 Call to order the meeting for February 7th, 2022. Welcome everybody to the Waterbury Select Board meeting. As usual, the first thing we have to do is approve the agenda. Everybody's read the agenda. Nobody has any changes or additions. We can move forward with a motion to approve it. I make a motion to approve the agenda as presented. Okay? Second. Motion's been made and seconded. Is there any further discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Consent agenda items. Minutes from January 24th meeting. Certificate of compliance for town, road, and bridge standards. Liquor licenses for kidney drugs, maple wood, convenience store, wood stock, farmer's market, and the country club or Vermont. I make a motion to approve the consent agenda. I make a motion to approve the consent agenda. Second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Public, this is a time that people who come to the meeting have a right to express some concerns or topics that may be weighing on our mind that's not on the agenda. And also welcome to participate in agenda items as well as the meeting proceeds. Is there somebody that wishes to speak? Come on up and do you want to go? Tom, why don't you go first and then I'll go after this. I have some fresh information I want to share with the board. You can just leave through this with me. The first email here is I sent to Steve Lott, Speaker, a year ago saying there's class two weapons on hold. The area holds one and two. I hope Davy and he did not agree with that based on what he had for information. So if you go to page four, this is a fresh analysis as of 127-22. So Chris, you had asked, has they and I have been out there? Indeed, they have been out there. And as you can see, there are a class two weapons. Along the dredging ditch that runs under the footbridge, which would be holds 18. One and two is part of the contiguous weapons that come off of the blue area. Holes four and five, the weapons extend out there. And as the weapons down, it holds nine and 10 as well. And this is from some type of aerial survey that A&R did. The next step that they would do is to do an on the ground delineation of weapons, which this could greatly expand. As I said, there's a contiguous six acres already defined off of the blue area. So that's how this originated. The second thing that they have for you is if you go to page five, if you look, it's a wetland permit application for, it's called an after the fact permit. And it's for the smuggler's notch disc golf course. And if you look in the yellow, you'll see down in the reason for the improvements is for a correction of a violation. And this was done in 2018 by a woman named Dory Biden, who I spoke with. And if you look at page six, you'll see the changes to the smuggler's notch disc golf course based on the findings of the environmental analysis done there. So there's extensive relocating of holes, greens, extensive areas where there's no mowing. This is all class two wetlands. And you can see that anyone can file a violation. We don't know who filed this violation. Someone did. And it's 25 cents a square foot for using class two wetlands in ways that they shouldn't be used. And you can see that they paid almost $12,000 in fines after the fact, or however you want to call it. But they also paid for the analysis as well, which Dory Biden, who did this analysis, she just completed a similar analysis on 700 acres in Northfield. And she didn't tell me how much that cost smuggler's notch to do that. But she felt that she'd be more than willing to come to one of these meetings or talk to you, Bill, or whatever. But she thought that roughly $10,000 would do a fairly comprehensive analysis of the 28 acres just to flush out the basic understanding of the type of land that is out there. So Bill, you have said to me repeatedly that there would be money in the budget for an analysis of that piece of land towards the management state. And so I was surprised two weeks ago when it came out as included in the package for the skate park and whatever else. It's a separate piece of land. Now it's up to me. It's in the budget, Tom. Excuse me. The money is in the budget. $50,000. It's a special article request. That's how the select board decided that they wanted to present it to the voter. That's fine. I mean, you presented it to the select board. But you had told me previously that there would be, you could find money in the budget for a study of the area. OK. Well, the budget that gets presented to the town is the select board's budget. This issue has been talked about at nauseam, Tom. We've been dealing with it for a couple of years now. And there's a presentation. There's people at the rec committee. They had $35,000 here marked for this park to do an analysis of this park to figure out what the conflicts were, to figure out what could be done to take the next step to improve the things that I think you have been talking about for quite some time. There's another group that wants to look at the site down at the ice center. So the conversation around this table was, well, maybe for $50,000, we can get an economy at scale and get the consultant in to do this. So I think I held up my part of the bargain. I made the presentation to the select board. They've decided to ask the voters to appropriate $50,000. I think we can do what you're talking about for that money if the voters approve. I understand about two weeks ago, your market said at the meeting that can we do this ourselves? And Nick said, well, we've already completed the analysis. And so I'm just thinking, who completed it? What's the analysis? There has been no study. There's been no analysis. There's been no management. I don't believe that that's what Nick was saying in that conversation. He made the statement. We've completed the analysis. I don't think any of us on the select board believe that. Excuse? Go ahead. I don't believe that any of us on the select board believe that that work that you're talking about has been completed, right? So we're all expecting that to be part of this work that we're putting forth to the voters to vote on it. I'm sorry, Mark. Yeah, I know. We've been conducting, finishing that up. Yeah, I mean, but that's the whole point is that we recognize it. We believe that it's viable. And then we're asking the voters for that money. And that's why we put it as a special article. OK, but you're asking the town to vote on it, and nobody knows what the issue is. We have an open forum for discussion. There is news coming up. The informational meeting on the 22nd, correct? Is about these issues that will be on the warrant for town meeting. And anybody, you can either come here, you can come there and ask these questions to clarify. My suggestion to have somebody from the agency and natural resources come and do an analysis, I won't say for free, because we pay the state for their services, but essentially, at no additional cost or above what they already provided, and give us an idea as to what we would be faced with so that we know that going into this project that if an engineer shows up, we're not getting charged with something that's, I just had a friend come to me with a big set of drawings for the development he's in. He spent $4,000 when he wants to subdivide his piece of property. He spent $4,000 and got nowhere with this engineer company. And I said, and he threw the questions at me that he was trying to find out. And I said, well, I could have told you how to do this for nothing. You didn't have to throw away $4,000. So now he's kind of throwing a project into my hands and asking me to kind of hold his hand through part of it anyway. So I'm just saying I was trying to get the town's tax dollars stretched a bit further by cutting off a lot of unwaisted time and effort by hiring an engineer to tell us something that we already know if we can get somebody there from the agency and natural resources. Jane, you had a question, comment? Yeah, I think that the map, I looked at it before it came in here, Tom showed it to me. And I think the one that just came out on January 27th, I believe that level of mapping is from like existing data from aerial maps. And it's all interpreted, but without, I think what you will need is ground-truthing that, so to speak. When you send somebody out and they look at the, when the snow melts, they look at the plants, they take soil samples. And I don't know whether you can get that in ANR or not. You mean to go to a consultant, that's all I'm saying. So I think, I just think the public, maybe need to partake out for the public that part of this management plan, the bill of saying, should have some more detail about the wetlands. So I'll add one more brief thing. We don't know what that's about. He has an estimate of $10,000. I don't know if you can get that in ANR or not. For Jane and the wetlands, and I'll tell you this, a gentleman had a project designed, didn't turn out well for him because he had a tough time with a contractor. My name got thrown in there. He dragged me up there to look at it. I said, well, you're going to have to go to the wetlands, people, and get this thing expanded. It was a roadway through a wetlands. I said, but there's no way this is working. So then I called the engineer who had drawn the design. And he said to me, have this gentleman go to the state, the wetlands division, and ask for an upgrade on his permit. So he said, I don't really need to be involved in this part. So the state does offer those services to an extent. Yeah, sometimes they have to heart themselves to do that, or based on my experience of what to do. Okay. Anyway, I thought I'd try. My understanding that the process is either they can be asked by the landowner, either the town, to do a delineation, or there can be a violation which forces a delineation. I think we all understand and we've understood for a long time, Tom, based on the information you brought here, that you brought to me, that you brought to the rec committee, that there's wetlands. Nobody's arguing them. You said it two weeks ago for the first time. Nobody's arguing them. I said, I walked out there with you. Publicly, I know that, but publicly, it's the first time that this group has heard the word associated with Mayhem. Because you can't vote on something if you don't understand it. I know, I've been in this position before, Mike. Okay. Well, it's, I think it's a moving point because we have an informational meeting on the 22nd that allows the public to, you know, be involved and understand this to a larger extent. Right. But when it was talking, he was not saying that anybody had done an analysis. What he was talking about was the rec committee had reviewed and got over the information that Frank Spaulding had brought back with his experience from the state. And they said, this is kind of what we're looking for. That was presented to the select board. We talked here about that was pretty broad brush stuff that we would need more information than that. So there's $50,000. If we can't get this done for $50,000, Tom, there's something wrong. So I'm not sure what you're saying, that there's a lot of demand on a number one and number two, people have to vote for it. Right. It could just fall flat. Well, that's what the process is. I understand that Bill, but there's a disc golf course. There was never a vote on a disc golf course, right? You have a skate group that wants a piece of town land. Why don't you give them 10 acres, right? Just give it, say, do what you want with it. Tom, when you have put your face back in the tube, all our issues that go back decades, we can't change anything. All we can do is go forward, Tom. I understand. I understand. You can do it right or you can do it wrong and revisit it. So that's really up to them. That's up to the select board. Well, I think the committee's gonna stay in touch with the select board. And obviously there's supposed to, you were at the last one, right, for the last record. Me, too. Is it the last one? Is it to our understanding that they're gonna... Well, there's two components. There's the agreement between the disc golf group and conversations surrounding that use agreement. But then there's a completely separate conversation surrounding the planning for that area to continue to work towards a multi-use disc golf, hiking, et cetera, that that's the conversation that I believe is being loaded on for funds is getting money together to make a more master plan for that area as far as I understand it and all the work associated with it which would include this board. Well, and I think probably at that point rather than expediting part of that plan, they should probably come in front of the board. And I think they probably will, right? Let us know what they've got. I don't think the select board would not be, have full visibility to the decisions surrounding how that money's being spent. So that we can direct them in perhaps a better direction if for some reason they're jumping the gun on something. We can get some of these free services to eliminate some of those costs. Right, so again, someone has to make the ask. I think they're under the understanding that they need to come to us. So the next part of the process that I think, Tom, and I know that this is something that you wanna help in tomorrow. I expect the select board will wait until the voters make a decision on March 1st about whether they were gonna appropriate the $50,000 amount. If they do, then I think we'll go forward in a particular direction. If they don't, then the issue is right back here again and they'll have to decide what the next step is. And I don't think the select board will be prepared to just let something that is this difficult and delicate to just lie. I think we'll end up having to do something with it. Well, you know, you say ad nauseam bill. It's like, this is fresh. You haven't seen this. No one here has seen this, okay? This is no information. And it's relevant. As is the smart information. This is relevant, okay? It's real, okay? Can I ask a question? I'm very confused as Vermont Wetlands Program permit application to me. This doesn't, this looks like something that smugglers, this doesn't have to do with them. Look what it says right on it. It says correction of violation. So they had an existing course and due to being in violation of the use of the wetlands, they had to go through the permit process. But this is not for our disc golf course, though. He would bring that as an example and whatnot. This is what food happens. If you do things in a class two wetlands, this is what you're looking at. I'm just making sure. This is the correct measures you're gonna be looking at. Okay? Let's just say one thing. In looking at this map, I was, I think you should take a close look at the very corner of the map, which is where that your book is, along that property line. And I just saw this vector for the meeting. But it shows that that blue area that's partially obscured by the label there is a wetland where whole mine is. So something to keep in mind. Yeah, we, I don't think the select board would allow. This whole mine parallels the center. Would allow violations to take place. You know, we haven't anything to say about it. We'll operate through the proper channels and see to it that it gets done and it's supposed to get done. Yeah, you can't make an informed decision unless you're informed, you know? You can go with public opinion, but that's not an informed decision. We understand that. And if some parts of the disc golf course needs to be relocated to work with the wetlands, that's what we may have to do. And that's all part of this master plan. I hope the master plan happens. I hope the voters don't vote it down. But, you know, if they have to be informed it's the first I've heard of this information meeting. I'll be there, you know. So we'll see what happens. Hopefully people pay attention to it. Yeah. Well, that's their choice, Tom. I understand it's pick and choose. We hope for an informed electorate. Yeah. There's a half the people vote roughly or less, so that's what it is. Not anyway. And even less than that will probably attend the meeting, so. Yeah, I'm sure. It'll be spotty. We'll just talk about that today. We have Lisa on the line, so maybe she'll take interest in something. Yeah. All right. Well, thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you. I've had a quick question related to Hope, Jane Brown, among the Recreation Committee. The Recreation Committee had come up with an interim draft agreement for Hope Davy Park at our January meeting in the middle of January. And I wondered what the status of that was in terms of the select board. Because I abstained from voting for it for a couple of reasons. And I sent an email to Mark to Bill and Nick, but I didn't copy anybody else. And I just had a couple issues of concern about that I mentioned in my email. I was concerned that the group of disc golfers are not like an organized group, but that you have abilities to collect donations. And there's no means for accountability with that money. It's a long-organized disabled agent. In terms of the disabled agent or... And it seems like we've been going along here, a league play and all this other stuff, and we just need to be really... It just doesn't make sense to me. And it was disappointing that they would step up and form a group similar to what Boada has with the Putnam State Board for their bike. They hold the Putnam State Board for their bike routes, which is a very different level of group. Boada has a very organized group with that executive board and director and everything. So I don't know why they just golf after a year and a half for meeting with them and having them assemble that way. And I'm not trying to... It has nothing to do with personalities or people or anything. It just doesn't make sense in the town that you would have nobody responsible when they're collecting money for a way to account for that money, where it's going, donations. And in terms of management. And the other thing was something that was in there was about liability. That basically the town would be held harmless for activities of the volunteers and work that was done by volunteers. So that didn't make sense to me either from a legal student point, because the town has insurance for, from Vermont League of Cities and Towns for its power plants. So there's something is to happen there. You're covered by that insurance. But in this case, because you have volunteers doing the work, they are deemed, if something were to happen to a private citizen because of some fault of the volunteers, there's no, it's not covered by insurance for the town, even though it's on town land. The way it's stated, it sounds like you have to sue a private citizen if something happened to you. Yeah, I think there's been conversation about how that could be structured. I think it was all gonna, the question was gonna be legally how could this agreement actually be a legal document and if there was a question mark. But I think there's the bulk of the agreement and the hope that there's an entity that can be legally defined in that agreement. That's a conversation for the town's legal counsel and trying to figure out. It can't be, say it can't be as informal as Senator Chains with they turn in a volunteer list or whatever that conversation is, if that can be it, then you look to groups like RW or whoever else that maybe could have it followed or if they wanted to, you know, whatever. There's a lot of work that still has to be completed. I don't think there was any belief in that meeting that I was in that that was the finalized document forever, that's just the document that would be brought to the select court. I think there's plenty of work that's gonna be remaining including questions surrounding if they do receive funds, how those funds are managed. That was something I brought up in the meeting while I was there. So like, I think to think that the select court was part of what that also came in during budget season. So we're busy putting budgets together. I don't think, I think that work is important, but it wasn't gonna be brought into the select board through the budget season because there's a lot of conversation in that document. Some of which that could probably not happen within the board meeting. Couple select board members can review the document together, work with Bill, figure it out with the lawyer to find out what legality is surrounding everything that was written because it wasn't written by a lawyer and then decide on question marks surrounding the lawyer might write a strike. So I don't think any of us thought that it was just gonna show up to our meeting where we were gonna sign off. Well, I didn't know what the timing was so I'm just asking. I don't know if there is specific timing on that. I think the hope is that we get it in place. It would be great, I think if it got into place before spring, but we have some time. Okay. You know, there's a lot of work between now and spring to get that completed. Sure. But I think that first could be made, awaiting on the committee to make the first move, I guess. Well, they did. They passed it forward. No, we did. We sent you a draft, but two of us abstained from it because we had some issues with some of the things here as much as we'd like to get the agreement made. So you, I mean, the town has legal counsel, so. All right. I think you should vote no, instead of staying on the beach, you have no opinion. I think you're right. And in hindsight, that's what I feel. So, and I guess that's part of my opinion. Thank you. Thank you, James. All right. I'm on it. I went in and spoke with Bill. Oh goodness, when was that? Monday? Friday. Friday. The parking lot in between the bottom of the clouds building and the stowa or the Waterbury auto. 51 something. The parking lot there has turned into a little bit of an issue. You have some homeless people living there. When it's zero degrees out, there's a couple of challenges. One is you've got this gentleman who's throwing his bodily fluids out into the parking lot while he lives in the car. I know the mental illness is an issue globally. I know the homeless, the housing issue is a global issue also. Bill is, I know, been working on it and thank you. And I know Mr. Wooder is also trying to address the situation, but you've got a bus down there that people live in periodically. You've got a pickup truck. Bill, maybe you know it different, but it's. As far as I know, at nine o'clock at night when you see him sitting in there watching television on a Wednesday night, maybe it's their TV room. But at the same token, you have another gentleman who's living in his car, unfortunately. And the issue's gotta be addressed because you've got people trying to conduct business on either side and you've got patrons walking by watching what's going on out there. And I know it's a challenging question, but it's gotta be addressed. Bill, you mentioned that you have the state police they're doing the well check. And some of the autos, even some of the trailers there aren't registered. Is there a protocol with towns established for vehicles being left and living? I mean, you're giving KOA a bad name, so. I'm not aware, we have an ordinance that allows if vehicles are unregistered, they can't be left in municipal parking lots or on town streets. I haven't gone and inspected all those. My conversation with Bill Woodruff, I believe the pickup truck that the gentleman in question is the only one that's not registered. We allow those, we allow 51 Main Street, 51 South Main Street to be used as a place where people can park their vehicles so you don't have other off street options. We've got a parking van, can't park on Union Street or any other street in the village. Most of the parking lots, the old street parking lot, parking lots up on the Royal Main, all of those are places that we tow cars from. When 51, which wasn't a parking lot until a few years ago after the flood, we allow that parking lot to be used as a place where people can put cars that don't have other places to park. We used to have an issue with WDEV, they're kind of an overnight person there, people that would come in early in the morning, they'd park out on Snow Street, they'd get towed. So we told them, park at 51 South Main Street, we won't touch it. So I believe, or I've been led to believe, I should say that the pickup truck in question is the only one that's not registered. I don't know that for sure, but that's what Bill Woodruff told me. The issue is not leaving a vehicle on site, we have someone who is unfortunately living in their car. You asked about the photo on the car. But it was taking a urine bottle and pouring it out the window, and it was defecating outside the door. And I'll be more than happy to forward your pictures of what's going on there. Which is atrocious. I'm sorry, yeah. I'm just trying to answer the question you asked, which was the protocol about vehicles. And I'm trying to, maybe I'm too detailed, but I'm trying to get there. Details good. So I talked to Bill Woodruff, this pickup truck in question, we called to tow it out of there. When the tow truck arrived, the guy's in the car. The tow truck won't tow a vehicle, that's somebody's in. So, you know, we played this Katmos game. I talked to Bill today about this. And I told you the other day, how that the gentleman had indicated that he was gonna be moving along. We didn't tow the vehicle today, but when I went by, there was nobody in the vehicle. So I understand the issue. I talked to the woman who ran the business on Friday. She came down after you did. It's not that I'm not concerned, but I'm not smart enough to fix this problem right now. Before I came down here, I watched the news, you know, Burlington is getting ready to try to spend $3 million to address the homeless issue. In Barry, they're talking about how they're dealing with their homeless. The issue is everywhere. We have a couple people, and I'm not suggesting that bodily fluids or anything else is okay, it shouldn't happen. But I can't arrest the guy. And the state police, they've talked to him, they've tried to make available to him the knowledge about where he could receive services. You can't make somebody accept those services. So I'm not saying that we're ignoring it. I've sent, you know, don't worry if it goes down there several times a week to try to deal with the issue. If anybody's got a suggestion, I'm happy to hear about it. I don't know if we have an ordinance that prevents public defecation or urination, but even if we did, I'm not sure how I'm gonna enforce it. So it's a situation that, I understand why people are concerned and upset. I'm just being honest with you that I don't have a solution right now. So can I ask the first question is, that is still the property of EFUD, correct? So how does that fall into the jurisdiction of a municipality, does it? Well, EFUD's a municipality, so. It's not, it doesn't fall into the town. You know, it's a shared property. And I explained to Carl the other day that I had this conversation with Skip Flanders, who's the chairperson of the EFUD board. I talked to Skip last week or so about it. And I didn't want to tell Carl that coming here wasn't a good thing. You should know about the issue. You should know about the concern. But the property isn't owned by the town of Calgary. It's owned by EFUD. I happened to work for both municipalities. So talking to me is fine. I hope I didn't waste your time by telling you not to come here tonight. Because as I said, you told me that you wanted to come. And I think it's an issue that we all should hear. So is it, does EFUD have a legal authority to post no overnight parking in that facility? And could there be some enforcement on that through that avenue, if that were the case? Well, I don't know. Certainly they could decide to say that they're not gonna allow cars to park in there overnight. Then that shifts the problem for other people who are just looking for a place to put their vehicles because they can't leave them on the street, right? So there's a different problem that comes up. And if you pass a rule, I mean, in ordinance takes 60 days before it's effective. So you gotta back to that. But even if you could adopt a rule right now and say no camping in that lot, and if it was effective tomorrow, I'm still not sure what I can do to get the guy out of there. I'm not gonna go down there and point a gun at him and tell him he's gotta leave. So my bigger concern is if something like that isn't enacted, eventually it will be completely commandeered by homeless and nobody will want to park there anyway. So in my opinion, if we can take an approach like that or if E-Flight can take an approach like that, that may put an end to this problem to some degree. You know, you gotta come up with something and right now what's there isn't... That's all the problem. And as I told Carl, just so you folks know, I haven't taken this lightly. I communicated, I talked to the municipal attorney, Jonah Plain, last week about this. He's the attorney for both the town and E-Flight. So either one, you know, it's a challenge. It's not something that you can... If it was an easy problem, Carl wouldn't be here because it would have been taken care of. No, I'm sure you're doing the best, Bill. Nobody's questioning you. No, I know, I don't feel, I don't feel... I don't feel... A mental handicapped perspective, whoever is over there is smart enough to know that they need to be in their vehicle before it gets towed. So they won't be towed. So I kind of question that issue to a degree, but... I would like to just stress, Bill has done, he's been very cooperative, very cooperative and listened to my plea here. And I want to make sure everyone's well aware of that. This one's a tough one. Skip, do you have any other comments? Yeah. I would highly recommend contacting two sources, both Down Street Housing and the Washington County Mental Health. I'm sure they have both of them, kind of experienced with dealing with homeless people and how to intervene a lot better than we all may be able to. It's a tough issue. I saw that thing on the Burlington, they wanted to build a little ice shampies almost for the house. And I don't know how good that's of an idea that it is, but I don't know if this is gonna be... I think this is maybe an outlier versus something that we're gonna have a whole homeless camp. Maybe I'm wrong, but I just look at it. I think we need to deal with it on a case-by-case basis and hopefully it's not gonna become more pervasive. I mean, I can try to get Down Street or Washington County Mental Health. I believe those are sources that the state police talk to him about. Right, I don't know if they have. Make somebody go. Right. It's a tough issue with homeless. And once again, come to Spring Mell. There's gonna be a disgusting mess over there. Hopefully this is somewhat resolved prior to us getting into that situation. I thought about putting the border party out there, but that's kind of invites people. Yeah, that just says, come stay here. Can I ask you a question specific to that? So say you had a house and I decided I was gonna just start using my yard as the bathroom. There's nothing that says that, there's nothing within town ordinance that says that you can't do that. Not that I'm aware of. I mean, all ordinances are typically not written to cover every situation. So I don't know that it's more of a health issue than what the city says. You know, this is more of a mental health issue, sooner or later, if it's not addressed. And you know, you can't let sugar run down the line from your septic system. So I believe there's gonna be some requirements for septic treatment. Ian's got a question. Yeah, go ahead, Ann. You gotta unmute yourself or we gotta do it. Hold on. Can't hear you yet. Okay. I see him come and go because my living room window looks directly across at him at that pickup. And he comes and goes, and I know the state police have been aware of it since August or even earlier, because I'd spoken to them and I know they've gone over. It's been ongoing and I know everybody's been trying to do all they can, but there are, you know, limitations. And I saw the tow truck over there the other day and he was walking around the tow truck and just standing by his truck and the tow truck left because they can't take it if he's gonna be there. But the plates, the plates, the registration was June, expired in June. So it's, you know, I don't know what we can do. You know, others- That's why they've been posting some type of restricted guidelines for overnight parking or something might be a first course of action. I mean- Like I said, that's because a whole mother issue with people who don't have places to park their cars, you know, just looking to get their car off, you know, the street to avoid getting it. Like it's- Like ticketing people. Yeah, I've heard a lot of our town is here. That's a whole mother issue. You've got to- I have seen him change his clothes out there. He wrapped himself in a blanket and changes his clothes. He's doing this in front of a business and you have someone who is trying to run a business. I know. He has the patrons watching this excavate. Yeah. This is- Well, I think at this point, we all understand that it's an issue and we need to try to somehow deal with it. And the first course of action is to get a hold of Skip and EFUD and maybe either have a joint meeting where maybe you can approach him again and consider the options- Yeah, we're not giving up on it. Yeah, just, yeah. Do I appreciate your efforts? No, I do. No, no problem. I wish I could- It's something we have to- Yeah, your pain. Be careful. You know, it's a- It's a difficult situation. It's a very desperate- It's, we feel more all of it. Yeah. It's, the empathy is there. Okay. Thank you, Carl. Thanks for that. Thank you for letting us know. You got it, buddy. All right. Yes, we can hear you and thank you for your patience. Community broadband is offering a matching fund for any funds that we commit during the 2022 toward broadband through the CD5R. The VPDB Board will match child and contributions of state fiscal recovery funds allocated on a first-come-first-served basis up to a total of $13 million for the whole state. CD5R share is one and a half million dollars approximately. The total amount that a single communications union district or town, not a member of the communication, will receive from the pool of money is equal to the percentage allowed under underserved and underserved road miles formula detailed in Act 71. The funding will be distributed on a first-come-first-served basis and the deadline for submitting a letter of commitment is September 2022. All the details are sent in a handout on the updated Act 71. And you should have received that. A letter of commitment must be included in the grand application from the municipality providing the matching funds. And the letter must be submitted to the CEV, which is CD5R. So I am here today to try to put together a process to see if you folks are interested in matching funds for any contributions you can make in 2022. Linda, the $1.5 million, that's the total budget that CV5Rs put together for their work in this area or is it just water barrier? What is that $1.5 million? That's the amount of money that CV5Rs can ask the Vermont community broadband board for for all the 21 pounds in our district, in our membership. So I've brought a possible number that you might be interested in. So let me bring that up next. A water barrier has 72 miles of road to cover with fiber. This does not include driveways. The cost of the construction for installing this fiber is about $3 million dollars. Paying the construction costs coming from two sources, grants or subscriber range of service. Grant funds provided by Waterbury to CV5R will lower Waterbury subscriber range. But at every amount, each town agrees to pay towards the broadband in their letter of commitment. The VCBD will match our first conference of basis, deadline, September 22. There are 21 towns buying for the funds that have been allocated to CV5Rs shares of $1.5 million. So whatever amount of Waterbury committed to will be matched if Waterbury commits early enough to secure the funds. Funds that Waterbury commits. Plus the matching funds are due for broadband construction in Waterbury. If Waterbury, I'm gonna give an example. If Waterbury could contribute $125,000 along with the funds that are matched by CVBD, that would total $250,000 to get started on installation on the 209 premises with 25, three speeds or less. We have approximately 121 underserved premises. And 88 premises, which are low service fees. So what I would like to do through is try to find a process to see if the select four will be interested in going for some matching funds. So I think it would help the residents of Waterbury. Thanks Linda. I think because I'm on that 209 person list, I should probably refuse myself from discussions around any funds towards that, but I will hand it over to Chris and we will continue. So Linda, just the project to serve the residents of Waterbury is a three million dollar total project to complete? Yeah, because we have a construction of 72 miles of fiber. And if we proposed a $100,000, you're saying that the match would be equal? First come first serve. What's happened? First come first serve. So how does the other 2.8 million dollars get paid for as the process continues? Gringo, once you wait to pay for it, and that is basically ARPA funds, grants, or we charge people who are subscribers when they get on. So the bill is that the ARPA funds that we currently have, or is there additional ARPA tablets? I think they're the ones you currently have. Well, all together we're gonna get 1.5 million dollars of ARPA funds. We've included in this budget that will go to town meeting $700,000 after month 600 foot for the water, and $100,000 for the high center. So there'd be 800,000 left, right? We've used some additional money in our budget this year. But I paid that down based on the last meeting. So I can't remember exactly how much ARPA money is going into the existing budget, but it was less than, it had been a couple weeks ago before the budget was finalized. And what I would tell the board is that I was gonna have this conversation after town meeting with the new board, but I can say it now. My expectation, or my goal would be the ARPA money that we have used to support our budget, so to speak, not these special articles. That we would wait until the end of the year, and if we didn't need to transfer that money to, if we had higher revenues and lower costs than we had elsewhere, just like we did with tax stabilization fund last year, we wouldn't have to spend the ARPA money. You understand what I'm saying, I do. So Linda called and talked to me on Friday. Unfortunately, the process by which she's wanting to identify right now is how does the select board choose to spend any more ARPA money if you want to on this or any other thing? And we just finished the budget process. Unfortunately, this information didn't come to us during budget time, which would have been a whole lot easier because it could have been discussed. I don't know for certain my belief is that the way of the federal legislation is written is that the select board has the authority to make decisions on how to appropriate ARPA funds, but that's a pretty radical departure from how the select board usually wants to deal with the expenditure of public funds, which is to have a town vote. So I explained to Linda that there's no way to put anything on the budget at town meeting to address this issue. Unfortunately, it's 2022 and we're in COVID and we voted to have an Australian ballot meeting because you could have dealt with this issue from the floor if we were having an open town meeting to make a motion to appropriate additional funding. So the challenge is not only to identify how much money you want to spend, what the source of the money is that you want to spend, but if you're going to go through the process of letting the town voters have a say, then it's going to require another town meeting and so you'd have to warn a special town meeting just for this particular issue. If you want, I can find out and be certain about whether the select board on its own motion could appropriate money for this with the ARPA funds, if that's something that this select board or the next select board wants to do, that's your choice. I don't know for certain it's a choice that you can make, but I've heard through the grapevine, so to speak, is I've gained more information about ARPA that the select board as the legislative body of the community can make decisions, but I don't know that for certain. So I'm just going to do the math here on Mark. Yeah, go ahead, Mark. Thank you so much. Linda, I guess one of my questions would be, I think at one point I was presented to the select board like a user fee of $65, do you believe that without the funds of the town, this project wouldn't get funded or would be, is there a change in the speed of which this project would roll out? Based on, say, if the town were to pay $100,000, I guess that's what I try to understand the reality of this project in general, but what are your thoughts on, does $100,000 really change users' fees that much, you know, there are plenty of other ways that money could be spent via the town, can you kind of explain to the board what would potentially happen if those funds, obviously, matched money is always nice to have, but it requires matched money, so I guess that would be my question. And I'm a user, but $65 sounds cheap, so. Well, the assumption of the $65, as far as I remember, is that it is under assumption that the town will be contributing some of the grant money towards their town's fiber installation. Any idea how much, Linda, he'd interrupt you, but any idea how much of that of town money that would require to get it to that price tag, price point? They have not set a price tag on it. Because they don't know how much the towns are contributing yet, so it's kind of a vicious circle here. You can reduce the subscriber rate by making contributions, but they won't note that until they realize how much this contribution is better, come in. So just doing some quick math, you said there's, what, 72 miles? Yes, yes. In the $3 million, that's almost $42,000 in a mile. If you were to allow the subscribers to pay the bill on that, that's a difficult problem in itself, because until the project's built out, you won't get the full subscription payout. We'll have to take a bond. See, the provider would have to take a bond to get the construction finished. And as soon as the construction is finished, the bond will have to be paid off by the subscribers. So to Mark's point, the town select board, I guess, would have to be tasked with the problem of figuring out where the money, ARPA money is better used, I guess, at this point. And that's, you know. Chris, this is Mark. The alternate delegate is here also, and I think he would like to chime in. Do you want one? Yeah, absolutely. Don't be impressed. Hi. Good evening. Yeah, I mean, there's, we could probably drill down and figure out the actual subscriber amount, you know, if we did some real, real hard math, but that's obviously challenging. Like Linda said, we don't know how much people are going to, or the town's going to be giving. The bottom line is, obviously, if towns don't contribute, you know, then the match, the BTBV match won't be there. And so that's going to represent an increase in cost that has to be passed on to subscribers. So the bottom line is here, is the more that water barrier can give, and the earlier water barrier can commit to giving that money, the more likely it will be that those dollars given will be effectively doubled and will reduce the rate. Now, if I had to, you know, sort of guess based on the information that we have, if water barrier didn't give anything, we wouldn't be able to get anywhere close to that $55 per month rate. It would probably be in the hundred or more per month, which isn't terribly worse than the solid data but anyway, I'm also in one of the under-served, so I'm certainly buy this, but whereas if we were able to, you know, theoretically commit to that whole $3 million, you know, we could probably be well under, you know, $50 per month for that same service. So, you know, those are estimates, but in order to get to hit that target, you know, $60, $65 per month rate or even lower, we really have to have funding elsewhere. And also, we have to, you know, we have to have a certain number of subscribers. We have three people sign up for our service and we're not gonna be able to maintain those lower rates. But what is clear is that CBFiber is dedicated to passing any and all savings onto the subscriber. That's kind of the whole point, you know, besides the fact of serving the unserved or underserved is not making the profit, is passing anything we can on to the users and the purpose. You know, for Waterbury residents, whether they're underserved or not, that's just a really high-quality service for a low-cost. It's an option other than Comcast. So, doing the math again on the 2.8 million into the 72 miles, it brings it down to 38,000 miles. That's $4,000 less per mile. That's not a huge windfall. You'd almost have to have an infusion of that type of match every year till the project's built out in order to make any substantial headway on lowering the cost. And then, like you just mentioned, the subscriber buy-in to this thing is critical. And is there any information on how you will move forward with that? I'm wondering, you know, I'm trying to think outside the box here. How many subscribers would it take to, or how many subscribers are you looking to reach, I guess, do you have a number on that? We don't have this point. Well, the goal, yeah, I mean, the goal initially is, you know, the first goal is serving the unserved and underserved. That's the, you know, the initial goal. Yeah, I didn't know if there was a number. And you're building out to be, yeah. So, in one of the laboratories, we have 209 that were caught firing at the moment. So, let me, can I ask a different question? Because Chris just kind of indicated that, you know, maybe others would subscribe. So, you need to build 72 miles worth of fiber to serve the underserved and the non-served right now. But how are the people who are already served, how can they benefit from this? So, is there gonna be CV fiber that's going in all the places that is already served? Or are you gonna place into con cap? I mean, how is this going to benefit people that already have broadband capacity? Just stand with it, as the construction goes along the road, that if people have time step for being a subscriber, they will be connected immediately. We are targeting the underserved, but others will be all on the ticket on the service. Yeah, so I think Bill's question is, can you take, go ahead, Chris. I don't know if I can answer your question. So, there's been goals here that CV fiber is trying to provide. Number one is ensuring that everyone has access to high speed internet, including the current underserved and underserved that live three miles down dirt roads and don't have access to anything. And the second goal is to provide quality internet for all undersers in our service areas. Every single E911 unrest in water areas. Now, the initial build out includes those 209 premises that are underserved or underserved. And then the second year of build out for Waterbury is everybody else. Now, to answer your question, how does that help them? A simple answer is competition. If Comcast knows that your only option to get high speed internet is Comcast, there is zero incentive for them to offer better service or lower rates. They are going to continue increasing their rates, decreasing their maximum monthly bandwidth allotment which they're doing across the country and they're proving and CV fiber intends on serving the people and not the profit. I understand that. So, I guess my question is this, picking underserved road or an unserved road. So Mark Friar is in the room right now. He lives up at the Copper Ring Road. There's no, there's not good service there. So you're going to build a fiber cable that goes up Ring Road. What's it going to connect to at the other end so it gets service up there? You're going to have to build, you know, two miles of cable to, or fiber to get service to his place, but what's it connecting to down below? Is it connecting to Comcast? What is it connecting to? We're only 100, 100X fiber output cables. The ones we're installing. But ultimately, ultimately farther up the road, eventually it's connected to the internet, right? That's your question, where how are we connecting to the internet? Ultimately, and the answer for that, and by the way, anybody can read up on this if they are interested in more details on our website, cvfiber.net. But we recently found an agreement with an operator and that's Wayfield Telecom. So ultimately it's going to connect into the Wayfield Telecom network and they are ultimately providing the internet access and we're providing the fiber connectivity to the Wayfield Telecom and we're also working with them to provide any technical assistance that customers might need. So we're leveraging that existing network and wondering if we take that, which is all documented on our website, is they have shown just outstanding customer service capability and far beyond any other internet provider in the area. I would like to say that Christopher has stepped up to be the vice chair of the Planning and Development Committee for cvfiber. So right now I want to thank him for doing that. He is extremely knowledgeable from his experience with the committee. So thank you. I just want to say, I want to circle back. I really think we can't do anything about this because we have a budget in place. We kind of outline where we're going to be using ARPA funds. We don't have a town meeting, which a normal town meeting where a revision to the budget can be brought up at town meeting. That's just not available to us this year because of COVID. So I think our only choice if we want to pursue this is some sort of a special town meeting with the vote. I don't think at least between now and March 1st, this is kind of a moot issue. We can't really, I don't think do anything like that. As a matter of fact, even if some legislation lets a select board make a decision, I think I personally think I would rather see a lot more transparency and the voters have input on this. Just my opinion. We have until September 2022 to put in a commitment letter. Yeah. But that means a... I'm spending all the funds... Between March... I'm spending all the funds or thinking that it is for some research. That means between March and December that we would have another special town meeting to have the voters weigh in on what they want to do. Because I'm a little bit... I heard Bill's question loud and clear. And I see both sides. Chris, I think you had a good point where people who were already served by different forms of cable, what's in it for me? And unfortunately we're in a society that everyone looks at things like that. And if there's nothing in it for them, but if Comcast or any other provider kind of looks there's a new kid in town and that could make competition and maybe their rates are gonna go down, that could be a good plus for CV fiber to make a case of why they should come in town and why there should be some town investment. Hey Chris, this is Bill Shepulak. I don't know what your schedule is during the daytime, but if you have an opportunity at some point during the day this week, could you give me a call here at the office? Thank you. Okay, thank you. CP5 Roof is willing to get together with the select board and pursue different alternatives for this process. So if you folks would like more information and would like to get together to discuss it further, we would like that too. Okay. Yeah, I think it's, I'm glad you came to us tonight and let us know of this option. It gives us some time to chew on it and maybe come up with some artistic ways of dealing with it. Yeah. Can I say one more? I think Linda and I both want you to know that we're not trying to hold water very deep in the fire here or anything like that. We just, and Linda and I are one of us knew about the timeline of the towns I did or anything. We certainly would have come earlier or tried to, some of this information is just coming out on our side anyway. But ultimately we just ask that you all make a decision about, do you want to, kind of a choice between three things, find a way to amend the current approved budget. Number two, see if there's a way to use existing allocated budget or unallocated money in the budget for this project or just sort of understand like, okay, well, we can't do that this year. That might mean a longer timeline or increase subscriber fees. But, you know, those are sort of, you know, in short, those are kind of the three options. Okay. About 21 towns are in the same predicament that Waterbury is in, because everybody didn't find out about this until January, toward the end of January when this Act 71 came up. So all the towns are going to be in the same predicament as Waterbury. That's why we love our federal government so much. Eric, you go ahead. Yeah, I was just gonna say, you know, I think the important thing, and it's been pointed out, this is, it might go after the underserved immediately, but the infrastructure should and hopefully will eventually be able to reach any E-9 or more property. That's a pretty big deal. And I think that the future of, you know, information and what that means, especially as like the work from home movement seems to be a continued thing that I don't think that's going anywhere, that connection and quality connection and speed and fiber as far as I understand is one of the best options for that and even Comcast isn't fiber as far as I know for most of all of Waterbury. If the select board's gonna consider the money towards it, you should move fast because there's an option to match funds. So I would strongly suggest that the board considers, obviously it sounds like it has to be after Tom Media Day, but I wouldn't sit on this too long. But if for any reason you think that the board should consider putting funds, I would move as quickly as possible to try to get the match. I would hate to see the board make a decision to do it in August and the funds are depleted. So I think, you know, I wouldn't, and I would be very surprised if plenty of town people would come and show their support. You know, I expect a lot of people, I've been feeling like I have, you know, I've struggled to be connected to the internet for some time at my house, but I know there's plenty of people on Sweet Road that are also struggling just to find the ability to connect to the internet. And I feel for the kids that are in school trying to participate in school and like I know there's families on my road and I don't know how they do it. I have no idea, but you know, it's a real struggle for certain properties. Well, I'm just thinking out loud here. I'm just wondering if there's, you know, what the bomb options are for the entire amount and amortizing it out over time. I just, one of the options that come to my head as opposed to nickel and diming with this other process. Something that we need to visit moving forward here fairly quickly, I think. Okay, Linda. We'd be glad to attend as delegates for Waterbury. We'd be glad to attend and bring more expertise to a side meet. So, thank you for your time today. Okay. We hope you will decide to help the residents of Waterbury with this additional matching fund. Thank you. Okay, thank you, Linda. Christopher will certainly keep you abreast of, you know, opportunities to have a discussion as a joint meeting and try to get some resolution on this issue taken care of, at least step in the right direction. Thank you. Thank you very much. Great, thank you. All right, consider grant application on behalf of Friends of Waterbury Residual and the state aquatic nuisance program. Yeah, so we've already kind of budgeted for this in our budget. Friends of the Waterbury Residual have sponsored a Greeter program for a number of years. If the Greeter is fully paid for by state funding, it's passed through Waterbury's budget. So, the employees are employees of Friends of Waterbury Residual. They pay unemployment insurance, the whole line of actors. They pay those people during the year and then they report to us and say we spent $3,200 for the Greeter program and then we turn around and requisition $3,200 from the state. They pay us, we pay Friends of the Waterbury Residual. This process is in place because the state money is not available directly to not-for-profit organizations like the Friends of the Waterbury Residual. You have to have a municipality in between, but there's no match for us. So, the Friends of the Waterbury Residual have asked if the town would apply for a grant, has to be in by the end of this month, I believe it is. Asking for 70, for two Greeters. So, I think it's, if you ask for $7,200, that will cover it. And if last year we asked for 7,000, the state granted 3,200 to us. So, in the end, Friends of the Waterbury Residual asked us to reimburse them for 3,200. We got it from the state. So, they're gonna try it for two Greeters again. So, I would ask if you would make a motion to allow the town to submit an application to the state of Vermont, for a state and aquatic nuisance program grant in the amount of 72,000, so moved. It's been moved, is there a second? Moved and seconded in any early discussion. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. I have a pipe stain, because I'm on the board. Okay. Friends of the Waterbury Residual. Municipal manager search process. My guess is that the only reason. Yes. We've started to, the process with bills upcoming leaving, to look at options for a potential municipal manager search. And we reached out to Mont League of Cities and Towns. They provided us, I was actually quite surprised. Yeah, I expected it. I've been involved in other executive searches for non-profits and stuff. And I was expecting a lot higher costs. But they were looking at an estimated total cost between 6,500 and 12,750. I think it's going to be more closer to the upper end. And they gave us. What was that amount like? Excuse me? What was that amount? It was between 6,500 to 12,750 dollars. So it was cheap, but I misread it, so I didn't know that. Oh, I still think that, you know, if you look at headhunters, what they search. What I was also really glad to see, they use a consultant. The consultant that they're using is a former town manager of the, he was town manager in Williston. You know, he's retired from that. Sure, Bill probably knows him, Rick McGuire. And I like the fact that one, he's a town manager. Two, a town somewhat similar to Waterbury's size, somewhat similar to our concern. So I think he would understand what we would look in their thing. They talked about our search, you know, would be definitely leading to someone with very strong people skills, which we know that's critical, you know, in a search. You know, the other expenses, you know, they have as advertising expenses and they gave a schedule of different advertisers between $1,000 to $3,000. Candidate interview expense for $100 to $1,000, that would include travel for someone either to fly in, lodging, car, et cetera. A background check, that surprised me a little bit, but would be between $400 to $1,000. I guess they do a fairly extensive background check, but I guess in this day and time, it's probably more and more important. And they have some optional custom training in management and select board roles and responsibilities, which was $415. So, you know, the consultant would be the big chunk of the thing, would be between $5 to $7,250. Looking over, you know, I'm not gonna go over every details myself and Danny, both were involved in this process. We didn't wind up meeting because of different scheduling problems. We didn't meet directly with Vermont League of Cities and Towns, but I think it's something, and I guess I could, you know, I don't know, Bill, should we present it to all the numbers, to all the individual select board members, or just go ahead with allocating money? I know we already have money allocated in the budget. I mean, I tried to put some money in the budget. I think I have like $10,000 in the budget. Right, I think it was $10,000. It ends up being a little bit more than that. It's okay. Exactly. I think the LCT would be a good entity to hire for this. They clearly know Vermont. They know us. I've been involved with the League of Cities and Towns since, you know, 1982, and they really do have the best interests of Vermont municipalities at heart. You need to remember, and you can share some of these costs because I'm also the municipal manager for E-Fight right now. And, you know, I'm resigning, retiring from that as well. So, you know, I know we've talked about moving towards maybe a merger at best late this year. There could be a merger vote. You're not gonna be merged as an entity until after the next manager comes. So E-Fight needs to play a role in this process. There's nothing in the law or nothing between E-Fight and the select board that says they have to have the same municipal manager. They're one of the higher their own horse and they could. I think that would be counterproductive. So I would suggest that sometime soon you reach out to E-Fight and have a joint meeting with them and you can share these costs because VLCT isn't kind of double the costs to do rights. It's all, they understand that I'm the manager for both. So E-Fight can pick up some of those costs. I think, you know, probably on the order of a quarter to a third of that E-Fight would be about a quarter to a third of that. But anyway, I think that's a good start. I just think I wanted to get it on the agenda quickly because you don't realize how quickly time will come before, you know, we're gonna have to make a decision. And the sooner, as a matter of fact, they were involved in, I think they had the Norwich a town manager and they're selecting them in July. So it's- Well, you know, just to give you a heads up, I mean, Steve McKenzie, the city manager, Barry. And that's before I did. He's leaving at the end of June this year. Last week I read in the paper that Carl Rogers, the town manager of the Barry town, is gonna be retiring sometime in 2023, early as January, but definitely before the end of the year, if he decides to, you know, that he's gonna step away in January, I'm leaving in December. You know, there's only so many candidates to go around too. So I think getting a start earlier is better. And even if it ends up meaning that you have a longer period of time where two of us are working, you know, that I think we should start earlier. No, I agree. To me is we shouldn't wait too much. We should look at things. And as you said, even if we, and plus with all these other vacancies occurring, there's gonna be competition for the good candidates. So that's another reason for us to get going sooner than later. So what's your pleasure? I'm in favor of this. And do we have to have a joint meeting with ECO or can we just have an email or one of them stops by and they can't give me, have this on your agenda for your next meeting. And if you're willing to, you know, help cover the cost for this person for this. So it just gets done sooner. When does ECO meet again? They meet on the second Wednesday of the month. They're meeting the day after tomorrow. The agenda is already out on Wednesday. They could, I'm sure at the beginning, they could add it if somebody wanted to come. Right. I don't think that, you know, I certainly could just tell them that this process is kind of starting that they should budget maybe, like they said, a quarter to a quarter. Would you want me to share that email with you, Bill? Yeah, you can do that. Okay. But the joint meeting, Katie, is not necessarily to talk about the talks. It's to get the process going. You're going to want to have Rick come in and you're going to talk to him and he's going to talk to you and ask a lot of questions and that process. I'd be glad to attend the Wednesday meeting with you, bud. Okay. So if they have any questions. Is that 4.30? 4.30? Yeah. That's it. Any additions, Chris or Mark? No, I think it's a good first step. I don't think any of us sitting here has any idea of any other viable options out of this. I know some viable options but they're a lot more expensive. What's that? Other headhunters, which I know would be good. I think this is actually better for what Bill says is League of Cities and Towns are experiences with municipalities plus the person who they have as a consultant who's a former, who he's going to be leading the charge. He's a former town manager. So he knows what the issues are. And I like the way that they frame in their document that they said they're really leaning on strong people skills. I think they all, you know, I think they were a little soft on the budgetary aspect. I think someone needs to have a good handle on numbers and stuff like that. But I think people skills are very critical in this day and time. No, I agree. I think I didn't even know about the other towns that are losing their managers. So I think that creates an additional layer of challenge here. But I would rather see Waterbury find a candidate early, know that they have the candidate well before Bill's planning on leaving. And if you gotta pay a little bit more of overlap, I'd say that investment's worth a lot more than the risk of Bill leaving. So I guess the next step is just on Wednesday, meet with EFUD and flush them out. And then just go forward. I think what I would recommend is, you know, that you meet with EFUD on Wednesday, get a commitment from them to put money in the budget. You can talk, Mike, to them about scheduling, you know. I wouldn't do anything before town meeting because there's gonna be two new select board members at that point. So we should wait until the new numbers I would sign the engagement letter after the new board. Even before you meet with Rick or anybody else from VLCT, because, you know. They should be fully invested. You know what, and you know, unfortunately EFUD, they have a different timeframe, you know. They'll have, I don't know what their situation is gonna be, whether any of the, they have three positions that come up every year, just like the select board does. But their meeting isn't until May. I wouldn't necessarily wait until May to start the process. I think that the select board is the kind of driving force behind this. We know if merger happens, the select board is gonna be here. So, you know, getting started early, you can have conversations with them. You know, are you gonna want any citizen participation? You know, are you gonna look to put a couple of citizens on a search committee? You know, those are all decisions that the boards will make. And I'm sure Rick will be able to, having been involved in processes like this, give us good recommendations. Right. So would it be too much to ask or to take a five minute executive session for something that pertains to this particular issue? Right now? Yeah. Go and ask me, do you folks- Oh, would you want to make things easy? I just, I have something that I think the select board needs to know about. Well, I'm just saying, if we do it, just for convenience sake, to do, you're right, exactly, do it at the end. Is that gonna be a problem? Is that why we don't have to connect and reconfigure, you know, disconnect. Yep, that's fine. Okay, so we'll leave it open until the end. Yeah, I'll add that at the end. Paving strategy, which I think was added because it was sitting in the parking lot. You asked me to add it, and I asked to add it because it was the last meeting that I've been participating in it and sitting down there for a while. I guess, you know, I think this original idea was surrounding paving, and I know we've talked at length quite a bit, but understanding a strategy that we as a town take when it comes to the paving of our roads, and I know there's technologies and there's decisions that are made during the construction process that could potentially, some we, I think, have been proven, some are questioned, but just understanding, and maybe it's at the point where it needs to go out to someone who specializes in this, and maybe in a small investment someone who consults on this type of work, but, you know, just the question mark surrounding when you take on a paving project, if it's a reclaim versus a complete rebuild, the investment costs of reclaiming, or whatever, the maintenance that could occur on a road to avoid or lengthen its time with that investment cost 22. So there's a lot of conversation, and then obviously it's, you know, different roads have different impacts in terms of the amount of traffic and everything else, and there's a lot to it, but it just, from being on the board for six years, I still feel like it's a little bit, and I don't think it's a problem, we are a small town, and maybe it's okay that it's just waiting to tell them that people are like, my road's terrible, and we take on their road, but, you know, in terms of long term, I think the one thing that we see increasing is obviously costs, and paving is extremely expensive, and it's a large part of our budget annually that maybe we should really consider digging deeper into a strategy that potentially could pay off once that strategy is in place, and obviously nothing's fixed on its dome, but I just feel like maybe it makes sense to do something like that, and I know you guys have conversations, like have some kind of Excel document that sort of lowers the input. I don't disagree with you, and I, you know, I kind of spelled this out a few years ago, and for a variety of reasons, Main Street reconstruction, Chief Lungham. You know, I think we do okay. Could we do better in terms of long term planning? Yeah, I think, you know, I think, you know, with Chris's kind of prodding and everything else, we have ratcheted up the amount of money that we've been spending on, on tape. You know, for the longest time, we were spending a couple hundred thousand dollars, and I was very frustrated and expressed so, because the last time that Alec did a comprehensive plan, this is back probably, you know, right after he was hired in 2005, you know, he put together a plan and said, this is what you need to do, and the select board said, okay, we're going to adopt this plan, and he said, it needs $350,000 a year, and they never funded it. It was always funded by about two thirds, and that never changed. You know, Alec is now a part-time employee, and he's getting to the stage where he's becoming a more part-time employee, and soon enough, he's going to be not on board any longer. I don't know if that's going to be in 2022 when he'll finish up. He's working on some long and sewer ordinances right now for EFUD and our rate structure for the sewer system, because the sewer system needs a little bit of money. I don't see Alec having the time to do an analysis, and you know, he's a civil engineer, but he's not necessarily a paving expert. I don't think it's a bad idea to talk about getting somebody in. Again, we didn't put anything in the budget this year for it, unfortunately, and I don't know how much it will cost. Chris has a lot of good ideas, but I think if you really want a plan, it's going to have to be a consultant. Somebody's going to have to do the whole inventory and come up with a plan. And I told you before that our money was not eligible for surface transportation projects, except up to the point that lost revenue could be earmarked. There's changes happening to that in terms of how you can calculate lost revenue, which is basically giving us a bigger opportunity to use it for our regular budgeting stuff. And leaving the CD fiber out of the equation, I kind of expected that as 2022 goes along, the select board would start having meetings and public information discussions about, okay, we've got $700,000 or $800,000, how are we going to spend it? So it could be something that's done. I'm not sure we have the money to hire a consultant in this year's budget mark, but I think that that might be the, if you really want a plan that you're going to stick to, and that's where we have, I won't say failed, but we kind of are still pointing almost on a year-by-year basis at what's next in terms of what just seems really bad. The last couple of years, we have had a, it was probably four or five years ago that Bill Woodruff and Alec came to me and said, we could use a paving grant on the lower portion of Blush Hill, which is the class two portion of Blush Hill. And then shortly after that, we should do the rest of it. So we get the lower portion of Blush Hill, I don't know, three, four years ago or something like that. And then we'll get the upper portion last year, we're going to finish that this year. Stow Street, we kind of have had that planned waiting for the next paving grant which we've got this year. But other than that, we kind of looked at, okay, Stow Street's really in need. And if you look at streets that are close to Stow Street, which avoids more mobilization costs and stuff like that, High Street is, I mean, Hill Street is really bad, so we've got to get that. Swayzecourt, North Street. So we don't have a lot, some communities have actual plants that show what's going to happen in a five-year rolling cycle. And to get to that point would be nice. And we just have a chance to hear it. I think that's been a goal of mine since I've been on the board is to get us out of the current mess we're in with our infrastructure, at least our asphalt. I mean, the bridges are a bigger issue. It's going to take additional funding from other places, perhaps. But I don't need to interrupt, but we've kind of held in recently on a half a million dollars. That's about what we're spending on paving. And we kind of plan that out, and if we get a good year and prices are a little better or the estimate was a little high, maybe we ended up spending $380,000 out of the 500 that we had. But I think if a half a million dollars is what you're going to spend, what you should really do is to talk to somebody and say, okay, we've got a half a million dollars spent every year for the next 10 years. How should we best spend that? I mean, Mike Hedges, who used to, he was the pavement management person for AOT. He lives here in what? In last year. After we finished La Chille, he came to me and he said, you know, every year I see that you're doing these reclaimed jobs and those are the most expensive things. And I said, yeah, I know, but those are the roads that are really in the bad shape right now. And we can't just overlay them. But I think his point was that, you know, if you can put a plan out there, you know, maybe you can get to some of these roads before you're in a position that you feel the only option is to be playing. But I think you've kind of got the number. But what happened before, I think, was Alec went out and did the plan and identified, you know, these are the roads that are worse. And he looked at, okay, we can do this kind of treatment on this road and this here. We should come back every seven years or what have you. He did the plan and then said it's $350,000. And the select board didn't feel we could afford that. So they underfunded the plan. If they had told Alec in advance, we have $200,000 a year to spend, if you were planned to spend that, it would have probably been a better process. And unfortunately, the assumption was they would fund the plan that he developed and they never did it. So I think that's what you should do is to. Well, we did. Determine your amount of money. We funded it years later. Well, yeah, eventually, after 10 years, we'll come back. I mean, you remember, well, a number of years ago when I put a proposal in front of the townspeople at a town meeting, based on a seven year cycle, the number of miles and rows that we had, cost per mile at the time, we needed to stick to a seven year cycle, okay? Which is what the average life expectancy for an asphalt road in the state of Vermont is. It would have required 1.4 million. We were at less than 300,000. 1.4 million per year. A year? Right. Yeah. And we were spending 200,000. That's what I'm saying. We were under 300,000, so you can see we were falling behind exponentially. We've since come up to the half million mark. We're gaining ground, but we're still not where we should be. You know, and I'm currently happy with the amount of money we're spending. I'm not kind of happy with how we're spending it because we're just, you know, we're doing the same thing over and over. Well, I think that's what concerns me. What concerns me is moving forward, if we're supposed to be getting out of the fossil fuel business, if we're supposed to be, you know, turning a green corner here, what's gonna happen to the cost of asphalt? You know, how are we gonna be expected to maintain our roads if the fossil fuel industries are going bye-bye or who knows what's gonna happen with them? So I think it's very prudent for us to try to figure out how the hell we can lengthen the life expectancy of our roads because at some point, we're gonna see the cost of asphalt become probably untouchable, depending if you look at what is perceived as coming. And, you know, it's too bad we didn't have that ARPA money back years ago. I mean, we could have put a lot of our bad roads under utilize that foam application. I think we'd be way ahead of the game right now, but it's still probably not too late because asphalt costs are still relatively in the same part because of the things that they've done through research and re-engineering, the types of asphalt or what they're allowing recycled asphalt to be added into the mix and several different things are going on. There are solutions are, I mean, if we were to hire somebody or consult I'd like to be involved in that because status quo, I think, overlooks a lot of other possibilities. Some base is a huge problem in some of our roads. If we started to address those issues, I think it'd be money better spent, but those are things for another. There's a challenge with that. I think you're actually right, but if you've got a half a million dollars and then you decide to spend $300,000 on putting a good base under some road, that's the best thing to do with a long road is just you're gonna have to run on a lot, rough roads for a longer period of time until you get all the way through the process. And that's what the challenge is, has always been. And that's where hopefully you can find someone who is knowledgeable on the new technologies, understands the cold weather climate, maybe even understands Vermont and historical sub base or whatever that knowledge needs to be for them to give the most in depth. But I agree, I think it's, if you know you're spending half a million dollars, how can you spend it the most efficiently because boards change, management changes, it's like it'd be great to know that there's some kind of strategy that best utilizes the paving funds for a long-term strategy. I bet you that pays significantly if you could do it right. Obviously it takes the quality to consult them too and who that would be. I wouldn't obviously use a paving company, I don't trust that they try to do the best job to not look good enough. I don't know if they take on that. So it's an interesting scenario. And I think there was even a conversation about turning certain rooms back into dirt, if that would make sense. But having somebody help understand that challenge and help a board make decisions that are half a million dollar a year decisions, I think that's a small investment, especially now if you can pull ARPA funds in that you bring the funds in by loss of income and then you can use it for however you wanna spend it, that investment seems to make sense. I just don't know how much that costs. I mean that ARPA money, I mean that was one of the things that ran through my head when we were talking with Linda and Christopher was from an infrastructure point of view, is that money better spent doing some of those things? Putting it towards upgrades in certain roads to, and then use our budget to pave over them. You should use the ARPA money as the sub-structure. It's something that we need to talk about. But you're right, it's to have a plan in place. And I don't know if it ever got done. We had talked about keeping a timeline on newly paid roads based on whether it was a reclaim or whether it was just a grind and repave or just a repave, keeping some kind of a timeline on that road's life expectancy so you could tell. I mean some of the roads we know full well, especially over here on Stow Street, High Street, High Street Extension, Wizzle Mountain, those roads are horrible sub-base conditions, some of the worst in town. You know we know immediately without having to kind of keep a timeline on the paid jobs because they've been so bad in the past. The examples like Nealon Flats, I've been on that now for five years, and I'm just watching it and trying to understand what does a crack mean that you're now, the road's gonna start failing and if it's not passed with tar, is that a problem or is that okay if the crack stays exposed? How do you tell that a road has passed the point of being able to do a grind in a top coat scenario and I know we have some of that knowledge in house play. It's an interesting thing and not all boards are gonna be as sad as having someone who lives in that world, right? So having that knowledge that each board can pass on, it's a pretty important thing. Unfortunately, Nealon Flats is that point right now or I think a simple grind and repave is necessary, but we've got other roads and funds at this point not considering any of the ARPA money that need a complete repave. That's always been the challenge is that we have so many bad roads that if you go over there and you do an overlay by Nealon Flats, the people on the bad roads are all, which I wish my road was as good as Nealon Flats, you know? And that's where the challenge is that we have. And I think we all know that, but if we have this analysis done and you've got a plan put in place and this is what my hedges was getting at, it's like spending that money to overlay this road now and the line line is gonna allow you to address a lot more of your really bad roads because you'll take care of that for another seven years. And that was my goal is to get from emergency management situation to a management situation and then a plan would work. And we're getting there. I think we've made a lot of progress, I believe. It's a well taken, we can get that on the agenda for the new board market. Do you wanna do some research and nothing in the real near future, but who, you know, I have not a clue where to find these kind of consultants. Just kind of get an idea of where, what the costs are, et cetera. There right there, we've got some of those cross-testaments that part of the challenge is that, you know, we do have Alec working for us. He says, oh my gosh, why would we pay somebody to do all that? We can do it. Exactly. But it's, you never get it done, you know. So sometimes paying to do it, if you can get the end product as opposed to, oh, we can do this ourselves and you just don't ever have time to get it. Sounds like projects around my house. Okay, thanks. Discuss February 22nd informational meeting, regular meeting date of February 21st is on holiday. So from my perspective, I didn't think we needed to have a select board meeting to plan for the, for the informational meeting. I think we've been through enough all through the month of January, you're pretty well first in it. I certainly can speak to it. So from my perspective, I think we can just meet on the 22nd and go through that information meeting. Carla has, I think, did you set it up? I set it, I have copies. Okay. You wanna look over it? What time does that start again? Seven. Seven, okay. Are you good, are you good? Yes. So we, with your approval, our plan is to hold the same format we did last year, which is a webinar format, I assume. So it's just a little bit more orderly. People have to raise their hand or they'll be muted and they will use a Q and A format. We just have to make sure and it will be that the meeting is accessible by telephone, by Zoom, by in-person, which is what you decided at your last meeting so that everybody has the opportunity to participate. Can you remind the board and myself how that food dirt, were you running that? Who was kind of leading that? Yeah, so I think it's set up as an agenda for a select board meeting because that's really what it is, right? So at the beginning you approve the agenda, there's a public, there might be consent to the agenda. So you kind of go through that. Then last year, what we did, once you got through those kind of perfunctory agenda items, what it came to discuss, whatever was next, what's the first thing on there? You did some introductory comments and then consider the reports of town officers. So that's not on the ballot. Do you have to copy? So, oh, consider the reports of the town officers. So under that agenda item number two, Mark, you kind of, as the chair would ask, make whatever comments that you wanted to make from the chair's position about 2021. Turned it over to me and I hit the highlights in terms of summarizing the budget that was spent last year and why we have fund balances and the like. Kind of set the stage for the discussion of this year's budget and then the first thing on the budget is the presentation of the capital budget. I can talk about the numbers and what the board has proposed to spend in 2022. Board members can chime in about things that are important to them. Public asks and then we go right through agenda item number four is the pre-operated plans. And again, I'll talk about that. The board can say what it wants, people can ask questions. So I think numbers from call to order through number two, Mark, I think you are kind of the lead person of those. And then at some point you'll turn it over to me and I'll just address the numbers and see if people have questions and then either the board can answer them. So that's like a conversation of potentiality. Who knows? Being lengthy, the whole Davey thing could be somewhat lengthy. Depends on who. Depends on who's there. Well, and I think we have to also control some kind of expectation for discussion. So things don't go too long. So we can do that right at the beginning. Which is nice to have some time. Have people limit their comments to two minutes or less? If we're doing a limitation, can you put it on the screen when you should be able to get the clock time? Or is that, I think rude? Can I do what? Like you have like a timer going instead of having like, you know how Danny does it in person here, but they can't see the time going. So sometimes they talk over and we can't get them to stop. So just so they can see it. I think we just asked for a soft two minutes and if it gets out of hand, we can just like the president of the base with the green light and the red light. So I can do minutes. I mean, it's nothing more insulting than if you've got a valid point you're trying to get across and somebody hammered. From what I understand, that's what the school board is like. It's like, boom, you're done. Yeah. I've been there. That leaves taxpayers really, kind of give on people a little bit of a cord, but also you have to respect people's time. Naturally, it's a give and take and do of that. Any other questions on the news? All right. Moving on to managers items, the Duxbury fire contract. Yeah, Sue, did you bring those? So when I presented to you the fire contract that I had sent over to Duxbury, if you remember I told you that I pointed out to them that the formula by which we determined what the contract price is was, one of the factors in that was the Duxbury Grand List and that the town of Walgreens Fire Department does not cover the whole town of Duxbury. And a couple of years ago, the Duxbury Select Board when I went over there said, well, we don't think that we're really whatever it was, 18% of the whole. Our Grand List is different than it was 10 years ago when this contract was put in place. I said, well, if it's different, you need to show us how it's different and we'll change it. So when I sent the contract over to them at the end of December and we were gonna get, I think you're at $17,000 or something to that degree, I told them, I said, if I know I told you folks here, I said, if you can show that your Grand List is different, we'll do it this way. If it's, if you're gonna get a lower price, we'll put it into effect for this year. If it's gonna be to Watery's benefit, we'll hold off and wait until 2023. It was a way to kind of incentivize them to do it. So I didn't know at the time, I should have, but Dan Sweet, who is our assessor who works for us 28 hours a week, he works for Duxbury too. It does that over there. So when I sent that over to folks in Duxbury, they talked to Dan about it and then Carla told me that Dan worked for them. So I talked to Dan and he said, why don't we get this done? So they've done it and it's slightly changes. So the fire contract for 2022 is 112,070 dollars as opposed to what we had talked about before. And I did all of it before, I think 107 wasn't it? 117, I believe, all of us, yeah. So I did go ahead since I got this information before the town report went to the printer. I did change it in our town report for in our budget. So our fund balances are a little askew from what we talked about before, but I would recommend that you make a motion to approve this contract and sign it. I have, oh sorry, go ahead. I was gonna make a motion to approve the contract, a fire contract with the town of Duxbury as presented. Second. Second. And move it in second. Any further discussion? Although some favoritly say aye. Aye. I was just gonna say I have a bunch of things you need to sign to go on and off again. Okay. Yes, a few local licenses in that world of bridge standards thing. Oh, we still have our executive session. Yeah, before you go home tonight. Okay. So, was there anything added to the agenda other than going into executive session? I don't know that we're major there. For executive session. To, that someone should make a motion to go into executive session to discuss the personnel about the move. It's been moved, is there a second? Okay. I know one second. Okay. They just said that we return to open session. We are exiting executive session and returning to open session. I'm gonna take a no action. We've taken no action. If there's nothing else, I think we can take the motion to adjourn. So moved. All right. Second. Okay. Please say hi. Hi. Hi. Thanks everybody.