 And some good conversation. All right, it looks like we have a quorum. It's 5.30 by my clock. So I'm gonna call a sub board meeting to order. First up on the agenda is public to be heard. This is on anything that's not on the agenda. It is meant to be a very brief comment of letting the board know about something or asking for something to be put on the agenda. This is Julie, my friend. Can you hear me? You can. Yeah, thanks, Trini. May I speak on the sewer issue? I think you can request that it be added to the agenda. That's right. That's what I was going to ask is, this is an emergent issue at the Randolphus project. And I was gonna ask if it could be added to the agenda tonight. Okay, so maybe give just a couple of statements on why it needs to be added to the agenda tonight. So we have that in the record. Yep. So in the process of doing the sewer line replacement that we were originally planning to do at Randolphus, we discovered a section of existing town sewer pipe, which was in extremely bad condition and was sort of falling apart. But also there was an area that is three feet above where we were supposed to connect it with the new pipe. And it's actually flowing in the wrong direction to do that. And so we need to confer with the town about how we can continue the construction and deal with that situation as quickly as we can. Okay, anybody oppose adding that to the agenda? That's good. Any other public comment? John Kaplan. Yes, thank you. I guess I have a question and a comment and a suggestion and I'll be brief. So my question is for the new utility poles that were placed along Pleasant Street here in the village, whether I'm assuming that those are in the town right away. And so I was just curious if the utility, I'm assuming the utility company coordinated that with the town or had to get some kind of permission to do that work. That's correct John. That was at us, we gave approval at a select board, two select board meetings actually. Okay. And so I guess my comment is, I think some of my neighbors and myself were a little surprised at the large trees that were taken down. And I understand why that happened more or less. But I think, and I don't know if there was any kind of, sort of announcement or information given to the public that that was gonna take place, but I think people would have been a little less surprised if they kind of knew that was coming before the chainsaws showed up. So that's my comment. And I guess the suggestion is that maybe the town's website could be used for things like that. And there's other venues too, of course, like front porch forum and places to let people know that something like that's gonna take place. Okay, thank you. I do know that the agenda item specifically last month was on the trees. But I also believe the trees came down before the select board meeting met. But it was to clarify the fact that the trees were in the original approval is what they were asking the board to clarify. It was a little late when they were already in the ground. They were a part of the prior approval just to clarify that though. And they also don't, they gave the town, I believe they paid the town $2,000 that went into the town beautification line item in the budget. As payment for the trees, not, we can't plant new ones there, but we can do something somewhere in the town with that money. Okay, thanks for that clarification. I'll go back and look at the previous minutes just to see that, thanks. Yeah, sure. Josie Crothers, Josie, you weren't on yet when we said this is a very limited amount of time to talk about something you would like added to tonight's budget or agenda or to update us on. It's like on a future budget or a future agenda. Oh, okay, this is brief and it is just to find out a little bit or find out how I can find out about what the select board's thoughts are on using the ARPA funds and to what extent is the East Valley Community Hall going to under serious consideration? So there's a committee that we set up to address the ARPA funds, to look at them and make recommendations back to the select board. So I would suggest that you reach out to that group and try to get ideas that you have on how the funding should be used onto their screen so that they're looking at a wide variety of uses for the money, and that might be some of them. And I believe Perry is our select board liaison for that. Okay, fine. Thank you very much. I'll be in touch, Perry, if you're there. You're welcome. Any more public comments? Perry's on. Any more public comments? Great, seeing none, then we'll move on to approval of the agenda. And this is adding item, well, it'll be item I under new business, which is the Randolph-House sewer issue. Did you need a motion and a second to approve the amended as a, the agenda as amended, not the amended as amended? I'll move the movement of the agenda as amended, the adoption of the agenda as amended. I have a motion and a second before I call it though, I was hoping nobody was going to step forward, then we have no agenda. We're done. I wish that life were that simple. It was so quiet there for a while. It's because I was muted. All right, we have a motion and a second to approve the agenda. All those in favor? I. Opposed? Motion carries. Next up is the consent calendar. This is three meetings for the minutes and the warrants. On the 20, the 122 minutes, they say that our meeting started at 8 p.m. and it should be 8 a.m. We all struggle that one, you get your eight and one. Yeah. I'll move that you approve of that correction. Second. All those in favor? I. I. Motion carries. Next up is the business part of the agenda. And first up is the Davis Road solar project. And again, tonight, I will do the same thing I did last time and let folks know that this property is owned by the estate of my dad. The sale is not contingent upon this permit, but I have corresponded with Larry and he will take and share this part of the meeting. Yep. So we postponed this from last time because we were waiting for some additional information. And I believe we've acquired the information that we wanted since that last meeting. And I'm thinking that most of that information is, yes. Brendan, Mr. Malley is joining us and I know we would like it if you could speak to what you all have done in the intervening time. Okay. I'd like to offer if Trevor wanted to present anything, we certainly could. But what we've done in response to the questions raised at the January select board meeting is we have hired a remote licensed surveyor to visit the site, to field verify slope data that was previously publicly available. And we've provided a revised site plan showing the array located on slopes less than 25%. And we've further provided letters from the engineering firm and the surveyor affirming that. Okay. So as I understand it, we now know that those solar panels are gonna be built on slopes greater than 25% and where it looks like we're meeting the requirements of the town plan and if there's other discussion folks would like to have, I would entertain it now. I'd like to speak. Who's that? If you're on board first there, you're gonna open. If members of the board have something to say, I would love to hear that first. I didn't hear any members of the board chime in. Sounds like the board is quiet right now. Oh, I think, hold on. So you have sunny. I think you don't you have sunny on here from the planning commission to give us his take on it as the chair of the planning commission. We do have sunny, but I was thinking that I would like it if sunny was available to answer questions. I'm not sure we need a presentation from them. Okay. I have a comment Larry's. Yeah, please go ahead, Pat. I don't know if this is the right time or not, but it was after reading all the materials, it seemed to me like the issue is the 25% slope. And if we could add a condition to our letter, which incorporated that it would not be more than the 25% slope, that might solve the situation. Well, I think we already have the assurances that we need from the developer. And I just offer the assurances are now a part of the, we've submitted an assurance, and it will be part of the, if issued, it'll be part of the state certificate of public good as a condition and enforceable by, that's my dog, by the state. Are you saying that the condition is part of your application? Correct. The condition is part of the application at the Public Utilities Commission. At the last board meeting, we circulated a filing that we had submitted to the Public Utilities Commission, a testing that we would not build on the slope of the 25%. Which then become part of the record and part of the requirements placed upon us to be required to fulfill to get in order to have the state certificate of public good issue. So it doesn't need any more fluid and sovereignty. I'm sorry, wait. Is that Jim Merriam? Yeah. Jim, I had a really hard time hearing you. Sorry, the N95 math, the easiest to talk to. I told, yeah, totally. But can you just repeat what you said? People allow. So at the last select board meeting, we provided a copy of a document that we submitted to the Public Utilities Commission that asserts they can make it a condition of our certificate of public good that we won't build on slopes greater than 25%. So it is part of the record and it is part of the conditions of our certificate of public good, which is the PUC process of determining whether or not they were able to go forward. Okay. Thank you, Jim. Am I correct? The planning commission did something like that? Correct. I believe it came about as an assurance to the planning commission that we would not build on over 25%. So we filed that as a way to qualify. Any questions from the board? I have a question, Larry. Does that agreement include the access road or is it just the solar panels? All right, I was on mute. Specifically, the preferred setting process and this perhaps clarifies some comments at the last meeting and that section of the town plan does not define one way or another access or array or make a... And so the only area within that chapter of the town plan where anything is referenced is that area of the solar panels. So this is in an extensive reading in general alignment with the treatment of other development with respect to slopes. So it's the location of the array itself on slopes. And so that's the condition. The access to the array utilizes existing agricultural access on the property. Thank you. Okay, seeing no more questions from the board. See Prokessor hand up. How do I speak in the audience? There's no work opportunity to see me. Oh, that's a good question. I can't really see the audience. So perhaps if there's a question from the audience, maybe Trevor can let me know when there's questions. Does that make sense? I do have a few questions. So yeah, whenever you're ready for questions, well, that's when we'll look around the room and let you know someone's in the room. We do know Michael now, but if that comes up, we'll keep an eye on it and give you a prompt. Okay. Well, I see no reason not to let Brooke go. She seems like she's ready. And then we can come back to questions from the room. Let's do that. Thanks Larry. This is very troubling what you're Larry for you to say, okay, fine. Sure, they're not going to put the solar panels on the 25% steep slopes or greater. That is not what your town plan says. It doesn't say don't put the solar panels on areas that are 25% steeper or more. The language of your town plan, which was ignored by the applicant when they gave you the town their presentation. They quoted the language from your town plan and said, see, we can fly with it. And they stopped showing you what the language of the town plan was when it came to prohibited locations. And it is one sentence that is at issue here. And the sentence reads prohibited locations colon energy facility development shall have to meet principal structure setback for the relevant area in the town zoning and shall mandatory be prohibited in floodways, class one and two wetlands, lands with 50 feet of the top of bank of perennial streams lands over 25% slope. It is hard to imagine how this applicant could possibly argue successfully that development of this facility does not include the earth moving activities that are required to create the access road and to do all of the area of disturbance at this site. Every inch of that area of disturbance is physical action on the land, which in Vermont is development. So development of an energy facility is not allowed on 25% slopes. It's that simple. And not only is that what your law is and it is your job to create the law and then to defend the law because we found out from the Vermont Supreme Court in the Apple Hill solar case from Bennington town that if the town fails to enforce their law and apply it consistently, it doesn't mean anything anymore. It loses its authority as being any kind of clear written community standard that can be imposed on any other solar array project in the future or any project. The letter in the editor that Joan Allen wrote to the Randolph Herald, at the end of it it said, this is a slippery slope and if you let this in, then there's no 25% steep grade provision left. But it's a bigger issue than that. It means your town plan will be disregarded for any telecommunications project at the PUC for any energy project at the PUC. I will send you the Apple Hill decision from the Supreme Court that reversed the PUC because the PUC made that decision that said you are arbitrary and capricious, you're not enforcing your restrictions so they're no longer restrictions. And it turned out the reason why they reversed the PUC was that wasn't what the town actually did. But it is very clear from the Supreme Court that if this select board or the plan commission decides to take a position and allow this to go through and not just say the development of this project is on steep slopes and our town plan does not allow that. That is your role here. It's your only role. It's not to weigh the public good of gee, we want renewable energy and isn't that great. The actual statutory mandate, if you want to take a position and provide a recommendation and issue a preferred sites letter, this needs to follow your law and you're not doing that. The other thing that's really concerning that doesn't seem to be part of the conversation today, I thought Perry was here to explain the process of what the PUC did or maybe sunny or something. There was a meeting of the planning commission and at which three members said, yep, I think we need to rescind this. And Perry said, gee, I'm concerned about getting sued. Let's talk with the lawyer. There's 100% behind that. Problem is before the lawyer was even gave an opinion, the planning commission through email that looks like sort of it was at Sunny's behest and he's the cheerleader here, not the decision maker. He seems to be on the wrong team, which is also concerning. But the upshot of this process is that a public decision was made by email completely in violation of the open meeting law. You can't do that. Not only is it wrong, but you led the public to believe you were waiting for a decision and you didn't. And now you have the decision from the lawyer that says, I don't know why you would be sued. Basically. And I don't know why you would be sued. This is a ministerial act that is covered by sovereign immunity. But Larry, the fact that you're working with these people or the planning commission is working with these people to change their project proposal means that the project as it was proposed doesn't pass muster and you should rescind that letter. You don't let them fix it now and say, don't worry, we'll ask for a condition. You say, I'm sorry, the reason why you gave us this project, it doesn't comply with the law and that is the job of this town. That's what they must do in this situation. It is black and white in the town plan. And if you do not reject this and rescind this letter, they can start over with a new plan. They can submit something different and get your approval, but they have to start over. It can't be fixed. Well, my understanding is that the role of the planning commission is advisory to the select board. No, they have the independent voice. The planning commission can speak to it. The select board can speak to it and the regional planning commission with regard to the regional plan can speak to it. And in fact, the planning commission and the select board are not even obligated to take the same position. I've seen one situation where there was a disagreement, but you get to speak as a select board and the planning commission gets to speak as the experts who created the law and gave it to you to enact. And all three of those entities are required to sign on if this is gonna be considered a preferred site, which is a monumental decision by the town because it becomes true and valid unless it can be overcome with evidence, which certainly that will be the case and if this goes forward, that in fact the town's recommendation is wrong because you didn't follow your own law that you wrote. And if you don't enforce the law, that means it's arbitrary and capricious. You're not treating everyone equally and you are obligated to treat all of your citizens equally. When you create a law that puts everybody on notice what the rules of the game are. And now you have this developer saying, don't pay any attention to the wording in your actual plan, because don't worry, we'll put the solar arrays, I don't know, we'll flatten the site. So there are no steep slopes and then we'll put our solar array panels up. That road is on steep slopes no matter what. It violates the town plan and that's all you have to tell the PUC. That's your decision. Treaty. Thanks, Larry. First off, the town plan is not law. It is a guidance document for the town that we look to to give us direction. But I just want to clarify what Brenda was saying. And I think given how this was, a long mission of fact, and the land and the element that's there, that is not excusable. Brooke. They didn't even bring up this prohibition to you and now they backpedal and try to put a bandaid on something that violates it. Brooke. Okay. You don't have the floor. So, Brooke, you will have a chance to be heard. I believe Trini was talking and you interrupted her. So please, please let her continue and finish and you will have a chance to respond. Trini, please continue. I'm sorry. Larry, I lost the audio. Were you speaking to me or telling me to do something? Yeah. Trini was in the middle of talking and you interrupted her. Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't hear her speaking or I wouldn't have done that. I apologize. Trini, please continue. I just want to clarify that it seems like one of the big issues here is the road and the access road. So there's two accesses to that property that are existing at this time. One was the original road that went up in. It goes around the outcrop of rock there. And the other one was built in 2014 when we had the property bogged and that was then put back with the proper ditches and water burrs and everything to meet the logging regulations. So there's actually two existing accesses to this property now, which I believe are the ones that are being proposed to be used. So those are existing. There's no, I don't think there's any question on that one. May I speak? Sonny Holt was another planning commission. Yes, Sonny, please go ahead. Yeah, I did an extensive study on this. I looked at the audio and also the video from the last select board meeting. There's a lot of misunderstandings of what went on and a lot of claims that have been made that are really incorrect. As far as the access road goes, it's 1,100 feet. That 1,100 feet, there was only one section of 100 feet that has a slope greater than 25%. And that's about 9% of the entire road and probably 2% of the entire limit that can be constructed on. So I don't really all think the access road is an issue here at all. I did, I can go and give you my findings and recommendations that I came up with in my study and then we can go back and expand on that if you like. There were two issues basically. One was will Norwich technology install solar panels on slopes greater than 25% in violation of Randall's Town plan. And the second issue is did the planning commission use a process to grant a preferred siding led with the Norwich solar technologies. And then my findings I found out that number one, Norwich solar technologies did not violate the town plan when they requested a preferred siding ledder from the planning commission on 1 June, 2021. And then number two, for reasons unknown, Norwich solar technologies changed the solar or a plot plan on 4 August, 2021 for review by the public utilities commission. Finding number three, at an open meeting on 7 December, 2021 the planning commission confirmed that the 4 August plot plan violated the 25% steep slope prohibition in the town plan. On 10 December, Norwich solar technologies have put on notice that if they plan to put solar panels on steep slopes, then the town of Randall may have to vote their preferred sites led up. Norwich guaranteed to both the planning commission and the public utilities commission that the array will be arranged so that solar panels within the current limit of disturbance are not installed in slopes greater than 25%. The PUC rule, because the status of the preferred designation ledder has not changed, the adjoining land notice motion to stay the proceeding is denied. In the process findings, although it was not a written policy, the planning commission did use a process to grant the preferred sighting ledder to Norwich solar technologies, but the process needs to be improved. My basic recommendations is to keep in place the preferred sighting ledder granted to Norwich technologies for the Davis Road solar array. Number two, task the planning commission to develop a written process or checklist for future approvals of preferred sighting ledders. Now also through this entire process, there are a lot of false claims and accusations floating around. And a lot of those meet their ways into local newspapers. One of the claims was that at the 7th to 7th 21 meeting at the planning commission, they decided to rescind the preferred sites ledder, but they were going to make sure they wouldn't be in their legal hot water first. And that's false. There was no decision made to rescind the ledder at that meeting. Another claim, NSC promised that if the planning commission did not rescind the preferred sites ledder, they would not place total pounds and slopes greater than 25%. That's false. There was no promises asked for nor given by either the planning commission or Norwich technologies. Another claim, after the December meeting, the planning commission members communicated privately by email with Norwich solar technologies. The NSC attorney told them that the town had no legal basis to prohibit their development on steep slopes. That's also false. The assertion that somehow a deal was struck between the planning commission and Norwich technology that's false. There was no communication with the NSC attorney. There is no known conflict of interest between PC members and the NSC. Another claim, one third 33% of panels are on slopes greater than 25%, that's false. Only 13% of the panels were shown to be on slopes greater than 25%. And here we talk about the access road. The access road is going into the stirred areas in excess of 25% grade and even up to 40% grade. That's quite a claim, and it's false. Of the 1100 foot access road, there was only one instance of a 100 foot section shown on a slope greater than 25%. That's 9% of the entire road and probably less than 2% of the entire limit of disturbance. I can go back and give you more details on any of those, but that's basically what I found out in my investigation. And it was very thorough. Thank you, Sonny. So Larry, Mike, finders been trying to jump in for a little bit too, just as we kind of rotate everybody here in the room with us. Yep, yep, please go ahead. Based on the map, I haven't had a chance to look at this new one. I'm not sure how different the road is, but on the site plan that's currently before the public utilities commission, there's several hundred feet of road that are over 25%, including some sections that are 40%. And I'm not talking about the grade of the road, the slope of the road itself, because we've all seen roads put on steep slopes that wind up around a mountain. The road itself doesn't have to be steep, although this road is fairly steep in some areas, but it's on slopes, it's carved into slopes that are up to 40%. So I disagree with whatever information Sonny has. I'm just using the PUC maps with the LiDAR data, which is all I have access to. If they have ground-based survey data that's different, I'd certainly like to see it. Maps from today, these are done by, just to clarify, we'll put them together, this was Krebs engineering with... Krebs engineering did the survey. And they were the survey. And Krebs is the third-party engineer. And they're the letter from Krebs and then the letter from Verizon stating both their qualifications and that they did the road. And then it's installed on less than 25% slope. And then this will be filed at the PUC level at some point. Yeah, we will update it again. I think the important thing here is that the limits of disturbance has never changed on this project. And we recognize, everyone should recognize that projects change a little bit as you get better survey information. But the limits of disturbance, what we've always said was gonna be disturbed, that has not changed. We're just, it moved panels around with inside that. Excuse me, Larry, is there a way for the remote people to look at whatever is being submitted to the select board in person tonight? That's a good question, Trevor. Give us a second here, maybe. It's not pre-loaded on the laptop down here, but maybe we can figure some out. But you guys might wanna keep going, we'll work on it. If not, we can certainly post it. It's just they don't have it right here. Or maybe if they have an electronic version, they could email it. Yeah, that we can certainly do. We're trying to figure out if we can quickly get it onto this screen share, but for everybody. So if you guys keep going up. Yeah, this is one of the limitations of a hybrid meeting. It's harder to share documents. But you see, Larry, this shouldn't be happening. That's the whole problem, whether you're in person or remote, they're not supposed to be bringing you back new maps to legitimize the decision that you made that was wrong. It should be presented ahead of time. You should have the public see this document. Then you should hold your public meeting on it, at which time people have had the opportunity to look at the document and can actually respond further. But that's why the process you're going through is wrong. They gave you something and it doesn't comply. Now they're giving you something to try to fix the non-compliance. They should be starting over. This isn't fair to the public and especially to the abutters. And frankly, Larry, if they haven't changed the limits of disturbance, you know what the elevations are. You know that the disturbed area has many slopes over 25%. So maybe you should be able to make a decision to rescind tonight because even the fix is not okay. You have to decide what the intent of the law is when it says energy facility development shall not be on lands over 25% slope. Areas of disturbance, physical action on the land is development. Look at your own zoning ordinance. People can't do physical actions on the land without a permit. That's what development is. You have it defined in your own ordinances. So just a question, if the select board chose not to take action tonight and then delays it for a few more months, what does that do to the timeline? I thought we had this urgent date that the planning commission had to meet, which is why they were compressed in their timeline. Sure. Do you want me to answer my training? I'll be applicant and answer that question. The timeline was driven by the fact that the public utilities commission changed rate structure at September 1st, which drove to have a completed application submitted to the public utility commission by September 1st. You needed to have the three legislative bodies, letters submitted or approval. And so that's what drove to the schedule. And to be clear, the only way this project goes forward is with the preferred letters. I think there was some discussion last meeting that this project could go forward with the letter retracted. That's not actually, it's actually correct. This project is not on a landfill. This is not on a rooftop. The only way this project goes forward is with the preferred citing letters from all three bodies. Yeah. I don't know if folks can see that. We did put the handout that the folks in the room have is it's up on our screen and it says it's screen share. So I don't know if folks can see that. Yeah, I can see it. And so on this, yeah. I can see it, but I can't read anything on here. It's just too small. So that's better. It's much better. Can you make it even bigger? Yeah, I don't want to lose the whole thing. I'd rather lose the legend though for this. It's just to show the picture. Not better. That's much better. Thank you. Trini, can I just answer your question? I appreciate Jim's response in terms of the original timing of the application or the needing the preferred sites letter. And he is correct about the preferred sites letter. It doesn't go forward with all three of those signatories. And so I do appreciate him correcting that information. But I think what you were asking is what was the pressing thing for the Planning Commission to make their decision or you folks. That had to do with the Public Utility Commission process going forward and setting the schedule and the hearings and all of that. And the concern was if the preferred site letter was to be rescinded or should be rescinded, then that process should not go forward. And unfortunately, it is going forward because the rescission didn't happen. So I think they were trying to beat a certain deadline where they had to ask for a hearing. But I believe Joan and Michael asked for a hearing. So it's on track at the PUC. And so I guess what Jim has explained is if they start over now, it sounds like they've missed the deadline for moving forward somehow with this particular application. But that's why applications have to be complete. And that's why the towns need to look them over and make sure that they pass muster before they get the easy kind of rubber stamp process. So I'm sorry that the timing isn't working out for them. But in response to some of the stuff that Sonny was saying, well, so what that only some of it's on these steep slopes? The town plan doesn't say, well, if only 90% of it's not on steep slopes. That's not what it says. It says all the development of this facility can't be on steep slopes. Rewrite your town plan and make it so that the steep slopes can be only on a portion or whatever other ideas that you have. But what you put into play is a law. And that's what it is. Sorry to say. I see Brendan has his hand up. Thanks, Larry. So I'd like to make a couple of points. And I want to acknowledge first off that some of these discussions have indicated a level of certainty about interpretations of the town plan or town code. And I personally, I don't want to present myself as speaking authoritatively on the town's plan or codes. However, given that, I think we should all recognize that it's for the town to speak authoritatively on those topics. Having said that, within the subject of development and the subject of an energy facility within the energy section of the town plan, an energy facility is not a defined term. The only place that it's referred to in any kind of descriptive sense is in the prior paragraph where it talks about the acreage of the panels. I could certainly present that as well. There's another distinction which I might offer for the town to consider authoritatively, which would be the difference between an existing development on a piece of property versus a new development. And so perhaps this is, and certainly I would think it would apply here. We are talking about existing access on a parcel. And we're talking about new array development. So that's the distinction that I have that I can offer to the town for the town to evaluate. I can mention something about that access road of the 1,100 feet of that area where only 100 feet was found to be on a slope greater than 25%. What Norwich Technologies plans to do with that road is dig it out 12 inches down. It will be a 12-foot wide section. And there'll be gravel placed in there, 12 inches worth. It will be well protected from any storm water damage at all. They have this covered under the PUC. PUC requires precise engineering studies on anything that goes on and what the conditions are to correct those areas. I see nothing wrong at all with the access road. And as far as the town plan goes, I think some people are misreading the town plan. So what the town plan says, the total project area of panels must encompass 10 acres or less. Number two, the project as designed cannot be visible in the growing season from town or state highways. That's always been one of the primary reasons we looked at solar development areas. It should be out of the viewshed of people. Number three, must meet principal structure setback for the relevant area in the town zoning. And number four is prohibited in floodways class one and two wetlands, lands within 50 feet of the top of bank of perennial streams and lands over 25% slope. There are other things in the town plan that we, of course, look at in the specific area where it talks about steep slopes is what I just read. Are there any questions from the room? I thought I'd check now that we have a moment. Yes, I would like to ask a question. It was just mentioned that the road would be carved out 12 inches deep, 12 feet wide, 1,100 feet long. That's 490 cubic yards of soil to be removed on steep slopes. I'm curious on the site plan, it shows that that soil from the prime ag soils will be stockpiled on site, presumably for restoration at some point. Does not say what happens to the rest of the soil that's carved out of there. And there's no stockpiled place for it. Perhaps somebody from Norwich Solar could explain, where does that soil go? Friend, do you want to take that one? You're a construction worker than I am. Sure. So the work that happens on site, typically, whether it is the, I'm sorry, I just had to take a second, because the description that Sonny provided was from the civil engineering notes on the site plan, which is correct. And so there are some conditional statements in there. So for instance, not all of it needs to be excavated. So that's if the excavation needs to happen in order to create a stable surface. It will be cut and then filled in order to create a stable surface. If it's not needed to be excavated and can be top dressed, it will be top dressed. So there's a lot of information in the details of the civil notes there. The prime ag soils specifically are required to be stockpiled for future restoration. The other soils are typically used on site. As where on site would they be used? 490 cubic yards is a lot of dirt to put on site, and there's nothing in the site plan. Are you going to fill in the valleys to make it flatter, or what? No. So I guess what I was trying to say, and I apologize for being a little unclear, it's unlikely that the entire extent of the road would require both cut and fill. So what the plans are describing is when necessary to remove 12 inches in order to create a stable road base, it'll be removed. Where not necessary, it will not. So the point I'm trying to make is it's not necessarily that volume of material that we're talking about here. And I have a question probably for Brendan. We were just talking a little bit about the area of disturbance and how that relates to the 25% slope. And I'm wondering if you can talk more about how those two things are currently related to each other. So there are two elements to this discussion. And it might make sense to just keep them straight as we talk about these various issues. One element is with respect to the placement of the array itself. And the other element is with respect to how the site in general is designed, permitted, and managed in the broader process. So as part of the state process, specifically the state stormwater permit process, that is where this project or any other project goes through a review, an analysis of slope stormwater management activities, and often an adjustment, and I say often because we're not at that part of the process yet, an adjustment of that type of construction activities that can take place on different areas of the site. So an example of that would be if, for instance, there's a sensitive area or a steep area, the state has sometimes conditioned our permit that you might have non-mechanized clearing in that area. Or another example would be no stumping on a area of certain slopes. So those strategies and conditions come typically through the state stormwater permitting process. OK, thank you. If I may speak a little bit about the issue at hand, I really think we're getting off into areas other than the initial issue. When the Planning Commission met with Binder and Allen back in December, the issue that was forefront was slopes over 25% in the solar array area. OK, we never talked about going down the access road and looking at that area there. So almost from day one, this entire issue has been about slopes on the array panel itself. The other issue is when Binder and Allen went to the PUC to show an interest in this, they never listed slope issues. They never listed anything about being in their view shed. All of this came up after events rolled on. So I think we're getting away from the primary point of what the issue has been all about, at least as it was addressed to the Planning Commission in December. And that was only on the slopes being greater than 25% in the solar array site itself. We seem to be getting off in the weeks here looking at other items that may be of interest, but it was not the primary focus of the Planning Commission on 7 December. Thank you, Sunny. Brendan, if I may, I follow up for a moment. I guess my question is really about are there 25% or greater slopes within the current area, planned current area of disturbance? So there are. And that would be an example. So it's areas not where the solar panels are located are over 25%. And so a typical way of managing disturbance and the consequence for stormwater would be something like non-mechanized clearing and no stumping in those areas. Those are typical strategies to manage that. So questions, what does non-metanical clearing mean? Does that mean herbicides? Oh, no, I'm sorry. It means not a feller buncher, for instance, but an individual with a chainsaw. Thank you. Brooke, you've been waiting patiently. I just wanted to mention I have cut and pasted into the chat the three most important sources of law for you to look at here. The Randolph zoning regs have a definition of development. It includes my excavation, the town plan section that talks about the prohibition of lands over 25% slope. And the important part of that town plan is, in the beginning of the sentence, prohibited locations, energy facility development. And the other piece of information I've provided is out of the zoning statute in state law 24VSA chapter 117, there is a definition of land development in that, which also talks about any mining excavation or landfill or any change. So it also includes excavation. It looks like a Randolph pattern, their definition after state statute. So this is about, is this development going to involve the disturbance of land with excavating on slopes more than 25%? And to say, well, we'll cut down trees with, you know, instead of bringing in a loader to knock them down and we'll leave the stumps, doesn't solve the problem. The entire area of this facility that is being developed, all the development related to it, including existing roads, if they are being touched in any way, shape, or form. If they're being widened, if materials being added to them, that's all development. And I think Mr. Malley is a very nice man. I have nothing against this particular project other than it violates the town plan. And if you do this, it harms the town. Mr. Malley can figure out a different way to do this, where it doesn't impact, is it problematic in the town plan by all means? I hope he can. I have no dog in this fight other than trying to make sure that the town follows their own law that they created. Just to be clear, Brooke, a town does not have authority to create law. So our town plan isn't a law. It is. Absolutely. That would be a statute. It's absolutely. No, laws are laws. Your ordinances are laws. Your town plan is a law. You enacted it. Well, assuming that you enacted it, it's important to statute with all the time frames and notices and hearings to involve the public. It is a law, of course it is. Laws are ordinances. Laws are statutes. Laws are constitutions of the state. And law is the constitution of the United States, as well as the statutes of the United States. The problem here, really, to give you just a little bit of context and background, is that the town plan document was a planning document for aspirational purposes. And then underneath that, and in compliance with that, zoning law is supposed to be enacted. And the problem with Act 250 and the PUC processes are they rely on an aspirational planning document and turn it into a regulatory document. And as a result, what we saw happen years ago in Act 250 where the town plans were being disregarded because they were saying, we should do this and we should do that, which is exactly what the town plan should say. And the problem is that Act 250 decided, well, that's not a mandatory requirement. And unless you use the word shall not should or say something's prohibited and make it crystal clear that it's a mandatory requirement, your town plan held no water in Act 250. So now it's when the PUC 248 process and the 248 for energy projects came into play, all of a sudden the town plan is put into play as a standard that it was never intended to do, wasn't written for, and really it's a really bad way to do land planning in my opinion. But that's what we're left with. And that's why all the towns went to all of the Vermont League of Cities and Towns presentations, including two of them that I gave two years in a row to explain the very issue about, it has to be mandatory language now. If you have shoulds, you might as well throw it in the garbage because it means nothing. So that's why I think this is so important. I have nothing against Mr. Malley. I think he's, green energy is great, but it needs to be put in the right places according to the rules that exist. And that's my interest in this and why I'm spending my time talking with you folks about it. I'm not representing anybody and I'm not getting paid to do this. I just, I'm really disturbed, really about the way the process is. And to this day listening to Sonny, I think very highly of him, but I don't think he understands the role that he's supposed to be playing here and I think that that line has been blurred. And so you sit in judgment of this and you get substantial deference to your opinion. If it's not right, Ms. Binder and Mr., Ms. Allen, Mr. Reiner can argue against that and they can upend the presumption that you're correct if this has to go through the PUC process. But in the meantime, the harm is happening to the authority of your town plan. That's my concern. I'll be quiet now. The way I'm seeing part of this, at least right now is that we seem to be wondering whether cutting down these trees like somebody with a chainsaw, which is within the limits of disturbance, whether that constitutes development. And it's not clear to me that that's the case. I think. Well, I just, can I, as Larry has sort of spoken maybe use this as a springboard if the board wants to maybe check in and see where it's at, we're in, we've been after this now for a couple of meetings for a while and we just check in maybe see play out where Larry is. I have a short conversation about where the board is at and see if that helps to illuminate some of the pathways or the unanswered questions. I'm trying to be mindful of the fact that we do have a number of other things to do without trying to give any kind of shortened end to this. I'm trying to find that right space. Could we share the document? I mean, these stuff that you passed out tonight short notice. I mean, let me have my short notice. I'll do whatever. The technology is here. Mike has a picture he wants to show you. Is it, you want me to screen check? Sure. But this is becoming a much longer conversation about much media stuff. I just wanted to check in to see where you're at rather than trying to parse through what constitutes development here tonight. Well, there are other things awaiting as well. Well, while Trevor is doing that does, is there any comments from the board? Seeing none. Brooke, is that your hand from before? Or is that a, I've done that many times. Can folks see that now? It looks like we're sharing. I'm not seeing a photo. I'm just seeing the folder. The folder, yeah. Yeah, change what you're sharing in the share screen. What's that? Change what you're sharing on your share screen. Right, well, wouldn't it? So, are you in the initial? Three open minutes? Yes, three open minutes. Okay, now go to the Zoom. Click on share screen. That one has to be open for us. That's what I forgot. Now there it is. Did I not think folks see it? Should see an image. Five red circles, can you count it right? Yep, got it. Thank you. Do you want me to explain what you're looking at? Yes, please. Who is this that's showing us this? I'm sorry. This is Trevor and Kim pulling it up. So it's up to our laptop. But this is something like Binder sent to us a little while ago tonight. Okay, thank you. The map you see is taken from the plan that's before the PUC. That's the road down there. And the circles, the red circles are 50 foot diameter on the inside of the circle. And I've labeled the slopes from the LiDAR data at the road crosses. The road itself is not that steep because it angles up on the side hill. But the hills in itself have the slopes that I've shown in that diagram. Quite a few of them are over 25%. And I think there's one on there, 39%. Yeah. I have the same diagram that I looked at. And I show no slopes over 25% in those particular areas. The only slope I show is down towards the bottom as it makes that turn on around. That was the slope that I found over 25%. I prefer we didn't argue about the map. My inclination is to think that this is an existing road and wouldn't constitute development. So I'm not sure that it matters, that it's above or beyond or below 25%. The road from the turn there, it goes on up. It doesn't cross those slopes pretty much. It goes along with the slopes. So it's not directly crossing them. Larry, is there any excavation, any material being added to any of the roads? Are they being widened? Because if that's happening, how could it not be development just because there happens to be a path there that is not supported in any law I've ever seen in 26 years in Vermont? Well, I'm not sure I'd call it a path. It sounds like it's a road that's already been used for logging purposes. If Act 250 found out that you improved a road without a permit, don't you think they would go crazy? This is development that you're talking about. They're not using an existing logging road. They are improving the road and developing it. They're changing the road. It's physical action on the land. Yeah, I don't know where you draw the line between it's being development and not development. It seems like if you'd have to go beyond a certain amount of change before it's considered development, but I don't know where that line is. I know this is an existing road and that any changes are going to be rather modest. So are they modest enough so that it's not development? I guess I don't know without knowing more. Well, the site plan calls for excavating, replacing the gravel and putting fabric under there and making it 12 feet wide. So yes, that is significant change from what's there now. Just offer Larry if you had a second. Yes, please. Okay, certainly this is outside the scope of the process that we followed in open meeting in both the planning and select board, these discussions. I understand the logical chain that got us to this discussion, but I would just offer that the discussions were held on the basis of the location of the array itself and in kind of good faith. We followed up and responded to concerns about the slope of the array installation. And I will further offer if there is additional discussion about the use of existing access. I think the folks here, me included, would be right to be careful to speak authoritatively about the town's interpretation of its own documents. And so I'll just offer from my point of view that the array is installed on slopes of less than 25% and existing access is used to get to the array. And that is the case. And it was the case originally. If there's further discussion about how that access is used, that is something that is, often addressed at the, at the state level. I was muted. Thank you. I'm sorry. I'm seeing no other comment. So seeing no other comment. I think we're done with this discussion and we will. Move on to our next agenda item. Trini, it's all yours. Thanks, Larry. Excuse me, Trini. Before I sign off, it's Brooke. Is the board going to do anything? Are they going to make a decision? Or table it or take it up next time? Or. I'll send that back to Larry. It sounds like we're just done with the discussion. No one. No other comment. I think we're done with this discussion and we will. We're just done with the discussion. No one had any more comments or, or motions. Deliberative session to discuss this. I'm sorry, Pat. Say that again. We go into deliberative session. Discuss this. I believe so. Trevor, is that something we can do right now? I would hesitate to say yes, just on my lack of. I'm not sure that there's a. There's no decision or discussion there. That's of a sensitive nature. So I'm not sure why. Deliberative session would be allowed. Yeah. Yeah. No, that sounds right, Trini. Figure out the story to get you into one. You have a section of law. Pat that you think we could get under this. I mean, this is usually a contract personnel issue. I was asking the question because I've listened. Read a lot and listened a lot, but I'm undecided. And I'm not sure how to resolve that. This is Tom, if we were to make a decision. Is the decision we're being asked to make to rescind. Our letter. I mean, what decision are we going to make? We don't make a decision that lets it stand as is, right? Correct. And where are we to make a decision other than that? Letting it stand. We'd have to have a motion to. For example, rescind. Correct. Yes. Exactly. Right. And the reason why I think we're unclear about deliberative session is that. We almost never. Use this. Ability that we have to go into deliberative session in. In my. Almost five years now on the board. I've only been in a deliberative session with the board one time. So I'm not clear as to what the exact parameters are. So. Are you using deliberative session in the same. In the same way that we use executive session. No, it's a, it's a, it's a separate. I'm not sure what the words are. It's, it's, it's a separate tool that, that boards can use to make certain, to discuss certain kinds of decisions. Okay. But they're not as proscribed as an executive session. Correct. Which is very prescribed. I am, I am not really sure it's been so long since we've, we've done that that I really don't recall exactly how. How detailed the. You know, how much guidance we have from statute about deliberative session. I guess I have a hard time determining. What we might discuss in deliberative session that we can't discuss in. The public session. Right. I mean. Yeah, I don't know what Pat has in mind. So. Yeah. I wasn't asking for it. I was just questioning whether we could. I guess my alternative comment would be is I think. I need some legal advice and some of these legal issues that have been raised. Before I would make the decision. So just really quickly. So everybody. Has a baseline. This is from VLCT. It's a quick summary of what's a deliberative session. It occurs only in conjunction with a quasi judicial proceeding. These are situations where public body. Such as a select order development reports acting like a judge or jury. It's evidence or testimony than ways, examines and discusses the reasons for or against an actor decision based on that evidence. Examples include tax appeal hearings before the board of civil authority, vicious stock hearings and employment termination hearings. I'm talking a little bit about zoning and subdivision development review. Those pieces that fall for a zoning board or develop review board. There are some more specific applications that I think this would be a little. It would be broad and be a stretch. Yeah. Sounds unlikely that with this would qualify. But it does sound like Pat has some, some reservations that he would really like some more information. About some of the legal questions that have been brought up this evening. And given that. I would, I would suggest that we do. Consider putting this on our next agenda after we've gotten. Some more clarity. About questions that Pat might have. And I think some of us, other ones of us too, probably have shared some of his questions. Larry, if I can just add the other issue that hasn't been addressed is the decision making by email of the planning commission on their decision not to rescind the letter. I thought that was going to be brought up today. And Perry was here to talk about what the process was that it was engaged in. I guess, I guess what I would, I would want to say. I would like to say about that is, um, I'm not sure that now is really the time to, to talk about, um, Open meeting law. I think that is another thing, which would be really great for us to talk about at a future meeting, um, especially given the amount of time we've already spent on this topic. That right now is, I don't think it's going to change anything. And I'll also let you all know that, um, we, the town does take open meeting laws very seriously. Um, and, um, um, our town manager is, um, scheduling sort of as we speak, um, training for chairs of committees and any other members of the public who might be interested in, um, in coming up to speed on exactly what the open meeting law requires of all of us. Right. But Larry, if you don't respond swiftly to this violation that is. In the emails itself, it's a separate issue. Um, the decision was made by email and you want to put that off. That's not the same issue. And really has nothing to do with Mr. Malley's, um, application. It's a holy separate issue. That has nothing to do with the substance of this. And that's, that's my point. That's my point. It is a separate issue. And we haven't put that on our agenda for this meeting. And so. I think we should address it, but I don't think that now is the time for us to do so. It's, it's not part of our tonight's meeting to discuss. This open meeting law. There was no violation of the open meeting going. If, if, uh, If you don't want to continue that. Larry, Larry. This was. I was, I was told that. I thought I read that. Harry was here. For a purpose. To explain. No, it's on the planning commission too. And my understanding was. Coming to explain it. And not. Maybe I misunderstood, but I have no, I just. I don't understand how you're doing this. People for the planning commission. And if they need to be trained. Or you need to be trained about open meeting law, then that needs to happen. The fact that sunny is not. Uh, you know, coming to terms with this and apologizing and say, we'll never do this again. It's really. Getting off track a little bit here. Like I said, I. Like I said, I, I don't think this is appropriate. I don't think this is appropriate. To do other than sue the town. If the select board is not going to be responsive to a vile, a blatant violation of law that's been proven by the FOIA requests that got all the emails that prove. What happened? They decided without a meeting by email. And you're not going to do anything about that is what you're saying. I'm saying that this is a topic for a future meeting when we can properly warn it. And when is it going to be warned? And when are you going to hold that? Can you decide that tonight? So that people can. Who have come tonight to hear about this. And understand. What month it is that the select board is going to approach. Yeah, I'm happy to suggest that we put an on our agenda for our next month's meeting. I think the other thing to note here, Larry is it was made known that the town is taking steps. Brook. So to, you should, you need to recognize that if we're working on doing training. Townwide for our committees and volunteers. Most of these people are volunteers. So to think there isn't going to be an issue once in a while is just ridiculous. But if the town's taking steps, I'm happy to suggest that we put an on our agenda for our next month's meeting. I think we're doing quite a bit there. You know, you. You may disagree with. Whether the planning commission had an issue, didn't have an issue, how it all went down. And why not? That's a whole different topic. But to say the town's taking steps to line up training and to work with these groups and to help these people who are volunteering their time to the town. To meeting the ever changing, I might add. Requirements of public meetings. I think we're doing quite a bit there. I think we're doing a little bit of a different project, but to say the town's not recognizing it is wrong. Because we're saying. Maybe we need to help some of these volunteers that are spending so many hours. Volunteering their time to the town. And bring them up to speed on the latest and greatest version of public meeting. So we are taking steps. We may not be addressing this specific instance and debating that one, but that's a different piece. I appreciate that. And thank you, Trini. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I don't really support the training, but I'm really concerned that Sunny, even tonight is still disputing this. And you've had the opportunity to look at these emails. And I think it's incumbent upon the select board. If they're taking this seriously. To make a public statement and say, you know what, guys, you screwed up. We'll train you. But this isn't the way we do business in Randolph. And make a public statement about it. And you know, we're going to have to get it under the, you know, brush it under the rug. That's my concern because this is so blatant. It's appalling. And now to tonight, even hear further argument that we didn't violate the open meeting law. When I've seen it from myself in the emails. It's astonishing. And if you guys are really serious about showing your electorate that you're going to have to go through this, you're going to have to go through this. You're going to have to get their access and your transparency, particularly you, Larry, I hate to tell you, because you're also a rep. Now come on. You already blew it with, you know, having. And, and treating. I don't hold your responsible at all. You recused yourself last time, but the baton got passed back to you. And I think it would be really nice to see the town. Take the high road, take a stand here and say, you know, this is better than the high road. And as you can see, we have a lot of public space. We're going to make sure we're trained. So we understand our roles and how the public. Has to be allowed to see and be present. When the, when the town transact. Business, because that's what they open meeting law is all about. You don't get to do it in secret. Whether it's on the telephone by email or whatever. in my town and it will change my vote the next time if you don't do something here because it's wrong. Okay, Cheney, you're up. Thank you, Brooke. I just take one final comment, Larry. It's Jim from Norwich. We are happy to come back to another select board meeting. We appreciate all the work you put into it. I apologize for the drama. This has paraded you. It is a tactic to stop solar by having letters, preferred letters repealed. For instance, last night at Norwich, maybe even some people here were at that meeting trying to get a letter that we had acknowledged repealed. And all I ask is, if it's December, planning commission meeting, it was about panels installed on a 25% slope. That was the issue. We address that issue and have been trying to be good partners here. And I'm happy to come back, but I'd really like to know that we're not going to make this a continually changing vote post by some of the complaints that come in such that it makes it impossible to come to this decision. So I'm just requesting that if we can get to an efficient place where we know what the issue is, we can then all settle on that and not keep changing and injecting new components into the process. May I rebut that? We at the planning commission and the select board have always maintained that the entire disturbed area of the road and the solar panels were an issue for the slopes. However, at the December meeting, we did use the PUC slope diagram to show that there were 40% slopes under the panels because that was the most explicit way that we could see using their slope diagram. And the steepest slope actually was under the panels there, but that doesn't mean that their slopes weren't in other places. The planning commission seized on that as did in order to solar technology as something that they could remedy and ignore all the other issues that we had brought up and focus solely on that. I feel that we did bring up the issue of the entire disturbed area and the access road at our earliest interventions here. Okay. Well, thank you both for your final comments. Cheney, I think it's moving forward. Let's go on to giving some direction to the planning commission on cannabis. Let's see. I think I see Josh just jumped on too. This one was scheduled. There was a little bit of conversation about it. Maybe start to talk. If I understand the basic question of at least this part of the conversation, it's about whether or not to create a municipal control board or to explore that part of the process. So what's the role of that type of entity? Much like we have a local board of liquor control. There might be other questions. It was voted on, I want to say it was last year, I think it says in the managers report exactly when there were two votes, one to allow retail cannabis and one to allow the integrated licenses. Those are the folks that have a medical license and a retail license. I think I saw 12 or 14 of those around the state. One was in Randolph, I don't know if they're still operating, but those are limited in number, but the retail establishments don't have that same sort of set of parameters. So I don't know, Josh, is this thing anything in that quick and in short? Yeah, maybe we should have gotten to the weed before the solar, but I just want to say thank you to all the volunteers who serve on our commissions and slide boards. Thank you for your service. So I think what I can add is this is still evolving from the cannabis basically the state statute allows municipalities who have adopted to cite retail integrated license operations in their municipality can form a cannabis control commission, much like the liquor control board. So what does that mean? Well, in essence, it's just like the liquor control board. It's kind of like a rubber stamp, because this is a state regulatory process. Now cannabis businesses, they're still businesses, they still need to adhere to our zoning regulations, which is pretty clear, retailers retail, manufacturing, processing, that's all considered to be light industrial. I think part of the challenge as of right now in terms of the planning commissions and the zoning part is we don't quite know how cultivation and what use that is, but I think we are trying to we are figuring that out. I would say one of the benefits of having a cannabis control commission that would be made up of select board members is that if there is, say, Senate Bill S-152 that's out there that is passed, it would allow the municipality to collect some license fees every year instead of just the state. And it also allows the cannabis control commission to just get to know their cannabis business owners. Otherwise, that might not necessarily be the case. So that's just a little bit of background information. I'm happy to answer any questions that you have. So Josh, are we premature in doing this, given that the state hasn't really outlined everything yet? And submitted to the state, they're being reviewed. I don't believe many of them are going to change. House Bill 701 was just passed, which codified a lot of the rules that the Cannabis Control Commission have created. And so there's very little that will be enacted that will affect the municipality's ability to regulate anything. This is a state control process, but like I said, they're still businesses. They would still need to get a zoning permit. I've had multiple inquiries about this. And so they're going to get a zoning permit. They apply for one. Retail is retail. Like I said, the tricky part is, what is indoor cultivation and what is outdoor cultivation? And according to our zoning regulations, the zoning administrator myself can determine that. Appellants or applicants can appeal those decisions to the development report. So my intention is to bring this to the DRB's next meeting at the end of the month, because they can look at a business model or sector, and they can determine a use if it's not already there. So I think we can figure this out. I think it's a good conversation to have with the select board to see if they think a Cannabis Control Commission would be beneficial for them and the municipality. And is that always the select board? I believe so, yes. I would follow the liquor control model. So when you say they need still into zoning permit, though, isn't there work then there to be done by the Planning Commission on looking at the zoning regs? As far as where we would locate these, there's rules right around proximity to schools and facilities. Right. And a lot of that, of course, according to the statute, they can't be located within 500 feet of school property. So I've looked at that map, and I don't believe that falls in, that isn't overlap with any district that we have that would allow retail. So retail is central business district, maybe some adjacent districts, but regardless, the state will not allow those upper-age seats of school property. Like I said, manufacturing, processing, there's cultivation, and then there's processing into value-added products, into packaged flour, and then is the distribution, wholesale distribution, into the retail facility. Most of our uses, so most of the value chain there, already falls under light industrial, which is allowed in pretty much most of our districts to some extent. And then, of course, retail is allowed in several of our districts also. Like I said, we're not sure how cultivation, you know, there's outdoor cultivation and then there's indoor cultivation. How do we look at those uses? What use do they fall under? It makes it a little harder to be said that they don't consider cultivation or to be an agricultural practice. So, you know, it makes it a little challenging, but again, I think that's where we can fall back on our process of, you know, engaging the development review board and the planning commission, so that we are looking at cultivation equitably for both outdoor and indoor, and so that anybody who's interested in that can look to the zoning regs to get a clear path forward to operating their business. Josh, if I may, you just said that the current cannabis policy does not look upon cultivation as an agricultural practice. Is that accurate? So is it looked upon? It occurs to me maybe that's similar to like a lawn and garden center where there are growing plants and trees that you can then purchase and plant yourself. I mean, or does it just fall into a gray area that hasn't been fully thought out yet? And my other question is, it's been said that there, I can't recall if it was you or Trevor, that there have been a number of inquiries so far, and I'm just curious as to whether the bulk of inquiries have been about potential retail operations or whether there is some interest in the town and cultivation. There has been one retail inquiry in several cultivation inquiries. Interesting. Yep. I can answer the first part of that question, I think, Tom. The significance of cannabis growing, not being considered a farming activity specifically, is because in Vermont, farming has a lot of exemptions, I should say, from Act 250. And so cannabis wouldn't fall under those exemptions that farming gets. And I think that was intentional that when this was all set up that, you know, farming in general is given quite a bit of leeway in terms of the things they're allowed to do compared to other kinds of uses of the land. But the cannabis cultivation doesn't fall under that category. All right, that makes sense. Thank you. I think another important point is I think, you know, obviously, with the new sector, we want to make it as easy regardless of what sector it is. We want to make it as easy for businesses to get started up. A lot of these business owners would have to still get a zoning permit from us to operate. If we don't have a cannabis control commission, there is nothing on the state side that, you know, they wouldn't tell an applicant, hey, you need to get a zoning permit. They're just going to issue their state permit. So if we have a cannabis control commission, the cannabis control board cannot issue a permit unless that applicant has gone through the municipality first to get their local license. So there might be a situation if we don't have a cannabis control commission that we have individuals who are cultivating, who are not aware that they might need a zoning permit, they go to the state, they get their license, and then they start operating a cultivation business without knowing that they need a zoning permit. And so that's a potential. But we can mitigate that risk if we have a cannabis control commission because the state is not going to issue their license until it's verified that the local municipality has issued theirs. So Josh, are you saying that the state, if we do set up one of these commissions that the state will know that we've set it up and that before that a grower or other business, cannabis business would be able to get a permit from the state, they would say, oh, your town has a commission that controls this. You need to go through them first and then come back to us. It's actually in the rules, the cannabis control board has said that if a municipality creates a cannabis control commission, they must inform the cannabis control board of that so that they're aware of it. So how I would see an applicant go through the system, which is they would reach out to myself in the zoning department, I would have the conversation with them informing them of the application process to get a zoning permit, and then inform them of the cannabis control license process. Simultaneously, working with them to get on the cannabis control commission's agenda and issue the zoning permit so that happens as quickly as possible. And then once that's done, then they can apply to the state for their state license. From what we're hearing, it sounds like there's some pretty good reasons to establish such a commission and not much of a downside. You can also condition approvals of licenses on, if you have the commission, on some of these factors such as Josh had mentioned the zoning compliance one, we've got a sign ordinance, so that would be one of those things you can regulate, condition compliance, or condition approval of a license. You have to make sure that compliance is a part of that. Public nuisances are another one, so you can do things, noise is probably the most common one that comes up. Because you've got the control board, you might have an ordinance in place that regulates those things, but it wouldn't affect the license at the end of the day. What this would also allow you to do is to tie compliance with the ordinances to the successful holding of that license if there's a violation. So that if they violate the ordinances, say you have a habitual offender of some kind, you could revoke that license authority at the local control commission, where if you don't have it, we're trying to use whatever tools are in ordinance, which are probably just going to be fines. And there's no real, there's not as good a tool set to maybe encourage the activity to see. So there's a little other wrinkles there, in addition to all the zoning compliance stuff that you get with the commission that you wouldn't get if we just let it sit with the state. So the discussion was to give direction to the planning commission. So are we looking to give the planning commission direction to create this? It seems to me like there ought to be some effort there to look at where we want these. There's areas that the state doesn't allow it, but do where would we like to see it happen? I look at the planning commission for. Right. And I think, I mean, it's important to know that the state statute, it trumps local statutes, right? Our zoning regulations cannot be stricter than the states. So, I mean, I would look to our own zoning regulations, you know, A, again, to manage where retail operations are. Like I said, light manufacturing covers most of the cannabis licenses that cover processing, manufacturing, the value added stuff, wholesale, warehousing, distribution, all of that's going to fall underneath light manufacturing. A lot of districts that allow that, most of them. So I think it's just getting clarity over how we should be interpreting what outdoor cultivation and indoor cultivation is just so that, you know, again, we're we're treating people equitably. And I think that that is easy to be determined. The DRB has not weighed in on this. And like I said, at the end of the month, they will. So I think we'll have a little bit more guidance from them. They might decide that that outdoor and indoor cultivation, because the state has not deemed it to be an agricultural practice, they might decide that it's entirely different use. And so then we might have to work with the planning commission to, at that point, to come up with some regulations at that time. So I guess I'm back to my original question then of whether we're too early to be looking at this. I don't know, I've been trying to get the planning commission to look at this for the last six months. So nobody seems to want to make a decision. And I don't I don't think it's too early. Our regulation says that the zoning administrator is to determine the use. If people want to wait, that's fine. Effective April 1st, the state applications go online. Applications will be given out by the states before May 1st. So I guess I'm happy to decide where we want to put these these businesses or what uses. I just don't think that's right for one person to be deciding that. So. And based on the timing, we might be talking about two different pieces. There might be, say, you return in March to kind of review the considerations for a control commission. And that's the part that you do before that April 1st deadline. It would leave open that period of time where the zoning administrator has to interpret sort of appropriateness of anybody who wants to put any of these enterprises somewhere. But then the planning commission can correspondingly be looking at, you know, what should be regulated if they should include anything. And then you've got that process, just that that one would take longer even, even if we were ready to go with a set of zoning changes today at the planning commission level, we're still going to be outside, likely outside that marker for, for, say, May 1, license issuance would be awfully close to try to turn both their process and our process around the statutory timeline. So I think we're talking we're up against the spring deadline. We're probably talking control commission as sort of first action. And then at least you've got some regulatory role in it at a legislative body level and then whatever it is on the land use regulation side as well. I wouldn't, I wouldn't think that the cannabis control commission would be, you know, you guys wouldn't be reviewing an application per se. Just like you, whatever you do for the liquor control board, whatever that process is, I would imagine it would be very similar because they would already have their zoning permit, which would be either, you know, approved by the zoning administrator or the DRB. So I don't, I'm not quite sure there would be a lot of lift for the, for the commission. But that's, it's up to interpretation. I think there, the state has, has, you know, left that up to municipalities to decide. Give us a little bit of a hook so that somebody does get out of order doesn't go first or there's some other disconnect in the process. You could either send it back or condition our approvals conditioned upon and get you successfully make it through the zoning piece. Ideally they'll have gone through that first and come to you there. And some of it might be that we have to talk about some of the policy elements of it too. It might be that, whether they make it into the zoning rigs or not, we may want to set up what's a flow. I mean, I don't have any good way to gauge how many of these we're going to get. I think there's a market threshold for what you can support for retail cannabis, particularly in the town of our side. Like, I don't know how often we'll get to, you know, get to exercise any of these, any of this knowledge and capabilities. There might be policy elements we can do to try to frame how people come in and navigate the process to make sure that things get reviewed and checked off in the right place. But I think it's going to be iterative. It's going to be while we live with it, at the simplest level, it may be as easy as what we do for liquor licenses, which is pretty light lift. But who knows, it's a different animal. So let's break this into two pieces. The first one being whether we should have this control board and the other one being kind of what we toss to the planning commission to look at for us. So I think the first issue of whether we want to look or explore having the control board is a different issue than what we think we need out of the planning commission. Right. So I'd agree with that because I think that the control board is no different than the current liquor board. And so the select board is going to grant the permission for an establishment to happen. And I'm assuming that I don't know this for a fact, but I would imagine that just like the liquor situation that there's probably going to be a cannabis inspector, like there's a liquor inspector from the state. And so, you know, our role here is to provide a license. And then I'm assuming that once we've done that, or maybe before, they've gotten their license from the state. So I agree that the select board should probably be handling that part of it. As far as what I think the planning commission should be looking at is, you know, we already have zoning laws that, you know, address retail. And so the question is, is, you know, we're going to consider this to be the type of business that's going to fit into one of the categories that's already, you know, in the zoning laws. Question is, is, you know, are those going to be allowed, you know, everywhere as we're allowing retail, or are we going to limit those to just, you know, the downtown business district? For as far as the retail component, I think as far as the cultivating side, I can see that basically happening, happening anywhere. So in my mind, if we're allowing, you know, certain businesses to happen, you know, outside of the village limits and are you five zones, then I think probably that's what we need to look at here. Okay, so throwing this, going forward, do we want to ask Trevor to look at whether there's any guidance out there on kind of the framework of what that liquor, or what the control board would look like? Like, what are, what that process is, you know, are we, do we have an application that people fill out? Does it then come before the board, or is it a, you know, do they have to come every year like the liquor board does, or are we able to have a process by which if there's no issues and whatnot, it can be an administrative renewal that doesn't have to come before the board? You know, we've talked about this with the liquor licenses and the state won't allow us to just allow it to be an administrative approval, but on the liquor side, but, you know, is there framework of what that control board would look like? And then on the flip side, do we want to toss direction to the planning commission to ask them to look at kind of what this, what this looks like? Do we want it to be like any other business where we look at lighting and traffic control and those type of things only? Or do we want to have other things we look at? Are we, we can't spot zone, we can't single anybody out and whatnot, but are there, you know, do we, do we have areas we don't want them in, you know, do they really all have to be in the business zone? Do we want them scattered? So there's allowed in Randolph Center and East Randolph too, do we, you know, what kind of, or do we want the planning commission to make a, a proposal to us of what they think should happen? That's, so one of the differences between this and liquor is the liquor control, liquor is controlled by the state. They're the ones that set the prices and they're the ones that set the tax. And in this particular case, it's different because they're not distributing, whereas the state distributes the liquor, the state would not be distributing this. So it's a very good question whether or not we would be able to, you know, basically administrate, you know, another, or renewal of a permit without having to come to the board every time. I don't know what the rules and, you know, look like on that. So we definitely need Trevor to do some digging here. I think they're annual licenses. I think they have to, they have to go through that process annually because the state wants their money. Right. But does the cannabis control board have to be the one to approve it or can we set it up? So in Randolph, the process is the, the board approves it the first time. It's an administrative approval after that, unless there's an issue with them. I think if there's a cannabis control, control commission that, that would be an annual license that they would have to approve, just like the state license from the cannabis control board. Yeah. But I think that's something we would need to flush out, right? Is there a way to make it so it doesn't all have to come before the board if they're, and it's just a routine process. So they're not waiting or whatnot, but So for next time, we'll put together almost like a little mini users manual of sorts. You're, you know, from what we can tell, you know, your guide to creating and operating your local cannabis control commission and see if that's something you're still interested in at that point, or at least better understand. And then that might be the action element at that point. And then also as part of that process, try to draw and identify some of those questions that you may want to consider and then task the planning commission to dig in further. Sounds good. Yeah, I think that's a good idea. I think the board is a good idea, but I think having the discussion in a, in a broader context is a good idea too, and having the planning commission kind of flush some of this stuff out and decide, you know, should there be, how should that all kind of play out on how does it interact? Do we need any changes in the zoning and whatnot? Let them make changes in the town plan to allow it in certain areas, that type of thing. But all right, let's move right along because we haven't got very far on this agenda today. East Valley Community Hall project, but all discussion over as they go out to raise funds to help renovate the hall, would the town consider allowing the hall to be named after a family name or some other appropriate name identified by somebody if they were a donor towards the rehab of the building? What does that look like? How much is that donation and what's the process by which we go about that? So let me weigh in here a little bit because I was tasked with what do other places do, and it really boils down to the type of building, the institution or the facility, where it's at, and naming buildings or jointly naming buildings ranges anywhere in pricing from what I found from like $75,000 up into the million. So it depends on the size of the building, size of the project. It seems so typically, you know, if somebody's paying or sponsoring a facility or a building like this, that there's significant recognition that seems to happen in the 25% to 35% category if that's what they're contributing to the cost of the project. So that's what I found from my research. I would just said having been involved in other communities and with arts organizations and other nonprofit organizations that have grappled with us, that figure that Perry cited is pretty consistent. Roughly 25 to 30% of the total project cost is sort of set as a benchmark for naming rights or and sometimes what happens is someone will make a sizable contribution, but then they'll ask to have it named in honor of someone else too. It's not just, you know, kind of a self aggrandizing kind of thing, but sometimes it's honoring a making a contribution to honor an exemplary community servant or citizen or or something like that. But it typically is in that 25 to 35% range. And this is a much smaller facility in larger facilities, your naming rights extend down to, you know, an auditorium or a gymnasium or a meeting, a conference room or a wing of a hospital. In this case, we're talking about just one relatively small building. So assume the estimate to redo this building is in the six to $800,000 range. I would say a $250,000, maybe a 200 to $250,000 contribution would to my mind at least would would constitute sufficient amount to give the person naming rights. The other thing we, you know, I hate to bring this up, but when you think about all the controversy that's going on around the country and not necessarily that we would have this happen here in Randolph, but, you know, what I'm getting at is that the person who is making the contribution needs to be on the up, I don't know how to put it, needs to be on the up and up. We don't want to have a contribution from someone with who's who's carrying a lot of fraught political baggage or, you know, allegations of racism, whatever it might be. You've got to make sure that I do think we need to make sure that the person is of, you know, high, high integrity and whatever moral character, however you want to put it. I can't imagine that would ever be an issue, but, you know, colleges all over the country are dealing with having to rename dormitories and educational buildings because the original donor that the property was named after was a slave owner or whatever. I'd hate to see us go down that rabbit hole with something as, you know, as basic as the community center, the community hall, I should say. So what you're saying is somebody needs to be doing some bedding here. Yeah, yeah. And Trini, I apologize. You asked me several months ago. You said that someone had approached you to ask about the, you know, Kimball and Chandler and whether they were, you know, slave owners or advocates for slavery or whatever. I don't even know where that, you know, that notion came up, but I offered to do some digging into that and never did and it hasn't come up again, so I sort of put it aside. But it's that kind of thing. We wouldn't want to have somebody contribute $250,000 towards the project and then find out that they're, you know, that, you know, they were former Ku Klux Klan's men or something like that. I mean, I'm really stretching there, but you know what I'm saying. There does need to be some bedding. You're saying we shouldn't ask you to bed them, Tom? If we have this project and it's going to take $800,000 to do it and we have two people come forward with $200,000 each, how do we name the building? Flip a coin and see who goes first. I would say whoever comes forward with cash on the barrel head first, you know. The cash of the Grand Parsons, Tom. There you go. Is it the highest donor of at least X percent? Is that how we word it? That's that's a possibility or you could do a hyphenated name, you know. Yeah, thinking you do a joint. You're out who goes first. If you had two donors that were of equal value and 25% or more. Well, probably your name's before mine in the alphabet. So it can be the Armstrong airs community hall, if you'd like. I do think $200 to $250 for this project, presuming it is a $600 to $800,000 project is a reasonable benchmark. And, you know, I would love to think there are two people in this community that could come up with that amount, but I doubt it. Oh, I wouldn't say that. Well, who would come up who could come up with it and would come up with it, I guess. Well, I mean, we've had significant gifts from folks before. I mean, you know, great generous to numerous organizations and certainly would have qualified for, you know, that type of nation. I wouldn't be a wouldn't surprise me that, you know, somebody was out there and thought that was a really good, really good behind it. They may be able to, they may be within those means to do that. So, yeah, yeah. I kind of like the idea of a third, you know, 25 to 35, but maybe say a third something like that, somewhere in that range. And I think when you have a smaller dollar amount project like this year, your risk is higher of having more than one donor at a set percentage. It's a good problem to have. I just want us to be ready if we have it. You know, do they, you know, let's have them start in on a bidding war, okay. Highest number gets it. Yeah, you could, yeah. That could be, that could be, it could be auctioned off as long as it's, you know, there's a minimum that, there's a minimum that needs to be hit and you could auction it off or you said, you know, two people could jointly share it. If they get along. Well, if not, then the same part is the way to go, right. You want the bidding war because they're just going to jack it up and get it away from the other guy. No, it's happened before, I'm sure. I'd love to think we could have that problem. I just want to be prepared, you know. Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, and I think if that situation should arise, then, you know, that's would probably be who best to talk about a couple options. One, you know, would they both contribute? Because if you somebody outbid the other, wouldn't you want the other person to be involved to if they felt that strongly about the project? Well, they would have to be a, it would have to be a commitment that they were making knowing that they did not be the winner. This is where larger projects are easier. It's easier to cope with this issue because you name parts of the facility after large donors. And so John Doe gets the auditorium and Jane Smith gets the, you know, conference center or whatever. But in this case, you've just got one building unless we're going to build a stage in there. And then you could, you could, for example, call it the, there is one. Well, then, then when that's renovated, and I've never been in the facility, but then when, when it is renovated and the architects, you know, when the design, final design is said and done, you could sell the naming rights to the stage for, I don't know, just making a number up 25 or 50,000, something like that. So the hall gets named after one person in the stage gets named after another and, you know, on and on. If there are other, if there are other discrete places within the hall, you can sell naming rights to those too. And you, you know, you just put up a nice plaque and have a reception for the person that it's named after when the time comes. Let them ribbon. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I would be, as this moves along a little further and we have a clearer picture of what the cost is going to be. And we hammer out this naming project, a naming issue a little bit more. We flesh it out more. I'd be happy to, because I've worked in the area of development and fundraising in the nonprofit sector for most of my career, or a large portion of it. I'd be happy to work with the, with the hall committee on a, on a, on a naming driven fundraising prospectus or something like that. I like that idea. You know, when they're really ready to go out and solicit these contributions, they're going to need to identify somebody that's going to go out and make the asks. I'm not the person to do that, but I'm certainly happy to lend my expertise to how you make an ask and what the value of an ask is and that kind of thing. Perfect. You're nominated. Be careful what you ask for. So what we need to do is come up with how the town wants to do this, because this won't be the only building, hopefully. But do we need a policy that talks about this? Do we, do we look at buildings and do it from a, you know, for X percent, you get to name, you know, this part gets named from you. But if you go to this, you know, is it piecemeal? You got to buy all the pieces to get your name on the building? Normally you would, you would have one sizable gift for the whole build to name the whole building. Take for example at UVM Medical Center. Back in the day when it was Medical Center Hospital of Vermont, I was working there in their public relations and development program. And that's what brought me to Vermont. And they had a major building project in the late eighties and early nineties. And the main building, I don't know if it's still called that, I would imagine it is the main building of the new MCHV was called the McClure building. And it was named after the former publisher owner of the Burlington Free Press. And the McClure's, he and his wife gave something like, I'm just making this up, but something like $10 million back then in the late 70s, early 80s, or late 80s, early 90s. And that building was named the McClure building. So, but then there were all these different entities around the campus of the medical campus and even around the university that are named after either historical figures or large donors. But I wouldn't say that a donor should like kind of put together a Chinese menu or a jigsaw puzzle of different pieces to have their name on the building should be named after someone or maybe two-someones if there are two large donors. And then you just hyphenate the names. Well, it seems to be pretty typical of educational facilities. I mean, that's where I reached out to is Dartmouth College certainly has numerous buildings named after you know, folks who are major contributors to their campaigns or whatever the project. Right, right. And you know, that's the UVM and Middlebury and those kind of places. So, I mean, I'm presuming that that Josie and the other people behind the community hall project, I would hope they have a sense of who they might go to in the community to look for that kind of support. And then it's just a matter of crafting the ask and going to them with a proposal and saying, you know, would you do this in exchange for that? You'll get this, your name on the building, your name on the stage, whatever. They've had some preliminary contact with a few people. And they kind of floated some stuff out there, but they are really looking for what the select board would support as far as kind of the value of the donation to the naming rights. What are they proposing right now as they're, do they have a very tentative, very, you know, even in draft form, a budget for what they think the full project is going to cost them. We've been throwing out this number of 600 to 800,000. Is that based on some preliminary number crunching? Yes. Yeah. So do you want to do a, do you want to do a motion about this or do you want to just provide them with some guidance right now? And if they come back with, if they think that that's achievable, then we can make further decision. I think that's right. I think the 30 to 35 percent of whatever their projected budget is, is a reasonable amount to ask for soul naming rights. And if they were so blessed as to have somebody step up with two separate $250,000 contributions and they were amenable to it. I just say hyphenate the name, you know, Smith Jones Community Hall. Right. I'm going to start with you guys. I think it needs to be in that percentage range. So do we want to just go back and tell them that's our recommendation? And then you're more than welcome to, I'm happy to step up and meet with their task force or their committee or whatever it is and start to try and flesh out. We should sell the stage too. And if there are any other locations in that, again, I've not been in the building. So I don't know if there's a meeting room, it could be that, you know, we could, we could sell the naming rights to the meeting room or I think we should stop short of selling the restrooms. Although at the Flynn in Burlington, the urinals have sponsor names above them. I'm not making it up. It's true. So you can get really crazy. But I'm not sure we want to go that far. All right. Let me go back and chat with them and see if that's enough direction to keep them moving. Yep. And again, offer my services, Trini, if they want to sit down with me and hash some things out too. All right. We'll do that. I assume when they name a urinal, they do it for somebody else. I'm not sure what the naming rights cost for the urinals, but there are name tags. At least the last time I was at the Flynn, you're looking at the wall in front of you. What can I say? And there was a name tag there. All right. Moving along, adopting the grant agreement resolution for the child care project. This is the standard grant agreement resolution form. There are a few of these out there. We'll have to fill in the grant agreement number. I know there's been a little time lag in getting that. I just didn't have it when I filled up the rest of it. We can put that in before we send it off. Otherwise, the form's filled out. It's part of getting us to being able to execute said grant. I'll move the grant agreement resolution for the child care project. I'll second that. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Those who carries the certificate of no appeal or suit pending. I know Mimi's listening, so we'll see if she's going to run pretty fast. She's just upstairs. I can run up and check. I can run up and grab her. She's here. I think maybe our pace threw her off. I don't know that there's nothing really to explain, isn't it a statutory requirement that we do this if we don't have anything pending as of the 1st of February? Must it protect you if something goes in court? I couldn't unmute my computer. Mimi's here. It's just the form that says we don't have any, is that what you're asking? I think that's a general question. It's just the form saying that we don't have any appeals pending on the grand list. Any grievances? But this grand list is launched as it is. I'll move the way approved with the certificate of no appeal or suit pending to 2,021 agreement. I'll second. Moving in a second. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? That's scary. I sold her on Mimi. Next up is the question on the fireworks. We've received notice that the village fire department is not going to take the lead on those this coming year. They indicated why. I'm just curious. The price went up drastically. Yeah, I've heard that from other communities as well. But I can bear with you about that a little bit. So you know, I know a little bit about the process. So I actually had a conversation yesterday with DJ from North Star Fireworks and you know, the situation is exactly is what's going on with other businesses around the state is there's staffing shortages. And so they're in the same boat as a lot of people. A lot of businesses are where, you know, there's just not enough people who you know, filling the needs of that field. And so it's kind of like airline seats. They've only got so much capacity at that point in time for that week. And they typically, I think that's, you know, I think she explained to me that maybe that's 40% of their gross or maybe even higher, you know, for their entire business model during that period of time. And so consequently, they're just, you know, an increase in their supplies and an increase in their staff. So they've chosen to take those shows and, you know, maximize what they can maximize. So that's why the price has now gone up. So it was $10,000 show, I believe before it was a, I don't know, five or $6,000 show. You have to ask the fire department about that number, but that was the impression I got. Yeah. And so the fire, the fire department was happened to do some fundraising to make up the difference between what they were getting from admissions already. So that was just too big a gap for them to look at. The question was whether the town wanted to take it on or whether we wanted to allow somebody out in the private sector to do it or just drop it. Were they willing to do something that the town did some of the funding? Were they willing to do the organizing and so forth? Sounded to me like they were ready to walk away from that. It had become quite a hassle, and Trevor and I can attest to that. This past July. We signed it. Yeah, that, yeah, it's in a few things that various last minutes trying to get that thing going. That's a site-specific issue. You know, that was trying to get an agreement with the Brunswick School, who was the new ownership of the pit. So, but you know, in the end worked out. So I'll give you, you know, I mean, my, here's my take on this. I would give you, you know, permission to use the top of Fires Hill as we did, you know, during the pandemic period of time. I don't want to be involved in fundraising for it. I did that once. I can tell you that it was very successful, but I don't want to do that again. But from that location, you know, you know, everybody told me they could see those fireworks for miles around, and there was plenty of viewing points to see them. So that's my take on that. I don't think at the town level, we have the capacity to do all that organizing. Well, it didn't take, I mean, it doesn't take a, you know, if you're not charging an admission fee and you're not worried about selling food, you know, I suppose they could look out of mess, but I mean, for me to do it, you know, that, you know, the times you've done it for Winterfest, it's honestly not a lot of work. You know, the biggest thing is getting a permit from, you know, the fire chief and, you know, other than that, basically, you know, in my case, it's turning over the top of the hill to these guys, and it's pretty simple. I mean, you just, you know, there's an area, I don't know, 300 feet, I guess, that just has to be, you know, no one can be near. And the fire department, you know, I'm assuming in the summer time, you need to have them on site in case there's an emergency, but, you know, that's not so much the case for what I've done in the winter. Um, so I don't know. Is it a free community event that we put on? Or do we try to find another organization that wants to, you know, take on the process of, you know, trying to generate and raise sponsorship? I will tell you that during the 2020 4th of July event that I did, we kept upping the number as to how many dollars worth of fireworks could we could buy, because as we kept on receiving money from GoFundMe and private checks and things like that, we were around the $9,000 to $10,000 range. And that was all just contributions. So that was done privately outside of the town, correct? Correct. What about, let's throw this out there. I'm sorry, Sunny's not still here. What about asking the two Rotary Clubs? If this might be something they would want to take on as a joint project, and they might even be able to raise money above the cost of the fireworks and have the fireworks be a benefit for, I'm just, you know, speculating, have the fireworks be a benefit for a scholarship fund or something, anything they raise over and above the $10,000 or whatever it takes, and then they could even have, presumably they could stage a cookout somewhere, you know, barbecue, chicken dinner or whatever, as an additional fundraiser as well. Just thought I'm no longer in Rotary, so I wouldn't be the one to make the approach, but... So there is a possibility there. I mean, like I said, I've got too much on my plate next summer to take this on. That's why I'm offering the property, but if an organization wanted to, you know, use the property to do exactly what you're talking about, you know, maybe there's some music, some entertainment prior to the fireworks, I'm happy to let, you know, them use that, that venue, you know, we've created that little thing we've been done for Chandler and try to help them out, so I'm happy to provide that space, but I cannot be involved in, you know, the organization or that right now, I've just got way too much on my plate. Does somebody want to reach out and see if that's something they're interested in, if the Rotaries are interested in doing that? Yeah, somebody, maybe I'm sure that, you know, Tom, maybe just reach out to Sam Cole and ask him, he's now the president of the... Who's the president of the more of the Sunrise Club? I think that's Sam, Sam Cole, right? Okay, it was sunny, but it's changed hands now. Right, oh well, I think, Sam Cole, yeah. Sam Cole. Yeah, I can reach out to him or, you know, I know, I don't know Sam, but I know something quite well, and I can reach out to John Holmes is handing off the leadership to, I believe, to Bob Wright of the Noontime Club, so I can at least speak to the two of them, and make some overtures to the Morning Club as well, and see if it's anything they're interested in. The Noontime Club is far more financially solvent than the, that's not the right word, but far more financially well-healed than the Morning Club is from years of fundraising for scholarships and so on, so they might be amenable to taking it on, especially if it could be another form of benefit. Yeah, I think that's a good start. I'm not sure if there's any other organizations that can pull that off. It's not that I'm thinking right now, it's like I don't know who else would be able to do that. To do that. Yeah. Perry, didn't you say that you fundraised for the fireworks last time at Fars Hill when you had them during the summer and that that was successful you raised? Yeah. A little bit of money. So I'm wondering if our real issue here isn't so much that we need to find a sort of an organization to kind of, it just sounds like we need to find a human being of any kind who would be willing to kind of, you know, go around and find folks who will help pay for it. Sounds like there is private money out there that's willing to help out with this kind of thing, so maybe it's a matter of having somebody who's willing to go around and do it and Perry it sounds like you've got too much going on to do that, but maybe there's somebody who can talk to the people that you talk to. Yeah, there was, I mean it was a joint effort with four or five folks who were talking it up and making a few phone calls and then Mary Richter did a GoFundMe page and on the GoFundMe page I don't remember it off the top of my head exact number, but the GoFundMe thing was that might have raised 4,000 or so and then there was a substantial number of business sponsors that probably kicked in 500 bucks and it's, I think it's totally possible that you just have to find the right entity that can do that kind of thing and I don't know maybe here's another thought, is it a rec department event thing? I don't know whether that's possible, but I know they're strapped and Heidi's got a lot going on when it comes to that, so maybe that's not realistic. I don't know maybe Chandler takes it on and does it in coordination with some time of an event that brings music in. I like that idea. I think the rec department has enough going on, especially in the summer, but I wonder if the channel organization would be interested in helping to put something together that would be... They're already using the hill. I think we'll continue along. It's been growing and it's relatively successful, so maybe they're the entity that puts it together and they pick up sponsorship to cover the cost of fireworks. I know right now when I talk to DJ, she wasn't going to give away the date. We have a little bit of time, so what that time looks like, maybe three to four weeks is my impression, so if we could come up with something, we probably could get that price and we'd be honored. Some sort of musical performance followed by fireworks, that sounds great. Well, for years, Sam was doing that at the stock firm with VSO, selling tickets to the concert and fireworks were part of that process. Yeah, yeah, that was fun. There's enough room, certainly, at the hill to I think accommodate something along that line, especially if it's a ticket sale situation. I'm probably not going to plant corn next year. I'm just going to put that field back into grass for a while. There's certainly enough space there, I think, to accommodate something along that lines of like a VSO situation, natural amphitheater. Okay, so Tom's going to pursue the rotary. Who's going to pursue Chandler? I can have the conversation, but I'd rather, you know, let Tom, let's try the rotary first. And then, you know, if the rotary says, now we're not interested, I'll have a conversation with Karen. So Tom will be in touch after his conversation. Yep. Great. Then next up is a member to the trans, oops, sorry, go ahead. Oh no, muted. I was just babbling along there, not really. I will reach out to Bob, Bob Wright and John Holmes of the Noontime Club right away and then kind of get their take on it and see if it's something they may want to do collaboratively with the Sunrise Club. And we'll see how that goes. All right, touch base with Perry. Yeah, I will. I'll reach out to John right away. In fact, I'll see Bob tomorrow because we've got an RACDC board meeting. So I can even, I can even mention it to him there. All right. So moving right along, Two Rivers Transportation Advisory Committee rep. This is to consider appointing Trevor to go have that fun. I get all the best now, so. In the past, we've got a high way to form one more thing. Yep. Yeah, I think it's, that's the last time I think we've had somebody regularly who's funded Bill Morgan was in that role. So it's quite a few years back. I think at this point, it would be useful, especially if there are some conversations about prioritization that could lead to funding through the infrastructure avenues that might be opening up. Make sure that as we develop projects, we can maybe get them into that regional priority framework and make sure that they're, that's another way to get them to the front so that they're at least seen considered to be interested in doing that. Yeah. Yeah. And I've served on the one in Chidney County, I think way back when, one of my tours of that, that way. I'll move to a point, our town manager, Trevor, to the TRORC Transportation Advisory Committee. Second. All those in favor. Hi. Hi. Hi. Post. Motion carries. Do we have anything under other business? Nope. Nope. Next up is a Randolph House sewer issue. Should I start with just a little background and then I think we will need to understand a little better what the town typically does in situations like this. Does that make sense? Yep. So also, I think we've been joined by our project superintendent who's Adam Proctor. I think he's on the call now. So Adam, please feel free to chime in. And I also, if you would like me to share some sort of, I have a photo and a map that I can share to show the sort of location of the issue and the issue itself, if that would be helpful. We haven't generally enabled screen sharing outside here for security reasons. Okay. All right. I sent them to you. Yeah, and we forwarded them on. Okay. So everybody's seen it. Okay. So in a nutshell, we are now unable to connect. We had to move a sewer line around where the new part of the building would extend. The initial location, I think, didn't work for a variety of reasons. And so with this is, this is a sort of a new location. And now we are unable to connect where we were supposed to connect because about 130 feet of this 12 inch place sewer line looks to be disintegrating. And the location at which the connection would have to be is apparently about three feet higher than our connection was designed to meet because of the it's, you know, the elevation line in a straight line should have been three feet lower than this structure is. So indicating that this is kind of like a roller coaster shape instead of a straight line elevation down. And so this area can't be connected to this as part of the existing town sewer line. So we can't continue until this is resolved somehow. Our construction folks at Nailer and Breen did an estimate for us and got some material estimates for the approximate cost of the installation of these 130 feet in the structure that's needed, which comes to about $40,000 and those estimates were forwarded to you. And then another concern that was expressed when this possibility of having to replace this came up, which I'm sure Adam can explain more, is that then the structure that this would end in essentially if you replaced all this line, then it's ending at a very old structure as well. I guess it's a some sort of brick construction. And these are all very old, very brittle pipes. And so we're concerned that the end may be difficult to or just non-traditional at least. And so we wanted to get the town water departments help in sort of coring and installing the sleeve that we would need to hook up to there just because that is their structure. And it seems like it certainly wouldn't want to be something where we where we did something to to cause that to be, you know, hurt in any way. So there's multiple lines coming into that structure also. So we're just concerned with any kind of damage to any other line. Yes, that's true. That's you had mentioned that that there's but a six and two 12 water department can confirm 12. Yeah. So we've got Chris here right now. And he's on a bit of a time crunch. And I think we anticipated being close to our three of our concert by the time we got here. So I don't know if you wanted to hear from Chris really quickly. Our perspective, because he's going to be got something he's going to do about 10 minutes. I don't know just to jump in there. It's a little out of order, but try to make the most of this time. So first of all, the line is still functioning. We've never actually had a problem on that line. I get that the clay bells are cracked, but believe you mean we have a lot worse conditional lines around town. I can list off about 10 within no time. But yes, there's recruiting. But we've never had an issue posed by this line. Typically, if we had, we would get it out, clean it out camera. If we saw that there was roots protruding, we would there's contractors that actually have root treatments. Broken clay bells are actually typical of an old line, especially one that's been turned like this one has just from sitting under the ground. There's kind of how it works. So the real issue with the project is the free foot. I don't disagree though with the line, you know, is not an optimum shape. And the structure that they want to go into is probably one of the oldest active sewer structures in town. I would just solely hire, I don't even know what who the contractor would be that would have to do it, but we'd have to hire a contractor to do that. We can't core and tap into a manual. We can't even do that with a new one ourselves. So we typically do everything precast as best as possible. I'm trying to think of what else I can include. Oh, that manual, the one that, the one that's, you know, that they be tying into does take about a little, probably two thirds of the town's flow through that manual. A lot of it goes through it. So there is some care that needs to be taken, you know, if we're going to do something to that aspect. Chris, just a question. If we have a developer that needs to tap into one of our lines, do we take care of that for them or are they responsible for hiring a contractor to do that work? They have to hire a contractor that we approve. Okay. Which makes sense. That's common. Yeah. The issue I think is, you know, twofold. One is that we weren't supposed to have to tap into that. I think our plan had us, you know, 130 feet back and that became impossible. And if, so, we're looking for some help here. This is a, you know, granted it, there may be worse, but this is pretty significantly bad in terms that it's, it appears that we can't do what we originally were, had agreed to do and were, were going to do as a part of the hookup. And I guess Chris, so if, if I could ask Chris a question, and I don't know if, if Adam can correct me if I'm verbalizing this incorrectly, but is, so are you saying that we could hook up to it the way it is? The condition on the line is not what's preventing the hookup is all I'm saying. It's the height difference is the big thing. I don't really understand where the height issue came from. If somebody didn't verify the actual depth of the pipes before the plans were brought up. I'm not sure of that. Usually engineers, there is a manhole, an older manhole that would have been in the corner, that if they'd have actually checked the height of it, I'm pretty sure it would have verified it. I'll try to make sure that that was done. Yeah, I could chime in a little bit on that, Chris. So yeah, there's the existing sewer manhole that's, you know, off Prince Street, and then there's the other existing manhole north of the Randolph house. So basically, I believe those two inverts were found. And then a line was drawn between the two structures and then basically the math was done from there. So when we get to that 130 foot north portion of it, you know, from Prince Street north, that's where the elevation by the math of the invert at the lower structure to the math of the invert at the upper structure was supposed to be three feet lower, but it's not. So obviously all our design is based on all those invert heights. And the hard part about all of this is that an existing line runs directly through the foundation excavation that will need to be done for Randolph house. That's why there's the urgency on it. So when you say they were supposed to be there, but they aren't, who confirmed where they were supposed to be? You can get an invert elevation from within the structure. Okay. So it wasn't a town of Randolph employee who told you this is where the line is. That was done through the engineering work. I believe it's from the ad built, but I can't really answer that from 1977. And that we have our engineer is Dave Conger from DNK who who did the maps and things. But I think the point that, as I understand it, is that this, so normally you'd expect this to be like a ramp, a straight, you know, line from one to the other. And this area that's three feet higher is actually like, you know, like a little yeah, it's like, it's like a bump. So it's not draining down toward the invert the way a sewer line should drain. It's going up and down. When we, when we exposed the pipe that's in the photo, it was three quarter full of solid material. So I guess what I'm trying to understand is whether this was something that should have been uncovered during the due diligence of getting the site work data before the design was done. I guess part of the question is what are you asking the town to do? So we obviously this impacts us because of time because we are stopped and so we can do this. We are also concerned because so much flows through this, including stuff from Randolph House that clearly this area is just, you know, it may, you know, quote unquote work sort of, but if he opened this up and there's a bunch of stuff sitting there, it's not, you know, working, working the way it should be working. And the fact that there's this three foot difference is I'm sure part of the reason that that's happening that the, you know, some of it's getting through, but maybe it's backing up as a result of the elevation change. We are just stopped because we don't have the ability to do what we understood we were supposed to do when we initially did the design based on the drawings and the invert heights that are there for engineers to use to create these drawings. And the impact to us is not only time, but it's, you know, this is a $40,000, you know, or to the town is this a $40,000 change in cost. And it's, and then, you know, it's our project, but this isn't our part of the project initially. So I guess we're asking how the town can help us get through this so that this is, you know, better, safer, but that we don't have to bear the whole cost of it. We're, you know, happy to think about supporting it. But, you know, it's a big ticket item and delay in being able to pursue this would create an enormous cost to the project. And I'll just mention one other thing which you may or may not know that we had, without being required to do it for the, so as a part of our plans, we are installing a water hydrant near Prince Street. And that was something we did in part because we discovered in the course of the project design that there was no hydrant on Prince Street that had satisfactory flows to serve that area that the fire department was having to use main street hydrants and bring hose down. And so we agreed to add that. That was a $30,000, $40,000 ticket item that we have already done to improve infrastructure on that street. We just, there are limits to how much we can afford to take on when it really impacts, as Chris said, this is a substantial amount of flow goes through here. And it's really just not designed right apparently or installed right initially. And the pipe is so old. I mean, if you can see this picture, and if, you know, Adam was saying that when they opened it up, there's, you know, there's evidence that it is not working that, you know, it's a good idea to fix it. And in terms of the issue at the other end is we just want to make sure that, you know, that's not on our list if possible, because there's so much going through there and it's another older structure. And this could, you know, we don't want to have to go another 130 feet to continue to replace, you know, unknowable old infrastructure. So Julie, is this project federally funded? Yeah. And so a cost like this would be a budget adjustment in that grant? A cost like this would have to go against, no, I mean, we can't just add to the charge of the grant, no, it would have to come out of either contingency or another line item. And there's, you know, limits to that, especially now given that in this environment, I guess we call it, we have already incurred substantial price increases and time delays that are taxing this budget. Didn't we, in some of your prior projects, hasn't the town had to vote to accept amendments to the grants to add funding because of cost overruns? The only grants of that sort are CDBG grants. This doesn't, that I'm aware of that doesn't, this project doesn't use CDBG grants. So there's no process for you to go back and look at additional funding from whatever source you have? Not in time. And we've been back once, this bid initially was a million dollars over initial estimates. And that we had to go back before we began to make up that cost. So could Adam explain the three foot difference? What, why is there three foot difference? Yeah, again, the design, which is what we follow, you know, as a contractor, so the design was based on the two existing structures that this municipal pathway travels from. So there's one structure on the north end of the site, there's the other structure on the south end next to Prince Street. So as a design, they connected the dots between the two structures. So you have a pathway between the two in a fairly straight run. And then they also have the two different elevations where the pipe leaves the north end and enters the south end. So those invert elevations are what the entire design is based on, you know, you do your footage. And that's just how they get their increments of rise per foot. So then the design for the entire, you know, sewer is based on those invert elevations. And that's where we get a elevation we need in that parking lot, which was three feet lower than what the line actually is, if that makes sense. Was that a mistake in that design when it was done in 77-78? I don't know when the actual line was put in, but I know when Randolph House, you know, was built. Right. But does that mean there's a mistake in the design of where it would be connected? Again, I'm not a designer. To me, the mistake would be from the get-go that it wasn't installed on a straight line and, you know, at the elevation between the two. But, you know, I can't say how they installed it or, you know, what happened during that install. But I just know it doesn't work for this project design. In your experience on these projects, if there's a flaw in the design, whose responsibility is that? Isn't it usually the designers? It gets hard when you get into municipalities. I don't know what else they could have done other than base it on the two structures and the elevations of each. Start to know, you know, what's underground. So how about generally, Adam? I'm sorry? How about Trini's question, but generally? Generally, would it be a design flaw, are you saying? Yeah, take municipality out of it, make them all private or other partners. You know, I can't speak again back when it was put in, whether it's 1890 or 1977. I mean, obviously nowadays, yes, it would be a flaw. Back when it's put in 100 years ago, possibly not. You know, there's a lot less strict guidelines back then. But I mean, it's obvious that it's not flowing, even though it hasn't failed yet. Right, but Trini, correct me if I'm wrong, your question was about what happens if this situation occurs and it's a flaw with the design plans not matching up with what's in the ground. Correct. Usually that goes back. Right, you're taking municipalities out of it though. So if it's a private scenario, you know, you're going to have structures and fields and things of that nature that you can base your design on. Just trying to get an answer. Yeah, I thought I was answering. I mean, I think in my layman's terms, how I'm looking at this and how I have come to understand this is that, you know, these, these pipes designed to let water or affluent flow cannot flow with this structure where it is. So when the designer takes where it's supposed to be one point where it is supposed to be on the plans and can be seen to another point where it's supposed to be on the plans and can be seen these structures that they're kind of the inverts that they're connecting. If there's something in the way that bumps up and cannot flow that is not anticipated that that's a design problem, you know, whether it happened 50 years or 150 years, we don't know, but it's not anticipatable by a designer who's expecting this, you know, this water and or affluent flow to be designed to end and, you know, and install to flow. And so there's no way whether he designed it, you know, whether he knew or not really. Just, you know, it's not going to work this way. Julie, let's take this a different way. Though they take that risk, right? When they signed the agreement to design this, they went out, did the field work and got what they needed to be comfortable with doing that design. If it was a private contractor who did this, I don't believe we'd be having much of this conversation right now. You know, you when you do a project, you take on a certain amount of the risk of getting your data. The town didn't give you that data. You had you paid somebody to go out and get the data they needed to figure out how they needed to design your project. And that's what they did. So, you know, they could have done other things. There's other types of testing and whatnot you can do to get that data also. So, you know, I honestly think this goes back on your designer. The fact that you can't connect and that between you and them, I don't believe this is an expense the town ought to be absorbing. So, just to be clear, does the town have no responsibility to have a sewer line that flows downhill? Because we, you know, there is potentially flaws from here to wherever this pipe goes. Is that really the contractor who happens to have to connect to its problem when it is underground, unknown, installed incorrectly in the only available evidence would have to indicate that it would have to go in a certain direction to flow? I thought we heard from Chris that it was working. I think you heard from Chris that it that it's broken pipe, that it's working and that there are worse places. But when you heard from Adam that when they open this up, as I understand it, there's affluent pooling around these pipes and the invert part of the reason maybe that the pipes are crap, part of the reason it sounds like, and again, Adam, correct me if I'm wrong, because I wasn't there when this happened, but I've been trying struggling to understand this and look at the evidence that that part of the reason that's pooling is because those pipes are not installed in a way that it flows downhill. There's like a bump in it. So it's sort of a compound problem is that you have like this cracking and the elevation. Was that right, Adam? Am I misspeaking? Yeah, I agree with that. Yep. Yeah, it doesn't have proper pitch. So it's building up in certain areas. Sounds to me like this is a problem that if it wasn't discovered in this instance that we would have had problems with this at some date in the not too distant future. And given the age of this line to begin with, it's probably going to need to be replaced or would have need to be replaced in the foreseeable future. And once it does get replaced, it's going to be good for another 100 plus years. It sounds like a good faith effort was made to do the right thing. And right now, if I'm not mistaken from the notes that I read earlier that we're looking at sharing the cost of replacing this line with our ACDC and that the cost of doing so is actually somewhat mitigated by the fact that all this equipment is already on site. So I think it seems pretty reasonable for us to share in the cost of replacing much of this line. So Larry, let's play that out. I'm a private business and I go in and I have the same situation. Are you going to do it for me too? Possibly. I mean, if somebody comes in and they send, I mean, I've had contractors do work for me where they, you know, they may give me an estimate based upon their best guess of what they think is going on. And then they come back later and they say, well, this other thing happened that, or we discovered this other thing that we could not possibly have known about and, and they want more money to do it. And I've worked with them on that. Yeah, that's definitely happened to me in a private situation. That's not what's happening there, right? I think that is what's happening. I don't think this is knowable in advance. I don't see how it could have been knowable in advance. I mean, how could it have been knowable? I suppose they could have run cameras up the lines and stuff like that. But if, but there's, my guess is that there's sort of standard practice about how these things are done and what you do to determine pitch and stuff. And if you're doing all best practice, you, you should be like that should be good enough for us. Yeah, I believe this is a line that's probably been installed for over a hundred years. That's just an old age line that really is in need of repair. And while it hasn't failed yet, it's definitely on the verge of failure. This is very, Chris, we're still here. There's the potential for failure. It's more nuanced than that based on our conversation, but I don't, I'm not an expert in these so I'll be out over my skis. Well, I can tell you, though, that there, there are standards that you go by when you're doing your due diligence on these. And if you think your system is a hundred years old and you're really not sure what the condition and whatnot is, you do a little more than locate two points and draw a straight line between them. So we run into this all the time. And that's for the engineer. I'm not the engineer. But what I'm saying is this goes back on to your firm that did your design. You know, if you knew the system was as old as it was and in the condition it was in, more than locating two dots and drawing a line is what they should have done when they did these plans. How would they know the condition it was in? They said they went back and looked at the paperwork of when it was of the as built was which showed how old it was. Yeah, but that doesn't mean condition because there is old lines that are still in good condition. This is just to be clear in case there's any question. This wasn't our system. This is a municipal system. This is a part of the municipal system that we weren't supposed to have to touch. We were just supposed to connect to something that was flowing and this, you know, like a standard elevation change that a municipal system should have to live up to. This is not our system. This is something we're tapping into a municipal system because we had to move one line. I understand what you're saying, Treaty, that sure, if this were our system, we owned it and we just ran into this situation and it was our system, we have to fix it. But this is a municipal system. There's a bunch of other places that are using this line and we just happen to have to move one line from one connection to another. The rest of this is not ours and it's affecting more and if it is flowing backwards, which it appears to be from what Adam discovered in in the excavation, then all of those other people's effluent are now saturating our property. So it's just not a good situation regardless of who owns it. We happen to be in a situation where we think it would be in the best interest of everyone to try to fix it. And I don't think one affordable housing project that use happens to use the line is necessarily responsible for the municipal use of that area. I'm not sure what the options are on the town side. I just know that we want to be part of the solution. We just I'm not sure it's fair for us to be the only part of the solution. So we don't have an actual proposal on the table. Is that correct? Well, we have an estimate. Those are the estimates from Neller and Breen and Estee Ireland that you attached. Right. The materials are incorporated into the estimate. So the photograph, Julie, that accompanied the email that you sent showing a contractor standing in an excavated site. Is that on public property or on Randolph House property? That's Adam, by the way. And that's on Randolph House property. And there is probably a, well, I shouldn't say this because it's so old, but typically there would be a sewer line easement to the town to enable them to do improvements or maintenance and repair over our property. But this site in the photograph is not where you would be. Is that where you would be hooking into the town? We're just not clear what we're looking at in this particular photograph. Are you asking if that's where the structure is located? Is that where this three-foot bump that we keep talking about, where is that in relation to what's in this photograph? That's roughly halfway in between the two existing structures. Okay. A little bit south towards Prince Street. Right. Well. Does anybody have a proposal? Are we talking a 50-50 split? Do you want to hear it, Pat? Yeah, let's nail down some numbers here. So a 50-50 split would be, I think, okay with, I mean, yes, I think a 50-50 split would be okay with us. I guess for us the question of timing was equally important that how quick, because we want to start this now. So getting resolution quickly is important. And if the town would split it, that would be, we would pay the rest, because it's also benefiting our flows. It's just not only benefiting our flows. You referenced earlier that this also entails several other properties flows. Are those immediate properties immediately adjacent to or in the village center? Do you have an idea of who the other? They're coming from Main Street, as I understand it, one near the library. And is it the other one on the other side, Adam? I just don't know who's, how many buildings are connected to, you know, it could be more than one building. The line that comes from the north, I believe, serves the library. And I can't say what else up there. The one from the south is the one Chris is describing has two-thirds of the flow of the city coming through there. So there's a lot of flow coming through those two points. So in that sense, I mean, Trini, to your concerns, I mean, the town does have a stake in the game here. I mean, it's not just RACDC and Randolph House. It's, you know, as we've heard, it's the library that's utilizing this as well, a public facility. It's not an exorbitant amount of money. I mean, I know we want to be responsible stewards of public funds, but we're talking 50-50 split of $20,000 here. And for an important housing resource for the community, immensely important housing resource for our elderly population. So it feels to me like it justifies the town taking some accountability for it. How long a section did you say this was? At 130 feet. Okay. Yes. Is that a motion, Tom? Yeah. Before I make a motion, let me ask, and I think I know the answer because neither Pat nor I have any skin in the game here financially. But is there anything, both Pat and I are members of the board of RACDC. Does that pose any conflict of interest in terms of our voting on this? I don't think so, Tom. Okay. I just want to, you know. No, that's great. And I think it's important that you put it out there that you do have that relationship. I think it's really great that we should have that kind of transparency. But normally a conflict of interest in this kind of case would be only if you were to have some sort of direct financial gain. Right. Like if I worked for Estee Ireland or Neller and Breen, for example. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I'm going to make a motion that the town of Randolph split the cost of this repair work for the RACDC project based on the estimates from Neller and Breen and Estee Ireland that we split the cost. And the only other concern I would have, and maybe we can deal with this, if I get a second and we go into discussion is do we have contingency funds available in our wastewater accounts to cover this? Yeah. We do have money available on the sewer improvement fund that would cover this amount without disrupting anything else. And if you'd be amenable to adding to the motion that you're essentially authorizing a sole source procurement, one of the other things is when you get into our purchasing policy and some dollar amounts, it would just provide clarity that because of the, it's more than $10,000. We weren't sure if it was going to land over the 25. You get to a certain dollar amount. There's an investigation I have to do about whether or not it's necessary, the timeliness element, etc. and so forth. So if you can just include in there that you're essentially authorizing this sole source procurement with Neller and Breen that provides an extra level. I will amend my motion to say that we are also authorizing sole source procurement given the time factor and the essence of doing this in a timely manner. And I might add that I'm wondering if it makes sense for us to include a dollar amount that it will not exceed? Not to exceed, let me add these, not to exceed $20,000 contribution from the town of Randall. That should just about be 50%, might be a little bit shy, but I think that's fair. Cap. I'll second that. For discussion, Trevor, to meet the procurement requirement, you have to document the reason why. And I think your reasoning on this should be based on using contractors that are currently on the site and that the work that they're doing was bid by RACDC according to whatever the procurement requirements were for their funding source. So it shows there was a competitive process to get the contractors on site, but that the, you know, to bring in a separate contractor and all that has an impact. And we can provide you with those if you need them, Trevor. Your procurement document. Thank you, Julie. Any further discussion? Yeah. I have a motion. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Post abstain. I'm curious. Next up, we have a manager's report. Sorry, did that, did that pass? I'm sorry, I couldn't hear. Yeah, it just passed. It did. Okay. All right. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. We'll be in touch. Into the manager's report. Town reports are available. They came in today. We've got spiral bound copies for you. I hope we figure out to get to you. And then we're just waiting on the PDF to be able to put those online, but that should be here in the next day or so. We're available digitally. I made aware of some plowing issues at the Pleasant Youth Cemetery. We contacted Orange County Sheriff signing that we've undertaken. Harold needs to plow in there. It's usually just said to access the vault. Somebody took it upon themselves to plow in a more wide ranging way. And so we'll have some grounds repair as a result of that activity, but we're trying to keep an eye on it, make sure it doesn't happen again, or we can figure out who did it. It's snow removal and maintenance activities from last Thursday, Friday storm, more or less concluded today when you think about everything through snow removal and the final cleanup. And they are going around and pushing back and shelving and different banks create a little more space. I got the Maple Street traffic analysis and cost estimates just the other day. So we'll loop those in for certainly your next meeting. I haven't had a chance to read through either one of them yet and to make sure that the cost proposal is to see exactly what they include. It does look like at a minimum for the road and sidewalk related stuff. I don't think the water waste water and I have to check the storm water piece that's supposed to be in there. We're talking about a $500 or $600,000 component. But that project component being somewhere in that range, depending on the one way or two way designs, it's actually the two way design was the cost effective option of the two, but that was a very quick cursory look. We'll get that out to everybody. Could you, after you've looked at it, could you get that out and swim out at any time? Yeah, we can send that, send that along sooner than later. We've given off a lot, a couple days before just like to have what we can. Yeah, we continue to work on process improvement with the board packets. Ideally, we want to get you everything on Fridays. This one, there was enough leak emerging stuff tied with a few other things that we haven't hit the marker for better. We'll keep trying to push it back to see it more time with the stuff. Even if we don't get the full packet, if we get some sort of a reminder of the board or something like that. Yeah, those are all that I had. You have just a reminder, we've got the informational meeting related to the Australian ballot pieces on Monday the 21st. It's five or five 30 p.m. We'll do that hybrid style, much like we are now. Check really quickly in my handy town report. Five p.m. Wow. The energy audit such a mention here. Yep. Do we do the bidding? Yeah, we'll probably coordinate the bidding. Stephen's tip is along toward the end of last week. I've got to go through them, mark them up. We've got some background information to add related to each of the buildings under consideration. So some of them just as simple as age, any renovation timelines, a few different pieces like that that we'll have to block out. But he's done nearly all of the heavy lifting in terms of setting up the different components. And that was covered under funding that was available with the two rivers. So that was a nice moment of synthesis between what they had available and what we were ready to do. And then the open meeting, a lot of training and get a chance earlier to talk about it while we're looking sometime late March to early April. The LCT is just looking at their post town meeting calendar and onboarding for a new attorney. It sounded like an additional one, not a replacement. So we'll have four. We should be able to set that up. We'll know next week, Gabby, who runs the municipal assistance center said that next week we'll have a date in time or at least some options for that. We'll probably do that hybrid as well. So we are moving forward there in the energy audits. They may help with whatever projects are identified through some of the rebate and other programs. We'll have to come back and see what's in there. And there is some money in the capital plan. Those pieces will be available and there might be other sources of funding out there that we could tap into for both implementation and because the RFP was, we were able to use those other resources, there aren't going to be any costs really until, I mean, other than the publishing or distribution of the RFP, those types of real small soft costs, but otherwise we're pretty well set. I think in the past, Christmas in a modern state for part of the audits. Oh yeah, sorry, I was thinking the RFP, yes, we'll see some funds for the audit. Trevor, did you say we're having, I missed this slightly. We're going to have a meeting, a pre-town meeting meeting on Monday the 21st at five? Yep, there's a public information meeting where we'll go through essentially the chance to kind of cover all the things that are on the ballot for Australian ballot. So we'll do a little, you know, everything from a small budget presentation on through to, you know, the questions at the end related to Randolph Center fire exemption. But people have a chance to at least discuss, obviously can't amend or take any action, but it provides an opportunity to learn more and to ask questions and to have that conversation. That's required as part of the temporary authority to make the switch. I would give that information. I think your idea of using this in turn, about that, President Warcraft. Yeah, he's going to be great. I think Will Weiss came in Tuesday and was he in? Yeah. And he's president of the Ski and Snowboard Club. So Harry, you need some research related to labor for the right price. We've got a guy for you. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. This kid's a he's good. He's a go getter, philosophy major. So he said, he's like, basically, I'm thinking whether or not to go to law school because there isn't much with that on its own that you can go do. But it's a common background for law school, I guess. So yeah, it seems like we got hooked up with a good one. So. And he'll be with us through. They've gotten to the end of the semester early May. He's a senior. We're going to try to structure his project so that he's through a little bit earlier than that so that those final weeks can be thoroughly enjoyed in whatever form is appropriate. I do have one more question. Well, what did you eventually find out on the trees cemetery? Oh, yeah, it sounds like that was a subcontractor that maybe got a little rowdy and a little ahead, because even Kevin from Green Mountain Power wasn't sure exactly what happened. I've heard any follow up on there about that. They did say it. I haven't had a chance to double check with Harold, but they were going to go out. They did leave some mess behind as well. That don't need to clean up. And the hope is to get it now, because if we try to get it when everything softens up to separate set of fouls. So coordinating them, making sure that the cleanups don't appropriately get to the tree. It sounds like somebody got a little autonomous rowdy into a little quicker than they were maybe supposed to. All right. So do we need to go into executive session, Trevor? All right. Just got a couple of quick ones. I don't think it'll take long, but I can give you an update on the collective bargaining agreement. There was some movement there, and then just give you a quick updates on a couple of personnel things just so you know what's happening. All second. Motion in a second. All those in favor? Opposed? Motion carries. We will be back in about five minutes in executive session.