 Are you here for a specific item or did you want to talk about something else? I'm just interested in a topic that's going to be just about the roads. Okay. Where do you live? Apple Hill. Apple Hill. Okay. Thank you. Are there any additions or changes to the agenda? Alright. The delinquent tax collager. Charger. You're up. Okay. Just a quick status on the delinquent taxes. We are down to 14 taxpayers who are looking on their 2018 taxes of the seven parcels and that the board motion to be sent to Gloria Rice for collection, all of them paid in full except for two. And those are numbers 10 and 14. And there's a little spreadsheet behind the software printout. So 10 and 14. 10 and 14. Okay. And the board nor was there any contact or attempt for payment. So that's where we are. Number numbers. Number one. Number one is agreed to make start looking payments good. Number two, that taxpayer died. Number three, the state is sufficient to cover that, but their work, we just have to wait for probate. Number three, they've contacted me. They're going to pay that balance with a credit card. Number four, if that property is for sale, that will ultimately get paid. Number five is on a payment plan. Number six and seven, interestingly enough, they have a payment plan for sale on a day and said that a payment of 7,000 would be made in 12 days. There's a refinancing a foot. However, the very last thing that was said before hanging up was, if I can't do it, I'll call you. So I keep, I've heard from, I've heard from number six and number seven. I'm going to pay it. I'm going to pay it. Well, I kind of feel like we should, I feel like we should believe them. I defer to the board's discretion on this. It's 10,000 out of 27,000 outstanding. So it sits at once. Well, I can see if he pays in 12 days. And if he doesn't, we'll have to decide what to do next. So the next few are very small amounts. The folks are paying $50 a month. They're just chipping away at it. And number 12 is on hold per your this select board's motion. I think we're going to hold off on that until October. So things are good. Excellent work. Thank you. You're welcome. So that's, I think historically this is the lowest amount of billing for past $1 a week. No, last October was 6,500. Oh, but we're not in October yet. We're not in October yet. So we're seeing. We're going to see. That's right. It's going to be. It's going to be. Maybe it will be zero. That would be lovely. Wouldn't that be awesome? And then just to follow up on a directive, although, and I think it wasn't an informal directive of the board to maintain a $10,000 balance in the town hall. Just give us a quick second. So I guess. No, we made a motion on that. To maintain a $10,000 balance in the town hall reserve fund and the rest of the fund approximately $49,000 was allowed to be used for town hall renovation project expenses. So we are at the $10,807 mark essentially left in the town hall renovate reserve fund. Ten years. Ten eight. So bills will continue to come in. And I have begun to simply post against the town hall reserve renovation project expense line. We're at negative 64, almost $6,500 on that line. I there will. 64 or 65? 6,500. 64,94. 6,500. So just to keep the board apprised, there should be grant reimbursement money for the accessibility phase of the project. John Acala projects that at the end. Sometime at the end of October, they are projecting that to be around $30,000. They're working hard to figure out how they're going to finance or deal with the septic system. So that's the town hall reserve fund. With the beginning of the new fiscal year and the inputting of additional money, is that not now? Oh, yeah. That's not to open. Yes. FY20 appropriation, that's it. That's $10,000. $10,000 is going to. So. And the grants, you expect $60,000? Well, I am told $60,000, but I know of $30,000. $30,000 is what I'm talking about. And then someone mentioned there was another $30,000. I am not specifically aware of that. So I cannot discount that nor confirm that. Well, I know that there's $30,000 that we're supposed to get from the accessibility. That's what is projected to come in in October. I don't know about it at another $30,000. And then I thought I saw an email that said there was another $30,000. But I'm not aware of what that would be. Maybe there's another kind of factor. No, we don't know about it. No, it was. That would be nice. It was suggested there was another grant. We don't know about it. I said that on my thinking cap. So that's where we are. I just wanted to select where to know that what the effect of this continued and ongoing spending is. It's basically to utilize our fund balance to cover this, these expenditures. Until we get reimbursed. Until we get reimbursed. And I don't know what the extent of the projected expenditures are above and beyond that reimbursement. So I'll keep you apprised so that you can be aware of that. I am unaware of any other coming donations or any other plan generating additional funds to cover what may exceed grant income. So you should just be aware of that because I'm writing checks and you're not seeing these balances on a regular basis. Well, I'm wondering a couple things. Just to update the board, since Ernie Parrish died, Green Line Builders has been going through some difficult times. So I know John and Donna were going to meet with Jack, who's the bookkeeper for Green Line, and try to flush out what's going on. So I mean, it's been a really difficult time since he died. The other piece I'm wondering is if the next town hall meeting, if we should have a budget discussion. Because I know that your figures and Donna's figures don't match up. I'm not sure how we're on a cash basis. It's not a cruel, it doesn't reach back. Whatever you had in the account, and whatever you have spent, it simply net out. There's not any other money on the side that we spent in 2017 and was reimbursed in 2017. It's just you are where you are now. Katie, can you put online to do list to schedule for the next town hall meeting, which should be September 5th? Maybe I'll ask Donna to put it on at the end of the town hall agenda to talk about the budgets. Because I think we need to get this figured out. If I, it's the town hall committee. I think we should also be really clear right now what our tolerance is for overspending. Because right now we're 6,500. 30,000 from accessibility. So a question I have is whether that 30,000 can be used for, can it be used, are we going to be able to use the whole thing, you know, do these accessibility spending offerizations match up with where we're actually spending in a way that's useful? I have no idea. Yes, it's tied into the lift primarily. Sure, but the question is whether there are other aspects to be ADA compliant. And the bathrooms. Right. And so other portions of that. So have we already spent money on those accessibility things? Yes, we'll get reimbursed. We put money up front for some of the ADA stuff. And this will be to reimburse us. So is a whole 30,000 that's coming into the go to? Do we have more money left to spend on accessibility? I think the money left to spend on accessibility is, I think it's pretty minimal. It's pretty minimal. It's like special faucets. And it's free. So beyond that though. So that's great. So that will offset to 6,500. But what I'm hearing is we don't know how much is still out there for bills. Well, and then part of that is to get together with Jackie from where I wanted to see where things are at. And meanwhile, things are still happening over there? They are. And John McCuller is doing a lot of the heavy lifting. That's great. And that's great. I still feel like our job is to express our tolerance point. Right. Well, I think that they're spending without knowing where the money's coming from. I'm going to ask John. I asked him about coming to tonight's meeting. And they wanted to wait until after they met with Jackie to come to the select board. So I'm going to ask them to come to our September 9th meeting and give an update on the town hall project and general budgets where we're at all that. But that's two or three weeks of possible spending. I'm just being nervous. The only other activity that's going on there is already work that is under contract. So we're not spending additional funds at this point. Yeah. The parents did their stuff. Right. And so there's still some employees of Green Line that are working for jobs that are already under contract. Under contract, i.e. we've already paid for it? Some of it we've paid for upfront. OK. Yeah. Exactly. And that's what we're trying to get a hand along. And Donna's figures look at the contract with Green Line and say, OK, this is money already spent. And your figures are only going to look at money that's actually been spent today. What we actually have minus what we had to spend because that's what you have. Right. Exactly. Do you know what I mean? I understand what you say. But the two of you together just confuse me and concern me again. Well, I think so just from a, we are on a cash basis. So from a cash basis standpoint, what I would say is what are the checks that they anticipate writing in the future? What is the income that they anticipate receiving in the future? And that's in the delta. I mean, it doesn't matter what their, well, just from my standpoint and a cash close standpoint, what comes in minus what goes out. That's what is going to affect the town's final balance ultimately. Right. So I can ask Donna to put together something that projects what you're saying. What's left to be, what bills do we anticipate we still are going to need to pay? How much money do we think we're going to have coming in to pay those bills? And where is it going to come from? Right. And when you say money is already spent, the Green Line money is already spent, does that mean Donna's already accounted for it in her spreadsheets, or does it literally mean that Sanders paid all the Green Line bills? I think there are more Green Line bills to come is what I understand. Exactly. I don't want to give a number. Because numbers consider the whole of that contract. Right. So it could be, okay, you've got this $6,500 hole, but then this $30,000 comes in and goes for money that's already been spent. So it covers that $6,500 hole and then gives us some extra room to wiggle. I can say that when I was coming back from the airport yesterday and coming home, I thought it would be a really nice treat to stop and get some corn at Morse Farm. And I ran into Donna and her and John are very sensitive to where we're at on things and they're working to make sure we're not spending anything until they've had a chance to sit down and reconcile with Green Line. Right. And they're very concerned. And they're really working really, really hard to make sure that we're on target. And it's at the top most of their frustration. Okay. Yeah, I just, yeah. No, they're not. We need to, I think we need to trust them. I think the project has been very well managed. There is not a question in my mind that the project has been well managed. But they're also, when you're dealing with an old building, there are surprises. There are just simply surprises that you just can't, and then contractors can't show up when they were supposed to. Well, we had bad weather. And everything started out so good. Right on track. Everything was running smoothly. And then the other shoe driver. Exactly. And the fact that Ernie died has really thrown a wrench into this. And Lisa's trying to figure out bank accounts and depositing money. Right. I know it's hard. I know it's hard. But I appreciate here that Donna and John are paying very close attention to this, to the negative, to the arrears. And yeah, because what we obviously want, what we don't want is for, is for what's still out there to be more, be more than 30,000. Or more than what? Right. 24,500. And more than what other grant money might come in. Right. So I think Donna's got a really good handle on spreadsheets. We just have to reconcile them with yours. And I think the fact that it goes over two fiscal years, for Donna's stuff. Well, that's fine. But this is what's in your bank account. It has nothing to do with what has happened over two fiscal years. But that's how Donna's looking at it. I understand that. But you have a hard number of a negative $6,500. So that's, I don't mean to. And believe me, I think the project has been great. I don't see any frivolity in that project anywhere that corners could be cut and maintaining integrity and the quality of the project. They've done that. My purpose of being here is not to discount that, but just to advise you of a number that I see every day, but you really don't. No, we appreciate that. So that is like, I don't want to come in here and have you say, what do you mean? We are $25,000 in the negative that I don't think you would appreciate that. So that's really what I'm why. No, you're exactly what you're supposed to do. But I have no criticism. It's just information. I didn't hear criticism. Oh, good. I didn't hear criticism. No, I didn't hear anything. And yeah, thank you. So now we just talked briefly about workstations. I was expecting as I got on the car, I thought it's going to look all different. And actually it didn't. That's because we haven't done it. No, it looks way bigger in here. It does. And the reception area is very nice. So I would really like to point out that the reception area is much more welcoming, much more spacious for folks to come in and for multiple people to do various kinds of business. The listeners are able to spread out. And in fact, today a John was meeting with a townsperson and that person was very comfortable. She was able to pull up right to a desk and work with him on the computer and see what it was he wanted to talk with her about. They must be more spacious for them than crammed in that little corner, right? It is much more spacious. We're going to have Andy come in. They would like a couple of shelves to lift their books and files and so forth, all of that desk to make that more to make it an easier workspace to work on. Well, after Rick purchased his services last week, I stopped in at the office and between meetings and Judy was showing me how all the stuff in there, all the wires and boxes and flashing lights are all like in one place now, so you're not tripping over things. You know where all the wires are. It was fabulous. So I'm not going to give up my opportunity to say that Holland from RB Tech came and he did a great job of rewiring us. We have had virtually no glitches. He was gone. Everything was up and running. He cleaned up all the wires. He labeled everything. It's very neat and tidy. He has, and it was a pleasure to work with him. He made suggestions. He was working with Andy talking about where we can put our technical equipment. Are you going to say stuff? No, I was really going to say stuff. I was going to say stuff. So that was very smooth. The one thing... Judy had a glitch. But that was a caught thing that they needed to just reconfigure something into the computer. And that happens periodically. The one thing that I'll put in a picture and then I'm sure you want me to go, but Holland did say that... Is this new computers? Yes, that we have three computers that are scheduled to not be... that are on Windows 7. Windows 7 will no longer accept security patches after the beginning of next year, January 1, 2020. It expires. So he, in due diligence, advised us of that. And beyond that, the next question is, once we're all on Windows 10, your dutiful little treasure says, oh man, so we're all on Windows 10. Windows 10 go down. And that will be... I believe it was October 2025. We'll have seven or eight computers and various devices that will need to be replaced. So we'll want to think about that for budget purposes as we go along. It's not that bad. We'll have several years to work on it. Katie, I had Katie post your... I guess it's Judy's email with the ticket for... We need to do the public computer and then we need to replace Alfred's computer at the town garage and the Lister's computer and Barbara's computer. And you said we have enough money in the budget to do that. The tech... The tech reserve fund will cover the laptop. Those are the most expensive devices to replace. The desktops are not. The towers are much less expensive. You're talking about the laptop for the public? Yes. So the select board has already identified that money to come out of the tech fund for the laptop. Depending on what you do with your IT contract, it is possible, again, depending on who the board selects, if there are additional funds there, that we can purchase those devices, the computers that we need for the end of the year out of that line item. For Lister's and for Barbara. And highway, we've come out of highway, but his has to be replaced as well. If laptop is the most expensive, why are we buying a laptop for public use? I mean, it's going to be in a fixed place. I don't know why that doesn't make much sense. It's really a matter of convenience. It's easier to move it down the way if we need the space on the countertop versus having a desktop tower or whatever. What's the difference in price? About $500. He figured the tower would be between $800-$900 and the laptop would be maybe $1,200. Yeah, well, that's... Yeah, actually, in this e-mail he's pricing the desktops for the office there around $1,500 apiece. Well, that's where the install... So him coming out, he would come out, set it up, pull everything off of the existing computer, get it all into the new computer. So that was included in that price. And will the laptop that's available for public be a single unit in that somebody who's researching will be using this screen? Or will it be hooked to a monitor? No, it'd be like this. Although we could set it up so that it could be paired to the monitor. No, no, that's not what I was thinking. I'm just thinking that when you're looking at some of those documents electronically, having a bigger screen, we could get a large screen laptop. But that's going to be more expensive. We could also just get an inexpensive, larger screen to plug the laptop into. But then you're moving something big. Right, but very small profile. I mean, it's nice. I mean, we need to be able to supply the public with something that they can use. But you do this. You go into town offices. I've never seen a laptop. It's always been a desktop. Is that convenient or inconvenient when you're using it? If you're trying to say, look at a book, one of those big books, plus look at a computer, what works better? Well, generally, the computer is... I mean, town offices, as you know, are set up in any number of different ways. I just know that sometimes you're looking at a map on a survey on the screen. They would be here, I believe. So having a little bit of scale... If you are looking at one of those documents, can you send it to yourself to look back at your office so that we're not having to... No. I mean, we want to make sure that people have the ability to look at things, but... And that's not a lawyer limitation. That's a town office limitation because then you'd need the computer that you're offering to set up somehow through an email instead of what they are sent to a printer so that you can... Rent a document. Right. And then you're... Which is good because you're keeping track of your pages that you print and you're paying for them. I would suggest if they haven't purchased the laptop because we do need to move on to our next agenda item. Right. If they haven't submitted the purchase order yet, it would make sense to ask them the question, could we save some money by looking at a desktop and larger screen option? The only... And we'll do that I think one of the considerations was simply space. Right. I don't know where we're... We could put a public lab. A public computer. The way the office is configured at the moment, even as we have cleared away, a laptop would be the easiest fit if you put a narrow table here or whatever. I was also going to ask, are we going to put a table there for the public? Yeah, that's fine. So it might have been, I think, the thought behind that. Yeah. It's totally workable. If we had the laptop too, it's going to have the two compatibility easily. If there was something where a larger screen would really be easily patched up there. And... I can't imagine it's... No. We've spent way too much time on this. Right. Yeah. I mean, we need to supply the public whole computer to what degree I think is. The big issue is being able to print it. That is the big thing. As it's connected to a printer, you say, yes, this is a document I want to print. I mean, John Lenz isn't here yet, right? Well, again, I introduced that topic just to put it in the back of your head that we probably need to move on the replacement of our Windows 7 devices before the end of the year. So you're not going to order them right now? Well, we have to have select board approval for that because of the purchase amount. So we would await your consideration on that. And we don't have a... They're not budgeted. So again, your consideration for how you would like to manage those purchases would be necessary. Well, just let me know when you want me to put it on the agenda. I think we can table it until we're done with our FPP. Yeah. And you had wanted to be on the last meeting of the month to go over budgets and that kind of stuff with us to let us know where we're at. So maybe we can do that at the end of September? Sure. Okay. See, there's not a whole lot happening. Right. I will say that... You have to bring in fiscal year. We're collecting taxes. And so we're not... We're really in great shape for managing our bills. Our bills went out within five days of last year's bill. So we were not much impacted by the forced merger in terms of getting our bills out and getting tax money. And the order that is before you tonight is 153... So, you know, it was $153,000 order. So we're really heavy in the beginning of our fiscal year. So it was very good that we were able to get our bills out. So a couple of things from the to-do list, Katie. One would be to make sure we check in with the office staff about when we want to order computers. And... Oh, I know. The other to-do thing. When do we expect the orders will want to come? Any idea? I still hear from them almost once a week. Because I know we pay them a bunch of money. With various tweaks and so forth. So they are still working their way through our data. They have not asked to come back. I was expecting them to be done sometime at the end of... Well, sometime in September. Okay. Just let me know in enough advance and make sure we plan enough time for the auditors. And maybe it can happen. Maybe it will be the last meeting in September when you come. So we can all be on the same night. Yeah, I don't... They haven't told me that they were ready to submit a draft. So they have made some suggestions and so forth. It's a nice working partnership. Good. Yeah. That's great. Anything else? Anything else? Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Oh, sorry. No, that's me taking too much space. So while we're waiting, maybe he got lost. He's not around. All right. Well, let's hear from Alfred. What's the status of the rental aside arm lower? It's here. It's been out. Two days. It's out last Thursday. It's out today. And that's the $3,000 a month? A week. $3,000 a week. John said he checked and it was a month. John said he said... That's right. He said that it was 3,000 a month. That's probably in January. I don't know. I think I got that figure already. I don't know. I have no idea. I have an invoice. Thank you, Sandra. Thank you. Thank you. You're welcome. It's 9,000 per month. I mean, yeah. So it's 3,000 per week. And the last week, the last week is free. So you paid for three weeks. And the last, the fourth week is free. And they delivered it on their nickel. So I think they cut us a little bit of slack there. But it's here for a month. And we're going to use it as much as we can. We've talked to Doug Grout about running it for us. And it dawned on me that now he's not a contractor. He is now going to be an employee. So we have to run him through the drug test and that stuff before he can operate. So that's going to slow us up a little bit as far as him operating. I was going to put him on. Right. Is he interested? He's interested. He only wants to do two or three days per week. So he kind of like a part-time, like a head or somebody, right? Yeah. Yeah, he would be a part-time. But still needs to be able to do it. Right. Right. No, we need to do it right. Yeah. Because he has to be covered by the insurance and everything. Maybe when I tell him that, it might change his mind. I don't know. I don't see why I would. But you know, he never knows. So I will have the ladies in the office schedule that. Okay. I'm going to put the drugs screen. Sounds good. The sidearm is the thing like we've seen in East Montpelier. That has like a dandy elbow. It's a tractor with a arm and a muller on the end of it. So we've been cutting the grass for the second time around. And also some brush as we go. Because it's missionable to both. Is this going to do the brush that's stuck up here that we talked about? Yeah. Can he get underpenses? That does not do very well underpenses. I would think it would get too big. Because yeah, it's too big. And the fence posts are close together. You don't know where the bottom. But we have been getting like over the guardrails. Because it kind of reaches over the guardrails. And you come over the backside of it. So that helps. But mainly we're just cutting brush and trying to get the second time around. Yeah. But it takes a long time. Because with the brush you've got to stop. Keep stopping, backing up, reaching out. You don't move in the arm to get it straight. And it's a brand new machine first for all of us. Right. We've never run one. So we're sort of like. You want to figure it out. Oh yeah. I know. I've already figured it out. Yeah. It's working. So. And are you renting it just for the month? I mean that's what I have rented it for so far. If it's still available. If they haven't got it spoken for for somebody else. Then we can use it. And we have my money. No. No. Not as far as the roadside mulling. Because we already spent half of it for the first moment. Right. And this is going to be more. Almost double what the second half of the mulling. And so we're going to be over for our roadside mulling. Yeah. Can you put it under equipment hired? Could do that. Yes. But does it help? Yeah. Because there is money. Equipment hired. Mine I don't know. Right. I mean that's. Yes. We can do that. Yeah. But that's going to. That will be sort of hurting too. Because we've hired a couple of trucks. For haul and gravel. Yeah. But I would concern and look at that. When I put it on the work orders. Yeah. Which is the best way to. Yeah. And I know. To pay for that. And the new or the new the least. The new truck is here. It's actually in more still like the body. Factors of place. Yeah. Should be having that. They were telling me really good things in the game. But. Then I guess their schedule got busy. But we're still going to have it by November. Right. Yeah. And so I'm going to. Your. Yes. Word. Yes. Word. Yeah. Yeah. Can you grab that. I'll put it over there. Thank you. It's pretty. But. The following in your face. Yes. Anything else. We. I. Went by. H. H. H. H. H. H. Both. Of course. Is the newwh guru. And was incredible to sell. Because he went by. H. Trailer. The new high street show because the other trailer we had. Was. Big. To you know. So I. Great. Trailer you. And. Selling. Your. Time. Which. Is try to. That you use for the labs haveاتok. Bull HO. Is you. Wait. Your T. So it's a lot heavier. We needed a heavier trailer. So I've got that purchased and it's all set up. We sprayed some green stuff today on Kent Hill, some ditching that we did. So that's working out really well. We hauled some gravel to, the last couple of weeks we hauled gravel to Wheeler Road. Long Meadow. Long Meadow. Yeah, I saw some end voices there. I guess it was a Monarch. Monarch, yeah. Somebody I was talking to drove up one of those two roads recently right after you looked on them and they said it was beautiful. That you guys had done a really nice job. Yeah, that gravel really works well. It packs down the rest of the tire and it's really a good gravel. So it makes a lot of difference. What other projects do you have for the summer? We're still working on culverts, putting in some of the culverts that failed from spring. And still waiting to hear for the Georgia Road Project grant. Was that the one we didn't get? No, we got the grant. But we're still working on the sizing of the culvert. The state is looking at it. It might even be a bridge. They might be saying that it might have to be a bridge instead of a culvert. Really? That's a lot more extensive. Yeah, our engineer Doug Newton is working with the state to come up with the sizing of whatever structure is not going in there. This is at the bottom of Georgia Road? Yes. Yeah, but we took the site visit when we were doing the arms farm thing, I remember that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean that culvert's overtaught a few times since I've been here. So just figured that would be a good one to go through. What's happened with the project on Moscow Woods Road near that corner? It was at the one we didn't get to go in for. You mean by the post office? Yeah. We're still waiting on the original planning commission. They were supposed to do an engineering study and come up with a plan. Oh, okay. Well, that was on the list for this summer, wasn't it? I thought there was a culvert thing right there by the driveway to the fellers. Yeah, but there's no grant money for it. Okay, you were just going to put it in a culvert. A box culvert? Well, they're talking about... Are we talking about the same thing? They're talking about water that's coming off of Batten Road. And their idea was to put an underground drainage system under the post office parking lot. And that's as far as I know it hasn't gone through. They were still talking with... And that CVRQC? Yeah. They were talking with the rec department to see if they would allow something dug underneath their parking lot. So there's still a lot going on, there's a lot more work to do there before we can break ground. But I've cleaned the ditching up and whatnot on Batten Road and kind of tried to slow that water down. Because of the problem down that's down over the bank is how that whole issue started. Right, right. John, this is proper. Yeah. So I'm trying to contain that water, slow it down, so it doesn't keep making it worse. Right. But there's more work to do there, of course. Okay. Anything else, highway related? Um, I don't know. So, I mean, we're just trying to get projects done. The last few rains that we've had, there's still these little wash pots being popping up. Yeah, yeah. So we'd like to send a grader out today to get two or three of them and fix them up. So it's just kind of maintenance. Are you John? Hi. Hi. I'm glad to see you. Join us. Thanks. Well, it sounds like everything's going on moving right along. Everybody's getting some vacation time. Yeah. Yeah. Ready? Roadside light. Did you get lost? No, but I almost did. I get lost everywhere I go, so. No, I just kind of lucked out, actually. Oh, okay. Very good. Thanks for coming. You're welcome. Thanks for inviting me. Well, actually, it's Matt that got it all started. Thanks, Matt. So why don't we introduce ourselves? I'm Denise Wheeler. Hi, Denise. Hi. Cliff Simmons, Calis Select Board. Hi, Cliff. I'm Robus Calis-Chuck. I'm the Select Board. Hi, Ross. I'm Keeley. I'm currently in the recording department. Hi. I'm Sharon. I'm a fan of the Select Board. Yeah. Richard Elliott says. You don't mean I have a cap? I'll be there every day. I'm the Road Commissioner. Hi. I'm Brian Lee. I'm the current assistant. Hi, guys. Hi, folks. So I'm John Lanz. I teach capstone engineering at EBM. Civil and Environmental Engineering. And Matt reached out to us and said, we've got a challenge. Would you be up for it? And it sounds like it's something. Sounds like rough for a challenge. We always have a challenge. And I sent you a whole bunch of stuff to look at. I don't know whether you had time to read it. I did go through it. I didn't read every page, but I did read it. I got a flavor of what? Right. So just for a little bit of history, Calis is well known for its citizen involvement and participation complaints. Sometimes we get compliments on roads. Several years ago, Alfred's laughing out. Complaints and compliments. I don't know what you love. Well, well. I think you're unique. Yeah. Well, I don't know how many. It seems like Calis has really a vocal community, which is good. Sure. You know? And that's the way it should be. Several years ago, we established a roads committee. And they wrote up some road standards. They've been reviewed by the state. And the state has signed off on them. I sent you that document as well. There's some frustration, I think, on both sides of the coin from the road crew, that some of the standards or some of the things that the roads committee had suggested that they do a certain way for whatever reason. And we've got to get to the bottom of this piece of it. Because, you know, why can't you do it? And they probably have some very good reasons why. And then the roads committee on the other hand says, we worked really, really hard. We put in a lot of volunteer time, did a lot of research, did a lot of work. Why aren't some of these standards being followed? So that's one piece of it. Then last winter, we had a real outcry. And you remember what last winter was like? Just like snow all the time or rained or something, which made it challenging. Calis has a huge distance between the maple corner, this side of town and the town garage. So we asked Alfred, and that's what I was going to ask you, to check in with like Worcester to see if we could stockpile or use their stockpile and pay them for it. So there's all these pieces. And one of the sense of minutes that I was looking at, was several different ideas about what we might, of what the issues were. So this is how this all got started. And Matt came to one of the meetings, and he says, you know, I think I might be able to get you some help. I was like, yes, we're all about having some help. So we put together a list. So you're the, what was that word you used? You're Shadashi? Was that yours? That wasn't me. Something about, you shoddy crowd source data collection application. That wasn't this. No, that was Rick King. Oh, that was Rick. And it's an app that you can use for any number of community involvement projects, be it roads, be it roads, conditions, a lot of communities use it for emergency. And I mean, engagement and whatnot. Try to remember how it's pronounced, the application. And it doesn't matter, because it doesn't work. It's interesting. I mean, I did look into it. And it is something that we could conceivably utilize, but it is something that we would have to, you know, put on in budget for and get approved. Manage monitor. So anyways, Matt came up with a suggestion, which I thought was really interesting. I had no idea that there was any such group as yours out there that works on this kind of stuff. We also have our operations, winter operations plan, which I sent you. And the rodeos, as I learned the term, are like six hours long. And one of the people that came from Detrans that I asked to come from my local road said, those are really too long. So I'm going to give you a little bit of a time span for a route. So with everything considered, I guess we're looking to you to see what you have for ideas or options or suggestions. Sure. So before we get started, anybody want a cake, Matt? I don't have my cell phone yet, so I don't think I should start with cake. I think so. It's not for us. It looks like it doesn't have any calories. Oh, yeah, yeah. It's got vegetables. Chocolate. Chocolate. It's got dark chocolate in it. So there you go. We need that. So anyways, I was going to tell you what your problem is. What do you do? We have senior engineering students, civil and environmental engineering students, and they spend a whole year, working on a project. We almost always, we always actually have been doing community service projects, which means that you as a community partner provide what I call a boots on the ground kind of knowledge, the kinds of things that you can't get out of a book about what's it really like to do something here. That's our man there. Yep. And we want you to get involved in, as they work, and I'll talk about that next. And then our students with support from faculty, sometimes outside advisors, will figure out first, what is it that you need done? I mean, we're starting here, but what can we boil that down to? What can they do within their time? They have, oh, each student probably has around five hours a week. They have a team of fours. You have 20 hours a week, 12 weeks. So 240, you know, you might actually get somewhere like four or 500 hours with the work. For free? Yeah, yeah, we don't charge. It's student work, so it's not something, if we came up with a design, you could put out the bid right away. But what we usually do is projects like this where they're not, maybe you're a little more immediate than typical, that there's some time to work on this to sort out some ideas and give you some direction and then you potentially hire a consulting engineering firm or an architect and take it to the next step. So it's to sort through ideas. What I understand of the project is when I talked to Mac, hopefully I interpreted it right, was there's a long way between one end of town and the other, if you've got to keep going back and forth to rainbow the truck, well, you're not plowing them. Right. And then the other part was, I think, prioritizing where you plow to, I guess, make the most people possible happy. That's possible, right? Yeah. Is that Mac getting it about right? But then I think, that to me sounds like the engineering problem-solving part of it. And then there's the almost the the mathematic part of, there's X number of guys, four guys. Right now they're doing six hour loops on an eight hour shift. Does that make sense? Is there a configuration that works better? Is there a configuration that would allow them to say, wait a minute, tomorrow's going to be a beautiful day. The storm is coming tomorrow night. How do we, you know what I mean? So in terms of just planning, yeah, planning and plotting the time, their time, their shifts, that's, to me, is another piece of it. And I would understand, John, if you said, yeah, we don't do that. That would make sense to me. On the other hand, it's an important part of the equation and how do we bring that perspective in from- How do we best manage the time? Do we have enough crew to do what we're asking? Or do we need to think about a part time winter person should there be, as Rose has said many times, should there be a person outplowing when everybody else isn't, Alfred has a legitimate concern with, he doesn't want one plow driver out there alone. If he goes off the road, we don't have cell service in Dallas. What could the radio going to do if there's nobody on the other end to hear you? So, you know, there's all these varying pieces. So have you done something like this for other towns? Me, no. I don't know that actually in the, I don't think in the 14 or 15 years that we've done this, we've actually done something like this. So unique. So unique. I taught, so we have a range of faculty that have different specializations. We have some transportation specialists. They call this the traveling salesman or saleswoman problem, where if you needed to go to so many different places, where do you start so that you probably don't overlap any more than you have to. So that was intriguing to them. We also have at least one engineering management student in the course this year. So they've got some interest in that. I guess I'm going to caution you to say that probably each storm is different. And so, you know, I don't know, but maybe we could work with you to come up with some guidelines. And the thing is I don't think you should count on us to give you the answer. I think we could, maybe you could ask us questions and we could try and guide you in a direction, but it's going to be case by case as far as the storms and the situation. Maybe we can narrow down to some things, maybe. So what we have the benefit of is so these students can do some research. They can do some literature reviews and see what other people have done somewhere else in the world, Steven. Stop the faculty and just kind of do something that you may not have time to do. Right, and I think maybe just somebody, somebody different looking at what we do and how we do it, you know, when you're right kind of in it all the time, whether it's Albert or if it's us, you know, what can we do different? What are we missing that might work better? For instance, you know, could we put a sandpile or gravel pile, what do you call it, someplace else so that there isn't the need to travel so far to reload? Look at the length of the rodeos. Do we have enough people to do what we want to do? And then you said there was also an environmental piece to this into our road standards. I'd really like to work on it. So one of the requirements for these courses is for our accreditation, we need to have two engineering disciplines or one involved. What does that mean? So if we had, say, pure transportation, traffic, then we need to have something structural or maybe stormwater or geotechnical because these are practice projects for students. So the accreditation group says you can't just do one thing and have four students work on the same thing. You have to work as a team. Usually then when you have two or more kinds of things to deal with, they conflict. If I did a great job on stormwater, maybe it's not going to put the salt pile in the right place or the best place. Put it in the most convenient place but then it's going to be a real difficult stormwater environmental issue because I don't want the salt running off into the stream. Right. So that's okay. I mean, that's real world every day but that's what we would do. I mean, I think this can be a good project. I don't want to over promise what we can do. Well, yeah. I mean, we're grateful for some different perspective. And there's also, I mean, just so you know for upcoming maybe some of your students to know that we're going to be meeting, we're going to have a meeting that's going to be with CVR, PCC, the Regional Planning Commission. They're going to go over a road erosion inventory and they've done a really good job. I'm thinking, I think it's going to be the meeting of September 26th. I think I, no, September 23rd. I can get back to you on that. It's a public meeting. Your students would be welcome. Oh, I think we want them to go there or at least to talk to you about what the stormwater issues are. I saw some things about sand and not sanding and running off and that sort of thing. I don't know if we can completely solve that because that's a real common problem. I'm just saying this might be educational for them to come to the meeting when CVR, PCC is going to be meeting with the select board to go over this report that they did. And is it an evening meeting? Yeah. So they should be able to, it's a bit of a drive for students. They're going to feel like they're really in Vermont. Isn't capstone and berry? I don't know. It's a different capstone. It's like a capstone in the term that needs their senior project. Because I'm thinking capstone has nothing to do with berry. It's a human service. Oh, yeah, right, right. Well, they don't want a human service. They've got the same name. I was like, how does that work together? I guess it doesn't. So maybe I should just listen a little bit and just tell me what you're hoping we can do. Well, that's why I thought it was better. You had suggested a meeting with Alfred and us, but I think we worked together more as a team with the road crew. Like it or not, sometimes. And then there's also Vermont local roads. Yep. And they have a workshop coming out. Snow and ice. Oh, did ice go into that? Yeah. So I didn't know if your students might be interested in that. Okay. Anyways, I think, I guess, maybe you have more questions than what we have. How does this start? What do you do? Oh, okay. So what's the process? So we'll pitch the project to the students. I will tell them this is, and hopefully I'll capture what's needed. And in the next week, starting this Wednesday through next Wednesday, I will tell them in about 10 minutes or so what the project's about, why you need it. I'm going to need your help to completely explain that. Give them a few photos to hopefully hook them in. I mean, we want to entice them. They bid on these projects or they propose, they give me a letter that says, I would like to work on this project. First, first priority, second priority, third priority. This is why I've got these courses that I've already taken or I'm taking that qualify me for this. And even if they don't have the right courses, I'm really interested in and I'm willing to learn. And then I and my colleagues pick a team, in this case it'll be four students, 55, but probably four. And they go for it. So the first thing is we need to entice the students. So the way, I mean, I've got about, at least I've got 13 projects going this year, or I need that many. And I have somewhere between 13 and 16 project possibilities. I don't have, I have one other transportation related project and I have a few students that are in that, that are interested in that. So I think they would be interested in this. Although, some of them, when they know that it's an hour and a half away, they are not sure I want to go down. So, but we've gone to Derby, we've gone to Manchester, we've gone to Levin, I know. They can come stay at my house. Well, the thing is, I need to also get a team that has the ability to travel. But, I think they could. So, so that's the way it works. So I would tell you next, well, by either next Friday or the following Monday what the choices were if the students said, yeah, we're interested in this. And I want them to hit this project right away. Right. Like pulling out some plans, meeting with you. Yeah, I mean, meeting with Alfred and the crew and the operations manager and then certainly back to meet with the select board what our expectation would like to be, would be really good. Well, then that's, that's the other part of it. So, we kind of have a plan now we might say we'll leave with, these are the things to look at. They'll come back and give you a scope of what they want to do and some deliverables that they think they understand you want schedule. And then there could be a little negotiation or you say, yeah, you got it about right. Right. I mean, I think one of the things they should do is just my thought is they should go to the town garage. They should see the equipment. They should meet with the road crew. I think that, for me, has always been helpful. Well, I'll tell you. Right. Because you can't, you got to talk to the boots on the ground, hands on the wheel people, really. And I'd love it if they, I'd want them to at least see what's going on in the wintertime. I mean, I don't want them to, have to bother you, but you know, maybe we're after storm. Sorry about 230. Yeah. I think they've got a CDL. Great, right? That's right. That's right. Great. So, That's the way to know it. That's the way to see it. Well, we, you know, have to go through an atypical storm. You know, some students might say, and if you're serious about putting them in the truck, maybe you're like four in the morning or something, you know, well, although coming out here in a snow storm might not work. Right. Right. They'd have to sleep here or something else. Right. We knew a storm was coming. But, you know, that's, But if you get a student that's super interested, you might be up for that. Yeah. He or she. He or she's with them. Even if you're just one student, to do it and report back to the other students. Yes. But that's how you're going to get to the real, the real ability to see what's going on out there. Yeah. You know, is to do it when we're doing it. It's the three o'clock in the morning. It's the cars coming at you. It's the snow blinding you. It's the, you know, the tree that we can't cut the other side of the road. You know, it's those kind of things that, that people need to see before they can fix this problem. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, so sometimes they run into situations where you can't fix it. Maybe you can make it a little better. Maybe that would be something we'd come back to it. Well, here's some tweaks. Right. I think some things that would help us would be just plain information. If they could do a study around other towns, how many road crew members, how many miles of road do they maintain, you know, what kind of road, what kind of roads, how many, how long is their rodeo? Right. That kind of stuff would be helpful for us to see if we, are we behind? Are we, do we have enough manpower? Do we not? Yeah. Comparative to miles of road. Now, I know every town's got a different type of miles of road, but we are maintaining 73 miles of road here. Back. We're at Back Road, Dirt Road, with four people. Now, Worcester has 21 miles of road, and they have three people. East Montpelier has four people, same number of crew, but 64 miles of road. So we're way up on our miles of road versus, and they have a person, don't they have a person who does an odd shift in East Montpelier? I don't know that they do, you know, and I did when my Karen was there, but I'm not sure. Yeah. I, I agree with what you're saying. Oh, for a time when you were talking a few minutes ago about the ability to, research, I think one of, one of the challenges we have is, you know, we're, we're a volunteer board, and slipboards are in Vermont. Alfred is busy maintaining roads, and so we are pretty myopic in trying to solve problems, which is not to say we don't, you know, talk to other people or, but being able to, in a disciplined focus way, systematically gather information and consider its relevance to us. We're, we're a long ways from ideal on, on that. We all have various anecdotes, but nothing particularly scientific. And, and I feel like that would be really, really helpful. I'm just going to say, I, I don't know, but I'm not an engineer that our biggest problems are really engineering so much as they are. There might be some engineering tweaks. There's certainly kind of systems issues that we could address and that, maybe that's your second discipline. I don't know. Systems. Yep. But in terms of road engineering, is that really, is that what? Well, look, you could, you could consider in terms of engineering, consider logistical engineering. Right. Systems. Right. It's a fair amount of what we're dealing with, is how do we best deploy our existing resources, and our, our existing resources adequate to the task at hand. And I agree with that. Yeah. I think that's a big question. That's a big question in response to your students. And how do we come up with a system that we're not just reacting to people's complaints? You know, how could we, what could we, how could we send out better information to the townspeople, whether it's posting on the website, whether it's posting something down from Porch Forum, whatever it might be, because this, the way this came about, was we had several people who wanted to share their displeasure and their concerns. Excuse me, last winter, and last winter was unusual. You know, it was a regular good old fashioned winter. How could we do a better job of getting information out there, explaining to folks how this works, and why. You know, why, why is it that you don't plow from nine o'clock at night to three o'clock in the morning? Because that was one, there's, you know, people that work night shifts, night shifts, they're coming home, and they can't, and they're having trouble getting home because the road isn't plowed. We also have a responsibility to have our crew be safe by having so much time off to sleep. So, you know, how do you address that problem? You know? And then I just wanted to mention Brian, you're some kind of engineering. Some kind of engineering. I'm a civil engineer. Now Brian is, Brian lives in town. I'm hoping to recruit him for the roads committee. We're trying to revitalize the roads committee, and getting people to volunteer is like really really hard. And the roads committee is discouraged, rightfully so, because they feel like the work they put in isn't being respected. The roads crew? No, the roads committee. It feels like their work isn't being respected for what they suggested. But my question is, is maybe some of the suggestions just aren't doable for whatever reason, whether it's engineering, manpower, supplies, materials. Yeah. Those kinds of things. Physics. Regular physics. Somebody has to do the regular physics. Some of the things in that, in that standard, it's just impossible. So that's something that we need to work out. I was going to say, I don't know if you want to throw the students into that, but I was going to mention that something that's probably really useful if you come out of this field, it's just on the mapping and presentation. I don't know if your students have JSC abilities and things like that, but putting together a map of what are the road goes. Here's four trucks in four different colors, and here's all the roads if you run the traveling problem a couple of times to be able to present if we change this, here's how it blocks, if we change this, here's how it blocks, and even some time-domain mapping or things like that, and you all get great results that you can get out of. Everybody wants their road plowed first, and you generally do the school bus routes and the milk routes first, and the main arteries. Well, there's one thing that I really like about the community, and I served on it as a select board liaison, identified all the roads in the town and made a color-coded map, and it has the connector roads, the main drags, the secondary roads, the low use roads or whatever, and so it would be interesting, and I've thought about that too, about the rodeos or the snow plow things, does it hit all the connector, the main drags, the primary bus routes or whatever, because when you think about it, Calis really is quite a bedroom community, so a lot of people here leave and go to work, of course, in Montpelier or Burlington or whatever, so you want to get those connectors. Is there a map? Do you know where that map is? That might be helpful to John to have for his students. Is that color-coded map? Yeah, I mean it was color-coded with highlighter, but yeah. I think I have that. I know I have it at home. Yeah, that's a good idea, Rose. Yeah. And to be fair, the roads committee put in a ton and ton of work. Alfred was on the committee. It would be nice if people could work together and come, okay, well, this doesn't work. What can we do instead? What is the compromise that we might do? Okay, so I see that the road, the plowing has one item, one piece. So that's one engineering discipline, I see. Is it realistic to think about another one with your salt piles or not, or something else? I think I saw something also, maybe with stormwater runoff, maybe from it existing, or maybe it had to do with the way the road was shaped somewhere. I think that's a big part of what the road committee was looking into on the roads. The ditching. A lot of silt and sediment going into streams and stuff and trying to control a lot. So there's pretty hilly here, there's a lot of rain and a lot of the road silt and stuff goes into the streams. And the road crew, through their credit, they've been doing a lot of work on trying to, you can't eliminate it, to make it less runoff, they've been putting a lot of time into putting in new ditches and culverts and things like that and also this road erosion inventory that I was telling you about, CVRPC did, is helpful with that and incorporating into some of that into our standards. But we're not looking for solutions on that. No, CVRPC is really the one helping us with that. I'd rather have your folks I don't know if you talked to Worcester, did you talk to Worcester yet? And what did they say? He said he had limited space for another pile. He's only got a bucket of Bacco so to load a 10-wheeler you're going to be 20 minutes at least. 20 minutes? Well, I mean, it could be love that certainly, but that 20 minutes that we drive it's going to take me 20 minutes to get from our town line to the sandpile in Worcester. Another 20 minutes to load it. Another 20 minutes to get back to Calis. So now you're an hour and a half you're easily back to Calis 5 by then. If you're in Maple Porter it's not going to take 20 minutes to get to Worcester. Oh yes it is. With the 10-wheeler with the chains on it. And that's what we're looking at. We've got a 10-wheeler that does that and you guys are the ones that drive it. I'm going to stop. What about your small player? His small player is going to be an option. We've tried that before but then again it's a timing thing and I'm not trying to just say no to everything because I've looked at it but you still got to have a bucket loader there or pasture them with theirs. We're all going to be out at different times of the day. It's just not that easy to put a sandpile somewhere else. I don't know if that's something that sounds really easy. It sounds easier than it is. But you've got to look at the whole picture which is another bucket loader and another. A bunch of guys shoveling. So number one snow removal when it gets done, how long it takes the sequence Efficiency and responsiveness to citizens. I think one of the I mean these are students. They've never driven that. I don't think. Most residents haven't either. They just like to say how they think it should be done. And when Rose talks about main arteries and connector roads, secondary roads low use roads all of those roads are dirt roads. The main drags and cals are all dirt roads. Just conceptually planning around this kind of a community instead of a Burlington community. We have county roads three miles, county roads three miles. That's paved. That's a town maintained road, not a state maintained road. And we had a lot of issues last year with county road for instance and Alfred bought that. What's that stuff called? Magic salt. Magic salt. Which is supposed to work at temperatures because what I've learned from Alfred over the years is that salt doesn't work at a certain temperature and this new stuff, this magic salt that's made from some kind of brine works at a lower temperature and you tried that and it did work better. But still the timing of putting it down you know everybody wants it down before they go to work. So sometimes it it is and sometimes it's not sometimes the road gets covered up quickly with more snow. You know that three miles of county road and all the complaints we had about it that could be a project almost in itself looking for us and that is kind of emerging of disciplines I think it's the fact, it's a weather it's weather science and how the storm comes in and hits county road it's timing it's what materials are you using it's speed of drivers it's communication so that that discreet problem could be a second piece that couples with the logistics of of the roots and manpower etcetera. I agree and what Alfred has explained to me over the years is people say well it's always better if you're a small pillar but in part of that when they say any small pillar it's true you can tell when you've gotten to Calis and what Alfred has explained we're higher up we get the results from the Worcester range so having someone look at that piece of it so we can honestly say study that little tiny issue right, I mean you know some of that is really true that it's just the effect of the location the elevation is just different and you try to explain that to people and they just think you're blowing them off basically because they don't, well I mean sounds like excuses but you try to, so I'm hoping out of this we can have some kind of documentation maybe we need to update our winter operations maintenance plan but also some hard fast facts that we can publish and say to people this is it this is, we had this study done these engineering students so it's in somebody different than us or the road crew ending up the information the third party, I think it will go a long ways well hopefully it'll give us, here's two things we can change right, here's three things you could change and it would be a complete waste of your time and then how that gives us information then we can, how do we mess it around I mean I like it because there's a lot of public involvement here if we got the students here maybe once for either a select board meeting or some sort of a meeting after they talk to you and say so here's a presentation I think my sense of student reports get people are a little more polite to students you know, the whole back and then you know that they send a good, the students send a nice clear message saying you know everything's you're doing the best you can but if you want to do better you need to do X, Y and Z by the way that's going to raise your taxes by exactly and I think if they wanted to even make a trip to the town garage to meet with the crew and see the equipment maybe ride in the trucks even before it snows it would be very beneficial just to see the hands on well even the widths of the roads you know out of the places where the roads are you know slow for the width make it that actually hard all of them I've never heard you guys complain the roads too wide yeah well that's one of the things we have these differences of opinion in town you know the road crew needs to be able to maintain, go down the road safely and there's other people in town that they don't want to see the roads widen because that's part of the beautiful culture of callus is the roads I know, I'm joking because I have a friend that lives in Rupert and he says I think their mission, the road crew is to make the roads all real wide that's what they want to do well you've got the erosion you've got to have rooms for the ditch you've got to have rooms to push the snow it's not just because we want a super highway through town it's because it's difficult to maintain when they're very narrow but we also have more traffic nowadays too that's another factor that's something that we could do a study the kids could do a study from the amount of traffic we have now to the amount of traffic we have 20 years ago or even 10 years ago do we have data from 10 or 20 years ago? it's got to be somewhere out there regional planning that's an important factor that people don't understand there's a lot more traffic out there there's a lot more demand the vehicles now are smaller the vehicles tires are smaller now you see people driving little Subaru's, little Prius's they don't get around in the snow like they used to right the demand is up on the highway cruise it's not just Calis every crew member I've talked to said that last year is not anywhere to compare to because it was just a brutal winter well and I think that CVRPC and Courier he's one of the people who will come to this motor road inventory even meeting with them they have all kinds of data all kinds of apps traffic studies you know and to be fair people the road crew needs to be able to do their job the public who pay the taxes we need to listen to them as well so it's how do you manage and how do you make that happen I can see students project work being a bridge here between the two as we were talking here I thought imagine you put a GoPro camera in the truck this is what it's like to drive a truck this high up you can't see among other things because this truck is this wide with the wing down it's tilted it would be great to have something like that that we could post on our website so people could like have a almost like you're there I mean I wrote in a truck I wrote in one of the snowplow trucks and it wasn't even it was after a storm but it was amazing how high up you are and how different it looks from the truck compared to even an SUV you know so maybe something like that what I like about this project is well it's not 251 towns but maybe 240 that are like this we'll exclude the cities and that's just Vermont so how many other places are like this students can even look at what's being done in Scandinavia or places where they have longer or even longer winters longer winters so we can pull some of that in and give you a report we're going to need to make sure the scope doesn't just get blow up we might have to have two years of your students time well if you've got the time we're not going anywhere do you have students who work do summer projects probably not volunteer like this but who take summer jobs in Vermont working in various municipalities solving engineering problems maybe somebody will want to see Calisthen in the summer or during month season that's another role back we won't go there no you wouldn't want to we don't like people to come during month season it's not an inviting time of year it's not an inviting time of year I did that once I don't know if you use the V-tran month season manual but we wrote that about 15 years ago so we we studied four roads Weston Windsor the three Weston Windsor I forget what the other town was and then we came up with some basic solutions put stone in what we call burrito wrap sand with a fabric they put in cements we put in these expensive geo webs and came up with about a 15 page document I'll send you the link there was a tech transfer manual it's a little outdated now on prices but the idea is if you've got this regularly month season problem month season manual who knew yep so we did that for V-trans because 15 well was it 2001 so 19 years ago no the state was saying cars are getting smaller and lower they got smaller and lower and I just came in with my smaller and lower car which I can't drive even though we do time here but our electric cars so they're lower and heavier and they're a different beast so was that any of those solutions effective yeah do you have document yes we do so maybe there's some images there relatively low cost one that actually worked pretty well so Matt you were at a lot of the discussion about I was at one meeting but you got the gist of it is there anything we're missing no I don't think so I think we talked about using it trying to adjust the routes you know cut down on the travel time or to get reloaded and that kind of thing you know just looking at you know the routes that we have now is there could be variants of how to improve you know like you said doing the arteries connecting roads and so forth okay for me do you have anything else no we can talk later about the road standards Richard did you have anything I think this is what you were kind of here for just interested thank you did you have any questions or comments just seems like it rains more in the winter as I used to and this past winter rode I live on it was plowed up and so it was just a canal the water had no you can worry about ditching all you want everything like that but the water in a winter rain had no place to go okay you're on up hill are you on the fourth class well any part of it but the class three part of it was the same I mean the snow was piled up higher than the vehicles on the sides there was no nothing they could do about that and so when it rained the water just stayed right in that canal and then it froze alright then it froze and then turned ice yeah so it just seems to me like it's raining more and students could think a little bit about you know if it does rain more in the winter what what strategies might be out there for dealing with that in the future but that's just my impression it could very well be that it's not raining more in the winter it's definitely raining a lot more plus the fluctuation in temperature I mean it's different battling a storm that is 20 degrees than it is battling a storm at 32 degrees raining sometimes it's snowing traction the type of snow there's probably 20 different types of snow or 50 different types of snow and it's all different traction wise it's different how to deal with it and I agree it's definitely a lot more rainy days in the winter time now than it used to be and you can go a week with 20 below sudden in two days now it's 50 degrees or 40 degrees and we've got water running because what's normally when it warms up it melts so it's just that huge fluctuation in temperature that makes it very difficult to battle any of these storms you know we might wake up in the morning and it's 10 degrees in the afternoon it's 30 degrees there's a huge difference right there and vice versa sometimes it's 30 in the morning and it drops right off so as soon as it drops off the sand works differently on the roads the piling is there there's just a huge fluctuation in temperature and it just makes it very difficult to first of all plan for it plan for a storm put a strategy together because the weather changes so fast it's all mixed right I mean whatever weapon you use against the storm is different per storm and it's I gotta tell you it's not easy and you're trying to save the tax people money by not going out and spread sand every single storm and we tried last year to do just hills and corners and that's what I always when this whole thing started heads up I said look it's the middle of the winter my sandpiles getting down we're going to start doing just hills and corners the people took that the wrong way I was just telling them we're just going to do this to try to let them understand why we were doing just hills and corners they took it that we were out of sand we're learning out of sand we're not out of sand now but I don't want to be out of sand because where are you going to find sand January or March it's all froze up it's a brick and the pits are closed so I was trying to avoid running out of sand but I wanted the tax people to know that you know what it was it was the way that it was posted out from the storm because it didn't give an explanation that was part of the reason why that happened that way and that's unfortunate from the person who posted it so another issue that might be look at the sand file compared to how many roads we have if you're looking at engineering type stuff Alfred can tell you probably right off the top of his head how many yards of sand about 7,000 to 8,000 miles per year compared to other towns with similar situations that's a very discrete research that seems very researchable I think that's what you're doing we had snowstorms where it snowed all day long you can't put sand down because an hour or two later you're going to just pop it right off it doesn't make sense to sand on the other end they would all just melt into the ice and then freeze over and that happened so many times and the other issue and I'll just bring it up I don't know whether it's anything you can put on your list but last year you know we deal with the buses and the bus companies and thankfully nobody was hurt it was just kind of some sliding but what we've discovered was that the buses don't have adequate tires for the back roads transportation of our kids they're like summer tires almost they don't have studded tires they're not snow tires and the school contracts with these bus companies and we've asked to have the contract reopened on the tires that's one of our big things that if this bus had had snow tires we wouldn't have had the incident that we had by the school so I mean across the state I would think buses not having adequate tires and then the town gets blamed it's our fault that the bus wasn't able to go or went off the road and it's our fault when it's really probably a combination if they should have safe tires it would be a requirement so yeah wherever it decides right so that must be across the state across the state researchable kind of thing and you know the safety for the kids and the traveling public the nation they have to be responsible for having the buses be equipped and outfitted as safely as possible good tires cost money right and they don't want to do that so we can tell you whatever we find to be best practices right well that would help us with the school bus contracts that'd be good for students yeah I mean that's what we discovered Alfred had just barely sanded and the bus went off and then when they were looking at the tires they weren't tires that should be on even on the road okay well so there's a lot here we can keep going John but we won't anything else we may pair a little bit of this we're gonna have to just to focus on but maybe you got two sets of students that want to do this it's possible although it's not one of the bigger groups that I've had in the years so I may not but if I do then I'm not gonna turn them away and just tell them how much they're helping their rural communities who are strapped for resources and looking for help they're very much appreciated I don't know if I have any I don't know if I have any students from around here like Barry but a couple of years ago I have a student from Bakersfield who drove in every day ooh that's a long drive that's a long drive okay so the other thing is do I still have to fill out these forms there's a little bit of form work there so what I have is a letter of understanding so we understand each other so our students are going to give you this their time and a report and some recommendations I want them to communicate with you on a regular basis so you know what's going on and then you can tell them whether they're giving you what you're looking for or not and looking for in two ways one is once a month could we have some sort of a phone call maybe they could come once or twice to a meeting or during the day to tell you what they have as they've gotten a little bit more done but just to check in so they'll have given you something maybe three or four days ahead this is once a month and then there's a phone call or maybe a Skype call you don't have cell phones you don't have internet do you we have internet no we have you have cable have cable Skype would be difficult so we'll figure something out and just to check in so there's a little conversation that helps everybody and then we'll have three reports we'll have a data report so they'll gather information would you look through it and say you've got it right or you missed something even though I gave it to you a preliminary design report so that design might be a concept of what this traveling salesman saleswoman salesperson salesperson is and then a final report at the end and just to give them a good review so I can do that faculty can do that it's not the same really as you as clients and I'm not asking you to check spelling or grade them but just to say yeah this is what I was looking for or I don't understand this yeah tell me in a better way some of it's going to be maybe the select board looking at it some of it's going to be out for looking at it and depending on what it is we can refer it to the right person that's fine if you just take that document and mark it up when you read that's fine I think that's where on the front end it's really important that the student team be clear about what the ability is really grabbing them and feels like a complete project you know what I mean so that we know okay this is what they're working on or if they're working on this the best mentor is somebody working with the board or maybe Toby who's not even here so knowing what scope of what they're choosing to work on is going to help us understand how to move forward and that's fine and that's probably one of the first conversations when they'll send you what they propose to do and you say yep I got it or we don't really need this let's do a little less of this and a little more of that so do you have enough notes here tonight that we don't need to make another whole list I think I do and we'll have it in our minutes Katie does an excellent job taking our minutes so we can send you those minutes and I'll let them have that if there's any photos you can give me an email me photos help when I explain the project show them the map of callus we can come up with photos Toby's probably got some something you know CVRPC has a ton of photos our channel website callusvermont.gov all spelled out yep okay yep we need the snow we do have a picture like that somewhere yeah the snowplow we have a snow pond there's a picture somewhere where we used to have a truck with two wings and that's floating around somewhere I don't know if I'm aware of that you'll probably never see that kind of truck again in callus just because of the nature of it two wings and I'll get you that map I think I'm exactly worried we'll try to find some pictures and ask Toby yeah I don't need much but a few well he's a retired AP photographer he's got pictures we need an existing road you know now it'll just be a little bit of something scary we would be happy to host them to come to callus fix some lunch I do want them to come sometimes come and spend some time at the town garage I think that would be really really important whether they ride all 73 miles or 73 or 84 73 or some percentage they're gonna be on these roads let them come to the town garage and see all the equipment and you know what goes into maintenance and you know it gives you a better picture to go to the town garage and we should do that soon because you're going to get busy with hopefully it doesn't snow right away hopefully not usually around 10th of October I start going to Plows On okay and if you want to you know that's what they're going to want to see they're going to want to see a truck with the plows and get the whole picture because you can even ride around in a truck with the plows on even if it's not selling so they can get the sense of what it's about is this you said 12 weeks is it a fall semester or fall and spring okay so it's a whole academic this is a great idea thank you so much Nick it should be interesting yeah by the time they started it's a couple weeks into the 14 week first semester it's 15 weeks but we don't want them finishing up at the last day so it's probably 12 and 12 so yeah okay great that's a good idea they're going to get just about all the seasons they won't get summer but that's not the important one anyway right we just talked about evasives are we going to do some overlapping disciplines yeah we'll get into that right first contact information I think you do I have some cards so I don't know I have cards I'll give you a card I'll give you a card anybody need a card probably my contact control yeah take it Katie you need it and you have my amount of information right John thank you John it was a pleasure to have you enjoy your cake you can eat it before you don't feel like you've got to rush out now when you came did you come just you took the county road I came up 14 is that the long way I live in Randolph center so am I better off going down to 14 I think the most right and maybe you'll say it too is Cant Hill Road at the top take a left that's the county road it turns into Main Street and Montpelier and you just want to get to Montpelier turning into your county road here yeah well I count the main street in Montpelier turns into the county road so that's just one street okay that is the way I thought might be shorter but I know that's the best okay thank you so 14 to the interstate I would go out Peking Brook to 14 back to Montpelier on 14 but that's the thing that really what I'm saying is there's any number of ways they're all good well I'll probably go see if I go I'll go through Barry I'll take 14 I'll take the county road and see what our three miles of pavement feel like so if you notice the change you'll get these small things if I notice it in the summer that's right that's right so I guess I'll tell you a little story I heard this morning I started listening to these podcasts called 99% Invisible my sister a lot and it's pretty interesting this one was what is the biggest design flaw ever the line actually the biggest design flaw ever is that designs do not include do not include women so that's just a pervasive design flaw designers started out to be guys so the short story was somewhere in Sweden people were complaining about the roads and how would they be most efficient in plowing the roads and I said well we'll do the arteries first this is the city, we'll do the arteries first and of course that would make sense then they started to think about who was using what and they realized that for their healthcare system they were getting a lot of injuries from women who were not driving but they were taking their kids out strollers and things like that with 3 inches of snow and they said it's a lot harder to push a stroller and 3 inches of snow than it is to drive a car and 3 inches of snow so they completely turned around the way they plowed they said we're not going to plow the arteries first we're going to plow the sidewalks different country different kind of scenario we're going to plow it but they said we'll plow the sidewalks first and then we'll do the main roads because you can get on a main road more easily than you can walk so we're slipping, tripping, falling on sidewalks that were icy and snowy so maybe the the comparison here is maybe we need the community needs to decide well what is it that you want to accomplish if people really are there that many more people that are leaving at the middle of the night to go to work or at 5 in the morning or coming in late maybe what used to be done 10 years ago doesn't work anymore and so you need to do something different maybe you need to plow 24-7 which means you got to figure out a paper exactly and then you got to have enough trucks and if the truck breaks down there's all these variables but I thought it was interesting to see coming here today and that's public health data coming in for designs so starting to think of things in the system absolutely it's just one thing so we'll see where it goes pleasure meeting you thank you very much we talked about that in the context of getting the speed study and was it you Denise who said the speed studies measure the speed of the cars and if 8% of the cars are going at x speed then the conclusion is that's the right speed and so absolutely zero information about the environment pedestrian traffic bicycles on our roads there's a lot of bicycles on our back a lot of people ride bicycles so that's another factor so anyway just the narrowness of the thinking and drawing important conclusions without looking at all right now we're also working on looking at traffic which is the only part of town that has a highway so you know we're looking at looking at people drive home more slowly through there so we're looking at maybe getting some of those solar powered all science so that's another hole I know there's no limit to how many projects which is okay this is really good thank you it is good I didn't make it did you make it? yeah I made it thank you any more any more questions? no? alright well thank you so much for coming you're welcome I'll just finish this yeah that's fine thank you you want to borrow the water? I have water in the car alright I've got milk in there I have milk in there you want to go with your cake? I don't know I wanted to get my milk I better write it down that was very helpful really interesting very interesting who knew there was anything like this even after next on the agenda the traffic ordinance Toby got back to us he just looked at that and another since we decided based on the sheriff's input that it would be better to put a stop sign at the intersection of Pekin and that's what we were going to do in the first place and then we had the public who said well we don't need a stop sign but the sheriff said if you want to really be able to enforce anything you have to have a stop sign which makes perfect sense so students might want to look at that traffic ordinance too because it shows it gives the names of all the different roads if nothing else do you have any traffic intersection issues? not huge though not huge we'd rather use this we're not brawling up complaints on that at all but it was also suggested and I agree we didn't have a stop sign at the intersection of Duger Brook and I don't know is that Pekin or is that North Calisthenia by Grant Baer's house you can just leave it we'll recycle it I love it thank you thank you so much for coming thank you very much thank you very much thank you Matt you have my email thank you so much I appreciate it very much it was suggested maybe a stop sign at that intersection of Duger Brook and North Calis this is Kent Hill and Pekin up here right why does the road have two different names? it does oh it switches you're right North Calis starts right here going north or going towards North Calis and then the other way it's Pekin Brook it doesn't have to Pekin Brook is called Pekin Brook and North Calis is called North Calis same road though it just changes right here exactly, yeah I know that's what it's like really you need a light in the middle you need a yellow line Denise you're changing roads now but it was suggested that maybe we want to put a stop sign at that intersection I've had more close encounters with this one right here than I have at the Duger Brook one but as long as we're looking at updating the traffic ordinance do we want to put it in? that's the one we were talking about right but somebody who just sent the email I can't remember who it was I just suggested it and I was like oh yeah it would make perfect sense to do it now instead of redoing the ordinance we haven't done anything with process as far as adopting it traffic ordinance so it was on the agenda it's been on the agenda several times and I thought we were at a point tonight where we would the process is as we adopted and then people had 45 days to comment or to oppose it and then we could change it or not but the process in my mind it works backwards that's what it is so can we I want to know can we make these changes tonight and then approve it tonight and then we wait 45 days I would rather we make the changes tonight agree to it and then show up in the minutes and then adopt it at our next so tonight we do like a straw adoption and then we form to adopt it because I want to be able to put on the agenda the ordinance and the date so people can show up complain and we can explain but we added if you go where I think it's towards the end Katie where the stop sign stuff is it's driving so Katie's looked at this Alfred's looked at this Toby's looked at this here I thought I put a note I might be in the wrong version of the note this is it this is the most recent if you open it with Google Docs will it show my comments then this is Google Docs and I think that just said stop sign at Haggett Road and Center Road um that can't be right be careful not for this evening there's with the notes that's me this is all Toby's notes well that's all Toby's notes okay great Toby Toby I'm sure I'm going to note you know what if you don't actually click comment I do click comment no you might this is what I've learned the hard way you say you want to make a comment mm-hmm if you don't say in the little box you type your comment then you have to say comment and otherwise it disappears oh god okay so the only comment I put in was to change the um to add the stop sign at Pekin or is that North Calis Pekin and Ken Hill Pekin and North Pekin and Ken Hill stop sign at Duger Brook and North Calis right there that's the first that I've heard about that one being a change but somebody asked for it and I go that way frequently and it would make sense to have stop sign there's nothing there there's not even a yield sign there's nothing there right it's not his tea but you got to be careful about if you do it in one place if you do it we have a lot of intersection that has nothing because this is a main artery I appreciate what you're saying and I agree this road is one of the main arteries in the town this road gets a lot of traffic it was news to me that it's a thing that you don't actually have to have a stop sign at the end I just figured we had a stop sign theft problem you know like the bridge that one is right you look at the ordinance and if the ordinance calls for a sign then we try to get a stop sign there's places in East Montpelier so it's neither here nor there because it's my neighbor I know there used to be a stop sign there and then there's not and I just know whatever somebody still has a stop sign and the guys are busy and we don't have one yet but now I realize oh there's lots of places I just never occurred to me but also to me it doesn't change my behavior they come to the end of the road and they stop a lot of people do it automatically I usually slow way down or stop but I'm coming off of Kent Hill but a lot of people don't because I've almost gotten plowed into so I don't have any problem putting a stop sign in place air on the side of putting one up my goodness it's better to be safe and then as the sheriff said Bill Davis wanted us not to put stops I have to put a field sign up well I could go either way but the sheriff said stop right it makes perfect sense so we just need to add that oh here we are Kent Hill Road entering Peek and Brook Road and call in North Calis and then the idea is to we've got to identify the name the number of Duke of Brook and North Calis Road okay that's yield that's yield well I actually just want to remove the strike through and then the second full of one had it rode in center road and during admin road that's not a stop sign it's not that's that little about it that's like a no way yeah do we want to try that we'll start World War 3 that would be like putting a stop sign out here so you know you're switching from Peek and Brook to North Calis yeah it shouldn't be there I'm sorry second blue one so let Cliff's driving no I'm displaying Katie's typing okay so we want to unhighlight the first one Kent Hill Road Peek and Brook we want to unhighlight that we want to strike through the second one we'll just I think to these where you want the first one is the highlight I don't know what it means you want to un-strike I said it's just taking a moment so now I can't keep Katie worrying about the blue yeah I did it I think our computers are just taking a moment to speak to each other okay I don't know why it's not showing up there quite yet so the first one I think the blue he just was bringing our attention to where he made changes yeah I don't mind the blue just to strike out I can move the strike through the first one and I added a strike through to the second one okay and then on the one below where we had Kent Hill and your old state how we know North to North oh I see go to the yields yeah right so eventually all the highlights are going to come out right answer pieces are going to be just deleted I think we were just doing it so we know where our team is then in section two on the yield intersections yes that's the one strike out the whole thing you're right where you are now yeah perfect and then we want to go back up to the stop sign section and put a stop sign at the intersection of Duke of Brooke and North Palace Road is that a new item yes where do you want it located in the stop sign list anywhere in there looks like their numeric order number one do you know what number road Duke of Brooke is number nine so maybe it goes right after that one so that means there already is stop sign at that end of Duke of Brooke road where it has a county road see that last one on page eight yeah there is one because I can see all the time so now there's going to be a stop sign at both ends right which makes sense sure that's what you guys decide yeah and what is in town highway I see above I want to see North Palace Road see a couple lines above is that correct North Palace Road is it Alfred is it SA-1 North Palace or TH-1 North Palace that's what you call it TH-1 because up there it says state highway but it should say town highway one not SA-1 on this can you tell me where it's wrong oh my goodness right here it says SA it says TH but peak in Brooke is the state highway that's why they're changed names right North Palace Road is the state highway it's giving me a list in some roads it's only in one place where it's paved or not it's class 2 road to state highway it's only the class 2 roads it's weird you can't tell by driving on it confusing the class 3 roads okay so are we good we're just going to put it out like that okay so I think that by our many more changes next meeting I want to put on the agenda adopt your revised road standards and we should have the working copy and a clean copy and we're not going to make a motion on these particular changes we can tonight and then adopt the whole thing next meeting well we made a motion of 4 and then it's really clear what we're making it like shouting it from the rooftops okay so you're going to make a motion I make the motion that we put a stop sign where Ken Hill Road meets peak in Brooke and North Palace Road and that we put a stop sign where Dougherbrook Road enters North Palace Road I'll second that any further discussion? I don't know if Ken Hill Road does that make sense Alvin? it's not on peak in Brooke and it's not at North Palace you know I think I might add maybe there are other intersections that that belongs to well not for now right I think if we move forward and we adopt that we can always be adaptive we need to make changes alright all those names please say hi alright and then next meeting we'll put them on and that will start the 45 day clock but in that 45 days Alvin if there are roads that you think we should consider putting a stop sign that's your opportunity to bring it in right and you can do that you know every time we tinker we reset the 45 day clock right that's what I was thinking maybe we should blow up and do some more research as far as if there are other intersections that need a stop sign or a yield sign I think we should do that absolutely after the 45 days after the 45 days in another 45 days to make new changes but we want to get we want to get this on the books or can he tell us right now between now and our next meeting when we adopt that doctor is there one is there one in mind of there isn't no but we're you had one phone call came in about Duke of Brooke in North Calis Road and now we're changing it so we should say tomorrow we don't get five more phone calls saying about other intersections that's all I'm saying we could that could very well happen but I've heard this Duke of Brooke North Calis Road issue before I just didn't think of it again until I got this reminder so it could very well happen you're right and then we'll just deal with it from there but we just need to get this done and on the books okay aren't you glad you came I am I wouldn't mess it for the world I did ask okay no I'm good thank you it's almost bedtime okay it has all that nutrition in it alright petition yeah 1927 I don't know why that put a three why did I put a three there that's wrong take the three off it's 1927 I don't know why I said three okay on the agenda so I reported back to I got an email response I think I CC'd you guys on all that and explained that Alfred was management so it's just the other three road crew members so they've got that answer and we are supposed to and I don't think there's really anything for us much more for us to do we're not opposing it we believe in unions so I think for us to do that I can tell and the person was okay with you explaining the deadlines like they wanted this by such and such a date but we don't even meet until you change the deadlines for giving them information okay and we're not opposing it so well we haven't decided to not but we're kind of saying it and I don't I agree I don't know that we need to vote on this or at least I think we want to reflect in the minutes that the select board does not oppose this petition and that we support unions I don't think we should say I don't think we need to say that I think we should be it's fine to say we we receive the petition we understand and we don't oppose it right but we don't need to make political statements and then and I agree with all of that what is the process when do we start bargaining I think that's the next question is what happens after the I didn't bring the extension of the dates but one of the dates I think was 31st or the 30th I'd have to go back and look at Tim LeNoon and this LeBarnard person Timothy LeBarnard's email I don't think there's anything I think the next thing is for them to let us know what happens now I think that's a question that we could ask them if you want me I can ask them okay so now what I think I'd agree with you alright the employer can agree that the bargaining unit proposed by the union is appropriate it can voluntarily recognize the union as exclusive bargaining representation representative that's option one the employer can agree to a consent election a consent election does not apply recognition of the union for collective bargaining purpose it does however requirement that the proposed bargaining unit is appropriate if the employer agrees to a consent election please notify the commission's board and we will work with you to arrange a date and time place for the election that's two if a question of unit determination or representation exists please file an answer to the petition indicating a specific question of unit determination or representation we've already sort of done that because I told them that it was management and then there's the three road group has Tim LeBarnard acknowledged that point well I sent you guys the email Tim Noonan did right but Tim LeBarnard responded okay I didn't see how much yeah okay and he was fine he he didn't question it further but I could tell unless I missed something so the employer can agree that the bargaining unit proposed by the union is appropriate provided the union demonstrates the support of the employees that seeks to represent no rival employee organization seeks to represent and the proposed bargaining unit is appropriate under the standards set forth if the employer chooses this option please notify the this board that these standards have been met and a certification of recognition will be issued so I mean none of us have I've never done this before so I guess we are saying number one we don't um I don't know that we need to consent to election there's only three people where they consenting to elect to choose the union to represent them I believe the election was the cars that they they already did and he does expressing interest yeah I don't think that's the same thing that's meaning we wouldn't like to sign up for this union and then we get to say I honestly don't know we're looking at you like you know I don't have a clue about it I don't have an opinion if we is it the employer can agree to a consent to election I think this document is in the folder right yeah we should look at it I think I gave it to Katie I thought I did I don't think I'd put anything like that a consent to election does not apply recognition of the unit for collective bargaining purposes it does however require agreement that the proposed bargaining unit is appropriate I don't know what that means I feel like I want to say I guess it's appropriate we have three road crew guys it's reasonable for them to say they want to be a bargaining unit is the same when we say appropriate if the employer agrees to a consent election please notify the labor relations board and we will work with you or your designee and to Mithila Bonbar to arrange a date time and place for the election well isn't this I don't think the road crew needs to do this why are we doing this they need to consent they want to do it I think what they're saying is they want to do the election I don't know if it means we're consenting I mean we're not we're not disputing it we're not saying we want to challenge this so it seems to me the easiest way to do this if we're not opposed to it is to go with option one the bargaining unit proposed by the union is appropriate and can voluntarily recognize the union as exclusive bargaining representation representative of the employees the employee's petition will provide the union demonstrates the support of the employees it seeks to represent which they have there's no rival employee organization seeking to represent the employees there's none that we know of and the opposed bargaining unit is appropriate under the standard set forth in 21 BSA 1724 C that's what we don't know I mean I don't think there's I don't think that they would be doing this if it wasn't correct Timothy Noonan who is the executive director of the labor relations right so that's my only question is what are the standards can we I didn't bring my laptop but we can go to the BSA online we can go to the statutes okay just go to the legislative brahmont.gov and then you'll pick look over to government and then we want to go to the legislature what are you looking at and then we're looking for here and then scroll scroll and then the counter at the top just brahmont laws just type in this 21 BSA 21 BSA that's going to get you bills though you need to go to brahmont laws that tab with the clicker is yeah go there the other one is going to take you and then go to statutes search it's on line either way and scroll them try entering just the oh good there's the titles go to what 24 yeah go to 24 here we go it's 21 okay that's 21 maybe that makes sense it's 21 and then it's section 1724 parentheses little c parentheses little c these are the standards determining the divergence of interests needs and general conditions of employment of all employees within the closed firing unit the board main is discretion required to separate vote be taken well they're talking about four they're talking about labor relations for it correct I believe that's correct it would be silly that they're talking about us I'm just reading out loud for the camera the board main is discretion required to separate vote be taken among any particular class or type of employee within a proposed unit to determine specifically if the class or type wishes to be included require the separate vote be taken among any class or type and then the final slide no barbie unit shall include both professional employees and other municipal employees unless the majority of such professional employees vote to be included in the unit and so that tells me that it's appropriate that it's the three road crew they're all the same type of employee C1 standard is met C2 all of the C standards are listed in the letter to me it just says C yeah just C so C2 is whether over fragmentation of units will result from certification to a degree which is likely to produce an adverse effect on the effective representation of other employees of the municipal employer or upon the effective operation of the municipal employer and so the question is whether this is going to have any unit among the road crew a bargain unit will over fragment our since we've agreed that they're all in the same unit well and does it create over fragmentation of the town as a whole other employees of the municipal employer does it have an adverse effect on the effective representation of other employees of the municipal employer or the effective operation of the municipal employer number three in determining whether a unit is appropriate the extent to which the employees have organized is not controlling so that's just information so the question was which one of those do we get one two or three right so the employer can agree that the bargain unit proposed by the unit is appropriate and can voluntarily recognize provided the union demonstrates the support of the employees it seeks to represent done no rival employee organization seeks to represent the employees we know of none and the proposed bargain unit is appropriate under the standards we've just read I agree yeah okay thanks for being thorough we are very thorough well and I don't want to go home and read this realized that we weren't alright so you guys agree I don't think there's anything more for us to do to say we agree with number one and in the communication if you don't mind me making the suggestion Denise I would say that I would just repeat what they said our decision is based on boom boom boom boom can you see what we're doing Thank you. Anyone want to be a say? One of you that we reviewed that. 172. I would just be very fact-faced. The little say. Read your letter and boom, boom, boom. This link will be a whole lot of people. Really fact-faced. No. Right? We don't have time for that. And does anybody else want that link? If we have the letter, I want the letter. It's got it in there. Yeah. I didn't see the letter and went beneath Florida. I just thought of the discussion. I don't think I've had any of that. I don't think I've afforded to everybody the email. All your stuff is sitting in some little outbox somewhere. I'll check again. I'll send it if I didn't. I'm sorry. I'll send it again, but I thought I did, because we talked about it last meeting. Yeah, see, I found this discussion thread, but going through it, I find no attachment. There should be a link. Anyways, maybe because you blind copy this or whatever, it doesn't come in. Oh, maybe. If you reply and don't forward, things happen. And sometimes Gmail does weird things I found out. This candy, I swear I sent something to Katie, and she'll be like, I didn't get the attachments. All right, well, I'll send it around again. It's not, it's not common. And also that you order anything, so. Also that the bargaining unit is three people. Right. Yeah, I would repeat that. Yeah, he acknowledged that before, so I'll just make sure we say it again. All right, I think that part's done. Good. Good to go. All right. Next up. And then after we're done with some of this other stuff, I'm going to go into executive session. And that's when we would ask everybody to leave. You are dismissed. Would you like to, if you stop by here tomorrow, I'm betting on the ladies in the office will give you the rest of this cake to take to the road trip. OK. I'll make it. Make a trip. OK. Thank you. Thank you, Alfred. I appreciate your help. Well, I can save a few pieces for the ladies here, and you can just take it to the office. Yeah. I'll be here tomorrow. OK. OK, good night. Good night. Thanks, Anthony. All right, so this is a meeting with CVRPC, RCT. And I don't know whether I got it right and it's GMTA regarding a commuter bus, Route 14. They want to come on the night team. The night? The night. I'm sorry, you're right, the night. And then that same night will be the road erosion. I think the road erosion inventory. I went to a meeting with PMD Andrea and Dan Courier. Larry Bush was there. Toby showed up about halfway through. And we just looked at the draft report. We've made some suggestions, and I asked them to present it to the whole board. So I think that will be on the 9th as well. That's fine. That's a regular meeting. That's a regular meeting. Yep. I love that. Love that. I'm trying not to have it, so there's extra meetings. I still have to work on this scheduling, this meeting with other towns. We need to have a BCA meeting on the 9th. That's 6.15. I don't know what people's schedules are like. Yeah, I emailed Judy today, and I said, you know, because I work, so I won't be on the 6.15. I'm at 6.15. We need to do a BCA meeting because we need to review the checklist and stuff because of the upcoming elections. Eventually, I'm not going to be available at 6.00 again, but I am right now. OK, so Rose is a no. Are you available? Yeah. I've been sharing, yes. Katie, are you available? Yeah, I'll add it to the calendar too. OK, thank you. And what's the BCA about? I'm sorry. Board of Civil Authority, it's about we have to look at the checklist and stuff because we have elections coming up. What is it, November? What is it, the first Tuesday or something in November? Is that the primaries? November 5th. November 5th? Yeah. Two days after day, like savings time. Oh, nice. Day only changed a lot of this. Although it's already getting dark so much earlier now. Stars are beautiful, though. They are. They have really been spectacular. True. But just, like, we know what's coming. I know. Just like we know snow and winter roads are coming. All right, Cliff, do you have any update for us on IT stuff, RFPs? No, I didn't just say, you know, notified all of the potential vendors who provided proposals that we were still working through the process and that we would not have any meetings in the month of August and possibly look at scheduling meetings if necessary. Sometime in September, dates to be determined. Everyone's understanding there's still strong interest in being our provider of choice. So you're no meeting on our books? No meeting. Anything I have, I can erase. No meetings are scheduled. Yeah, OK. But yeah, I think we should probably at our next meeting with the board identify, unless we could do it now, identify dates where we would potentially want to schedule meetings and identify dates for potential evening meetings and identify dates for potential day meetings. Do you think what I need today was, or do you think they really want our business to show up in the evening? They'll show up if they really want the business. But last go round, when we had some dates out, we had offered some AM times. I mean, offered some PM times. And did people? And that was across the board. Some people were like, yes, I can meet during the daytime. It's much easier for me. And others were like, well, I would prefer a new meeting because those are like, OK, I need to do regular business during those hours. So this is what works for us. Right, and I think that if we want the full board to participate, it's going to have to be in the evening. Yeah, I would agree. And if we want to identify those dates now, we can. Or it may make sense to have another round of discussion in an executive session regarding some contract specifics. Do we have more information? Yes. We have more information than we have last time we talked. Do you want to get that? I'm trying to think. Yes, actually, yes. OK, do you want to put that together in your mind and whatever you want to do. And then we'll plan to do that on the 9th. Have that discussion. That's fine, yeah. That work? It does work, yeah. OK. And then scheduling the? I think we want to probably schedule them. I know everybody pretty much holds Mondays open. Animal control, though. Oh, we're not moving on yet. I haven't done anything with that yet. Yeah, so then we can discuss and we can identify the dates. OK. So everybody come prepared with calendars. Be good to try to keep them on Mondays, because that's when everybody kind of has blocked off for select board, if we can. I know everybody's not available on September 11th, because that's when they announce new iPhones. So we'll find a way to get you on the phone tomorrow. Oh. But we're not going to be able to look, because we're going to have substantive possibly demo meetings, right, when we meet with them? I think we need to do them on off Mondays from regular board meetings. Well, and what I'm worried about is spreading it out too much that we don't remember from one to the other. I would rather have discussion because we want to talk to you, but also with this additional information to consider. OK, so great. OK. All right, you want to do some minutes? Everybody review on Simon Lawrence, did they? I have minutes. What do we got, Katie? We start on July 22nd. OK. I think those are good to go now. But look. Anybody want to make a motion to approve the July 22nd minutes? Second. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. All right. It was Rose Cliff and I, so three of us are here. So we can come on. Did you have a look? Oh, OK. The table moved. Reach the extension board. It's OK. Now that there's more room in here. Oh, my gosh. It's OK. Are you good, Rose? I think so. OK. I'll make a motion to approve the August 8th joint meeting with Eastmont Pillar. So, like, board minutes? Second. All those in favor, please say aye. All right. Sharon, you're abstaining? I'll abstain. John is in here. OK. 812. We have a chance to vote. Yeah. Should we on County Road or not in County Road? I was glad that the sheriff said that. From a pedestrian perspective, cars on dirt roads appear to be going faster because I could be doing 30 and they're walking and they look at you like you're going 90. What? Katie, cars on dirt roads appear to be going faster for flying down. Then they, it seems. And then they appear. OK. Just something. You got too many words at the end. One of them's got to go like that. Yeah. No, that's not right. That's the opposite. Cars on dirt roads appear to be going faster than they actually are. Yes. Here we go. Here we go. That's what you know. Or the reality. So good. The point, yeah, that wasn't important. In terms of R, though, then they actually are. Than in reality. Than they are in actuality. That's not actually a preposition, though. It's an OK word. It just makes you uncomfortable. Well, now if you change it to fastlier. Oh, that works. Does that work? I got the camera on. OK. OK, anything else? What else is there? That was, to me, that was like, when I think about what did the sheriff say, the big one is that point. What were the other things he said? Who was driving the cliff or Katie? Can you scroll down? You can just scroll down. I'm displaying Katie's entity. OK. Scroll down more. I think there was an album. I don't want to go ahead and do more, Jane. Do we have, yep, room from the show, the top of the dog? Throughout room. Which she told us tonight, he did. Yep. Can we just read, have a conversation about the union stuff? Oh, Finney is F-I-N-N-I-E. I think I put that at the top. Oh, thanks. Yep. Yep, thank you. So, instead of that this will affect salary negotiation just to be more clear and maybe the bottom of that paragraph, the highway department is signing the cards to the board comment that it will affect just to be moored off that we're going to let that affect. I would say the board commented this means we will be negotiating with the highway department crew as a unit. That's what it means. I don't think that's what we said though at the meeting. It's what we would have meant because we didn't mean that it's going to... Well, what John said is that we could be really clear about that. What John said is you start with a blank slate in negotiating so we could say that as well. I just don't want it to sound like we're going to be retaliatory. No, I don't think it does sound that way. Help me out. How should I... I guess I don't think this will affect salary negotiations, period. To me, when we say affect salary negotiations, it sounds like it could be read that we have what I would say the highway department is signing the cards. It's going to impact the salary negotiation process. Why don't we just put a period after you and do something else that's fine too. Let's do that. We don't have to keep all the clutter out of it. It's just that. Okay. Period. I'm going to leave it at that. That's good. Okay. Here, right? It doesn't improve the rate of back and forth. It reduces the rate of back and forth. I think that's good. Oh, it's not commissioned. It's a Rhodes committee. Probably capitalized Rhodes committee. Let's see. Which number is it? 11. The board plans to seek to revitalize the Rhodes committee. And then just have space in between two and seek. That was pretty much it. What's on the last page? Because that was it. All right. Everybody good with those? Yeah. So, emotion. I'm going to vote to approve the August 12th. Minutes with changes as discussed to me. In a second? All those who can hopefully say aye. Aye. All right. Now I would entertain a motion to go into executive session. Prior to that, maybe we could discuss business or business to business. Do we have any? Apparently we do. I would just like to put it into the minutes that the board is saddened at the loss of community members to purchase and recognizes his valuable contributions to the town of Calis. Nicely done. Thank you. Yeah, it was a very nice service and when it was packed Old West Church standing on the link. It sounds like we can't hear, but I went to the reception in that failure. It was a nice reception. Good. Good. Yeah, and that was one of the things I wanted to do. Well, you have to do as well as I was out there. Yeah. It was pretty quick. You said he'd been sick for some of the weeks? He'd been in ICU. They were just having a hard time figuring out what was going on. It was respiratory in nature. They really had a handle on it. Unfortunately, his condition just deteriorated. Sounds a lot like Ernie's situation. You know, I'm kind of I know what he's done. It's really just sad. Well, Ernie, it was, I think, his heart. Didn't they talk about him maybe needing a transplant? Well, but the condition, the way I mean, the way it came about was they didn't know where it came from or why, and it sounds very similar to where his kids did a wonderful job speaking. What do you think? They did a really nice job. It was very upbeat, which is nice. The pastor or a reverend or whatever he was did a really nice job. Yeah. So I spoke to Nancy afterwards and gave her our regrets. Another one I didn't know. So thank you. That would be nice to have in a minute. Yes, do me a little bit. Thank you. All right. Any other old business or new business? Okay. Hearing none, I would entertain a motion to go into executive session for one VSA, section 31383 to discuss personnel matters. Yep. I'll say you'll take a moment and make copies of us. I'm hoping that clip has a call-up. Thank you. You guys are going to be surprised. I do that for you, Katie.