 Do an application for this comes about once a year, usually in December. And we usually do an approval for the following year to make it happen. So right now, well, it's entirely, well, hopefully it's no season's getting down towards the end. So by the time the roads are approved, if a motion goes back to us, it would probably be for the following year. Actually, we have enough money so we could do it for the next season. And that was part of the intent when we tabled it. We also have standards as it relates to the snow removal. And the standards are online. So if you want to, for example, we don't salt the sidewalks. All right. Does the tide seem to be different? They are, yes. Okay. Having watched that meeting on Channel 17, I just added that Bruce Ford mentioned that because the rec path part of that, except for roads, thing is wide enough it could be done by a pickup truck and it would be minimal issue, but that doesn't apply to all of it. That's why we're going to be able to do it next season, assuming that the road gets exceed. Any other public comment? Very none. Then we move on to interviews and appointments. And we do have an opening on the Planning Commission. We have three candidates. One we interviewed two weeks ago. And we have two people here that are for interview tonight, Chapin Kander and Gary Miller. If you'd come up to the table, both of you at the same time, since it's the same position, and presumably the same questions will be for both of you. So. Nice to meet you. So one by one, if you'd introduce yourselves and give us a brief outline of your background and why you'd like to be on the Planning Commission. So my name, I go by my first initial G. So I lived in Essex for about 25 years. And I was on the Planning Commission there. Also the high school and tech center school board. I was the chairman of both of those organizations or boards. And so that gives me kind of a background to be able to come up to speed it within the Williston organization fairly well. I have a background in, I went to art school, Rhode Island School of Design, got a BFA in art education. And then I got a degree at Trinity College in business administration. And then I've worked at IBM for a long time. And now I'm working at the Homeland Security. But basically, I'm really interested in the planning process and also giving service back to the community. Because generally speaking, I've been very well treated by Williston as well as Essex. So that's my background anyway. Chapin Caner, and I think you all know me some. My degrees in computer science, my background is varied. My last 18 years working were in middle management and information technology at VSAC. I retired three years ago. And you appointed me at that time a little less than three years ago to be your Green Mountain Transit representative. And I've chaired that board. I'm now nearing the end of the second year of chairing it. And I'm going to stop being chair June 30. I'll be the immediate passport chair still on leadership committee there. But with that decrease in my commitment or the amount of time I put into that job, if you want to call it that, I was looking for another service opportunity and the Planning Commission felt familiar to me. I've sat in on many Planning Commission meetings. I've helped with rewriting the town plan. And I've lived in the village since 1985. And I've been through the hack process, whatever it's called today, probably eight or 10 times. And so as a resident, I've been through some of the things of the planning office overseas. And I'm just, since I retired, I like doing service. I do a lot of service in the school. And I both volunteer and substitute teach in Wilson Central, Allen Brook and in the high school. So the Planning Commission looked like a good fit for me. Seems to me a very good fit for G2. And I would respect whatever decision you made. If you have any questions, please ask. Thank you. So I'll open up to the board for questions. G, sorry. G, let me start with you. Then I'll have a question for both of you. But on the blurb that you, the information you provided, and you make a statement, it is my view that there needs to be balance that both sides can be comfortable when you're talking about environmental conservation versus development. Very worthy goal. But sometimes it can't be achieved. And in fact, I would probably argue more often maybe than not. And so I just want to hear a little bit how you, when it's very difficult, if not maybe impossible, to come up with a balance, how you choose. Well, I've been known to choose on both sides. Nothing wrong with that. You know, if there can't be an agreement made, and that's the first choice, obviously, if there can't be an agreement made, then I think that you have to learn to what makes the most sense for the community. In other words, sometimes more development is needed to support town goals. And sometimes, conservation is needed to support town goals. And I think you need to look back to the town plan to get a basis for making those kinds of decisions. Next I'll go to Chapin and then come back to you, G. And the question has to do with primarily the town plan. And your thoughts on it have you, well, first question would be, Chapin, I suspect the answer is yes. G, I don't like that. Have a chance to read the town plan. Offer your thoughts on it, where we're doing well, where we could maybe do better. I feel very aligned with the town plan. And not because of my input necessarily, my primary input was advocating for public transportation and paratransit. But I took part in the Streetscape Committee in the 90s and the Wilson and the Future Wing, things and various things that probably most of the things that the Planning Commission has put on for the last 30 years. And so I think I have built into me pretty much an understanding and acceptance, more than an acceptance, I feel like Wilson has done a good job trying to balance growth and conservation, if you will. With our growth area, we've done a good job of focusing growth in the Taft Corner growth area. And with the special rules we have in the Village District, we've maintained the feeling of the historic village. And it's always a balancing act. And I'm someone that doesn't shy away from controversy, nor do I shy away from saying, this is my opinion, but what do other people feel? I believe that we all should be heard, and I think that happened. I think actually, Wilson as a whole does a good job of that. So I haven't read it cover to cover yet. It's a long document, as well as the bylaws are a long document. So I haven't read them cover to cover. But the town plan, I think, is, I don't know what the last town plan was, but this looks like it's taking some incremental steps in basically, I would say, the same direction that I've seen Williston grow. There's, as Chapman said, there's a lot of good on both sides, both on the conservation side. You see a lot of new park or recreation areas being supported. And the development allows us to do that. So that's a good thing. I don't have any suggestions on how it could have been better at this point. I think that really what I'm looking for is going forward and changing the bylaws to support the new town plan. I think that's very important to have those in alignment. And I'm sure that's probably the next step for the planning commission at this point is to delve into the bylaws to make sure they do support the new town plan. Thank you. If I could add just a small thing. I'm just aware that a lot of what is hot for the planning commission right now is that the incentives for certain kinds of development, do we need those incentives? Do we need those controls? Or can we let things go based on simply the zoning? And nobody's talking about form-based code, but they are talking about relaxing the strength of what's been happening. And I know that that's sort of the hot topic. And I don't have a particular opinion about that. I do believe I have heard Ken talk about form-based codes and sort of I'm looking to others to help me out here, sort of a more not a drastic change to, but more incorporating form-based code approach into our bylaws, more on a maybe step-by-step basis than a probably in the growth area switch. That's true. And then I'm just going to make the observation. We have three good candidates for one position. Just to make sure I got that correct. Yes, you do. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Other questions? So my question's fairly simple. So what I've read both of the profiles, and I think I know maybe some of the answer, but not all because the profiles are pretty different. But what fresh perspective will you bring to the planning commission versus what's currently there? What? Well, over and above just experience and moderating. I would say that at a small level, I would like the meetings to be more efficient. I feel like they could be more efficient if you get more done. And I'd like to work with the staff to make that happen. And that includes just getting minutes out quicker and also meeting, open meeting law. The meetings from February 6th are put out on the website and the draft should have been posted so many days after. And so I feel like I'd like to tighten up some of just the operation of the planning commission. That's the micro level. At the macro level, to me we need to be focused on the long range vision. They tend to get mired down, if you will, sometimes in details, which are important and have to be worked through. But I think they could be worked through more efficiently as my perspective after sitting in on many meetings. Thank you. Thank you very much. Yeah, I think just coming from not only did I live in Essex for about 25 years, but I also lived in Burlington for five years. So I think bringing that outside perspective, the way as things were done in Essex or in Burlington to a lesser extent, I can bring that experience to the Williston Planning Commission. Other questions? Thank you for your interest. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Or is the deliberate perhaps make a decision tonight or not? But we do have three candidates. Julie Pardini, who interviewed with us two weeks ago. And we have her CV as well to take a look at. But is there anything? Does this say would the board entertain a motion? I would. I would move to a point, shape and caner, to the Planning Commission for an Unexpired 4-Year Term Ending June 30, 2021. Is there a second? Wow. I wasn't ready for a motion. But I mean, I certainly, I will second. I'm sorry, just let me end it now. Any discussion? And I understand where you're coming from too. They're all excellent candidates, and I wish that we could bring all of them on, because they all bring something really great to the table. But I have a particular appreciation for, and especially having worked with Caner before in the Planning Commission, for what he can bring to the table and do. So I wasn't prepared, because we have a candidate that I haven't seen. So can we talk a little bit about Jill and, I mean, I chape in as well. Excellent background. Very good background coming from Maryland. Did you see her CV that she presented to us at the board? I only have the what's online. So take a few minutes to look at that. Can I advocate some more for why I feel that I feel it? Do you want to have a chance to read quietly without me talking? No, no, it's OK. I can multi-task. I do it all day. I think one thing that we all have to consider in making this decision is how we have a wonderful track record right now, both like on our slept board with all of the way that people are working together, how they're working, what you're doing, and there's a cohesiveness that's about despite all kinds of differing views that I really, really admire and appreciate and sets us apart, I think, in many ways from a lot of other town governances in Shetland County. So that's another reason why I'm advocating the way that I do. Not that I don't think any of these people are all equally qualified, but there's a tribal knowledge that's coming to the table that weighs heavily for me. Can I ask what's not clear is how long Jill has been in Walliston? About a year and a half. Two years perhaps, maybe three. I have my notes said a year and a half. OK, that helps me. So I was actually going to ask a question, and I'm going to explain my question a little bit and then ask it. And my explanation is, unfortunately, sometimes I do some of my, I don't know if the word's best, maybe most verbose, maybe a better way to put it, thinking about Sluck Board meeting agenda items on the bus ride back from Montpelier, which unfortunately doesn't give me time to check in with staff if that would have been a good idea. And I was wishing that I had sent an email to Ken that basically asked, is there an area on the Planning Commission that you see is lacking? A skill or a perspective, something along those lines, Ken very well may not have been able to answer that. But that would be helpful. I'm going to look to Rick a little bit to see if there's any answer you can provide. I suspect the answer is no. We know what. But I think in general, we look for diversity. Yep. And whatever that means. But it kind of happens organically. Yeah, OK. So in other words, don't get too hung up on that right now. OK, good. What I can say about Chapin is I've known Chapin for a while. And I agree with everything you said. I think Chapin will bring a, trying to think of the right descriptions here. It has to do along the lines with environmental. It has to do along with the lines. You work with energy issues, energy conservation, trying to push Willowson to be more cognizant of and make, for lack of better words, not that we aren't making good decision, but keep on pushing Willowson to make good, appropriate decisions when it comes to things like energy, like the environment. And that certainly is not a perspective. That is certainly a perspective, I'm sorry, that I want to have on the Planning Commission. I would agree. I also think Chapin. I've known Chapin for quite a number of years as well, having coached his son in soccer a long time ago. Wow. Was he any good? No, it did don't. He was actually pretty phenomenal, actually. I hear he's back in Willowson. I don't know what he looks like. So he's probably six and a half feet tall or something. And I probably wouldn't recognize him. But I like the fact that Chapin's been following the board, participating as a resident. That's a good point. And I think he's going to support the citizens. He's going to have the citizens' viewpoint, a strong citizens' residents' viewpoint. Yeah, that's a good point. I think it's going to be a positive. I think he'd also bring that without maybe he'll bring a subtle bit of management without trying to maybe run the board. Because I think his tactics are more subtle and moving towards consensus. So yeah. Thank you for your discussion. I'm just going to make one other comment. And I don't believe I've been on the select board for, well, too many years maybe. And I don't think we have ever been in this position where we have had this quality of applicants. I guess maybe I shouldn't say that. Put it quite that way. I mean, we are quite fortunate. It also makes our job tougher. Quite fortunate tonight to have three well-qualified people apply for this one position. I would also hope that whoever is not chosen would continue to watch what's going on in the town and look for other positions. Because I think any of you would add so much to town coverage. So I hope you'll continue watching. To that end, by the way, we do have an opening coming up on the Conservation Commission. Jean Kistner, who has been on for a long time. Oh my goodness, really? He's moving out of town. Jean is moving. There we go. Watch him, please. Any further discussion? If not, all those in favor of the motion say aye. Aye. Opposed? No. Thank you, Jean, for applying. Yep, thank you. Gee, that was a very serious heart and thing. Please watch and see what's going on with the town. Oh, excellent. Excellent, thank you. We haven't advertised yet or barely advertised it, so. Free application. Thank you. Thank you both. So we're running in about five minutes early for the public hearing. Lisa, Helen, what take you to talk about the Regional Unified Planning and Work Program list? I'm taking you there long and all. Let's do that. This year, we're submitting two different applications. Actually, planning and zoning is submitting one. And public works is submitting one. And we have to determine and put on a list of which one's first priority. And of course, planning and zoning gets first priority with public works, that's always so. We submitted two applications. And we said that planning and zoning application, which is basically they want to come up with some sort of policy and procedure in regards to shared use parking for different businesses in the Taft Corner zoning district and the State Desidenti Growth Center. These are applications that we work with Regional Planning Commission on. And it's an 80-20 split. And according, this is again, like I said, this is on behalf of planning and zoning, Kent submitted the application. And according to his calculations, the total project cost is going to be about $8,000 and with a local match of $1,600. Basically, we just want to come up with some way of explaining to applicants when they come in how to calculate how many number of parking spaces they need for their project as opposed to the neighboring projects we can share and make sure we don't end up with another Walmart Home Depot parking lot type situation. Or worse yet, a situation where there's not enough parking for both businesses that are trying to share it. So that's one of the applications that we're looking for support for. The other one is for public works again. We also submitted for the 2018 Environmental Mitigation Grant application through VTrans. That's a 50-50% match, whereas this unified planning work program is an 80-20 split. And for that project, we're looking to have a study done on all the large culverts in the Albrecht watershed, the ones that are like greater than five feet, as you know, was last year or two years ago, that we had a failed culvert on Talcott Road, which shut the road down for a substantial time. And as you know, we have a temporary bridge over on Marshall Ave connecting to South Brillington, another large culvert. That one's in the Muddy Brook. But the ones that are in the Albrecht, we want to try to come up with some sort of capital improvement plan so we can set money aside for these larger culverts as they're getting older and they're going to start to fail. So that's what the study is for that for public works. Our estimate was $30,000 total with a match of $6,000 for us. Lisa? You ran through it quickly. And I was trying to follow in the paper, but I got lost when you started talking about the 50%. Yeah, the other grant application, because we apply for as many grants that we can, because if we get denied on one, then we have another one to fall back on. But we applied also for the same Albrecht large culvert assessment for the 2018 Environmental Mitigation Grant Agreement, which is through the V-TRANS. This is the regional planning. And it's a better match for us. And we don't see that one here. That is correct. We're hoping to get the 80-20 because that's a better shared match for us than 50-50. Could you get them both and then end up with a? We could, but we couldn't use the grant funds to pay for our portion, our match. Unfortunately, they're pretty strict about that. So you actually have to cite a piece of paper saying that this isn't coming from another grant source. It's actually coming from town funds. We also did apply for other projects of the Uniform Planning Work Program with regional planning. But those are more of traffic studies, traffic counts, speed studies, and stuff like that, which we don't specifically need to get approval from this legboard to apply for. Lisa, what was, first of all, I have no objections to either one of these projects. But I'm just curious, what was the process, if any, that was used to come up with these two? Were there other projects that didn't make this list, or kind of went to Ken, kind of went to Bruce, said, need ideas? Well, James, myself, and Bruce sat down and discussed what public works needed. Like I said, we applied for the other one for the 50-50 match, and we said, this is a better fit for us for 80-20. And there wasn't anything else that really stood out. As you know, the stormwater program was applying for multiple grants, different projects for that kind of stuff. So there wasn't anything that was eliminated, because we could have submitted more applications. We just needed to prioritize them. Yeah, OK. And then I'm looking at number two. And I guess I'm a little bit fuzzy on what would be the outcome of number two. If it were selected, were funded, what would we get out of it? Would it be like a feasibility more, or planning type? Is this for the large culvert project? Yes. I'm sorry. Yeah, the large two? Yeah. Yes, it would basically give us, it would identify all the large culverts in the Allenbrook. OK. Determine what shape they're in and condition they're in at this point in time. So an assessment of their condition. Yeah, assess their condition. Determine a prior towards prioritization for the replacement of those. It would also give us a rough estimate of how much money we need to set aside. OK. As you know, these are pretty substantial culverts, and they're very expensive to replace. So if we have a prioritization list, we can say, OK, we've got money for 2020 to replace this one. But then wait a minute, this other one failed instead, because we had a massive storm came through. But at least if we start setting money aside and we have a rough idea of how much money we're going to need, we'll have that funding source. And again, your answer doesn't affect what I just said. I'm fine with both of these. Just more curiosity, would the concept of what we get out of this study be, this culvert should actually be replaced with a box culvert versus a steel, whatever those corrugated things are called. Would it be also this, because it's Allenbrook and we know Allenbrook is impaired, this is the types, would it also look at this water quality issues associated with the culvert that type of thing? Yes, because that can affect the cost. That is a substantial difference in cost. The state is leaning more towards bridges and box culverts as opposed to culvert culverts, just for the efficient wildlife to get through, habitat to get through. So that'll give us a better idea of saying, OK, well, we just can't put another round culvert or arched culvert in there. We have to actually get a box or a bridge, and then we'll have a better understanding. They're going to look at what's going to be required for permits for both state and federal permits in regards to this. OK, good. That's very good. That's very helpful. Other questions? Emotion was in order then. I'd move to approve the projects proposed for inclusion in the reading room, and anyway, in the 5-9, we'll close in fiscal year 2019-7. That's very good. Discussion or motion? None and all of us can hear the motion and say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed and no abstentions? Thank you very much. So it is 7.30 this time for the public hearing and the traffic ordinance amendment, and I'll leave you with the warning. We're still in part 5 of the proposed and motor vehicle and traffic ordinance. So like we're going to hold a public hearing at the Wilson Center hall here on Tuesday, February 20th, 2018 at 7.30 p.m. For the purpose of this public hearing, Mr. Received public comment on a proposed change to Appendix A of the ordinance. Change includes the following. Appendix A, lower the speed limit on all-stage road, northern section from Mountain View Road to the dead end from 35 miles per hour to 25 miles per hour. And to just bring us up to speed on where we're, why we're doing this. Eric Wells, I think it's going to present it tonight. Good evening, everyone. The board scheduled this public hearing back in January. This is looking last summer, the Regional Planning Commission conducted a speed study. We're looking at Old Stage Road from Mountain View to the dead end. Speed studies show that the 85th percentile of traffic speed was, I believe, 23, 24 miles per hour right there. From that study, it's recommended to reduce the speed limit from 35 to 25 public works degrees without assessment. The question before the board is whether to amend the ordinance tonight. Good. Is there any member of the public here who wishes to make any public comment tonight on the, on the issue? I'm seeing no one here. A motion to close the public hearing will be in order. I move to close the public hearing. Sir, second. Second. The discussion of the motion follows in favor of closing the public hearing. Say aye. Aye. Any opposed? No abstentions. So the next on the agenda then is to consider adopting the amendment to the traffic ordinance. So can we ask questions? Of course, sure. So Eric, what precipitated that study? It's kind of an odd place to study the speed limit unless there's a problem. And if the 85th percentile was 24 miles an hour or 23, forget what it was, what, what kicked off the study? Yeah, it didn't recently. Yeah, I can't. I can't say that. Oh, great. There were multiple people that live on that section of old stage road that were concerned about people speeding on that sectional road. So we did, again, went to the regional planning and they had a traffic study and a speed study for us. And it was determined that their, the normal speed limit of the 85th percentile was 23 to 24 miles an hour. So. Thanks. What do you have a pedestrian traffic on that road during certain times of the year, when the apple picking season is on? Apple picking, yeah. Right, yeah. A motion as it would be in order. I'd move to amend the motor vehicle and traffic ordinance by reducing the speed limit from 35 to 25 miles per hour on the segment of old stage road located in the intersection of Mountain View Road North to the dead end. Sir, a second. Second. Sir, discussion of the motion. Just a quick question, Lisa and Eric. Is there anything you can think of why we shouldn't do this? I can't think of any. Nope, okay. I don't see any reason not to. Maybe it's the dead end section where you said there's a lot of people that are walking up and back. It's a short piece of road too. Okay. All those in favor of the motion say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? And okay, then we can move on to the Lake Eroquoia Association aquatic nuisance program update. And we have Chris Conant and Jamie Carroll tonight to fill us in on the details of this. Welcome. Good evening, good evening. Good evening, I'm Jamie Carroll, secretary of the Lake Eroquoia Association and I've been leading them in the foil control group for a few years. Chris Conant, president of the association. We appreciate you having us here once again and we're here just to basically give you an update on our herbicide permit that we have co-authored with the town of Alastom. And I'll let Jamie fill you in as far as where we're at. So in partnership with the town of Wilson we applied to use the herbicide sonar to treat the lake for Eurasian watermelfoil. Last spring the state issued a draft permit for that permit and had a public comment period, written comment period that ended in April and there was a public hearing on that in May following that. The state received kind of an unprecedented number of comments on that permit and some of those comments had the state reflecting on its review process for those herbicide permits. Last week in a conference call the state DEC officials informed us that they intended to deny that permit. We met with them today and the annex work was able to give us a meeting space there to learn more about the reasons for that denial and also develop a plan to move forward with them. It seems that public comments on this permit have caused the DEC staff to take a look at their process to review these so that they feel the statute that authorizes these treatments is somewhat vague and they seek to revise the rules or develop rules to guide the review of permits. That's one of the main key factors. So they have interim guidelines they're working on within the DEC and they intend to initiate a process for public rulemaking to work forward with new permit approvals. Another thing they mentioned was there's a potential breakdown product from Sonar. The three letter acronym is NMF which is potentially causes birth defects. It hasn't been discovered in natural environments. It's been shown to occur in the lab. So because of that, they're taking a harder look at Sonar. This is Sonar has been used in the state since 2000 in Lake Hortonia and other water bodies. So our permit application was modeled after others previously the state DEC found findings for this use. So this was a bit of surprise for all of us. Sorry, I just want to make sure I understood first of all full disclosures. I work for DEC, but not in the Lakes and Policy Program. Is was their denial based on they don't currently have what they consider an adequate process to review the application? Which is I think what you talked about in the beginning or was there a technical issue, the MF, whatever that acronym is? Yeah. Or is it kind of a combination of both? I believe it's safe to say it's a combination of both and we don't have the full revealing of that. And we asked them what were the implications they've offered to allow us to withdraw the permit application and they indicated they would summarize the public comments and summarize their findings and issue that. Alternatively, if we were to continue with the application and they would issue denial, they would issue responses to all of the public comments and they indicated that would be at current draft is 40 pages of comments and they would reveal the deficiencies they see in their rules or lack of rules and also this technical issue that's been identified with the NMF. Yeah, I'll leave it there. Okay, thank you. They issued a draft permit to us earlier in the spring that allowed us to move forward but because of the public comment period and the public hearing that occurred, there was so many different comments and questions that were raised, they felt it was necessary to look at their regulations and ultimately are allowing us to either withdraw or deny and we have chosen to take the route of denial so that we can then see a full disclosure and see where we may have gone wrong as we move forward. Also, I think it's really important as an organization within our town and being co-applicants, the town of Wilson, co-applicant. The DEC is really working hard to work with us in this process and looking to help mitigate this problem that we have over there but we really feel that it's important that we have full disclosure to understand where our permit went wrong and so that's why we've asked and chosen the route of going through the denial piece. Based on what I know so far, I would support that. Do you know often when a denial of a permit application is issued, part of the rationale you'll get back is outlining what avenues they look as viable avenues, hopefully to achieve the water quality goals that you're hoping to achieve. Do you know if that will happen in this case? Well, I think we have some of that already from a meeting today as well as what they've been doing with other water bodies. They are not sure they're pulling the permits from other water bodies that have sonar permits in place but they're strongly encouraging that or there's another product called Renovate. So those lakes, Lake Hortonia I know has a permit application in to use Renovate in Lake Hortonia this summer. Lake Moray is another lake that's doing the same thing. So they're steering lakes towards another other side as an option. There's a different sonar is treats the whole water body over a longer period of time. Renovate is typically administered off a flake. So it's a more of a spot treatment. So there's been a shift within DC to move to more spot treatment rather than whole lake treatment. There's also another herbicide coming that people are interested in as well. So as well as other control techniques. So that was some of the things we discussed today. We remain committed to this problem and we always felt that it was gonna be a multi-pronged approach. We do have a grant from the Lake Champlain Basin program to do $15,000 worth of dash which is diverse assisted suction harvesting in the lake from mill foil. So we're gonna continue working on this. We have been the barriers we'll be installing at the fishing access to keep that channel clean and working with DC to draft a management plan that doesn't include sonar that includes other techniques. And working with Lake Iroquois Recreation District at the beach to try to help mitigate some of the problems surrounding the beach. And I've made reference today when I was a kid, we had a huge body of water that was buoyed for the beach and now years of pulling in those ropes because of the weed problem over there. So we're really committed to working with Lake Iroquois Recreation District also in the town of Williston, in the four towns or three other towns. So I have to assume you're looking at this as a setback. Could you briefly describe how much of a setback, I mean, you feel this is? We both feel it's a huge setback. We spent, Jamie especially has spent over three years working on this project and trying to bring us to this point. We've spent the last year and a half waiting for an answer from DEC. We were issued the draft permit months ago. And here we are today or last 10 days ago in a conference call told that with Rick and with the DEC members that we were at a stop dead point. So yeah, it's a big setback for us. And you know how many times we've been in front of you and worked with the administration here and we really appreciate that. That's not gonna stop us. We're committed on taking care of our finest resource here in Chittenden County. We really feel that way. So don't give up on us. I wanna thank you so much for your efforts. And I would very much feel like the rocket didn't pull that from underneath me. I'm not sure I agree with how this played out from so many different standpoints, but thank you so much for your work. Please don't. We really appreciate working the respect that we have for all of you and Rick's office. And that's a, it's very important to us that we continue that. I'm sorry. I just have one question. So you asked almost the questions I had, but the one I have is on this last point you made about this breakdown of Sonar into this NMF, was that brought up by one of the public comments or did that come out of further study by the state? It was. Or do you not know yet? It's been unknown in the literature around Sonar for a long time and there's been study of it. So it's been seen as a breakdown product in the lab. There was academic studies that it wasn't found in water body. So if you treat with Sonar, it wasn't found in water body. So we, I don't know much, how much more I can say about that because we haven't received much more from DC other than this issue has been raised to a higher level. I have been in touch with the applicator, the contracted applicator and they pulled up emails from a decade ago discussing this and the Vermont Health Department has reviewed this and has previously signed off on these treatments. So it's rekindling of something. We're after today, we had a two hour meeting today with multiple players and after today's meeting, we had a lot of work to do. A lot of kind of reorganizing with our board, reorganizing in the state, I have to say, that the players that were there at the table today were great to work with and we respect that. I think they know how hard we've worked to get to this point. Our past president, Pat Swayze, has been working very hard with Jamie and we really, the state knows how committed we are to taking care of the problem that we have there. So we continue to look forward to building that relationship and reworking our whole plan. And it's a, we have a great group of people working on this. I think to be in either such issues because you're probably somewhat caught up in all the issues around the country with water quality and municipality, not taking care of their water and being also conservative maybe. At the same time, we have a huge amount of respect for the public process. So if DEC is taking a look at their regulatory piece, that means that I guess we may have done our job. We've raised some issues and here we are and because of your office and us working with them, we're at a pivotal point and we can't give up on it. Find a path. Thank you. So I don't know if there's action for you to take as a board tonight regarding this. The permit's been submitted. I think the only thing to take would be in the negative if we wanted to withdraw. You're the ones that submitted the application and they're gonna deny your application so I don't think that we have. Well actually, Williston is a party to the application. They waived a $500 application fee if a municipality was a co-applicant. So in the effort of fiscal responsibility for the municipality and the citizens, we sought that out. Doesn't make financial sense for the state but that's not a good idea. And I think it's important that we do have a general consensus among the board and our organization. I really, I think that I know it's a hard position for you to, but I think we feel based on our work that we are going to ask for a denial and I, instead of withdrawal. As a co-applicant, which you're asking us is to support that position and also look for a denial rather than pulling back the application. Absolutely. I want the rationale behind it. The information. You won't get it if you pull it. We're here tonight to help you make a informed decision about that. Do we make a motion? We can tonight because this is an agenda item so we can make a motion to do that. Just a question before you do that. And you mentioned the possibility of them going to rulemaking and that's a pretty lengthy process as you know. Nine months minimum. So the opportunity to submit the application probably won't come about for a year anyway, I guess. But you're right, it's nine month minimum is what we are, because I've been through rulemaking what we always figure and most likely longer, particularly if they have to do a lot of work to figure out what they want in the role. But that would only be about the sonar. There are other things you could apply for if I heard what you. Just ask. What's that? You read my mind, that's, you're going. Well, and I'm not advocating for or dense, I'm just trying to make sure I understand. This is only to, in this case, not withdraw the application of sonar, not withdraw the permit application for the application of sonar. If I got that right. Correct, and in the meeting today, Renovate is another approved product. They would accept a permit application for that. I don't know if it would get tied up in rulemaking or not. Right, I don't know if they're referring to just the sonar permit application process or all herbicide application or the other extreme might be all herbicide. I have a suggestion that the board, if it takes no action, means that we're not asking, in other words, the application stays the way it is. So I'm not sure the board needs to take any action unless it wants to withdraw the application. Because it's been submitted, so it would take affirmative action to withdraw it. We're conscientiously choosing not to take action. We're thanking you very much for your time and presentation. No further actions required. So the only question I have, and I realize you had the meeting today, that was just a short while ago. It was about the next steps, and Terry talked a little bit about that and you explained, but I just, what are your thoughts on your next steps or is it too early to really... Well, the state staff really wants to engage with us and develop a robust five-year management plan. Okay. That sounds very positive. Yeah, and we talked, they're busy, talked about really embarking on that in the mid-summer. Okay. We have the benthic barriers, we have the dash for this summer. So we have things to do this summer. We're gonna continue the Greeter program, which is something we partner with you on and grant aid applications for the state. So we're gonna continue that. And that's where we see ourselves going now. We'll explore with the state and with the board and with you folks what we would explore for 2019. Good, thank you. Great. Thank you for the questions, comments. Thanks very much for coming in. Yeah, thank you very much. Good to hear you tonight. Great, thank you. So we're within about five minutes of the next public hearing. On the Woodworth Wilson Road Study, perhaps we can fill in that five minutes for the manager's report. Sure. First of all, you have the financial report, which is a report on finances through pretty much the end of January, 2018. You have a written report from our finance director. They're kind of some of the same trends she's reported on earlier continuing. For example, we tend to continue to be underspent in the police department budget. We are overspent in one item and that is on our property and casualty insurance. We are 100% paid for that. So then that was not gonna be any more expenses, but we are a little bit over budget on that item. In our report, she also referred to the local option tax and that report did come in, just as we were finishing this report. The trends for receipts continue to be strong. On the sales tax loan, we're probably, you know, 60 to 70, ahead of what we kind of estimate for the year. Next quarter is gonna be the lowest quarter, of course we also estimate that it's gonna be low. So if it's anything higher than what we estimated, we're still gonna be ahead for the year. So it could be more than likely we'll end the year in a very positive manner as far as receipts go. We did budget more for next fiscal year, but as I said, this is a rather volatile tax and when it's going down, we'll be probably budgeting more than what we're receiving. In this case it's going up, but anyway. That's good news in the short run anyway. The after town meeting this year will be likely coming full with a proposal for a charter change. The state law has changed, but our charter is more specific and so in order to be the same as state law, we have to change our charter. Of course, there's no mandate that we change our charter, we can leave it the way it is, but it involves the positions of town clerk and town treasurer. Under state law, the law allows for a vote at town meeting to change those positions from elected to appointed positions. And our charter does not allow for that option. It's elected period. And so what we'd like to do is come to the board at some point with, well, first of all, the concept of does the board support looking at this? And if the board does, then what format, what procedure do you want to use? Because there's different ways of doing it. You can form a charter vision committee, you can just ask staff to come back with a couple of written proposals and you can debate those. These are pretty simple issues. In other words, there is a lot there. There's not, there is the potential to be controversial. Simplicity doesn't necessarily mean it's not controversial, but it's not, we're not looking at a whole bunch of different changes to the charter, I think is my point. So something to think about, I don't need any reaction now, but who appoints versus elected? Well, that would be one of the things that would have to be looked at quite. What was prompting us to move from electric to appointed just because we can? State law change. Just because the state law change is allowing it? And actually, at least one of the positions, I think our current town clerk would support changing. But that's an argument for a later time. All right, and then two more things. One is the school budget presentation. They originally, I believe, had said that they were not going to be doing a presentation at town meeting. Now they do want to do a presentation, which is fine. In the past, we've alternated. Towns would go, one year would go first, then next year, the school would go first. This year was the town's turn to go first. The school has requested that they would like to go first this year, even though it's the town's turn. I guess they think their presentation will be a lot shorter than the town. Are you aware that the town meetings also, that the school is going to hold their meeting at CBU that same night? No, not this year. Not this year? Not this year. Thank you. Yeah, you were at the same meeting I was, so Tony was very concerned about that and the ability to get from one place to the other. So this isn't a formal meeting. This is a budget presentation. So I guess I'm looking for direction from the board as to which one goes first. Does he have a big agenda to do? I think it doesn't matter. Let's leave that discussion until we come back to it and let's go forward with the presentation on the North Wilson Road study. It is 8 o'clock and I want to keep people waiting for that. So I will open the public meeting on the scoping study. And the notice that was given was the Williston Public Forest Department with technical assistance from the Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission and Transportation Planning Consultant RSG invites the community to join the select board on Tuesday, February 20th, 2018 at 8 p.m. In the town hall meeting room for our presentation on the draft final alternatives for the North Wilson Road multimodal scoping study. And the project seeks to outline and recommend improvements to the drainage system and transportation network, including motor vehicle, pedestrian and bicycle travel. This time I'll turn it over to RSG, the CCRPC and Lisa from DPD. As you know, this isn't our first meeting. We appreciate all the feedback that we've done so far from everybody in the community. More than once, I think we've heard from quite a few people numerous times. So we've done the best that we possibly could, collecting all the information and all the feedback that we've done in trying to come up with the best solution, possible solutions for the project, school. And I'm going to turn it off to Corey, so he's going to go through the presentation real quick. We technically have 45 minutes on the agenda and I want to try to keep it to this so the network can get out of here at a decent time also. Great, thanks. And a lot of this isn't going to be new information. I think the presentation has even been posted online so hopefully we can just go right through it and get to the meat of the discussion which is what we want to talk about. Again, I'm Corey Mack with RSG, with here with the RPC and Lisa. This is our third public meeting, so hopefully we're all pretty familiar with the process and everything, but again, this is a scoping study to transportation issues along North Wilson Road corridor. So just quickly what I wanted to do tonight was just talk about the last couple of meetings we've had, the public feedback we've received, the alternatives that we've developed and a draft recommendation that we've prepared and then try to get some feedback on a way forward and hopefully get some buy-in from the select board to endorse a preferred alternative. Again, the study area is North Wilson Road from Oak Hill and route two up north to the river. Where we are now, this is towards the end of the process. We're at this final public meeting. We've been taking public comments like throughout the entire process, but the most intensive areas where we were doing that was early in the stage trying to get an idea of what people wanted the corridor to look like and feel like from a transportation perspective and then a livability perspective. But then also as we developed the alternative earlier, I think it was like basically January, what people thought of those. Just to bring it all back with why we're here, we're really trying to get a safe and resilient travel corridor for all modes of travel. Safe for motor vehicles, bicyclists, pedestrians, transit riders, any way you could really go down that corridor and resilient so that it's a road that is functioning for travel needs. You just don't want your road to fail. So we wanna make sure that we're designing this road to meet those travel needs and all types of conditions. Just to take it back to the existing conditions, we know that there's traffic on this road. It's increased maybe 5% in the last couple of years. Regionally, we're expecting 10% growth in the next 10 to 20 years. And the road as a cross-section really could handle that. I mean, it's not so much a traffic volume along just the stretch of roads, but what we expect out of our community and everything, that might be different than what the engineering capacity of the road is. And there are crashes along this corridor to a number at Mountain View. This is what we're trying to come up with here. So along through the hollow, all that. So the earlier meetings of the public concerns, speeds was one of the main issues that people were saying was an issue, just the concept of regional cut-through traffic along the road. A lot of people were concerned with that. Just a sense of having a livable corridor. And there was a key question, is it possible to maintain or enhance livability and also accommodate the traffic needs of the region, which as one of the main crossings over the river, excuse me, it's functions as a regional transportation corridor. The snap on the right kind of shows where most of the comments were directed to when we were talking about what, where the areas are of issues. So the hollow was really the primary area there that was discussed. So then just going into the talk alternatives, we're not gonna go into the specific alternatives, we can describe any of them, if there are specific questions about them. But I mean, we all kind of know what these things are at this point. So this is just a general gauge of what people were saying. You know, it's not a, it's a relative scale here, so let's not get too focused on where it is on there. But basically what it comes down to the rumble strips were not very well received by people that don't like the noise. There's some issue of whether or not they're gonna be effective. But then as we start moving along the speed tables and the curve of medians had similar issues of, you know, how effective are they? Are they gonna be a noise issue? But a lot of people respected what they can do to bring traffic speeds down. And that's like one of the primary concerns here. And then the more unobtrusive things, signs, nobody had too many negative issues with that, but their effectiveness, that is something that could be a little called into question. So it's kind of this fine balancing act of finding something that'll work and not be too obtrusive. But I mean, the whole sense of it is it's gonna be a little obtrusive, it's gonna get you to slow down. So it's a balancing act there. Regarding the cross-sectional alternatives, what we're saying about what we want the road to look like physically as we're driving down it, there was really a unanimous, everybody wanted it to be exactly how it is. They think the road is pretty good shape. It's 10-foot lanes and three-foot shoulders in both directions. There's a sidewalk on one side of the road. Bicyclists can use a sidewalk, even if it's not technically a path, a number of things there. So it serves the public pretty well. South of Mountain View Road. There are some issues with crosswalks, but we kind of touch that and there are other options. North of Mountain View Road. There was probably the greatest public support for having the path on one side of the road and leaving the road as it is. And then there was a fair bit of support for enhancing the ditches and making the road just a little wider so that it just maintains it's primarily like a travel or a vehicle, I shouldn't say that. It's all on the asphalt. It's all a road. It's not gonna have a separated path or anything. So that kind of brings us to our recommendations. And I'm kind of going fast through those and we can back up if anybody has any questions. Maybe I can just wrap this up. So the traffic measures and pedestrian calming enhancements, we've kind of, all those ones that we had on there on that scale, including the center line rumble strips, we're saying that these are good alternatives. They can work. And if we're serious about getting people to slow down and drive the corridor responsibly, I think we should try them all. None of the traffic calming enhancements are really a significant investment. I mean, it's more than I'm gonna wanna pay, but it's not something that like the town as a community can't invest in their road. So we go into a map of exactly where these things are proposed a little later. And then North of Mountain View Road, this is another thing of what we're trying to achieve here. And based on a variety of reasons, I've been leaning towards the alternative one of just the wide end road. So that's taking, I think, wide and little tootie on either side, reducing the travel lanes, having like the five foot bike lane kind of width shoulder. But it is also usable for walking on the shoulder. The reason for that was that it's, I'm calling it the greatest resiliency in the sense that you can rebuild, while you're widening this, you rebuild your shoulders and you rebuild your ditching. So you can really invest in that drainage infrastructure so you have a good stone line ditch and under drains to convey the water. So you're not gonna get a washout in those kinds of events. I put in there the greatest flexibility and assignment of pavement. That to me means that if you don't like the 10 foot lanes and five foot shoulders, what you could do is you could like squeeze everybody on like the vehicle traffic on one side and you could put like ballers, some sort of flexible posts that delineates a walking path or bike path or something. It gives you a little bit more room to play with that asphalt area. Whereas if you have a path and a narrow road, there's really nothing you can do. You can't put cars on like the path or something. It just gives you the opportunity to kind of work with that. And it's also the least expensive alternative there. For stormwater management, I mean, that's gonna be, when I'm talking about resiliency, that's really, it's all just a fancy word for stormwater management, just making sure that when it does have, when we do have high intensity storm events, that there's a way for water to get down the road and not cause washouts. So really you want to make sure that all your pipes are the correct size and your ditches are well maintained and protected. And so for alternative one, the concept there was that the ditches would be reconstructed on both sides of the road to like a really high level. For that path alternative, we were talking about leaving the road basically how it is. And then just building a path on the side of the road. So whether there's some sort of combination that could come out of this, that that's a possibility too. So then the specific traffic calming measures. This is south of Mountain View Road. Here's our little location out there. So we're talking about having two speed tables. This is basically along the gulf course, in front of the gulf course here. And this is that new plans development that's going here. I believe their drive access is kind of the center of those two speed tables. And then having enhanced crossings at Tamarack and Fairway. And then also at Lefebvre Lane, a little further to the south. So that's really what we're planning in the south of Mountain View Road and what are the presidential, you know, Wilson village area. As we go a little further north, so this is going to be north of Mountain View right here. I'm sorry. So this is what we're calling a curved median. We're saying two of them, but really it's because there's one on one side of Mountain View and one on the other. That's really following through with the recommendations from the 2012 intersection scoping study that was done at Mountain View and Northwestern Road. And that there's a number of reasons why it hasn't been pursued, mostly right of way. But, you know, it's just continuing along that path to acquire the right of way or do what needs to be done to that was originally discussed. As we head north through what we're calling the rural segment here, we have three speed tables identified on either side, like between this house here and the cemetery, then south of the house there with the beautiful four trees, another speed table just north of the cemetery. And then you can kind of see right here, this is that smart sign that we've talked about with, you know, it's a curved warning sign that says if you're going over 35 miles an hour, it starts flashing out. You just let you know that you're about to enter. Something that you probably should be driving so fast to go into. Now, this is Unity Lane right here. So then this is that same smart sign there, the curve warning and the activated lights. Then this is going into the hollow here. These orange things are the Chevron sign. So it's kind of just, especially at night when your headlights hit it, it'll reflect back at you, you see that there's a curve. There's a number of running off the road reported crashes and probably far more that aren't even reported because it's not a big, you know, cost. So it may not make it into the state database. But so that we have these Chevrons on one side here at this corner and then on this corner. And then again, as you're approaching Williston Road and then getting towards the bottom of the hollow there. So these dashed yellow lines, that's where we're calling for the rumble strips, the centerline rumble strips. So it's basically just on either side of Williston Woods Road there. So I'm just intersection warning signs. There's no sign to warn you that there's this intersection there. This is one of the higher crash intersections. So just something to let people know is that it is limited sight distance that you're going through here. So anything to get people to be more aware. There was signs that were entering Williston Woods. On both sides of the road. Really, there is this? No, yep. That sign there? Oh, okay. Coming both ways. We must have missed that somewhere. We've been there for... All right, well, one thing done. Listen, it was probably too high for you to see. Yeah, I was looking at it. Sometimes we're too low, sometimes we're too high. They're still sort of there. Low hanging fruit? Good, I'm glad it's been picked already. So, okay, that one is complete. Good, check that one off the list. We're making great progress in this meeting already. And then as we get towards the bottom of the hollow, a couple more speed tables. And this first one, as the first speed table there, we're talking about maybe that could be like a gateway feature to let you know that you're entering the village. The North Williston Village, excuse me. And then the last segment here, between the river and the hollow, we have just north of Fay Lane. We're talking about doing one of those curved medians. And then we have three more speed tables between the bridge and Chaplin, I'm sorry, Chaplin Lane. So, those are sort of what we've been talking about as the traffic comic features. The whole cost, if you already go out there tomorrow and bid all this and get all these things billed, just like we were talking about, it's probably about $200,000. It depends on how, you don't have to do all of them right away. You can do it phase, you can do a couple here and see how the phase implementation, you can see how it works. And maybe you only need two speed tables instead of three in between Chaplin Lane and the bridge. Build it as needed, see how it works. The next step would be public works is doing a great job of maintaining the current condition of these ditches, but instead maybe go out there and widen the ditches, kind of dig them out, kind of working from the bottom of the hollow up so that they're working towards this wider roadway. And then when you do have the opportunity to reconstruct the road, which will be necessary in the next, you know, probably 15 years or so, that's when you can like dig it all up, like at least the minimal cost. That's, if you prepare the width of the roadway, it's a relatively simple and easy thing to do. It's just that the whole process of getting there is the problem, the problem. And that's sort of what these next couple slides are referring to. We've identified some areas where there's a substantial slope with the existing ditch right there. That's the areas that we're gonna have to like really consider how we're going to either retain the existing slope with additional stone, maybe do some underdrain kind of drainage improvements. There are, you know, I think it's, her house right there. With, it's right on the road, utility poles right there too. So these are the things that we can like work towards that wide roadway. And there are opportunities that instead of widening, you know, two feet closer to her house, we could go on the other side of the road even though, you know, there are issues on that side of the road too. But it's, you know, I think if you take it, you know, one piece at a time, it becomes a much more manageable process. And this is just a concept of the full depth radical nation we were talking about. We don't need to get into that. So these are a lot of next steps and texts. But really what we're looking for is an endorsement of this plan of the way forward. So, you know, I guess that's where I wanted to end it and probably we're gonna have some comments now. So unless anybody else has anything, then we can go into how everybody else took it. So, yeah, let's do it. There's not four-way stop sign, you're recommending for a map here when you're close to the road camera, all right. Excuse me. There was a study done in 2012 in regards to that intersection. And at that time, it was not warranted to have a four-way intersection stop sign. As you know, and we've discussed this multiple times that the slick board picked a preferred alternative in regards to that intersection improvement. And so far, only part of those improvements have been done. And at this time, during this study, we're recommending to continue forward and do the other sections of those improvements to see if it actually affects that intersection before you start changing something that wasn't finished in the first place. Well, the reason I asked, because I'll be honest, I'm new to Williston just about four years. And it is amazing how three times a day if I come up Mountain View, I can be stuck all the way down by PT360 on industrial app. And it will take close to a half an hour to get to the top of Mountain View slash North Williston road. And traffic is like, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh. It's pretty much so. So the study you did in 2012 is six years old. The traffic is increased to a minimum of 5%? It's about 5% from some arbitrary number in there. Well, it's actually more than 10. Is it not more cost-effective to put it in a four-way stop sign than those big comps that keep breaking every time cloud tracks go through? Well, is it not more effective for the environment to keep traffic going, moving more smoothly? And is it also more effective as a traffic calming measure? If it is not warranted, it's not technically a traffic calming measure unless it's warranted for it. And that's why we do these studies to determine if it's warranted for it. As you said, you go down industrial app in Mountain View. If you come through the village here at the same given times of the day, traffic is backed up, and this is a four-way intersection here. It's backed up past the church on the hill. So that may have been adverse to you. If you're going over there, we still got another mile down the road that the traffic is still backed up. I understand traffic's gonna be backed up at certain times of the day. I'm not even disputing that, but it seems like that one area is notorious for being extremely backed up. Like I said, based on our recommendation for this study that we're doing, because this is for North Wilson Road. It isn't, again, for this intersection. We're highly recommending because the intersection has been brought up multiple times in regards to this project, not only by community members, but also the select board. We highly encourage to implement the other items that were supposed to be addressed back in 2012, to see if those impact that intersection in the appropriate way, as opposed to jumping into a four-way stop sign that has not been warranted yet. We should, if we picked a preferred alternative, we should implement that preferred alternative and see if it works. If it doesn't work, then we go back to the starting board and say, okay, well, maybe we need to look at something else. You know, usually I would go to the bed history in a lot of places that you put in a short-term fix. Go ahead and quote, it's there 25, 30 years later. The short-term fix doesn't go to the next. I try to be really nice about this, but let's get real. The short-term fix doesn't get changed. So we've definitely heard this from many times throughout this project. A lot of people want this four-way stop. And really, you know, if we could just try to like separate that issue from the other issues along the road, it's, you know, maybe a stop sign would slow people down at that location, but it's not going to really do anything for the rest of the quarter, which is a lot of us. No, but it's just one part, right? Just probably, it seems to be more of a, and that's one of the reasons it hasn't been completed yet, because we do need to get wider right away right there. We had a limited amount of right-away, so there's going to be right-pan turn-in-way on the left or straight turn-in-way with a median in it. And that's one of the reasons that we have not been able to implement that because of the right-away is limited at that time. Did you have something to add to that? No, I just wanted to say that I'm Jason Shrest with the Chisholm County Regional Planning Commission, and I've been around long enough that I recall the 2012 study, and this discussion sounds quite familiar. Regarding Mountain View and North Wilson Road, we had a similar spirited discussion concerning a four-way stop, being implemented at that time. We looked at it. It was not warranted or to the manual on the old form-couple devices. There are thresholds that are set, so that stop signs are just not put in really nearly wherever residents demand them across the country, so that we do have some sort of uniform standards that people are following. And through all of that, that was how we came to the conclusion, or the select board came to the decision of endorsing the preferred alternative that they did. And you may be correct, we may need to recount that intersection, and we can revisit those warrants, and it may be warranted at this time. That was just not something that we looked at as part of the study, due to the previous study that has not been fully implemented. I guess if we're just going forward on a road, I'd like more accurate, yeah, instead of something that's already six years old. At this time of year, all these traffic current measures are trying to move into river runs on the road. So is there any consideration for dealing with that issue in the study? Unfortunately, Wilson does not own anything past the halfway across the bridge. That's Essex territory, and the intersection of 117, and North Wilson Road is V-Trans in Essex. I know Essex has done a study for the flooding purposes for that, and an intersection study for that, and Williston actually was presented with what they picked for their preferred alternative. I spoke to the assistant director of Public Works last Thursday, in regards to the flooding of that intersection, and basically the state's saying, that's the floodplain, that's the way it's supposed to go, and we're not gonna do anything different with it. So their hands are tied too, and unfortunately, Wilson doesn't have any authority over it, so we can't push back on that on the state, but that's what, that's, this study ends at the bridge, because we don't have the authority to do anything in another town. I happened to manage the study that looked at that intersection across the river in that floodplain, and it was also just prohibitively expensive to design a road that would withstand the flooding that's experienced there. Have we had a number? Not on the top of my head, but it's available online in the report. Just so you know, all the studies that are done through regional planning are available on their website. If you go to reports and studies, it's in the upper right-hand corner, and you can organize them by town, or by transportation, by sidewalk, by whatever you wanna look them up at, and then list all the ones that they've done for the last 15, 20 years, so, feel free to look those up. If you can't find them, let us know. I'll send you the link to it. Describe a little bit about the southbound gate lane and the median road, and maybe some of the, how, why do you envision the travel lane being affected with it? So are you talking about like this type of? Yeah, one of my favorite. Okay, so the concept there is, maybe the travel lanes will still be what we're talking, what is out there now, maybe an 11-foot travel lane, and three-foot shoulder or so, 14-feet total. It's sort of similar to what's being described, or what was built on Skunkall Road in Jericho, so if you can imagine what's going on there, where it kind of shifts, it basically put it at an eight-foot or 12-foot wide island for 40 or 60 feet in the center. I'm asking, we have a apartment that's about 12 feet wide and 55 feet long, pulling out of the lane onto, where I don't try to go into the other lane at all, but I have a time for them on the yellow lines. It's on both tires and the other tires on the white line. So as Corey mentioned earlier, the specific exact location you're gonna take so many feet is gonna have to be filled with verify, and that would be something that we would work with you to find out what the turning radius is on your large piece of equipment. I mean, we also, don't forget, we also take into account the ladder truck for the fire department. We wanna make sure that they can get in and out of their safeway also, so we take all those things into account before we actually go physically, implement any of these. I think the other concern I have is the speed tables. And I know right now, the expansion joints on the bridge and the railroad tracks act like the speed table for Franklin, and we're running about 20 miles an hour, and it's very jarring. And to have three more of them seems excessive, and I kind of think the railroad track acts as a natural speed table now. Yeah, I'd agree with that too. There's enough speed bumps on that road. According to the traffic engineer and their policies and procedures that they follow, you're supposed to install them so far apart from each other for them to be effective. If you put one at the beginning of the road and one at the end, that gives people plenty of time to speed up to 50 miles an hour before they hit the next one and they have to slow down. So that's why they put them so close together. My question is, on there was the speed limit on the speed table, 20, 25? It depends on if you want to replace shots and struts. No, no, no, no. I'm dropping cars off my ballboard. So they can be designed to be any type of speed that you want. It's not really about the amount of vertical deflection that you put on there. So the speed of it's 35. Yeah, so they're usually designed for like 30 miles an hour or something. So it'd be like a three inch table. I'm thinking of 127 or whatever it is in North End of Burlington where it's 30, but the speed tables are like 15. And it's like, hmm. So I mean, I'm seeing these places and there's like, wait a minute. Where are we going to happen? The other piece is we only have sort of an indoor speed belt. And because I'm in there, I watch cars go rattling over that sucker and spying with it. So, you know, I'm wondering about the effectiveness of these cars. And lastly, thank you for considering the aeroscience of the curves. I was the one that mentioned that. And it's like, every time I drive that road, I'm like, ah. You know, I do much less curvy roads with those chevrons. So I think that's a great one. Just to go into the speed tables would have both striping on them so that you can see them at night and also signs at them so that, you know, you shouldn't be a surprise. Sounds like the inverse speed table is a bit of a surprise, because, you know, it won't be a surprise. It shouldn't be. So we had that, Andrea. I live next to the railroad tracks. And I would not say that they are sufficient to reduce speed. And I'm not referring to larger vehicles, but like farm equipment, but there are many trucks, large vehicles that also seem to have excessive speeds going both directions and over. We have cars. It actually was redone that intersection more recently. And so it hasn't been quite as loud. And cars don't seem to catch as much air. But we have cars go off of our road into our field, off and then not coming from. From losing control. Actually from more from River Road, I'd say. Southbound, yeah. Southbound, sorry. I would not say that that's currently a sufficient traffic. It's not technically a trackability issue. It's not a trackability issue. Well, that was a question somebody had in their hand. Yes. You've got three speed bumps there. I'm assuming that the first and the second is the zero one that we saw the other do. You keep inviting that drift in the back every time. Yeah, it depends on how you want it to go about it. I would say that if you're going to put one in there, you'd probably want to get to the marginal price difference is probably not that great. So I would say that you'd want at least two at a time. So I mean, it's all what you're willing to stomach. And if you were to ask me, I would put in as many as you could. It's because he does half the driving. I think I'm saying sport. Well, like Mr. Wittman was saying, these speed bumps you've got to realize when we go over with our ag equipment, we come to the stop to go over that in the trailers. There's a lot of trips a day during the week. Because the whole town down there is ag. And you're crossing the river and everything, too? Yeah. Just to clarify, sometimes they just explain that it was speed table is compared to a speed bump, just to have a good picture of what it is. So speed tables are generally shorter and longer. So they're typically, I was saying, a three inch rise over seven feet. And then they're about 14, 15 feet long at a flat surface. And then it drops down again on the backside, three inches over seven feet. And it's designed that way so that a vehicle won't bottom out on it. So a speed hump or speed bump would have, sometimes if they're too tall or on a curve, yeah, you might bottom out on them. So the wheelbase of a typical vehicle can sit on top of that. So that's a difference between speed bump or speed table. They're typically shorter and longer than speed table or bumps. Excuse me. Would the speed bump be wide enough? Or would they be so wide that they would affect bike traffic, too? Well, they're usually tapered at the sides. So it depends how far over the bike is, I guess. But yeah, they're going to have to go over a speed table also. Have you thought about putting temporary walls on the head and unending them? Which I think is made out of plastic or rubber. So that was something that I proposed at one point. I don't think that the public works really wants to have to deal with moving, installing, taking them out of winter. Because a plot certain, they would tear that up. I think there's a real potential with having the temporary installations. Just to do a study, even if you did it in the summer. Well, and I don't know, but we've discussed on Caldwell multiple times because it's a neighboring town and they have them on Caldwell Road. And I believe their study, originally, came up with seven to be installed on my own section of road. And they actually, the select one, decided to put three in. Start with that, see how it worked. And those three, just the most three being installed, seemed to slow down traffic to the point where they're not getting as many complaints anymore for it. So, you don't have to question it. Yeah, I'm just looking at this map and thinking about where my house is. And after that, really dangerous, that's heard. And then my house is there. There's nothing happening in that gap between the, can I give you a second? This is, your house is on this map, right? I think it's like, I think it might be right here. That's right, that's right. Now, you're, Oh, yeah, sorry, you got it. You're right here. Yeah, so I, yeah, I'm there. I'm below where the Southbound Gateway is. Yeah. And I just, I don't see anything there. And I'm just wondering if that would be a place where people are gonna be like, ooh. Yeah. I'm just gonna, and you know, my house is really close to the road and I think I'm in the safety of my family. And. So there's one little further south, a little further south. You know, the intention here is to space them out, you know, every 500, 800 feet. You know, you don't want them to, too regular, they're just not cutting. You're just gonna be constantly going over speed bumps, but you don't want them too far that people just can accelerate back to what they were doing. So, you know, you're gonna be, this is probably one of the longer stretches in the North Williston, or in the North Williston Village area. You know, and I don't have a scale on this, but I guess it's maybe about 1,000 feet between the two. So it's one of the longer stretches, but you know, if it's a corridor and people are expecting to travel it as a corridor, I wouldn't expect them to, you know, like really get on it here if they know that there's, sorry, two more, you know, here and here. And then they're about to go up a hill. People do dumb things all the time. So I can't even see. You're talking about the dumb hill road. Yeah, and that's to cut out for the S-curve, right? Yes, yeah, so I think this is the S-curve you're talking about right here. Or maybe it's, yeah, here, I don't know. Yeah, it's like there's, in those two pictures, our places are cut out of each, above Aaron in the top of this or in the bottom of the other. That's interesting. If you're going north then you would hit one table before you got to your house. Yes. You hit one table before you get to my house after the S-curve. Yes. Okay, wow. It looked like there'd be one right in front of my house. In front of your house. Oh, right at the end. Yeah, that's what the... Yeah, okay, sorry. I'm trying to figure out the... If you want to sit down and go over these closer, we can, it's not a problem. And these aren't final locations, the whole idea is to get a concept of let's put these in, let's try this, let's find out the best places to do it. And I mean there's nothing, we can put them on a map here on the wall, but when you stand out there and you see like actually the sight line isn't perfect here, we're going to have to move it up a hundred feet. You got some changes. I'm sorry, I interrupted you, Jason. No, you said what I wanted to say. And like the fireman down there, we need to work with him as we're going to put it into curved islands and to make sure that he can get his equipment in and out. Otherwise he's just going to keep running it over and wrecking it. We don't want to do that to him and he doesn't want to do that to us. Yes, ma'am, you had it. Can you go three slides ahead? It shows the Clara House and how you're widening the road onto the Fontaine land. So you're right there taking out the sledding hill and taking out the utility poles right there. Oh yeah, those are just a highlight like impact. So those red things, that's not like roadway widening or anything. That's where the issues are. Yeah, that's just to say that that's a problem. Yeah, we started the widening road and from my point of view, that's why it would be impact. We're not saying we are aren't. We act widening, that's why it would be impact. That's the narrow cross section for widening. So the widening is actually shown here, but it's so tiny that that's like a big icon. It's like, here's where there are issues and we'll have to figure out what to do about it. It's like a gentleman that lives between Unity Lane and Mountain View came to us and said, I don't want you to put a path in front of my house. I've got these huge maple trees right there and they're all going to have to get cut out. So those are the things that we need to do. Do we lose six maple trees to put a path in there or do we shift them so it works according to without losing these things? So those are all things we're trying to juggle here to make this work the best that we can. On the website, is that correct? If you were going to do bike paths and widen it, it was not the east side where you have those, in this particular slide where you have that icon that you were saying, it was actually the west side. Yes. Yeah, that was just to show that these are issues that would need to be addressed. I keep passing you up there. Yeah, so I just want to say thanks for this again. And I heard a lot at the last meeting, I mean, five, two, there were a little, look, it's going all the way, that's the road, like we've been, oh, some of us won at least, and I think, I feel like you all took that to heart and answered it here, so I just wanted to appreciate it, especially up and down the hall where things really get dicey. Looks like a lot there, the Chevron, the speed tables, but you know, all of a sudden, I mean, I think that that, except for the people who are going to be stupid and crazy, you know, which we can never really prepare for this kind of thing would make a big difference. Like Corey said, when he was going through the slide with the crash data on it, a lot of times going through the hall, as you know, people would just slide into the ditch. The police may not get called for that, that may never be reported, so that may not even be counted in those numbers. So, and I see it, because I go to that one every day too, so I'm like, some buses off the road. Oh, I see that, I don't know about it. Oh, yeah, I want to get groceries. She seemed too many, three busted people. I bet. I have a question about what you thought about the safety of having speed bumps on that hill, through that follow, to say like the swim turn storms that you've been having, because you know, people were going to have to break coming into, you know, some of their curves and so slowing down for the speed bump. I was wondering about that safety and, okay, I'm going to be one every single day on my way to work. I'm going to have to hit seven of those. It's going to drive me nuts, I'm sorry. I'm just going to put it out there. Seven speed tables, it's just going to drive me nuts. Seven one way, seven coming out. It seems like I'm one. So the specific location, like the placement of these, like we were saying, can be adjusted a little bit. We intended to put them in places where there's a clear sideline that you can see that it's coming up. So it shouldn't be a surprise. It shouldn't be like you turn a corner and there's one that you weren't expecting. Well, I'll be turning out of my driveway and there wasn't one. Yeah. My son brought that up with all the traffic coming by quite frequently. If you want to get into it, we do have to kind of speed up and then we'll be slowing right down. And I was wondering about also about the backing up. Traffic is usually very bad twice a day. So I was wondering that watching the traffic, if it slows down that much, what will it do, will it bottleneck going backwards to River Road type thing? If everybody is slowing down, because if they're going at a constant speed now, let's say, if there's that kind of slowing down, what then? I'm just wondering what would happen. Usually they only slow down just to get over the hump and then they pick up to the normal speed that they've been doing anyways. I haven't seen it back up any traffic. It's gone call over people to go over the speed hump unless the roads are bad. Or they follow a piece of farm equipment, sort of big trucks that's got a lot of stuff. Well, that's what I was thinking with the free slow down. Yeah. So in the hall, because I looked up at the Wilson Woods, one of the biggest things is when you're coming around the curb, bottom line, if you can't see anything. There's no lights. There's no good margins on the road. The trees are hanging, starting to overhang. This is like death row. And that was good day. Right. And in the winter, I can't even imagine how many people, yeah, could be pulled out one way or the other. Because when you're heading north, the little sign that says you're going to be in an S-curve, you know, and it's 35, is about this far off the road. And when the snowplow goes by, you laugh. When the snowplow goes by, you can't see that sign anymore. You know that. So that, I mean, so for anybody who's not familiar with the area, they're going into a very dark, unmarked area that's just, like, even right now would say, please, let's knock back some of the trees or something, or put some more signs immediately. Because that's. And that was discussed. That was the first report, yeah. That was discussed. Both those items were discussed in the first report that we did, the existing conditions report. Number one, there's not just that sign, it's very low. There's multiple signs that are very low. Number two, that the trees do need to be cut back. Not only will that help with being able to see what's coming and going, but it'll also help with the salt and de-icing the road, because it's so shallow right there that it doesn't ever thaw the snow and ice off it. That's right. And then, like, to those, you know, you get to hollow, and it was so foggy that, I mean, that was a good stress common thing. So through the hollow, through the hollow, we didn't want to put any types of these vertical deflection, the speed humps, or the speed tables through the hollow, just because we feel like people are already struggling to stay on the road. So let's not add that to it. So the intention is to, like, get people to slow down as they approach. So there's the speed tables in the village, the north village there, and then there's a couple along the rural flat section there. And then there's that flashing sign. So that short one that you're talking about is being removed altogether. And we have the smart sign that tells you if you're going over a certain speed, that you should be, like, you know, warns you of extra warning there. Just so everybody knows, this isn't the only study, as you know. There's multiple sections to this study that's been done. There's the existing conditions report. There's the alternatives report. This is just the presentation for tonight. These are all available online. And if you have a hard time finding them, me, no, or Eric, no, or Jason, no, and we can direct you to the right place. Because a lot of this information we've collected, we've discussed at one of the other two or three meetings. So we're familiar with it, like I said. We're trying to juggle all the bubbles all at once and try to come up with the best possible solution. As you know, we can't make everybody happy all the time, but we're going to try to the best to make as many people as we can at one time. I'm just going to say I just was so happy to see that the rumble strips were up from our house. And it also is in an area where there's less houses at the road. So appreciate that and keeping people in the lanes as they go through the curtains. And I think that will help to that area. Because a lot of times when you're going up or down, you come up and somebody's like, oh, you're kind of close to my light here, buddy. Well, I'm interested to see what happens. We don't have, and I'm not driving a new truck, so I don't know the impact of that, but I'm interested to see what might happen and slide people down the tables. I do feel a little bit nervous. We've just spent a bunch of money replacing our driveway and a huge culvert in our driveway. And so I just don't know what it's going to look like to do the widening of the road. And I think that'll be the next thing, depending on what the timing of that would be. And what's the impact of that's going to be? What is the impact of that? How much is it going to command me to drive us a bunch of cedar trees and all of that? So, yeah. And as you know, in that last meeting that we had, the alternatives presentation and discussion and report, it starts to go into costs. As you get down through the hollow and where we're going to widen the road and everything, not only are you dealing with drainage issues, you're dealing with obviously a very narrow road, structural concerns. We do have- The water comes fast. The water does come very fast. We have to make sure that whatever we do there, we don't want to have it washed out. For some, for say, you can raise a band up with another Irene or anything like that. Yeah, we don't want to make it like really great along the road and then have it hit your culvert and your culvert done just as gone too. I mean, it's a whole system-wide approach. We're going to blow out our culvert. We could just make that the bridge and go through it. I don't know. I don't know. This is an observation. Now a few roads at the junction of the north and you're trying to go north. The sidelines are pretty poor. There's a tree there. That's the wheat tree. It's growing up through the rail fence. That is okay now, but in the summer, that's all leased out and you can't see cars coming south. So just a little change so I'll work with you. And I think we heard a similar comment in regards to coming off of Governor Chicken, trying to take a left, heading towards the village. To this village, because there's a fence right there and it's difficult to see there too. So those are all- That's right on a big wheat tree. No. No. They cut way back in the whole couple years ago. Yeah, they will protect their lines, but they don't want to clean that up. They just leave it. No. And that's for erosion. Yeah. Touch on the sideline roadstrips again. And some of the data presented besides negligible effect on speed and an increase in noise, it quoted 37% decrease in head-on traffic collisions. But all of the data that was presented, not a single one of those accidents was actually reported. So where does that production come from? The number starts at zero. Yeah, so you're absolutely right, but that's these are generally installed in like higher speed, rural areas were preferred to keep lane departures from happening. With the intention to reduce the head-on crashes. And I don't think that that was any of the crash types that we observed in the hollow. The intention there is really just to keep people in their lanes and to get them to drive slow enough to stay in their lane. And also not to force the person that's hogging the lane, make the other guy go off the road. That's one of every set. Like I said, I've seen that happen multiple times where you're coming around and the guy that's going down cuts his lane a little short next to you know, I'm on the shoulder. And I'm sure that's happened to many people because people don't, it's either head-on or you take the ditch. I don't think the ditch every time personally. So I think that's what we're trying to prevent is for that people from cutting corners and pushing other people off the road by accident. And it's a bit of a like a proactive versus active approach also in the sense that we're kind of proposing before it's too much for the problem, you know, I guess or we could argue that we're trying to fix a problem that's not an issue, but. So, I mean, careful. It sounds really great. One question I guess I'm just wondering is do you get to a point where there's kind of sign overload and the effectiveness starts to go down? We found that with, and actually this is one of the comments that was brought up to us was those flashing speed limit signs. And I don't know if we ended up putting one in this preferred measure or not. What happens is people ignore those after a while because you know, let's see how fast I can go. Let's see how fast I can get this thing to go. Or I've seen them every other 10 miles so I'm not even gonna pay any attention to them. So that is considered sign overload for those examples. To be clear, I don't think we feel that we've reached the point with what we proposed. We just feel that the roadway is significantly undersigned at this point. So we're just trying to bring it up to where a similar roadway would be if it were built to do and signed properly. There are specifications that you're supposed to be following for road signage. The MUTCD being there. And many of these are replacing signs too. So that curve one is gonna replace the two short ones. Mount Review and Governor Chittin Road and North Folkster Road by a lot. And there's that sign when you sign across over. Which is great when you cross over to the other side with your sidewalk there. You're walking through high grass. Is that something that's gonna be ready? It just- On Governor Chittin' it? On the corner of Governor Chittin' and North Folkster. It crosses you to the road. It has nothing for you to go to after you cross over. And that was a conversation that was brought up when we put those rack of flashing beacons in. And I'm not sure if there will ever be anything where it's to go to. I know that there's the Catamount Family Centers down there and the town is looking to purchase that property. And that might be something that we can do is install a sidewalk on one side of the road and the other, going down Governor Chittin' and give you a place to go to. That's definitely something that I can discuss. Well, they're gonna have these weeds that grow that you don't want to touch. I'm here with their call, but they look like you're all, you know, wild parsnips. Wild parsnips, they say so. And they're growing all over to you. You're texting them. And it's quite, it's quite high. So I'm just bringing that, that is an issue. I'm using the light, but the dog breath at times. Yeah. I don't go all the way in, I just stay on the road and go around, and I'm not sure how safe that is. I think like, don't know, did you have your name up or both days? I did, yeah, I'm just, I, you touched on, or some books touched on, over signage. But I did want to ask that you've mentioned the flashing light that was smart if you're speeding, if the flash is to catch your attention at the top of the hollow, but it would seem wise to have something at the bottom of the hollow where folks may have gained the most speed to catch them before they come into this straight away. Because that's where they've done the studies to show how high the speeds are there. The percentage of people that are speeding that region, it seems like you want to catch them at the hollow to help them to be aware of their speed before entering the straight away. So it isn't entirely true that we didn't propose any of these radar speed signs, we actually included in our cost here three signs for that. So we did talk about maybe having a mirrored one in the residential area, and we were talking about having a couple others, you need to replace these signs effectively like you're saying, and we'd have to consider where we put it, it could be a good spot in between that thousand foot section we were talking about between the gateway and the speed table. So as I remember, we were talking about putting another one of these in- I think the reason the smart sign is at the top is because that corner, that first corner, if you have a going down that road in a while, it catches you by surprise. That sounds like a great place, and I just thought to suggest that it seems like where folks may have the greatest speed would be a good place to catch their attention and from looking over the recommendations, one of the very first things you were suggesting was that all of the roadway north of Mountain View was narrowed, that was one of the first recommendations, correct? Yeah. The reason I didn't think it was narrowed. The lane was narrowed, not the lane was narrowed. Your travel, the travel is, okay. Yes, that's gonna be a recommendation for the next time it gets painted, is just to keep it a consistent 10-foot traveling. I mean, that's a really simple thing to do. Whether or not it's effective, and I mean that to repaint it more often, but it's a good way to just make it feel narrower and do what you can with what you're already doing anyway. I think I wanna see if the select board has anything to say. This is their meeting after all, technically. Well, this is really our chance to listen to everybody else who have comments. I suggest let the public finish their questions. Sure, yeah. Good question, if you go to the next step slide, what could we as citizens really help you move this forward? Oh well, talk to your select board about. Yeah, so really the next step is to endorse the alternatives here. If there's any revisions or modifications that you'd like to have them propose, tonight's the night to make that, put that out there. Once you endorse this, then it's really about making an implementation plan. We could aggressively pursue all of these traffic calming measures. There's $200,000, there might be some grant funding that we can get for through either the Trans or the RPC has some ways of finding money for people, that kind of thing. Putting in some, just taking manageable bite sizes. So if all you're doing is putting down five speed tables this year, that's not too much. If it's five the next year, or however you want it, you want to approach it. So the plan that we're endorsing tonight will kind of lay that out there of how to do this. And then when it comes down to doing the ditching, I mean, that's something that you have to work on every year, year after year, and hope that it doesn't wash out in the meantime. You know, that's just a regular maintenance and then identifying your priorities and fixing those as you can. Let me just, I don't believe that the select board is actually going to endorse any of this tonight. I think they're going to take it back to adjust it. And we're going to come back next month and either adjust it, endorse it, whatnot. But that's my understanding, is that correct? That's right. It may not even be next month, maybe April. Right, so. But that would be our next step. In order for us to apply for any grant funding throughout state or federal funds, we need to have a study in hand that is endorsed by this select board and we have to show that with our application that this is what we want to do and the select board's behind it. And then I'll have to come to them and say, can I go west for more money, please? And like Corey said, it's most likely going to be phased. As you know, as you go down through that hollow, if we start reconstructing that road, widening it and doing drainage, that's going to be a lot more expensive than science at all. So. Step one seems to be doable to me. Correct. And step two needs a much better long-term plan of work. I just wondered to make sure, obviously we're all interested in what's going to happen here and I want to make sure that it happens. Yeah, I agree completely, because it's frustrating if we get a study and nothing happens and it just sits on the shelf for 10 years. And I don't want that to happen. Not only because it increased the cost of everything as you wait 10, 12, 15 years, but it also, then we've got to re-study it all because all of that is old. So let's not do it again. We've spent some money to get this report. So I'd like to find ways to make sure it happens. Please step one. I guess that's, I think my question sort of relates to what it's, whatever it is saying. That's like phases and stages and timeline. And is that going to be after the select board decides and then we come back and then it's proposed I think we're going to work with the select board and endorsing what they want to have done and what phases, if they say, okay, phase one, we want to put all those signs that you recommended and we want it done next year. Phase two, we want to put the speed tables in and we want that done in 2020. So that's how we're going to have to coordinate this. Or they may say, you know what, we want it all done now. We're just going to have to find some money to figure out how to do it. But that's what we'll work with the select board. And the time isn't going anywhere. And I'm trying my hardest to make sure that he knows what's going on with this project between Front Porch Farm, Erika's Facebook page. We get emails regularly in regards to this. And if you haven't heard anything for a couple of weeks and you said, hey, wait a minute, did the ball get dropped? Feel free to give us a call. Just throw us an email and we'll keep you up to date. That's the answer to my question. Yep. We just got grant funding for Blair Park sidewalk. We did a study three or four years ago. Boy, I called the lady up over there and said, hey, we got funding. We're going to offer design and construction. And she was jumping up and down, you know. Something actually happened and she couldn't follow through. So she's very excited by that. So I try my hardest to make sure the community is involved and knows exactly where they stand. Thank you very much. Thank you, Nancy. Yeah, I'm just going to say, I live over on Tamar Drive. And there are a lot of kids that walk to school in the morning, that bite to school. And I can tell you that some of the people in drop a day, I can stand there, walk trying to cross the street, find my own stop. So I would love to encourage that big priority for kids, especially, who don't always think we're taking the hope and courage for what it's safe to cross. But those were actually my big mom. And hopefully it will stop to happen that way. You have two of them in the village here. And I've seen people with it. The one down on the road, I don't know. Do you think it will stop when you flash it? Some do. I think the more they see them activated, the more often they're going to stop one. And plus, like, too many are in a row. Right. Plus, we have a new police chief. And I've been pestering him to make more police presence known in regards to certain things like that. So they've been trying to make sure that that's the question. But I'm just wondering about what we're talking about now is priority implementation. So if it stays, how will we know who decides on what goes first? So once this is done and it goes to you all, is there another point at which when there's a determination that we're going to phase this, this is the proposal for what we're going to start with, is that once this goes to you all, is that it? No, well, we're going to come up with a phasing if they want to phase it and what they want to phase first. But they believe it's their priorities. So that's a conversation with you all and the design team that's doing the work. And then once we all agree with that, and the select board and the board will post it and say, OK, this is what came out of the meetings. They want to put these signs in. They want to put the people crossing signs in. They want to do this. But that's something that the select board's going to initially have to come up with as to what they exactly want, what they want to endorse, what the budget's going to bear. What the budget's going to bear. Hopefully that would be done in a very public way. We'll be. We'll be. Make sure everybody's. And we decide it's public. So it's the intention. I mean, when I say the select board, I would hope it's with public input. Yeah, absolutely. Those decisions. Well, we cannot have a meeting. It's not an open meeting. Absolutely. If there's not any more questions, like I said, my card, I brought another stack of my business cards. But it doesn't happen yet. Feel free to give us a call. Stop in. Call Eric. Call Jason. Whomever if you have any questions. If you think of something, whatever, that you don't understand, and then you start reading it and say, wait, my name doesn't make any sense. Feel free to let us know. And like I said, as we continue forward with the select board, I'm working with them. We'll keep you publicly posted. I think Jason's got an email list that he started. Yeah, anybody who has either emailed me or has signed up in the sign-in sheet, and I've had a copy of it, I think that we're up to around 50 different addresses that have been involved at one point in time or another throughout this whole project. So anytime we do something, just send it out to that whole list of apologies if you're getting it. And you don't care to see it. If you're not getting it and you want to be on the list or you're not on it, let us know. We'll put you on the list. Again, thank you for coming out tonight. Please drive safe, because I'm sure the fog is still terrible out there. Thanks for all of you. Thank you. Thanks for everything. We're still going to have to do that. Yeah, I was thinking, so. So I think we want to ask some questions, and I don't know if they want to hear the questions. OK, if you have one, excuse me. The slide board is going to ask some questions and discuss it and what things make it. So if you want to stick around and hear what they have to say. Does that start at the only good time? So we need to limit our time, but ask questions, yes. No, we're not going to get to discussion of this tonight, except questions. Right, so will these folks come back when we want to? I mean, I have a list of questions, so I mean, I'm not really limited by time. And it seems like you would want to hear the public, hear the questions that we have as well. Not that this is the end of our questions. But I have a few. It's right here. One is, it seems like the traffic has increased more than 10% over the last five years. Places there that it's being counted, it's decreased in some places, and it's increased by a larger portion. So it depends on where exactly we're talking about. I don't think I have in this specific presentation the actual different numbers. So these are just the number. Yeah, in 2013, it's around 52. If you average the two, it's 50 to 50. But in 2016 and 17, it's up around 6,000 if you average the two. So that's more than 10% per five years. I'm saying it just didn't change. It's like at the same location, it's changing. So whether or not that means that there's 600, new 600 there, it doesn't necessarily mean that. It seems pretty, I don't know, it just seems pretty clear. It just looks like we have a pretty significant increase in traffic over the last five years to me. So your proposal for this change at the intersection where some people were looking for a stop sign, by the way, I'd be one of those people. I think the rules that are handed down by the federal government maybe that apply for the whole country don't necessarily apply in Vermont or some rural location. But has the right-of-way changed at that intersection such that you're proposing this drive-around thing in the intersection at Mountain View and... That's why it hasn't been installed, according to the... Right, so this is just a question. So it's not, you know, we would have to discuss this. But it seems like a four-way stop is an exceptionally easy thing to install. And put up and try. Why would you install so many speed tables or propose rather than just trying the stop sign? Because I can see the dynamics of that intersection. When you have all this traffic coming from, say, you know, going through the corridor, heading home in the evening, because I cycle through there and I happily get on the bike path for a little bit and can fly right by. But that traffic's held up by a very slow, steady trickle, a much lower traffic coming from the church up at the corner, right, coming from Route 2. So, and you almost have to be a daredevil to jump out into traffic to make that turn left. You kind of make the turn as you see somebody coming and maybe turning left. You're hoping they're going slow enough so you can sneak out. So that's what I do. I mean, I'm just being honest. So it just seems like it's more of a common sense thing than maybe following the exact rules. It seems like a cheap thing to try rather than ripping up the intersection, going into battles and right away and all this other stuff. So I don't know why the study didn't show that, but it seems like I would talk to my other board members and say, let's redo that study. You know, it doesn't seem to make sense to me, but is there another place in Vermont that has that many speed tables in that distance of road? Oh, I'm sure it's somewhere. Really? But that is Skunk Hollow works pretty well. And I was one of the people that was, because I cycled down Skunk Hollow as well. But those kerbouts, I feel, are dangerous for cyclists because they keep drivers from giving you more room. So unless you increase the road, you know, the shoulders, seems like they're dangerous for cyclists, but I don't want to be parochial. I guess cyclists could go up French Hill instead. And then the rumble strips, I'm just wondering, I don't know how many people are from Williston Woods here because I know, I think one person at least, but I know other people didn't want them for noise and I don't know how much noise that would cause. And another gentleman was really, I think right up in the second row here, was very astute noticing that there were no head-on collisions. So we're putting in something. So I would want to try other things first. And that brings me to kind of a phased approach. I would want to do the least obtrusive things first and see how they worked, right? And test them, so kind of rather than, I wouldn't want to do everything at once. So I'd like not to get into a discussion of things tonight. I'd like to answer questions. Ah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So things to think about. I'm good. Thank you. Any other questions? Not discussions tonight. I got a couple if you don't mind. I'm trying to figure this, I'm trying to, I just don't understand, so I'm trying to figure this out. So traffic calming is designed to slow traffic down. We have a road that has a lot of traffic on it and I believe all signs are traffic is going to increase on that road. So I'm trying to understand what is the impact of traffic calming on the traffic the road is seeing and in particular, as we have more vehicles going slower, which is I think the logical thing you would assume happens, are we in fact making the level of service or the danger of some of the intersections actually worse? We might be helping the travelers on the road themselves in a sense, but are we actually making our intersections more dangerous for the traffic that's trying to get onto North Williston Road? And again, I live on Governor Chittenden Road. I consider the Mountain View Governor Chittenden Road my intersection because I go through it at least twice a day. And it's a dangerous intersection now in the morning when I'm trying to get to work or come home. My kid's trying to get to school. I worry about it and I worry that we're not helping that intersection out, we're actually making it worse. So I guess there's a question in there. I don't know how you can answer it. Can I ask just a clarification just so I could understand your question? And maybe you can answer it, but just so I could understand it. Are you asking that a hypothetical situation if you're trying to turn off of Governor Chittenden Road, if the traffic is traveling slower on North Williston Road, is that making things more difficult? Right, right now the trouble is, is there very few gaps, but there are occasional gaps at the peak hour times. If traffic is traveling slower and there's also more of it, my concern would be there'll be no gaps. So then you're just gonna take more of a chance when that one seemingly, it's small, but seemingly the only gap you can get out, you're gonna try to take advantage of that. Does that make sense? Yeah, it does, it's a complicated equation I guess. I don't doubt that. I can only tell you how it feels. And I also second the four-way stop. Why not give that a try and see how it performs? I think that my other questions are gonna have to do with phasing. We can wait on those. I might actually advocate for doing some of the more expensive work first, simply because I think the road needs to be widened. And I worry about doing some of the traffic calming efforts on a road that isn't widening. And again, it might be slowing traffic down, but I think it's gonna make it more dangerous for cyclists. Yeah, I agree with you. Let's get into questions only tonight. Hopefully they can answer that question. In regards to widening the road, we found that the wider road in the travel lanes are, the faster it seems people go. That's why they're narrowing roadways more than they're making them wider. I understand the reason to make them wider, but we also need to take that into consideration when we do start widening them that it's gonna possibly increase the speed of traffic. I should have clarified, when I said make them wider, it's so we have a bike lane on both sides. I didn't mean make it wider for the travel lanes. And then I also actually have a question about aesthetics. I'm not trying to trade safety for aesthetics. Don't get me wrong. But are we at a point where our road is gonna look like so many roads in the US and increasingly in Vermont where there's a lot of traffic sign noise that's gonna actually take what's, believe it or not, a pretty, pretty road. It has problems with traffic and make it into an eyesore with traffic signs. I'm not trying to trade one for the other. I'm just a question there. And I guess with that, I'll stop. Thank you very much. Can I just add one comment about the stop sign? I would have to do some research into this, but my concern would be on behalf of the town if you were to go and install a stop sign at this location and it was not warranted. I'd be concerned about your liability and if you would be responsible for something that may happen there due to the installation of something that was not warranted. We would be remiss without considering such an issue. I don't know how that really works. I'm not against a four-way stop sign, but I'm thinking the report was done in that way. There's always a liability in regards to when you put something in and that is not warranted. You set yourself up for sanctions. So if there's an accident, somebody could sue the town. Because you put it in a stop sign that was not warranted and we had a study done and it was proven based on the standards and the studies and the policies. That's why they broke it up. I'm not disagreeing with you on the four-way stop sign, but if it's not allowable warranted. If we go back to studies already six years old and the traffic's increased more than 10%, they did their studies wrong. Well, if we make a decision, I would like to ask that study for that intersection be updated so you know whether or not it's warranted or not. Because that seems to be a hotspot for just a couple of you, but several residents that go through there all the time. And Barry pointed out that the traffic is not what he said was to shoot 112. It's a good, it's a. We need to close this discussion tonight. There'll be more discussions coming up. The select board will have to make a decision as to whether we want to spend the money to do another study on Mountain View Road intersection. And we have the easy job ahead of us. So, so thank you all for coming tonight. We appreciate it. And we had probably another hour or three years ago. I'd like to have input. Yeah, it's just great. Wish we had so much on the budget. Oh, absolutely. Thank you. Oh, for the. For this meeting. So I would just ask. We could do the evaluation a different night, too. I don't know, but. Thank you for holding on to it. Keep that in touch tonight, Ben. Yeah. I'm past the point. I'm getting to the essential point. What else do we have? We have Rick's evaluation. So if I could ask everybody to move that has questions and talk outside so we can complete our business here, that would be wonderful. Thank you. So I think we're back to the manager report and request for our opinion on whether or not the school budget presentation will be before ours. I would ask that it be after. Is there consensus that we would continue to alternate the presentations and ours would then be first this year? There's a couple of reasons for asking for that, too. You guys put on, you two put on the agenda, that whole thing with the conservation. You definitely threw the part of it. And that's going to be in the discussion. It could be. And it will be. So I'm just going, I would prefer that we do our town meeting in the order that it was. I mean, that's why it was set up that way. Can I ask, is there a historical reason for going first? Does... We alternate. We alternate. No, no, but I mean, do people leave after the first print? Some do. Okay, so I guess I would like, I think it would be great to keep the town first because it would ensure we have a good audience for the down part. Maybe, does that make sense? Because I think it's, you know, it's sometimes it seems hard to get participation. This was great tonight. It was. It's kind of democratically working. When you get a hot issue. So, yes. I'm not coming up with a big reason to have, not have us go first. Sounds like we have consensus for us. Good. I think we're down to other business. I have one more. More things. It's not on my written report. Because we just received it today. But we received a letter concerning the, our request for redetermination, the common level appraisal. And it was very favorable. Good news. So that. Yes. What does that mean? Well, I don't know what they'd, ideally you'd be like to be at a hundred percent. Sure. And right now they're suggesting it should be 97.92%, which is close to under. Before they were down, I don't know what it was, maybe 93 or 94%. That means there's an adjustment they make on the state property tax for education that actually raises, increases the tax rate. So this would be less of rankings. But anyway, my point that I wanted to bring up this, first of all, to make you aware of this. But secondly, we have to decide whether or not we want to appeal this or not. And the select board had voted to file the appeal to begin with. We have, according to this letter, 10 days. 10 days. We have to decide whether or not to file an appeal. However, the hearing is scheduled for March 29th. So we have a select board meeting in between. I don't know whether or not the state will accept a written notice, let's say on March 21st. I think they will because they don't want to go through a hearing and normally you can opt out of a hearing at any point. I want to verify that tomorrow. If they won't accept that, then we may have to schedule a special meeting. I could not ask the board to act on this time. Right now. So it's not your agenda. We'll be a very short meeting. And Bill will give us his input on that. He thinks this is good. But we're asking for input from the Listers as well. And I don't have all that yet. So the implication of this is? Lower taxes. Lower than what the school board is predicting. Appealing would result in potentially lower taxes or this adjustment? The adjustment will. This is the result of an appeal. We can appeal it further by going to a hearing. So appeal resulted in a positive action? Yes. Vote on appealing again. Either you have to go to the hearing. Right. Which Bill would probably give us some of the information to say no, it's not worth doing. Okay. I'm anticipating. Right, right. I just bring this up because it's going to come up as an issue, whether it's coming up as a special meeting or whether we can do it in March 20th meeting. Do we know what the, how much we've gained? How much ground we've gained? Do we have any feelings? It'll all be part of the report when we get to that point. That's all I had this evening. Thank you, Rick. Is there any other business we need to talk about before we go into executive session? No, but I have, well, yes. Kind of sort of a couple of neighbors are complaining about unleashed dogs. And I recommended that they send an email directly to you to get that on whatever agenda. We actually already have a rule against that. I know that, but like enforcing it, and that was the problem that they're ending up with some dogs that are just really poorly behaved that are not leashed, that are causing more issues. And I said I would start with my association first, but I don't know that there was a lot of policing in the town could necessarily do. Enforcement's always difficult when it relates to that. Well, we seem to have broken up the pack and now that it will also be sent out to the public. There were way too many dogs up there that were off leash that weren't well-behaved. Well, there's a little off topic here, but there's the number of dog bites seems to be increasing too. Really? Where I say dogs biting people. Wow. Really? There's some, well, I don't want to get off topic. There are some aggressive dogs on the path. Enough that my dog shies away and she's huge. So, interesting. Any other business? I just have one quick thing that Rick and his wife and I went to the fire department awards banquet. Saturday night was very nice and good awards to our folks as well as some others from Essex, I believe. What was that? It was at what used to be the double tree. It's now Trader Dupes, I believe. Yeah, okay. If there's no other business, then I would appreciate a motion to go into executive session to do the annual performance evaluation of the manager. I'd love to go into executive session for the annual evaluation of the manager. Is there a second? Can we have discussion on this motion before we vote? So the question is, we don't have Ted here. And should we have Ted here for this? Or and or start on a night a little earlier so we don't feel rushed? Well, I would rather complete it before a town meeting and tonight's the night to do that. Oh, do we have to complete it before town meeting? We have traditionally done that and, but if the board would choose not to do that tonight, then we would put it off to a different night. My only question is, is there a reason to do it before town meeting? Is there a practical? Only, there has been in the past, of course, when you're not sure who the select board would be, it appears that the two seats are uncontested at this time. I've started a massive writing campaign. I have no objection. I just do is one little piece. I want to point out that I will be working without a contract, but I'm not overly concerned about that. But it is that and that's one of the reasons why it's always done this time. Because I started working for the town in 1998 in February, middle of February. So. So you're okay with it? Well, as long as I get paid. We said nothing about that. Nothing about that yet. At least 30 minutes, maybe more. So we have three, at least three issues to deal with. One is the evaluation. So I don't hear a second to the motion for executive session, which means that we can be adjourned. So we are adjourned. We're free. So I hope you're okay with that.