 It is seven o'clock. I'd like to call to order this January 29th, 2024 meeting of the Waterbury Select Board. I'd like to first apologize for having to change the venue. I also thank Chief Dillon for welcoming us to the firehouse so that we could accommodate more people. About a week ago, a little less than a week ago, we found out about this new initiative for the use of the armory, which had previously been suggested to be used for housing. And now, with this new thing, we knew that it was going to attract a certain amount of public interest. So we moved it to here. And I apologize for any inconvenience. Have a game area. I'll try to speak louder, then. Hi. And I do appreciate the fact that you will respect the fact that we'll have one person speaking at a time. We do have a packed agenda. And we have, among other things, we need to pass the proposed budget for 2024 by the end of the evening. So we're going to try to stick with the agenda. That is the first item on the agenda. Do I hear a motion? Make a motion to approve the agenda as presented. Seconded. Moved and seconded. Any discussion? I would like to propose that we add an additional 10 minutes to the 720 item, the National Guard Building Development, to make it a 50-minute item. OK. Second. Moved and seconded. Any further discussion? All in favor of the amendment, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? All right, now we're voting on the amended agenda. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? All right, the agenda is approved as amended. We'll add 10 minutes to the discussion on the National Guard Building Development. Second item on the agenda is a consent agenda. Do I have a motion? I move to approve the consent agenda as written. Second. Moved and seconded. Any discussion? Hearing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Consent agenda is approved as written in the agenda. Next item is the public session. This is for anything that's not on the warned agenda. The use of the National Armory Building is on the agenda. We'll be discussing that in two more items. So we'll have plenty of time for that. But anyone that would like to address anything not on the warned agenda tonight, please come forward. I ask that you keep your remarks to three minutes or less. And anything requiring more than that will put it on in the subsequent meeting agenda. I should note that on the people participating via Zoom, we don't have the chat function tonight. So you just have to turn on your camera and raise your hand so I can recognize you. But I don't see anyone being asked to be recognized at this point. So we'll move on to the appointment of the Housing Task Force. Is Peter Hack here? Hi, Peter. Peter, if you wouldn't mind coming forward, please. Yeah, well, you can sit right over here, actually. Special guest chair this evening. All right, Peter has applied for an appointment on the Housing Task Force. Peter, can you explain why you're interested in that position? Well, I've been a landlord in town for 20 years. I've got a few units here and there. I'm in the construction business my whole life. So I've got the background and I have the interest. Obviously, housing is part of my life. But I have an interest in helping out the town, helping out where I can. I think I have some. I don't have any solutions, obviously. But I hope that I can help the process. All right. Thank you. Thank you for stepping forward. Any questions from the board? Any question from the public? Do I have a motion? I move to appoint Peter Hack to the Housing Task Force. I'll second. Moved and seconded. Any further discussion? Hearing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Peter, welcome to the Housing Task Force. Thank you. Thank you for stepping forward. We appreciate your service. Yeah, some of it will be tough, right? Yes. Karen will be. OK. Next on the agenda is the National Guard Building Development. We understand that Chris Winters of DCF is here. Chris, are you in the audience? He will be momentarily. OK. Do I have a motion to have Skip come forward and present his agenda in the meantime? We're going to use it for people that want to speak. But yeah, why don't we do that? Where are we going to do it? We'll just move it for the time being. Roger. Yeah. Could you juggle and share? Carla, why don't you announce there's a sign-up sheet going around? You could sign up just to document that you are here in the audience tonight. That'd be great. Allegedly, please, so I can read it. Roger. OK. Roger. Got you. I move. Kane. I move to put Skip's presentation above the National Guard Building Development portion of the agenda. I guess that's the whole motion. Fair enough. Do I have a second? Second. Move and second it. Any discussion? Hearing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? All right. Skip, if you wouldn't mind coming forward and giving your presentation on the Edward for our utility district. Skip Flanders, for those that don't know, is the chair of our utility district. Has served in that capacity for several years. More than Skip would like to admit. We'll say that parking was so tough up here, I had to drive back home and park at home before I came tonight. I apologized earlier, I love you too so. No problem, I'm kidding, you know, the church. Up in your top pocket up there, inside. Well, thank you for inviting me to talk to the select board tonight. I think that's good talking to the different boards and things that we appreciate the opportunity. Skip, I'm going to have to just ask you to project because we have a big crowd. Yes. We're absolutely interested in that. And one of the topics you mentioned was the Wallace Award that you and I have talked, and I've talked to Rosina Wallace. We have some good candidates to receive the Wallace Award that we will be doing at town meeting this year that we forgot last year. So we'll be working on that. Incentives for housing, I'm also on the housing task force that Peter just got a pointing to. And one of the things is incentives for housing that we've talked to some contractors and things that one of the things they mentioned is reducing fees, fees like water and sewer allocations and things that permit fees. So if we're going to get into incentives that reduce fees, we would need to coordinate with the select board on what we do in that. Also, one of the other options is tax reductions agreements going forward that if they did housing, they might get a reduction in their property tax for five or 10 years as an incentive to have housing and things that might be something that we would talk about there. We're also working on the employee appreciation breakfast, pancake breakfast that the water commissioners have done over the years. Last year, when we did the one before Bill's retirement, it was kind of short notice. And I felt that Alyssa and Danny had worked on setting it up but then had to go to work, which was too bad. They didn't get to enjoy the discussions and things that they wanted to do a better job this year. Also, one of the things, the employee breakfast, I tried to include the volunteer boards that do so much for Waterbury and having them on a weekday morning and things, a lot of them go to work. But I don't know if there's anything we could do about making a better range but that they could come. We talked about a Saturday breakfast but then the town employees and things might not want to come. So anyway, we'll have discussions with you about setting up a date. You don't have any date in mind right now? No. And then I was going to talk about the water project that the E5 commissioners are talking about, coming from a waterline extension from Gupta Road over through and coming out to where Capitanics is, that the discussions began about trying to provide fire protection for all the property in that area that there's a lot of development in eating fire hydrants and things for fire protection. But when Bill Woodruff talked to the people about the water line and getting lights away to get over there, there's a lot of wells with poor water quality that we could pick up. There's a mobile home park, the East Wind Mobile Home Park that has water quality problems in it well that we would be providing water service to them, which would be to their advantage. They're kind of in the affordable housing category, too. So that's good. So we're in the design phase with that. It's fairly expensive. I think the last boat was $4 million. $3 million, but that was a year ago. So $4 million is probably right. We've gotten some grant funds and things. We hope we don't have to raise rates in order to do this. People have been concerned about possibly running the water line out there, opens up areas for development. Everybody that we've talked to is already in existing building. And if you know much about Vermont, development is usually controlled by finding room for sewage disposal. You can drill a well in most places. So it's not likely to open up any areas that weren't available for development. Lifeline's out. Sorry for the interruptions, Skip. We just lost a portion of our audience. Oh, we're running out of time. Oh, here we go. Ording in progress. There we go. All right. We're also working with the PECs on the Nealon Flats mobile home park, getting a grant and things to replace the water line serving the park that they would be in the old and improve the old lines that are there, the original lines and things. And once it's complete, the commissioners have agreed to take it over and operate and maintain that system when it's done. So that further. When do you expect that to be done? They're trying to get their permits now. I don't know if their money is lined up. But I would say within two years, it's likely to be, I don't know, maybe Tom has a further update. I think that sounds about right. Something for the select board to think about for that project, too, or for the Rep. 100 project is both those projects would entail adding fire hydrants. And the question has come up is that should that be a town expense? Because in essence, we're protecting the town's grand list. So I think it's a reasonable conversation to have in the future. We'll make it closer. And quite a few years ago, the text went out for online. Can you just recap the last two minutes briefly? Sure. Skip Flanders, the chair of the Edward Ferrar Utility District's been discussing the future programs that he's got lined up, or that the commission has lined up, to expand water services mostly up towards the Route 100 corridor and some of the adjoining trailer parks that are likely to be serviced, including East Wind and Neyland Flats. You got to the bottom of the list. Oh, that the pecs had paid with their own money to run a water line up Neyland Flats Road into the park. So they had been getting water for three or four years through their own lines. So this is not a new connection, but an upgrade of their lines there. We're also concerned about the recreation things in the watershed area upon Water Works Road, Loomis Hill there, that increasing use through the trails and bike paths and protecting the watershed and things. And we've worked with Department of Forest and Parks. They're doing the Worcester Range Management Plan, which includes recreation and things that we're submitting, comments relative to that. And not sure what concerns, controls, and things we'd like to implement, but we're concerned about that here, I think that concludes my comments and update relative to EFUD and things. I don't know if the folks have any questions for this time. I think I'm good, but the rest of the board? Yes, Danny. Is there any concern about the feasibility or any hesitation about the Route 100 project going through? I know you're only in the planning phase, but the new? I mean, the water line across. Water line, right. Does it just seems like you're just early in the phase, or is there a concern about it happening? It's more than the early phase. We're in final design. OK, OK. In some grant money, the only concern would be getting enough money to go forward with it, going out to bid that the rate materials and everything are climbing. It's a pretty significant project to take on. Other questions from the board? Any questions from the public? From the next what? I couldn't hear the question, I'm sorry. Can you? The project I thought I would be a budgetary review. Sure. I can answer that. So the initial engineering had about a $3 million price tag for the project. We have a grant for $600,000 from the state, and we have a federal earmark of $2.4 million. The federal earmark has passed a house appropriations subcommittee, but getting it through the full house and the Senate and signed. Who knows when that will occur, if that will occur. And then the $3 million cost for the project is now a couple years old. So even if all those funds are secured, and I'm not counting on the federal dollars coming anytime soon, there still could be a budget challenge. So that could be that if it's small enough, there could be a rate adder for users of that waterline, for new users, and it wouldn't impact everyone. But that really depends on a number of users who sign on, and just the overall cost. Is that the review that counts up before decisions are made? Yes. That is under the purview of EFU, correct? Correct. So it's basically a user-based expenditure and other than grandmoney and whatever else. It doesn't relate to people who don't use cattle water. So it's probably not a town issue, right? That's correct. All right. Chris, thank you. I would just like to add while I'm here to thank the select board and the public employees and the volunteers for all the help in the two floods we went through in July and December, living in the flood plain. And I can appreciate all the help. I think you did an excellent job of providing service and the volunteers that came around as well. So a big thank you from us for your efforts on that behalf. Thanks, Skip. Thank you, Skip. We appreciate your work. If I could just make a note to everyone in the audience for having connectivity issues. If you're on our Wi-Fi, please shut it off. And maybe that will help things. I don't think they are. I'm on a secured network. Is there a way to increase capacity before taxing me that they're soon making any? No, I can't. The plan that we have is the plan that we have. All right. So it's Chris Winters here to come back. Has he joined us? He has. And we're meeting. All right, Chris, if you wouldn't mind coming up. Are we recording this? We didn't break your internet. Yeah, we wonder. Let's wait for one second and just make sure we're recording what we can before we get started. Sure. We're going to just wait and try to get everything back in order. Yeah. Could there be the ability to maybe bring the podium? I've heard some people back here say they'd like to have them stand in the podium if you could over maybe off to the side rather than the front so that people from Zoom can hear and do as much as possible. Actually, people are going to hear them via Zoom the closer he is to the. It's coming through the aisle. The Zoom is being heard from this computer right here. The microphone's in the computer, so. OK, we'll try to project our voices as we move forward. Can you stand up, perhaps? I was going to say, the elderly stood. OK. It's not the hot seat. I'm going to stand up. We're not posting. While we still work through a couple of the issues here, I'd like to welcome Chris. Thank you for coming to present. This will be the first time any of us have had the opportunity to get some clarity on what is now being proposed. I think my understanding, last I heard, was that the state was proposing to use the National Guard Facility to sell it to a developer for housing. And then a little less than a week ago, we were informed that there was a new initiative, which has since been posted in various media. And I think that's the reason that you have such a large audience here, is that perhaps there is a perception that this is being rushed to service. And I just wanted to say I know that there are a lot of people here that would like to voice concerns. One of the things that we're going to try to do is when a particular concern is voiced, I'm going to ask for a show of hands to see how many people share that concern. So we get a sense of who is what, and we won't have to have a lot of repetition. So just by way of introduction, I'd like to say that Waterbury has been a welcoming community for over a century. This community in partnership with the state welcomed people with mental challenges from all over the state. And to this day, I think we still have carry a lot of compassion for those that are in unfortunate circumstances. And at the same time, I've been hearing a lot of concerns about whether this new proposed facility is going to be able to care for the serve population adequately. I don't know if anyone wants to raise their hand and shares that concern. I also have heard that people are concerned about the vitality of the Waterbury community and our host community. And I don't know how many people share that concern. Quite a few. And I'd like to introduce our board, starting with Mike Bard, Kane Sweeney, Danny Kellerman, Alessa Johnson, our municipal manager, Tom Lites. And I'm Roger Klab. One question for you. Are you related to Phil Winters? Ag extension agent. I grew up in Williamstown. Phil is my great uncle. Uh-huh. OK, well, my grandfather's brother. I very much enjoyed working with him when I served at the Department of Agriculture. He had a great dry sense of humor. And we're glad to have his great nephew here. So if you're recording in progress, we are now recording in progress. For those that are on Zoom, I'm sorry. Karen, Karen Town-Petrich. Oh, yes. Karen Petrovich is here as our town clerk and town treasurer. And Teresa Wood is a Waterbury resident and our representative to the legislature and serves as chair of the Human Services Committee. And thank you for coming and your participation. For those that didn't catch it on Zoom, we are going to try to get everyone heard from. If you wanted to turn on your cameras and raise your hand when you agree with a particular concern, that'll show us a little bit of the flavor of people that are following this discussion today. At this point, I'll turn it over to Chris, if you wouldn't mind introducing yourself and give us some detail as to what's being proposed. Sure. Thank you very much. My name is Chris Winters. I'm the commissioner of the Department for Children and Families. I'm a native of Central Vermont growing up in Williamstown. My wife grew up here in Waterbury, very familiar with the community. And I want to echo a lot of the things that were just said about the role that Waterbury has played in being a part of our state human services solutions. What I'm talking about today is very fast moving. I want to apologize for not being able to come to the community sooner. But I am here tonight. I was going to do this on Zoom, but thought I'd best show up in person, given the number of people who are interested in this topic today. I will say that in probably all my years as a school board member in Berlin, this is about the total number of people who showed up to all five years worth of meetings. So I'd love to see community engagement. I do want to hear what folks have to say. It'll inform our decision making. And I also want to answer any questions that you have. And hopefully, alleviate concerns that you have. My hope is that you would support this project coming out of the meeting tonight. But I'm sure you have a lot of questions, a lot of legitimate concerns already raised here. I thought I would give some background to help you understand how we got to the decision making point that we got to around the armory just in recent weeks and how fast moving all of this is as we try to address our homelessness crisis in the state of Vermont. We have a housing crisis, first of all. I don't think that's a secret to anyone. Our vacancy rates in Vermont are among the lowest in the nation. Our rents are among the most expensive in the nation. And you can see a direct correlation between this and the number of Vermonters who are experiencing unsheltered homelessness right now. It's expensive. There are low vacancy rates. And we're unable to address some of these issues without more housing units. We're aggressively pursuing policies, and you'll hear a lot about it in the legislature this year, to promote unit generation. But that's going to take time. And in the meantime, we have 1,600 households living in hotels and motels across the state. And that's households. It's more like 2,300, 2,400 individuals living in hotels and motels. That's expensive. It doesn't connect them to the services that they need. It doesn't move them into permanent housing. So we don't want to follow that model into the future. What we do want to do is expand our traditional shelter system where people can be connected to services. They can move on to more permanent housing. Now, meanwhile, we're trying to address what we have in front of us while we're trying to address the long-term solution. And part of the shorter-term solution is standing up five additional temporary shelters in five communities across the state. And we know we're the highest concentration of folks experiencing homelessness right now is in Bennington, Rattleboro, Rutland, Chittenden County, Washington County. So we're trying to stand up under the current proposed budget that we're working with. We're trying to stand up five shelters with as many beds as possible in those five communities. We also have 500 of what we would call traditional shelter beds across the state. So those are the ones that are connected to services, often provide meals. They connect people with employment opportunities, mental health services, substance use services, health care, and all of those things. So that's the model that we want to go to. What I'm talking about here tonight for the Armory is a temporary stopgap measure in between. We are proposing this from April 1st to July 1st. And to speak a little bit more to the specifics, we have a very rough design of 40 beds with plywood separation that the National Guard could help us construct. We have, there's electrical that goes with that. It would be staffed by a professional organization that is used to running shelters. We don't have the local capacity to do that. We try to work with some of the local providers that they are stretched to capacity. So we would be putting that out to bid and contracting with providers who are experienced in doing this kind of work. We have projects around the state. We have something really great going in Brattleboro. We're optimistic about our project in Bennington. We're trying a mobile shelter site. So these are shelters on wheels and trailers in Rutland. And in Montpelier, we thought we had a really great option where we were gonna lease a hotel and have a local provider run it, but that fell through. The provider was overextended. We thought we had 42 rooms there. We don't have that. We keep pivoting to whatever will work to try to stand up shelters by this very short timeline of April 1st. And the April 1st date is there currently because as you all may recall, the hotel motel program ended for a portion of people last summer, but are most vulnerable. Those who were in the hotels due to vulnerable and catastrophic eligibility. That's people, families with children, people with disabilities, people over the age of 60, victims of domestic violence, those who may have lost their housing to a natural disaster. Those folks that were in the hotel, they were extended through this April 1st. And that's an ongoing debate in the legislature as to whether that should end. The rationale behind extending them to April 1st was that the state would try to connect those people to housing in the meantime. And although it started out with about 1,300 households on July 1st, we still have over 600 households still in the hotels and motels under that. It was called Act 81 that extended them. That's set to end on April 1st. So that's why we're looking at April 1st to provide additional shelter space across the state for those people. Those folks are, like I said, a large proportion of them are families with children. A large proportion of them are people with disabilities. And a large number of those are folks who are elderly. So we are trying to stand up additional shelter space. And that's why the April 1st date. We had looked at the armory. We knew it was a possibility for several months. We had looked at it for other purposes, but nothing was really firmed up. Nothing was certain enough for us to come to the town to explore or to have a public forum or anything like that. But in recent months, in recent weeks, when that Montpelier option fell through, the National Guard is coming up against a deadline to have enough money to go purchase their new armory that they're looking to put forward. The transfer hadn't happened yet. The transfer did just happen in front of the legislature. There's money in the budget to purchase the armory at, I believe, $890,000. So that's really what got the wheels turning just in the last couple of weeks. As soon as we knew that was a possibility, I reached out to Tom. It wasn't public yet. So Tom briefed the select board in executive session. Last week, and then this week, I testified in front of the legislature that we were pursuing this. The budget was made public, so it's all public knowledge now, and it's at this point that we knew we had to do community engagement, and that's why I'm here with you tonight. Just a little bit more about how fast moving this is, much of it's tied to the budget. It's tied to the state ownership of the armory. We've got approval to buy. And then just to be clear about what we intend to say once again, it's a temporary shelter from April 1st to July 1st, with 40 beds staffed by shelter professionals. We've started contact with law enforcement to understand some of the impact on law enforcement to make sure we have that relationship there. We have plans with local, we will make plans with local service providers to bring service to the shelter, and also transportation arrangements to bring people to the services that they need. This will be run according to our shelter standards. So it's not what you might, some people might think of when they think of low barrier shelter where there's drug use happening in and around the site. This would be run according to standards. They would have at least two staff members on 24 seven, enforcing the rules of the shelter and we would have transportation in and out. I will tell you that I know there are a lot of stereotypes and misconceptions about people who are experiencing homelessness. I've visited a whole lot of people in the hotel motel programs in my first 10 months as the new commissioner of DCF. And these are folks who are a heck of a lot like us. We are all not also far away from experiencing homelessness ourselves. They have jobs, they have families, they have children. They have hopes and dreams just like you do. They don't want to be in the hotels. I'll tell you that that's another big misconception is that a lot of people are just there for a free ride and want to be in those hotels. It's really difficult living in those hotels from what I've seen. And I've met a whole lot of good people there who are down on their luck who can just use some help. And if we can connect them to services in a shelter model like this, as opposed to a hotel, we'd be doing a lot better by them. So I'm here to answer any questions that you might have. Hopefully get your support as a community in this temporary measure to provide some additional shelter space for the Vermonters who are going through homelessness right now. And open to your feedback and modification to the plans that we have to try to alleviate any concerns that you might have. So thanks for hearing me out. All right, thank you, Gress. Okay, I'm gonna first start with questions from the board. I mean, folks, can you wait till you call Don please? Yeah, I'm gonna have to call on everyone. I'm sorry, we're all sort of convening with ourselves because we can't see, you're cutting out. Thank you. Okay, I'll start if you don't mind and then we'll go to the other members of the board. Chris, my understanding is that the legislature just passed a budget amendment for this current fiscal year that extends the Motel program through the end of June. And based on what you just told us, it seems as though that would cover the period that you're trying to cover with this project. Would that obviate the need for this? So it might change the need some. What it has happened is it has passed the House, it has not passed the Senate. And what I'm being asked to do is stand up these five shelters in anticipation of something happening on April 1st that I don't know is gonna happen or not. And we can't wait to start making the plans to start putting things together or they are not going to be ready on April 1st. I won't begin to try to predict whether the legislature will pass something that extends the Hotel Motel program. But even if it did, we have, like I said, 1600 households in hotels and motels and we're sometimes turning away 50 or 60 calls a night because we don't have enough hotel rooms. So whether or not it passes on April 1st to extend, we do need the additional shelter capacity. And the other piece of this that's really strategic on our part is that we need to show the hotels and motels that we're willing to house people in other ways. I don't know if you all have seen like some of the rates that they charge. We're trying hard to negotiate those rates down. But when we fill up all of their rooms, they have no incentive to dial those rates down. So there's also a bill proposed in the legislature to cap those rates at $75. On average, we're paying $135 a night per room. That's about $40,000 a year per person if they stay in a hotel for the full year. Right, okay, thank you. Who's next? Danny, Vice-Chair. Chris, thank you for being here. I think it's really important to have you here in person so I really appreciate it. You mentioned putting it out to bid to operators outside of Vermont. I'm curious when that might happen. What, if there's anything in the way of getting that process started and then what if no provider's able to step forward? What's the next step? So we did put something similar out to bid last summer and then decided not to do any other shelters at that time. So we had the bids already. We just asked them to rebid. So we have four providers who have bid. We have them already and we just have to make a choice as to which one would be the best bid. Kane, this question pertains to the rush-ed-ness that we're all feeling right now. Sting on your mic. Just stare. The Scott administration's made it no secret that they want this Motel Voucher program to come to an end. And it's been, he's not made that a secret for years. Why rush it right now? Why not have worked this plan out over time to the end of the program instead of having to do this bomb rush to April 1st? Yeah, we have been, I'll say that DCF has been for a long time trying to get other shelter providers to step up and get us to switch away from the hotels to the traditional shelter model, which works a lot better. It's really slow going. Like I said, I think we have 500 shelter beds. We have plans to expand by another 180. And there's money in the budget, and the governor's proposed budget to do that. But that's really slow going, as I said. We've been trying to move away from the hotel Motel program. There, the piece that we're proposing ending is what we call the cohort, the folks who were in last summer that got to stay through April 1st. That's already on the books. That's already in law. That's set to expire unless the legislature does something else. And then there's folks who are in there through adverse weather conditions or other eligibility. So it's not, I think it's been a long haul to try to unwind this program while more people are experiencing homelessness. So I wouldn't say it's a big rush for April 1st, but this is when the law is set to expire, when we have to be prepared to have more shelter space at that time. I'm not sure that I answered your question, Chloe. Yes and no. Mike. Yes, hi Chris. Having had experience, I was over 30 years program director for USDA Rural Development, having worked with a lot of low and moderate income people, people of homelessness, et cetera. My concern is looking at the space. You mentioned helping people with families and stuff like that. You look at the armory. There's only two bathrooms, one male, one female. That creates an inherent problem with housing families in that space. Can you address that? Yeah, so I think if we look at prioritization for who goes there, I said this in testimony last week. Is it congregate shelter of this sort? Sort is not ideal for families. It's not best practice in general. We want to give people privacy and dignity and hopefully a locked door, but when you don't have a choice for that and you have to do something that's congregate, we're calling it semi-configured if that's even a thing to try to put up some partitions to make at least some screening and some privacy. We would not be looking at housing families there as our first choice. We are looking at the bathrooms, noting that we might need to add an additional bathroom to make this work. Tough in that time frame. Alyssa? As a local elected official, I guess one piece I would just clarify is we were literally informed of this in the meeting just to say if there's any perception, Tom told us you had texted him, but I just feel like we're being put in a place between obviously this proposal, the state is advancing in concerns. We're hearing from folks and constituents, so I guess can you just speak to how you would anticipate working with the town? I mean, folks come to us in terms of services, you know, whether it's the library or our emergency services that we support as a town. So just curious to know what that interaction would look like. Sorry about the tech. Maybe we pause just a second. I think it's gonna be good for them to hear that. Okay. If we have 10 seconds, I can see if it'll go up. I don't know. Might not. The choice of technology. Maybe not. I really don't think there's anything I can do. Okay. No, last time I connected fast, so I thought if it did, it was worth it. Sure, we'll try to catch people up if they miss something. Yeah, so. Would you mind answering? I appreciate the question. It's still very much in development for us as well, and as soon as we firm up plans, we would definitely want to be in communication with the town, like I said, around things like transportation, law enforcement, what other impacts it might have in either the neighborhood or the town in general, and are there ways that we can mitigate that? Are there ways that we can provide assurances to the town? Are there ways that we can provide resources to the town that would help for that three-month period? And we're absolutely happy to come back as more people become aware of this and maybe have, and you all have had a chance to think about it and have more questions. Okay, for those of you that are online, I apologize again, we are having some technical connectivity problems. The question was, again, why are we put in this situation where we have less than a week warning before what appears to be a fairly imminent decision? And we first apologize that he'd be willing to come back and address this again, and he's looking forward to partner with the town. Let's take. Yep, Jeff. Can we do a few more? Yeah, go ahead. I think I'm curious if this is, I think it was published April 1 to June 1 originally and you mentioned July 1. I assume that may or may not change based on legislature, et cetera, but is there a plan for the building after for the million plus going into it? Has that been discussed? It has not been, I think the state will have plans for it. Obviously, I don't think they would be making the investments that we are if there wasn't, but I don't know what those future plans are. I don't think there's anything set as to what they might want to do with it. Yeah, Tom. So Chris, that's one of the concerns I've heard from the community a lot over the past few days is that you're, you've got a real difficult problem to deal with this homeless population. You're investing in a facility. Presumably if you open it, this problem is not gone in a few months. So is temporary, what's been relayed to me by a lot of people is temporary, really not months but years. Yeah, I know better than to say temporary means temporary. I mean, we're opening up at the middle sex facility for secure juvenile youth treatment. That will be temporary because we have plans on the horizon for a permanent facility. I don't know exactly what the timelines are gonna be. We're looking at April 1st to July 1st. We have money in the budget for three months. That's all we're planning for. And there is not money in the budget beyond that. So unless the legislature or the governor changed his mind about adding additional money to the budget, it's a three month plan. But the governor has presented a budget for the following fiscal year. Is there money to operate this facility in there? No. Thank you. All right, a number of people in the audience are gonna want to speak. I think maybe the way to do this is to have people come to the center, and I saw your hand first, if you wouldn't mind coming up here. And then others that would like to speak after her can come up behind her. And then we'll also bring in people from other side. Can we, we're all just gonna pause for one second because there's a lot of movement and I just wanna make sure we get your name and everyone can hear you. If you wouldn't mind moving that over. That'd be great. Nandy, are you timing? Yes. I'm sorry to interrupt. I was wondering if you wanted to ask your question before the other questions about public process and it just seems like maybe that would be fine. That's up to the board. I'll be glad to, I'm gonna suggest that everyone limit their comments to two minutes in respect to the number of people that we've got here and here. And then afterwards I'm gonna ask if people have share similar concern as the speaker so we won't have to repeat everyone sharing the similar concern in your name place. My name is Pila, that hotel, hotel and hallism and drug addiction and the cops over there every other minute. How would you propose to vet the people that are gonna come to Waterbury? You know the effect on our community will be great unless things are in place. This rush doesn't work for me. You know, maybe they, if I understood you, the state wants that money so the National Guard can put up a building for the National Guard. Well maybe they'd better put a wall on their reins until things are really worked through with a really, a plan. It doesn't sound like there's a real plan yet. I mean, to me there's no plan and I'd like to see a clear plan. I'd like to see people, that is they're coming in and services in that building for them that are solid and there's a beginning and end time. First you said it's April until July. Now you say, well, it might be, it might not be. That's too wishy-washy for me as a taxpayer. I don't like it. And I don't like that coming into my room. I'm all for I hand up but not I hand out. If people are gonna be there, they ought to work for the state either mowing lawns, doing some kind of service. I've listed a bunch of things they could do. You know, they could be custodians, gardeners, shoveling, mowing, painting, road work, kitchen work. Some office work. If the state wants to hand out money like they did to the people up there, it was a tragedy and it was vulgar. People just got money for sitting on their butts. I'm not for that at all and I don't know how many people in this community are for that. Well I mean. Sure. Can we not applaud? Is that something that we can ask folks to do? Just let people speak one at a time and move through? Is that appropriate? Sorry, I'm looking at Tom. I mean, do we look at Roger? Is that something we can ask? Are you comfortable asking? Sure, and again, what I was going to do was going to just ask for a show of hands. Anyone that sort of supported the tenor of what Elaine was saying. You can just raise your hands and we'll have a sense of what the crowd support is. Okay, thank you. Is it okay if I respond? Yes, please don't. I did just want to say that that's one of the problems with the Hotel Motel program is that there are no standards, there are no requirements, there's no accountability, there are no services. One person at a time, we ask Chris to stop. Some of their conditions are really poor. We shouldn't subject people to living there. And I also just want to say please don't use sweeping generalizations for these people. A lot of them are working. A lot of them have to contribute 30% of their income to stay in the hotels. A lot of them have mental health or substance use issues. It's a difficult, difficult problem and people are complicated, just like every one of us in this room are complicated individuals. So you may see some of the worst of it manifesting on the street or in the crime log, but that's not the vast majority of the people that I've interacted with in these programs. Okay, thanks, Chris. Your name, please. Lisa, name this? Yeah, go ahead. I'm sorry, that's out of order. It's out of order, sir. I'm sorry, you're still out of order. Is this my note? As you mentioned, is there a way for us to access those rules somewhere? Did we get one link to those or something? Sure. And is this going to be a 24-7 facility? Yes. Has the state looked at the Housing First initiative or are I just curious about why we're not going in that direction? I think a lot of people in the legislature do want to go in that direction. That's too bad. Yeah. Let's put our phones in there. Okay, a show of hands. Anyone supporting the question that was asked? All right, thank you. Chris Viennes. I just would like to say that to me, this seems like a knee-jerk reaction to a bigger problem that's coming. I've been at several select board meetings, encouraging the select board to try to pay attention to the ongoing drug crime and addiction problems that we have in this state that's not only consuming Burlington, as you've all witnessed, but has consumed other towns in our little state of Vermont and a lot of bigger cities and towns throughout the United States. What bothers me is that seeing this thing come across the Pacific like a tsunami has been slow reaction by our state legislators who do anything about it. We had a lieutenant police officer, state police officer, in at the select board meeting one night, talking about things that- Yes, we can hear you, but not see you. Things that the town can do to help try to ward off this problem from getting worse in our own community. He spoke about the revolving door to justice system, and I had him elaborate on that a little bit. It seems as though some of the policies that are being put forward by our state legislative body are enabling this crime and drug issue to grow bigger and bigger and homeless issues grow bigger and bigger. Continuously as we're asked to dole into our pockets and run faster to try to keep up with higher education taxes, higher municipal taxes, higher state taxes, and foot the bill on all these other things too. One of the questions I have, we have an elementary school with just literally a stone throw away from- 10 seconds, Chris. This facility, what's that? You have 10 seconds left. Okay, you know, what guarantees do we have there? And when it comes to temporary facility, I question that. Thank you. Okay, let's hold your applause if you want to raise your hand in support. Thank you. I don't think there was a question there, so. I don't have any options to know the level of support. They can see. They can see you. Apparently they can't see us. I don't try on the screen. So thank you. If you're right in the center, select board. They're looking at you through the owl right there. Yeah, they can. Just keep commenting that they can't see us. Oh, they're commenting to you then, because they're not commenting to me. Oh, and they can't see us at all. All right, well thank you. Let's see if we can make some adjustments. But, Tamara. Up to the armory. I think there are three things I hope you take back and understand. One is that you are placing this in a residential area. Two, it's a residential area that has been kicked in the teeth over and over and over again, especially over the last six months. And so whether it's just a perception of decreased property values or a very real thing on top of the flooding, we can't take it anymore. We are modest means folks living on those houses in those very small houses going up that road. It's where we teach our children how to ride our bikes, where we take our dogs out for walks. And we want to be promised some level of safety and security remains for 43 families. The last thing I'll say is I had the pleasure and honor of being on the Debsbury select board for many years, chairing that select board. And I can remember if we wanted to ditch a road, if we wanted to create a new culvert, we had to make sure that every fish was taken care of, that everything was done properly. And so to come in and rush this process into a community without careful thought, not only to us, but to the people who you claim to be taken care of, there are no services here. We have no emergency medical anywhere near us. We have barely any behavioral health or mental health services in this community. I'm talking about families. So if you're saying that you're trying to do better than the hotel program. At the same time, you're talking about family, other than ours, it's going to be about that. We don't need to get out. So I don't know. Sorry about that. Sorry for the, thank you. Christy, feel obliged to respond to that. It would not be an ideal for families. She didn't, sorry guys. I think I just a minute, please. Yeah, can we, I'm not, I'm not host. So I can unmute people. Okay, okay. All right, if you can. Everyone online can refrain. Someone muted me. Oh, thank you. Okay, your name, please. My name is Rachel Souter. Okay, thank you. Support for that. All right, thank you very much. Okay, I'm gonna take one more here and then I'm gonna start interspersing people from the online world who've had a tough time of it. Your name. Sir, when you first spoke to us about this, this meeting, you mentioned that. We can't even know. Sorry, whatever. My concern is that this gentleman first started speaking about this proposition. He mentioned that this would be a transitionary place for families. Well, he was quick to retract that later on in his discussion. I don't think I ever said that. You would say. Well, let's go for it. Anyways, so my question is I'm not trying to judge or make sure for anybody in any sort of situation, but what history has said that other programs that the state has done when it comes to housing situations like this, especially with a hotel program, there's been a need for other resources, other services, and there's been altercations which has been caused for need for policing. We're in a town where we do not have a police force. We have a limited force provided by the state police department. So my question is, with this facility, when these additional resources are gonna be required, where are those resources are gonna be coming from? What's the plan for those resources? Who's gonna pay for those resources? Because as a resident, seeing our tax dollars go up 3% or more every year, we don't have a lot more room to go. Thanks, Joe. Thank you. Can you respond? Yeah, I'm sorry if I did insinuate that it would have been families. I think I was talking about overall in the Hotel Motel program, there are a lot of families there. Congregate shelter is not ideal for families, and that's why we would steer away from families for this particular shelter. And how about the, he was asking who's gonna provide the services that'll be needed? Yeah, and I think that's all things that we're talking about now and resources that we would need to talk to the town about. In other communities where we have shelters or where we have had to have security at the hotels and motels in particular towns where we have a large hotel full of people and you don't have shelter standards, security was necessary to come in there and we would either pay for the security or reimburse the town for that security. I do not foresee that run in a shelter that's run properly by professionals as opposed to kind of a Wild West hotel. And I'll just add that it does put us in a bit of a bind because some time before midnight tonight, we'll be approving the proposed budget for the town. We have not had any time to take into consideration the need for increased security or any of these other services that may be needed. I'm gonna recognize some of them from here and then we'll come back to the line. Yeah, this one's from Jonas. Ingrid Jonas. Larry, can you hear me? Perfectly. Commissioner, thanks for taking the time and thanks Select Board for hosting this meeting. I do have just several questions regarding clarification at this point. If you could, Commissioner, if you could please help us understand like how many staff members would work at this site, what kind of services would be provided and what would the hours be? And what did you mean by, you said something in the beginning that the police, I don't remember the term if you said they were on board, but I wanna know more about that. And also what are the statistics that you have from other communities? Like what services tend to be relied upon in communities where these shelters are placed? What are we looking at for pressures in the community and on workers, et cetera? Thank you. Thanks for the questions. We've just had an initial contact with the state police, Berlin Barracks is all we've done at this point. This is all, like I said, very new to us. And so we haven't made a lot of those contacts yet. As far as shelter standards, I'm happy to kind of share those with folks. I can send those to the Select Board so you can see how we typically run our traditional community-based shelters and what kind of services that we provide. Generally speaking, we bring people to the services that they need. We provide the transport. We're gonna talk to Green Mountain Transit about an additional stop there, if that makes sense. But otherwise we provide the transportation to get people to their medical appointments, to job interviews, to mental health and substance use treatment that they might need. So it's a variety of services depending on the individual that'll come along with this shelter space. And as far as impacts, I think it really depends, but I'll stick with what I said earlier, which was in a well-run shelter of 40 individuals run by professionals, we don't anticipate a lot of security issues. The staffing is typically at least two people, 24 seven, if not more, so two people at least and then plus additional administrative, if we need it. Also other service providers could potentially be in the building at times, food delivery, potentially food preparation. We haven't totally fleshed out the plans for how this particular shelter will run. Laura, thank you. Oh, Lisa. My name is Lisa Lawson. I was just hoping that you could speak a little more to where these people are coming from. You mentioned that the 2,400 people that are already being housed, well, we're looking housed and whether it's in the blocks of people where they're coming from and then I may have another question based on that. Yeah, thanks for the question. I meant to mention it earlier. We're trying to set up five shelters across the state and the community's most affected to alleviate pressure in the hotels in those areas. So those folks would come from Washington County. If we knew they had a connection to Waterbury or potentially other contacts here that would make it make more sense for them to be in Waterbury, we would look at those people. But generally speaking, it'll be from people who are already in hotels or experiencing homelessness in Washington County. And where are the majority of those come from? Are those Vermonters that have unfortunate become homeless or have they been brought in from other states? Is it coming in from other borders or are they from southern border? Do we have that kind of information? When people show up and say they are a Vermont resident or planning to stay in Vermont, they are eligible for housing. I'll tell you the vast majority of people that I've talked to are locals are from Vermont. There's a real misperception that people are from away, that they've come here attracted by the benefits or by a free hotel room. But there are a lot of people who do have connections to Vermont. The vast majority of the people that I've talked to in these hotels are connected to Vermont. We do what was called the coordinated entry screening to try to get as much background information about the people who are in the program as possible so that we can hopefully fit them up with housing applications, subsidies if they're qualified for its services, if they need them. So I'll say that there is a big perception that people are coming from out of state, but that's not been our experience. But we don't know what percentage are people that have lived in Vermont for a very long time. I don't know that we ask that, are you a native Vermont or how long have you been here? I don't think we do collect that. Seems like something you would want to collect, but I understand that's not something that you should personally have to do. I feel badly for this left-board being put on a spot like this, and I feel badly for one of these house people who also are scrambling to get answers to these questions. And I think whenever the government does something hastily, it rarely turns out well and temporary usually becomes permanent. And for that reason, I don't think it's about fear as somebody has suggested, but it's more about just the realities of this situation and what it needs for our community now in the near future, so. Okay, thanks so much. It's a hand on the wall, right? Thank you. We'll go back up here. Do we have another? Let's see. Like Lindy's iPod. Lindy's iPod? Wow. Lindy's iPod. Hi, I'm Lindy Garfield. I just want to say I agree with everything Elaine Holt said and the previous person who asked a question. It just seems to me, this is not very well thought out. And why try to put it together without the specifics worked out and to throw this upon people. Just dump it out there. Just it's not right and it's not fair to do that. Anyway, I don't really have a question. Just comments. Thank you. All right, thanks, Lindy. And we'll raise our hands for Lindy. Here we go. All right, back over here. Yes. Hi, I'm Beth Ann Mayer. I live over on Randall Street for 45 years. And in the last three years, I've actually spent a lot of time with people who are living in shelters, in hotels, and are living on shelter. And these are our people. They're our brothers and sisters. They literally are. I run into people all the time in this situation who consider water burying their home, but they can't live here because there's no naked housing here. It's an economic problem. The rents are double what they were 10 years ago and the incomes are not. It's straight economic. And the people that flounder are the people in our most vulnerable who can't keep up with this. So I think that we need to welcome this. We need to welcome the fact that DCF is being an activist and setting up a shelter. I don't think that's happened before. That they're gonna staff it and that if we work with them in a non-adversarial way, I think that there's an excellent outcome. I mean, I live on Randall Street, been affected by the floods. And if I get flooded out, I'll be one of the first ones to open the armory. It'll be great to have that reason. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Last week when we had four nights that were below 10 degrees, we opened up a church basement in Montpelier without any publicity. And just by word of mouth, we had 10 people come in who would otherwise have slept out in the cold at less than 10 degrees. This can be life-saving. Two of those people had serious health problems at the end of the two minutes. Okay. One guy was in a wheelchair. About 10, 10, 10, 10... Thank you. All right. Back over here. Marci, Marci Blava. Marci Blava. She's unmuted. Marci, are you with us? I'm here, but I didn't raise my hand or anything. Okay. I don't know where you got me. I'll unmute. Thank you. Who else is here next? Glenn Anderson. Glenn Anderson. Hey, how are y'all? Can you hear me okay? Mm-hmm. All right. So, you know, I guess I basically just want to keep it short. I'll just weigh in. I first of all want to reiterate the importance of these services. And I think that in whatever conversation happens and ensues hereafter, I think it's critical to keep in mind the people that would be using it and understand that this is a real issue. The problem that I have, and I think many of our community do as well, I think that there's a reality of what the state is asking us to do, not just because it's rushed, but because there's an assumption. And there's an assumption that with a, you know, 90 million dollar bond coming out, whether there are kids in this facility or not, that was one of my questions I think it's been answered. Whether that's just for the temporary plan or whether that's for the full-time plan, I don't know. Does that mean that they'll be used to justify a more bed base for the enrollment levels that are declining just to justify a school bond vote? I think the bigger picture though, and when I'm looking at water issues and expanding service, it's great for us to grow our economy. But if the state keeps coming in here and saying to us, we want to build a city at all costs and they don't have a traffic study and we don't have a really legitimate plan for public transportation and for traffic solutions, I have a problem. So can you hear me okay? Is everybody like, yeah, I think so. I just wasn't sure we're having so many difficulties with the tech here. So towards that end, I'll keep it short. I just hope that we could keep perspective, not be dismissive to the people that need services and work towards that, but not necessarily have these backhanded taxes on us that we'll have to pay, whether it's a school bond tax down the road, whether it's just increased services, that's fine. But let's be upfront about it. Let the state come in here and start underwriting some of those tax cuts or make it better with a traffic study. And so we have some better public transportation. Oh, thank you. I appreciate it. Yeah. Yeah, thanks. He's asking about kids at this facility. Not going to happen. Yeah, but how about in the future, right? So that's the bigger question. Three month plan. So why don't you just speak for yourself? I don't want to put words in your name. So I think I said before that this would not be, I would not be appropriate for families. We would be looking for people for adults, probably single, some couples for this facility. And that's just for the three months of the plan or would that be for the entirety of ever? Three plan stands. There's no intention to use this as a shelter after the three months. Okay. I do just want to say again, I would prefer to do a longer range plan, earlier community engagement. You guys are breaking up again. We lost them. All good questions, Glenn. Thank you. I appreciate it. And I hope I didn't crash it this time. I mean, I think this is the start of it right now is how can we react in a way that other than saying, okay, never mind. This is something that we really need. And we want to have your partnership and this is want to be good neighbors and do this in a way that has the least amount of negative impact in the community. I think it could be a really wonderful thing. These are folks who really need help. We've moved 12,000 people through the hotel and motel program since 2020. So people come into homelessness and hopefully they come back out and get to more permanent housing. And with some community engagement and services. We think this could be a positive, very positive thing for the people who pass through the shelter over the next three months and get to get to something more permanent. So what I'm hearing is the decision is not ours, but sort of the path and services and assistance can decisions can be made based on the issues that are raised by the public and the questions that we have. I mean, I think so. I'm being told stand up these five shelters across the state in the next couple of months. Of course, they're done work on excuse me. If you wouldn't mind, Chris has got to tell me, I don't know. I don't know what the right answer to this is at the state owns that property. I think it's a legal use of the property, but we do want to hear from you. We want to hear how we can how we can modify our plans. It's not working for the for the community. Okay, thanks. Roger, it's okay. I recognize Roger is running the meeting. I just want to know it's like folks on zoom folks in the room. We're all here because we care about this community. I just want to recognize we do have a full agenda. It's a long night. I recognize I occupy one of the five elected positions at the seat, but I would ask folks to consider highlighting the questions. We are trying to get answers. The commissioner has already said he would come back to raising an issue if you have an issue, but we don't have time for everyone to give a political speech tonight. And I just ask that we say if the question is already been addressed, you consider getting out a lot, but with the amount of folks here and the amount of things here, I will ask Roger what motion needs to be made at a certain point. We want to hear from folks, but we just ask that in doing so you're considerate of all of our time here together. Hey, listen, you guys broke up before, but did you get to the traffic study? Is there one that exists? Thanks. I'm not aware of a traffic. He's got a line just like, yeah, we'll just leave that one then. Okay. You have the phone and I just, I apologize. I didn't hear the answer to my question. You guys cut out. So thank you. Yeah, I got you Karen. Thank you. I'm Karen driver. And I'm glad I'm following you back in there because I think she knows what she's talking about. I know, you know, Thomas so, and I feel as she does, but this is an opportunity for water very really step up and shine. And I, I know that water very can do it because I know we have the human resources that we need. And I know that we help each other really well. And as long as we do see people as our brothers and sisters, I think we can do this well. And I would be so proud if we did say yes. And if we did our very best to make it work well for everybody. Thank you. Answer Karen. All right. Thank you. We got over here. Mariela Lampson. Mariela Lampson. M Lampson. Hi there. Sorry. So one question I have is they're saying obviously April 1st of July 1, what happens July 1 when the shelter shuts down? Do we then have 10 cities at Dakbro at Rusty Parker Park at the Park and Waterbury Center? These people aren't just going to up and leave Waterbury. What's going to happen? I mean we've seen what happened in other towns. And the other concern that Ellie brought in the beginning of the drug use, you can say, you know, initially he said, oh, it's families and families, but then we're being told it's not going to be families in these shelters. Not that families are the only ones that use drugs, not that single people are the only ones that use drugs, but the likelihood of drug use happening being brought in into town more and more. Obviously, it's going to come with this. We all know it. So what is the way to address those issues? Chris, you have a question or an answer? Sure, I just would go back to my answer about it being a properly run shelter and with, you know, supervision and security. There are 440 beds, I think that we're looking at. I think it's highly likely would be targeting folks in the program who are singles or couples, perhaps folks with disability, perhaps some people who are older. It's hard to predict what the population will look like that's in there, although we are saying not children, not families with children at this point. Like I said, the plans are still evolving. We're happy to come back as soon as we have firmer plans on what the shelter operation would look like to drink the select for to keep having an open conversation with the community. And drugs have been mentioned a couple of times. Chris, what are the security considerations that prevent drug use in the facility or around it? Well, it's a violation of the rules of the shelter to use use drugs in the shelter. You'd be ejected from the shelter. As far as people with the wind down, I think was one of the questions as well. We would, you know, probably place those people and hopefully have found them permanent housing, but if not place them in other shelters and other areas at the end of the three months. Okay. John. John, I'll see you on her court. Chris just a couple of clarifying questions. So it's a 24 seven. Man's shelter, right? Correct. We do not have a police force is 24 seven. Within water. And part of time state. Police officers are basically. Not existed. As far as most of us are concerned anyway, we've already had crime. In our area, we've had our cars all broken into in our area. The question is two full one. It's 24 seven shelter, but people are not going to be there 24 seven. So who's policing them. And two, if you've got 40 beds, but 80 people want to show up. What do you do with the overfill? It's not a shelter where people can, it's not a. A shelter where people will just show up at the door. We would be coordinating it through other service providers who are coordinated entry through our phone line. We don't send people there. Unless there's an empty bed for them to go to. So it's not going to be like the line at the door like you might see it a seasonal shelter in Burlington where it's just a walk and it's not that. So for the mouth thing, people are desperately there. There's a shelter. The armory. It's supposed to turn them away. The people running the shelter. And that will. In turn, the winnings folks. And where do they go? It's a big question. Where do they go now? So we're a magnet for. The unhoused effectively at this point. You could say that you could also describe it as. You speak up. You could also describe it as being one of the many communities that are being a part of the. Of the solution we're trying to. To offer some of their resources to a problem that's widespread. It's across the state. It doesn't just happen. In Burlington. It doesn't just happen in Rutland. You know, we've seen people. I drive down to every day on my way to work and. We're 10 on the park there along the river for a number of months. It's not everybody else's problem. It's in everyone. But. There's another one problem I get that I understand the plight. Of your work. And I can appreciate the. Challenge you have. So I thank you for your time. Thank you, John. If I could just follow up Chris. My understanding from what you said is that this is people enter the shadow third by referral. Not by walking up armory drive. That's correct. So, okay. That's helps. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Online. Liz. Liz. Hi, I want to thank everybody for this conversation. It's challenging online, but you're all doing a great job. And I want to ask these questions that I apologize. I might have missed. During one of the dropout periods. So. Chris, I was just curious about. What services were provided. I know you said you'd be putting it out to bid for an agency. But will they, there'll be a kitchen or cooking space or showers or anything like that available to people. What kinds of services will be available to them to take care of themselves? So I guess it looks like you left. Yeah. We heard you. It literally just dropped out. Hey, while we're here, did anybody hear the answer to the problem? Do we have any kind of solution for that yet? Glenn, do we need a traffic study? There are, if it's 40 people. They won't all have cars necessarily when the National Guard was there, it was more than that. Yeah. I guess I might be expanding it a bit, but I just feel like it's this like ever exponential growth of, you know, move to the city model. And it's like, we don't have a public transportation plan that I think. Glenn, Liz, you're live again. Liz, it's your turn to speak, please. We did not hear you when you spoke before. So if you could tell us again. My questions were about what kinds of other services will be available to people there in terms of kitchen services, are there showers? Are there a place for them to cook and store groceries? It is a challenging building as I recall. And so we want, I want to just understand what could be done to modify it, to make sure it's a place where people could actually be okay to live. And I want to go on record as saying, I support this. I, given how many people became homeless or so close to homeless from flooding, we cannot say that this is not a concern for us. We have lots of folks who are in our community who are struggling with this on a daily basis. And so this is, you know, our fight too, but I am curious about how that building will be made a safe and comfortable place to live. Yes. Thanks for the question. It is, we are going to do minimum setup because it is temporary. So we are trying to keep costs down. We are planning to have a food preparation area. We are planning to have ability to, for folks to store their belongings. And then it's really critical that we connect with service providers to make sure they can either come to, to the armory or have folks transported to where their services are provided. But it's all part of what we call complex care for the individuals who are experiencing homelessness to try to get them stability, get them on their feet, get them to a permanent housing situation. Okay, thanks. Over here. Chris Lynn. Oh, your court. So just for your context, where I live is right at the corner of your court and army drive. And my first question for you is, have you been up to the army yet? Look at the facility. Yes. You had it. Okay. So that drive was right by my house. And I'm going to bring up a little bit of a, a little bit of a story that goes down to local committee store. So I'm going to be at a kind of focal for traffic there. And one of the reasons I asked is because people was up there this last summer because of flooding and there's a lot of traffic before that, the state used it as storage. For their material when they were doing the, the ramp. And then that street up to there in a rough shape. fallen apart, the asphalt is falling apart. If you're putting buses up through there, and any other traffic, you're going to pound a snot out of that street up through there. It needs work back already. So I don't know if there's any provisions. I believe it's a private street. It isn't along with the city. But I hope there will be some sort of provisions in mediating that street up to there. Because it has a lot of traffic and it's really in core shape. My next question for you is, it's kind of a follow-up to the vetting process. If people are in the homeless shelter, do they need to register on the sex registry to be in there? And so we had access to know that there's people out there that are on the sex offender registry. And again, it's a straight shot to the school up across the road. And then, you know, and the other piece of that whole thing is, you know, having been up there, that property is bound. You've got the interstate, you've got a river. That's enough. I mean, if you really want to get across it one more time, I guess that's really good. So there's only one way in or out. And we've certainly found that during the flooding. We were in Island twice. So that place is isolated during flooding because that bridge goes into water. You can't get through it. So don't miss any questions, right? I've been cutting everyone out there too. So I'm going to ask you to let someone know. Thank you so much for understanding. Yeah, everyone's got only two minutes. Okay, I have a couple of questions, but thank you. You can email them. I will just say that there, we do house sex offenders and we do not place them in the same hotels as where we place families with children. I don't, I'm going to be very honest here and say I don't know what the plan would be for the armory. I would need to check with our like our shelter standards and what those screening processes would be. You have to be fair in some ways to who you let into a shelter. You can't discriminate for a number of reasons. But I think sex offenders actually one of the reasons where you could say that person is more appropriately placed somewhere else than in a congregate group area. Do you want to address the road issue? Sure. Just about the road. We actually did get a quote to pave that road this year. It wasn't initially in our tentative paving plan that I work on with the public works director. The select board finalizes the plan in the spring. But that road is $80,000 to repay if the state wanted to do it, we wouldn't argue. I just wanted to say a lab that when I arrived in Juana Berry in 2014 I was homeless and I got a job and I slept on a couch until I could find an apartment. That leads me to my question. You said 30% of the income has to go. We're out again. Does anybody know if this agency is buying this building but only going to use it for three months? Isn't that weird? They keep referring to it as temporary, but the plan is they're going to raise more money and then in July it's going to be a more permanent thing I think. Because they're buying a building. They are not buying the building. It's a swamp between two different agencies. But so then that agency will own this building now but they're only going to use it for three months. The state will own the building and the state will determine what the building's purpose is moving forward. I live in Meadowcrest so I'm not overly close to this. I have a lot of compassion for the homeless. I think a lot of us here do, but this size I think will have an impact on the character of Waterbury. It'll change and I say that with a level of confidence. My son is a lieutenant for the Burlington Fire Department. He's been there for 10 years and as the homeless population has increased, it's changed Burlington a lot over the years. We will see changes here and when you say it's going to end, I doubt that it's good. This once they build it, that's something that's going to probably be here for good. And I'm just not sure that's the right location. It is in close proximity to the school. That's not always a great combination. But I do have compassion for the homeless and I want to see us help them. But 40 beds is a lot and the other thing is it's going to impact services. And if we don't think this out ahead of time and figure out the impacts and the changes and some of the examples of other communities that have done this and it's not gone so well, then it will happen to us and we'll just kind of walk into it gradually and it won't be fun. So I do have those concerns. Thank you. Thank you. Any answer, John? Can we get Ann online or anything else? You can try. Ann, can you speak? I guess not. Okay. Hi, my name is Nora Miller. I live on Lewinsky Street. I am not a native Burmonter. I hail from the northern border up in Maine. But I've lived here for several years now and I have been volunteering with the True Blood Recovery Response and Bloods with the Neighbor Fund and this is an urgent need in this community. I work every day receiving calls from folks who are either currently unhoused from the brink of being unhoused. You're in temporary and that's because we had COVID, couldn't go to work that day, broke their leg, whatever it is, their car broke down. This is an urgent need. It's not only in the state of Vermont but in this community. But I appreciate the position you're in and I don't envy you because this is very fast moving a lot of logistics and concerns about the location and how you're going to run it. Like any good program, I hope you have fairly stated goals and a process for evaluating whether you achieve those goals. Are you able to share with us the program goals, your evaluation plan, and then also what community influenced or perception or experience you part of that evaluation plan? I really think I need to bring back the shelter experts to speak to this group. I'm not an expert in running shelters. I knew the agency of human services actually 10 months ago, but we do have a lot of people on staff who grant out money, provides shelter expertise, hold those shelters to standard, measure all of those, look at all those measureables to see what works and what doesn't. So we could definitely have students come back and speak to you about what's appropriate for a shelter, what outcomes we're looking for. Let's go on. Paris Stark, Guptel. Chris, thank you for being here in person. I want to thank the select board for giving everybody the chance to speak. It's awesome to see how they both serve, getting up here and posting their views. I think it's important that we just talk about the reality in right now, which is that Vermont is in the grips of a humanitarian crisis and we have the second highest rate of on-house folks in the country. And that reality already costs a tremendous amount of money. It's already closing a ton of difficulties. And the solutions that we're talking about, standing on fine new shelters, they're not great solutions. They're totally imperfect, but the alternative. My question is less to the select board unit, I guess more to the room, which is that given that this problem isn't going and we're already spending a tremendous amount of resources, what would it take with some form of solution that enabled us to move away from folks who are currently planning to live in the streets or part of the world's health program? And I think if there are things that the commission or things that the select board can do to get us there, let's talk about that. Because this problem is not going anywhere. It's just going to get harder. It's just getting more expensive. And I see this is the first step in a number of hopefully better steps there that will move us closer to more of a sustainable solution. Okay. Hands for Harry. Okay. I guess we'll go right here. How are you doing? Steve Frapp here. Hello, I'm Barry Helt. Just two real quick things. Is it unfair to ask the state to commit to the security, the policing of this right off the bat, just a yes or no? I mean, we've talked about it. It seems to be an underlying concern for everybody. We have state workers returning. We have influx of people. It's a busy area, busy town, busy time of the year. So I just like to hear a commitment from the state saying, yes, we are going to start amping up police, providing resources for additional policing round the round the clock. If you put this, I mean, you're basically, you've said it's going in regardless. So to commit to those resources, the ambulatory police, all the other things that are involved in putting something like this here, I'd like to hear a commitment saying yes. And then the other, one of the other concerns is, and we all kind of seem to agree, is once there's a temporary shelter, temporary becomes permanent, easy. Is there some type of commitment from the state to say, all right, want to bury? Look, we know we're rushing this end. We want to be out by June, come June or July, whatever the hell it was. We want to, we'll take in the consideration, we'll sit here and have another meeting and talk about what we're going to do next before we jam something else in there and commit to that and almost like a contract. And if we don't agree to anything past July 1st, is it legal? Is it, is there any basis to say, okay, I don't want to shut this down? Because if this becomes an epic failure come July 1st, do we want to have an escape route? That's, thank you. Yeah, I think that's fair. Hands for Steve. Thank you. I want to be careful because I don't want to promise any, make any promises that I can't keep. This is a problem that's fast moving. It's complicated. The legislative dates might change. The needs of our homeless population might change. But I will commit to you that if we do anything different, we're planning to do anything different on July 1. We'll be back here well before that to ask you about it. And as far as security and impact on services, I think we need to really assess what that looks like, what the needs are. And if the town needs more resources to feel good about, you know, safety and security up to the plate and support that. Thank you, Chris. I'll try one more online. Eric Gross, Madeline Sullivan. Hi, Eric. Thank you. So I live on Union Street right on the bottom of Armory Drive. I've flooded twice this year. I'm still trying to rebuild from that. A homeless shelter right up the street is not ideal. I have a lot of concerns like everyone else does. But a lot of this is because of the St. Albans Armory House PCBs in it. Doesn't this one also? So that's okay for homeless people but not for the National Guard. I do think it ought to check with you, confirm this. But I do believe it's been tested. The air quality has been tested already before the sale, before the National Guard sold it. But I'll have to get back to you. I think buildings and general services has already done that testing. And I think it's clear. Thanks. I'm Rachel Muse, the director of the Waterway Public Library. I think a lot of folks here know public libraries are on the front line of the housing crisis. We offer a safe haven of heat and air conditioning, public restrooms, computers and internet, a space where people can spend a lot of time without spending a lot of money. The Waterway Public Library serves all members of the community regardless of housing status. My staff as well as being really wonderful with traditional library services have also been trained in Mental Health First Aid. We have access to Narcan. We provide basic hygiene supplies. We're definitely not social workers or counselors but we do the best we can without judgment. And public libraries frequently end up filling the gaps where shelters like this aren't necessarily meeting people's needs. We've already heard a lot of questions about the details of the shelter and I just very much ask that the library be included as we get any information about those details because I do think especially considering this shelter is just a half mile walk from the library that we're going to be right there when people are looking for somewhere to be. But I also want to ask that we hear more about what resources might be available to town staff as far as things like training go. We really need to know more about what this population is going to look like but I suspect that we're going to find that there are gaps in our training and knowledge for how to manage the situations that we're going to find with this shelter. So please do keep us in the loop and remember that the library is going to be impacted by this as well. Thanks for Rachel. Thank you. My comment on that is that libraries really are on the front lines and they are the unsung heroes of helping people experiencing homelessness especially if they need to charge a phone, access services online. What we will have at the Armory is electricity, is access to the internet. So if folks need to do search for an apartment, connect with employment, do some of their virtual appointments, they'll be able to do that on site at the Armory. But I can't expect that they would use the valuable resource of the library as many of us do. Okay. Yeah. Good evening, I'm John Negrikin. My questions for you would be if residents don't follow the rules and are asked to leave the shelter, I'm not really that worried about the shelter and the rule of following the votes. What happens to that individual? I'm not exactly sure of the answer to that. They're not allowed into the shelter but I don't know if they'd get a ride to wherever they want to go or I'm not sure what happens but I'd have to get back to you on that. And then another question I would have for you guys, are you intending to involve the zoning planning commission in these retrofits changes to the building? It's currently empty, it was a warehouse for armaments, now it's going to be changed to potentially cooking, making meals, housing people, changing bathrooms. What involvement is the town going to get in that number? So we'll have to keep talking to the town but it's my understanding that as long as we're working within the envelope of the building we're okay but I'm not sure if I have a full understanding of that. So my understanding it's preliminary is that they'd likely need a change of use permit from our development review board. That being said the state is essentially exempt from most of our zoning bylaws. So it's not necessarily the highest bar to clear. There's other details to it but I want to share those with this left board. And then I have one last pretty question for you. The purchase price of the building divided out by 50 beds divided out by 90 days is actually $197 a day which is more expensive than the hotel motel action program which leads me to believe that there is a long-term plan that's not being shared with us. I do believe that the administration is very capable of planning more than 90 days. It'd be really nice to know what thoughts and discussions have occurred. I understand that maybe there is some need for executive sessions or whatnot but it would be nice to hear the discussions. So I don't know of a future use of the program at the price you talk about divided by that's all correct but then the state has an asset at the end of the day. So I don't know what the future plans are. If there are any I would be sure to let the folks know that they need to come and engage the town before moving forward with any of those those plans. DCF does not have any plans for that that space afterward. Hands for John. Madeline. Is there a time that you want to end or you want to go for it? Yeah I recognize that we're four minutes over but I do because people have been very patient. I'd like to extend if it's okay. Yeah I just wanted to ask. Yeah I'm thinking we'll try to end this by nine o'clock. Madeline. Hi thank you so much and everybody. I saw new managers at congregate living facility of another nature. I know that often it's not the clients or the residents who bring challenges but their visitors their family it's it's the nature of the work. So I'm just curious about the parameters for visitation and such at this shelter such as this. Thanks so much. I will I don't know what the plans are for the running of this shelter. I know there are typically rules around visitation depending on who's running the shelter. So as that firms up we can definitely bring that back here to let you all know what the plans around that would be and how it might impact the town the neighborhood and when you're buying. All right. Thank you. Yes. Hi everybody. I'm Matt for Ella. We live on High Street. I understand one of the original considerations for this property was to develop it housing and we do have the homeless problem in town. We do have in the state. We do have a housing issue in the state and in town and it seems to me that a more direct and reasonable approach for addressing the housing problem might be building more housing and that could keep people from falling into homelessness. Obviously homelessness is also a problem but just be a nice direct way to prevent some people from falling into this unfortunate situation. All right. Hands for Matt. All right. Thank you. Any comment? We need more housing units. Yes. Affordable housing in particular. It's part of the administration strategy but this is the measure in between what we have while we're building more housing units and hopefully encouraging that to happen. We're still going to have high levels of homelessness. We actually have like the programs to move people into units. We have the money available to subsidize some of those folks who might need a helping hand to get into a unit but we don't have the units to move them into. So affordable housing is definitely a part of the overall strategy but what we're talking about here is the short-term temporary shelter in between that. Okay. Bob. Wescott. Hello. Hello. I was wondering do you have any sense of what fraction of the 40 people that are going to be in the shelter are our local friends and neighbors because if let's say 90% of them came from within 10 miles of the shelter I think the answer would be hell yes let's help our friends and neighbors right if they're all from Australia or whatever then that's that's a different sales side. So you know there must be some homeless people that showed up that have been almost from Waterbury. We don't know. In all fairness the folks at home may not have heard that short dialogue earlier if you just want to recap it. Yeah I'll just say that we gather a certain amount of data on people. It's imperfect. We rely on what they tell us. I think you heard some folks in the room already say that your friends and neighbors are experiencing homelessness. We all have those folks in our community but I'm not sure about this particular like if we can go through all of the hotels in the 1600 rooms that we have across the state and see who's from Waterbury and try to place them in those 40 beds here but I think those folks should get priority if they have connections to the community and will probably be more likely to succeed here in those in those 40 beds we would definitely consider that as part of the placement process. All right thanks. Bill Sheplick. Thank you. Bill Sheplick. I'm the town health officer and just anecdotally two summers ago I was a gentleman who delivers meals on wheels came into my office and told me about women who was living on Batchelder Street. I investigated four unit apartment just recently sold. The new landlord increased all the rents from $750 to $15 and up. Three apartments were empty. This one woman had nowhere to go. She's I don't know where she is now. This is a big problem. This is not a perfect solution. I think everyone here has already acknowledged that the timing of this is difficult. I'm glad I'm not sitting there any more with Tom. It's challenging. But as Teresa is here and I know she supports this it's interesting to me that the state is able to come up with however much they're paying for this National Guard. When they're sitting on Stanley and Watson Hall site over here where three years ago we wrote a letter and asked buildings and general services to turn that property over to Down Street so they could build permanent houses. They're still sitting there doing nothing. So that's the solution that we need. I think we have to live with this. I think we have to encourage this to be temporary but the permanent solution is to prevent the apartments across the street from having the landlord evicting people and doubling the rents and putting visiting or traveling nurses in those homes. That's what's happening right there across the street and that's why people can't afford a place to live. And for Bill. All right. Thank you. Back up here. And him off. Okay. Real quick. I was wondering if Chris knows how many people are homeless in Washington County um aside from the Waterbury people are there any numbers and the other thing I'd like to mention is uh I don't know how many people uh at the fire station or online lived here prior. Uh oh. Well that's what we got from Ann. I think we got the general district of what she was asking. Yeah. We do have numbers on people by county. I'll say Washington County is third behind Chittenden and Rutland and slightly ahead of Bennington and Wyndham. And we do have. So I don't I support the concept of having temporary shelter for our friends. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Thanks. And we also know how many people are in the hotels in Washington County as well. I don't have those numbers right in front of you but I can provide them. Okay. All right. Thanks. Sharon Dolly, resident of Waterbury but I also am an owner of a licensed residential care facility. Um and I think it's important for the community to know that six plus months ago um we were informed as a group of licensees about the specifics at the Jewish cohort and we were all surveyed and participated in the survey to what extent we would be willing to help with this crisis in specific to Act 81 in the Jewish cohort. We all responded and I haven't heard from one person whether it be your agency or Dale. In regards to my response. So I am disturbed as a Waterbury community member knowing what I did and put my hand out to see if I could help and they've done nothing. I just talked to beg into your new board on Friday. There's still all kinds of talk but no nothing that involves us. So I'm sorry if that's a little bit out of the realm for the general population. But I want you all to know that there are some options and the state has not yet not your department but it's I don't understand. It's my agency so we do have we're doing a lot of inter-departmental works. So whether it's DCF or corrections or mental health or Dale or the Department of Health or even D.Va like we need to do better than we have in working together and connecting that Dale piece of it. I know the Representative Wood is very much informed and interested in that and we're trying to pull that piece forward to help the people who are in there. So I'd love to connect with you after. I said I have a bed available and not one person said let me talk to you. Because there are a lot of people in the hotels and motel program who have significant needs who could use that level of care. Is this just to clarify is this specific this armory shelter specific to the Jew and cohort? Yes that is that is the intention. We're talking about that 600 plus group with 500 in the aged category 60 plus and 80 a little under 100 in the disability category. That's certain on those numbers but something like that. And there's like eight fragments. That is the group of documents. So we're not talking about the general homelessness correct. We're not talking about somebody calling 211. I don't have a place to sleep tonight. Correct. We're not talking about the general people that were qualified for the hotel motel program. We are focused on that June cohort. The June cohort. Okay thank you for that. Thank you Sharon. And yeah I do want to wind this up. Teresa I don't know if you had anything to say to us and then we'll get the. Actually yeah go ahead. She may be able to answer what I'm going to make a comment about. All right why don't you make your comment then we'll ask Teresa to come up. We've all heard a lot tonight about it's the cost of living in Vermont that's creating a lot of this homeless stuff and that people can't afford apartments the apartment the apartment prices have gone up housing has gone way up yet we have a legislature and maybe Teresa can help bring it in that continue to pass bills that cost us all more which then adds to the homelessness so the vicious cycle has got to come to an end at some point and maybe she can answer it to that how we can stop passing all these bills to help people that don't have anything that cost the rest of us more that creates more people become homes. Okay answer Gary. Thank you Teresa. This is made for taller people. I don't have to make it adjustable. Good evening everyone it's nice to see so many people come out to share their thoughts and concerns online I think they sort of broke the record. So my name is Teresa Wood. I'm state representative here in Waterbury and I am chair of the house human services committee a committee that deals with individuals who are homeless and the supports and services needed to try to rectify that situation. I have a lot of same concerns that people have raised here tonight and in fact I shared them with Commissioner Winters earlier today. The state doesn't have a real good track record when they say something is temporary and and then you know we can look at the middle sex facility that's been there for 10 years and is now going to be there for another several years but refurbished. So I think that those concerns are valid and warranted and I think that we need to hold the state's feet to the fire on this and I'm just going to be frank and Chris has only been in this position a short time but we have asked the administration for a plan for the homeless people for the last four years and what they are bringing forth is a plan to house people for 90 days. That's not the plan from my perspective I will say. We have not had a focus on unit development for very low income people. People who are living on SSI or SSDI they are living with very low income. Not all of them as Commissioner Winters said we do have people in this group of people who are working and have families and have been priced out of the market essentially. So there is no one solution that's the one thing that I can tell you. There is no one single solution and I think that the biggest thing that we can do is to try to have a period of time that essentially buys us some time until we have more units available for people at this income range. I don't think honestly it's a very good plan to have a three month shelter. People have asked what comes next and we don't really have a response about what comes next. The house passed the budget adjustment bill and it did include an additional the governor had asked for 8.2 million. The house added 2.5 million to that reduced the amount being paid hotel owners but to $75 a day from the $135 and that buys extra time until June 30th for 1,500 households to be in the hotel hotel program. I always put program quotes because it is really just a it's not a program. People do not get the kinds of supports that people would get in a shelter in a bona fide shelter and I think you for commissioner winters say that. Do we have enough shelter beds? Bona fide shelters. I'm not talking about the hotel and motel. I'm talking about bona fide shelters where people receive assistance with transportation, with case management and referrals to substance use providers if they need that, mental health providers if they need that, job coaching all of those things are part of the construct of a professionally run shelter. I have my doubts about whether you hire a profession and get that up and running into that for three months and then you just stop it. Honestly it just doesn't it makes zero sense. It makes zero sense that the governor hasn't included any of that in his budget for FY25. So I you know in my committee we try to make the best of trying to ferret out the facts and looking at the needs of people without putting people out on the street at the same time transitioning them and we have reduced that cohort number significantly and you know has it been perfect? Absolutely not. It has not been perfect and Vermont right along with the rest of the country is undergoing this and it's actually not even in the United States. This is a worldwide issue and it is part of the impact of coming out of the pandemic and what has happened since then. So I don't have a lot of money in my pocket. I don't have a lot of solutions. I think that what we'll be doing in my committee is we'll be grilling the commissioner tomorrow. He'll be in my committee giving testimony on his budget on these these temporary shelters and a plan for the future. My committee is in the process of doing what we call a GA which is general assistance emergency housing modernization because the rules have been in fact for this program really date back to its inception in the 60s and 70s and they're not really as reflective of what today's society is. So that's all part of the work that my committee is doing around this. All right. Thank you Teresa. Thank you Commissioner Winters. It is 906. We're well over a lot of time. Appreciate everyone's patience and everyone coming out to participate. As Commissioner Winters said probably not the last time we're going to be talking about this issue. Sure we can take a break for three minutes and stretch our legs. Apologize also to all of you online. It wasn't ideal. Approximately 30 minutes behind schedule. It's not bad. I'll call us back to order and address the next item on the agenda which is finalized budget and warning for the annual meeting. Tom can you help us? Sure. I emailed Karen. I don't know if you could put that up on the screen or I can pass it out. For our finalized budget. Good morning. I hope the rest of this meeting is uneventful. So the prior budget that was presented had a slightly higher tax increase but since meeting with the select board we the prior budget presented had a slightly higher tax increase but since meeting with the select board we talked about the a little bit of money we had in for sidewalks. That was $30,000 that came out and then I didn't I had in the budget a really healthy increase for the state police contract and I was hoping to get an exact final figure today. I did not but I've got some assurances that my budget figure was too healthy. So I still have a 15% increase in that contract and essentially what I've been not officially told but unofficially told is they'll simply look at the last year and apply an inflator to that. So 15% is still an awful lot of wiggle room so that would that would bring us to a 2.4 tax increase as of today. So 1.3 pennies. I'm gonna let Tom finish and then we'll call for comment. So we'd be 1.3 cents on the 2023 tax rate a little under $40 for a $300,000 home which is typical I know people will say that's not typical home in Waterbury but remember our common level of appraisal was below the market. Earlier there was a proposal I had presented to use some of our reserves to pay down some debt early and reduce the tax rate. I actually don't suggest doing that right now in part we're lower overall and in part we may need that to deal with some of what we heard of tonight to address some challenges that may arise and so if you're comfortable at 2.4 percent we we can essentially wrap the budget up. Comments from the board? I'll make a comment. I think all the all the work that you put in Tom to bring this budget in below 3 percent has not gone unnoticed. Thank you. If you could work on the state people to get there. Well yeah the education that's that's the whole kicker. We could do what we want but it's not going to make a difference if the if the education is high. Tom are you suggesting you're pulling the $30,000 non-repair in the sidewalk? There'll be some sidewalk work which will be which will be grant funded that pays on pays for park row but after talking about it further with with the board and Bill Woodruff we'd like to do some sidewalks around the schools especially over time. If we could wait and in the future year do a much larger bid we'll get better better pricing per foot. I think we're better served if we wait and and then I don't have an exact number for you. I haven't gotten that level detail from contractors but if you if we can bid out a quarter million dollars at a time we'll get much better unit pricing it's I mean you know that business better than I do. Yeah the other challenge we have is with with the sidewalk work we did this past year for example which was Randall Street our staff pulled the sidewalks and Public Works is looking forward to having those staff do some road work this next summer so there's a there's a call saving them to do the sidewalk but there's plenty of work on our on our roads that can be done too. And the ones that are already under grant contract are Park Row and Elm Street. Okay so any other comments on the from the board about the budgeted 15 percent increase on the state police contract? Okay we're all comfortable with that. I guess then next point is to yes Mike on the special articles I know as of the last meeting in Green Mountain Transit not give us a accounting and report have they since done so? They potentially no I think I have a report and well they are one of the few that use their request as their report so some some some of the people send in a report an invoice and an appropriations request and then there's a few such as Green Mountain Transit that they just use their request as their report so there's a request in the top at my recollection and then language underneath that speaks to their ridership and things of that nature. So I do think I have I have a report. So they have met your net because I know as of last. They have been sent me an invoice for 2023. Right. Yeah do we still haven't paid that? What do we do it at some point we just say we're not going to pay for for the last year. Yeah I don't know if I've I've certainly never been faced with that issue. They don't invoice because I know we've had this question before if they don't invoice I would just soon not pay. I don't think we do pay if they don't invoice. Yeah they have to invoice. Right that's what I'm saying. But if and I'm not necessarily jumping through hoops to ask again. Right you've asked I don't know how many times. Different towns have different procedures sometimes take the position that because the voters specifically approve the article no invoice is required and simply if an invoice is received they'll honor it but if none is received by the end of the year they'll simply make the payment. Okay I know history has been we've had invoices. Yeah I have been invoiced every single other one so I do feel a little you know I don't think it's asking too much for me. I appreciate what you're saying while other people do it. Gary. Should not the same rules be applied to these groups in invoicing as they are like departments within the municipality like I have so much time to submit an invoice that will be accounted for in 2023 as an example and if I have a purchase order I can go a little bit longer but then then there's a hard cutoff and nothing can be paid at 23 so it comes out at 24 and I think we've gone past that date. Just sorry you didn't put it in. How does it work from your accounting perspective? Until the books are completely closed and audited we can always date an invoice back. Yeah Tom would have to sign it at this point to get it in for 2023. And when would that audit happen? We probably have a few months maybe three or four months in reality. I'll just be on the record I wouldn't pay them because it's just like we've had this argument about delinquent taxpayers that you miss the date you're done and if we hold our town taxpayers to that standard I don't know why these special articles folks it's not that hard to send an invoice and I'm just here to make a motion. I would make a motion what would be what's the deadline for what's the deadline? It sounds like the deadline is the audit I guess. For the audit I don't think that doesn't matter. I'll make a motion. Okay we've got a motion I move that the waterway select board after town meeting create a policy that is then emailed with all of the recipients from this year's annual meeting setting out the terms of payment required based on the outcome of town meeting I know we normally wait 30 days for the appeal so I just think I don't dispute the fact that we need a standardize policy that we should encourage folks to pay on specific terms I feel at this point retroactively it seems like this is an outlier I'm not disputing that there's merit to saying they can't be paid but I think given that our agenda item for this evening is to finalize the warning for our annual town meeting this year which has a number of special articles I would propose that we look to finalize said warning and that when folks are notified of the town meeting outcome it is with clear payment provision terms moving into the 2024 fiscal year. I second the motion. There's no policy about payment in voice deadlines. Mm-hmm yep so we're setting a deadline and a policy for payment provisions if we approve that motion. All right it's been moved and seconded any further discussion hearing none all in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed any abstentions all right motion passes and so now are we on to the warning itself yeah unfortunately realizing in this moment of all the things I did today I did not print one of these that doesn't say draft. Sign the draft and then okay you can't sign the draft because I can't take the mark off. You can approve it tonight can our fire chief print one if you email them now. I'm trying I can't get into my files whatever. Nothing is going to go well. I can swing by the office in the morning so I can swing by the office tomorrow morning. Yeah I can't seem to get in the network. Can we all swing by in the morning? If everybody could just sign it we'll date it for tomorrow instead of tonight if I can ask. Do we need a motion for that? Yeah not a problem. Just okay thank you. All right. I've been working on that but I can't get that done. Do I have any further discussion on the warning? I'm just confirming we support article 21. Yeah article 21 is the one I was looking at as well. Yes and I just wanted to make a note of that when it comes to writing articles like this there's no exact guidance you'll find different attorneys have different interpretations some attorneys will say estimated total of $30,000 some attorneys will say no you should say up to $30,000. It's a select board choice. So this is estimated to total $30,000 and as of today the claim is for $33,000 but so that is interesting. FEMA has a history of massaging claims along the way so there's a automatic buffer built in based on that. And bottom line is that we are kind of doing this for the purpose of transparency not legality. So should $33,000 come in it's still quite well within legality etc to put the funds where they're meant to go. You have the authority to transfer funds to crew without voter approval. Okay. So are we happy the way it's written? I think the intent is clear enough. Yes. Okay. Any other issues that people like to bring before the board? Do I have a motion? I move to accept the draft warning as written. Is that what the motion you're looking for? Exactly. Data January 30th. Data January 30th. The last second. Moved and seconded. Any further discussion? Just a note on care and under care and signature it should reflect the day change. Yes, two places. That's okay. All right. As well as all in favor of the motion with the friendly amendment from Mr. Bard. Say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? The warning is approved. Next on the agenda is tax payment options. I can speak to that. All right. I guess the first thing I'll say is I'm reasonably confident that this will be brought up from the floor during town meeting day and that at least one person will suggest that 8% is too high for what that's worth. Did some additional thinking and research about this and there's two items that we suggested and I suggest a reasonable consider and the first is the tax to date we simply stay open later. Staff are here a little while after that after our normal close anyway because it takes time to balance all the deposits and process it. So if we're open, you know, I think this past year they left around 515 or 530. So if we stay open that extra hour or so and there's a few additional people that come in, it's not going to keep them there until 730. So you're suggesting 530? I think 530 is a reasonable mask. Gives people a little more time just in case. The other piece is we do allow ACH payments. We encourage it. A lot of people take advantage of it. You have to sign up in advance. There's online options. We have to find a vendor where you can pay. They call it ECHEC often but it's essentially an ACH payment from your bank account to ours that you initiate online. STO allows that and I believe the payment is $1.50. That's the fee for the service. You can pay your tax bill online via credit card and there is a 3% charge that we don't get. That's the processing fee. So 3% of your tax bill can be an awful lot of money. A buck 50 is not much. So I think we research vendors and identify this extra option. No sense in enriching the credit card companies. And I think those two things won't hurt. The problem is never going to go away but I think these two things are pretty reasonable to do. Yes. So I did speak to our vendor today as indicated in the email. ECHECs, which even our vendor considers old technology, are not secured funds. So that means if somebody uses an ECHEC on the platform and does it right because he said a lot of times they don't fill it out correctly. A credit union has 21 days to pay it. A bank has three days. A user has 60 days to put a stop payment on it. If it's a personal check and three days as a business check. I don't love it. I think nowadays people can go on their bank account. They can use a bill pay service that's a bank check. It comes with secured funds. We know it's not going to bounce. And that's a newer and more secure technology than ECHECs. And our vendor does it for a dollar, opposed to $1.50. So you can get a guaranteed bank check for a dollar? No. In that exercise, Roger, the individual paying their taxes is driving the payment they're going on to their bank account and they're saying, I want you to send the town of Waterbury a check for $2,500. But they have to do it 10 days in advance. Oh, okay. And ECHEC, yes, would allow them to do it day of, but it's not guaranteed to the town. The money's not guaranteed to be received. And when there's a 21-day lapse in the receiving of that money, it could be, well, it certainly could be the next month. And then if there's 60 days stop payment on it and the tax-free date is in November, now we're into the next year when we find out that the check has a stop payment. So the vendor talked me into a state of, this isn't a great option. This is, there's a lot of other options out there that exist that aren't ECHECs. So I don't like it. Aaron, Mike, just a question from my banking background. I don't understand why a credit unit has a 21-day leeway. To me, it should be a three-day right of precision. But like the vendor talked to me today, you go into the bank now and you open a checking account. They give you a debit card. They don't even give you checks anymore. Right. And you need your checking account and your routing number to even use an ECHEC. And you have to buy checks to get a check so you have that information. He's like, it's old technology. It's not being utilized. What happens if you get a check that does bounce? Are you asking me process-wise? So I get an email from the bank that says that a check is bounced. Northfield Series Bank is great about getting the information about who wrote the check quickly. A memo has to be written to the bookkeeper to reverse the payment on the account and then add a $20 bounce check fee. And if they miss the deadline, then Palantino Interest is added. And that process is the same for the town or EFUD. But why would the ECHEC be any different effect than if someone gave us a paper check that bounced? Essentially it isn't. All right. Well, it's really, I hear two different measures being proposed. One is keeping the town office open till 5.30, based on the fact that the staff is still there. Anyways, processing the last-minute deposits. Everyone feel okay about that? Do we? Yeah. Yeah, I think leaving the town office open the extra hours. Would save me the penalty. Yeah. It's okay with the town clerk. I won't be there. I'm not the tax collector. All right. Good to know. Do we have a motion? I make a motion to, on the day of tax collection, that the town offices stay open till 5.30 p.m. But we'll have to have that motion on town meeting day because it's made. It's made as part of the morning. Right. As part of the total collection. Okay. All right. Could I make it as a suggestion for it to be at town meeting? I'll call on you. Okay. That's okay. Okay. I like to collect money. All right. Any further discussion on the e-check issue? So we're not going to e-check issue yet? I mean it sounds as though the vendor says that it's a technology that has significant loopholes. Our town clerk has just verified that. And I'm not sure that it's going to solve any particular problems. Yeah. I think the only problem it would solve is allowing a day of option, let's say somebody works in Burlington. They screwed up. They forgot. They're not going to get here. It allows a day of option without a 3% fee. So it's just a, it's a more affordable day of option. But it doesn't sound, I think it'd be helpful to know if other towns use it. And if they struggle with it, if it's the same amount of bounce checks, written checks versus e-checks, I think we're a little late to be able to gather that information. So if other towns use it really successfully, it could be worth a one-time trial and then say, wow, wrong move. But I think we're too late to make a really strong case for that. So it might be something to bring up in the future with more due diligence. I think a few people know about e-checks. I mean, I use them. Can I make a suggestion? I think it's a very, very minority. This occurred to me tonight on the way home. One thing that I have not done to push, and I don't think we've done to push as a town for a while, is the idea that you can just pay early on your taxes. You can pay monthly. You can pay weekly. You don't have to wait until the bill is due. There's about four. I think there's four people that need that. I mean, it's a huge percentage. But that's something that we can advocate for just to- Oh, like pay your bill monthly and then see how many people- Well, if it's the hardship of paying- All at once. All at once. Or if it's a hardship of- There's a lot of people who like to pay their taxes on the very last day. And those are the people who are getting penalties and interest for paying right. It's not because they didn't have the money. But there are individuals in our community who set up a bill pay service on their online banking, and the town just receives a check every month for $100, sometimes at $700. And if they do that diligently, then at the very least, their penalty is reduced. Well, at least. Because their principal balance is lower. So that's something that could be considered. Bill is asking for that. Yes. Yeah, to Danny's point, I think all this is really administrative. None of how we pay goes into the article that Tom needed. So there's plenty of time between now and August to think about whether your pay is a good thing or bad. Then pushing ACH. That's the easiest way to pay on the last day. Is to sign up for ACH. And then it's on the top. How does it get to the last day? Well then, it increases. But all of this, all of the things, I think you don't have to decide that tonight. I wouldn't caution you, while I work. But no matter how many options you try to give to people to meet everyone where they're at, it's going to be people who are late and it's going to be people who are mad. And it doesn't matter if it's going to be 8% or 4%. They're going to be upset. You can find a way to solve that. Well, I don't think we're trying to eliminate the problem. I think we're trying to reduce it. So we understand, yeah, for sure. Thanks, Bill. All right. So just to be clear, the warning, I'll end doing this, updating the dates. Excuse me and removing the draft. Yes. But we can, Mike has already offered to bring up the issue of making a statement about keeping the town open from tax day until 5.30. At the town meeting. Next on the agenda, any other on tax options, we done? We're done. Okay. Next meeting agenda, February, yeah. And then we have to also decide if we're going to meet on the 19th. Which is, well, I did say we were, but I believe in democracy, so we're going to put it to the board. Yeah, it is President's Day. That's the reason for the issue, but town hall is open. Yeah, I was going to say it doesn't sound like a municipal holiday to me. Okay. So we have the draft agenda in front of us, an entertainment permit for Good Fire. We've asked revitalizing Waterbury to do a presentation on upcoming issues and their budget. Which we'll already have proposed. And Karen has asked to go first. So it's essentially first. And then the housing task force objectives. Joe Camarada has asked to come back and present those. And then at eight o'clock, we've got the planning and DRB boards to discuss the proposed changes in the phase one. Zoning regs. Any other surprise state developments that we should be made aware of? I think perhaps there should be a placeholder on the agenda. Lies. Lies. Oh yeah, right. We may solve that before then, but it wouldn't hurt to add it. In the spirit of tonight and in the spirit of flood stuff that we did previously, I would propose we have only development updates first on the agenda and just address with more stringent time requirement what new developments we have. Thanks, Alison. Yeah, that's good idea. So you want that first? I mean after public would be my proposal. Yeah, I think so right after public. Hopefully it won't go forever. And we can just, you know, depending on the level of updates, why I said it can to flood, it may be that there hasn't been significant update since the last meeting, but I think given the attendance tonight, we need to provide the updates that we have and also discuss like if we need a venue for further feedback or email. I mean, we all have email inboxes were receiving feedback, but if there needs to be a more formalized structure or anything like that, I just think that it wouldn't be in good faith after tonight to not have that first on the agenda. And Danny, you are going to get back to us about the February 10th. Yeah, yes, and I sense just an email perhaps today to you, Roger. So under so that if you did not see it, let me open that now. Do you want that now or do you want that on the. If you could just give us like a short update right now what's being proposed and then we can decide whether we need to put it on the agenda. Absolutely. So Katarina said there's not so much an agenda. There's like a general overall plan starting at six is the event and then right around 610 or 615. And this is for the community flood just for those because we just kind of spoken in code. The community flood celebration. Yeah, where's it going to be? Right. Yeah, what the flood that's at the Legion. And around 610 or 615 a really short speaking program right now, Roger. You're a maybe if you're interested. I've already agreed to do it. Oh, perfect. Okay. Tom, Liz, Alyssa. Yeah, and starts at six and then around 10 or 15 minutes after that would be a short program, maybe 15 minutes. Just an acknowledgement of thanks and appreciation to the community. And then right around 630 or so music, dancing, you know, whatever pretty low key the goal is celebration. And this is what I haven't spoken with Alyssa about is that there was conversation in some of the planning meetings of like paper plate awards, which is a very informal thing. That's often done at community events, school events where, you know, you write an award. But I wrote back to Katarina asking like if there was more talk on that because I think I'd love to see that list. I think you'd love to see that list. Make sure if there is a list of folks being acknowledged individually, we'd want to take a look and add some names. That's the only outstanding piece, but it seems to be pretty informal. Really, it's about community gathering, appreciation and celebration. Okay. And just curious how are people being invited to this, you know, open invitation. Yeah. I mean, it's anyone who helped or was impacted by the flood, which is pretty much all residents of Waterbury. So I think there was a post by Katarina on Front Porch Forum. I assume there'll be more. There's been invitations on Facebook that went out through the town, but have been being spread by volunteers, et cetera. So there'll be another post, I assume, on Front Porch Forum. And I can confirm that with Katarina. And two other specific venues are the list of all the volunteer folks who signed up on something genius or we know volunteered. We'll get a really specific, I'll say candidly in the planning, the capacity of the Legion is 120 people. And it's one of those events. We're not requiring RSVPs. We want it to just be accessible, but it's hard to balance between wanting it to be open and invited to everyone and recognizing we don't have unlimited space. So it just to say it's been in planning conversations. I candid balance between those, but I would say like the volunteer email list and the impact of property owner email list, both of which we have very clearly. We'll probably get more email invite and then general public invite. Liz Schlegel did reach out to Sara Litorra about a poster. So there will be some, I think, general, you know, posturing Front Porch Forum kind of things, but then most specific targeted invite to folks on those email lists. And on the paper plates just say, I said I would help with that and haven't thought of further than what Danny described. But just say, I think circulating a list ahead of time could work out. And the intention is also that it would allow folks attending who maybe had a volunteer helper that they really want to think a way to plug in because it isn't something super formal ahead of time. Yeah. That's fine. Great. Alrighty. And I think we have a planning meeting Wednesday. I don't think we need to put it on the agenda for next week from what I'm hearing. Yeah. No. Can I propose one modification? I just say if planning and DRB boards are coming for the purpose of discussing the unified development bylaw updates that we tweak that language just to reflect planning commission update on zoning rewrite or something similar just in terms of public awareness of what we're planning to discuss. And this is a draft. So I put placeholders in opposed to like. Oh, totally. Sorry. So you would like it to say what? Roger. I didn't. I don't know exactly what it is. I'm asking for clarification. Yeah. It's a discussion of the unified bylaw updates. Planning commission presentation of unified bylaw updates. Yeah. I think it makes more sense to have the planning commission present and then have the select board and the DRB present to ask questions, get clarification. If there's things that we disagree with, we can try to iron those out. My whole point is to try to get the three different municipal bodies to agree on the basic elements of what we're presenting at the public meetings, which will be later on, I believe in March. Can I ask another clarification? Please do. So it's perhaps what I heard you say then is the item on the agenda is planning commission unified bylaw updates, but you want me to make sure that I include an invitation to the DRB to attend the meeting. Correct. Thumbs up. Yeah. But they won't actually be presenting. No, they'll be there for clarification and discussion of certain points. And do they know already that that's up there? That was going to be my next question. Who's Mike, are you liaison? Can you make sure that they get invited? Yep. And I'll make sure that when I send the agenda, I include them on the agenda. I'll make sure. All right. Any other comments on next agenda? What about February 19? Oh, yeah, February 19. I'm proposing that we hold a regular Monday night meeting. It is President's Day. It's not a municipal holiday, so I understand it. But anyone, everyone okay with that? Yeah, all that's going on with this potential, you know, the congregate housing thing, you know, you never know. We might have some more spillover. Yeah. We'll ask Karen to start drafting the thing, and I expected that will be there. We also may have some updates on flood mitigation. And it is, I guess, one other issue that has come up is whether we should hold a, some people have called it a flood fair informational session on what's happening with the natural disaster preparedness committee, the crew mitigation updates from FEMA elevation and that sort of thing. What's your feeling? I think that's a great idea. Okay, who wants to do it? Just one more thing. I don't know if it doesn't, it's not so time sensitive, but Al Lewis, he's a Rotarian. He's chair of the Rotary Parks Committee. Tom probably, I think he got a copy of information. Basically the rules and regulations for the parks, once the village got, you know, nuked, there are really no... They did themselves then. Well, there are no really rules and regulations in effect. So he's looking for the town to, you know, draft some, and I don't know how we want to do this. I can work on that with Al, we have a parks ordinance, so there's some rules in place. Right, I think they would feel comfortable because of all the events that they wind up holding. I don't think it would be something difficult, but it probably should become before us to approve. I'm sure we can find the old one. Yeah, it would probably be very similar to that. Are you going to see Al tomorrow? Yeah, if he's at the Rotary Committee. I just let him know that Winterfest will be at the Rusty Parker Park on Saturday, and we might be tapping into the electrical outlet if it's alive. Okay. Okay. I think he's got my number. Shoot. What? Winterfest. Did we do that last week? Speaking of Winterfest... Right. Was there, I heard way back when there was a rumor that we were going to be doing some sort of event on Game Show Night? I don't think that came together. Yeah, that's closed out, so that was filled. I think he got it to me on time, so we did that. I didn't know if one of those crazy names was us. Oh, I brought it up. I think we're too late again. I'm looking now. Okay. And just a quick update, Brian Voight with Central Bond Regional Planning was here well back. We talked about a grant application. We submitted the grant to State Emergency Management, which is the first layer of approval, and they recommended it to FEMA for funding, so we're hopeful that at some point relatively soon we'll have that award. Awesome. That's great. Hey, and we just lost... Perfect timing. So tomorrow morning we can sign off on that? No. Are we going to approve it now? Yeah, just to approve it now. I apologize, I don't have the details. Oh, I don't have the details. We're going to sign those in the morning. One more agenda before we adjourn. Yeah, I think it would be good. It's basically Mark Fryer... Oh, no. Yeah. It wasn't until yesterday. Special events for Mitt Bigger's Fielding. I'll see. I'll have it. No, that's not it. Yeah, Mark Fryer put in a special bench permit for WIC, I think is the name of his entity, to serve in the gazebo, if I believe, for a Winterfest event this Saturday. So I guess in the absence of finding it on any of these darn agendas, if somebody can make it. It's beer tasting. It'll take place from 2.30 to 4 o'clock. I thought that was a propane. No, this is Fryer is doing it on behalf of the beer shepherd, Vermont beer shepherd. But Fryer holds the license and he's asking for a tasting permit. They're going to be at the rotary tomorrow, beer shepherd. So I'll entertain the motion. I move to grant Mark Fryer and WIC a permit to do a beer tasting at the gazebo. Second. Moving seconded. Any discussion? Hearing none. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Got the permit. Final note, 36 Union Street, which you approved for a buyout a long time ago, finally got the paperwork back. Oh, great. So you all need to sign this, or at least three of you need to sign it and notarize it, which you can do tomorrow. So I'm going to just give it all the time. That's the only one. Okay. Awesome. Get our pen ready. I brought my stuff. And 40 Union has all been given to FEMA and it's in the, you know, it's in the meat grinder of that process and we'll find out. So the houses on each side of Terry are almost complete with their applications? Yes. You're going to have a lot of room to run around. I'll entertain the motion to adjourn. Second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Thank you.