 I have 10 after five. I can't see who the guests are if somebody would tell me. Yeah, I'll tell you it's okay. Let's listen to it. Yeah, it's Mark from the Budget Committee, Elias, Randy, Bill McKinnis, Theo, Vic, and Sandy Levine, and Orca. Okay. So pretty much pretty much the expected guest of characters. Yep. Yes. Welcome everyone. Happy New Year. Are there any amendments to the agenda? Yeah. I just, the only. Yeah, go ahead. I just sent you guys the extended agenda. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, stop. One of us got to talk at a time. Go ahead. Okay. It's this is me, Sarah. So just that the. This isn't going to work. Forget it. What's wrong now. People can't hear me. We can, we can hear you. Um, so there are no amendments to the agenda. Peter, this is the only only amendments. I'm sorry. Go ahead, Mandy. Just a question. Process here. Do we need to make any amendments to this, Sarah, if the Budget Committee has recommendations for. Just got done. It's talking. I cannot hear a thing when everybody's talking. Yeah, but I can hear the meeting that's going on. You can. I'm going to mute everybody. Right. I don't want to talk. I got the audio. It's Bill McManus. I muted him. Not muted. There. Peace. So the only amendment I have is that we need to have a quick discussion about what our plan is going to be going forward. For our select board meetings. That'll take just a couple of minutes. And also. I believe the legislature is considered going to consider. At least this is what I was told. Consider what we can do about town meeting. On the 6th, which is two days from now. So I don't know how we're going to deal with that, but maybe we need to have a special meeting once we know what. What they're going to allow and what they're not going to allow. But you may know more about that, Sarah, than I know, but I'd just like to have a quick discussion about it. Okay. You know, Peter, you should probably just say over and out when you're done talking. That way we know that when no one interrupts you. But Randy, Randy had a question. And so, Randy, what's your question? Just as a matter of process. The budget committee has a couple of recommendations. They'd like to put forth in front of the select board. And I'm not sure if that's covered underneath your budget discussion already or not. Just a question. I would think it would be. I would say it's. Very good. I'm sorry, this, this really isn't working. I would say it's under the budget discussion, Randy. Thank you. I mean, assuming it pertains to the budget. It does. Yeah. Perfect. Okay. So. With that. We're going to start the budget discussion. I have printed out the latest. Sheet, which Dorenda send us today. And I presume everyone else has that in front of them. The only other thing I have is that Steve did call me. And I don't know if he called you, Sarah, but he can't be at tonight's meeting. And obviously he isn't at tonight's meeting. So with that. I guess, Dorenda, you're up for the budget discussion. Um, so the. Budget that I sent through was everything we had talked about at the last meeting. And my only concern in thinking about this over the last couple of weeks. I don't know if this is an accurate representation to the voters. If we don't somehow indicate that our plans is to still fund those to, um, the tennis court fund and the paving fund, but the money was coming out of. The fund balance. And I think somehow that needs to be represented in the budget. And I'm not sure how we do it without affecting the bottom line of the budget. So can. Well, what we'd have to, what we'd have to do is, is, is take it out of the, uh, take it out of the line item where it is now and put it in those two line items. And if somebody asks the question, how come the select board discretionary has been reduced? We'll say because we chose to fund the tennis court and whatever it is. You're not doing it out of the discretionary. You're doing it out of the fund balance. Fund balance. All right. So what we need to do is, let me just think about that a minute. Randy has his hand up. Okay, Randy, go ahead. Um, so this, this ties right into the one of the recommendations that the budget committee, um, discussed and voted on tonight. Um, and our recommendation is that the, uh, general fund balance not be used to subsidized any of the budget line items in the town budget. Um, if we plan to, and that was our motion and what we voted on, uh, there. Um, but just as a matter of some of the back conversation. Um, we feel like that it's important to, um, think about the capital improvement plan. Um, when we look at, think about the uses of, of some of the, um, the, the fund balance and potential future uses of that along with, um, all of the other things that traditionally the fund balance allows us to do like four quarterly payments for taxes and an operational cash flow. Um, it, it was during our discussion, we felt that if, if those items were intended to be funded, that they should be shown right up front as a matter of transparency for the voters. Got it. Gotcha. Um, what's the total amount of money? Duranda. For those two items. For those two items. One was, uh, let's say I sent it through early. I do. I don't have it in front of me. Um, we reduced the. Go ahead. It was $10,000 from the paving fund, reducing that to a $20,000 line item. And a $5,000 out of the tennis courts, reducing that to a $5,000 line item. And then you were eliminating two, um, you were reducing the roadside mowing. That was just going to be a reduction. And the other one was, uh, the emergency road repair. You were eliminating any budget for that. Yeah. We just chopped those two things out. So. I don't have the minutes printed out in front of me. What we had agreed to was that we would take it out of the fund balance. Those $10,000 and whatever, whatever it was. Yes. I guess my recommendation would be, we take a $1,000 out of the, uh, select board discretionary money, which we never seem to spend anyway. And what, what's that 7,000? I think. Hold on. 8,000. Okay. So. So we're short. $3,000. So. Okay. So. So we're short. $3,000. No, we're short $4,000. We leave a thousand in the discretionary. Right. No, cause you're leaving taking 10 and five. You've got to come up with 13. 12,000. We're 5,000 short. So my recommendation is we put that 5,000 back in there. Okay. Okay. In other words, in other words, however we do it, add the whole amount for the tennis courts and whatever the difference is. You understand what I'm saying? Well, what you would do is there. Increase the draft budget by $5,000. So we can fully fund the things we're intending to fund. And move. $7,000. Out of the select board discretionary. To make up the rest of that difference. We'll have effectively increased the budget. By $5,000. Does that make sense? I'm trying to do it. Okay. So. Can I, can I speak? Once again. This is Randy. Sorry, Peter. Okay, Randy. Go ahead. Just before we get. Too far down the line. The other recommendation that the. Budget committee discussed and voted on tonight. Was the recommendation. For trying to. Get the budget. Increase to 8.87% by. Reducing the cola. Carried. To 3%. Along with removing. $2,000 from somewhere within the public works. Budget. Okay. Well, let's, let's, let's talk about that as part of the. The reason that, the reason that I bring it up. I mean, I don't, I don't, I just hate to do this in a random order. So. I'd rather, I'd rather hear from Dorenda. And then, and then consider what you're, what you're discussing. If that's okay. I mean, we're going to talk about it. Absolutely. Okay. That's absolutely fine. I just didn't want to go too far down the road of. Messing with a bunch of line items when. You know, you know, you know, the recommendation that we were that we were discussing was tied to the existing budget before it moved too much. That's all. Yeah. Okay. We won't. Go ahead, Dorenda. Making those changes. It brings it up to 10.01%. So we've slipped over, we've slipped over 10.1%. And that probably means that. Randy's changes, if they were adopted. Yeah. That's a good point. 8.87%. Yeah. So it's probably more like 9%. If. If we do those other changes. But let's see what else. What other, what other changes do we, or recommended changes do we have? Dorenda, anything. I don't have any changes. Those were the, I just submitted the, and the concern that we weren't being completely transparent by not showing those entries. Okay. Okay. So select board members. Anything for many of you. Yes. I just, I wanted to ask. Victor and I think we touched on this last time, but my memory is a little hazy. Yeah. As far as the, the 10,000. That we took out of the budget, but we're then going to consider funding. Through. Our surplus. Our fund balance. Do we need that $10,000 as part of our anticipated paving coming up. This spring or summer. We did that. Okay. I believe we've got, I believe we've got that covered. Okay. Then. My preference would be to. Not fund that 10,000 at all during this budget cycle. Put the 5,000. In for. The tennis court and take that out of the. In the discussion. Yeah. So we're going to do a select board's discretionary fund, but then that would leave us with. 3,000. In the discretionary fund. Okay. And. I cannot support a reduction to 3%. We'll vote against any budget. That has reduced the COA. To that level. on something on the back of our employees and I won't support it. Okay, okay. I actually kind of like that myself to tell you the truth. Just take that $10,000 right out. That makes everything easier. Other board members. This is Liz, just a, I probably should have asked this last meeting, but is there historically a line item that we don't spend because you're always, talking about how we never really fully spend our budget or is it completely random based on snow storms and things like that? Is it generally out of the roads that doesn't get spent? Well, typically it all comes out of the road budget one way or the other because that's the gigantic variable. Most of the other stuff, there's not a lot of give and take. So exactly where it comes out of in the road budget, yes, changes from time to time, but the fact of the matter is, as we go through the year, we carefully manage the total road budget, but we definitely move money around between the different line items from time to time when we have to. Can I also ask? Yeah, go ahead. I just wanted to get clarity on what the first thing Phil said, did you say to take out the 10,000 for the paving? What did you say about that? Yeah, yeah, it's just not funded at all. Like give it 20? Yeah, is that, because we had 30, right? We were gonna- Yeah, it's usually 30. Yeah, give it 20. And five take out, wait, what about the tennis court? Take the five for the tennis court out of the select board discussion that we fund that leaves like three grand in there. So that keeps it at what Dorinda already says, we're just moving money around. Oh no, we're not. No, we've taken $10,000 out of the budget. Nine point. No, we've taken, we haven't taken, we won't change anything because we'd already taken out the 5,000 from the- No, what we've done is the previous proposal was to fund that $10,000 in a different way. Now we're removing the $10,000 from the budget entirely. Oh, but that wasn't in the budget though. Using our fund balance is not in the budget, doesn't show up in the budget. And that's what Dorinda's argument was, she wanted to be transparent to the voters. So- But the proposal that I was discussing was that we were outlining, moved money around to fund that $10,000 without taking it out of the fund balance. I still think- Am I wrong about this, Dorinda? I think we just, if we adopt Phil's suggestion to reduce that line item in the budget, then the only thing that we have to rejiggle is how we pay for the tennis court. And the proposal is to take that out of the select board account. Right. What that means is a budget reduction of $10,000. No, it doesn't. It puts us right back at 9.5. Where you were in the first, in the beginning. Where we were when we started the conversation. Right. So we've addressed item number one of the budget committee's concerns. We need to decide what we're gonna do, what we're gonna do on the COLA situation. And I, especially since we're now down to 9.5 again, I support just like I did the last time, the 4%, but I don't know how everybody else feels. Liz, Mary, what do you think? I don't think Mary's- I'm sorry? I'm not here, Peter. Oh, Mary isn't here either? No. Okay. Victor, how does he end up? Okay, Victor. I think it's very good of Phil to want to give the employees the 5%, I do wonder under what we've already- 4%, 4%, 4% Victor. Yeah, but Phil said five. No, four. You didn't say four, but you've been at five, but we compromised down to four last time. The only thing I'm wondering about, Peter, is with the increased salaries we got and our overtime, what's that gonna do to our overtime in the budget? What do we budget to rent at 225 hours or something like that? I mean, how does that work? Or are we- The overtime is 225 hours a year. So yeah, essentially it's a 1%, base increase. So I believe I'm right, Dorinda, when I say that that would be one and a half percent if it was overtime pay. Right. Maybe asking, which is a good question. In the line item for overtime, does that include this 3% or is that like a fixed number? No. Calculations, Dorinda. It's all a calculation. So it automatically formulates what 225 hours would be at whatever percentage you guys say to use. Okay. So I am really sorry, we are doing this without two members of the board. That's unfortunate. So I'm sorry, Dorinda, can you tell us again? I'm sorry, I'm really confused now what changes have been made. Could you tell us what you've done and where we are right now with the current 4%? So where we are right now with 4% and all I did was take, reduce this discretionary fund to $3,000 and eliminated the 10,000, which was already eliminated, the 10,000, we're only gonna fund $20,000 to the paving fund rather than adding an extra 10 from the fund balance. So all we really essentially did was move the tennis court money. And so it remains at, just as we started the whole conversation at 9.5 because we didn't change up to now we have not changed any numbers. But hold on, the budget that you sent us, oh, that was with special articles, nevermind, okay. So 9.5 and now if you were to turn it to 3%, what does that look like? It would come down to 9.16. And not worth it, in my mind. So I would vote for a 4%. Here's the question. Our next select board meeting is two weeks from tonight, correct? Correct. I hate to have another long budget discussion, but I would really prefer that we approve the budget when at least four, if not five of the board members are available. Absolutely. And the alternative, if we need to do it sooner, the alternative would be to have a special meeting when Mary and Steve are available. And I don't know, is Mary still out west? Do we know? Yes, she's still out west. To my knowledge, your information. Okay. And Steve's in Florida. He had a family thing come up. That's why he had to beg off at the last minute. But Derinda and Sarah, there's no reason why we can't approve the final budget in two weeks, is there? No, the earliest you can warn the meeting is I think, the town meeting is I think the 19th or 20th of January. So you've got plenty of time. And if you're talking about maybe holding a special meeting to discuss what the legislature does on the sixth, you might want to just do a budget meeting and on the 11th, I would assume people would be available. Well, let's try for that. Does that work for everybody? Yeah. I guess, Budget Committee, the only thing that we have not yet agreed to with you are your recommendation that we reduce the COLA to 3%. So that's still up in the air. But otherwise we're good, right? Mark has a question. So folks, the recommendations on the Budget Committee was more not centered so much on the COLA, but was to try to get the budget increased below 9%. And maybe from an optics point of view, that's not something folks are that interested in doing. But I think at least from my perspective, our last meeting on the budget was pretty productive and pulling what about $30,000 out of this budget, getting us down to 9.5%. But I think the question we have to ask ourselves is have we done everything we can to limit this budget increase for the next year? And I'm just not 100% certain that we have. And so, the attempt here was to find another 7,000 or so, which would bring us under 9%. So that we present to the voters as, you know, as last an increase as possible to the budget. And why are we- And ask also just a question of Dorinda. You won't be able to give me this answer right now, but I think it could be helpful. Would it be possible for us to find out how much gets put back into the fund balance at the end of each budget to give us a sense of what we're not spending? So what if it is 30,000 every year on average, right? It's not, what is it, 5,000, 10,000? It varies. We varies and we would have been overspent in the budget this year if we had not received two state payments at the end of June. One was 72,000 and the other one was 40-some thousand, I believe, or 30 or 40-some thousand. And they came in the last week of June. Otherwise, we would have been overspent. So that I think we added a little over, it was somewhere around $100,000 just in rough numbers to the fund balance. The other thing that's coming out of this fund balance which seems to be keep sleeping everybody's mind is all the money that we appropriated for these pay raises as of January one is coming out of the fund balance. So you're already reducing it by what we estimated to be $50,000. So we are hacking away at that and that is the only thing that keeps us going throughout the year, I have to say. It allows the four payments. It allows us to pay the school on time which they don't care if we get the tax money or not. We still have to pay them that $800,000 every quarter. All right. So, and we are not over every year. Some years we are, some years we aren't. A lot has to do with- It comes and goes and it's very difficult. It's very difficult to project. So I mean, we've got that and we've got the issue of where the grand list is gonna come out. We all saw the utilization report which Sarah sent out to us. That would tend to indicate that the grand list is going up but they're not exactly in lockstep the way they do that calculation. So, and that's a tax issue, not a budget issue. Not a budget issue. Yes. Peter, I just wanna say just to clarify that CLA affects the education rate which just affects the bottom line in the taxes but you guys are gonna be facing your tax rate on the 2022 grand list, right? You understand, everybody understands that, right? Yes. Okay. Yes. I guess the budget committee, you guys are just saying you wanna see the budget increase to be no more than 8%. And now we're at 9.5 with what we've talked about tonight. We're not gonna finalize the budget tonight. I would suggest everybody think about this. Is there something else we can cut out of the budget? I don't know. I mean, there's always something we can cut out of the budget. I hate, I really hate to do it on the back of the town employees myself but let's see what everybody has to say and I would encourage the budget committee to look for other ways to save the money rather than reducing the COLA and I would encourage the board members to look this over long and hard and Darinda, you and Sarah the same way and see if we at least can't find some of that money. I mean, I feel good. I feel pretty good that we're at 9.5 but less is more or more is less as they say. So that makes sense to everyone and I realize that means we need to have one more meeting and I'm sorry about that budget committee but it's likely the select board's gonna have to have another meeting to discuss the 10 meeting situation. So at least it's a Zoom meeting. We're not asking you to drive across town. Mark has his hand up, Peter. Yup. Hi, Peter, I just wanna clarify the budget committee's recommendation is to get the budget increase below 9%. Oh, below 9%, okay. So we need half of, we now need half of 1%. Yes, we have about $7,000. Yeah, okay, thank you. I'm sorry, I screwed that up. I know that's what you said, I missed it. I apologize. Peter. Yeah. Yes. Dorinda, what's our mowing budget for after July 1st next year? You already cut that in half. No, we didn't. Yes, you did. No, we did. No, we didn't. Okay, so that's cut in half but we're still gonna get two mowings is what I'm saying. We got a mowing in this budget before July and we got them after. So theoretically, mowing once after July 1st then you could take, I think it's roughly $7,000. It is, it's on the money. You took already, you were at $14,000 and you cut it down to $7,000. But how much do we have left for this year? From last year's budget. That doesn't, that doesn't, you mean what's in there right now? Yeah. I don't have a financial statement in front of me. I don't know, but that doesn't carry forward. It's whatever is used this year and then the rest. That's correct, but we could mow, we could mow the last weekend in June and take care of it like we did yesterday. We only mowed once year. But if you're not interested in doing it, that's fine. Traditionally, when do they mow, Victor? Well, they usually mow like in the month of June and then they come around in September, which in my opinion is not a big deal because I mean, last year they only mowed, they didn't even mow once and we got by with that. The idea behind the two mowings had to do with the spread of Bishop's Suite and the chervil and stuff like that to try to get it to before it flowers. That was the original when we went to keep mowing. Yeah, we used to mow in July or sometimes, sometimes sort of the end of July when the rapid growing season was over. But we changed it to June because of the chervil, I believe. Right, and you're still gonna mow in June. You're just not gonna mow in July. Could you refresh my memory about the gravel again, the $40,000 gravel line item? Wait a minute, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Can we just talk about the mowing thing and settle that first list, if you don't mind? Yeah. So the problem, Victor, with what you're suggesting is we put no money in this year's budget will be okay because we've got money for this year to mow in June but we won't have any money the next year. That's correct. We'd have to put it off, we'd have to put the mowing in July. No, is that true? Is that true? No, because you'd be cutting it to zero. But you wouldn't be able to mow next June. We can mow in June of 2022 but we would have no money to mow in June of 2023. Right, but we could mow in July. We'd have to wait till July. Right, I don't know. Let's look, look, look, we've got a lot to do tonight and I think we understand what the issues are. We're looking for $7,000. It's gotta be in there, it's gotta be in there some way and believe me, the other way to look at this is we just do $7,000 less road maintenance but I hate to do that. I mean, we need the road maintenance. But anyway, maybe we can take some out of the, some out of the, what I'm trying to think about is we're going through this capital plan planning process and I doubt we're gonna spend more than a very little bit of money for instance on town hall and town garage maintenance until that process is completed. And we do have the issue of the heaters at the town garage but maybe we can whack a couple of thousand dollars out of that and a couple of thousand dollars out of the town hall and we're, you know, we're getting there. I'm just thinking without, without sitting here looking over the numbers and thinking about it anymore but I'm just thinking about places where we potentially have some flexibility and where potentially in the past sometimes we have not spent the money in that line on it. So unless anybody objects, I'm gonna conclude the budget discussion for tonight with the understanding that we may, depending on what the legislature does, we may need to have a special town meeting, probably on the 11th, not town meeting, select board meeting, or we'll finalize the budget at our next regular select board meeting. Can I ask everybody else that with that? I just have a quick question on vector on the mowing. Is it $7,000 every time they mow? Roughly. Okay. That's a lot. Michael Levine looks like he has a question. Yeah. I just wanted to- Okay, Michael. Hi. Last year when you went from two mowings to one mowing, I didn't ask that question about why and I know that you were caught flat and desperate to get somebody to just mow once last year but I was also kind of assured that you had no intention of cutting to just one mowing. The two mowing is really important for keeping the noxious weeds down. So just keep that in mind when you do finalize the budget. Okay, thank you. Okay, so with that, we're gonna conclude the budget discussion for tonight and thank you, Budget Committee and move ahead with the treasurer's report, Dorinda. I don't have anything. Okay, someone else? Someone else spoke up? Okay. Considering amending the town's personnel policy to address employee sick time due to COVID action possible. So I believe what we had was a proposed change and I don't have the language in front of me but the proposed change essentially said that we were going to allow employees to go in the hole in their sick time for COVID related absences. Yeah, that was my recollection, but only for COVID. And the question we had, I believe was if we were gonna limit that to some finite amount of time, like the amount of time before our disability kicked in and we were gonna look into the disability question and I'm not sure whether we did or not. I kind of forgot about it myself, I apologize. I don't think being sick with COVID would fall under the Disability Act, to be honest with you. I'm not sure. I mean, I don't know how that's going out to be honest with you. I would, I mean, and I don't know the answer either but I would presume it's like any other illness. I don't know. It's a sickness. So, I mean, that's another question I guess me. I think that what we were sort of the idea behind this conversation was to talk about the, if, well, there could be two things. One is someone gets sick from COVID. Excuse me, I have an emergency here at home so I'm guys backing out. Okay. I'm sorry, who's that? That was Bill. Bill, he's leaving. Okay, Bill, thank you. So I think there were two sort of scenarios. One is that someone gets sick with COVID and we automatically sort of give them sick days to use for COVID or someone is sick with COVID and doesn't have sick days because they've used them all up and we grant them paid sick leave for X number of days. I mean, my recommendation would be up to five days because that's sort of now where the CDC is like stay home for five days. And that would be either one of two scenarios. One, they've used up all their sick time for other reasons or two, everybody gets that sort of granted to them which is an expense. I don't think I would vote for that. I don't think I'd vote for anyone because there could be people out there who have 10 weeks of sick time right now available to them if they've worked here a long time and don't use your sick time. No, we definitely, and that was the concern, we definitely need to limit, we definitely need to put a limit on it if we're gonna extend it. And the question was that I guess we still don't know the answer to and Dorinda's brought up another question which is, is COVID related illness gonna count towards the waiting period for disability? And the other thing which complicates that is, you can have multiple, the way the disability works, it's a waiting period per occurrence. It isn't a waiting period per year. So, if somebody had some reason to be out on disability and then they wanted to file for disability for COVID, they would have another waiting period which complicates the issue even more. I think that that's the conversation that we should have tonight about whether or not, I think it's because it takes months to get to qualify for disability. And so we're really talking about road crew being sick, can't work for three or four days because they have COVID and they have no sick time. Like, are we going to grant them and have them put it in the hole, like, and that they earn it back? Are we just gonna give them X number of days free? Probably not. So that, I think that's what our discussion is. And the other thing we have to think about is, which has already come up, what about dependence? So somebody has to take time off to pay for their son, daughter, spouse, parent, whoever it is, that list of eligible people. Does this apply to that as well? I would say it would have to, right? I think so, yeah. Randy had a comment first. Peter, I don't mean to take control, but can you not see that people are raising their hands? I need to ask you guys. No, I can't. I'm on the phone list. So I have no way of knowing that people are raising their hands. Okay, so if you don't mind. So Randy, you said something. So Peter just kind of hit on what I was gonna ask about was, does this pertain just to the employee or does it fall out to their dependents or other family members if they have to provide care? And the other thing is, just are you talking about a per occurrence event or an annual limitation? Is it five days? If you're talking about five days, is it five days annually or five days per occurrence? Just thoughts that jump into my head as you start talking about this because it means dramatically different things. Well, and you could have, I mean, suppose you have two kids and one kid gets sick, then the other gets sick, then you get sick. What happens? Does that mean it's 15 days? For the record, with the last bout of COVID, we had an employee that we did go into the hole by nine days and that probably would have been 10 days except it fell over a holiday. So they got paid for the holiday and as part of that week. So, and then the rest was the other four days was sick time that they did go in the hole, but when all was said and done, they were 70 hours, I think, in the hole. So we've already done that with the first. And at that time, at that time, 10 days was the CDC guidance. That's correct. It isn't anymore, but it was then. Yeah. Recommendation would be that we allow people to go into the hole by five days. I mean, right now it's looking like the virus, if you get the Omicron, it's not as severe and the CDC is saying you can go back after five days. So the only problem with that, Liz, is that I'm just harkening back to a lot of my relatively unpleasant discussions with the road crew. The first thing they're gonna say is or somebody's gonna say is, so he got nine days and now you're cutting us back to five days. That's fair. Well, I don't think he did. I think he used his own sick time and he went in the hole four days. Is that right, Jorinder? He went in the hole nine days. Well, in the hole is still what you owe. I mean, he's not making any money off this. Any sick thing he earns is just being put back into his negative, right? That's right. So every week after this happened, he accrued back his sick time, which kept reducing it and reducing it. Right. I mean, maybe we can go back and, I mean, maybe it's a case by case, you know, that we deal with it as it happens, but allow them to, you know, maybe we just make the statement, you can go into the negative if you don't have sick time and the number of days will be at the discretion of your supervisor. It's all gonna be different. I think we need to, I think we need to limit it because there are just too many, there are too many different situations and the other thing, and thank God it isn't the town of mental sex, but another organization I'm involved with, we have a person who is saying that they've undergone so much stress. They want, they're putting in a disability claim and they think they're gonna be out for 90 days. So, you know, it isn't just recovering from the illness of COVID, it's the whole. Randy has a comment. So, my head goes to, you know, are we paying on a weekly basis, this is a bi-weekly basis, there are employees two weeks behind, if somebody was to take a bunch of time and the town has that liability, when you start thinking about thresholds and whatnot, does a town require, you know, a payment out of their last payroll to bring them back to nothing? And if that's the case, then ultimately, you know, that threshold should never be more than what their last payroll would be. But I don't know the answer to that question, Dorinda. Do we? Three hours. Yes, it's in the personnel policy that if they are negative, that it will be deducted from their last paycheck. Yep, so there you go, Randy. So I do think, and back to what Liz was saying, I think you need to be consistent. We can't decide on a case-by-case basis. These payrolls should show up on Monday morning. We have to process payroll. We can't be tracking down what we're gonna allow and what we're not gonna allow. And it needs to be fair across the board because truly it isn't just the highway crew. You also have two people in the town hall that have been sick this week. And so if it is COVID-related, it also affects them as well. So this isn't just road crew. Right. So Randy asked, have they paid every two weeks, Dorinda? Is it at every two week paycheck? So it's 80 hours. Right. I can't go into the hole more than 80 hours. I would not say not. I would say especially since we've already done it for one person four days, and it could have been nine, I don't know. I don't know, what is it? Let's make a decision on this. Well, it sounds like it already exists. If it says that, we don't need to make a decision. Well, no, we didn't. Because you're saying he had six days he could use. Now the question is though, he used up all those days. So let's say he's sick again. If we say he could use 10 days for COVID that essentially reinstates his sick time so he has some sick time. Yeah. I would almost say you can't be in the hole more than 10 days at any time. Right. Right. Yes. So it could be that he uses that twice but builds it up over the next six months and it happens in the same calendar year or same fiscal year. How about making a motion, Liz? Dorinda has something to say. It should say COVID only, COVID related only. And I think you need to clarify if this qualifies under family members or I think you need to be very clear in this. I would say it does because we use our sick time for COVID for our family members. I mean, I would if I needed to stay home with a child I would use my sick time. No, no, no. I think by federal law it has to as we discussed before. So we will allow any employee to go in the hole. I'm stating your motion for you, Liz. Yeah. Up to 10 days for COVID related illnesses for themselves or their legal dependents, whatever the right word is. But do we need to clarify that it's, I think it, we should clarify it as something like they may go no more than 10 days in the negative for COVID related as opposed to because it makes it sound like it's in a row. Well, in the negative is better than saying in the hole. I agree, but it's the same. No, but I mean, I'm trying to turn it around. What are you saying, Randy? Suggest using an hourly rate for an 80 hour limit? Yeah. If you use days, especially with these guys using, 10 days of, or 10 hour workdays in the summer, I just would want to make sure that there's absolutely no confusion that you're basing this off from an eight hour workday. So I would suggest using an hours figure instead of days. Yeah, I agree with that. Okay, Liz, we're ready for the motion. So employees may have up to 80 hours negative, how would we say that? Deficit? Yeah, deficit. 80 hour deficit, up to 80 hour deficit at any given time due to COVID related illness. Liz, we don't need to say anything about them or their family. And do we, is this four, is this going to be a four everything or are we going to do it for six months or a year during the pandemic? Just say. Yeah, but who's going to say when the pandemic is over? Chris has something to say, Chris McVeck. Why don't you just renew it every six months because that should give you enough light. We think that's too long than every three months. And just, you know, the other thing I would suggest is that in terms of dependents and things like that, just let it track the family medical leave act because that's a known thing that we already have to follow. So you're not just for taking care of dependents or spouses or things like that. Just let it track the FMLA. Yep. Yep. So my question is why do we need to do this when we allow this already? We stay in our personnel file that they need anything that's in the negative they need to repay. Does it not, we already allow people to go into the negative it sounds like and we pay them. Is that true? We have in the past. The reason this came up was because somebody who was already in the negative from COVID went and submitted sick hours, just regular sick hours that were not based on COVID, they were just out. And they said they were told they could use go in the negative for any sick hours. Oh. And that's what came up that there was to be a clarification as to the COVID, what's justified to go into the negative amount. And it was determined it was gonna be for COVID only. All right. So again, I think we're making this more complicated than it needs to be. But let's say somebody uses five days, 40 hours for COVID and they're now at zero. They've used up all their sick time. Then five months later, they've granted they've accrued some of it back but let's ignore that for the moment. Five months later, they're sick again in some way. So they've used five days for COVID. So as much as it's a normal sickness which is causing them to go in the hole, they wouldn't be in the hole without the COVID. No, not necessarily. So they would be able to use those sick days is what I'm saying, the way I look at it. Not necessarily. I mean, they can use vacation time if they're sick. They can use personal time if they're sick. No, no, no, I understand. No, no, no, I understand. But if they say, if they say, so let's say they zero out their sick time with, and I realize they're gonna be all kinds of, so many days of this and so many days of that, but let's say they zero out their sick time and they've used five days for COVID. And their sick time is zero. Now it's four months later and now they're sick. They would not be going in the hole for the current sickness if they haven't had the five COVID days. So does that mean they can go in the hole up to 80 hours for the current sickness? I think it does. That's gonna be really hard to manage. You're gonna have to track that separately. No, I think you just say, I think the way you manage it is you just say, look, you're allowed to go in the hole for up to 80 hours for COVID sick time expenses. Press the stand up. I think that covers it. Could you just make a separate COVID bank of five or 10 days, whatever you have, and when someone gets COVID, they access that bank without going through their regular sick time to begin with. So I think Peter makes a really good point of, if someone goes out and uses all their sick time for COVID and then has another sickness that they would have been covered for, had it not been for COVID, I think they can be built in inequity there. But if you have a separate COVID sick bank that each employee gets however many days you decide, and they're out for COVID, they're just accessing that, going into the hole and reserving their other sick time. You don't have a budget for that. One, we don't have a budget, but also- Are you getting paid back often after COVID, right? It's their accrued time that's working them back out of the hole. So if you keep that accrued time, you're never gonna pull them out of the hole because they got nothing applying against it. Yeah. What you'd have to do is, if you set up that COVID sick time as a separate thing, we'd have to set up a whole other account in our payroll system to track the COVID time. But how do you pay it back? I think we'll keep it simple. I say you can go in the hole for the next six months, and maybe longer, but for the next six months till July 1st, you're allowed to go in the hole up to 80 hours for COVID-related sickness and leave it at that. Can I say something? Yes. Yeah. Okay. I just wanna try to get this motion down because we are supposed to have a public hearing pretty soon. So should the motion be to allow employees to borrow? Can we use that word borrow? I just can't stand going into the hole. Can we borrow up to eight hours of sick time, only if the illness affecting them and or their family is related to COVID, this policy will be reviewed in six months? I think borrow was the wrong word. I think go negative on their accrued sick time or something like that is gonna make more sense, but I'll leave it up to you, Sarah, to craft the language. And I'll move that motion. Okay. Any further discussion? Okay, all those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Aye. So that's three ayes and we have two absents. So we have approved that and we need to include that in our personnel policy effective immediately. And do we say to cover the situation that already exists that we're doing this retroactive to, I don't know when retroactive to whenever that first situation came up? Well, it already happened. There was nothing, they were paid, they got, they were covered, nobody denied them any pay. Yeah, but how are we gonna? Okay, let's just keep it simple and do it. And Sarah just added that we'll be revisiting to come up. We're getting too far into the weeds. Okay, done and done, thank you. So we have a public hearing mourn for six o'clock and it's now six 10. Do we have any additional people other than the ones I'm aware of already who are participating in the hearing? Oh yeah. The people in the waiting room, Sarah? Well, they're in the meeting now but we have members of the planning commission including Sandy and Phil Coleman and let's see Theo Kennedy and we have Paul Zabriski is here and JJ Vandet is here. And am I missing anybody, Liz? Lowry. Lowry. This is just such a nightmare for me to try and I recognize most of the familiar names but the others I don't recognize and I sure can't see any raised hands. So either Liz or Phil, if you would conduct the public hearing and recognize people, that would be great. Sure, I can do that. Liz, if you're willing to do that. Yeah, I can do that. Okay, thank you, Liz. So at this time, we're gonna open up the public hearing on the energy town plan. And Sandy, let me. And we're ready to receive comments, questions, whatever. Sandy. This is Sandy Levine and I just wanted to provide a brief introduction and thank the select board for getting this on the schedule. This is an enhanced energy plan. It's in addition to the town plan, it would be an amendment to the town plan. It is based on the state's comprehensive energy plan and how that would be applied to middle sex. It's a project that the planning commission has worked on for two years and has unanimously voted in favor of twice. And we would encourage the select board to pass this on so it can be voted on hopefully by town meeting and recommend that the vote be to make that both the town plan and the energy plan valid for eight years. Thank you very much. And I think Theo may have some additional comments as well. Theo. Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity to talk to briefly the select board. Yes, we're asking for your support. Again, Sandy said our chair, we unanimously voted in support of it. It's a couple of quick observations. I wouldn't want the goal for perfection to be the enemy of the good. We worked carefully with the central Mont Regional Planning Commission, but we also tried to make this middle sex size as it were, but there have been observations that I wanna quickly address. One around data, it is definitely true that a lot of the data that this relies upon just doesn't exist specific to middle sex. So if you look at the document on page three, it speaks directly to the data sources that were used. There are no inaccurate data. It's the best available data. And certainly as we go forward, we're gonna want to whenever possible have middle sex specific data. The other thing I would mention is there's nothing in this document that is a requirement. reasonable minds might think something should be requirements, but these aren't requirements. This is a template to deal with a way at the municipal level to participate in our share of the goal of moving to renewable energy sources by 2050 to the degree of 90%. I also wanted to say that this isn't an endpoint. This is really just a starting point. And a town plan is a living document. We worked hard to understand both the legal and factual context. I think this is an opportunity for the town to participate at the local level in priorities that are both regional, statewide, and national, it's not international. We did listen carefully in our public hearing to several commenters and did make adjustments that I think improve the plan and they're reflected in the text. And I also wanted to emphasize that there was attention to making sure that we're not disenfranchising anyone by this. So there was language, a general language I recognize, but on page six to specifically identify that it's our goal to implement this in a way that is financially and culturally equitable. I think those are the highlights. We are under a little bit of a timeline crunch and so much is that in order for this to go to the voters, which we're asking that you please pass it and send it to the voters in March, that if you are to make any amendments, we wouldn't be able to meet that timeline. I guess there's some situation where if you did need to make substantive changes that it could go before the voters in November, but we're hoping that you will approve it and send it on to the voters in March. Thank you. Paul Zabritsky. Hi, good evening. And thank you for taking the opportunity to consider this. I wanna thank the planning commission for the work that they've done to really bring this forward, having been involved in the early days of Act 46 and how this process moved forward and seeing recently with the release of the comprehensive energy plan that the blueprint put forward by through the process of the Global Warming Solutions Act, noting that the administration's comments on those plans both stated they rejected the idea that there'd be statewide planning around energy and its relationship to zoning and town use and really putting the onus on local communities to engage in this process. So I think there's been a lot of great work done. It's not perfect, none of these ever are, there's no crystal balls as to what are the technologies that are going to be the solution 10 years from now. So I do expect it will continue to evolve, but I think it's really important that we get this template move forward, both for being able to have the town be respected in the processes that are the regulatory bodies go through as they try and move forward on energy infrastructure. And also just as a community member engaging in a process, you wanna feel like you're not just chasing your tail and that these processes actually do move forward. And so I'd love to see the select board put this to the voters and have a public debate and a vote on that. So I appreciate very much your time and look forward to working on energy projects in middle sex in the future. Thanks. Chris, you had a comment in the laundry. I did. I was, well, first of all, thank you very much for preparing this energy plan, which is very comprehensive and informative. It was interesting to see all the different types of heating and transportation that the plan covers. I think it's an aspirational document. I would be one of the ones who would want to see requirements as opposed to aspiration at this point, just because of the climate changes that we are dealing with. But I think this is a really good first step that fully supported. And I would ask the select board to think about incentivizing residents to go solar, much the way we do during town meeting to reduce our tax bill, I think by 1% or something like that. If it's paid all at once, that type of incentive for community members to just go the next step. But I fully support this plan and look forward to the debate. Thank you. Thank you, Mallory. Yeah, thank you. And thank you also to the planning commission for preparing this. It is quite a piece of work. And it does bring a whole bunch of concrete ideas and options for the town to consider where prior to having it, it was really up to just individuals to come up with brainstorming ideas. And so it's really helpful to have this. And I agree, it's not a slam dunk, but it's a great start. I've spoken to the energy coordinator in the town of Waterbury, where they adopted an enhanced energy plan a couple of years ago. And they've been using theirs in this way where they've got a large committee made up of select board members and other volunteers. And they're chipping away at the proposals in their enhanced energy plan. And so it's a guiding document for that committee. And so I think we can do a lot of good here as well. Working together, not just as a volunteer energy committee, but getting the select board and the planning commission together on this as well. So look forward to that. JJ. Hello everybody, JJ Vandet. I appreciate the opportunity to speak in favor of this plan. And I hope the select board will approve it. I had the opportunity to review it in full in October. And it is, there's clear to me that there's a lot of work that has gone into this document and during one of the public feedback sessions, a few suggestions were made and edits were suggested along the way. I had some comments and feedback that have since been incorporated in the plan, which was awesome to see. Yeah, the words were kind of taken out of my mouth here in the comments prior to this. It is an aspirational document, which is great. It doesn't obligate us to anything, but it sets some guide posts for us as a town, which is awesome. And just to echo something that I think Paul said, you know, what's in there right now is not necessarily gonna be the path forward, going forward. Technology is changing fast. Energy use patterns are changing rapidly by the day. So this is, it seemed to me like good enough for now, a good step in the right direction, knowing that it will, you know, things will evolve over time, but I appreciate you considering this. And I'd love to see it in front of the folks in Middlesex to vote on and ratify come town meeting day. Thank you. Any other people who are here on the call that would like to make comments, see anyone. Sandy, did you have any sort of final comments? No, okay. I do have one question, Liz, Peter. Yeah. Sandy, when we heard from Dexter at the previous hearing, he mentioned that the state has, I guess just in the last month adopted a new comprehensive, updated comprehensive energy plan, and that this is, that this document is based on the old comprehensive energy plan. And I'm not familiar with either of those documents, but he was advocating for using the data and the goals and objectives and whatever was in, that was in the new state's comprehensive energy plan. And I have no idea how much work that would be and what the effect of it would be, and if it's even possible. So that's kind of a question. Oh, it looks like Paul can address that. Well, so those plans are constantly evolving. And certainly the Global Warming Solutions Act, its plan will be hotly debated in the legislature as they go to allocate resources to move forward with various facets of it. So I think we're in a constantly evolving environment related to both the data available. And I think that the way the plan was written, it assumes that we're constantly trying to use the best available information in decision-making. So I think that, I guess I'll speak to my sense of urgency, which is, we have a planet that is in peril every day that we don't act is a win for the fossil fuel industry and a loss for our children. And we could sit here and debate and try and make perfect all these documents and they're out of date the next day. So I don't think that we can really stop and try and assemble all of this and just make it so for today because it will be out of date tomorrow. Yup, okay, thank you. I could just look it up and the new comprehensive energy plan is due out sometime in 2022. What the middle sex plan is based on the current comprehensive energy plan and there's nothing stopping the town of middle sex from updating if we need to based on new data that would come out in 2022 or after. Yup. Yeah, that was actually my question, Sandy, was that, so you're asking us to approve it for the next eight years. And so this energy plan is within the town plan. They're not two separate documents, right? It's one thing, the town plan that has this energy. So is there anything from stopping us from making changes to the energy plan within like four years or does that become the whole thing is you're doing the whole, you're basically doing the whole thing. The adoption process is the same whether you're changing the town plan or the energy plan. So it would go through the same adoption process but there's nothing stopping the town from updating this in four years, two years, one year. I see, okay, but it's the adoption of it. Yes. Okay, but you wouldn't, if you updated it would you need to re-adopt it? Yes. Okay, all right, Theo. No, I just wanted to add that the opportunity for this energy plan started in 2016 law which if we adopted this it could give us, among other things, deference at the public utilities commission when it comes to questions of renewable energy siting. But the plan that we're presenting doesn't just focus on that. That's one of the elements. The four areas that it focuses on are consistent with the Global Warming Solutions Act and the areas are conservation and efficient energy use, reducing transportation demand, looking at patterns and density of land use and the siting of renewable energy generation. So those elements are in the current plan, the Global Warming Solutions Act. And I don't see any, I wanna just echo that this is an organic document in so much as we would have to formally re-adopt it but there's nothing stopping us from making amendments as we, as technologies change and as we make decisions as a community. Are there other comments? Scutter joined us. This is Scutter just, sorry, running an errand. Got in late, but I've looked, I've read it and it looks good to me, thoughtful, some helpful information. You always want stuff that's more current than what they had to work with. But I think it's great. I think it's the right thing to do and gives good guidance to the town. And, you know, it has some interesting information like we can get plenty of solar if we just do a good job on that with that. I think that we can actually help other communities rather than just meet our own targets. Hey, Liz. Yes, Sarah. I just think we ought to enter Elliot Berg's email to the board and to the record. Okay. Will you read it? Nope. Dear members of the Slack board, we would like to weigh in strongly in favor of the proposed middle sex energy, enhanced energy plan that you will be considering tonight. We think that it is no exaggeration to say that climate change, a major focus of the plan is a paramount public issue of our time and the most serious challenge to the quality of life for our children and grandchildren. In response to climate change, action will be needed at all levels of society, including the local. The plan's main action items, conservation and efficient use of energy, encouraging reduced single occupancy vehicle trips and the use of renewable sources for transportation, adopting patterns and densities of land use to increase energy conservation and effective siting renewable energy generation, all address climate change in our own community. We applaud the work that went to crafting the enhanced energy plan or to select for the throw its full support behind the plan. Thank you for your consideration, Elliot Berg and August Burns. Thanks. Yeah. Any other comments? Someone is just joining us by the name of Shane. Oh, hi, Shane. Shane is our road crew guy. A road foreman. Our road foreman. Anyone else? I'm looking for any more raised hands for discussion of the enhanced energy plan. Okay. I don't think there's any further discussion, Peter. Okay. So just again to review the process at our next board meeting, the select board will need to make a decision about whether we move this forward and put it on the agenda for town meeting, correct? Sarah? Oh, I didn't know who you're addressing that to. Yes, and Sandy, correct me if I'm wrong, but we have, even if the board meets at its regular, votes on this at its regular meeting and votes to accept placing this question of the enhanced energy plan in the ballot for the March 1st, 2022 town meeting by its January 18th meeting. I believe putting to Theo's handy dandy adoption timeline, we are safe, right? Yep. Sandy nodded. I believe so, but you know, you should double check the adoption requirements, but I think that's within the timeline. Well, it's gonna be the same as for town meeting, for town meeting passing a warning. So it's the same deal. Yep. Okay then. So that concludes our, or that will conclude our public hearing on the town energy plan. Thank you all for your comments and your participation. Sandy, I guess you were up for a planning commission update and you sent us that document. Yes, thank you. And thank you for your time. I sent you an updated document that list that identifies the projects the planning commission is working on and the current status of those. Happy to answer any questions that you have. I know you have a very full meeting and where have other things to need to get to. I did want to make sure that the select board know that we're moving forward quickly with the update of zoning. I had hoped that it would be done by the end of the year. It looks like it'll be done in, middle of probably by March or so, but where the plan is to do some outreach in the spring and the summer and have it be ready with the process to be voted on in November. And the other update is on the route two and scoping say the route two improvements for bicycles and pedestrians and the study that's going into that. That's also moving along and have a public meeting community forum on that in February at our February meeting we'll be reviewing drafts in January. Cindy, I have a question. Were you, so I'd been in touch with Central Vermont Regional Planning Commission, Chris, Christian Meyer that we've been working with on the capital spending plan. And I have to have him look at some possible like planning grants for us to consider for the like doing a study, like a scoping study of the town hall. Were you planning on applying for any like planning grants in this next year? We haven't planned on it. It's out there as a possibility and obviously we should have a conversation. What's the town's biggest need? I don't know now that there is a need for it but we could consider it. Certainly if there were other things that obviously would be fine but we could talk about that. I just as a way of an update I also noted that I believe there will be two openings on the planning commission, both Elias Gardner and Philip Coleman have said they did not plan to run for the next term. I have spoken with some community members and I believe there will be names on the ballot and folks who will be stepping up to serve on the planning commission. Any questions for Sandy? Okay, thank you, Sandy. Thank you. I do appreciate your document. It's very helpful in terms of keeping track of all the different pieces and parts of what's going on. Very helpful. And if anyone ever has any questions feel free to reach out or give me a call or send me an email. Yeah. Okay, next on the agenda is reviewing the trail committee work plan. Michael Levine was supposed to be here. What, you don't see me? Oh, I don't see you. Oh, sorry. Okay, Michael, you're on. Well, I don't really have a lot of introduction. I sent you the work plan that we, the trails committee, let me step back. Trails committee is a subcommittee of the conservation commission. And we don't have elected or appointed members. It's anybody who's interested in trail development around little sex can come to meetings and can participate. So we first go through the conservation commission. We developed this work plan for I'd say the next six months to a year that I shared with the select board. And essentially we are gonna try and promote the use of some of the existing town corridors, public right-of-ways. And those, we had walked them all this summer and kind of evaluated them for their potential. And we decided that there are three that we would start with to start small. One is Davey Road. One is Upper Lower Barnett. And the third one is the section between East Bear Swamp and North Bear Swamp. Because a lot of people like to walk or bicycle that entire loop. So the next, the reason we're coming to the select board is just so you'd have a chance to see what the committee is up to, what our plan is. And we'd like just some, I'm certainly happy to answer questions, but basically we'd like the select board to endorse this plan as did the conservation commission so that we can go to the next step, which is try and develop a little better idea of, you know, these are existing right-of-ways. They're walkable right now, but what might we wanna do? We could develop some budget ideas, but mostly we wanna put up some signage. So people around town can actually find these trails that exist on the map, but most of them, when we got to them, we didn't even know how to start walking on them because there was either a few shrubs or they were overgrown or whatever. So that's really what we're looking for is just like an endorsement, this sounds great. Go ahead. One of the things we certainly would do is try and communicate with any of the neighbors of these trailheads. So if they do see an uptick in activity, they would understand what's going on. We would be careful not to be out of the town right-of-way if we do put up any signage. And we certainly wouldn't be doing any work until we came back to the select board and said here is a suggested work plan. What do you think about that? We would work hopefully with the town road crew if there was anything that was going on that they might be able to help with, those kinds of things. So we really wanna be kind of step-by-step, start slow. The idea is just to let people know these are assets around town. There's a lot more need for recreation right now and you don't have to go that far to find a nice trail to walk in the woods. Thank you. Any questions for Michael? Oh, what Michael is looking for is a select board endorsement of their work plan. Is somebody willing to make that motion? Hold on, Nick had a question. Yeah. Yep. That work plan, Michael, you sent to the select board? Yes, it's also... Is that on? Go ahead. Yeah, it is available online on a Google Sheet. And I think, Rick, it's pretty much the same one that you had seen when you were in on our trails committee meeting and we were talking about the work plan. It hasn't changed much, but it's still definitely available as a Google Sheet. I can send you, actually, I don't know if I can figure out how to put the link in here, but I can send it so that you can have it. Yeah, it should go to... I would think it would be of interest to both Shane and I know that... And I don't know if it's he part of your trails committee. I had a discussion about a week ago with the Dennis Nealon, Dennis and Mary Nealon. Mary is very active on the committee. Okay. And they were asking to put material in over there. So it sounded like there was some work that they were or the trail committee would want the town crew to do. And I don't know if they expect that to be done this year or not, but we would have to budget that. Would that be correct? Narendra, so maybe sooner than later, if you're expecting anything done this year, we should have a figure or it would be next year. It would be budget. I understand what you're saying and if they can develop, what we did is divide, basically sort of members of the committee have adopted one of these three trails and Mary has adopted that section. If she can develop a plan and a budget that quickly, I'll definitely try and get some numbers to you. But I feel like we're probably a little bit behind the curve of getting it in the budget that's gonna be voted on next week. Right. I mean, I just want to caution because you've seen here, well, I don't know if you've been here all night, they keep our budget, our highway budget keeps getting cut and our duties get extended. So at some point, a little thin. So no, I just, I'm just putting that out there, that's all. Yeah. And Mary may have- No, that's a good point, Victor. It is a good point. And Mary may have been sort of more inquiring as she starts to develop a plan for that trail, just like other people are gonna develop the six, but I don't think any of us expect something to happen in the next month or anything like that. This is the longer-term process. Very good. Thank you. Yeah. Miranda. If this is a subcommittee of the conservation committee, this may come out of their funds, which they allocate money for special projects every year. Right, exactly. And that's why we want to be sort of procedural and develop the budget. Conservation Commission has said that there may be available certainly money for signage. You know, when we start getting into heavier equipment and gravel, that's a whole different realm. But for signage and things like that, they said they definitely would have money to cover this. Cause they see this, you know, essentially the conservation commission sees this as an extension of their limited pool of resources to do the work they want to do. But the fact that this second group came along and is willing to kind of spread that out a little, they're definitely willing to support it. I have a question in general about the trails. Someone had reached out to me about who to get in contact with and I gave them Mitch's information, but I said, if he didn't get back to them, that I would find someone else. So is there someone that you would, you would recommend that if someone was interested that they could reach out to like, do you have a little sub chair or something like that? Yeah, Adrienne, Meghita and I are kind of co-chairing the committee. Okay. So either of us is fine. All right, I'll just let this woman know. Her name is Elizabeth, I believe. And if this information about the contact is not currently on the town website, we can try and make sure it gets there. Any other questions from Michael that, okay, nobody's gonna say anymore, Peter. But do you need a motion? Do we need to? A motion to endorse the work plan as presented. Will or Liz? I'll second it. I'd be glad to make that motion. Okay. And you second it, Liz? Yeah. We have limited opportunities here. Okay, so all in favor of the motion, which is to endorse the work plan presented by the town trails committee, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Okay, we've done a Michael, thank you very much. All right, thank you. We'll keep you posted. Okay. Next on the hit list here is highway report update on town roads and discussion about how road crew gets time off in the winter action possible. Victor, you there, Victor? I'm here, Peter. Okay, thank you. Okay. I think Shane's here. Yeah, see, there he is. Yeah, they brought up the question of, it's basically the 40 hour work week and how you take time off once you've worked 40 hours. But maybe Shane can explain it. We had a discussion today about it. And when I say we, Shane and the whole crew met and had a discussion about it and the questions that they have. And I think Shane can probably fill you in better than I can. Okay, Shane. All right, so I'll give you a scenario. A couple of weeks ago, one of the guys asked for Tuesday off to bring a significant other to the hospital for procedure. And I said, yeah, that was fine. Okay, so we worked, physically worked 41 hours that week. So I put in 40 hours of regular time, eight hours of vacation time, one hour of overtime. And I was told the way our policy reads, he cannot take vacation time after 40 hours because that's buying time. And I can't find it in the policy. So I would like clarification on that because that's saying if we work 40 hours for instance, we have bad storms or whatever, we work 40 hours by Wednesday afternoon, we have 40 hours in. Someone gets sick Thursday and Friday, we're being told that you can't put sick time out because the town doesn't buy time. Well, that's not buying time if it's a scheduled work in my opinion. So we need clarification on this because those eight hours got taken away from the employee and you only got paid to 41 hours. I guess I'm confused. So Dorenda, can you tell me what happened here or explain to us what happened here? Our work week is based on 40 hours per week. So once the, and this has been being, since I'd been on before I was on, we pay up to 40 hours. The employee got their 40 hours pay and then put in for an extra eight hours of vacation time. We don't pay for anything over 40 hours unless it's over time for time worked. Otherwise that is buying back your vacation and sick time. And we have never paid it and it's never come up before but our work week is 40 hours, not 48 hours. That's what we budget for. And this is a policy we have been following since I was on the select board. So, and as, so I just didn't follow and I don't make up these rules, I follow them. And this is the same discussion we had the previous pay period when somebody put in for sick time when they had already worked their 40 hours. And it's buying back time. But if it's time owed to you and it's a regular scheduled work that you took off, I don't understand how that's buying time. The only thing it says it can't be used for is towards overtime and it wouldn't be if you paid at your regular time. That's where I'm confused. That's what I'm trying to hand. So the guys can't take any time off or they can't get sick after they put 40 hours in because they're not gonna get paid for it even if they have it coming to them. But they already got their 40 hours. Nobody took away their 40 hour work week. It's not a 48 hour work week. It's not a 54 hour work week. It is a 40 hour work week. They already got paid for 40. Nobody took a penny of their time away from them. If anything, he still got the day off. He didn't lose any vacation time. He didn't lose any sick time. And he got paid for the full week, plus overtime. So he got the day off. Phil. When we was at last meeting, we started having this discussion about how overtime was calculated. And I went to look at the, I think it's the U.S. Department of Labor site, but I can't be sure now to look at again, what the federal regulations were about how you calculate overtime. And so yeah, I absolutely agree, during this exactly the same thing. Once you've worked the 40 hours, you are whole. You don't need vacation time. You don't need sick time. You've worked your 40 hours. So you can't take time beyond that. It just doesn't calculate, it's 40 hours. If he had 41, then he had an hour of overtime. But then if he just doesn't need sick time because he's worked his whole week. Can I just clarify that overtime, I think you've said this before, and I think this is the federal rule, overtime can be paid only for 40 physical hours that include real work time over those 40 hours. Not, I took three days of vacation and then worked for the rest of the week. I suddenly had to work 12 hour days. That's only 36 hours. And I still don't get overtime even though I took two vacation days or whatever. Well, that becomes a policy within the how you wanna, what you wanna put into your overtime hours. You know, it's still overtime, the federal law is overtime does not start until after 40 hours physically worked. Now, if some, you want to adopt the policy that says which we already include holiday time. If you wanna include sick time, vacation time, personal time, and then have that part of it and then still pay on that, then that's a different scenario. That would be a personnel policy that you would have to put in place. But the federal law is physically work 40 hours. And that's always been the way we've handled it, right? Always. Yeah, so I don't know why all of a sudden, every meeting we seem to have some misunderstanding about the way we've been doing things when we're not changing anything. But I guess we do, so we need to deal with them. But does that make sense to you, Shane? Well, it does, I just wanted to make, I mean, it does and it doesn't. I mean, like I said, in Marshfield, they did it by the day. You're on an eight hour day or a 10 hour day, depending on what time of year you're on, you had overtime on the day, not the 40 hour week. So you could still take a day off and get paid regular times. I guess the only concern I have is now with the policy of only being able to carry over 120 hours of vacation time. So now we're gonna go into May 1st unless we have some lull in the weather. And we're going to May 1st, and if he has all this vacation time built up, he's gonna have to take it all off when we're getting ready to start our busy season. That's all I was concerned about. I wanted to make sure on the timing right I was supposed to be put in and I wasn't aware of that. I knew I could get paid overtime for it. I knew that, but I figured I thought if you were due owed vacation time, you should be able to get paid vacation time anytime because it's not any extra, you're already earning it. Yeah, but that's like saying, I wanna get vacation time for every Saturday and Sunday until I use up all my vacation time, right? No, because he took a day off during the regular scheduled work week. That's what my point was. Now I understand you can't buy vacation. Buying vacation to me would be on a day you don't normally work. Now, if you have to take a day off for something like one of the employees did and it was early in the week and then we ended up putting all these extra hours in so then he can't use his vacation time. I mean, it's time that you guys are gonna pay one way or the other, so. Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. Why can't he use his vacation time? Because he worked over 40 hours that week. He took a Tuesday off. And because the whole work week was over 40 hours, he can't take eight hours vacation time too. Now I'm getting, now I'm getting, tell me exactly what his situation is again. He took one day off during the week and then he worked on a Saturday. I must've been the Saturday before and then whatever we worked throughout the week and it put him at 41 hours actual work time. So the way the policy is, he can't take the eight hours vacation time for Tuesday because he put in 40 hours of work time throughout the week. Right, because then he wanted to be paid for 49 hours. Right. I guess I'm confused because it's the. So there was no need to take vacation or sex, so. But he worked 40 before that, but when he took the day off, he didn't have 40 hours. That's where I'm getting at. Then he worked the rest of the week. There was a day he had to take off. And he has a comment. So some of this really comes down to a budget, right? So you're budgeted for 225 hours of overtime. You're budgeted for whatever your allotment for sick time is, whatever your allotment is for vacation time. And there's some sort of expectation of what time gets planned for in the budget. So think about it this way, Shane. If, let's just say, for example, we get hellish snow all winter long, you guys are working all your all kinds of overtime. And folks were allowed to bill for sick time and vacation time through the winter or whatever. And all of a sudden you're beyond what has even been put in the budget for funding for any of this. You're essentially burdening the budget you're essentially burdening the taxpayers twice with time that they wouldn't have had to have paid during that budget cycle. Well, I guess not really. If the fiscal year starts in July and he has 15 days or 120 hours, he has to use a vacation time and you're already budgeted for that. And he's taking time out of that time. You're still paying it, whether you're paying it may further, you're paying it now. That's already budgeted for for what he has. Not if the expectation is that the vacation time is taken during time that isn't worked. So by saying that they could take it on a Saturday or a Sunday or any week that they're working with over 40 hours, whatever the timing of it may be, you're essentially being burdened with it. If they never took a vacation all summer long, all winter long and they worked every day through that period, it messes with the way the budgets are looked at and what are put in for hours. So all of a sudden they're working all kinds of hours and putting in for vacation time, essentially it's double tapping the budget twice. That doesn't sense to me, but. So, Serinda is the 2080, the 2080 hour work week that includes vacation and sick time, doesn't it? Yeah, right. So Shane, basically, if you're using a vacation day or a sick day, you are taking that in place of working. So you can't work, our budget is for 40 hours, whether you're working, whether you're sick or whether you're on vacation or taking a personal day, those 40 hours are what we budget. And so for him to get paid 49 hours is outside the budget because we already paid him 40 for his physical work. And in a sense, he's kind of working overtime, right? Because he took a sick day and if you counted that, it really would be, you know, 50 hours of work, but he physically didn't work for more than 40, except for that one hour. So we can't pay him overtime. And by giving him vacation, then that's going into some weird like place that we don't go essentially on a budget. It just doesn't really work that way. Unless we had some policy that our 40 hours work, you get overtime, which we don't, and that's what Dorinda was saying, we would need to change our policy to say that it doesn't matter what your 40 hours are, physical, personal, sick day or vacation, any hours above that, we pay you overtime. But that's not how this is- That isn't a lot. I'm saying people don't do it that way. Like that's not, that would get very expensive to do it that way. To start paying overtime above and beyond vacation and sick time. Right, and even if it's paying that straight time, you know, with the 225 hours that are budgeted here, you're really budgeting, including all of your sick and vacation and everything else, you've got 2,305 hours throughout the year that you have budgeted, including that 225 of overtime. So if folks are allowed to work through all of this time and then Bill on top of that, their vacation and sick time, you're gonna be extended past that budget and you're exceeding what your budget amount is. That's the easiest way to explain it that I can think of. All right, I get it. I guess the other piece of this, the other piece of this that I would say is, so ignoring the budget, but trying to be fair to our employees and follow the rules and regulations, the bottom line is one of the reasons we have a four-person road crew instead of a three-person road crew is so that if somebody needs to take a sick day or a vacation day to take care of personal business or whatever it is, that's fine. We have people to cover it. Now, if all of a sudden, if all of a sudden we have two people out sick and somebody needs to take a vacation day, obviously that's a problem, but the whole idea is that people can take their vacation when they need to take it. And if that means for a good portion of the year, and believe me, I manage people and I always used to say, how come nobody ever was ever working? Everybody seems to be gone all the time. Well, everybody's taking their vacation and their personal time and their sick time and it adds up to a lot of time. And which is another reason why you don't need to collaborate with us. We should be able to manage our work so that we can get by with as much as possible, people working the 40 hours and then when they have to work overtime, they get paid overtime, but over 40 hours of actual work. Which is why we don't allow people to carry that much over because it's a budget thing. So like, and why you don't pay people out. Oh, I didn't use any of my vacation this year. Well, one, that's bad that people don't take vacation, but two, it's not in the budget because your vacation is already included in your salary. All right, that's understandable. I mean, I guess the last piece of this, just to say it again is, we want people to take the time they're entitled to. And the only previso to that is we reserve the right to manage vacation time. If all of a sudden three people want to take the same week off in the winter time, that obviously isn't gonna work. So you have to say, okay, Fred gets first choice this time and Harry gets first choice the next time or however it works, it's a challenge. But it is what it is. And I know the guys understand that in the winter time, it's challenging for them to take time off and they need to do it in the late spring, early fall and summer. Right, but this was just something unexpected that came up. Yeah, but they're always, I understand, but they're always unexpected things that come up. Family emergencies, who knows what, I get it. But again, that's part of the reason we have a four-man road crew is that we can when we need to do the work we need to do with three people. All right, so bottom line is- Not the greatest. We budget for 40 hours. Bottom line is we budget for 40 hours and then budget for overtime. So you stick to your 40 hours unless it's overtime because we get some hellacious weeks or something. But other than that, you stick great to the 40 hours. And those 40 hours include vacation and personal time and sick time. All right. That's built into the 40-hour work week. But the overtime's only paid when you've worked physically 40 hours. Yeah. Or it could happen. I mean, let's say- With the holiday. With the holiday. Right. But let's say, for instance, let's say, for instance, somebody takes a couple of vacation days or sick days, Monday and Tuesday. And what is our pay week during the, does it go Saturday through Friday? Yeah. Yeah. So let's say on Saturday and Sunday, there's a hell of a snowstorm and everybody has to put in eight at just for simple things and it might be more than this. Eight hours on those two days, okay? So they've worked 16 hours. Now it's Monday. Then they take a sick day on Monday and Tuesday. So they've got 16 work hours and they're gonna be paid for 32 hours. Then Thursday and Friday, they work another two days. They're up to the 40 hours. If they work in those days any more than the 40 hours, they would get overtime for those extra. No, their sick time would not be used for the Monday and Tuesday. When they took that time off, you essentially wouldn't submit for the time, whether it be sick or vacation, and you would only submit for the work hours up to that 40. If they went over the 40 for worked hours, they would get overtime for the over that. But essentially they would not- I think that's what I said, Randy. You said that they'd be paid overtime. No, it isn't, Peter. They only get paid overtime when they get 40 hours of actual work time, not counting sick vacation and personal time. I think they would adjust their sick hours and not use them. If they ended up physically working, say, 45 hours, because that's what happened, but they'd already taken two sick days, they would reduce their sick hours. They would go back to their time sheet and say, I wasn't sick for 16 hours, I was only sick for five hours, and then save their sick time. And essentially they're still getting those two days off and it's not taking away from any of their sick time. Right. Or vacation time or whatever. Whatever. They'll get it back. Yeah. All right. I think we beat this to death. It did too. Well, I wasn't after the last meeting, so I wanted clarification myself. No, that's fine, Shane. That's fine. The roads are looking good, Shane, by the way, with all that ice that you had to deal with. No, I'm hoping we don't get any more ice. I'm sick of ice. I know. I wear my crampons, but so far I haven't gone. Yeah, that's a good hope. Whether it'll ever come true or not, who knows? Yeah, I'm ready for a good old-fashioned snowstorm. Yeah, me too. Maybe this weekend. Yes. Really? Is that what they're saying? Yeah. It sounds like, depending on who you believe, it's either going out to sea or it isn't, so we gotta wait and see. I'm gonna believe Phil and Shane. Thank you, Shane. Anything else to report on the roads? Either Vic or Shane? Nope, just been busy, that's all, and we're getting a little bit of a break now, so doing some maintenance and probably bringing the grader out tomorrow if it's that warm, and we're gonna try to knock off some of the high spots and try to get him cleaned up a little bit so they're not so rough if we can. Sounds like a plan. All right, well, thank you guys. Thanks, Shane. Okay, thank you, Shane. Right. So it is now 10 after seven, and don't get me wrong, but I think we need to spend some real time on this use of the school business. And I know Chris is very anxious for us to get back to them, but I still have some concerns and questions about it, and everybody's tired, and I'm tired, and it's late, and I'm gonna suggest that we defer that discussion till our next meeting. Chris, I still, whoop. Peter, I'm anxious, but not about the policy. I'm anxious about asking you folks to reconsider the vote so we can send out ballots. Chris. The policy, I'm happy to come back and talk about the policy. It's a proposal, and it can be tweaked, and my goal in drafting it was to recognize the legal reality of the easement and maintaining access, but also, in fact, taking into account the school schedule. And so that was the real goal of the policy, but making it crystal clear that there's a legal entitlement to access to the building and the properties. No, I appreciate that. Yeah. I appreciate that. Can I just ask a question? Chris, you asked us for comment, but it looked like the only thing that we could comment on was like that final page that was sort of about, because the other stuff was already part of the agreement when we sold it to them for $10. So this was just a COVID thing, right? Like a temporary thing. It's, you know, the commenters are just the procedure itself in terms of the access and how to maintain the access and how to approach the school, because not all the community members are gonna have keys. And so how do we set that up so that if someone wants to use the building, the mechanism of ensuring that that happens? So tweaking that process and thoughts and comments on that is great. Yeah, we can't change the legal definitions or what is actually the description in the easement itself, but how to make that a reality is what the policy, the procedure can deal with. Gotcha. Sarah, you had a question for Chris. I was asking him if he wanted us to make a, if he was asking for a vote tonight because it wasn't warned. I thought it was on the agenda before, not this one. I thought it was on agenda before that that was on there. No? No. Okay, so when is your next meeting? Well, I don't wanna speak for the board, but I think that they've already discussed, they've already talked about the fact that they're gonna pick up this issue next Tuesday at a special meeting when the legislature decides whether or not floor vote towns like ours can hold the town meeting by Australian ballot until, and that was one of the sticking points as you recall back in December for the board. Okay, I'm happy to come. You're talking about next Tuesday, we've been there? Yeah, they're gonna do the budget. Yeah, we'll let you know. Okay, that'd be great. And then, and again, I wanna just, I just want a little more time to carefully read through all that stuff. I guess it does, I'll just make one comment. I mean, it does make sense to me that the principal needs to be the gatekeeper, not the superintendent, and that the principal needs to be very careful that he doesn't unreasonably say, the school schedule always has priority. So if there's a conflict, it's found some second place. But I guess we just gotta work on that and have a good relationship with the principal and do that. I don't think there's any other way to do it. And if it doesn't work, if we feel like we're getting refused access unnecessarily, then we gotta fall back to the easement and say, hey, this isn't working, you're not honoring your easement. And so the goal was to limit the principal's discretion to say no. Correct, and I saw that in there, I appreciate that. And it was also trying to coordinate, not having the health officer at school make the unilateral decision on whether COVID's over or not coordinated. Do we have, does Middlesex have a health officer? Yeah, it's a good one. Who? Dr. Penny. Oh, okay, so that's why I was incorporating that as a collaboration between the two as opposed to delegation to one or the other. All right. Yep. Okay, okay. Well, maybe we're most of the way, maybe we're most of the way being comfortable with this after all, but let's put the voting business on the agenda for our likely January 11th meeting. If not, it would be the 16th. No, it would be the 18th. 18th, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Okay, thank you. Okay, thank you, Chris. See you later. Have a good night, everybody. Yep. Bye. Okay, how are we doing? Approving minutes of the December 22nd, 21 select board meeting action likely, is there a motion? Summer. I'll second it. Okay, thank you. All in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Okay, we've approved the minutes. Renewing a class two liquor license for the Roots Farm Market action likely. This is the current license that they have, right, Sarah? Yeah. Move and move. Mr. Renewal. Yep, just in the middle. Okay, Liz. I'll second it. Okay, thank you. All in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Okay, motion passes. We all got a copy of the Vermont Equalization Study results, no surprise, no surprise there. We're gonna be likely headed for a reappraisal, but we don't have to do it right now. So that's the good news. Anybody have any questions on that? It's pretty self-explanatory, I think. Okay. Receiving Bill McManus's, whoop, yes. No, before that, I was trying to amend the agenda before, but I couldn't get in. We have Morris Knight, I think I sent this to you. I was gonna put this under correspondent. He lives in on near the class four section of North Bear Swamp Road, I think he's during this meeting. And did you guys all read his letter? Yes. I did. Okay, so he's here. I thought. Go ahead. I was just gonna say, I thought we agreed we were gonna put up a sign in addition to the boulder and that we were not gonna block off both ends of the road. Is that not what we talked about, Rick? I think he's gone. I'm not gone, I'm not gone. No, yes, no, no, we didn't agree on that. Peter, we're not gonna, you've gotta cover, you gotta close the other end. I mean, I think that's the only responsible thing to do. If somebody gets out there, then they have to turn around and come all the way back. If they can, you know, if they ran into all kinds of scenarios. Right, I know. I guess the question is, if we, I know we discussed putting up a sign, but maybe we didn't decide to. I mean, my only question in reading his thing is, does it make sense to put a sign up? It does on the rock side, like the guy says, because you can't see the rock, it gets covered with snow, but our side would, they painted it up and so that it could be seen. But there's no sign on it saying close for the winner or. No, I think the, we just thought the handwriting was on the wall when you saw the barricade, the concrete barricades there with the red marks, I mean, orange marks. Who put up the barricades? We did. We did. Yeah. So, I'm sorry, I don't know, I must have zoned out when we were talking about this. I feel like this is like Groundhog Day. We've talked about the Stam scratcher road so many times over the years, I get them mixed up. I guess, Mike, I'm sorry. Oh, we were just getting kind of confused on it too, because, or I was, I guess I could only speak for myself. At one time we talked, Peter and I talked, we weren't gonna close it and then we were gonna close it. Then it came to us to close it. So then you told me to notify Rupert to put the rock up there and then we, then we said, I talked it over with the crew there and it's, well, jeez, you gotta put something on the other side because it might not be a place to turn around once you got over there. Amen. Right. Amen. I guess the only question I have is if we need to do, whether it's a sign or some kind of another barricade that makes it obvious that the road's closed rather than just a rock that's gonna get covered with snow and I don't know the answer to that. Did people drive around the rock? Is there a room where they can drive around it? I don't think so. But don't we have those signs left over from the old McCullough Hill there and said something about being closed due to for the winter months. This road is closed for months. That would be good. Yeah. We'll see if we can dig those up. I don't know where they'd be. Yeah. See if we can dig them up. I mean, it can't be that expensive to create something. All I know is that that until somehow that road gets improved and that parking lot can be open in the winter and the state's gotta plow it or whatever, it's gonna be an ongoing problem. It's never gonna go away. And it doesn't seem fair to me that it's the town's responsibility to have to deal with this problem, but I guess it is. And I'm certainly not suggesting that we budget the money to upgrade that stretch of road and start plowing the state parking lot. So we've got what we've got, but I think it does make sense to try and put signs up if we can find them. That makes sense to you, Liz and Bill. Yes. Yep. Yes, it does. Okay. I'll ask. So should we, our response to this letter is that it is the best judgment of the select board that the road needs to be closed in the winter due to all the conditions and problems which have existed over time. And that we agree that signs should be posted and they will be posted. And if we can't find the old signs, make some new ones. Yeah. Sounds right. That makes sense to everybody. Just, I mean, we should respond to his letter. That's all I'm saying. So, Sarah, if you could just, you could just write a letter and sign it for the board and just say we discussed his letter and we appreciate his concern. We're trying to address an ongoing problem which I believe he's very aware of and opening the road in the wintertime is not the answer. But signs will. Go ahead. I just said, okay. Oh, okay. Thank you. Thank you. Peter, you want to. Will you accept? Okay. Yep. Yeah. I would just have you sign it on behalf of the select board, Sarah. Okay. Just get it out. All right. We need to acknowledge receipt of Bill McManus's resignation for the budget committee effective March 1st. Second. Liz, you'll second that? Yeah. Okay. All in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Aye. I'd like to acknowledge his service to us and tell him thank you. Yes, we should. Don't forget to do that. Aye. However we do it. But we should and accepting is why don't we just send the letter and say, you know, we accept your resignation with regret and we appreciate your service to the town. Thank you very much or something like that, Sarah. Yep. Okay. And orders. I'll stop down tomorrow morning and sign the orders. Sounds like Liz, you need to do it this time because both Mary and Steve are out of town. And I will be, I'll stop by tomorrow also. Wash your hands. What's that? Wash your hands. Six central down here. Okay, guys. Wait, no, no, Peter. No, no, you have two things you want to talk about. One is, you wanted to talk about how select board meetings are going to go forward if they're going to still. Thank you. So my recommendation based on what we're seeing going on every day is that we continue to have our select board meetings by Zoom until further notice. And when we get through this, we can, we can change. But I don't see us, I don't see us resuming our in-person meetings. I agree. Unless anybody disagrees. So we probably need, we probably need a motion just to get something in the minutes that we agree to that. But we still have to have someone at the town hall, right? Yep. Yeah. Because unless, now who knows? The, the, my understanding is that the legislature is considering the whole town meeting day issue and I believe they're going to be talking about select board things at the same time, although I'm not sure. So they may, you know, they may waive that again and make it easier for us to be remote, but they're remote. I just, I just can't see all of us piling into the town hall right now. That makes no sense. So you're going to make a motion, Phil, or Liz? I am moved that we continue to hold select board meetings remotely with one person physically present at town hall until, what should we say for the next six months and we'll review it at that time? Yeah, let's just say, let's just say until further notice. Until further notice, okay. That's the plan. That way we don't forget and then we're... Okay, yep. You seconded it, Liz? I did. Okay, good work. Okay, all in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Okay. So I guess the only remaining question is, are we going to try and or not try, are we going to warn a special select board meeting for the 11th to finalize the budget and deal with a question of how we deal with town meeting? Yes. Or do we just wait until the 18th? We can wait until the 18th. I believe we can. That would be a question. Okay. Yeah, I think we should wait until the 18th. Not having an extra meeting is fine by me. But wait, we're still having a meeting next week, right? That's what you're talking about. What? That's a joke. We're saying we would not have the meeting next week. We would wait until the 18th. But I thought we agreed on it for another reason. Brenda? Whatever your name is, Sarah, would that give us time? I mean, if we don't approve the budget for two weeks, because I can't do any report until I have an approved budget. You know, I hate to say it, but frankly, I think you guys would probably just benefit by having a special meeting on Tuesday. And I don't, there's no one who doesn't want this more than I do. I don't think you have to approve about, I don't think you have to rush anything about town meeting or sending out the school ballots for the school, because it's a complicated issue. And there's no reason to rush it. I mean, the school district may want it, but they can't get their warning done until the 15th either. So I don't know why they're trying to ram this down our throats. There's no reason. But we do want to do the budget next week. You might want to do the budget next week. I think it would probably free up a lot of time. Plus we've got Russ Bennett is coming in on the 18th to talk about the do a presentation on the Colby property. And you guys are going to have to approve the warning and you're going to have to approve your the select board report. I'm sure part of that is going to be assigning Phil to write a budget addendum like he always does. So, you know, it would be nice if all that were tidied up at a bow on the 18th. So just meet did just on the 11th. So can we make it a one item agenda, which is just okay, let's do that. Yeah, let's do that. Okay, but you should tell Chris, I think he's assuming he's going to be there for this meeting. I'll tell Chris. Yeah. Okay. So especially good resolution. Okay. Mike, Peter, are you okay? Yeah, I am. Okay, my throat's just dry. I had a negative COVID test today. You'll be glad to know. Hey, listen, I'm going to tell you something. In my COVID exposure, everybody was testing negative right up until New Year's Eve when they were also testing negative. And then on New Year's Day, they all tested positive. Drinking up that fall. Well, I'm now, I now have no rapid tests and I can't figure out where to get them. So you can't, you can't find what to do with. Wait in line behind the bunker down. Yeah, they're fast. They're not. I'm still waiting for my results. Really? If I took it at 9 a.m. yesterday. Oh, yeah. No, it takes like two days to get it, but great. I hope you don't have it. Yeah. Me too. Yeah, I hope you don't have it too, Sarah. Cause I was right way. Vic and I were right next to each other today and I think I scared him. Oh. Well, I had fever, body aches and headache for a day and a half and I tested negative on a PCR test. Good. Who knows? Well, Dorenda said, Dorenda said she had the real flow, not COVID, but the real flow. So there are other unpleasant bugs going around. Exactly. Please have a nice this year again. Okay. So just to recap your meeting on the 11th, just to talk about the budget. That's it. Yep. Okay. Great. Okay. We done? Okay. I hereby declare, boy, I've got a pile of papers on my desk at each eye. Um, Sarah, I need to, um, I'll give you a call, but there's definitely something going on with my zoom and I don't know if I need to delete the program and reload it or whatever I need to do, but I may need your help to do a little test with me. Why'd you buy a new computer? You mean you don't think my, my five year old computer is okay? No. No, it's not. Get a new one. Get a new one. Okay. Bye. Bye.