement of value. And then the other error on the report is, let's see here, it's finished. Oh, shows the entire basement, all 1700 square feet is being finished, which as you all saw, that clearly was not the case. Half the basement is storage rooms. It's not finished space. So if you net those three omissions, the error of the barn being included, not being included, but you reduce the radiant heat and the square foot of the basement, you've actually reduced the appraisal. The conclusion for the cost approach is actually higher than it should be if you fix those three errors. Not by much, but it's higher. But I do note that that has nothing to do with the sales comparison approach. The sales comparison approach was not encumbered by any of these errors. Moving on to the lot, there's mentioned about 80 acres of land, open acreage. There is not 80 acres of land. There hasn't been as far as we can tell for 30 years. At best, there's 40 acres of open land. I've never measured it. I can only use Google Maps to use their measurement tool. Looks like it's about 40 acres of open land. My understanding is as many years ago, there were 80 acres, but John Rock planted 40 acres of pine trees, which are now adult 30-foot pine trees. The mention about the pond and the quality, I sort of view this as being, I don't, from a tax perspective, it's not going to impact my tax bill any. That pond is in the UVA area. I'm going to be taxed $151 an acre, no matter what the valuation that the town puts on the tax bill. I guess I don't really care about any of the valuation of any of the acreage other than the two-acre house site, because all of that land is UVA. And the only thing that the valuation matters is what you guys, as the town, get back from the state for whatever that program is, where they give you some money back for land that's in UVA. But it has really nothing to do with what I'm going to pay for taxes. So I'll stay out of that. It mentions that we put the land in conservation. Actually, the land was put in conservation by the prior owner. There's mention about the McCulloch Hill property, which has fewer acreage. So again, what we're proposing here, and we're setting forth is that the value of the house in the two acres, not in the UVA, is what we produce the appraisal for, the house in the two acres. The McCulloch Hill house had 25 acres. So it mentions that it has fewer acres and really it does not have fewer acres. What we're talking about the appraisal is two acres versus 25. And then lastly, it's a small thing because I don't think it's even germane to this. You're talking about the pizza oven, which wasn't even started on April 1st. In fact, the porch wasn't even started on April 1st at all. I don't know that we need to get into the minutia on that. But there's talk about the pizza oven providing a heat source, and that's actually not how that oven is designed. It has an 8-inch unvamped draft. It actually requires to be a window to be open or a door to be open for it to actually work, because otherwise it would be negative air pressure in the room and you'd feel the smoke. So that's just not the way that oven works. Again, I don't think it's needed here or there. So those are my comments with regard to the inspection report. And I did want to just make a few comments about this overall where I think this process is that my understanding is that the objective of this body is to determine the fair market value of the property. And the fair market value of the property is a concept that's very well-defined by the law. And it specifically sets forth the law sets forth the process that when you have a property like ours, that is a mixture of enrolled land and UVA and unenrolled property, that you must value the unenrolled property as a standalone property, which we've done, and then add in the enrolled property. So I think the law is very clear about what needs to be done to arrive at a fair market value in a property such as ours. And there's been a lot of discussion amongst the inspection committee and the listers about the attributes of the property and what features it has and doesn't have, but what is absent curiously, which seems to be the only objective under the law, is any analysis of how any of these attributes actually comport to the property's market value, its fair market value. We have produced credible evidence that fairly and reasonably shows that the listed value of our property is greater than the fair market value. Vermont courts have consistently held that an appraisal completed by a licensed appraiser meets the standard needed to overcome the presumption of validity of the listed value. It is now up to the listers to introduce evidence that justifies the listed value. And I'm going to quote just one sentence from the Vermont Handbook on Property Tax Assessment Appeals page 11. Quote, in short, once the taxpayer puts some credible, puts on some credible evidence, the listers must be prepared to defend their appraisal. They cannot rest on a defense based on the grand list alone. And quote, there has been no such evidence presented. So the BCA is now left to determine the fair market value of this property. It seems to have three choices, accept our asserted value based on the evidence that we provided, which is the only evidence of fair market value that has been presented to the BCA, accept the listed value, or I think the only other option. I heard Mary ask the question about remanding to the list, or if I didn't even know that was an option, is to come up with your own value. And it seems to me that a value, if you're going to come up, either accept the listers value or come up with your own value, it needs to be based on evidence. And in this case, inexplicably to us, no evidence supporting the town's value was presented as required. We're hopeful, Gretchen and I are hopeful that the BCA will reach a decision based on evidence and facts. And you know that you're required by law to include the basis of your decision in your written document, in your written decision. So we'll be, we'll be very interested to see what facts are included in the promulgation of your conclusion. In conclusion, all we're really asking for here is to be treated like any other taxpayer in town, to be taxed at the fair market value of our property. This process provided the forum for the town to demonstrate how it was meeting this basic fairness obligation to show any support at all, that their appraisal was equal to or even close to fair market value. Again, no evidence was submitted to support their conclusion. We're left to conclude absent of any evidence to the contrary, that the value that we are asserting is the fair market value. That's all I have. Okay. Thank you, Scott. So our agenda says invite final comments from the listers, but I don't think there's a list. They're not here. I think I would move to go into deliberative session. Yeah. Okay. So we're going to close the hearing and we're going to, Scott, just so you know, we're going to enter the deliberative session and then we present a written decision within 15 days. Great. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Scott.