 We're here for the meeting of the Waterbury Select Board on Monday, February 13, 2023 at the Steele Community Room. Everyone tomorrow, be nice to your Valentine. It's an important thing. First thing on the agenda is to approve the agenda. I'll make a motion to approve the agenda as written, unless there's any changes. I'll sign it up. There's a motion to the second. Any further discussion on the agenda? If not, all in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Motion carries. Next thing on the agenda is the Consent Agenda items, the minutes of the January 30, 2020 CRE meeting, and to approve a first and second class liquor license for the Country Club of Vermont, approve a second class liquor license for Thatcher Hill LLC, approve a second class liquor license for Village Market, and approve a second class liquor license for King Drugs, number 101. We have a motion to accept the Consent Agenda items. So moved. Thank you. We have a second. We have a motion to the second. Any further discussions on the Consent Agenda items? There being none, all in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? The Consent Agenda item is passed. Now is the time on the agenda is we give time for the public to comment on anything that's not a warned agenda item. If anyone wishes to say anything, if they could step forward and please be brief. Or if anyone's on Zoom, there being no one. So, Mike, quick question. Can I step off on this report? I'm going to be a public, I think. I just want to bring something to the table and I should have caught it on the agenda and added it to that. But I just want people to be aware of a couple of things. We had the Lieutenant White here while back talking about drug problems. I just want people to be aware of the fact that my niece who works part-time at Shaw's was involved in a NARCAM rescue effort of two addicts that had gone in and used the bathroom and overdosed and were lying on the Shaw's floor on their way out. And she took the bull by the horns because she was the manager at the time, ran to the pharmaceutical part of the store and grabbed the NARCAM that the pharmacist gave to her and administered the NARCAM to these two people. They recovered almost instantly, bolted out the door to a waiting vehicle that was outside and took off. I also had a friend stopped in the other day just to visit briefly in the morning. He's a frequenter of the mobile station from about three o'clock on. He witnessed a drug transaction that took place there out in the parking lot with a couple of well-known people in that industry. So I just wanted to people, you know, everybody to understand that you know my cries for awareness of this problem is closer to our doorstep than we all realize. And I don't, you know, I just quite honestly don't know where to go with it from here. Because like I said before, my concerns about it consuming our community like it has so many others is a real worry of mine. So I just wanted everybody to know that. Just in response to, I don't think that anyone on the board feels that fentanyl oil and drugs are not a problem, but there's only a certain amount of things that we can do, state police and stuff like that. We don't have a, you know, local policing except for our policing contract. I think it's like you said people like the manager who have their eyes and ears open on things like that. It's kind of a shame that people just bolted out the door, you know. Well, the problem is that's the consequence of a problem. We're not focused. We're never focused on the cause. We only focus on the consequence. I think there are a lot of places, you know, Howard Mental Center, you know, there are a number of places that have drug programs. And I think they serve, I think some of the ones even on the agenda for the warrant for, you know, have to deal with drug issues and stuff like that. But can I do something personally, can this for, I don't know, Roger? Yeah, well, when Lieutenant White was here, testifying about this issue, I asked him what we could do and he said to let him know, you know, and let his officers know what was going on. So I'm just wondering, did you report that back? I haven't yet. It just happened here recently. So they were aware of that. They were. Yeah. Right. And just in response to what you said, I was at the regional emergency management meeting last week, and someone in the group raised the issue of Narcan, you know, and I emailed Gary and he responded, you know, you know, I didn't know, I wasn't sure what resources that we have. He and he responded that the fire department does have Narcan, you know, there, which I was, I thought that would be the case, but I wasn't sure. And Waterbury, you know, he said, Waterbury ambulance, and that would be my first place that will be, you know, we have was he, you know, would be the place that I would refer any kind of situation like that, but the fire departments, you know, another thing probably, again, I wouldn't be surprised our two police officers probably have Narcan. So I don't know if you're missing my point. I don't think you are. I mean, we shouldn't even have to be, get to the point of having to use Narcan. Right. That's what I'm telling you. It's, you know, I wish I could come up with, and I think about it a lot. What could we do to stop this before he even gets to that point? I hear you loud and clear. I just don't know if there's a silver bullet. Just for clarification, the fire department does have Narcan on three of our trucks, four of our trucks, but it is for our members for use. If we go to an incident and something happens to one of our members, we do not run first response for the ambulance. Even if something happens down the road, that is, that's an ambulance issue. And Narcan is for us. I just didn't want people out in the community all of a sudden to say, oh, just call the fire department because we won't go. And it's not our care. Yeah. Thanks for adding that, Gary. Sure. Okay. Okay. Thanks for bringing that up. Thanks. Anything else in the public sector? There being none, we'll move on to the base agenda. First item is approval of road closure for Little League parade on 429 from one to two o'clock with a rain date of 430. Scott, if you want it, come on down. Hey, I love you. Good evening, everybody. Hi, Scott. So everybody knows me except for probably Tom, correct? So Tom and I actually emailed back and forth. So trying to rejuvenate some of the past things that I remember in the Village of Watery around Kidd. So I've taken over the Clivewood and World of Little League program this year. I had it in 2005-2006 as a board member and come back and run the program very close to my heart. I was inside the display now, so that's how they thrust me back into this, you know, my full list gets 30 years old. So what's Little League needing to be in here? But I would really love the opportunity to give, you know, these, the community members and parents and players and everybody that's had a part of this over the last 55 or 58 years of the program has been running Watery under the Clivewood and World of Little League logo and take an opportunity on the 29th of April, which would be considered our opening day, even though we probably won't be on the field still the middle of June the way it's going. And I would like to assemble our parade for the players to start down here at the Dacro field. Assemble on the field off the beaten path so we can set it up, make sure we have things going. I've actually spoken with Sally Dylan, I'm assuming she probably spoke with Gary about it also, maybe fire to fire and get involved there at the same time. I don't know what that would look like for the SP response, if any at all, but I remember the days of Wayne's Order, the red year one, the gang, I'll run the blue lights worse up and down the, up and down Main Street for that 45 minutes. The idea would be to come out onto Main Street, make our way down the main venue town, down over the hill to the first, first ray and turn to the state complex and then disassemble from there. So we're talking three, four-tenths of a mile. There'll be banners, there'll be, I don't know. Park Road, Park Road. And that would be, like I said, I'm thinking these players are somewhere between five and 12 years of age, parents would be involved at the same time. There'll be banners for sponsors, we picked up 13 local sponsors this year and probably fundraised between seven and ten thousand dollars, which is something they don't think they have done in a long time and really like to give back to the grassroots piece of it and you know give the community something for the kids to be able to do and have some memory makers at the same time. So that's what I'm here for tonight, to see if there's a permit involved or what our program has to do to work with the town and the facilities to be able to, you know, make that happen. So you'd like the, the traffic to be cut off, I think if we did it the same way we do our typical Fourth of July parades, you know, I mean, I don't know exactly know how they assemble or disassemble. I just know having a staging area, then having to stop traffic at the, at the drive bridge, at the drive bridge, work our way in and then have a follow car behind us to keep people away so we're not going to the meandering and carry it on until we get them in a safe place back off and then we resume this, you know, as currently set through. So maybe I'm misunderstanding here. Well, first question is, is this a route that you used to take prior? This is a route that I remember in the 70s and 80s that we did. Yep. And are we talking about re-rooting traffic? Well, I don't know how that would go. It's an hour to the enclosure, you know, obviously people traveling from one end of town to try to get to 100. I mean, I don't know if it's a, if it's a matter of taking them through coffee roses back up here. I don't want to impede on residences either because, like I said, I've never done this before. I know we've done it in the past. You know, Gary, his gang and the, our village police before we had them always found a way to do it. Is there a way that we can do it now and I can work with you guys and you know, whatever program pieces that we need to, to get this 45 minutes to be able to do it? They're doing it in the Wakefield. They're doing them and still, I, I imagine we could probably figure out how to do it here in Waterbury. Yeah, sounds like, out, out by, uh, Art Grove Cafe, coffee roasters down there. Yeah, they'd have to go on to Stone Street. To, uh, Union Street. Uh, Union Street or Stone Street, right? They can split right there at the bridge and go either way. Um, this is on a Saturday. It's a Saturday the 29th of April. And I picked the later days. I picked the later time in the afternoon, not three. One to two. But we, uh, we had a photographer that's coming to do lead photos at CrossFit Brook, started at two thirds and done the girl with an early program for 25 years and I couldn't get him to shake to make it a later or later or earlier for me to be able to accommodate, you know, what we were trying to accomplish. So we got him, that was his date, that was his time. I didn't, I had no control over that. Are you requesting police, uh, escort front and back? Well, I'm, I'm looking for safety for 100 kids and their parents out on main street in Waterbury. So I got to put a fire truck or ask for a fire truck in the back with lights and somebody to the front to keep the pace moving the way we wanted to make sure that the, the travel and public goes in the direction they need to go for that 45-minute interval. You know, that's what we do. That's the pre-planned piece. Yeah. So we currently don't have our on-duty guys, police officers on Saturdays or Sundays. Uh, I had mentioned in the past, I don't know if it went anywhere, whether or not Bill talked to, uh, VSP about alternating, uh, potentially alternating days. There's flexibility, I think, in terms of kind they could serve. So whether or not. And I've actually got a couple of parents who are in the VSP world and have not volunteered their time with the state's equipment, but I think they would probably be really happy to, if it was a volunteer thing and it was, you know, cleared through the VSP commander, I don't think that would be a big deal. They're at AQID, they're at River of Light, you know, all those things are on, you know, I did, uh, traffic control for River of Light for a, right, where Carians have done that. Right, the bottom, uh, trucked, uh, the, uh, train tracks all over here. And then we had, we staged, uh, we had a volunteer down that end. And then, uh, there were others, uh, intersections, um, and I did, uh, a new ski straight. So it does take a bit of organizing, uh, volunteers to make sure that, uh, those, all those intersections are staffed. And we don't have the Vermont State Police to do it necessarily. So I mean, we would need your help, uh, in terms of recruiting volunteers and, you know, or getting safety vests so people know that that they're official. Uh, I didn't see the compliance for the agency of transportation for 31 and a half years. Oh, well, no, you don't get a vest. I had a bucket of knowledge where it comes to routing traffic. I know the NVKCD book, Frontwards and Backwards. Okay. And I bet we could probably give you up some vests and some cones where I could get a group of volunteers together, do a little mini training with them and what we're looking for. That would be really helpful. The same sheet of music. It'd make that happen. We've got cones. I'm sure we've got some jersey barriers. You guys want to say, Scott, I had a conversation about this with Fort Worth and Com on Friday. Um, very supportive. I think AT for Kids is a great thing. AT for Publicized. Little League, I played Little League, you know, it's, it's, it's a great thing. And don't disrespect anybody who's run the program or been anything to do with the program in the past, but it's really struggle. And it's not, it's not because of just the program itself. I mean, you've got, you've got club sports, you've got spring soccer, and this is, there's so many things for these kids to get around and very little for them to decide on what they're going to do. The only thing that, that both me and Tom kind of, I think I mentioned this and maybe you want to think about doing that. I know traditionally I went to Park Road, but if it just went the route from Dak Road to Stow Street or thereabouts, it will shorten the parade a little bit, lessen your requirements for public safety. And two, I think it will be good for the kids because if you compact it a little bit more, you might have more people. You know, it's there, you know, the longer you have, the more people are going to be spread out. My other problem with that is that some of the businesses that have donated money as sponsors, you know, the reservoir, those groups down the hill that we have never had before is going to have a banner in there that they're probably going to want to see their patrons and the community see come down the hill. So I'm trying to do a service to the community at the same time, by keeping our local business owners happy for them to engage in local stuff for our children. What I was thinking is that like you could try to go over to like a cross from Pro Pig, you know, and just engage into the parking lot. And I'm just thinking about the established, the one next to the new animal woods. Oh, the paid part, the paid part, our new paid parking lot. That'd be a good area, you know, and I think you probably can. You got to pay for all the spots. Well, I think Eric would be pretty simple. Right, so I'm here in February because this is in April and we got some time. Right. And I don't want to come in here in the April meeting to say, hey, guys, in two weeks, what can we do? And that's a good way to do it. I'm just trying to have some pre-organization. I'm just taking the best thing because to me, if you compact it a little bit more, you'll have more of an impact. And kids love to be walking in front of, you know. Like I said, we've got 41 registered players right now, which to me in February in Vermont is a pretty good number. And I'm anticipating when we start our indoor gym, starting the 4th of March, that's eight Saturdays, and they can't come in and play or practice unless they're registered due to insurance. So my best ballpark guess I'll have somewhere between 75 and 110 kids. That's quite an assembly area when you start talking to parents and vehicles. That's why I thought using the Dacro facility and using the land and coming up on the main street would be a great place for parents to park, a great place to assemble, come out through, make it short and sweet. Come back in and just assemble on the other end. Get some kids, good kids that will get you into the Little League World Series and that will give you just more publicity. We're here to give you this. We're here to train your memories. And Danny does too. Yeah, I'm sorry. That's okay. Melissa. I just want to say thank you, I appreciate it. Conceptually, I'm certainly totally on board. I appreciate you coming in early. I guess I would defer to Tom and staff just to understand what the process is. Clearly we do events like this with River of Light, but who should the point staff personally and my personal feeling will be. Conceptually, I think it's great if you want to just save the day personally. I feel really good before a final sign off. I would just want to see those plans about what intersection to where, who's helping out and what does our state police or public safety look like. Assuming we get all that in order, I would feel totally comfortable signing off. There you have it by the next meeting. That's great. But I would go to Tom in terms of what's the process for a community member and who should he be in touch with? He should be in touch with the emergency management director. Hilarious. He's sitting there going, makes that a name. Okay. Danny, do you have? Yeah, I was really similar to Alyssa. I'm really excited to see this coming back. I haven't been in town since it's been, been a parade. I think it's great. I love, I think saving the day is perfect. And then similarly, I was curious if there exists a checklist or, you know, an organizational procedure orish things or parades. Like, you know, we do it for different things. Like does something like that exist? And it's not in conjunction with talking with Gary, maybe reaching out to some of the leaders of the other parades. And they might, they do it so often, they might have a really nice, like checklist that they use each year that could help you. So you don't have to feel like you're reinventing the wheel or doing it all by yourself. Thanks, Danny. I'm just sure. Scott, does this also include the girls that are playing softball? Is it just? Absolutely. Okay. Absolutely. Matter of fact, we've made some pretty good accommodations for that group too. We're no longer going to use the small field down here beside Main Street for safety reasons. And we're going to move the girls softball programs to Anderson Field, which for us is not a really big utilized field. Right. And then we have parking. We have places for kids that aren't playing. They've got the playground, the tennis court, they've got the basketball court. It takes all those cars off of Main Street so that we emergency services comes through or something goes awry. I don't have to worry about that anymore. Air and balls into Main Street. So it's like I said, it's a win-win. That's where I've been trying to focus my time on is how do I utilize what we have? How do I harness it all in and how do we disperse it? And that's the big one. And right now it's like just trying to get community support and revive something that is definitely needs to be revived. What'd you say the age group was again? They started four years old and they play up to 12 in this program and then they go to the Babe Ruth program or a senior little league. That's the national little league. Well, the Babe Ruth crew would be member of the valley actually owns the charter for them and they play hard with it. So registration is up. When do you have to register by? We started registration the 19th of January and we will close it to the 15th of April. Not saying that we won't take anybody out on the 15th of April but we need to cut it off somewhere because you know how that goes. You make it to 17th, someone comes in on the 19th. We make it to 1st, they come on the 12th. So you had to set some type of parameters. So that's what we ended up with. So I might be in touch with you. Great. Any other questions? Just a little. We'll be glad to help your security. Yeah, and like I said, we're just trying to get this going for everybody and hopefully, you know, we'll take this as our maiden voyage after a long extension of not doing it and see if we can make it an annual event. I'm sure if you asked the Repairians, I'm sure they would be a good group. Ron and Marge are my neighbors. If they wanted to keep parking, they'd vote in my house. I wouldn't do that. Sounds good though. So just to be clear, we'll come back to you in two weeks where thereabouts with the sort of complete plan here. So what I'll do is I will gather a list of volunteers. I will give you an exact parade route. The time is already there. So it'll be like 45 minutes before for assembly. The disassemble afterwards doesn't make any difference as long as we're off the main run. I'll see what I can get together for any equipment that we have on here, desks, combs, and then we can incorporate gearies in the fire department crew on top of it as well as maybe, you know, our town highway department. That might be another good, even a strobe light on the side of the road is better than nothing. Are you going to have them on floats or do you just... I don't want to do... I'm not looking for the giant episode. I'm looking to... It's like opening a piece. Keep it simple. You don't buy a million dollars of equipment and have $5,000 worth of work. You know, you want to make it simple. You want to get that dry run through, learn from your mistakes as it gets bigger. It'll get more complicated all by itself. We don't need that. So we need to start at that piece. Anything else? Thank you for coming down to that. So like I said, I will find... I'm going to list the volunteers. I'll give you a Zach Parade route for what I can gather up for equipment and then I will come back in a couple of weeks and see you guys again. Yeah. And on the road, just emphasis on the closures, where they are, who's doing that, and what do you have. A sheriff there is going to be a volunteer. Yep. And I'm sure after our next item, I'm sure Tom can confirm who the appropriate person's job is. Thank you very much. Thank you guys. Thanks, Scott. Thanks, Scott. I think he did. Thanks, Scott. Next item on the agenda is fire chief emergency management director. Discussions relating to parade policy. That's not a good time to be perfect. So Scott has a good plan. Scott has historically done a really good job. I've been thinking about having the town because you as the board are going to approve this. And I think you own it if something bad happens. It can't be just the board saying, yes, have a parade and then something bad happens and you can say, well, we just approved it. We didn't say, you know, how to be it. So that's why I think there really needs to be a more in-depth policy on what the expectation is. I think this is a great start. It really kicked off this past year with the River of Light. There was absolutely no coordination. I couldn't get barely from my house to Down Street. They'd already closed off Union Street. I mean, Stoke Street. An hour ahead of time. They closed off Park Row at the railroad tracks. An hour ahead of time. You couldn't get down Railroad Street. I barely made it through with my pickup down Union Street because it requires park on both sides. So there's no way that a fire truck could get up Union Street. There's no way a fire truck or ambulance could get up Railroad Street. Any call in that area, the trucks would have to go up 100 and then down. So at some point, I think we need to have a policy that also considers people's lives and not just everybody saying, oh, this is a wonderful thing because it's not wonderful to the people that are negatively impacted. So I think parades are fine. As far as Scots parade, I think the fire department will have a couple of vehicles involved. That said, if we have a fire, they won't be. So I mean, Scott's going to have to have a contingency for that. So that's really my push is Waterbury has to have some sort of policy that they go by that requires certain things. Instead of just saying, yeah, go ahead and have it. And it wasn't like we could move barriers on top of the railroad overpass because it was the recreation's van parked sideways on a road with nobody around. Same thing at the railroad tracks, the van is parked across the road. And if the fire trucks had to get out through to Pilgrim Park, couldn't because there's nobody with the van. So these are all problematic issues when something bad happens. And that's the way I live my life is what happens when something bad happens and we can't get there. We've worked it out a number of years ago with the in this past year was to me, the best was the Stowe Street Arts Project. They no longer hunt Stowe Street. It's down to Pilgrim Park. It's the best place for it. But every year when I would meet with them, what is your contingency for moving all this stuff if there's a fire? We don't have a contingency. And they were never told they had to have them. So I really think Waterbury needs to take a stronger stance, maybe a more involved stance in all these things that the board approves. That's where I come from. And I'm not saying any of them are bad. They're all great for the people that are involved and people that like them. Will I be involved in the Little League League? Probably because my wife is. So that means I get sucked in. But I think it's a good thing. I think you've got a very good plan. Yeah, probably. But again, if we have a fire call, that's out. And we may not have time to say, hey Scott, you're gonna have to find some other people. And there's a call, there's a call. So, Mike, go ahead and listen. No, you go first. So thinking about what you just said about the vehicles broadside in the road, with nobody there to manage that. When I think about a lot of kids walking down Main Street, you wouldn't expect something like this to happen in Vermont. But I've seen it enough across the country and other places that I worry about. Some maniac in a runaway vehicle. So just thinking about what you talked about here earlier, how can we prevent the situation that you're just talking about. So I'm thinking about wooden barricades and cones and maybe some ribbon. That's not going to stop a maniac in a vehicle. So either if there's vehicles broadside in the road, there needs to be somebody there all the time manning that vehicle to get it to move if, in fact, there is an emergency. I'd hate to think about doing anything less than something very protective where somebody could just, you know, you could run through some wooden barricade pretty easy. So whatever, you know, we consider, I want to make sure that the safety factor is on both sides of this decision-making. Alyssa? Did Gary want to respond? I will. I don't disagree, but I can give you a couple of examples. Go ahead. Oh no, I was just going to say the same thing. I mean, thanks for being here all night. I appreciate it. I mean, Danny raised it earlier. I think, honestly, creating a policy is a win on both sides in that it helps our community volunteers who want to plan events have a roadmap to get to success and know that I do want to do parade and it really matters. So I need 20 volunteers. So if you want to see the parade happen, you got to help out. And I feel like I don't have the expertise, as you said, to be making a decision on a safety basis. So having the appropriate time to pull a municipal staff would be great. My question was going to be to Tom or you. Is anyone willing to draft it for our review? I mean, I would not mind helping and being involved. I speaking selfishly. How much do you expect from a nonpaid emergency management director? Again, I volunteered a lot of time and I don't mind helping, but I don't want you sitting here thinking, oh, we have an emergency management director, but he's not on payroll really. In fact, I don't think I am. But it comes from the fire department, I guess. But there are things that need to happen. You need to have a route that people can get around. Prior to the pandemic, when we were doing a parade, setting up for the parade down to coffee roasters for the not quite Independence Day parade, I encountered a person and I'm glad it was me. Who was very angry, driving a car, and he was on a verge of out of control. Because he was inconvenienced. Not because he was inconvenienced, because nobody knew which way he should go and was just sending him away. And that person was very angry. That person had a firearm on the seat of his car. I tend to have a little more knowledge about that than the average person standing there. I was able, in about five minutes, to get him to calm down. But he had been told to go the wrong place by other people, not from the fire department. And that's the type of person that does something bad. When they just are getting mixed messages and they're being sent all over the place. And he clearly had some control issues. But it took about five minutes for me to get him to calm down because it took about four minutes for him to stop yelling and screaming. And then I could get him where he needed to go and he was appreciative. But all of these things have to be taken into consideration. People have to have, you can't just say, for two hours you can't go. And in Scotch is 45 minutes. They have to have a route where they can be guided to get around. Because if they don't, they're going to find a way. And then you have the potential of somebody getting hurt. Even accidentally. Fanny, nice for Henry as well, just to write your attention. Oh, you're muted. Sorry, I thought I clicked it. Part of what we're doing a little later in the meeting is some goal setting. And one of my largest kind of categories is some of these procedures for things that we just don't. They'll be sometimes just weighing and hope for the best. So this is hopefully going to be part of that conversation. And I'm curious, Chief, if it might work best, what that board and staff and some potentially volunteers create a draft and then show it to you for some input. So it's a lighter lift on you, but we're able to rely on your experience and expertise. Mark, I'm willing to help out. I just don't want, all of a sudden, I'm doing policy work for the town. I'll take the lead on that. In fact, there was a written plan for diverting traffic for the River of Light. I saw it. Wyatt O'Brien was sort of newly appointed as the coordinator for the Rec Department, drafted it, and was working with Tyler Rancourt, one of our two state police officers, who was really acting as point on this. And I was interacting directly with him. So I thought that he was sort of the one that was overall managing this, but I sort of came to understand like there were certain pieces of it that weren't being intended to like there was nobody at that band. So I sent somebody down there. There was nobody at Winozki Street. So I took care of that. So you're absolutely right. And I'm being glad to serve on the committee or whatever we come up with to try to come up with a new policy. Perfect. Yeah. I think we have in the past, I think we in the past have heard we've had plans. And they may have been plans. And it went what they may have not been executed the way they should be. And that's probably something I think the word that you said it's most resonance with me is contingencies. I don't think in a lot of these events that there are a contingency should something like what Chris said, some kind of crazy person kind of, you have to have contingencies for a lot of different scenarios. And those are things, yes, in policies, we probably need to have the groups come up with, yes, this is what they're playing. This is what their volunteer structure is. This is what they have for contingencies for XYZ happen. And that would help you out a lot. But I understand as we're volunteers to, you know, I totally understand and I respect time, you know, you donate a lot of your time toward the town. And we all kind of have to, you know, everyone has to roll up their sleeves. But I think, you know, with Tom's guidance, I think we create a policy. And I'm not saying I don't want to be involved. I'm simply saying don't expect that I'm going to work a 40-hour work week. Sorry, I wanted to down this slide. No, it's not that tight. It's caused from something else. So anyways, I think this is a great start. I think Scott has a great start and has already thought a lot of stuff because of his previous work life. But I think we really need to hammer this out so that we're not saying one thing to one group and something else to another. And then every group, whether it's not quite an independent state, because all we do is we set up the parade. We do not do the road shutdowns. Whether it's Little League or River of Light or Joe Schmoe just wants to have a parade down Main Street. There's a plan that is consistent. Did they close the streets with anti-car show for that parade? No, they don't. They just kind of go with the flow. It's just cars going down the street. One thing we probably should do together as part of our emergency management plan update is incorporate some of this in that emergency action plan. Yeah, you know. It's all part of it. Well, except. It's all minor part. Yeah, you know, that's something that's over in an hour. So it doesn't mean it can't be referenced. A lot on numbers. Sure. Sure. No, I get that. It's just, you know, for, you put your most planning in for the most likely event. The floods. Right. So, but it doesn't mean it can't be referenced in there and have some discussion. So once a plan is established, then I'm assuming that there'll be a point person to make sure that everybody's on the same page before the event takes place so that there's no, while I wasn't told or. Right. Yeah. Well, the things that you said kind of thing, you know. Our emergency manager would be one of those people who would have to sign off on it. Yeah. I think having a couple people revealing the plan and saying they hit everything they needed to hit. They make a recommendation or sign off on it and it goes to the select board and the board in general makes a decision. I think it should still be your decision because you're owning it. You know, you don't get off that easy. But at least you're making an attempt to have everything done fair and equally and with safety in mind. And the flow of traffic, quite honestly. This is, we're not talking about, you know, 1980s traffic anymore. Yeah, that's most my consideration. Saturday, mid-afternoon, there's still quite a few cars on the road here. Scott, did you have anything else you wanted to add, Derek? Well, I was just going to, on Roger's conversation there in regards to the recreation department, Wyatt O'Brien actually stepped up and he's actually a board member on our program this year. So it'd be very good to have that relationship with the rec department as well as us being a private entity working and using the fields and what the rec department basically owns, you know, and their little treasure chest of stuff to be able to tap into that resource. That way I have an outlet here at the same time. He's already done this once or twice. Sound like with the river of light. And some of these mistakes have been made and some of these advances have already been set up. And if I plan on doing this as an annual event, I would like to use the same template every single time. So we know Stowe Street is going to be off. This one's going to be off. This is our parade route. This is where we assemble. This is where we don't, you know, and then the volunteers, I mean, that's the way it is. It's like getting coaches and getting board members. You guys are unpaid. You come in here, you do your due diligence and serve your time on committees to be able to make everything functionality for the town and, you know, from now for the next, you know, some of the decisions you make is full effect what people do here for years. So it's like if we can get in here and do it right the first time, make it happen, and, you know, get the right people in the right places, I think we can set a template for the river of light and for the Fourth of July parade or whatever other, you know, setup you have. And that's where I'm at with this. I mean, I'm willing to anything. It's like if you want us to start on Manuski Street or Stone Street and end up at Park Road, I mean, just getting it in was going to be huge. And that's just one of the things we're working on. I agree, this is not 1980s traffic anymore. We used to have all the fathers and blood, mine and their cars up three wide and go right down Main Street. They didn't care where anybody went. We had to parade. And then, of course, now our program, being a private program, we have a level of liability too. So some of these people that want to do these parades shouldn't have to count on the town's dime to protect them in case something happens. They should have an insurance, some type of docket or a declination that they could bring back to you with their permit or with their request and say, hey, we house a million dollars worth of insurance in case of these types of things that happen. And they happen in a second. And it could be life long for a lot of people and a lot of communities who just, some of us, they really can't afford to take that kind of chance. So that's another piece that I would be pretty interested to know is, do these people have their own type of liability insurance that will protect what they're doing in a travel roadway that your group is, you know, giving the blessing to? Thank you. You're welcome. And if I might, I want to be clear that I met with Wyatt after the River of Lights Parade and we chatted for about two and a half hours. And there was a lot of enlightenment on his part. He learned a tremendous amount in that couple hours of what not to do. So it was a big, a very short but wide arcing curve for him to learn. And I think he's, we'll do this talent justice. If he sticks around and I think he'll do a great job. It was just kind of dumped in his hands. And, you know, when you have people that say, oh, just do this, do this, do this, and that's what he does, you learn quickly. That's just my piece. I'm certainly willing to help out in any way that I can. But I think we need to have something to protect the town. Thanks, Gary. There's no guarantee, though. Excellent. I didn't put in something I think we need to order. I definitely, good advice. All right, thank you. Thank you, Gary. See a lot of wandering down the road, too. As each one of these events comes up, you don't want to have big messages, you know. Checklists of what you, what we're looking at. And maybe it's something that they should have, some sort of insurance, you know, come in with, you know, I know Rotary for NQID. They have our insurance policy. But that's a Rotary national, you know, a local. But you could get, like, a one-day insurance policy for some of these events. It's going to come at a certain cost, but I think that's a small price of that. You could, but if it's a town-sponsored event, they're also under our insurance. Right. So the liability is going to come back to the... Right, it always comes back to the... Can I underdecorate there for a second? You're absolutely correct. But I know anytime that we request, okay, permission to do so, if we set the plan in place, they will fall on the insurance that is the primary, which is the person responsible for the, you know, the following through of this setup. And you would be the secondary caretaker. But being that some of these programs don't have that, you're automatically on the books because it's going to be a proven signature of the program, you know, of the event, as I guess we'll call it. There are a lot of one-day insurance kind of... Oh, absolutely. My way of... That you carry, you know, for any small non-profit. My boyfriend's craft shows and she has, she will rent venues and they require her to have her own LLC insurance, as well as some companies that some people that come in and set up actually have businesses. They have to have an LLC docket to be able to fall back onto. So, you know, none of these venues want to take total responsibility for it, or it would cost you, you know, so much money to do it, you'd never be able to get in this. In our program, there's a program called where we can require someone using our facilities to get that coverage. And it's exactly that a one-day coverage. It's really inexpensive. So that could be part of anything. That should be maybe part of our policy. What's the... I just wanted to go through next steps. I think a checklist like this, again, it's a great... What a friend asked, how do I rent this steel community room in Waterbury? I literally emailed them the link to the PDF on the town website, which says, complete this form and email too. And that's all there. In terms of staff, is there anything you need from us, or what would you envision for next steps? Next steps, as I hope in two weeks, you can come back with Scott and Gary and not have a policy plan for this particular parade. And that all I think informs a policy. And that plan will become the... In essence, that'll be part of policy. We'll be able to formalize it right at town. Kind of to say, we could probably tweak it a little bit for general policy. Yeah. Okay, thank you. Great. Anything else on that? If not, we'll move on to the next topic. Select for participation in the interview process for planning for the zoning director. You want to take this one? Sure, this is an interesting position. So the planning commission by state law makes a recommendation to the select board about who to hire. You do not have to take that recommendation. The select board hires the planning and zoning director, and then the manager manages that person. So the commission makes a recommendation to you, you hire, and worst ever came to worst, I fire. And so it makes sense for all three parties to be involved in the interview process. And so I'm looking for, I think a couple of volunteers to find the time when we get there to be involved with the planning commission and sit in those interviews. The job is advertised, and the advertisement resumes are due around the end of the month. So I'd anticipate the interviews would be some point in March at the coordinated with a lot of parties here to get it all done. Do we have any follow-up here? Well, I just want to know a little bit more information first. Any idea like how many times we'd meet? It depends on the applicants, I guess. Depends on the number of applicants. Is there different interviews for different parts, or is everybody all, I mean, similar to the process we went through for you? You had many, too many, you had several different parties interviewing the same person. I would think, is it just one party? I think it'd be nice to do it as one party. That's how I envision it. The planning commission, you know, a couple of select board members myself. And I think I'm hoping after the first round, which might be three or four candidates, we can boil it down to one or two finalists or maybe a second round. So that's my vision for the process. I think, again, it helps to have everyone in the same room given it's really a joint hiring and management process here. So I'm hoping we can call less around the candidate pretty quickly. If we can't, I think that's a sign that you need to re-apportize and go back to the drawing board. Second question is this daytime type activity, I suspect? Or not, evenings, any idea? Probably evenings because I think the planning commission would want to try to fit this into their regular meetings as best they can. I've told their chair that I think everyone's going to need to be a little bit flexible here to try to make it work. I think it's a little bit unusual for job candidates to interview in the evening too, but I'm guessing it's going to be evenings based on, they're actually meeting now, I believe. Correct. So a couple of off Mondays. And you said it'd be, you're thinking about the time frame would be what, a month from now? Resumes are due at the end of the month. End of February. So we'd be doing the interviews in March, April. So number one question outside of you, who's going to be on the board? So to volunteer for this now as a board member, may not come to fruition after. You don't need to have any questions. You can leave it to the planning commission to bring you up. I assume you're a little bit of a character here. So I think it makes sense to have select board presence on this interview panel, but there's no obligation. You can let the planning commission and myself lead that process and we can bring you, hopefully a final candidate. And then you can simply choose to take the recommendation and now you're going to have to interview that's not to go down the law. All the law says is the planning commission makes a recommendation to you. Right. Yeah. No, I'd be interested in assisting. It's just. And we could send this up as my workload. In person, Zoom combination. One, my workload to whether I'll be on the board or not. You know, we'll see. I think we could take volunteers who were interested in the process. I know everyone was presently on the board, at least is right. You know, yes, they're not guaranteed to see, but should someone not, you know, be appointed, I think we can make a substitution. Who is interested, first of all? Well, again, I'm interested. Chris, I know he said. Under any others. I'm happy to do as I think you all know, I was on the planning commission before. So I don't know if that's an asset or a liability in terms of coming from that perspective, but I'm certainly interested in planning and zoning and happy to participate if we would like a rep. I think that'd be a big asset. If I'm going back around there. I unfortunately, I'm planning to take a bit of time off in March and maybe even a couple of days enabled. So I don't think I'd be a good candidate, but I would love to participate in the final interview so you know. Yeah, I'm kind of going to a little similar. One, because my participation in the town manager search, I would like to give some other people opportunities to do that. I think that's one is really important. And two, I don't know. I, you know, after town meeting, I've been wanting to do that for months or a little bit. Somewhere warmer, although the way things are going and maybe pretty warm after town meeting. You might be better off just staying here. Exactly. Danny, anything? Any input? Sorry. Any input? Yeah, well, I sent an email. I was going to kind of wait until the end of the meeting, but I unfortunately not going to be available. We can talk more about it later. I'm having surgery in a few weeks. So I'm going to be low, very low capacity for the month of March. So I just don't have. I would love to. But I just don't have. Just can't really understand. Good luck with your surgery. Thank you. That said, I agree. I think it's super valuable to have select board members on that committee. I agree, Chris. We don't know who's going to be elected. So I think just like we said, if we have volunteers and move forward and hoping for the best and then see what happens with town meeting. We can't have two of you consider volunteering here. And we're not a quorum. I don't know how you're going to end. I mean, I know it would be personnel anyway, but two volunteers. Yeah, if it works out that I can be available to do it, I'll certainly help do it. I think the committee could be pretty flexible enough. I agree. We'll work, there may be other people that are going to have some issues. Just like even the town manager selection, you know, we work it out. Roger. I'll move that we nominate the listen, Chris, you know, representatives on the selection committee. Thank you. We have a second. A second. We have a motion and a second. Any further discussion? If not all in favor, say aye. Right. Aye. The opposed. The abstentions. Motion carries. Thank you for volunteering your time both of you. Thanks for having us. Okay. Next item, as was discussed before, we're going to have a discussion of 2023 goal setting. Mike and I talked about this a bit on Friday and there's been drips and grabs in prior meetings for a little while. So I sent along a few examples from other communities, not because I think they're perfect, just because I found them. I thought there was a good mix of really concise and really broad. So the question is how formal do you want to be? You know, there's a simple way, which is everyone can just email me their thoughts on goals and what we should focus on for the next year and midterm. And I can consolidate that into categories and bullet points and give you something to look at in a future meeting. We can spend a little bit of time on that now to give me some concepts. Or are we doing that individually to meet the open meeting law standard? Yes. And I can develop that into more of a formal document for you to review and consider. It's also especially useful for me being new to know exactly beyond the day to day that arises and the execution of the budget, what you want me focusing on for the longer term. It makes it a fair way to evaluate me too and how I'm getting those things done. So I think it's good for all of us to hold me accountable to some of those things. So I just wanted to get the conversation started get input from the board on how you would like this process to go. That's a reasonable way to proceed. It's hard to open a meeting like this to do that before maybe getting some more input for which everyone else's thoughts. You know, I saw somebody at the, I was talking to a stranger the other day from a completely different town. And we got talking about Waterbury and she looked right at me and said, you know what, Waterbury is one of the most resilient and well maintained, well run towns that I know of in the state of Vermont. And I, you know, I was tickled to death to hear that come out of a complete stranger's mouth. She didn't live here in Waterbury. She lived in a different town but recognize the hard work that, you know, the people in this community have put together to keep this town as inviting as it is and as high quality of a lifestyle in the state of Vermont that you can possibly find. And we should all be proud of that. And I think, you know, your efforts right now asking for ideas to consider moving forward is another sign of good management, you know. And I think it's a great idea. And so, you know, I'll put a lot of thought into it. I've got some ideas already, obviously. But yeah, I think it's a good part of the process of operating our town, keeping up on things, being proactive. Tom, I want to congratulate you on putting together what I thought was a really good budget in the face of a fairly challenging inflation situation. And one of the things that I think I'll recognize is that retaining good quality personnel in this environment is going to be a challenge for this town, for any organization. And so, one of the things when we sent that out that occurred to me was that one of the ways that you can retain talent is to engage them in making improvements. Like, oh, we can sort of set some ideals as to what we'd like to see going. But part of that, I would hope, would be to engage the town staff members being part of the solution. And making things more efficient, like Chris has brought up a couple of times, reducing the use of salt and being more efficient and the use of the highway equipment. And so that would be one of the things that I would put on that list would be to make the staff part of the whole push forward to become more efficient and better manage. Good idea. Dany has her hand up. Thanks, Roger. That thanks for that input. I fully agree. And I think that's such a great idea. I'm really important as we move forward. And then one of my, you know, I've got a little list as well, depending on how we want to carry forward. But looking at, you know, our municipal plan, there are, I think, you know, 10 or so, sort of categories that might be really helpful to guide us as we plan. And some of them might not have some immediate short-term goals to put in those categories. But I think it's a nice way to start framing so we don't feel really overwhelmed with, you know, compiling. So I wonder if putting it into a little chart or spreadsheet, like some of the examples you sent Tom with those categories, and then perhaps the board can go in and populate those categories with our ideas. And then maybe at future meeting, we realistically look at this year, next year, three years, that kind of thing. That's a great place to start. Although I know Elisa doesn't like the, like, planning and municipal plans in general, so. Danny, you brought it up, not me, in my defense. I also have two pages of planning notes here. Thank you, Danny. Yep. Anyone else? Well, now that you've started it, now same thing as Danny. I have some ideas I wrote down. I actually appreciate the note to consolidate through Tom because I think, like, we can all discuss together, but in some ways, if we're all thinking the same thing, it's great to have it on paper. I would say of the examples, I probably land somewhere in the middle. I thought that South Burlington was like, whoa, and really detailed specific. I love a table too, but I also really appreciate missing all kinds of just saying kind of like, if you prioritize everything, nothing is a priority. So to me, you know, a two-step where we collect ideas and then prioritize makes sense. Thanks for bringing it up. I think it would be a great thing for us to have and be able to point to and be a unifying frame. One other thing I want to add here is I just want to make sure that we don't overload our new town manager with excess amounts of complication. I'm worried about burnout factor too early in the game here. I appreciate that, but I'm not sure this is overwhelming. Well, I just want to make sure. To me, it's given me the game plan. It's part of it. It's about the balance of power between the manager and the board. I think without this, the balance of power is almost solely with me, and that's not what you want. I just want to make sure that if you feel like too much, not necessarily now, but down the road another year, who knows, just keep us abreast of how much is too much. I appreciate that. Yeah, I've been having every Friday, I have a sit down now, which I didn't do with Bill, but every Friday, we kind of have a 10 o'clock sit down for hour, hour and a half, going over stuff, going over things on the agenda, and I think that's been really helpful. Myself as a former manager, I also agree. I don't want to see Tom get burnt out. We have to work together to create a better community. And I think that's what leadership is all about. And I think we have a good team. And I think giving him some ideas on what he's given to us, I think that will help. The only thing I want to add right now in terms of goals, do we get our screen to be a little brighter? But for those of us who may be a little visually challenged, it's awful hard to see some of those hands out. Is that possible? Well, we can invest in a new projector. That's one option. It's going to be costly. I don't like that idea. Well, the chair of the Everfruity Utility District would like to see a widescreen TV. That the projector could still be here, could still be available for consumption. But behind it, in this exercise behind it, would live a TV with a more LED screen type clarity. So, yeah, I mean, I talked about Butler Bennett recently. If you're serious, then I will ask him to give us a quote. But if you're talking about anybody. Winbur, I know I have a hard time picking up the little hand sometimes. I'm not certain it's a screen. It's always the item that's got the least resolution. And I think that's the L camera. Yeah, I don't know about that. That projector is like 200 bucks. I can talk to Bob and get some ideas. There could be that. Old school or video. Yeah. I'm going to move some of that out. What's that? What's that? Well, we're going to sell that out right now. And I know, I get crazy with, you know, I really have a hard time sometimes picking up the hands. Or if there's some way that, you know, even there was a tone to associating when someone chimes in with them. Well, I'm not fixing Zoom. Oh, I know that. Do something about that or that. Hot wire electric shock to your leg here. Yeah, I'm thinking about that. Hey, I'm going to get some grandkids. I had a cursory conversation with them, so. Yeah, I bet too. But that's, you know, at least let's look into, you know, what our options are for a little bit. You know, I'm, I am fiscally conservative, but, you know, sometimes good options. I don't want a big screen TV just to become a Super Bowl party. I don't mind. I understand. Stuff like that. But if it would help make better meetings, I think, you know, we need to invest in our community. And I'm hoping it's not going to be like a $25,000. Yeah, I'll get some, I'll get some information. Okay. Uh, Mike. Yes. Uh, a lighter note. Um, the, uh, our previous, uh, municipal managers, one of his, uh, objectives was to reduce burnout by merging the two municipalities, uh, the select board and, uh, Eva, um, uh, became controversial at times, uh, and probably remain so to some extent. Um, I think we should have some type of conversation, uh, about what their vision is and whether, you know, what do we think about that concept and how soon would it come about? The pros and cons to merger, they mean? Yeah. The final merger. Right. Our plan to get there. Or even, is that something that we want to do? Because, I mean, part of the burnout is that he has to manage two different municipalities. Uh, it could be simpler if it were to be managed by one, but, uh, that's not going to happen tomorrow. What do you mention that? Because that was, uh, a Friday discussion. A little bit. We discussed that. Just for the record, I did vote for merger. Back in the day. Okay. Yeah. Good enough. Okay. Anything for us? I just want to look. I framed you. I'm just thinking in light of this conversation, because I agree with you, is this is framed as annual goals. In my mind, there's a spectrum between annual goals and three to five years goal. Recognizing boards changes we all just acknowledge, but I think in some ways I wrote down annual goals. So I was actually kind of limited. And I will say the first I wrote was support municipal staff to execute effective and responsible. Oh, responsible local government for our residents. I do what I can, um, but actually saying that, like, you know, before we can do anything else, we got to keep the lights on. No, I said, you sound like me. No, I said, I do what I can. We're not so far apart. No, um, anyway, um, anyway, but it says annual goals. And so I kept things to one year, but I think in the planning, it might make sense to take three to five years and pick the three to five that are annual of one year. Recognizing some of things might be more than one year. Can you give us a deadline please? No, seriously, I'm deadline oriented. I'm just going to send you a picture of my notebook pages. But yes, we're going to say another week. We're not choosing for people. So for next, the next board meeting, we need you to have comments back to you and mine. In time to, for me to console. I think we'll start a week from today or even by this Friday, which is, he's probably thinking sooner or later. You know, I'm not going to be at the first meeting in March because it's the, well, I don't know if you're going to have the first meeting in March, but maybe you can make, you know. So the 27th, right? We canceled the 6th, because it's the day before town meeting. Yeah, right. I think that was the idea. I didn't know we'd be at the first meeting, but I'm going to make sure the calendar says that. Or that's what I did. I was thinking you could discuss goals at that meeting, but if you're not having it, then that's how it's done. Could you get it by the 22nd, which would be a Wednesday? Yeah. Sorry. Of March? Of March? Of February. On the 19th? Your thoughts? Right. Well, I'm just going to play. Okay. Moving on to the next item. The hanging of the new banner. I know we discussed this as well. And the new banner will be here. It was supposed to be here today, but I got busy in the morning and distracted trying to boot kids out of the house onto the school bus. I didn't pick it up this morning, but it's 10.06, so I'm going to grab it on my way in tomorrow. We looked at, yes, the banner's added, and it definitely needs to be replaced. Roger had an excellent suggestion that we should have some sort of a formalized select board inviting the public to have some sort of like a re-hanging event. I know I heard through the grapevine that Chris thought it was a good idea, which I think is an excellent idea, that maybe instead of replacing the banner with a... For this time, we have to do the vinyl, but vinyl is not vinyl. And I know Chris thought it would be a good idea to put some sort of a wooden hanging, not permanent, but it will still hang, but in some sort of a wooden format. I think that was an excellent idea. One, I like supporting the wood products industry. Anything that does things with wood is a good thing. I know, Tom kind of mentioned that you might you can be interested in possibly helping the town. Yeah, that's where I have some restraints there because my timeframe, if I had the time, you know, I'm not set up to do signs per se. That's not my forte by any stretch, but not to say that I couldn't do it. It's just, I'm so overwhelmed all the time with workload to find the time to do something like that, even though I'd love to take a stab at it. There was a good suggestion that even we might just be looking, you know, it's not like we're getting a new vinyl one, so it's not a pressing kind of thing. And probably wouldn't be maybe we'd do something for next year. But, you know, so we have time to go out, some sign shops, you know, see what the cost of that would be. And again, my philosophy, I like helping the wood products industry. Well, I guess my thought was, as opposed to replacing, you know, the cloth ones every two years, if it's something that the town is going to you know, keep hanging for now till somebody else changes their mind, then perhaps investing in something a little more durable and nicer looking would be more appropriate. In the long run, pay for itself. I agree. We'll find out what the cost is. I don't, you know, I don't know what the cost for a wooden banner would be. What we have time and we'll find out, I guess. And any input you would give, because I know you have a lot of woodworking knowledge that you're well appreciated, Chris. Yeah. Any other ideas on the banner? Well, in the shorter term, Tom has ordered a new banner. And so, extensively, we'd be taking the old one down and putting a new one up. And I just thought if we're going to do that, we should we might want to do it publicly or we want to participate in that simple ceremony, perhaps try to set it deep to do that. Yeah. I think I, at first when I had talked to Tom about it, I thought, you know, maybe we don't need to really do anything in that it's sort of a fixture now that we decided and it's sort of just replacing the old with the new. But Roger, I like the idea of just letting the public know and inviting them. I also, when you were just talking, thought maybe there are some, I think people that we could reach out to. I'm just thinking it breaks forming out loud. So, but I think potentially doing a sort of land acknowledgement before we do that might be appropriate. I mean, I think the banner, we've all talked about the merits of what it does and why it's there. So, I'm wondering how, you know, how do we make a little bit extra of a positive impact when all we're doing is replacing the old with the new. So, there may be some folks in town, like perhaps we put it on Front Forge Forum and ask if there's a volunteer who might like to do a land acknowledgement. And then maybe a board member could say something doesn't need to be here. But I mean, you know, meaningful. Hey, Danny, there's some conversation in the room. Could you just explain to folks what a land acknowledgement is and what it might be used? Hey, yeah, thank you. So, it can be used in all kinds of situations, but it's essentially acknowledging the land that we're on, particularly here in Waterbury, Vermont that belong to the natives of the land before we came and settled here. So, it's acknowledging the original people of the area, you know, can express gratitude. It can explain a little history of the area. Generally, it can be anywhere from just one sentence to a whole paragraph. So, it's a way to acknowledge the fact that we're on land that didn't belong to us originally, express gratitude for it. And that's just a part of the statement of welcoming all and being as inclusive as possible as a town. So, Danny, I'm glad you came up with that suggestion. And I want you guys to know that this topic creates some anxiety in me because I paid a heavy toll throughout this process of where this started from the original request of the mural. When I suggested can we have something more inclusive and was attacked for weeks on end, months on end, to the point where the night of the discussion of, you know, and I have to excuse me, you have to excuse me, I remember all the meetings and everything that took place as if it took place yesterday because it impacted me in such a difficult way. Right down to the point where the BLM banner for a second time was requested to be hung through discussion. My wife who ended up being here requested the Declaration of Inclusion to be read out loud. And at the end of that reading when I said I had an epiphany, what if we used a part of this declaration as a banner and was attacked even then resulting in that actually being done I am a great supporter of this banner. The anxiety that I still go through from time to time because of what happened makes me want to express to you people another concern of mine. The banner is supposed to represent in my opinion a coming together of different races, different sexes, different religions, but I think we're missing another big diversity part of what this banner should mean and that is differences in opinions, differences in philosophies, differences in education levels because although the banner does represent the compassion to have everybody care about everybody based on colors and race and sexes and religion perhaps but when it comes to opinions and you know those other things education there's certain groups of people that aren't willing to tolerate those differences and I've been thinking about a lot of it is due to social media to perception of one person's opinion expressed to another about another person when in fact never knowing that other person never talking to that other person our behind-the-scenes class in diversity with Mary you remember Danny right my biggest takeaway from that and I think I told you the biggest takeaway I think that a lot of us got out of that was the fact that we were able to let each other know a little bit about ourselves I feel like that was huge in bringing us together and in laying out the common ground that we all have which was in turn gave us the ability to work together a little bit easier even though we have differences another thing that proves to me that this ought to be a part of what this sign represents is the fact that the hiring of this man here through that process with all the different people that played in that participation didn't all agree on the same thing from a day-to-day basis but yet we all chose the same person that to me showed even with our differences we have common ground and what bothers me the most in our community is that and what I recognize most as time goes on and the demographics change in this town the people that I used to know have either left or died and I'm day after day being left standing knowing less and less people in my community and that troubles me knowing those people on a personal level that troubles me because there was a time when I knew all those people even with our differences we still called each other friend and I wanted to somehow I've been to the Grange hall to speak to Monica Callan you people some of you people know it that I've asked her to consider maybe a once a month gathering of local Lottery neighbors where you could go and each one at their own choosing stand up on stage and maybe talk to each other about who am I where do I come from why am I here that I'm not getting much response there maybe because of many reasons busy schedule who knows so I was thinking how can we sink more teeth into this meaning of this banner would something like a round table meeting at the school gym like we've had in the past for other reasons before but where people local people neighbors in town of Waterbury would gather and we would have several different round tables where each person could gather at a table with others of who they don't know and have conversation in this round table discussion about each other and talk about different things get to know each other a little bit maybe close the gap on this divisiveness that is tearing apart a lot of our communities throughout the nation it's just a suggestion I don't know I want to you know to to hang a banner that's been hung for two years it means what it means to some people but to a lot of people it has no teeth to it you know where does it go from here where's the action items behind that to make that banner become something more than just a banner so that's my that's my two cents for what it's worth thanks Chris Alyssa and I had a short conversation and said what you just said at the very end the banner is important we know that but it's already there and where the action items was next so I think we're on the same page in that regard I think it takes a little bit of planning it's actually one of the things I want to put in our annual goals that we just talked about so I so I don't know and I don't know if it's something that we can put together in the next couple week you know before we get that new banner up but if other folks have suggestions I'd love to hear it and if not then maybe we do put it on our annual goal when we start strategizing as a team I don't think it would be very hard you know maybe you just do it as a informal potluck or something like that you could put that together pretty quick I would just want to be careful Mike because what we're talking about is really personal philosophical political and I would want to be very careful and and plan really well do we have a moderator are there questions when do we stop a conversation when do we you know so um maybe it's just a potluck that is just a community potluck without that you know but do you know I don't know if that's what we're looking for right if we're really looking for something meaningful I think we we want to really plan it um super intentionally I understand and that may be if we do like next year do this wood sign or something like that that would be the time to do that but I think it's something other than just standing by the banner raising it up and having Lisa taking a picture of us I think you know that's all nice but it's nice to I like I really what I heard from Chris that I like is people talking to each other and maybe that's you just have the rules of the potluck is you don't talk to people you know you talk to people you don't know yep exactly and you know maybe as simple as that you know you know but that's the first start you know and and and then yes I agree with you Danny to have something that's quite meaningful we're not going to be able to do in two three weeks or whatever time it's going to take so it's something yes we could look for maybe you know if we do something and maybe that's a good idea is to have that in conjunction with a more permanent kind of a side just my thought others yeah I really like Chris's idea as well of having sort of a more structured round table groups and maybe move from one group to the next so you have to know more people and get to know people's names and what they think and so forth for this I guess one thing that I might suggest would be to allow people like maybe a minute to just express what the banner means to them at the ceremony and something like Chris was was saying you know brings up certain issues going to bring up different issues for different people but that could be meaningful and without having to go through all you know I mean a potluck we're going to be doing this within the next month or so we're not going to be having a potluck outdoors I was saying like Saint Leo Hall a couple of days ago yeah yeah no no I think that's a good idea but I also agree with Danny it's probably going to need a little bit more structure than your group people standing around banner coming down and well there's another aspect of this too Danny that I'm interested in is you know by getting to know your neighbors better there may be some opera business opportunities there as well that you don't know but your neighbor down the road is a graphics designer or a violin teacher or you know it's it those types of things themselves can also come out of these conversations which in turn brings us closer as community as well and you know in the potluck thing the problem that I see with most of these gather public gatherings is people who know each other typically stick to their groups and I'm trying to you know make all those little groups one one group if possible you know so that everybody at least have some idea of that's like last week we had a RW business mixer and a couple of businesses I never even knew existed I never knew we had a an uber service here in you know Waterbury that kind of blew my mind you know so it just I think you know you can and different and I always try to make it introduce myself to new people versus people who I already know at an event like that but yes you have to do that to as you said if you have a pop people you're going to congregate among your own figure out a way to avoid that we need to break that ice you know so what's your pleasure on this do you want to do something or do you want to just well I'm just saying moving forward I think the banner hanging is probably an appropriate suggestion but moving forward I want to think about something with some teeth in it that that can make that banner you know more important than it is already I agree so in terms of the banner it's obviously soon to be here it's in the state so if we want to do something I mean just Danny shared but I echo I think it's great if we want to do a ceremony I think it's a strong statement that we're reaffirming it I would not want that to be our only work so I think this point of you know I wasn't on the board when you all did an equity training such as that becomes something that's annual what are these other events we could look at I think is all great I guess Roger did were you thinking of a timeline and thinking of time meeting you know would this be something small you want to do in the next weekend or two you know I think we're hearing there's a lot of work that could be done and so we probably want to revisit this for a bigger conversation about future efforts so that's one piece I'm hearing about time and then there's this short-term effort so yeah yeah um I am uh sensitive to the fact that we do have an election coming up uh and this could be viewed as political and think of that but yeah me um so good point and you know I think either we could do it um at the end of time meeting day or after time meeting I don't think it is really appropriate to do it before time meeting given the fact that we're already within the election cycle really so if you're I actually was not to be clear actually getting on that at all and I made my advice there but um in that case I would say then you would probably want whoever that board to be to all support that so I guess that pauses that right if that's your I guess my thing was either I think if this board wants to say the five of us who are the board right now who are elected want to reaffirm that commitment and do a new banner I think we can do that and if not I think it becomes a conversation about what does this board do annually to say this is the thing we're re-adopting it and here's our project for the year you know round equity yeah I mean we don't think it's I would say let's do it ASAP uh but give people at least a week notice uh that and work at the details of what exactly the agenda and what not is I mean it's the fact that we've gotten the new banner already made doesn't necessarily mean that it has to go up immediately just I don't know if there was a sense of urgency from from you all for that reason but you know Roger and Alyssa got both good points on both sides of the aisle here so I don't I don't know what the solution is yeah my only urgency was that I was just looking at it the other day and it's full of you can't you can't see uh which means it's like pretty sad uh not doing its job uh so um 13th so do you want to do something right off or do you want to let people after what's your pleasure you you would end up in the audience I just um I think that everybody's made valid points and I think that because we do have the election coming up that if there's really no reason it has to be done prior to uh town meeting day so my input is keep it simple for everybody since it could be seen as being political and do it after the election and then the board can do whatever wants to support it the only side to that is that if there are new board members there would be different it might be different inputs you know at that point in time well I want to bring up one point that I think was made back before that uh the banner would stay up until the elected officials decided otherwise uh right yeah right um so to do it I don't know how that will look to do it so soon before the election not giving not giving or possibly going not giving the new elected officials say in it at least for another year or whenever it comes about to be replaced again whatever comes first I don't know if this needs to be a yearly affirmation if that's the right word because I think my understanding wasn't that it was going to be like a yearly vote or a yearly reaffirmation it was just going to be like if a board member wanted to raise it um so I'm okay either way folks don't comfortable doing it before election you know before elections I'm fine it does look a little ready I'd love to see it replaced but the other thing is yeah I mean we as a board supported it and and it's on record so I don't it's not like you're changing your political views before election you know hopefully no one would see it that way because you already have burned it you've already voiced your opinion it's not a change um so but yeah I think I'm fine with whatever the consensus is candidly I think air quote the event is what makes it political so I'm just going to put my cards on the table and I thought Tom was just going to order it and go stick it up there on a Tuesday morning while cars were driving by and and I respect folks saying that we should pause and I really appreciate raising the point but I guess I just wanted to throw that as another option which is say if we think the banner which we've all by consensus agreed and voted to be raised is falling apart a new one could be put up there and the affirmation style ceremony could wait until after the election and whoever is here to come up with that well I'm going to put the burden on the rest of you and say I don't it doesn't matter to me how we do it so I think that's whatever you guys decide is if we have the batter so it's not flying up there looking really ratty we could put it up and then have a ceremony basically it's you know it's not kind of a reason because it's there but have an affirmation ceremony I think that would that would work after after counting or can you tighten the one that's up there now no I know it's it's going to be flying in the air pretty quick all right yeah I was afraid to right I'll I'll move that Tom uh would he replace the bear sort of practical uh and that uh if the board the new board that's elected after a town meeting to set up an affirmation ceremony will you can do that at that time whenever they decide thank you we have a second all second we have a motion and a second any further discussion if not all of it or say not I can you pose any abstentions motion carries okay now we're on to the last item on the agenda is consider resolution and budget for better connections grant when Steve is rapidly coming to the table again yes and I was doing double duty tonight so thanks for uh incorporating this so this is a continuation of the conversation from the prior meeting when we talked about better connections grant in your packet there is the resolution itself it's a requirement to apply for the grant just as a refresher this is looking at Waterbury Center Village trying to figure out how we can better connect the different parts of the village that are divided kind of divided by the stream they're below the seminary building looking at pedestrian connections looking at calming traffic looking at how to make it safer more welcoming if you will and there's a map in your packet that shows the the whole area that's basically bounded by Waterbury Center State Park on the west the Hope Davey Park on the east the Seuss former Seuss building to the north the town garage to the south so it takes in that whole area we've been working with different stakeholders with Monica and Peter with the Grange Hall working with uh Rivales and Waterbury working with friends of Waterbury Reservoir uh Children's Literacy Foundation they're all in real support of the project so that's a good thing we're kind of building a team that will work on this together and then we'll have it open to the general public it'll be a very public process there's a work plan and budget in your packet that will be part of the application and in a nutshell it's about a $70,000 project as we envision it Tom and I have gone through this work plan that identifies the different tasks we require consultants there'd be a steering committee form that would be representatives of the different stakeholder groups and businesses in the area people who live in the area perhaps people who have outside of that area be similar to our park study you know group of 12 people that would guide the project they'd be a series of meetings that would be open to the public and we really try to find out what people think is the best way to move forward in in the area and what the concerns are there was good support in the ARPA survey for doing something especially around pedestrian ADA access so I'll mention it's about a $70,000 project as we envision it there's a 10% local match that would be likely to be spread over two years so the budget impact is is pretty moderate the grants are due this Friday so my task right now is to do the actual writing of the grant I've started on that working with of course with with Tom and the RW Karen Nevin and Jane Brown that's kind of been the inside team on this so what we're really looking for tonight to see if you have any questions about the project concerns and then ultimately we've in order to apply for the grant we would need you to approve the resolution and sign it the planning commission discussed the project earlier this evening the air and support of it and mark the sign the resolution so they're on board and with that I open it up to any questions that you might have or Tom if you had anything you wanted to add that's fine too thank you so when when I read the ARPA survey results I didn't you know keep in account but my impression was a lot of people made comments about Waterbury Center and the need for some pedestrian improvements and general some infrastructure improvements in that area that that came through pretty clear to me I thought so I think this is important because it's going to guide that in theory for you know the next five years depending on what happens here so I think it's important enough that if the grant is not awarded I want to consider something like ARPA to show them start the project I think it's good application hopefully it'll be awarded but yeah I think we've got a pretty good shot at that we can move forward in some other way we also look at stormwater management there was a study done by the state about five years ago looking at potential water quality improvements in that area in terms of treating stormwater so we look at potential locations for the stormwater facilities on town owned property or whether it might be a willing landowner old fire plan there we might sit there's some development going to be able to adapt we'll see but that's it I move that we approve the resolution for power communication is there a second all second discussion I have I have one not problem but our share of this project is this in our existing budget or how would we deal with that it is not in the budget as a separate line item but it's about seven thousand dollars I know it started a lot so we can move things around we can make that work in the broader context of it and probably in 2024 we might budget a little bit to make up for it if there's any issue in 2023 I just didn't want to know that we're just we're in a hole somewhere that we can't do what we agreed to do you know I think we'll be fine okay Alyssa no I just want to thank Steve I think for putting it all together and it seems to really amplify like Tom said all the input we heard out of the ARPA feedback I think it's really important because I think one of our centers really lost its identity ever since you know TJ's market you know went away it's just you know then it kind of had it was something now it's kind of just like it's it's it's the park and it doesn't have really as much of an anchor and you know have it and services just like people in the village always people live out of out of town yeah we've got you know activity in the root 100 quarter with right it was literacy foundation and cannabis store and I mean there was some revitalization going on but it's also going to create the draw and but it's more of the root when part right versus right area around the triangle I agree it's kind of a black hole that yeah project Steve last time you mentioned that this would potentially allow us to expand a downtown designation to include the Waterbury Center village so oh explain so we already have a designated village center right in Waterbury Center around the vicinity of the triangle we have a designated downtown here but in Waterbury Center about five years ago we got village center designation for the area or whole area around the triangle and so what this if we get the grant do the project we would be eligible for what are called downtown transportation fund grants that we've received we're working with one right now on Randall street for your sidewalks and which is funding those three quarters done yeah right next year they'll be finished work in rusty Parker Park so we we could potentially have state funding to maybe implement some of the recommendations of this study if we are able to get get it funded so I think it's important I support it lady for the staff I was just going to say that any any positive improvements are certainly worthwhile good okay facing us if not we'll vote all in favor say aye so last step is if you don't mind signing this while you're here that would be awesome and then Danny maybe I looked there at the time this week did you swing by the office yeah I'm coming into my afternoon so great okay I should be there well I'll have it on Karen's yes okay okay no I'd be great thank you thank you as always oh yeah you're welcome I consider exciting project and hopefully give a good shot I miss seeing you in that chair oh okay well I'm not this caring for a while well it's coming though it's coming it's good memory all right thank you see you know another old white guy something named after an old white guy hey someone who's done a lot for the town I know I'm just being a little high oh hang on Karen I I buried it way too quickly yeah thank you I know I know thank you thank you thank you thank you see you later all right the end of the agenda the only thing I do want to put on it's more for a parking lot issue because I know we didn't amend the agenda at the rural emergency management committees meeting last week as we were discussing before they they talked about select boards participation in the emergency management process which I think is really important I know I have taken I thought I was going to become you know emergency management directors over paging parents and stuff like that I kind of separate and I thank Gary for doing that and he's done a great job but there are I think it's really important that we all know a little bit about emergency management and Vermont emergency management has a class for design for select boards you know it's probably not going to be a one hour kind of thing it's probably going to be you know a two to four hour kind of deal you know we could do it either before a select board meeting or just scheduled at some other time but I think it would be just good not that's just kind of a parking lot thing but I probably you know would like to see us do it sooner than later probably again after the election when we you know have you know whatever the board made wind up being after that so that's just a parking lot and I don't know do we want to start formulating that with Vermont emergency management Harry Shoften said he'd be glad to do that maybe we just get something pinned down for a day is kind of an informal opinion people think that's a good idea well I've been there done it and uh I can't think of the bigger horse drink but maybe that's because I'm in the industry I'm in so a lot of it's second nature to me but I'm a little bit the same you know I understand because I did a lot of disaster you know the Virgin Islands different flood things around the country you know take a nice place to go for a disaster but oh no it's no it's not after Hurricane Hugo you wouldn't want to be there green with MPs with M16s it's it's not a fun place to be after a heart okay but uh it's I just think it some of it's important it's some of it just knowledge yeah I understand sometimes it's a little bit I went through a full eight hour emergency management director training well and it could be a little bit but there's a lot of concepts you learn that and just it's just more of an awareness I think me is important you know where the leaders of the community you know we should you know the case of disaster you know yes you may be familiar about what to do I know Gary's a little bit the same I don't care it's not a big you don't want to go into trains and stuff like that I'm sure he has a share of them with the fire department but I think just knowledge is important because that's a little bit of a planner and a lot of times emergencies will throw curveballs at you that oh even even the best first person isn't prepared for you know a lot of times it's I guess reactionary if that's the right word you do what you got to do under the circumstances you know but we talked about that you know like when we had I read here it's does it fall through the chair of the select board does it fall to the town manager like right public information officer I think bill did a lot of that function yeah we had a chart yeah right you know by default who's in charge down to us so and just awareness that you know when disaster happens you know we kind of don't want to just be trapped the phone through you know if you know kind of who's who's who to go to incident commander and stuff like that I bet if we went around the stable most people wouldn't know who that would be why don't you email it to Tom by the 22nd as an idea for your annual three and five-year plan that we do annual emergency management training and we can vote on it then because I'm totally supportive and that way it gets on the annual planning site perfect well you're thinking this would be like just uh somebody coming and right it'd be outside of a normal select board meeting and we could do that and it doesn't file a town town the open meeting law because if you're in training then you're not considered even though we're there we're not considered it's not considered violation even if a whole five of us are there so we're good that was one of my first questions I thought about it that I think I know that's correct I don't know if anything else if not I'm going to have a motion to adjourn so move second motion second all in favor say aye