 We did a good job. All right. Well, we'll call the meeting to order here. I think while we have everybody here currently looks like. I think we get on and Jesse on, I think saw Jesse in the background there somewhere and then Jerry Thomas. Looks to be everybody that I see in the participants. Yep. Currently. So first on the agenda, I'm going to have to flip back and forth because I have no idea where I put my packet went, picked it up from Teresa and lost it. So, okay. I'm looking back and forth my screens here. So, first is to approve the agenda. If anybody has anything that they want to change, I think the only thing I was thinking of maybe if I don't know how we do it, but I mean typically we talk about the. The dedication page in a, you know, do it at the end of the meeting call it an executive session, but a private session that way. We can do it at the end of the meeting when everybody else signs off or maybe we'll just save that to the end. I mean it is on the, it is on the agenda so that's not an addition. Okay. But other than that, I didn't see anything else anything else that needs to be added to that. Good. Hey, just need a motion to approve the agenda. So moved. Second. Hey, all in favor. Hi. Hi. This evening we don't have any appointments. So we will move rate to public comment. So if there's anything that's not on the current agenda for this evening that, you know, at this point I know Jerry's on for his piece probably. If there's anything else Jesse Owen, I don't see anybody else that's on so. There is anything that somebody wants to bring up at any point to feel free to, you know, put a message in the messaging piece and then Theresa myself will bring it to everybody's attention at appropriate time. So first on the agenda, there's an appointment for Jerry Tom. Thomas to the equity and inclusion committee. Hey, there is a, his information was in our packet. Yes, it was I received an email which I included. Jerry was telling about talking a little bit about himself and says he's been a resident Bethel since 2018. And he is currently attending the Vermont law school, sorry. So, I know last time we had talked about, if I remember right we were at, so it's not like eight numbers. It would just be the ninth member then. I think so. And then has has the committee, either Theresa on as the committee decided on what the size of the group would look like or feel like. I don't think that they, they had as of yet I hadn't been a conversation but I mean I think that you would probably my. I would be probably try capping it at nine for a while just to see, you know, because eventually it's going to get too big and you're not going to be able to get things done or there's going to be too many people so you know we can wait and see how that how it's going like in six months or something and see how they feel is going and maybe at that point, everybody's not participating maybe something has come up and somebody has to step down and they had a couple of meetings and yes organizational. Yes and the minutes are been in your packet. So, they've had minutes and agenda so they meet again in January and could always, you know, going forward could always have some alternate members. You know, just like some of the newer committees that do form or have formed over the years usually, there's a lot of traction early and then you start to get some membership that that dissolves so, you know, it's always good as you find someone someone might move that town or, or just decide not to be on it anymore and you know, maybe have some alternate members that you could appoint at any time but right. There's no reason why someone couldn't go to a meeting if they had some concerns to boys. They're all public. They should attend and and purchase they can participate they just, you know, yeah. And that's no big deal. And you might find as the committee gets going throughout. You know a few meetings or a year whatever you might find that some of the members might just rather be, you know, community members that come in voice rather than be in the committee to so yeah. She sent us all a message saying she had to sign out and back in because her mic wasn't working so I'm back in a minute, I guess. We'll send Dave over to do the Well, I have problems I have to get the wife out. So, so unless we have any while week for the committee to jump back on. But unless we have any other further discussion, we just need a motion to appoint Jerry Thomas to the equity and inclusion committee Jerry have any questions or comments he wants to make or no questions at the moment I apologize my camera. Today. But I do look for helping on any way I can. I think Jesse and Owen to turning on me on to this committee and for you offer the work that you've done so far. And I just look forward to helping out anyway I can. Thank you. Great. Happy to have. Okay, did I get a motion on that. Make a motion. Hey, and a second. A second. Okay Dave second all in favor. Hi. Okay. Just trying to delay a little bit see if Lindley gets back on here. Yeah, maybe she's switching laptops or something. She's usually the one to help me if I have. Well next week we'll have problems because all the kids will be on remote learning again will be clogging up all the bandwidth and town. That's right. That's right. Yeah. That's right. Let's see what that becomes. Is it working. Yes. I can now yeah yeah. Yeah I said a bunch of stuff before and nobody ever responded. So I just. All you missed out, Lindsay, as we pointed Jerry to the equity and inclusion committee. And then we were stalling for time to see if you're going to jump back on. So we are. So next on the list, we have a couple of lists. One is to request to hire Mimi Bernstein as an assistant lister. It's being listed that way as a lister, just because she is not a citizen of the town of Bethel. So in order to correctly do it, we'd have to hire her rather than appoint her. And I think either Therese or Judy can tell you that she's got a higher level of training. And yeah, on the packet, Louise put together some nice packets about Mimi and about Judy. And it was interesting what Louise had given was a nice background. She had these requirements for listers, and she had them listed as level one, level two, level three, level four. And apparently, Louise and another lister prior had worked on these. And then the state actually ended up adopting something very similar, which stages listers. So I think it's good information. I met Mimi. She's very nice and a young lady. And she has had been a lister in Bethel before when you went through the last re-appraisal. And she has a full-time job elsewhere. And she also works in Randolph. But she's looking for about 10 hours a month, very computer savvy. So hopefully she will also be able to do some more training. Maybe I'm sure teach Judy some tricks that Mimi has learned over the years of the software, which is nice. So she's not, obviously, like you said, she can't be a lister. So I just said assistant to the listers trying to be creative to put her in the office. So if nobody has any questions, we would be looking for a motion to hire her for about 10 hours a month, that $20 an hour. Hey, all in favor? Hi. Grab the speak up then, Lee. We can hardly hear you. We can't hear you, but you're very soft spoken tonight. Yeah, always is. And then kind of the goal along with this is to right size the pay structure that we currently have the listers is. And based on some of the classes that Judy's taken is to, the next was to right size Judy's pay to $18 an hour effect as of the 7th. So it'll be back dating it a week, two weeks. So I'm just staying from us. I'm staying from us. So moved. OK, moved by Paul. Give a second. Second. Only second. All in favor? Hi. Heidi. Is that any better on the volume? Yeah, much better. And we can, next up, we have a motion to authorize the town manager to expand funds for the right White River or the Vermont River Conservancy. So we have to do purchase fund. Yeah, so that's a money they'd fundraised. And I did speak to Mary Floyd to make sure she was comfortable with that because Vermont River Conservancy is $7,730. And Gensburg and Greaves is $245 for our title insurance. I don't know what's digital, stitzel page and Fletcher's bill is just yet, but they had $8,377 in that fund. So certainly Mary was happy to have the money spent. That was what it was fundraised for, to acquire the property or to help Vermont River Conservancy acquire the property. So I had emailed back and forth for her and then we chatted on the phone. So she was all good with that. But since they come from a capital fund, despite the fact they're fundraised, I just would rather have it in the minutes that you approve to the expenditures. So, Terese, I had a question looking through the project expenses and revenues there. And it's been a few years since. I can't remember which grant paid, what percentage of what total or paid, but didn't include that. But there's a piece in there that says, the town of Bethel $10,180. Right. And that's what you guys had agreed to from the start. And then we had already paid $2,450 of that. And it was also out of this fund, I believe, that they had fundraised, was where that money also came from. Because Mary had done really well with donations from. Oh, gotcha. OK. So yeah, that's where it's. Maybe I was just looking at it wrong. I thought we were looking at $10,180 plus another. Oh, yeah. You know what it was? I was like, man, that doesn't sound right to me. It is deceiving because it says $10,180. Then he wrote over here, paid to date. And then the remainder. So it's just a remaining balance of what we had authorized prior that we need to get $10,000. And I don't have, like I said, I don't have the Stitzel Page and Fletcher bill yet. That'll come next month, I'm sure. I mean, that's a common closing fee. Is it just a closing fee or? For Stitzel Page and Fletcher. Yeah. Oh, their bill will be, because they didn't do the title search somebody else did, but he reviewed it just to make sure it was protecting our interests. So it'll be something that will be from David Rue from there. So it's probably $700, $800 or less. My god, I would hope not that. I would hope not. But it's paid a lot more an hour than we do. So OK. And he was the one who suggested we get title insurance. So for $250, it seemed like it might as well ensure make sure our title, you know, that we had ensured that the research and stuff for the title insurance. So it kind of made sense just to protect our investment. OK. Yep. No, so that makes sense for me now. I just I was looking at it as we already paid $10,000. Why was it first two? And I was like, oh, wait a minute. That's not what we agreed to. It was a weird the way it was laid out there. OK. So I'm heading back to my. So I just need a motion to allow to Reese to expend the funds there of the 7700. And I got lost with the 7,730 plus the 245 and then whatever still page and Fletcher bill will be. They'll basically just expend the funds from. Yeah. And I think I mean, yeah. Yeah, I mean, I mean, we've already kind of agreed to the fund be prior to spending it now. So it's just nice when you're spending money out of other than, you know, capital funds that it's in there in the minutes. And then when the auditors look through it, it's right there. Now, the other question I had, I know we have motion or trying to get a motion on the table here. So out of that 7,700, there was some talk about there was some donation money. It was all donation money, all the money that you had that you've paid. I don't believe you. So the 20 whatever $100 that we paid to date was the donation money? Yeah, because remember they came a while ago and we and you guys agreed to pay for a portion of the appraisal. So that also came out of that fund. So that 2450 that we paid to date, that was the donation money. OK, that came out there. So she had raised quite a bit of money because the 2450 came out of there and she still has, you know, 8,800 something. I just put the page over there. There's still 8,377 in that fund. Then you've expended the 24 before that. So now they had done a great job fundraising. Don't move on your motions. What would they do with the remainder of that fundraising that they get they looking to do some other projects on the land by the time we take the 88 and we take out the 7,730, the 245 for the title insurance and whatever Stitzel page and Fletcher's bill is left. They may use any of it left with maybe a kiosk or something or whatever you land down the road. OK, if you didn't hear Mo moved. Hey, Lindley second it. All in favor. And I know there was some talk about potentially putting a kiosk there when we talked about this couple of years ago and that might actually be spearheaded by the conservation committee maybe. Yeah, yeah. So since Mary's the chair of that committee, yeah. Might be able to get Linley's workshop folks that involved on that and never know. And next I was just checking to see if we had anybody else jump on. Can't seem to get my thing back on. Think I'll just make the kids hall lumber across from the school to build it over there. I like it. I like to make kids hall lumber everywhere. That's right. That's right. Why not? They'll do it. Next on we have the Revolving Loan Fund committee's recommendation to defer Kevin Berry's payments for three months due to COVID. I was just checking to see if Kevin Berry was on, but doesn't look at. He had he had called. And so I had Carol catch up and call him. And so as you can see with the note in the packet, he Carol called Kevin and then he talked to his committee and they agreed to grant the request. So obviously that's their recommendation. He knows that you guys have to approve. So I want to make sure that we get something in writing from Kevin, obviously agreeing to increase his amortization schedule. The other option, maybe I know there was some concern about that it's taking quite a while for the LaVeer block to become developed. So you have this will be six months. If you give him this extension, you would have given him another three before, tagging on to his amortization schedules. Maybe you ask him for a schedule. What is he leaving? Trish, just to clarify, the Blossom block is the one that's still under development. The LaVeer block is the one that the Sandwich shop is in. Oh, OK. Because yeah, that's the one he has a loan for, is the LaVeer block. Yeah, so that's fully developed. Oh, OK. I'm sorry. I had them backwards then. I'm sorry, I was thinking. Oh, OK. Well, then I guess we can't tie the loan to that then. That was my thinking was if you're going to extend this loan, then figure it out. But the only thing I would want is if you're going to approve the revolving loan fund committee's recommendation. I don't have a problem with that, but I think that we need to make sure we get it in writing to Kevin. That way he knows we're extending his amortization schedule. And then maybe it's just I can send him an email and ask him, what's his timeline on the Blossom block to see if he has any more potential partners? Does he, when is it going to be open? Or does anybody know? Oh. Yeah. OK, well, I can ask him that separately when I send him an email about this. We would be interested to know what his plans are as well for that building. And also, is this, you said the loan is with the revolving loan fund. That's a town fund. Yes. The question, and we may not know the answer here, because none of us are the loan fund committee members. But is this handled, so the deferments, are these handled similar to the way bank loans are done, where you're still liable for interest? You just pay, you pay the interest as back payments when you start making payments against. You make a whole bunch of interest-only payments. Or is it just he's deferring, and when he starts back up, it just pushes this whole amortization schedule back that many months? It just pushes this whole amount. I think it's just pushing this whole amortization schedule back three months. So he's still going to, and the payments aren't huge either. So he doesn't owe a big balance. So it's, I believe, when I spoke to Carol, it was basically they're just pushing it out, basically saying, we're not going to pay anything now. Then we're going to add three more months I did to his amortization schedule. Now what? Three more months to his amortization schedule. But I'll verify with Carol, catch him what he, because he and I talked briefly about it a few months ago when he did it the first time. So I'll double check with him, and then I'll double check with Carol what he promised him. But that was my impression. He was basically just giving him going to tack it on later. Yeah, I mean, I think as a board member, it's kind of difficult to understand what's behind the motion to defer some payments here. But the Revolving Loan Fund Committee is a committee that we appoint to go through and do all that research and make the recommendations for us, which Carol and his team have done a really good job in the past. Exactly. Because he called, I just put him direct contact with Kevin. That way Kevin wasn't telling Carol. So I know Carol and he had the conversation. I'm sure Carol asked him all the questions. But I agree with, you know, like, Teresa, I know this board anyways, any time we've had either we've done some water or sewer deferral or anything like that, we've always asked kind of of a schedule of a progress schedule of the piece of property. And what do you think? Will it be six months? Will it be three months a year? What are you looking at to either finish your renovations or pay off your loan? So it would be nice to have something in writing, I think, on that. Yeah. I'll just pick his brain about the blossom block, since he doesn't have a loan with us on that, what I don't believe. I'll double check. But I'll see. I'll just ask him what's going on with that. And then when I reach out to him about and writing about his increase in his amortization schedule. And I'll also follow up with Carol about that, what his deal is on the interest and what he promised him. Yeah, because I mean, go ahead, Dave or Paul. Teresa, what's the vehicle for that whole loan? Does he pay the bank or does he pay the town or how does that all? They pay the town. Whoever has a revolving loan fund pays the town. Pays us. They pay us directly. OK. So what if we have, actually, I don't know what the deal was. But I would think that there should be something in there or an incentive to move along. If you give them a total of six months off with no interest, no payment, no nothing, what's the incentive to keep going? Well, obviously he has collateral. There's a loan there. It's a legitimate mortgage. So we can collect on it just like a bank could. So he probably has collateral on his loan. And that's why I want it in the minutes. And I want to send him an extension or something from him in writing, excuse me, about his amortization schedule. But it's a legitimate loan. It's recorded in the land records. And I'm sure that my assumption is that the property itself is the collateral. So if we had to collect. I understood, but if he's OK, all right. So I'm not sure the circumstances in which he just said with COVID, I'm not sure what his circumstances were that he explained to Carol as the chair of the Revolving Loan Fund Committee. Yep. But I'll get a clarification and then put it in my town managers report next time once I speak to Carol. And then we'll have a all no. And this Revolving Loan Fund is one of the tools we have at the town's level to promote vibrant downtown renovations to buildings or whatever. So it's definitely a tool that we want people to take advantage of. But it's also we want to see the outcome of that. If the loan is on the LaVeer block, then he's already developed that. So the only other loan we have out is with toasters. Everybody else has paid off their loans. So you have a good history, which is good. It doesn't look like anyone's ever left you defaulted. So which is nice. Yeah. All right. So we just need a motion to accept the Revolving Loan Fund Committee's recommendation to defer Kevin Berry's payments for three months due to COVID. No moved. OK, all in favor? Aye. Aye. OK. Next up is our June 30, 2020 audit. I'm sure you all had a fun time going through all the pages of the audit. Well, it says draft audit, but I had gone through it already and approved it and sent it to Stitzel Page and Fletcher. And I did. They should be getting the transfer station audit done before the transfer station board's next meeting. That was my request of them. And we still we need to do our single audit. So I'm sure that they will get a hold of me when they have time in their schedule. And that's because we spent over $775,000 between FEMA and the Drinking Water State Revolving Loan Fund. So that's once you spend over, it used to be $500,000. Now I believe it's $750,000 or $775,000. So that's still ongoing, but this is the regular audit itself for the town. And as you can see, if you look that the net position of the town increased, you can see that we actually made a little money. But you can tell before what our fund balance was in the past and then what it became. But if you look at all of our governmental funds, we were ahead by $250,000. Yeah, that's good. Looks like overall, our revenues fell short. Well, when I say revenues, our localized revenues fell short by like $6,000 or something like that. Looked like we still had, based on last year anyways, we had about $100,000 in uncollected tax money, I believe, by looking at it. Of course, who knows, some of that could have hit the very next day. So it was a snapshot. And at that time, I mean, it looked like our cost overall came in and had the $256,000 or something. So it's about a quarter million dollar balance, which we had talked about the last couple of years that. And I believe it was in one of the recommendations of the audit, maybe two years ago, Teresa, where not having a fund balance in the town is a detriment. And if you have to keep borrowing money to do payroll or pay to school, no. The good thing, too, was once basically we were, the reason that we were running the way we were in the deficit position was because of that, before we kept renewing that short term loan on your debt, which you originally thought was because of Tropical Storm Irene. And then once we realized it wasn't, and we financed it into a long term debt, that made a big difference there, too. So yeah, I just did the delinquent tax page for the town report. That's what I've been working on, our pages for the town report. And so it looks like, I think, in January, I'm going to have Deetre start going through all the accounts that we know are going to have to go up for tax sale. And then get that process started. And there's a process to it that we do. And there's some properties that I know that, well, those two properties didn't sell last time. And I have another that someone I know has, I just recently found out someone abandoned. So we're going to move forward with the tax sale. We didn't do it this last year. But we definitely will have to, again, to. We've gone through and I've done a huge one originally, put up 40 some odd properties for tax sale, carried it down to 11, sold all but two. And then we had created deals with a lot of people. So it's given people some time to make sure they've lived up to those deals. And some have, some haven't. So it's time to do another start the process for another tax sale. And I noticed on there, I guess, you called the recommendations for internal control audit. I didn't see anything major that stuck out. Is there anything, Therese, that the office is going to be doing different than before? I didn't see any major items. No, some of them were public errors, but. Reconciliation abound sheet accounts is always up there. Because if I'm off by something and they fix it, then they obviously they write you up for that. Trustees of Public Funds investments, I've never recorded. I never, we haven't done it in the past and I haven't done it since I started. So their recommendation was basically have Carol bring his books in every quarter and then I can do a journal entry to keep, as I wait and then at the end of the year he brings his books in and they were making the entries. So that was one of the things that they recommended. The authorization of journal entries was all I was just doing them because I was making the corrections. So I'm trying to make sure that if I make a correction because somebody coded something wrong, get there. Make sure that the department had coded, initials my journal entry. Then the other one was department head approval and coding of invoices. And I actually was, I wrote to one of the guys and was like, what are you talking about? We have this stamp that everybody signs and he was like, what is the sample? Well, he pulled, they pulled the sample and it was a couple of things from FEMA and it was actually me. I had coded them, I had predated them, I had written the amount and I just didn't initial it. And I'm like, oh my God. So I'm not making that mistake again. So anyways, it was me and I went back in the invoices and it was all my handwriting and I had coded some bills but I hadn't put my initials on them despite it being my handwriting. So I was like, all right, fair enough. So overall, I mean, it was a good audit. It was a lot better. It was the best audit I've had since I came to Buffalo. So. Yep, it looked pretty good. I would say as I've read through in the last five years this definitely was cleaner. You just thought it would be better. I had a couple of questions. Of course. Go ahead. Chris, you actually stole one of my questions here. I was gonna ask about the recommendations at the end. Yeah. But the other item that jumped right out at me was the, there's 171,000 some odd dollars to do from the transfer station. Yep. And that actually changes every on a regular basis. Actually Pam and I just paid that today. What happens is we, just like we do for water and sewer water and sewer also have a due to the general fund. So the transfer station does. And so what Pam and I do is usually once a month we transfer money from the transfer stations checking account, which is they make their own deposits of all their, you know, they do the deposits and take them directly to Mascoma. So we print out, I print out a report off of NEMRIC that's the due to due from that shows what they owe us for making their pick, covering their payroll, covering their accounts payable. And what Pam and I do is we, we transfer as much money as we can out of their checking account into ours. So we had done that beginning of December and then we just did it today. And I think we were able to transfer another, oh, I can't remember. I want to say 20, I can't remember how much we transferred today. Anyways, I guess I won't hazard a guess, but it, it buys it down. So then what happens is that number, as soon as Pam does pay accounts payable this week, that number will go back up. So it's a constant fluctuation. The trans Bethel Royals and Transfer Station is, board is well aware of it. Whenever we transfer money, I give them copies of the transfer so that they have it for their accounts. And this budget that they have passed actually has them paying us. They've actually scheduled, budgeted some money in there about $15,000 to come to us. And obviously if we ended up making a deal and going with Kasella or Myers or somebody, we would get paid off. It's the same process for a water sewer. They just haven't been self-sufficient. So I think number is just a snapshot of a moment in time. Absolutely, yep. And I think if you were, Paul, if you were looking for more of a, you know, more of an exact number of what is owed, it's a little bit above a hundred thousand. Yeah. It's, you know, as of today, like I think it was a little bit under and, but that'll change. And there's, when I look back in the history of the audits, it was actually one year, Bethel owed them $9,000, but otherwise it's always been that they owe us. And it's just happens to be what it looks like at June 30. But then I run it on a monthly basis for Pam. And then we see what they have for money and we take almost all of it and then, so that's the way it goes. But they're aware of it and it's one of the reasons you need to do the rate increase. And Theresa, I know we talked about it before, but what was the recommendation for having for reserve for a town of the size? I know we talked about before, and I can't remember if it was like a quarter million or 300, 400,000. Yeah, sometimes they say it's a percentage of your budget and everybody has a little bit different take on what it is. So it can be, and a lot of times what you'll do is if you have an amount, sometimes you'll write a policy for that. How are you gonna deal with your designated fund balance? So your surplus, are you going to leave some alone for like a rainy day fund? Which is always my recommendation is have a little cushion there in case something goes haywire that you haven't budgeted for and you have an overrun. The other thing is some people use it for, if they have an employee that you need to pay out, maybe you have a lot of leave time coming up and you're gonna pay out for that. So there's different recommendations on what that can look like. And sometimes too, you have to be careful because sometimes it's just not cash. It looks like you have this big surplus when in fact it's tied up in equipment or something. So. Well, I know in the past we, wouldn't even have thought of having this discussion of what we would do with surplus money. Yeah. But it might be something for us to think about here this coming year of, what is either by a percent or a dollar amount that we should keep, anything above and beyond that would, we would on a yearly basis, make a recommendation to the voters of what we put that towards paying long term debt or whatever. I can ask Rick at Sullivan empowers his recommendation for fund balance. I knew no, another town, what we used to do sometimes is we would use, we would take money from the undesignated fund that balance and if we had quite a bit and we'd transfer it into capital funds, maybe a road fund or a building fund or a lot of times we would put $10,000 back in the budget as a revenue to say we're going to reduce tax, reduce the bill by the budget by 10 grand to kind of give some money back to the taxpayers. So it's new for us to have a surplus. So I'll definitely get some recommendations from Rick and then over the next few months we can talk about that. Yeah, absolutely. I think that would be a good idea. Just because we were talking about it last meeting, I'm curious if one of the things that maybe we should think about putting that, some of that surplus towards is the reappraisal fund. Could be, that's a good point. Yeah, I'll make a note. I'll ask him what his recommendation is that we keep there and then I'll look and see how much of it is actually cash that we have and then reappraisal. And if we do that, then we will. What we'll do is we'll do it at a town meeting and maybe this one, maybe not. And you just make it as an article. So the voters vote to probably want to do it in this one just because it's Australian ballot. But I think it showed that there was about 165,000 or something in the reappraisal fund already. Yep, and which is good because it's going to cost us an expense. I did talk to Louise again about that today and same thing she'd given me. She thought she had a draft RFP for that. And it'd be good to get that out and then maybe even get in somebody's queue, maybe a couple of years before they get to you, but at least you'll have an idea of what your cost is and an estimate and be able to save for it. So Louise and I were talking about that today for a few minutes. Yeah, that definitely should be an ongoing agenda item for 2021. Good one. All right. Does anybody have any other questions in regards to the audit? Something comes up later if you didn't get through the whole thing or whatever, just certainly can email me or call me and happy to answer any questions. Next up, we had discussion regards to potential bond vote for town garage. We're just, I don't think we should do it at town meeting this year. I think that we'll have to do a bond vote later. It seems like we need to sit down and I need to get a hold of a couple of towns. I know Chelsea built a town garage recently and I'll talk to Chris Bump and ask him who he knows that's built one and get their RFPs. And then we'll have to make a decision how we're gonna do it. Are we gonna do an RFP for an architect and then have the architect do the groundwork and then obviously they'd put the big documents together and then we would go out to bid that way. Or are we gonna do a design build service in which Kate and then are we gonna do cost plus with a guaranteed maximum or how are we gonna do it? So I just need to spend a little more time doing some research on that. And I just don't feel like, I feel like if we were gonna do that, people are gonna wanna see the image. You know exactly what we're gonna do, what would it look like? And I mean, I know what our cap is. I know what we can afford and we've backed into that number. So I think we just have to decide what's gonna be the best fit for Bethel, how we wanna go about doing it. And it may be just getting, doing the traditional two step, which is the architect first and then going to bid after. I'm concerned about metal because of COVID, how long, you know, if it will take a while to find that, but I don't know what that market's doing right now. So. Well, the other thing too right now is in some cases, some of the building supplies are very expensive too. So. Maybe going to the, putting it out for design right now, which will buy us maybe half a year, will give us a better opportunity to get materials at a more reasonable price. And the other thing too is we have $100,000 in the capital building fund. So we do have money we can spend, that we can use to get that part done and then we would bid later. I mean, certainly our cap and my mind, our cap is $700,000 for the whole enchilada. We just can't, you know, we can, that's what we can afford to make a payment on is $700,000. And we thought we talked about buying that down to $600,000. And, you know, so it'll be interesting to see. I wonder about some certain bells and whistles, you know, that's going to change what the codes are going to change. Obviously there's energy codes, building codes, there's also some safety, you know, stuff that we do not have. And I wonder by tearing out, we're leaving a structure itself, the framing of the original garage, but then doubling in size and then encasing it all in one beautiful new shell. But I don't know how that's going to work. And that's why we need an architect because I am not up on all the codes and standards to make sure that, you know, we're going to do everything we need to do. But it seems like what we can afford and which we've talked about is that loan payment would be basically what we were putting aside in the capital building fund. That's the loan payment. And it just doesn't seem to me that we could spend any more than that. But is that, isn't that going to leave us shy though in that fund if we use that allocation? I think there's about 200,000 in there. I think was the, when I did my spreadsheet loss was looking at it, do my stuff for town report. And I think there will be with our next with this year's money going into it. So we have set aside the money, so it's there. So it won't, we won't be putting that fund into the hole. No. And I think it's definitely good to, you know, I mean, if we were talking about, you know, maybe investing a hundred or $200,000 into the garage, maybe we could move forward and kind of build it as you go type deal. But definitely if we're thinking about some substantial amount of money, I know as a taxpayer, I would want to be able to see the plans and look at the plans and what is it going to look like and feel like and smell like. Yeah, exactly. And I'm hoping that we would be able to as a town, we certainly have the equipment to do it. So I'm not sure if we would necessarily demolish the addition but we could certainly prep the ground for concrete to pour, you know, there's only, there's dirt and then some black top. So we will have to dig that out. So it's a real foundation, you know, based on the other side, I don't see why we can't do that ourselves. And we also are going to have to relocate the waterline because it comes in the back of the garage. So we know where that is. So it seems as though to me that hopefully the road crew would be able to do some of that work because we have the equipment. Hopefully get the RFP out for a design and you know, that process, maybe we'd get something back by mid-summer and then maybe able to have a fall bond vote or something like that. Which would be good. And sometimes, frankly, bond votes are better on their own. They're more apt to pass than to be tucked into an Australian ballot when people are already saying, okay, I got school tax, I've got town tax, where my experience has been, sometimes you're more successful in a separate vote later. So you can get out and educate everybody and sometimes works better. Okay, any other discussion on the garage? All right, I think we were just gonna leave, like we had talked about, we're just gonna leave the report dedication to the very end. The select board members will just stick around at the very end to talk about that. Normally we kind of like to do it in secrecy and surprise people on who we dedicated to. So I think we'll stick with that tradition. So we have town managers report. I know we dug through most of Teresa's goodies, but is there anything left in there? Oh, so one of the, let me look. Okay, so I guess it was, so we put out the list of how to do, there's some offices that have vacancies. Spit it out, Teresa. So some elected officials. So we did put something out on front porch forum, Facebook and on our website, letting people know that obviously that Moe sadly is not gonna run again for his seat. So there'll be a seat and Moe is a three year seat. So that will be open. The Listers, there's gonna be one Lister that's vacant, which it wouldn't be the end of the world if this select board appointed a Lister because you want someone who has a very specific background to become a Lister and has the time and everything to those skillset to do that. So the consent of candidate forms are due, I believe it's January 14th, it's after our next meeting, a couple of days after our next meeting. But we put that information out as well. So if you were a typical town that all your elected officials went by Australian ballot, what you would have to do is pass a petition. You'd have to get some certain amount of signatures and you get them to the town clerk, but the legislature waived that. So the only thing you have to fill out is a consent of candidate form and Chris filled his out. Basically, it's just what you're running for, if you're what seat you're running for, how many your term it is, what town it is and how you want your name to appear on the ballot. And it has to be in by five o'clock on the day. January 25th. It's before the 25th. Well, it says on the sheet here, no later than 5 p.m. on Monday, January 25th. What you posted. Oh, it seems late. Maybe it was the 25th, and for some reason I didn't see it in my brain. So it says 25th. Okay, well then it must be the 25th. I thought it was like the 15th, so I'll double check just to make a different date stuck in my head. But anyway, so you have to have the consent of candidate filled out and you give it to the town clerk. And then when we make the ballot, that's what goes on the ballot. So it's pretty simple process. Normally you are what I call a hoot in holler town. So you, somebody could just show up and run that day at town meeting and against you and you'd have no idea. This way you will know in advance. So that's one of the nice things. When I was an elected official, I always knew if someone was running against me or not, if you were running opposed or not. For the record, I ran unopposed, but I was always told me no, stupid enough to want the job. So that's the way it goes. So it's a very simple form to fill out. Chris could tell you that because he just filled it out. So if somebody wants to run for one of the seats, I did try to outline what people were already running like Chris was running for his seat. Pam will run for hers. Louise is gonna run for one of the Lister seats. You know, Stan Capron is gonna run for grandeur and Jason Towne, Agent or vice versa. So I did try to spell that out. So people were, you know, understanding what was out there and maybe who was running. And I know as a vote counter, it is very nice when you don't have to deal with a bunch of write-ins because it will take us forever to count them all. So I definitely would encourage anybody that wants to run for a position that get their name on the ballot because it just makes our life when we're counting ballots that night so much easier, especially with COVID, you don't wanna have to have a bunch of people kicking around counting ballots. So- Right, and the good thing is- The machine will kick out anything that's got a handwritten. Right, but that does stink, yeah. And people still have the right to do a writing campaign, of course. Oh yeah. But yes, but you definitely want to discharge that. So if you know somebody who's interested in running to be a Lister or to be a whatever, who's running against one of the open, one of this other seats, just because somebody's running for it doesn't mean somebody else can't run against them. So, but if anybody wants to run for a seat, then we're trying to get that information out there and they can just call the town office or go to the website and get their forms filled out. So that was a question, because Lindley, is that what you want to know, Lindley? Yeah, just to run through it again. Yeah. So, unlimited comp time and enough money to buy a pack of bubblegum. Yes, that's right. All the perks. That's right. So the other thing was I had seen Mrs. Placy. She came in the other day and it was after our meeting and she really, she was really wanting to unload the property that we had talked about. So, and she was like, well, what if we cleaned up the trash and you evicted them because she just doesn't want to go through all the hassle. So I'm going to reach out to the nephew and she's just really wants to unload it. I'm just going to ask the nephew, look, you know what? If you don't, if you give it to the town for a dollar, we'll clean it up and we'll evict the person. But if you're going to charge us for it, then you can evict and you can clean up your own trash. But I did have a conversation with Mrs. Placy. So I'm going to reach out to the nephew, talk to him and have him call Mrs. Placy. So they're both on the same page because she had not yet spoken to the nephew. Is there, and I can't remember who it was last time. Maybe it was Dave or Mo. Somebody had kind of thrown it out there that they may know somebody that does that kind of removal or, but is there a way of maybe getting one of those people to maybe drive by the property and kind of winging a number on what it may cost us if we did take the property type deal, you know? I don't know. I don't know what's in the outbuildings and what's in the trailer either. So, I mean, you don't want to assume the worst, I guess. Nice to know. The trailer is on the table and says that. I mean, most trailers, they demolish and they sell the frame, I believe. They demolish them right there. Yeah, they load them right into, like you would a building. And then, of course, what you left with is the frame which they start to sell. Yeah. I mean, granted anything that metal, usually you can get one of those dealers that'll come in and take all the metal for free or whatever. And of course, too, when the governor extended the, extended the, his executive order, he also extended the eviction. So you can't evict at this time, but it doesn't mean that if you're the owner, you couldn't go in and start cleanup. So if the town did own it or with Mrs. Placy, she, even though they're there, she could start cleaning it up. So I'm going to reach out to the nephew. Well, the other thing too, I mean, you know, even if she gave it to us for a dollar, I mean, it might cost us a lot to clean the place up. You know, I don't know what it would, but I would assume that whoever the tenant is that's there, probably a majority of the items that are on the property are probably theirs, you know? So you're going to get into that, you know, can you actually go in there and clean it up? Or, you know, take the deal and it could be, you know, I like the property, but I think it could be a headache of trying to work through that process. Oh, it is. I think the eviction process is not cheap. I think you're going to get into, I think you're going to spend a major part of 50 grand by the time you clean up and evict. Yeah. I'm serious. I really think that's going to cost that much money. Yeah, I think that's, that's probably a very reasonable estimate, Dave. Yeah, it'd be nice to kind of know what it, you know, I don't know if anybody knows anybody does that type of work, but it'd be kind of... Dylan McCullough's uncle did one from in South Wales. Trailer, probably a little smaller, and he did what Mo talked about, you just smashed the heck out of it, put it in a dumpster or whatever and sell the frame, and it was $16,000 just for the trailer. That was like eight, 10 years ago. So that's where my idea is coming from. Yeah. What were you going to say, Mo? Frank was going to give that to us before he died. Yeah, and she's still May. I mean, I don't know. I'm not sure what her, she just really wants to get out from under it. So that's, so I'll see, but yeah. And right now the eviction process. I mean, once, if somebody knows and they may want to move to the other thing is we don't know that, you know, we're all saying, I'm using the term eviction, but maybe once they find out the town owns it, they may find another place to go and it may be very smooth. They may, you may not have to evict, they may just relocate. So... Is there a... Theresa, well, maybe I'll just talk to you on it later, but if there's an opportunity really to come to an agreement on that property, maybe you and I could take her get permission to go take a look at the property and see what we really have involved there, you know? Okay. You're bringing the hazmat suits. So... I've been in that trailer. You wanna wear the hazmat suits and watch out for the dog. All right. I'll bring Brady. We'll be good. There you go. We'll go outside only, but... But it might be nice to just be able to look at the, you know, the outbuildings and... Yeah, exactly. So like I said, I'll reach out to Mrs. Placy's nephew and have her him talk to her and we'll go from there and see what we're doing. But it would be nice to get it cleaned up and have open... He's asked Dylan too. He might know what it would cost to clean that place up to. Sure. All righty. And that was it for the town manager's report. That was everything, all right. Let me screw it back up here. And select board meeting minutes from the 14th. Did anybody have anything they wanted to amend or are they good to approve as written? So move. I can... Hey, all in favor? All right. And, you know, other communications there, there was the solid waste board meeting minutes. Mo, anything big on the ice? You know, it requires our attention or... Not right now. We'll see how these new rate increases go next week. We all might be in jail, I don't know. And that it's... We're still looking at Myers and Cassella taking over the enterprise. We haven't heard back from them yet. As far as I know, have we trees? No, no, nothing, Mo. I was wondering about you. I haven't. Okay. No, Myers has only been about a week, so. Now those, you know, remind me again, the, with the new increase of caught or the new pricing there, was that gonna absorb the entire, we'll call it monthly deficit that it's running or is that gonna just make up a piece of it or what's the projection on that? The projection was to cover the whole... So based on those, that price increase that it would cover the debt that it's... Yeah, it's gonna help. Prearages that it's been, okay. Yeah, I'm not sure. Yeah, I would think that it would, I think that in some cases, there's some pieces that are gonna be yet to be determined. Like the $3 per visit, you know, we did an estimate on how many, Jen and I did on how many people we see, how much that's gonna generate to cover any losses. So anything that they can cover of their own, we're hoping, well, yes, contribute to paying down what they owe a baffle. But we did make a stride by putting a payment in there too. So we do have a little bit of a cushion. So, but if they, if the food scraps that takes off, that would be good if that's $2 a gallon, plus the bigger items, I think tires and couches and things that increased. And then with the $3 per visit for the recycling, that should also generate enough money to get them ahead. That's our hope, yes. And they also made some cuts in budget. I thought it was a good budget and got approved. Yeah, well, I know... We also raised a ton is $10 a ton to the... Anybody over the minimum is $10 a ton more. And we also raised on the free-on items. That's right. That cost us my neighborhood of... Yeah, that's right. Thank you. Yeah, I forgot about those. So yeah, so I think it, you know, is it gonna be a whole entirely? I don't know, I hope so, but we'll see. Some of it's, we estimated some numbers and we need to see what the turnout is for people that come. All depends on what we, you know, if the recycling end of things we get more money for, that'll help out too, but it doesn't look that way right now because there's no money in recycling. So it's a loser, food scraps. I don't see why the state ever proved it the way they did without, you know, just dumping it onto us. I mean, that's quite a cost for us for every month. And be free. Exactly. That's just my opinion. No, but you're right. I mean, you're right. It was food scraps was a big expense, like wham, and nobody had any clue what that volume of that was gonna look like. So there's certain places we've made some assumptions, but at least we did, they did put $2 a gallon, enough money to cover the cost of it and handling it. So... You may... Right now, right now, every week we're shipping eight 45 gallons of food waste out of there. And that's pushing it very, very close on this end of the week. Sometimes we have to put it in smaller barrels. But there's a lot of gallons of food going out of there, of food waste. That's amazing. I'm really surprised. I wasn't sure I thought maybe people would do more composting or, but that's also hard if you're in the village, so. Yeah, I get to rethink. I know Brady found like composting piles, so. A lot of people that could compost on their own are bringing it in. I've noticed that. I mean, I know where a lot of people live and they just bring it in. Yeah. And there is, I think, you still sell composters too. So if people don't wanna do build their own or something, have something more enclosed, you can buy one at the transfer station too. And they had some nice. Yeah, I think we sold three in the last month. Kinda helps. They were nice contained, I think, to keep pets and wildlife out, so. And I was watching something over the break here and with the new federal administration getting ready to come in, you may see that the, because like from what they were saying that the Chinese used to be our number one consumer of recyclables. And through the tariffs that were going on between us and the Chinese, the Chinese stopped taking recyclables from the United States. And I guess the thought now with the new administration that if the tariffs get reduced, then the Chinese might be taking the recyclables once again. So maybe the recyclables will start to have a value again, I don't know, but. The actual reason the Chinese didn't take it was because the product coming in was about 60% contaminated. So they had to get rid of it. So what did they do? They throw it in the ocean. Nice spot. I mean, a lot of it wasn't the tariffs, a lot of it was the consumer, but they were shipping over there. And that was one of the arguments I made today to people was reminding them, you know, if you're going to recycle, you need to wash your recycling out because if Jen sends a load of recycling down and a lot of it's dirty, they backbill her for transporting that and dealing with it. So it becomes a cost. So I think people need to, you know, there's plenty of signage there that tells you at the transportation to rinse out and clean your recycling. But if people may not realize that if they feel that the load is contaminated heavily, she gets backbilled for that. That's right. And I worked down there quite a little bit since Jen's been out. And I'd say between 40 and 50% of the recycling is garbage trash. People don't care. They throw in dirty stuff. They throw in diapers. The other day I dug out a whole bag full of diapers, used diapers, you know. And the lady says, well, the box said number one on it. You know, the box is recyclable, not the innards. No. Well, those are tech. So I mean, people don't read and they don't listen. And then it just ends up affecting everybody, right? Just like the free table and everything else. Yeah. Exactly. It's the 1% that kill it for everybody. Yeah. But I don't know what it is about composting, but I know my dog, he left that composting in the corner of my property alone all year. But now that it has frozen, he's in that thing every day. So I don't know what it is, but frozen season, he wants it now. There you go. I don't know what it is. He dragged it all over the yard down. Yeah, oh yeah. So you can figure that out. Yeah, not funny, Therese. Not funny. You need to buy a composter. Sorry. It's not funny. Trust me. Can you show them? Yeah. Oh, I'm telling you. Maybe I'll hire him out. There you go. Anything else? Did I miss any other, let me see here. No, it just says other communications or any other business. Yeah, I didn't see any other communications in there. So. I don't think so. I mean, it was just what we'd put on the website. There was the couple of things that I just wrote FYI on. There was no errors and omissions. There weren't any this year. I'm trying to get the poll stuff off the polls. That's an act of Congress. Yep, planning commission minutes. Yep. So just kind of a... Yeah, I saw that response there from whoever it was. Not even, I've gotten more emails about this now. There's basically, once they put the polls up, there's no timeline. They don't care. They just need to get off the poll. And I thought it was just consolidated, but it's consolidated and Comcast. So, and there's no order in which that like consolidated doesn't have to come off first, then Comcast, but nobody is in a big rush to get it done. Let's put it that way. So I've sent the letter, I've emailed, I talked to the public service board, so they actually put out a complaint. That got somebody's attention. I heard from somebody the next day. And the Lori from consolidated, but it's still an on and off. Well, according to that response you got back that they're not even thinking about even starting to back up until springtime. Yeah, they're not. And they're not the only ones on there. So it's not gonna manage to get done tomorrow. That's too bad. Can we give them a certain amount of time before we get the train cells out? Apparently not. I asked, I was, I just got another email. There's plenty of people saying so. At the end of the day today that I have to read and she was sending me some more information. I just didn't get a chance to read it because I was working on town report. But so yeah, it sounds like we're just innocent bystanders. The public service board allows them to do it and then we just get what we get. I was able to issue a complaint, but yet I can't, there doesn't seem to be a timeframe in which they need to be off the old pole onto the new one. So I'm trying. The utilities are just like the railroads in Vermont. I mean, they're pretty much untouchable and you can't really do much about it. Unelected. Yeah. I'd be surprised if they're off in two years. Well, it's already been what? 29. Two more years. Yeah. Yeah. It's already been two years. One thing I wanted to bring up under other business was I talked to Therese today. So I was going through like I have the last couple of years and putting together our select board synopses of the past year. And I always kind of go back and look at past town meeting day just to look at what we had included and stuff like that. And it's kind of eerily similar that every year the town managers report on the select board's report is pretty much the same thing. Other than one says the town managers report and the other one says the select board report. So I talked to Therese today and said, it just seems awful redundant that we have a report that says the same exact stuff that the town manager has. So or vice versa. And so I think we've agreed that we were gonna, with as long as the board's good with it is we would go through and just do one joint report from both identities of the year and review and just leave it at that and be one less report for to be in the town meeting day brochure. I mean, what does everybody feel about that? That was good to me. Yeah, I would agree with that because there is a lot of redundancy between the two because we work so close together. So it makes sense to do a combined report. And there's only so many, what happens to you happens to me. So if we had a flood, it affects all of us. So a lot of the items are everything that we're, we're already talking about the same issues. So I don't have a problem with that. I was, I have to do my, I'm sure my goal is to get all my town meeting stuff done this week or town report stuff done, excuse me, this week drafting the war and the whole thing. So I'll kick out a draft and then you guys can, whatever, add to it if I've missed something. And maybe some towns, maybe the reason why there are two reports is maybe some towns the town manager doesn't agree with the select board and they have different opinions. And I will say that, seems like our between our board and the town offices where as one and maybe we just show being a show of solidarity to have one report produced. And then maybe when Teresa has hers done, she could just send it out and maybe we could just comment on it if there's something we think maybe needs to be added or don't forget about, but. Yeah. That's always helpful. You had to go back because you know, I go back through my calendar and different stuff for the year and it's been a busy year. So there's a lot going on by a fake ladybug floating around here somewhere. I did get a call today from Chris Bump of V-Trans. So he's out of wherever hibernation. So he's going to help me with the RFP for Pinello Bridge. So, which was good. So I don't, they've been in hiding, I think the state employees. So he reached out to me today. He's like, how's that going? Like I'm waiting for you. So he's like, okay. So we should be able to get that out too, which will be good and get that. Mike, I would like to see that done this coming summer. So. Okay. All right. So I guess at this point, we'll just have, we won't need any more notes or anything. We'll just have the board members and Teresa stay on. We'll, that point will just talk for a few minutes on the dedication piece of the report. And that'll be it. Sounds good. Bye, Lisa. Thank you. Bye. Thank you all. Thank you.