 anybody on the zone doesn't look like we do right now that's showing up on the screen man Sandy somebody needs to hit got it okay can you hear us all right Sandy are you listening thumbs up hey oh it's back there we'll see how impressive it is in a few minutes when we all start talking at the same time but it's very it's very interesting from from RC tier as well so welcome Sandy thank you for thank you for being here and do we have any amendments to the agenda yeah let's I have the easement for the CV fiber right away to be able to do construction up by the town garage yeah I forwarded it to Sarah earlier I know did you print that out Sarah no okay I wasn't sure you know I told the consultant who's handling the easement work that we had a meeting tonight that I bring to the board but I couldn't I didn't know where we were in the process right now we still needed to actually send it to Rob to look at whether we might take action on it tonight just a basic straight forward yeah look yeah I mean so many feet by so many feet with some description of where it is yeah I don't think we need to send that to you don't worry because we don't have a yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah okay so I'll get back to her and tell her you know the week we considered it will take action at the next meeting but I mean I think as far as we're concerned they can go ahead and do make ready prep and but once we authorize it in at the next meeting let's just start when we get down to the end of a regular agenda let's just read the language on the easement into the record and so we can all hear it and make sure nobody has it okay yeah good I don't make sense okay thank you so it's 505 we're we're almost right on time reviewing and possible approving of town-wide vote a 2023 town meeting updating the middle sex land use development regulations presented to the select board on August 2nd 2022 action possible so I have heard from no one select board member or other member of the community suggesting any changes any changes to the draft regulations and we had no input at our public hearing with regard to any changes I read it very carefully a month or six weeks ago I read it quickly again over the weekend and I didn't see anything that jumped out of me and I reviewed the I also reviewed the presentation that was done to us which gave the highlights of the changes and I didn't see anything that jumped out of me so I don't know if anybody else has anything if we make any as you as you all know if we decide to make any substantial changes then we have to have another public hearing it's just some grammatical thing a editorial thing we can we can do that right but I really I could not I could not see anything and I don't know if anybody else I went through it once fast before the last time we met we're gonna talk but then I went through it again much slower and I need a time I didn't I didn't see anything that caused me any concern what was very helpful is the is the summary of the changes that was in that presentation is one that when I read through the document I lose track of what the changes are and what's the way it's always been which makes it a little confusing right so with that is someone willing to make an appropriate motion Sandy can I can I just ask a question before we go there sure one of the one of the changes revolves around unit size and and making it more basically streamlining streamlining the approval process for three to six units and then it's there's a cutoff there and the seven or more just wondering like is there a reason that there the cutoff is is where it is and and what what's behind that the cutoff you know overall is based on you know what is the town plan say in terms of what do we want for each of the zoning districts you know higher higher density housing or or lower density housing and the we we open you know made it easier to build you know smaller multi family I think it's the three or four units I don't remember the cutouts you have it you you just said what they were recognizing farmhouses can be subdivided we need to have homes for you know families starting out they those can often be good places for them when you start moving into seven seven unit that's more like you know more of an apartment building out in a rural area and there should be you know greater review of that that it the thinking was more along those lines in line with sort of the goals that are set forth in the town plan okay yeah I looked at I looked at that too rainy I mean that's where that's where I get in trouble when I look at those because I say well why did we draw the line there instead of somewhere else or why did we so so in the world I live in you know there's some very clear distinctions between you know what's considered an actual multi-family building bait from the Department of Energy and whatnot and then that distinction was you know a five-unit building and I was just wondering if the effort was trying to match up with that and and and we were just off base or what what the consideration for that cutoff was so the description that you gave and and trying to say you know looking at changing over a farmhouse or something like that or that style of housing it's good enough for me anything else anyone Sandy would you be willing to refresh our mind on I know you had something in there I don't have in front of me now but about which I can understand 25% slope is a limit the is a cutoff limit for building and then the other thing is you're trying to protect the ridge line is there an elevation that you can't in town that you can't let me see if I can find it I don't remember it off the top of my head okay I think there's additional review for development on 25% I mean I don't understand why anybody want to build on a 25% slope but here's here's what it says 3.11 says development shall not take place on slopes slope gradients in excess of 20 saw 25% with the exception of limited site improvements necessary to facilitate development on contiguous land with less than a 25% gradient required agricultural practices and acceptable forestry practices are exempt from this section in accordance with section 73 is that like a driveway or something that's what it would seem to imply yeah yeah like like somebody has a flat I know that I know that the slope issue came up I mean in part because of drainage and water you know water impacts on steep slopes become very difficult to manage so the other one is there is that altitude limitation somewhere in here I'm looking yeah I don't it doesn't jump right out of me unfortunately but I remember 2,500 feet does that sound right ensure that no buildings are placed on steep slopes or extended the most a height of land highest point of any prominent bridge winder hilltop and that is section 6.1 subdivision lot density calculations 6.1 and now it's under section F natural and scenic resource protection I'm almost there but is there a specific elevation restriction I don't know it's not about the elevation it's the ridge line yeah not about the height of the baseline yeah so we would be in your opinion kind of like in the situation where Worcester recently wanted to put up a I think it was a cell tower we wouldn't be able to do that either well we've had restrictions on cell towers in our in our we have that in our existing zoning and I think that there's a tower overlay district that's in our zoning now and I think we carried that forward into this new proposal that covers for towers you know above a certain elevation I don't remember now what that elevation is and then also you know the ridge lines up on dumpling hill so that's a specific overlay district just for cell towers would it be fair to say that that the ncs tower on between east hill and mccullough hill road would still be allowed that is still allowed that's not within the overlay district and actually I believe there's a proposal going forward to increase the height of that to reduce the height of it to increase it to increase it increase yeah okay yeah I think the tower area was more the the Worcester range area where there's not development as well as dumpling hill which is the hill that's right by the moment school yeah good so Peter you need a motion yes let's see after reviewing make a motion that we approve the little sex land use and development regulations for a townwide vote on town meeting in 2023 is there a second to that motion second oh thank you um any further discussion all in favor whoop go ahead to add can we just provide to go through it one more time as a proof reader because I think there were still some grammatical errors that got left in there sure I mean I think that's that's allowed anyway isn't it minor grammatical corrections or whatever yeah sure um so the motion passes thank you sanny congratulations the plan is on track thank you good job okay considering a subcommittee recommendation that a certain architectural firm responding to requests for proposals conduct a feasibility study of the current town hall likely so I believe the way this goes is that the subcommittee is going to make a recommendation to us and we presumably accept that recommendation or not I I think we want to wait for Dave Megida he was expecting to come at 530 okay is he he's not on is he Sarah okay I'd like to wait for him okay so queen go to maybe 605 reviewing the town all right well let's let's see we've got a couple of things we can do here do we know if ruben is coming or not he cannot come until seven o'clock on november 15th possibly seven o'clock on november 15th okay so do we want to talk about the speeding ordinance or implementation of a social media policy what's your pleasure well they're both so exciting yeah let's talk about the speeding everybody's favorite subject so I read through all that stuff and it did me a lot about speeding but I did just just before we we dig into the into the meat of it I did all of a sudden one one interesting thing did did jump out of me so on page nine of this long document it says generally speaking the vermont agency of transportation traffic and safety division does not recommend setting speed limits on class three gravel roads most people tend to drive on gravel roads at speeds slower than what towns might have sat not true behind me the traffic the traffic engineering survey is a reasonable method for helping you make an informed decision about the proper speed for a particular road no one criteria by itself determines reasonable and safe anyway I thought that was interesting with that okay so that's page nine determining the speed paragraph three that kind of surprised me well Steve Martin and I both got slower than the speed line I didn't really drive slower than the speed limit but sometimes I don't sometimes I get raised I got killed last night by a teenage rally driving well when the road when the road behind my house he's still road is the way it is now honestly got us like a super highway they come down that bill at 50 or 60 miles an hour it's crazy so are we considering um what are we doing we're just reviewing well what we're trying to figure out is the path forward because as we know right now we can't enforce our speeding our speeding ordinance because we're improperly posted and improperly done and and all that so um well we were afraid we were going to hear and we did hear and Sarah's probably going to say it again is that to redo all that we need to do a traffic study which involves of course money time trouble effort all of the do we know how long we've been out of compliance probably forever I don't think we ever I mean we thought we were in compliance Randy but when you really read through it we're where we where we fouled up was when I believe and help me out here when we actually posted the roads like we have that ordinance that Sarah sent us and it tells out you know what the speed limits are but we didn't put like you're supposed to put signs so many feet before where the speed change it you know blah blah blah we never complied with that we just we just didn't do it we put signs where the change was but we didn't put signs ahead of where the change was you know but warning warning signs that the speed limit was going to change or what right right right right so I would tell you from what I know now we've never been in compliance now and I'll get to you in a minute Sarah I mean what begs the question for me in looking all into all this is and I know this is maybe it's because it's the midterm elections and I'm a little hyper sensitive to all this political stuff but what's the point of doing this if we can't enforce the speed anyway which clearly right now we can't go ahead Sarah and this is why I'm here I'll speak up okay so um I had a conversation with our Christian Meyer at central Monterey planning commission he is a guy who would do us would be involved in this so here's the deal the way it works is that you don't post speeds for all the roads you just post for the most the most problematic roads otherwise you have a blanket speed limit for roads that are of issue the measurement for the traffic study is the 15th fastest person becomes the benchmark so if they do a study of 100 cars you get to the 80 everybody 85 and below is that's that's where you draw the line and what the and what the benchmark speed limit should be so people are driving a certain road at the you know 15th let's say it's like you try to set it at 35 I gotta get my brain around this the 15th if the 15th half fastest person is at 35 miles an hour then that's where you set the speed limit it's also a new thing doesn't have anything to do with who's the first fastest it does not I was going to volunteer to try and put back and then the um are you talking about using one of those things that they're going to put little things across no it's just then you don't know that you're you're you're not being told what to drive no you're not going to measure they're going to take measurements over certain roads and the certain roads are the ones that you tonight or eventually decide which of the roads you want measured otherwise you just set a blanket speed limit for various roads you can set 25 miles an hour but do it judiciously and for paces with high density well where people ride bikes or the schools so talking to christian about his schedule and getting together a budget it looks like they were not going to be able to do any type of traffic study until the summer because once the snow falls their equipment gets ruined and then it's mud season and blah blah blah so his recommended he's going to come back to the board depending on what you decide how many roads you would like measured and give us a quote to put in for the budget starting after the fifth the july 1st fiscal year if you're interested in that and what average of the cost i don't know he's gonna he's it depends if you say we want one road you say you want five roads you you know you work you decide what roads you want measured i thought we'd done this before oh there it is i know but i mean in my time on the board we didn't have about it but we didn't actually hire okay for the same reason i thought it was like seven thousand dollars or something or maybe i mean well let's hope i don't know so if you get one road you just decide to do shady rail or just decide to do shady rail in brook road that's going to be very different than doing shady brook road center well and looking you know and looking at the list in our current speed i think that's pretty much the list okay i mean we need to go we need to go through it but you know certainly it's going to be broke road certainly it's going to be center road calder hill road of course might be a question but that road's impassable most of the time anyway east hill road molly simple hill portal road shady rail three mile bridge road and west hill road i mean i think those here here this is thinking can i can i make a comment yep yes and we uh the planning commission uh dealt with this a little bit when we were doing the work of the mill sites village and sarah explained it was you know super helpful and but i also read through the um the guidance from v-trans there's a risk that you have i'll take peters east hill road for example if 85 percent of the people who drive down east hill road or driving down east hill road at 50 miles an hour you cannot realistically set the speed limit at 35 miles an hour so the traffic study might actually support higher speed limits rather the lower speed limits right and i so that's one one thing to think about and the other piece is yeah maybe the select board has a policy that roads be maintained to support travel at the speed limit that's desired which may be you know 35 or 40 or in accordance with the highway ordinance that you have yeah i think the um the the guidance from v-trans says people drive at the speed the road is safe to drive at and if you widen it and or maybe excuse me but or maybe just a little faster sometimes away faster but you know i i mean using east hill as an example my favorite my favorite example there are times when it isn't safe to drive 10 miles an hour on east hill and there are other times when it's safe to drive 60 miles an hour so when do you do your traffic study you're not going to do it in the winter that's for darn sure you're not going to do it in mud season that's unlikely so you're going to do it when the road is maybe very similar to the way it is today which is like a super highway i think that's i think that's the point that sandy's trying to make is that that by the time you hit that good weather and we do that study very well could you know impact it in the exact opposite way that you want it to um you know i i look at this and and you know you hear people always talk about oh you know somebody almost ran me off the road or oh they're driving fast you know how fast is fast it's all subjective none of us are you know what's fast to you might not be fast to me um or vice versa right exactly so um you know i i'm just curious about how big is the problem that that we have really um you know if we if we go through the efforts we spend the money on the on the traffic studies and we go through this whole effort just so we can enforce it are we going to get more coverage no well that's exactly what i said 15 minutes ago is this a fool's uh is this in a way a fool's errand yeah problem with just keeping the signs up as they are i think you're i think if you leave the signs up the way that they are people are going to drive they're going to see the signs the majority of the folks are going to try to abide by those limits and the people that are going to exceed those limits are probably going to exceed them whether or not we've gone through all this effort to make it enforceable or not and then when they do are we going to have a sheriff sitting around to actually enforce it no i was here i was here the day the sheriff came in the last time this was before covid he said the problem is the like he had just come from shady real and he said the roads don't match up you talk about one speed limit of 30 miles an hour which it's posted differently when you go by the school it's posted he said the posting doesn't match with the ordinance and that's why they can't write the ticket right so either his suggestion is we change the ordinance to match the correct description because he says i can't write it because your ordinance isn't speaking the right information right well we the the ordinance has blank statements like it says well there's more than one speed according to what he told me there's more than one speed limit sign on shady real there's a school there he says that's the problem and he said it's not so much i don't know if you have to rewrite your ordinance so much is to make it correct to what you have posted is more or less what he relayed to me or move the sides well isn't isn't isn't the difference that it's 30 miles an hour around rumby school and for ways either side that's a school zone and that that i think that's enforced by the fact that it's a school zone and then you get down the hill a little bit farther i don't know if it's 35 or 40 but this just says it's 30 miles an hour from the intersection of west hill road and again he said that's not even the name that's on the road sign i think he told me right so he said that's the problem it does none of this is matching what so he can't write a ticket to that i think i mean don't don't get me wrong because it requires some careful measurement and some some improved description but i mean i think we could do that relatively easily i don't see that as i mean i don't i don't see that as a big hurdle the question is is it going to require a traffic study if that involves changing the speed limit on different sections of the road and i think it's gonna i think it does yeah so i think we're in i think we're in for a traffic study but my my question is just going back a little bit and talking about use of town resources and money and all those issues i went over uh it was probably in august and i sat over in putnam bill at the morning at drive time just to see if i could tell what the effect of our flashing signs was and i would tell you people slow down they don't not every one of them slows down but it's substantially different than the way i remember it so that makes me think you know maybe we need to buy four or six of the portable signs with the flashing lights and put those around and maybe that's more effective than anything else we can do i don't know the answer to that but i'm just wondering if we're not taking an obsolete backward old-fashioned approach to to this by but we got to make it we got to make it so we can enforce it right well i think the first place to start is probably getting the road names correct on the ordinance yeah and the speed limit signs right if it's truly more than one speed limit on that sign you're not i don't think you have to do a traffic study because it's already posted at that so he's just saying for them to write a ticket they have your ordinance has to match was actually that makes sense so we could amend the ordinance i would assume you don't need to do a traffic study to amend it to what it currently is only if we wanted to change the only if you wanted to change something right well i would i would suggest to start out with the approach might be to say we're not changing the speed we're just we're just clarifying and straightening out our ordinance and then get the get the sheriff in here and say okay are we good now or no or do we need to do a track traffic study our position is we've not changed the speed limit on any of the roads we've clarified where it is i think whether that'll work or not i don't know but i mean that that i think is a relatively easy thing to do um and this doesn't have it and then there roads that don't have speed limits right right because they weren't a part of this original study because these were in a study right and then but we picked the roads to be in the stuff yeah we picked the roads to be in the study and then the other roads just don't have speed limit signs right okay and we can't i mean i mean if you want to go 50 miles an hour down the class for a row there's no way to enforce that yeah okay but we still have to go through the ordinance process of updating it and advertising it and everything if you want to do that just give me the direction so that we can start warning it that way well someone needs to go like you can need to do an inventory of how roads are posted and what the correct you know road i think we need to i think we need to correct correct the description first there's a nice first step well why not just take take and compare the two and if we determine that we need to clarify names at that point we can do that all at the same time but i think we should be making sure that this at the posted limit on the road sign and the ordinance match up at the same time so it seems like run an inventory of what all of whether the roads are posted at see if it matches here check the names and then change it all at once oh yeah i agree but make sure make sure that the description matches the area where it's posted yeah are we going to find that there's signs that are not on here like that someone randomly put up well we'll find out i don't think so because it wasn't it wasn't it last year the previous year that all the signs got changed a couple years ago yeah the question i would have though is it's kind of like remember when we put the flashing sign in in putt numsville yes they remember it was a big deal and we had to move it yes that was terrible and and anyways um but i don't know if the same regulation applies to downroads because you know it's a statement because you have remember the issue was that we're putting a 35 in and we had it in the 50 zone so you have to put a sign up reduce speed ahead right so i don't know if we have to do that on i don't know i don't know either victor i don't have the answer but i think i think all i'm saying is that i think randy and i are saying the same thing is to get this language to match what's really out there is the first step and there are probably some signs i don't know but they're usually every time i go around there's some signs that are missing especially if they get knocked down or whatever they don't get replaced but i believe there was something about you know i have to be a sign every certain beat like you can't go a certain distance with that oh yeah right also things you can't change a speed limit within a certain time you know distance so it can't go right in that side of it so do you want me to call the sheriff's office so you just drive around do you want me to just give me some direction what you want me to do with this stuff to us to take that inventory right i mean they're gonna take the inventory for us no but i mean at least you know i'm the sheriff's probably i i would suggest that that you know we take the inventory um check the names and at that point before we make any changes we could grab somebody and say this is what we're trying to do this is what we found do you have any insight this is what exists right now yeah and then we can go to the warning of the ordinance procedure because that's gotta be advertised and you have to hear every hearing i think i have the sheriff's name that i spoke to downstairs and the notes gave me of what the issues were okay this says a traffic engineering study is required to lower or raise existing speed limits so our position is we're not changing them we're just clarifying whether that ultimately will wash or not who knows but but somebody's gonna look at this and look at the new one and say oh yeah but what you've effectively done is change the speed limit here or there or who knows what but i think mostly it's clarification like you look at brook road a maximum 30 miles an hour from the intersection of center road and traveling east to the intersection of center road well that's pretty much right he said his biggest one was shady railroad yeah because it changes yeah well no because the names the roads names aren't accurate well we've changed the way we right we've changed the way our road signs work i i still don't understand how that happened but we did it anyway now center road goes all the way up to the bottom of shady railroad and then east hill road starts at that intersection correct it always used to be east hill road went to the intersection where it came up the hill so center road grabbed a hunk of east hill road and i never understood how that happened but anyway is there an action all right well the action is i guess i guess i would request our uh road foreman under the careful and diligent supervision looking at this quickly i don't think it is that bad reality is we should actually have a sign and we'll get a new sign here can you just finish that statement you said you're going to request the road foreman under the road do you want to worry the road no don't don't don't don't emotion don't tell me no but i'm just i'm just saying eric our faithful road foreman with a little bit of time i think could fix this and also at the same time be even more familiar than he already is with our road system if that turns out to be a horrible thing come back to us and we'll figure out what to do if you need help with that oh okay thank you no two two eyes two one if you drive and the other has to clip forward yeah right if you need help okay okay so we're good on that one so i think we are ready to go back welcome sir thank you for coming david yes thank you for coming david um we are ready to go back to considering a subcommittee's recommendation and a certain architectural firm responding to our request for proposals conduct a feasibility study of the current town hall action likely and what i was in the middle of saying when we decided to wait for your arrival because for once in our career we were ahead of schedule which is always unusual um as i believe this this process goes and please correct me if i'm wrong you guys are going to make a recommendation to us and then we accept that recommendation or ask for reconsideration or who knows what we do but let's take it one step at a time so what we're looking for is a report from you guys you review the proposals um what you're recommending right do you want to you want me to start okay sure so um is sandi are you still on i don't know she's still on so sandy um okay good hi sandy let's see your face because you're part of the subcommittee so sandy and um david megida uh who had i as you know we had reached out to him a few months ago just in this whole process when we were looking for the cd bg grant um david has been really helpful in um sort of guiding us through this process um and with the recommendation from the board um we went uh sandi and david worked on an rfp um that was submitted to a list of about 15 different architects and um we got a miraculous five which was really great we were really impressed by the number of people who responded to the rfp um so it was our job to review the five and be really looking at we had a we had a rubric um to look at in terms of um you know how these uh architect firms scored um some of the things that we were looking at were things like do they have experience with municipalities have they done buildings municipal buildings have they worked in vermont because some of them you know had more experience outside of the state so do they understand small towns um small vermont towns um and how well did they sort of respond to the rfp and and the um and what we were looking for um in in a report or what they they could do for a study um david you met with them people came to the town hall you have the opportunity to turn home yeah and and how many took took you up three four firms should have okay great um and you know so they were able to see the town and get a little better sense dave was available for questions um and uh and then so basically because i was quite the lay person um and sandi somewhat also have a lay person in terms of looking at these proposals what was challenging for for us um it was easy for us to go through and say oh look they got these awards these are the projects that they've worked on these are their sort of educational um you know their uh you know credentials um that part was easy what was hard was sort of looking at what they were going to do in their scope of work and compare that to um the cost of the scope of work because as you know when you saw them there were a number of um you know this is what you sort of base prices and then there are add-ons and as a lay person i didn't know you know what what add-ons are required what would we want to do as add-ons so david was really helpful in helping us sort of parse out what what are we looking at what is the bare minimum that we want to do here um and and also you know dav asked some really good questions like well how soon do you want to do this like if you're going to be making changes to the town hall whether it's rebuilding a town hall or doing rehabilitation or building a new town hall whatever it is that we are deciding to do if this is 10 years down the road we don't want to spend all this money doing you know x y and z and so um you know in the end all of the things that they mentioned are things that would eventually have to get done but for the purposes of this um what we sort of narrowed it down to was that we didn't want to present to the town's people um sort of plug in numbers without really doing a an evaluation of the town hall that we think is is necessary um we didn't want to say to the to you know just present at town meeting this is what we've done and this is what hypothetically are the problems or this is what hypothetically it would cost to to do x y and z so um so we we narrowed it down to um two firms um and then uh we interviewed them um and sat down with them for about an hour each um to to sort of get their take on on you know some of the questions that like sandy and i had from that layperson standpoint of life well what is this what is the structural engineering thing that you would do or what is the civil engineering piece of this and why would we want to do it or why wouldn't we want to do it that kind of thing um and um and we um and chime in anytime gave um please if if i'm missing anything or sandy if i'm missing anything um and uh so so we sat down with each of them um and those two that we uh which i told you guys about work laugh river design and um vermont uh integrated integrated integrated integrated yeah i want to say integrated but integrated architect right um so between the the the the two um we uh we felt um sort of unanimously that uh v i a would be providing the support um and the professional guidance and uh be able to communicate with our town's people in a way that um felt like uh would be um they they'd be really good representatives of of speaking about the town hall and representing um us in terms of our our message to the town um about what's going on with the town hall um and what the options are um for the town hall did you explain to the board previously about the three options three different looks you want to take right so we were uh go ahead we were yeah go ahead one would be a renovation after the we select the firm at the mom board they're going to be meeting with the users and with the board here the board select board to look at three different options one would be a renovation of this building one would be a renovation of this building with perhaps uh in addition to this building and the third would be an all-new building and those are some pretty good options we're hoping that one of them is going to surface the talk very quickly but we won't know that until the consultants start talking with the users and doing a code review and a structure review etc of this existing structure until all that's done they cannot give us a recommendation they got to work through the whole process and there's going to no doubt the more requests we'll ever be able to afford so they're going to practice reality with these folks and the the IA the one integrated architecture they're used to that process they're used to getting far more requests and they're ever going to be able to afford so we have to work through the very public very kind and respectful process to talk with people get all our needs met at the lowest cost possible and I think my strong recommendation throughout this whole process would be that we're not doing something with a 10-year life we're doing something with a 50-year life or more and there's lots of different ways you can finesse the project so that you can accommodate future renovations we don't know what's going to be available for technology for example in 20 years but we do know we can put some trays in the ceilings we can move wires around inexpensively they're confident that I'm confident they know how to do that and they've done it as 42 other municipal sites in the state and Dave you did some reference checks on them as well do you want to share just a little bit about sure I don't want to disparage anybody I want to just say that I got one of the best recommendations I ever heard in my entire career from the I about the IA from the municipal manager of Waterbury and he said that if I could sum this up they're the best consulting from any kind I've dealt with in my 41 years we have to when evaluating the five proposals there were some numbers that were way out there and we spend a lot of time trying to clarify that because they're the napples to apples comparison between the five and even still there's a little finessing that we have to do so if the board proves our recommendation we'll sit down with the IA Sandy Blizz myself and anybody else wants to join us so I think it's a little bit of a negotiation but when you put everything on the table the price seems very similar from the two finalists and we're looking in terms of you're probably all wondering how much is this going to cost right so I think we're right right now with the IA for what they recommend it's just just under 28,000 and that's you know what Dave is talking about is the you know potential that you know we might want to negotiate it down to 25 figure out what we really need in here the other thing that that I I thought was really good is that they have a lot of experience helping towns or working with towns on the municipal planning grants and so because we're in the middle of applying for one that's due December 1st we would sit down or I would Sandy's going to be gone sit down with with you know if we decide to go with VIA once we've figured out you know sort of what we're going to do with them one of the things that they will help me do is create the budget because the thing about the municipal planning grant is that I can't we can't pay for things that have already been paid for and so we we talked to them to say you know so can it be that you put off billing us for certain things they can have done the work we just can't have paid for the work so that it fits if we get the municipal planning grant which is very competitive we may not get it we got it last year two years ago so there's no guarantee that we're going to get it but but I have checked with Jenny at at the CCD my acronyms are off but the and and it's fine that we have we've gone through a competitive process as far as they're concerned and we just have to be careful that we're not putting things in that have already gotten paid for so that's how they would help me because I'm not sure what comes first and you know what can be put off in this process we did also tell them that we're not necessarily going to be able to come to town to town meeting on you know March 3rd and say here it is these are the three things um that's we're not we're not going to make this go fast just to get it for town meeting but what we do want to be able to present to town meeting is this this is how far we've come and this is where we are yeah so um the uh yeah if you want to look at this or you have that yeah i'm just going to summarize anyways you're not getting construction documents this is very early in the planning process what you're going to get from PA as a minimum is going to be conceptual design with some numbers behind it what it's going to cost to get that conceptual design done and they'll include everything from their time to consultants time to permitting cost to insurance we'll take care of that they won't do insurance we'll have to do that but they know all the buttons that need to be pushed to make sure that the final product is darn close to what they recommend but you're not going to have it it's important you're not going to have construction documents only after the plans they come up with are approved by this board and you give the go ahead to do the the next steps will they start working on design development and construction documents please it's a long process what are you fair to say you're going to get a vision you're not going to get a vision of what we want or what what what they are recommending the best part of their recommendation of net one quota gave you their set has been extremely good listeners so what they're going to do is they're going to listen to what the town wants and they're going to try to meet all your needs of what you want to have in this building through their design that's what architects do the good architects do that they listen to what the customer wants with the building users are going to want and then get the blessing in this case from this board say we agree with this is the list of things we want to have accomplished and then they'll go off and they'll put together something that's going to be kind of sexy to show you with computers today they can do all kinds of fun stuff but it'll give you a good feel for what you're going to get what their recommendations are and i'm assuming they're going to identify the deficiencies yes thank you yeah that's why we were pushing to have the structural engineer and civil engineer on board because those are expensive items to be surprised by so to get those things looked at initially he's going to really make that number that this may cost them a much more viable and eliminate drastic those things can be explosive and increases in budget if you don't know so um and i did read all the all the proposals and all the stuff some of it went right over my head but i got it for the most part the one piece i didn't see in there which is a question i think we're going to have to face is and i'm not sure it it makes sense to include that in the scope of this study maybe it doesn't but let's let's say hypothetically so they come back and the cost of renovating this building is going to be more than the cost of building a new building so it makes sense to build a new building hypothetically the piece we're not going to know is we have some town on land available where we could build that building other than this site right how do we as a community get our arms around is it important for the town hall to be on the site would we consider having it on another site because if we if we're going to have that conversation then the value of this site in this building as something to sell is going to play into the numbers and it may be premature to start thinking about that now but it seems to me we need to at least get some idea and maybe that's up to the town to do that is to have somebody come in and and i'm not sure appraisal is the right word but do a do a what would this property sell for type of situation so we can have that number i mean these guys are not going to do that no they specifically we should be doing that i think we should be doing that in parallel and at the same time at the same time we should be thinking about i mean we own land over by the school we own land down by the fire department we own a few nice parcels of land down along the river on the three mile bridge road that'd be a great site for a town hall um i'm being facetious i was expecting those today by the way um but but be thinking about that because i just have a i just have a a feeling in the back of my head that that's going to be part of this process if we get that if we get to that point and maybe maybe it's premature to think about it now i don't know no it's not premature but i think you're you are definitely ahead of the information we're going to be getting yeah they're going to let you know order of magnitude pricing which one of those options is the least expensive but in your conversations that you're going to have with us with the subcommittee and with them you may say you know what after all this talk we don't we're not interested in a new building if we can do it for this get what we want from purchase i'm throwing stuff out mm-hmm we don't it's being new and a renovated building we're going to get the exact same things that our users and our public needs we don't have the stomach to do this so eliminate that option yeah you really can't make that decision till you hear back from them order of magnitude pricing saying pricing similar between those three options or no there's not at all there's the cost of a newly constructed building far less then to that cost somebody you're absolutely right peter somebody's going to find out the value of this plot and that's the value of this plot is going to be affected by what the civil engineer is going to find we already know that there's some deficiencies sure sure but just the just the site here is in a pretty attractive position and it also is attractive from the point of view of enhancing our village and all of that which is you know sort of part of the bigger we talked about that a little committee picture yeah and we talked with the consults i think yeah if we do this right let's say we stay on this site for now we really wanted to speak about middle sex it's not just a building housing functions it's something show middle sex a strong vibrant community and be percent that have been pretty exciting i'll also add that they did mention which i felt was a bit of a selling point making making it feel to me like we would be very supported that they actually aren't accepting new work but they were very intrigued by this one um and you know we're anxious to that's the whole that's the old i liked it they say i mean you know barb ruck caught in the corner of your job when they said that but but when he said you know that that um you know the the people who he checked references on really also felt extremely supported by by the team so i like that i think all the firms this is a lost leader for them they all want a big project i believe that the two finalists did that that's great for us right yeah i would just say you know first of all i think it was great we got five proposals yeah i did read all five of them i didn't read down through the list of awards and prizes and too much of that but i paid a lot of attention to the cover letter and the scope of work and the way they laid it out and i thought you know we could have worked with any of them probably so we're lucky to have five to pick from or four to pick from five to pick from yeah yeah so unless anyone any other members oh i'm sorry yeah i mean maybe just playing to see that i don't know it's probably putting a cart before the horse but has anybody thought of maybe doing a combined building of town hall and town shed we have yeah i mean we've got the property just Eric made a good point this afternoon we talked about this and uh to be transparent we talked about it and uh it's a lot easier to build a combination building than it is two separate buildings and of course i've already said this you know the last time we talked about it i mean i think we're just throwing money down that just down the tubes to even think you can fix this up and if you want a place for the for the town clerk and uh and the town garage just go build one yeah we may very well find that out right and i think that we have this is that i know i know what you're saying it does feel like and you know if we get a grant that you know it could help out a bit um the maximum we can apply for is about 25 000 um so i don't you know i think we'll apply for that and they will give you less if they like your project and don't want to fall in the whole thing but there are new opportunities popping up all the time um i was going to bring this up but as another matter but um by friday i was speaking with um mr pennbrook who's the director of planning and uh buildings with the state um they are currently standing up uh efforts to push out money um regarding you know efficiency work within buildings uh we had some conversations as to whether or not that was isolated to existing buildings or if it included new construction efforts for municipalities and whatnot and uh the effort is new enough that uh the new construction piece was a little bit up in the air but um you know they're looking at at projects uh being awarded up to five hundred thousand dollars to complete this type of work um and there he suggested that uh we make sure we connect with uh regional planning commission and i mentioned the fact that we have been working with christian on some some various efforts um and he said that that was great um and that we should make some connections there and find out more about this um so i was i was going to bring it up under other matters but when you start talking about how we paid for this and and the cost you know the some of the analysis work that are in some of these proposals like uh i know some of them had additional costs for energy analysis and right and whatnot those that program fully funds those efforts they have contractors that they're currently out they got rfps out right now um with reputable contractors here that would come in and provide that service as part of that program so there are opportunities to um not use the town resources for all of those efforts now you said this guy's name was uh it's eric embrook eric embrook he's the director of uh i believe it's uh planning and buildings planning and property management uh with bgs okay that's the word i was waiting for yeah so there's there's uh so you're saying we might we can get up to five hundred thousand dollars that's to redo this building and it may not just include just existing buildings have and i had a conversation i asked the question is if a town was looking to do additions or new construction if that could be included in that um and he needed to look into it a little bit further for that answer but it may have been possible so i think for us that's a connection that we need to make through this effort because some of the things that these guys are planning to charge us for and that should be discussed in how you know we have those we have those conversations that there may be other outside sources that we pull into this process that don't require us to utilize town resources so i just i want to make sure we're aware of that and we should have some follow-up conversations with um with those folks do you remember sandy or um dave because i know a couple of the um rmps had mentioned they would sort of support you in identifying funding were they one that this they say no on historic preservation consulting i don't know if that's funding that's probably just more about keeping following the rules of keeping it historic building but um is that a part of this that they will help us like because i'm wondering that they they could even facilitate it but it could be that it's paid for because that's the other thing that that um i felt what we were going to get from this team was um more guidance and like sort of helping direct this as opposed to feeling like it was going to be put on the select board to have to do all the steps for this whole process because that's just not something that like any of us really have time for what were your thoughts on that dave no you guys don't need to worry about the details you're going to be presented with an option that have been fully vetted and fully worked by the consultants but there's going to be some logical points where you're going to be updated and tell us i'll say tell whoever's working on it that yes we like where you're headed keep keep going or we like we had with this little tweak or we like where you had it by the way did you know that there are funds available from this organization but no we're not going to ask you to be involved in paint colors what's that i'm not going to ask you to pick out colors of paint but you are going to be shown a lot of different options and the committee should fully recognize that this board needs to make decisions on an ongoing basis but the grunt work behind giving you the options will be done long before it gets to you i don't know we need more options and those do so well with decisions and if the board feels that you don't not have all the information just tell us so um if if a recommendation if if you guys can agree to that that we um engage with via tonight that would be helpful because i need to start working on the budget for the mpg for the what the municipal grant and when did you say that was due this december 1st so that is written most of it and getting letters of support and stuff but the budget is where we need to hone in this we're not going to have to expend any money right off no no yeah we're not if i understand that right and pardon my ignorance is that you're gonna we're going to apply for the grant first well the the grant just happens to be due december 1st so we're going to go ahead and like agree to so so well yes we may have to pay for some initial work right um and that's why the budget piece is important for me because i need to know what in this budget is going to be something that we pay them after we know we get the grant which isn't till february 1st but that's like the earliest i mean what and you know we've already learned this have less than the hard way once when we're authorizing the uh committee to negotiate and retain this firm to do this work we're putting ourselves on the hook for that yes we are which was whatever we're thinking that that's you know that the fallback is the arpa money or whatever it is we have to be ready willing and able and prepared to come up with that 25 or 28 000 dollars whatever it is just in case i i agree i mean i'm reading things every day about these pots of money that are coming in here and there and for this and that and you know you can get yourself thinking oh my god we should certainly get that and we won't have to spend the money but uh the other thing of course is uh which we all know is this 25 000 dollars is a tiny little amount compared to what the core whether it's renovations or rebuilding or whatever that's going to be that's going to be a big bill and who knows if we can get some help for that that would be that would be great but it's likely going to be a bond and the town's going to have to pay for it over time so this is just a this is just the first baby step in the in the process unfortunately and yes exactly right if we don't get the grant we are going to need to come up with the money which is what i believe when we had our list of our but it was around 30 000 that we set aside 25 to 30 thousand that we set aside for this actual process yes Victor yeah go ahead sandy i i i think what we're going to need to do is you know the um the select board can approve or okay moving forward that Liz and Dave would begin on a negotiation for a contract that would break it down into like a phase one and a phase two and the phase two would be what would cover if we get it right so that it's very clear that we're not you know spending money that would be covered by municipal planning grants uh beforehand but at the same time it's clear that we're going to be able to get started on this before we know that the letter now we will have the municipal planning grant right do we do we have a timeline on when they award that those funds February 1st yeah Peter yes i think you and i are probably the only ones in here that are old enough to remember and i don't know is it going to be beneficial to bring this up but wasn't there wasn't this all done about 12 15 years ago by radio would that serve any purpose there was there was a very informal process but i remember nothing nothing is comprehensive no no probably not but still uh john and whatever we're in on where is it well i'm sure it's downstairs probably tucked away in that vault somewhere i mean i can't you know i i'm not saying it would replace it but i can't i mean i i would imagine that it might have uh you know some value i would think so yeah well what was that uh victor just like a walkthrough analysis type of deal or was it no it was more than it was more than that there was but it wasn't it wasn't anywhere near as comprehensive as this it was you know i i think it was when when we replaced the boiler which is now failed exactly that's that's what caused the discussion so you know what do we do about energy improvements what do we do about replacing the boiler what do we do about the you know building in general that kind of that that's what i remember yeah that's that's what i'm vaguely recalling right right all right any any i would presume any historical if we have if we have changed jocelyn's wiring diagram of when he put the electric heat down stairs that might be helpful but any any historical information we have about what was done to them here so probably gonna be interesting yeah well who knows i mean they may just look at it and say you know well this doesn't help us at all but they may find some measurements or things that are behind the walls that were found earlier yeah it can only be used like he's like he just said they may think it's very valuable it may say no we want to do it ourselves again to get an update yeah but what i don't think i don't think and i i could be i could be wrong Victor but i don't think we ever ever were so radiating a real blueprint of this building i mean we had sketches right of what it was but it wasn't you know it wasn't a vision of what you could do if you wanted to yeah yeah but anyway we should we should try and dig that out are you listening Sarah so i think to cut to the chase for tonight i think we have to decide if we're ready willing and able to approve the recommendation of our committee well let them go back and negotiate then i presume after the negotiation you would come back to us and say okay here it is and then we would approve it would you do you okay because right now we don't know what the what the final price is but we could also i suppose theoretically give them a range and say as long as it's no more than $28,000 or $30,000 or some amount we give you the authority to go ahead the other thing that i strongly feel is whatever number we come up with we need to put some kind of contingency number in there because they're things that i think they have it in here don't they 15 that's it that's not but is that included in the 28,000 or no i don't think so maybe i misread it i just know no matter what no matter what you do something's going to come up and they said oh well we have to look into this that's not included in our proposal it's going to cost six dollars you know it says this is a not to exceed fee estimate which sort of seems like a oxymoron not to exceed estimate i think it's it'd be great if this board give us the maximum number we can spend i think so too otherwise we're going to lose some time yeah and i know we don't have to have everything ready for town meeting but it should be nice to give people but pretty good pretty darn good presentation to town meeting yep i agree so so liz did you determine if there's contingency money in there enough i'll it now it says consultant fee is included 15 markup in addition other reimbursable expenses will be billed at 1.15 times cost that's reimbursable let's hear i don't think there was any i don't think there was well so there their amount right now is sitting at 28,000 yeah so if we said a 10 percent come in contingency be $2,800 15 percent it'd be whatever it is 30 whatever yes um i'd recommend 15 percent just because that'd be 32,000 32,000 and that's going to come out of our funds if we don't get a grant yeah shouldn't that be stated in your motion you know i'd well we're on the air now but here's the thing municipal planning grant wants to know what your other choices are and they're going to turn us down if they see that they're that we're going to use our ARPA funds we really want to use this we don't want to use the ARPA funds but if we have to we will come up with funds yeah i'd be i'd be muted for that reason victor even though it's not we all know we all know that's where it's going to come we're not going to sell and where we are mentioning it in the grant because you have i mean we already said that we didn't get the cdb g grant and um you know that part of this will you know inevitably get paid out of by ARPA funds because it's going to cost more than what we can get from the municipal planning grant anyway we know that um and i mean the the i you know the chances of us getting the full 25,000 are probably slim right but they might give us 9,000 or 10,000 and so that's you know where the remainder would come from right sandy in your experience have you done municipal like have you gotten the full amount every time you've asked or um i think so but that's you know right and we got the full amount when we asked for but it wasn't the full amount that we could apply for our grant it's all so so again and i'm just trying to keep us keep us on track here um um we basically have two two choices here and i understand i understand the time is of the essence bet but i think the question is if the board does not want that ready for town meeting we don't have to press the accelerator here no i think we do want it for time i think we think it's important to have the best presentation we can have at town meeting so so all right all i was going to say is there are two procedurally there are two ways to do this one is to um give your subcommittee the authority to negotiate a certain not to exceed amount which now to me is looking like 32 or 33,000 um obviously you're not going to tell them that when you start negotiating with them um but the other choice is to go ahead and do your negotiation and come back to us and we can have a special meeting with them a day or two to ratify whatever you come up with and if that makes the board more comfortable to do it that way i think that'll work i mean if we're going to move forward with this i'd say give them the not to exceed and and go um if we're not going to do it that's a different story but um i think my one of the things i would add to that is through this process and this negotiation process um i would want to ensure that uh they're aware that we're seeking other opportunities and if say this other avenue panned out and we were able to receive resources from there but we had to use their contractors for you know energy analysis or any other analysis for that for that matter that uh via is aware that we're we're pursuing something like that and it's not going to be a hang up if they don't use their guy to do something through this process um so that would be important to me and isn't it i mean so dave let's say that we all decide like we go through this process and at some point in this whole long process we decide that we're going to renovate the building you have a new contract with like if via could potentially be the lead on it right but that's not any of this that would be that's like a whole separate thing that's a whole separate committee for the entire project we're going to be only for what you read about right just this thing right logic will tell us if we're happy with them right that um they're going to get the whole job which is why this is probably a loss leader for them and for black rubber design right and so to your point randy i'm not sure that anything in the short term would like that that we would be able to come up and say oh look we can actually do this part ourselves well so there there are things in there specifically calling out like energy analysis and right i think and and in my discussion with with eric on friday we didn't include that we didn't include that okay that's like we knew that that was something that we could do so another time and that's like that's not in this yeah so your question is of course we say there's a funding source available to us but we need to use this engineer we can turn to them now and say we want that flexibility to tell you that we want this engineering firm instead of this one that you recommended that's well within our pounds yeah and my sense is that they're aware of this stuff as well they're they're probably on top of all these you know sources of funding especially because they do work with municipalities that need to to piece me all things together right very very fresh how logistically i mean what i don't want to do is let's say we can access some of this money but we have to use a certain engineer i don't want via to be surcharging the bill for the engineer because they're somehow providing supervision or i mean how would how would that all work we're talking about that that's that's exactly what what i'm asking randy is your thing out in public yet what you yeah so eric we basically were uh presenting on uh information for an event the agency of natural resources was putting on um and they happen to be there at the table next to us okay and eric you know said you know some of this is still being ironed out you know but we're actively seeking projects moving forward you know it was something like 46 million dollars that they were looking looking at and um like 35 of that was dedicated specifically to projects and they they anticipate you know um they want to see projects come forward is this is there some link you can send us or some sort of is this like build back better money or something i would is i will i will dig up what i thought and and if not i don't mind reaching out and asking for more specific that might be helpful for us just when we're you know i think it was something in the press because i when you brought this up it rang a bell it was something i read recently i don't know if it was from a digger or uh i tried to go on that website really quick just to see if i attach a name to it um but no doing it for me so google money to help town for my i'm going to make a motion go for that we accept the recommendation of the committee to engage uh v i a for the purpose of doing our um are we calling it a feasibility study or uh just a study of the town hall and that we authorized the committee to negotiate the final cost budget with um with v i a i'm assuming that once that's done we are going to have to ratify and approve that before signing up on a document i don't think so if we give them a do not do not exceed number and they come back with that number then it's a done okay i think it's a done that we set the amount uh that the committee's authorized to spend at the quoted 28 000 plus a 15 percent contingency for unforeseen expenses or cost overruns the thing i i just want to be sure we're we're clear on is that contingency should not be should not be part of the negotiation with them we want you to negotiate the best price with them in our minds we're going to think okay there's potentially 15 more but we don't want to throw that into the contract right yeah okay got it got it thank you is there is there a second to that motion i will thank you randy sorry you've got that four of us to accept the recommendation of the subcommittee to engage v i a to conduct the town hall feasibility study and to authorize the committee to negotiate the final budget with the d a a to its quoted 28 000 plus a 15 000 contingent 15 percent contingency and i don't know where to do after that so i think that's it that's it yep yep yep so i think i'm going to use this question they will know because this is a on the record that we have a contingency we're not hiding it so we'll do but i i just don't want to be thrown into their contract right yeah yeah we'll tell them that contingency the contingency is for other items and things which may come up during the course of the study and i would think they would be glad to know that that was possible got to be careful you know how to you know how to deal with this i know you do yeah i mean whether they'll actually look at our minutes or not who knows but yeah we want to have it in the minute i would if i was them yeah i would do but anyway it's not going to be in there well maybe you just make the motion to be without the contingency in between the board you just we can handle it we're not going to get it unless we want it yeah so do you want to take 15 percent out or not no leave it in okay i want it in the minutes that's where that's what we're planning on or potentially planning on so with that all in favor of the motion please say aye i i i'm going to uh recuse myself from the vote just because of my relationship with the principle of black river design can i vote you go i'll vote aye so it's four i's one abstain or recusing whatever the right word is okay thank you thank you this will you send me a copy of that proposal so i can just have it in our record uh yeah do you want a paper copy sure that'll work i think this is yours she can have it okay because i thought there were extra one i know that sarah has i have i have one i want to i just want to put it in so let me start coming in i want to okay thank you guys and thank you now the real now the real work begins right so um are you going to call both of them in the morning or did you already talk with them i can't remember um i'm happy to do it you should tell me the protocol should somebody from the board be contacting them um or might the representative of the board that i mean i'm only saying you because you've been in contact with them but i can call them i don't know what do you guys think i think it should be somebody from the committee whether it should be you because you're on the board or that makes sense to me that it's this yeah she's on the board she's on the committee yeah okay unless you have a strong a strong reason that you shouldn't and dave should i mean i have no problems with dave doing it either but i'm fine with doing it um i think though dave you and i should talk because we'll want to set up sandi you're leaving friday right so you're sort of out and um so she's gone um we're going to want to meet with them asap okay and um like do we want to meet with them as soon as this week if we can okay all right and who's the person that i should call from da i'm going to go back take a look yeah the sign in the letter okay thanks guys um uh eight thank you for all your work yes it's going to be exciting and thank you sandy as well yes okay completely uh completely shifting gears discussion of whether the town should implement a social media policy as a part of the personnel policy i mean the answer is in my opinion we need to have a social media policy i'm not sure whether it's a standalone policy or whether it's part of the personnel policy but yeah i'm sorry go ahead vicar you need a policy as a policy uh pertaining to town-owned equipment right right i mean you can't you can't stop a guy a person from from using social media on their own phone i mean it's freedom you can and if you if you read through this stuff yeah they can be limited on what they can talk about with regard to town stuff as can't as can't wait like if all of a sudden you start posting stuff on social media about what's going on at our select board meetings i would prefer that that not happen so you're not an employee you're an elected official there is a difference well there is a difference but it would pertain potentially i would think to us as well as to employees well we better be sure well i think we probably if we're going to have a policy you can there can be recommendations in your policy about municipal people versus you know me so employees i don't disagree with you that i think it's personal responsibility what you do but as far as controlling someone else what they free speech i don't know about that so i yeah but here did you did you read the the first part of this you know they they pretty much say that therefore if a municipality wants to regulate its employees personal off-duty use of social media to do so in personnel or other policy specific to their behavior they have for consultation with its attorney i mean they're nervous about how you this is not an easy question how you do it i mean saying we should do it is one thing figuring out how to do it big difference is another thing but um certainly we've got and i did i did right i admit it was pretty quick but i did read through this and a lot of it made sense to me i mean we're not we're not looking at this tonight i just think it's something we should have on our radar scoring and we need to deal with i mean it's it's becoming a huge issue for not only governmental entities but private businesses and you know everybody else so having having a personnel or having a uh social media policy that regulates town sponsored accounts absolutely fine with putting in a personnel policy i think trying to regulate people's personal accounts is a completely different absolutely different no no no activity here so i just want to make sure we're clear about what we're what we're proposing that we move forward with discussion on and and my my stance would be that you know the personal personal social media realm is outside of the purview of this group and the personnel policy that we would potentially be talking about um the in my mind the personnel policy uh around social media would only regulate town sponsored accounts so like if the town had a a facebook account or if the town had a twitter account or or something that said we are the town of middle sex and my understanding is and correct me if i'm wrong sarah but as of today we don't have any social media and we've been advised to stay away from activating town sponsored social media accounts so the only thing the only thing i disagree with a little bit is if someone one of us or an employee who knows who were to start using social media to discuss town issues i think that's a problem it's it's a personal it it in my opinion it it really depends on as a select board member i'm very careful when i have conversations and i express my opinion and i i try to be very clear that i'm not speaking for the town of middle sex i'm not speaking for the select board or any other member of the board this is as a town resident this is my opinion so when i talk to somebody i'm trying to be very clear about that if somebody's misrepresenting um or if they're representing themselves for saying that they're representing the town in in that then then that's a completely different or or the other part is where they're disclosing information which was discussed in a confidential who knows who knows what i mean that you just you know it's it's tricky it's really tricky because you can you know free speech and all that you can't you can't prevent people from in my experience from what i've seen is they're fine as long as it's they're disassociated from the town but as soon as they say i'm a town employee and this blah blah blah blah without saying this is not the town's opinion that's where it becomes a problem you know for instance let's say let's you know representing themselves as a town agent you know well let's let's say for instance too when this has happened not in social media thank god but through the underground railroad of uh middle sex town communication you have two members of the road crew are having a spat and all of a sudden that bubbles out on the social media you know whether it's front porch forum or twitter or what it is um if it's town related if they're ever you know somebody's who knows having some kind of personal situation that's a different thing but if it if it relates to their work in the town like fred doesn't know how to drive the greater and this happened and that happened and the other thing happened that's not appropriate but how you draw that line and how are you putting that policy i don't know their voice in their opinion of what they think if i don't think that bob is doing a good job plowing the road why don't i have a right to say bob is not doing a good job plowing the road i don't know i don't know i just want to say that liz gave uh said me two handouts one from the central montan medical center and the other one i guess is regards to new jersey they're just kind of like guidelines for employees on social media and they're in your packet so if you have a chance to look at those that might be a direction you want to go yeah it's a very slippery story you have to be careful i don't think guidelines are i mean and to be honest some people just don't know them right they honestly don't know that they shouldn't say something disparaging because everybody says disparaging things all the time and it's just not professional when you work for like i wouldn't start disparaging my employer on my personal social media account because i know better right it's just it's but some people literally don't know better younger people in particular and so i think guidelines are not there's nothing harmful about having guidelines and you're right we're not going to be able to take them to the police and say you can't say that about the town grader right i mean but i think it helps to just set up precedent that this is professionalism when you're you know and we may want to also have something where you know on like what cvmc does is that you can use social media on your breaks but not while you're you know plowing the roads right i mean we might have to do that because what if something happened like you know somebody crashed and found that they were texting well i mean and that's an extreme example but even if they're in the shop and they're being paid to you know maintain equipment or or clean shop or whatever it is it's it's you know it's it's town time they're on they're on uh company time so to speak they shouldn't be engaging in personal activities you know um they need a break to go make an appointment or something like that work it out with your supervisor but you know that just goes to saying i mean i'm not opposed to uh and i really feel like this ties into um efforts that we've talked about about you know really thoroughly reviewing and making changes to our personal policy as a whole um and including there i think if this is if this is due to an isolated incident and we're talking about trying to discuss reprimanding somebody and i think we need to go into an executive session to have more specific information out there and not just shoot blindly but that's only if we're using this as as a mechanism to try to combat specific incidents where we're trying to recommend somebody but i feel like it it it does tie into the effort that we've discussed around uh a thorough review and making revisions of the personnel policy to bring it up to today's standard um and i don't think that that's out of the question and i do want to be very careful about overstepping and feeling like we have the right to control um folks personal social media no no but this is an example about like us right as select board people i don't know if you do but i have two accounts on front porch forum one is a select board and one is lisha from culver hill road right and so i rarely use the select board one so but if i'm doing anything that remotely seems like a town announcement i'm going to use the select board one because that to me is like that separation between the two now i think you know if someone goes on their social media and says the middle sex roads you know are so terrible and they're you know disparaging the middle sex roads there's no there's nothing illegal about them doing that right do we want them to say you know full disclosure i'm an employee of middle sex and these are my opinions like and what are we going to do if they don't nothing right but like just maybe having a guideline that helps people feel like they can express themselves but know how to express themselves the whole policy there is no social media policy though about the whole oh the whole life fall just under employee conduct right rather than a separate policy just employee conduct yes yeah yeah yeah because we can address it without without walking that line of you know kind of nudging into the rights that people have so we can do that through we don't want to be conduct we don't want to be appearing before the vermont supreme court along the federal supreme court and hopefully and hopefully it won't happen i i like the i do like the idea of guidelines rather than trying to make strict rules because strict rules are hard to everything is subject to interpretation needless to say do you want me to update the personnel policy and put it on the agenda for the november 15th meeting we've talked specifically about that and not and not trying to address that until we got through budgeting and every all of the high priority stuff just asking for a scheduling yeah yeah it could be part of next year's goals yeah next year's soon to be forgotten ignoring goals yeah when this was brought up anyways it's uh i think it can be handled through our leadership is that what you are leadership absolutely yeah i think that's i think that's that's uh that can be handled through that i think that that's the way to do it whether it's in the whether it's in the code of conduct part of ours during the suggested they're not personnel policy which might be the right place for it you know you need you need some kind of support i mean you don't want the leadership making up the rules as they go along that isn't that doesn't work either and it's also putting people in difficult situations you don't want people carrying banners around saying you know all you all you have to do is watch the news and see these people running around with buying you know free speech i could say this i could say that i could say the other well sometimes you count and sometimes you can't anyway enough for tonight can we agree on that we did um highway report update yeah it's so good and smooth i just i still have to do a little bit of shoulder work but other than that it's done he was actually doing it like you actually did it you were like driving the truck no no oh okay that's what i thought that you've used that for i was like eric really did the all the paving himself new truck i saw it today it's together uh they were going to do it once over on it and it's going to kenworth and they got to do some wiring thing and then we're getting it so and they're taking away we no longer have responsibility for our old friend yeah that's why it hasn't moved i didn't dare to touch it so that we did determine that they're going to uh trade that we weren't going to try to sell that out that's the same trade and just get it gone and not deal with it and did they end up honoring or remotely even close to what they had projected okay i knew there was discussion that they thought it wasn't very far off but i didn't i don't remember hearing the final word i believe so it's my understanding i haven't seen the actual paper yet okay last week was officially in year that we ordered it october 26th well drive that other truck before it comes as we pulled it out to put the wing in the back so that it can go away without um that's it so on the highway thing in order to get reimbursed on the grant somebody has to put a closeout report okay at ta 65 and it's got to be done within 45 days okay are you familiar with that but i can figure it out this is spelled out it's in the form it's copy of the form is a ta um 65 it's got to be done within 45 days and it's part of do you have a copy of the grant paperwork in your office i'll look if not i've got one but it um spells it out what happens this is the one for the um for the paving so it's we get 175 thousand okay um when that gets i will look and if i don't see it i will ask you for it okay okay are you gonna bring up you said you would but that's okay i can bring it up um oh wait stop let me do it okay no uh we had a quote for uh three hundred forty thousand three forty one sixty five right and they billed us for three forty nine and the the point comes out is they don't give us an estimate they told us that was a bit so i mean i was under the impression that we're paying for the tonnage but but you know whatever came in the trucks but i mean that's from my past history over the state of amont not with the town of middle sex so i mean i don't know if if that's a legitimate gripe or not i mean it's legitimate very legitimized is it one is it one that the board would like to pursue could you just say that i'm sorry it's you're talking are you talking about the hutchins bill yes okay just i just need the other part of it is when they did the estimate they estimated um uh 14 when they didn't gave us the bid they bid it out at 14 500 square yards of coal planing and they billed us out at 15 000 so somebody either misman measured or something that's a what's that like 1250 $1250 i've got it broken out 245 times 500 so it's it's like the whole bid came out at $9 000 over so i said until i got approval from the board that we weren't going to pay that i mean this clearly says that it's a bid for the 340 165 we'll sell unit price there's total bid price everything on here i don't see estimate anywhere uh let me start looking through i looked through i didn't see the words estimate on anything so i mean for the for the tonnage for the actual material i mean that could be read that they could change the price for the material but not for the cold planings so the cold planings 14 500 they billed us for 15 000 and that may just be generous measurements over uh you're not talking a lot when you're talking a mile 22 foot wide i mean it's 1200 bucks 1200 but i'm not making so when i was looking at here dorinda was just there's a volatility um note here that says that they can change the pricing so that that would be anything that they're charging us by the ton for so that they didn't change the price though 112 that's all the price did not change and that's the original yeah price stayed at 112 to 45 so that did not change they just the quantities the quantities all changed and the yardage all changed theoretically the the cold planings should have been last because uh they didn't do on the uh on the uh south side of the bridge you know originally we were going to do it i mean i think you just have to i think you may want to start with a conversation yeah ej the original bid yeah because i don't have that you don't have that either you got issues i can send it to you tomorrow thank you i i can put a copy or whatever when i can have that shoes right though it doesn't change the unit price doesn't change on that so that note down there doesn't apply they didn't use the volume yeah they didn't use the volatility to change the price they changed the volume right right anything else gentlemen we're ready for the inevitable change of weather which is coming it's not going to be 70 degrees for the next month i don't believe not next two weeks so see 70 this weekend right right yeah not tomorrow now do we do we know it's those six you know what the duration of uh the drew transport classes are like are those just a couple more weeks is date for the cdl class oh he said the 24th the 24th of this month yes 24th or 25th point of the other yeah i thought that was based on when they could schedule yeah they said the class was four weeks but when he when he when i talked to rick he said well yes but they base it really on when they can actually schedule the test yeah because it's such an up in the air thing that's a 44th in november right yeah okay yeah it's two weeks all right sorry is and did we um i know what i think in our last meeting there was discussion about uh i think it was jay who was looking for a referral there that was on my list so um anyone that told me about him and he sent him to us so do we have a i mean how do we typically handle that is that just uh you know us authorizing to render to to make you know uh our referral payment to jay do we need to be doing that or do we have the motion that was made when it was done i don't know if it was a motion but what was stated in the minutes was they would get 500 up front and then another 500 after i think it was that was a year right was it six months or a year we went back i think it was six months six months they would get the second 500 what's uh so what's the story i mean what uh how did that come about jay tell me about him is that what happened yeah yes jay says i'll send him up he says my neighbor once was looking for a job i said will it send him up i'd say that's a referral that's a referral here it's a ta 65 that's what it's in the book the orange book just do a control app on t a 65 or new instruction yeah i gotta get him a copy of the uh grant and then please give me all those documents you said yep we'll do so i mean if we've already approved that then it's just a matter of eric saying yes i got this referral and so i'll do that so next okay just doc just documented in the paperwork that's why we were doing this yeah but no we should absolutely if it doesn't work out we'll hold them accountable are we fully staffed them we are right nice good job guys yeah not like other towns and so that was there or no yesterday i'll count it fully staffed yeah okay that's right yeah now he has to take a test right when he finishes the class and that it's a written test and then a driving test right well the written test is for your permit and then the driving test is for your license yeah so yeah so i imagine he's already done the written test as part of the you know he's probably already driving class word yeah so yeah yeah because he can't drive without the permit right yeah right anything else boys i have one other thing before we move on uh are we into a five-day work week at this point yeah that was all i had i knew that was coming up so i asked that question so we are we are in total depending on how the discussion goes over the bill roughly nine thousand dollars over right current yeah nine thousand forty eight right was looking for a while like it was going to be a lot more than that so that's i think darinda for bringing that up yeah library library and darinda you're up i'm up okay audit report ready to approve it oh i did read it yes i read the narrative pieces i can't go through all the numbers but i did read the narrative pieces so we need a motion and back to yep you were happy you were happy with it and there wasn't anything i didn't see anything i i took the time to read it after not reading it last time i felt bad i didn't take the time to read it so there's a lot of greek in there oh yes yeah so yeah the message that everything is a good shake would came through a lot of clear there was no comment that said during the left with lots of money yeah right i would be happy to make a motion to approve and i'll second it okay all in favor of the emotion to approve our i always get the f y screwed up uh f y 2021 audit of the town's finances no 22 this is 2021 that's her type of was 22 okay i'm sorry well let's get it right yeah um all in favor hi hi any opposed okay you've got it darinda awesome um phil i guess i wasn't clear did you end up or that you didn't are we going to i i was going to ask if it was here no because you said i said well do you need a credit card and you said no so i said well then he you know i thought it you know what i maybe i was getting ready to leave and i think i may have just dropped the ball in terms of saying we just need to send a p o okay because i don't have the credit i think that's the way we've done it with them before um yeah i don't i don't you've been ordering them i haven't so um you said we didn't need the credit card so no so if you want i'll get i'll get back you'll get back to that we'll figure it out okay so while we're on that discussion we um everybody liking our owl um yeah our borrowed our borrowed owl yes our borrowed owl which brings me to the next question um i did um do some research on a bunch of stuff um we do need some kind of laptop that to run this if this is the route you guys are interested in going um i can casco has one that has everything we need for 349 99 and you just need the different ports and it has more ports or something on it are you talking about the but they to run the owl yes so this is not a computer that's going to be connected to our network or anything else just this is just to run the just to run the whatever meeting whether it's the budget committee the um planning commission whatever wants to come in that is here for them to do it but first you got to decide if this is something you're going to want to do before we you know um and the owls i looked those up and i think they run about 1200 dollars from what i found and to those those basically that package that 1200 dollar package comes with the various microphones that we see here and what not no i don't think so no okay no these are his microphones that's why i was asking was i knew that they had they had set that up it's uh oh so these are for the camera that's for the camera so this is all built into the owl okay you just need a stand coming just probably would need a stand yeah well i can sit on top of the table it just happens that uh or i had a tripod yeah but we can put it on top it has a stand we can put it on top of that desk or anything so currently everybody that's that's chimed in tonight over the zoom call is hearing us from the owl everyone is hearing you from the owl they're seeing you from the owl okay okay i would say if we're going to do the owl that we also get a tripod because this works out fine and the other thing is volume is not good coming out of the tv for this room so i would say get a sound mirror no you don't want to coming out of the tv well we got here we got to hear like we got a hard time you couldn't hear sanding no all you know my turn okay so you want a sound but i think we i think we don't yeah so i'll get us a package uh together and um give you some pricing on it and i mean some bars are running what a hundred and a hundred rocks hundred and fifty i mean you know um i think right now orca has said and i don't know if this is right or wrong but i think they have said that no one has requested this owl like to be returned um this owl has a name oscar um so we could keep them for the next meeting okay oh yeah because it's going to allow if orca allows i i would welcome the opportunity to continue using it as long as we can while we yeah actually the laptop is the more important thank you that's my laptop i'm not going to hear the drv meeting and right right yeah no we shouldn't be using your laptop no we shouldn't be using anybody's laptop so um so we're we're looking at you know with the owl the laptop soundbar you know somewhere just south of 2k um to make that effort 90 by a that's right ball when you think when you think of what we were looking at recently is six months ago for a cost it was three or four times yeah iso this this to me seems very reasonable to be able to continue to have people dial in and participate absolutely and this is a quantum improvement over what we were trying to do with the laptop oh yeah absolutely so i mean and it just seems to work i mean i don't know how complicated is it complicated to set it up i mean are people going to be able to come in and turn it on and use it if everything stays connected all they have to do is turn on the laptop it's it's really just connecting to the internet through your zoom link and no no i understand that but i mean in terms of setting up the owl on the and the tv and the computer that runs the owl inside your video settings for a while darin and i had i mean it was just crazy as people really tried but if we set this laptop up for that nobody should know once you set it up you're basically they're just coming in and logging in right and then that should all stay the same for a user right that's exactly what i'm asking you know you're probably going to need someone else to another computer to allow people in and out i don't know we'll have to say uh because i'm allowing people in and out because you're still running the zone so i'm running the zoom over here so i think we can explore that a little bit sarah but i think if you don't um cast your you know mirror cast to the tv every hardwired in then you can use that computer to monitor and let people in and out as well because you can just extend the display and then monitor from one and everybody else will see this okay so before i order anything why don't we try it or something yeah okay what size screen is that that is is that a 96 sarah do we just need to make fun of me because it's like a scene from the spinal tap i originally ordered a 32 inch screen and there it is like a 32 how are we gonna come down and watch football i was thinking that would just be like right here and then and then that's 55 that's 55 yeah so the nice thing about the nice thing about that size is when we have other people in the room they'll be able to yeah see it too we're just just looking at it yeah we're doing pretty well although the price difference is negligible i'd probably even go to 65 and mount it on the yeah i couldn't get that in my car we'll find a vehicle but it was $249 you know so i said they're just giving these things away now i think i said you know what this works yeah normal yeah and i almost got arrested so so are we asking to render the go print this stuff and come back and that will approve something yeah i would i mean yeah with our with our new practice but if you if you just write if you she can order it now then we can get the ball rolling because i would i would give her the authority to spend up to $2,000 template i mean we don't i i would make that motion okay is there a second yeah phil okay it's been moved in second into authorized order and just spend up to $2,000 to implement the owl is that and then we have to have a school children and naming the owl yes we might that might be a good thing and that $2,000 is not included $200 various no no we shouldn't we should in all seriousness we should consider in light of what the state's doing of having our uh rubney kids name our new truck name our new truck yeah it's kind of a fun thing okay so all in favor all in favor of that motion i i opposed okay you're going to the only other thing which has no relevance to anything but if you noticed in the bills tonight we've just paid $1,700 almost $1,800 for porta-potties i saw that three months worth or whatever that's ridiculous isn't it i already it's seasonal right 1745 wasn't it something like that where are there's a porta-potty down here right there's one at welch park i don't know if that ever well they they say where they are here there's never used it i don't think that one down at welch park ever gets used and there's two of them over at ronnie and um and the charges ronnie should be paying for why are they well they're on the wreck they're on the wreck field yeah okay yeah so it should be like a hunger no hunger well i don't think there's one there i thought that wasn't us though i thought that was somebody else that put that there yeah there was one there i saw it there was one but i don't we didn't put it in i don't think the state might have put that in or something no but it was a lot and uh what it is so i just thought i'd mention it so when we come to budget time i mean yeah we've never i know we should slash that one yeah there's welcher kelly park yeah welch park that was sorry shady real road 433 that's ronnie yeah but how often in the they were how often are they they're expensive 178 a month yeah a month sorry i don't know but i'm for each one but that's every time it isn't it it's not per month or is that no it's just per month 170 it looked like a monthly fee at me when i looked at it so at 1745 i mean it's almost 600 a month that we're paying for looks like we were like so fast due to i mean it just seemed like a horrible experience i'm not so so there's one incident whether your dad desperate to walk but still there's one at welch park two at ronnie and are there others no it's a three months okay but why did it add up to so much because it was three months where they'll lie through october but i just thought i'd throw that out there i think that takes care of my laundry list actually it's in november did it through november 13th so are we not gotten these removed no they must still be here probably you'll leave i think we should get them removed well i think we're in charge of uh who's in charge of ordering those and getting them out of there i think they should be removed now with the weather we're gonna be a man we reach out to mitch and and ask him to have them removed who's gonna do that you are i can i think we should if you want me to because it looks like we're paying through november 13th so that's like two weeks from now okay right yeah i can make a phone call to him and ask him to have him level okay that's great um where is the um credit card bill is that in here the credit card bill is in there okay i just can't find it who is it it was commerce bank i think or something or something one i don't know it was in there okay please do you need a glass of water i don't know it's like i've got dust caught in my throat you're all set no that's all i had i don't know if you got a question what did you put your naps gone i no i'm choking on some dust all right how are we dealing with budget um appointments i haven't gotten anything except five hundred dollars coming next week next time and the um um and then the highway department to be the first week of december and i think i got a work and i think i got something from the conservation commission which was kind of i don't know if that needed to be confirmed i think we're meeting tomorrow meeting on thursday night yeah they usually just send us yeah pretty yeah they don't send us anything i've not had anything from the cemetery commission despite the requests i haven't heard anything from the planning commission they know the i have a question uh as as a budget committee member and and the cip and understanding what might be helpful for the board as far as uh the budget committee coming forward with what they've been tracking on the cip and and upcoming expenditures are we are your thoughts that we should be piping in when these individual um folks come in and and do their workshop to say hey the the highway department's got an excavator that it's up this year you know uh how are we how are we addressing that um those types of things uh also the conversations around you know what are we doing with that cip how are we moving forward with you know potentially funding it and all that kind of stuff um should we be asking to be on the agenda um i usually it seems to the agendas when you get to the budgeting stages typically yeah so i'm i'm just curious to participate in those in those budget discussions so i think that is the time if if if the organizations themselves haven't picked up what's in the cip that's in their budget it's absolutely okay yeah as far as the budget committee's conversation with the board around you know the future of this cip and how we fund it and all of that kind of stuff it seems outside of some of that and i'm wondering if that that can be you know an isolated agenda item through one of these one of these uh what i would suggest is let's get through the budget building process and see how the cip rolls out into that and how it works and then we can have a discussion into that and say sort of the process we anticipated work did not work oh no okay i that's what makes sense to me randy is let's let's follow through and make sure we we included in in this year's budget process which i don't know my list and i know you've had a year later screen to make sure that those items get included and not only and not only this year's items but say oh by the way remember next year's the year for the you know whatever it is um and we've got a bunch of stuff in there about the town hall you know it's going to be hard to do much with that but in terms of you know we already know we've got the server on our on our uh radar screen and i'm sure there are other things as well yeah but yeah yeah it seems like you know having a a block of time on one of those agendas just for the budget committee to talk about that process there the the future of that and what it looks like i think because i i think that could take up a significant amount of time okay um and i i'd hate to hijack somebody else's time in front of the board talking about their workshop and how that works so yeah um if we can make sure to just add that typically we have you know once once we get through the budget and get through some of our other year and stuff there's a little mini quiet zone before town meeting where we don't have a lot of stuff going on yeah but that's i'm actually thinking about like like things that will impact how we put together that budget with the cip and not just the process not just the process but we need to do a sooner rather than later yeah so not just the process but actually talking about the future of how we fund that and and how we you know how how the board looks at the future of that you know we're a year into this process you know we'd like to talk about what we've been doing thus far but at the end of the day the board needs to choose how they're gonna fund those activities we can put everything on paper we can plan it out but it needs to be included on somewhat of an individual basis with you know the the highway department coming forward and and our efforts with those guys prior to the budget workshops making making sure all that's in there but then there are other things that you know whether it's you know it's a building a building fund or or saying hey you know we want to create an opportunity fund to fund this cip or whatever so i mean one of the big parts of the cip for me is knowing what's coming at us down the road and you know we're now going to have have that for the first time and then think about obviously where the money's going to come from to pay for that like are we going to continue to buy our trucks the way we have been with that are we going to reimplement a sinking fund where we build up a fund of money to you know all those all those questions about how we do that i think our our fair game especially in a especially in a situation where interest rates are certainly on the rise i mean where we've had cheap money for a long time it's now not going to be so cheap so randy would it work after you know all the departments have done their budget proposals but before we finalize the budget to then have that discussion about how does the you know the the cip piece fit in um so the board then has an opportunity to take that into account before finalizing budget yeah i think so i think it's a combination of the two right so yeah the budget committee would in my mind would sit in on the workshops like like the past yes you know and and like take the highway department for example you know if they had that excavator in there and they they didn't bring it up in their budget discussions the budget committee could then say okay well as a reminder we have this what are the thoughts on that how do we how do we envision that but after that i think after those individual workshops are put together i think that's what i could have that that's where we say okay this is everything that we have to do lands how do we how do we incorporate you know all of that cip process stuff and and i know that there are discussions around how that all shakes out because it's new for us um and just role yeah just understanding and and making sure we're on the radar and it's not a wasted effort right because this could be this can be a good thing absolutely we put a lot of effort into it thus far if we don't follow through with it yeah wasted yeah yeah so i think you know that that some of what the effort that we were doing when we were meeting with everybody like our meeting prior to this was to say what's here's what's on here here's here's what isn't on there that you think should be on there what we haven't seen is the the we've provided people with the forms we haven't seen any forms actually be brought to the budget committee outside of this because it's still new right so um the vision is i should do one but go ahead the vision is is that if tomorrow something pops up into your head or you and victor are talking and hey we've got us we've got to spend this much money or we want to buy this and we know it's got a five-year life cycle and it's more than it meets all the criteria right the idea is that they're going to fill that form out submit it to through that cip process and we add it to and then it comes back up and in these types of conversations you yourself yes it's all shit yeah what's the still out of form when do we hear about that grant i don't know i gotta check it with you like i don't i don't i don't remember seeing the um when it was going to be awarded the dates of that now i'll have to go back and check the paperwork um for the tide being i'm thinking of utilizing the greater bay for salt because we have no place to cover up wow so that would mean the greater lives outside or we have to have we have to have it somewhere and we have to have it on something where it's not on the ground like where it could be an impervious surface does it get used to the winter the greater not really occasionally yeah maybe you can put the salt the old fire department behind town i looked at that but i don't think the doors are big enough they probably won't be able to dump as it is but at least i can get i mean i i don't i don't know anything about this but doesn't doesn't salt absorb water is that potentially going to create some kind of a problem in the building well no it'll eat away that concrete slab well it's not much to it anything and we have we have some metal things yeah we have the concrete waste blocks that we have down that back i can make a three-sided wall inside the building to scoop against so you're not going against the walls i don't know where else to put it and we can't put it on a on a tarp on the ground that doesn't pass the scent test no you got no way of getting in the truck right because we're going to put up with what are other towns doing do we know i mean they must all be in the same situation where no they have salt sheds no they don't the other towns all have salt sheds and we don't as far as i know i'm sorry what apparently really all the other towns have salt sheds you my knowledge wow once we i did not know that i mean in order to have salt you have to have a place to store it oh the deal was the deal was we were buying it right right right we were just going to picking it up yep and there's no continuing that process nope why not because barracks bought out newtons and they do not allow that to mix the salt with the sand no no how does the stand out so we went to them and said hey we need you to do this one more year we're willing to pay they wouldn't consider it no it has to do with again with their their contracts they have to deliver it deliver it to themselves go out of the park and i pull around and you come so i'll give you that i mean that's just too bad i just yeah we we tried in colchester we tried getting them when we were alone in salt can we just go pick it up nope and we bought a lot of salt the state when you they wouldn't let the state do it the state buys a lot of salt huh nobody else that it's not a matter of it's not a matter of having somebody loading the vehicles they don't want vehicles transporting out of there that aren't their trucks correct great it's a contract issue live on there and is that because they're afraid of live at liability somehow i'm not sure it's i won't say it i was yeah it's it's basically to prevent them from using other folks to transport transport so it's guaranteeing somebody else you know the business yeah yeah but they're they're in they're in and uh they're they're uh salts delivered by train right whereas in the northern part of the state they truck it out of Montreal right the only other thing i can see is doing is i don't know if it would happen in time is is putting a asphalt pad down with those waste blocks and then covering it with a tarp that sounds like a lot of tarps don't know anybody with a big building that wants to rent it do you know how many tons of salt is it at any given time 20 yards well they use that's a lot in the past we've used about 180 tons throughout the winter a lot of salt you don't need it all at once but but yeah logistically what do you how much would you need to store at one point in time to make it still still somewhat efficient but not having to they would have to deliver probably one or two tandem truck loads every time i would want to have at least that much on so that we can go out several times through a storm so just just going back to your previous comment because that's what i was trying to think about is if we know we've got to build the salt shed which we know and we know where we're going to put it why wouldn't it make sense how long is the gapfalls plant going to be open another month yeah we'd have to get somebody to come in and do it that's all i don't know the availability of someone to pay that you know your little roller yeah we should have had them come well well it's just it's just i i just the idea of putting all that salt inside that building just seems like a bad idea to make unfortunately so if it's if it's our only option it's our only option but if if we know that we're going to need to put this asphalt pad down for the salt shed anyway i know tarps aren't the greatest thing in the world but i also know they can work kind of that i guess all i'm i'm suggesting and i don't know how you feel about this victor other other board members is i look into it and see if there's any chance that how big of a pack well i would i would like to say at least 50 by 50 what about you you you said you did look at that building but is there a possibility of like well oh they're too low i was going to say that we do something like building over it how thick of a pack i would say three four inches anyway i mean what about the fire department i was i was what's that talk between four and six i'm not sure what what it takes to i'm gonna be back and you're gonna be back you know i mean maybe i'm sobering you're gonna be driving i can talk to i can talk to the contractor i mean they're the experts not me yeah i would say i'll fit that proposition does this summer to pay i don't know if we want to was it p and something p and g i think there's an outfit out out there p and g paving i can check around you got r and g maybe that's maybe that's what i'm thinking about maybe well the building night we had we just got to have give the go ahead to do it but it takes 16 weeks to order the building so yeah so you're getting a ready-made building okay but all i'm saying is if there was a chance that we could get the pad in the building and not have to fill our holes because the other thing i don't like is and i know it's covered yeah but i mean how is it any different than putting it into our shed because it's a greater shed foundation oh okay what about the middle sex fire department can they keep their other truck would it fit in there the same building no i meant the one up by ronnie i know that's the one he's talking about that's when we're talking about it okay yeah and we're gonna just carry it down anyway so it really doesn't matter if it gets there isn't someone here who has an empty barn i don't know if you're probably right you can't get anybody in time and the plant's going to close down or whatever and that's my concern i just uh salt is wicked bad stuff i hate to have it in our building i'll put it in uh where the greater fire fire station the left hand side okay i don't think they're closing the plants on 15th but it's not the end of the world to have snow falling on the greater okay yeah and it isn't it isn't heated anyway i mean i you know yeah keeps the sun off it so the paint doesn't fade that's right that's a point then yeah i i just soon i'll have it out from under guesser if you have to buy a tarp what it is a giant tarp for the greater the greater the greater won't fit in over here right too long to buy too tall yeah what else is on the agenda we're almost there okay we're almost there i'm gonna move on she's she um see if we're on zoom we wouldn't have this problem we'd be out of here liz was running the meeting we'd be out of here yeah you could say it less we need to approve the minutes of the october 18th 22 meeting is our motion october 18th so moved oh second moved by vex seconded by les and philip's name right yeah all in favor hi hi orders were we're signing away any other matters to come before the come before the board was there only one thing to sign during that that's all i found was one no there's a payroll one i've looked for the payroll one where the heck is it we'll just find checks are attacked was attacked so unless they got taken off okay here there yep yep yep okay i got one in my pocket hey sir okay check thank you everyone uh we're gonna get direct deposit oh yeah i'm sorry no no no i meant i didn't want to know thank you just send it out i was gonna forge it okay just just for a few bucks yeah phil yeah easement we're gonna do it next time we didn't warrant it so let's just do it next time okay don't fight i'll send it out to you guys tonight okay thank you okay with that we are adjourned