 Okay. Great. Okay. All the cows select board needs order as well. Okay. And we're calling the media order at six. Oh, five. Um, so we have additions to the agenda, I think. Bruce. Yes. The only application. Yep. Okay. All right. And then we're going to move. The minute. Oh, no, we don't have minutes here. Yeah. Okay. Got it. So let's. Move to our special joint meeting with the Cal select board to discuss. He's popular fire department, FY 20, 23 budget requests and fire engine purchase options. Um, so what does the Cal select board think of the budget? Let's just start with that. Okay. We have agreed to put into our warning. The budget amounts requested by the fire department. Okay. Yep. So Denise, are you, you're going to vote, vote at town meeting on the budget. Correct. And we learned today that. I think it's going to be. Yeah. So that's one 72 past. He's expected to sign it like tomorrow or something so that. All of our articles will be by Australian ballot as they were last year. Or because of the pandemic stuff. Everything will be by us. We will hold an informational meeting. And I'm going to ask the board to talk about when that meeting's going to happen. Okay. So we have a prior to town meeting, which is February 26. When do you hold your. Uh, we try to hold it when we have our select board meetings. So we'll, we'll have, I'm not sure we haven't discussed how many we're going to have, but we'll have as many as possible. We generally have those on the Monday before. Town meeting and we may have it. You know, other Mondays. Before that. You have more. You hold them more than one information. Yes. We, we like to because. Especially with no open town meeting. We want to get out as much information as we can. And if we do the mail in ballots, which we may do that, we haven't decided yet. We like people to have an opportunity to discuss the issues as much as possible. Yeah, we should. We can call select or can talk about it. We did an informational meeting last year and it went really well. Yeah. But you only did one. Right. Yeah. That's where we used to do things on the floor. So this was almost. Yeah. Yeah, we'll probably have more than one. We did last year. So. Okay. So. Did you have equal level turnout at both? If you had two last year. I think we had more than two. And, but good turnout at all. And a diversified turnout. I wouldn't say we had a great turnout every single one. As I remember, we did not. But we had some turnout. Probably most at the Monday before. Is that correct Bruce? Yeah, we had the three of them in. Two in February than the night before. Yes. And evidently the most was the night before. Yes. And you did that. What's that? You do it on zoom. Yes. Yes, we do. I wasn't clear. If you had three meetings, were there different participants at each of the meetings so that. I mean, if it's all the same people, then it's maybe not worthwhile. I'm just wondering what the spread is. No, it's different. People. Okay. It's good information. Thank you. Yeah. Okay. So, um, I guess we'll have to go. What's that? What do you want to do first? I want to ask the East. What, what they think of the budget is I'd like to get that done. I think Judas concerned with a budget last time. Uh, that. Vaccines for the health workers were going to cost more money. I think that's what I got out of it. Um, I'm sorry. I was concerned that the. Not having a vaccine or testing policy would result in. More, um, EMF D employees being susceptible to COVID resulting in absences, which would impact the ability to provide service, but would also impact staffing and the need to hire. Staffing, which might be more expensive, blah, blah, blah, blah. But we've, I've seen, um, their new policy and I appreciate the efforts that they've made. So I, um, I no longer have that concern. Thank you. Well, the chief is here and he can go over the policy with you. We're not, we're not going to eat up all night on it, but I've talked to chief tide twice about the policies. He's given me a huge amount of information. He's got a lot to share with you. Is that what you want to do? Ty, right now. I, I, I also want to move on to the beyond the budget. Um, we have Judith, myself, John, Amy here. Um, what do you think, what do you think about the fire department, ambulance service budget? Uh, the rest of the small police life board. I'm fine with it. I approve it would approve it. Yup. And Amy. So why don't we get that out of the way, make a motion to approve that budget? I'd like to see that happen so we can keep moving the conversation on. I would move to approve the East Montpelier fire department budget as proposed. I'll second it. All those in favor, please say aye. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. The eyes have it. They appear to have it. They do have it. So the budgets. Past. Um, now. I, I'd like to move to the truck. Is that something you want to move to Denise? Sure. Okay. So the proposal that the fire department has made to us. I'm just going off the top of my mind here, I'm going to pay for a little over half the truck, which is 400 and some odd thousand. And as the towns for about 200,000 130 was going to come from East Montpelier and 65 from Calis. Is that correct? Everyone. Yes. That's one of the proposals they've made. I personally think it's a very fair proposal. I don't know what the rest of the site board thinks of it. I don't know what Calis thinks of it. I don't know what the rest of the site board thinks of it. I don't know what the rest of the site board thinks of it. I don't know what the rest of the site board thinks of it. Here we go. I think from Calis perspective, the fact that they're paying a. A huge part of. I think our. A huge chunk of the truck is really. Really. So you're saying. Calis is willing to pay the 65 and. We're putting it on our warning. Okay. Yup. Okay, good. All right. Fair enough. Thank you. Thank you. Judith, John, Amy, what do you all think? Yes, John. I think it's a, I think it's a really good deal. Actually, I don't want to get, I don't want to get cheap rolling too much credit, but. I really appreciate the fact that he picked up. We're going to pick up that large. Or larger share what I expected of the truck. Yep. So I, I appreciate it. Yep. I'm on the same page. With John. And Judith. Yeah, no, I think it makes sense. I would approve. I think one of the things I talked to tie with. Is if we put it on the warning, which I'd like to do. We do need to say the percentages that the fire department's paying what the town's paying. And make that quite clear. How much the fire department is stepping up. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. Yeah. I've heard the article in the warning in such a way that it clears that up. It makes that clear. Which I think is in everyone's best interest. The townspeople know what's going on. And that's a good thing. Yeah, I think the clear, we can make it better. Yeah. Yeah. Yes, we know it's a huge expenditure. The fire department is going to pay a lot of it. I think that needs to be made clear. And we asked the townspeople to approve this. So we can do this on a consensus. Just we don't need a vote or anything, a promotion or anything. No, we don't. Yeah, I can say, I think your consensus is fine, because we're just talking about putting an article in the warning. Then, and then when the warning is done, the two separate boards vote on approval of the warning. Yeah, but. Are we doing that tonight? No. Yeah, we're going to, we're not ready to, we'll be doing that next week. Yeah, we're not ready to. Get up articles. Okay. Okay, so. As a consensus. Does a select board think it's a good idea to put this on the one. Yes. Yes. Okay. Great. All right. So we're callous. Are we done with the fire? Okay. Yeah. I just had a quick question if there's thoughts on how it would get paid for in terms of like loans, would call us take loan for the 66,000. The small pair would take a loan for its portion. Just so we have a sense of that, if what it would come out to be, you know, once the votes go through. In terms of actually purchasing the truck. That would have to take that alone. Okay. I am not, I am not for taking out alone. We have money in our capital reserve. I think we could do it. Without it. So the goal is the goal is a small pair would. Support its funds through the capital monies. Call us would take out a loan for the 66,000. Or 65. For its portion and then he's up there. Fire department would take out a loan for the balance of that and carry the note through paying off of the capital. Over the next few years. So basically each entity would pay its own portion on its own indebtedness. Yeah. That's, that's my take on. Now, I might be off. Is that correct, Bruce? We're throwing numbers around. I thought we'd agreed on the numbers. Hopefully we'll get those straight out. But as far as the east one failure of being able to take it out of its capital reserve, that's how the warning is phrased right now. Yes. And that's my perception. Yeah. And do we is just so unclear is the fire department taking money out of their capital. Reserve. Or not. We would. So we would take a note out with the bank for the balance of. Beyond the 200,000. And we would carry that note, paying the payments out of the capital reserve account on our side. Yeah. With the anticipation then on the front side of it. You know, Calus would have put in its portion. It's on third and he's about there when it's put it in its portion. Yeah. My question is, is do we have to authorize the expenditure of. The money out of the capital budget. Yeah. Well, I think, I think that would be an action of a one time action that would cover the lifespan of the truck, but I think that would be an action of a one time action. And I think that would be an action of a one time action. So just as we have with the other apparatus that we're currently paying for with loans for the ambulance and rescue to. Okay. So, so our warning would be structured so that it, it authorizes. In addition to our. Taking a loan out for our share. We would authorize. That expenditure. For the. Yeah, that sounds fine. No, that's not how we would do it. Oh, you would do it two-fold then. No, we would not put before the voters, the use of the fire departments capital reserve. Oh, right. Of course not. Right. Yeah, we're not going to put that in front of the voters. Because that's something that we always do ourselves. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. But we're kind of. Approving it. Right now, even though we're not formally approving it. Right. Before you buy the truck, we'd have to do that, but it's implicit. In this meeting that we do approve that. Is that. We're not going to. We're not going to ask the voters to come up. To approve us taking the money out of the capital reserve and we're not going to approve. You guys taking the money out of your capital reserve to pay for the truck. We can't approve. Well, there's no point in approving that until we find out if the voters. Approve. The expenditure. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we. Yeah, but it isn't really because the way we've. We've structured in the past. Is that we approve. We're not going to approve it. We're not going to approve them taking the money out of capital reserve. To pay for those payments. So that would. But it's an implicit. That we're approving it. Even though we haven't formally gone through the process. By putting it on a warning. Right. Right. That would be the effect. Right. The effect is that if the call of the voters past that. Yeah, we would have to do that in a formal meeting. Right. Yeah. Right. So. Is that your, is that good? You good on that? Yeah, I think that sounds like it covers it. Then you guys will have a warning that's written jointly between the town. So it will show. The same wording in Calis as well as. In East up there. Yeah, we should coordinate on the word. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, I think that would be important. I think that's important. Yeah. And I think the other thing to know just even once the approval. You know, if it gets approved that town meeting. And once the truck has ordered this truck would not arrive until sometime. At the very best in the early parts of. May or May 20, 2021. 23. Maybe mid 2023. The way things are going. Maybe just for your calendar years. Cal. Cal calendar year 2023 on that. So it would, it would not arrive for. Minimum 12 months, maybe the 15 months after ordering timelines. So, you know, if it was ordered sometime in the May, Okay, so we've done the budget and the truck. Is everyone satisfied with those two items being. Approved as they are, and we can move on. Is the other reason I have a question. Okay. Based on the timeline that you just put before us. I guess it's a question to you, Bruce. Is there any issue with voters approving something in March? 2022 that would not be an expenditure until possibly after July 1st 2023. But actually just the opposite here because of the way. It's just like we're going to do it when it's possible to do it. Yeah. When it's proper. Right. Okay. We're approving our budget for 2023 years. So that falls. That's moved as well. That's we're budgeting for 2023. That's we're budgeting for 2023. Provide it well. Meeting. So if the truck is purchased. We, you know, if it came in 2024, it still wouldn't matter. I don't believe as long as the expenditures made before. But yeah, I don't think this could authorize an expenditure. Where the money flows out of the towns in 2024. I don't know. I don't know. This is fiscal 23 and it sounds like the truck would come in. 23. So it's not an issue. But where it would be an issue is if it's a major payment that has to be made when the truck arrives. When it's picked up. And that doesn't happen until the second half of the calendar. 22. No. 23. 23. If it happens in fiscal 24. It would happen at 24. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if the truck doesn't come in. Year 23. Then we would have to re-worn it for fiscal year. Well, unless it had been totally. In other words, it doesn't matter when it arrives. What matters is what the money comes out. Yeah. So we just need to pay for it before. June 30th 2023. That's what we're saying. Yeah. Ty. Yeah, so there would be no issues with that. There's no penalties for prepay or anything. There's some benefit. You know, we save a few percent, but it's very little on the prepay. But there would be no issue of towns approved the monies to go ahead that we could go ahead and take those monies, but we're going to have to take those monies. So that's where we're going to be. So that could be done within the fiscal year when you needed to. Paying the payments to the manufacturer of the truck. And take care of that issue altogether. So it would be a non-issue. Yeah, it's a non-issue. I think. Okay. So. Do we have anything more to ask of Ty? While he's here? Yeah. I guess. We didn't receive a copy of the policy. So what is the policy? That's twice here that. It's more of a question directed from Eastmont Fair, several select board members in Eastmont Fair to the Eastmont Fair fire department of if we were all vaccinated and things and the answer is no, we are not all vaccinated. We have several members, we have several staff people that are not vaccinated. We can forward you the all the information basically you have, we have extensive safety policies and COVID guidance policies has been in place since the very beginning of this. They're ever changing for us working with the health department, working with the hospitals as well as internal and you know in any any world it's difficult to mandate somebody to say hey you have to be vaccinated not vaccinated but the option we adapted the only thing that changed that we've done to what we already had in place was adding the option to have somebody test weekly if they choose not to be vaccinated and that will be implemented and started as of February 1st 2022. So that would be a requirement the testing time? The testing will be a requirement for that you know and again that will follow CDC guidelines for as long as those pieces look like they're in place and things eventually this is going to be the new normal and a lot of these you know things will change in the justice as everybody's seeing. So that's the current policy as to what you see we'll get it in front of you guys when you can see it but. Ty, Ty so PCR test is the accurate one as we know it would seem to me to make sense that you require a weekly PCR and then when someone arrives on duty they do the 15 minute test in addition because there's a lag a three-day lag on the PCR and so if you require the weekly PCR test and then when they come on shift they do the 15 minute test just to cover the gaps and then you're good. Yeah I think if you read the guidelines we've got to I think they're most likely with that it would be if we receive a positive test from we're probably going to do antigen tests internally on there to start and if we receive a positive test then the employee will have to go have a PCR test to clear where they need to be. But the employees can have a negative test you know quick test and be contagious. I just talked to somebody who came out negative on this and then it turns out they had it and they were sick as God. I really don't see how it's even conceivable that we would let someone to be in an ambulance with sensitive people if they haven't been tested on the the more accurate. The antigen test is 50% efficacy so you know you guys are EMTs I would think you'd be most schooled in that and I like Mark have a family member who their their daughter tested positive with the antigen and what's positive the mother tested negative and with the PCR was positive. So just FYI you're going to be potentially the EMTs anyway not the fire people but the EMTs are going to be going to houses increasingly of old people like my neighbor who's on her last legs and they could be potentially the reason that the person doesn't make it if they expose them and you know just so you know my understanding is with the vaccines that those like me who are boosted actually mask the symptoms very well and so I can actually be highly contagious and if I were an EMT in fact that say an elderly person who's immunocompromised and killed them unwittingly so even for people who are vaccinated it's really important that they get I think at the minimum the antigen test to vaccinate people I think everyone should get a PCR if they're on the EMT weekly and then the antigen test to fill the gaps. You've got Travis here this had his hand up for a while can you let him speak? Travis Schroesman. Very quickly I am a prior EMT and my wife actually works at CVMC right now in labor and delivery which is also urgent care for a lot of people who come in both with COVID positive symptoms and otherwise and one of the things that they are seeing quite frequently at the hospital is a rapid test at home proving negative and the PCR coming back positive it's a new phenomenon that's taking place right now so it's not really that effectual to say that we're going to put all our trust in a daily rapid test and think that we're all going to be in any way prophylactic to the actual COVID vaccine or the virus that's out there right now. What I will say though is that as an EMT that also worked a lot with law enforcement and hospitals the rates have been well over four times the amount of COVID spread among first responders that are out there so there are people right now I mean even a co-worker of my wife you know in her family law enforcement as well tested negative at home positive at the hospital after she had already been in contact with sensitive populations of people who had no ability to get the vaccine. So policy-wise I think and this is my own opinion right now the most responsible thing to do would be to mandate that people do get vaccines and when we say we don't hear about anybody ever mandating vaccines well that was actually the policy for all our school children up until the COVID happened that I mean I got a call the other day about my daughter not getting a HEP A vaccine booster in time and I said you're calling me about HEP A during a pandemic that you're not mandating a vaccine for that don't we find that a little strange and so I always found that if I was going to be in the best care scenario like I trust my own body I trust my own health I did get vaccinated but you know I'm a pretty healthy guy I don't want to be walking death sentence to somebody unwittingly and that's kind of where my policy would be right there to do the most diligence I can if I can have a body that can receive a vaccine to not be able to be in a place where I'm going to affect my co-workers and we're going to lose time and then have to hire people um and stress the very thin amount of workers that we have currently right now anyway so that's my two cents I'll be quiet for now thank you thank you Travis thank you so I have something else to add I know it doesn't surprise you John do it no it doesn't surprise me at all I'm still awake though so we kind of call us and I think maybe East Montpelier we were sued fire department were sued uh under the legal premise that the East Montpelier fire department was our our designate for emergency response and all that stuff and our insurance did not cover us because East Montpelier fire department passive would not cover us because East Montpelier fire department was a private non-profit and they weren't a municipal entity so because of that I don't feel one that we can compel East Montpelier fire department to do anything because they're a private nonprofit but at the same time it sets us up for massive liability if the EMTs if we're funding a program such as the EMTs and the trucks and all the training and everything else that leads up to someone knocking on someone's door with a stretcher at hand um we could be sued and I think there's very good argument we would lose for actually getting ourselves bound up in contracts and and funding programs that are maybe in the eyes of the law not protective of the populations we serve so I just want to put that out there folks good point John thank you well we may not be able to propel them directly we have a contractual relationship with them we can write whatever we want in the contract well right I guess we could but we're not reopening the contract are we you've made a very interesting point right there's always the opportunity so I think that um we've conveyed our feelings appropriately and Ty can put out the information he has to me um and I think there's some other people Ty probably Denise has said something about not getting your protocols or whatever it is you want some more if we had had the document that you all have we might have been more prepared to discuss this tonight actually I don't have the document I just talked about it with Ty I don't have any documents so Seth Seth a couple things one uh Calis if you want to download the documents from the East Montpelier website you're welcome to do that they're they're posted there right on the front page and uh to Ty I want to thank you and the rest of the fire department for being responsive to our concerns and developing this new policy yeah I do too actually yeah I think it's a tough issue it's a tough I think for clarity these policies have been in place the only thing we changed was adding the testing portion of it and I hear what Travis is saying in the concerns and everything however the reality is you can be fully vaccinated and be a carrier and not know it and spread it to whoever I think the key element here that is the key difference in what we do is the PPE that our staff wears on every call going in we do not blindly going into somebody's house knowingly exposing even long before COVID we don't blindly go in and expose people right we're wearing safety gloves we're wearing gowns where we need to wear wear and tieback suits goggles mask eye shields all kinds of protection methods that are not in place for the typical general public right and that is our standard protocol when we go into the hospital the same when we're exposed to a patient in the back of the ambulance we have safety procedures that are in place that we uphold and that we do we do different procedures now differently than we did before because of the COVID and again we're under the constant guidance of the emergency room in our bed control as to what the standards are there was a reminder notice that came out from our bed control today you know just reminding people to be wearing their n95 mask their eye protection and gloves on all calls and things you know and again it's not because there's a rampant disregard for it is sometimes there's some squads around and our squad has been very efficient and effective in wearing the PPE as needed and I think that is the key difference in what we're looking at here in terms of vaccinated unvaccinated exposure risk to the general population so so the cvh um assuming that's the hospital you're talking about um they they your your policy for protecting against the spread of COVID um with and without vaccines vaccinated personnel um are consistent with cvh's policies for you guys they're good with what you're doing essentially Ty essentially yes I mean our ours are not necessarily parallel to or guided by the specific hospital to its employee guidance however we have guidance that comes out in in effective reminders from our um you know from our med control and everything um again so this is from this was today no this was sorry from the 7th dated 1 7 2022 from Dr. Ellen Stein who is our immediate med control for district 6 ambulance board okay she says an annoying reminder please wear your n95 and eye eye protection on all calls and then whatever possible even at the station these are the next few several weeks are going to be rough and something we just need to get through again that's just a reminder from them as we do it you know and upholding standards and things when we go into the hospital all patients that we carry in transport in have masks that are put on them prior to arrival to the hospital so again we work hand in hand with them and the standards that are there we have no inhibitors to anybody who's not vaccinated that they cannot enter the buildings through the emergency department they go in wearing the proper PPE as needed through to patient delivery sounds good any more questions for ty any further comments tell us what work i appreciate you taking the time ty to answer everyone's questions and do things as well as you do i know it's a lot of work tremendous yeah thank you we appreciate the support and you know we understand the questions but we do appear and uphold a high level of you know safety for our individuals and staff but also more so for the population that we serve and we fully understand the risks that are out there with us yeah okay so thank you everybody i think calis are you done with us are we done with you are we done with you i think so yeah i think so send that form along bruce would you the form the form i'm sorry the policy that ty was referencing i guess it's on the senate to denise it's on the website and whose website the fire departments are ismael pillars he's my failures he's my peers right okay we shall look for it thank you all good to see everybody yes happy new year sat wipe the sweat off your brow would you oh yeah i gotta have another corona as soon as i'm done uh okay um so looks like we're a little early to open our meeting is that gonna be a problem okay perfect um so let's let's go to review a minutes is the next thing we have it's i know amy has reviewed them i have uh john has who else and we have a second all those in favor please say aye aye the ayes appear to have it they do have it um minister done the next thing is the town treasure reports i said can you comment because you didn't go before oh whoops public comment public public public public i see some names here um but i don't see hear any public comment um we did do additions to the agenda so we did do public comment so next thing is town treasure report uh so i don't have that in front of me though i could get it i guess uh what are we looking at can you i had one question what's the final problem with the little tiny decimal point okay i couldn't figure that out the yellow in that final problem yeah what is that indicating the interest rates okay thank you so the first page of that treasure report don has the interest rates out to the far right okay okay what do we have to worry about in this budget as far as the this is just the treasure report from the end of december okay showing that you have money okay it's not showing much okay and the percentages seem like they're pretty much appropriate yeah there's nothing out of line at this point that i've seen right on the regular defense line okay um we can move on then if no one's got any burning questions it doesn't look like they do i could be missing something but i don't think i am um we have a road foreman that has been with us for a few minutes and he's champing at the bit oh perhaps perhaps we should move on i'm using that as because i've been around horses a lot it's pretty appropriate um so i'm going to say let's move to item d the road foreman report is truck replacement options and guthrie's here to replace to present that to us all right you have the floor yeah i did some shopping and came across what i thought were pretty uniform numbers for what you guys have all seen in the past um you know if you're just gonna stick with the 10-year replacement plan uh i'd have to say the mac probably still holds it uh when you break it down over 10 years because it's not certain the other brands want to hold up for those other three outside of that seven-year mark uh we had tremendous luck and this the 13 still going strong uh minor repair stuff uh i think we can get another three four years of the spare truck easy out of it which would be really nice handy to have that extra truck as a 10-wheeler so and when it comes to chassis that's kind of what i came up with um and then went down the plow equipment side of things uh 10 code did move out of town so they are located in new hampshire now uh they're owned by the same company that owns hp fairfield oh yeah so they're not in very town anymore portee at very town yep they were up at the old bombardier building uh they've moved out of there last month they are now in the old caterpillar building in hoppington new hampshire right down by claremont really hp fairfields in the same building they're both owned by alamo group um so uh the distance is the same for parts distance is the same for all that uh the differences when we got spare parts for a tenco we've got spare parts for what would be a fourth truck that would be identical as far as where parts right so it doesn't really make a lot of sense to bring in a different brand to me you know the stock different parts you know we have good luck with the tencos not putting anything on myself but i know them inside and out but they're not a lot different than the mg's either but parts wise they are different they different parts but they do the same project type of stuff so you have to go all the way down in new hampshire for parts you know so what we're few what we're finding right now is that our salesman for hp fairfield lives in craftsmarey which is very handy because he has to go to the shop at least once a week is what he told us so yeah so he said you know if it's like a stock order stuff then not a problem um and they're 50 50 so far um with mower blades and stuff like that this spring we get those through hp fairfield um it was a little bit hit and miss they had some of the stuff they didn't have some of the stuff so they ended up shipping some stuff up and he brought some stuff up so it wasn't terrible it wasn't like we ran out of anything yeah so but with with the same equipment on all the trucks you're going to be in pretty good shape uh yeah you mean you carry one bed chain for four trucks you know and that's that's where we're at we keep two used ones that won't fit anymore because they've got five or six feet that are demolished gone out of them yeah and then we keep one brand new one um that's all machine oil and nice like it was fresh out of the factory built yeah um so that's pretty handy for me um like you say the little bit of price difference by the time you start stocking any parts you've you've changed that price difference you've already spent it in parts that you may never even use yeah yeah yeah but you can always end up in stock when the truck's done you can always rob a part in an emergency off another truck that's it is a in that case hopefully you can just run the other truck because we'll be in a spare tent right yeah no i hear you so the um now you weren't going to trade off the international on this truck or you're just gonna sell it so we've got some options on that um i think that our best bet might be actually putting it up for auction whether it's through auctions international or minisibid uh that our first speed cart came through minisibid um which was actually pretty handy um but i've never sold anything through either of them but the state is selling all their stuff through auctions international yeah um getting fair money out of them uh they're they're smaller stuff like they're they're pickups and stuff like that i think they crazy good money for it way better than you would get on a trading yeah yeah but anyway the so i think that would be a really good option for what i'm getting for vibes out of the salesman's are either they don't want to give you a price um for a trade in they want to see it go out for auction the big problem is because the chassis is going to be so far out with everybody the truck's going to change it's going to be a year older by the time they actually can't get in trade so there's a lot of things that can change there's a lot of wear items that can be yeah worn out worn yeah i mean that's that truck still until this past week had the original tires all six tires were the same ones that came with their yeah they were all still the original tires uh both inside duels in the back were in bad bad shape but just the same yeah it it's one of those things where he's going to expect yeah not some worn out caps on it when it's gone they're gonna want some decent rubber on the back yeah so if we ordered a truck today the max say how when will we get so that's the hard part no matter who you're ordering through that's getting tricky right now anywhere from six months to 12 months it depends on the day that you sign really um they don't really from my understanding none of them are making any stock vehicles so they're not making any just this is standard run trucks to go on the lot if it doesn't have a name attached to it they're not building so theoretically you're going to be the next in line yeah but you send the car dealers yeah i think the same thing yeah so um which i that's what i'm having problem next topic really but with the with the town pickup side of things i don't even think anyone's going to honor a state contract to be totally honest they're just going to say they can't fill it they actually uh colchester dodge got back to them about a truck that they ordered and told them we can't even build it for that price we're canceling your order for you yeah and that was a 5500 so it was a just a ton and a half or whatever all right so and anyway that is a little tricky but hurdles to cross when we get there i suppose but uh so with the max that would be like i say it sounds like it would be a solid eight months before the chassis would arrive and if things shut down if they run out of parts it could be eight months before they start to build it which would probably be closer to 10 12 months out um but the nice part is it's not like you're ordering a 20 22 chassis if it comes it'll be a 23 or even 24 chassis theoretically when it when it comes because anything built after about august of 2023 would be so 20 so that includes the equipment that tenco would put on about a year is that what you're saying or is it eight months to get the truck another eight months get the equipment on uh eight months to get the eight plus months to get the chassis and it sounds like it would be a minimum of four that sounds a little different because they're in a new building yeah um so the plus side is if the fairfield side of the shop isn't busy the tencos they can go to the tenco side and work yeah the tricky part with that is those people have never built tenco even though they're similar they're different yeah yeah right right and they have i don't know if they have any tenco crew down there right now but um pretty good relationship with rick ackerman he's a foreman and chelsea and he's got a truck sitting in his garage right now just a bare chassis because they promised him they'd build it in bare and obviously that's not going to happen they don't even have a facility there anymore so he doesn't know whether it should be built in canada because he doesn't know what they'll be doing what a new tenco truck's gonna look like there's gonna be a little bit of a phase change to it same equipment just probably mounted slightly different is my guess so we're looking the short answer is looking at about a year i would say a minimum of a year yeah i say the and that's i i think that's a fair statement a minimum of a year yeah so we should we should order yeah right yeah it's like i said we're not getting bumped by a long ways every day that goes by but we're getting bumped yeah yeah i mean town meeting day is really truly the day after town meeting day those guys might be looking at i don't even want to joke and say two years but right that there's a chance that those guys could be i guarantee it'll be two model years out right because it's a big that's what a lot of people wait for is after town meeting yeah they want the people going on it so we could get the jump on that yeah okay so i'm good with the mac myself but i don't know whatever select board other members think what are you all thinking there folks there's not a heck of a lot of difference between the bid numbers anyway right um well there's seven thousand dollars between the freight liner quote and the mac quote yeah if you're happy with the mac then i wouldn't have a problem with it because everybody has everybody has their own experiences and and if you have good experiences with the mac and you want that then for that amount of money i don't think it makes a a lot of difference i mean what's that i would agree with purchasing that for the mac yeah i mean i'd push for the mac my first down the slack board because internationals were just so problematic and my experience with the max was good it continues to be good the good trucks um i think that my opinion we should stick with the max we have a bunch of max they're doing really well for us we have good relationship with the dealer they're not too far away yeah so that's another one of those pat up in the service department lives in woodbury yeah they deliver once a week anyway so if it's something small they drop it at the shot at the count office there and on a wednesday it's there i think their service is awesome there's other people that will say it's the worst they've ever seen and i have not experienced any of that no me either i buy parts of my max all the time up there it's great so like i said pat lives in woodbury and if it's something we need in the pinch if he remembers it uh it'll be sitting on the steps sometimes seven eight o'clock at night he'll throw him on the front steps on them so and that's worth a fortune right there just having that service yeah fortune so um let's see uh judy i i would agree um i think the difference um in pricing is negligible and i would defer um to the road foreman's recommendations on this and amy i haven't heard you for a while yeah same okay okay this sounds good and carl what happened to carl right there it's still there i agree here you're in the office that's where you are you're hiding here you are hiding a place like what's that hiding in plain sight okay right right got it do you have any uh strong opinions about the truck no i i defer to guffrey and your judgment on it and as others noted the um the bids are fairly similar yeah so i think we should order that truck do we need to have a motion on that yes please okay yep second we have a second all those in favor please say aye all right all right okay that takes care of that truck now what was the other you're gonna talk about the pickup yeah that's after doing some shopping i it will be interesting to see if anyone wants to honor any state contract purchasing agreements at all um the state just backed out on 28 truck 28 big cloud trucks i believe it was um they just said we're not doing it this year um so it'll be interesting to see what kind of mess that turns into in a year from now when they do need to replace at least all those trucks if not more and their trucks might be a year and a half two years out um so anyway uh the as far as the pickup goes um did some shopping around um the dodges do seem like they're pretty beefy truck um they're pretty fairly priced i don't know they had to didn't get back to me at all this week i ended up calling three times and i didn't get a call back at all from uh the commercial guy up there where are you are you dealing up in goss or whatever it is yeah yeah yeah they hold the state purchasing for the oh dodge so yeah yeah so he he hasn't got back to me this week and when he did give me that one quote we got he said things were changing that week is when he was redoing the pricing so i don't know i just don't know if they're going to honor it that's kind of what i'm hearing through grapevines is unless you've got your name signed and when that was back in before any snow hit october he was working on the prices and it sounded like he had five or six to order and he thought he'd be able to order them this quarter the first at the end you're at first so i don't know if that just means he can't do anything and he doesn't want to let that out so if you wanted if you wanted to you could probably go on a very much better and find out if david honor or or some way meet meets the same bid price i mean i've seen lamoille about uh ford do the same thing when when the four dealership in on in montere came in you know with they had to they had to you know they had the bid appropriate they were the appropriate bid company and uh but they couldn't get the truck so lamoille valley got it yeah um okay so these guys might do the same thing it'd be worth asking them anyway yep i can do that and like say uh being it's not that commercial sized i think we could get the service local too so yeah for warranty purposes that's what i do somebody help me out where where in the capital budget do we see the pickup be a negative one right it's gone by the replacement year i just don't see it on page six where we have our vehicles there's a six-wheeler 100 000 i don't know i don't have the pages in front of me so i can't say so what do you want to do got three so pick up with flow of course and then there's a minus two on it got it thank you you want to just keep us updated you just want to keep looking into it that i don't know what else to tell you i'd hate i don't want to yeah it's one of those things where i guess i'll try to get a pinpointed number for your guys's next meeting um i i just i'm not getting answers out of the dealerships and if you can't get that then yeah but you'll give me an answer eventually i mean i had to go buy a pickup the other day and there was like one coming in in two two months or three months so i like well i'll just take it you know it's just short mid-state did have a thing uh uh commercial the other day that said they were in the top three in the in new england i think it was for northern new england top three for most stock vehicles or something doesn't necessarily mean it's a truck but i was up at the newport dealer and there was a bunch up there at north point yes okay good enough yeah there was a 21 5500 up there actually but i don't know what there's right this minute but there were pickups up there okay so i'll do some looking around uh yeah they may be someone else who's not in the commercial side would let the cat out of the bag on what the deal is there if they're just plain not gonna honor it right on the state contract yeah well they probably aren't going to because there's they're in short supply and the state contract was probably on the lowest low low price yeah so they're going to get more money and not on the contract yeah that's probably what's going to happen so okay so you'll get back to us on that yeah as sad as it is uh like i say i i understand you guys's position there it's not like you can just say yep go buy a truck that's you need a fixed number to go after you need something yeah like i say i i can't get a hold of that salesman from up there so try another one we'll do some shopping around and i'll get back to you as soon as i can with it yeah sounds good all right was there anything else that you were a lot to talk to us about see this is when you guys have those pamphlets and i don't so let's see we've got highway operations on the next item do you stick around for that okay well we're gonna look it over okay but you're done talking to us about vehicles that yeah i don't have that i've shared i've spilled all the beans i can well we got the big truck order and that's good that is right that's a big hurdle yes so the next item is discussion on f y 2020 feet budget development and your highway operations is the next thing on there yep um i'm gonna look it over on the slackboard memo here and wouldn't you have only minimal increases it says so it doesn't look like anything doesn't look like anything anybody having questions for got three on highway operations the silence is deafening but i'm in florida so we can't hear everything you have uh you've already done an increase on the wages this year anyway so yeah that was pretty significant for that's more than i would normally put that budget up anyway so yeah oh yeah say there's a couple hundred dollars for what was it it was 200 over in uniforms maybe something it looks like uniform right yeah that's not much um now is the current road crew okay with staying in the spot for there and stay happy or but i didn't really want to be driving a truck all winter plowing the road so well be hard you know there's a 2,200 mile difference i would say i don't know where the snow line is but yeah but i am getting my cdl but i think wow yeah i know but anyway what did yeah how's it how are things looking i think everyone's pretty content right now yeah which is a good thing yep yeah i think we've made it through a little bit of a patch where we could have had some rough going yeah yeah right that's yeah it's the the wheel's still turning um yep i think callous is still down to at least one guy yeah plane field just went through this past weekend with one guy instead of three so it's they're back to two out of three at least now so it's they're gonna have another spot filled up over there pretty soon i would say so and it doesn't seem to be any am i guess um wow well thank you for all of that info um anybody have any questions for guthrie before we go on to the next item thanks for all your work on on evaluating these bids and everything and making extra effort to go on top of people and move forward with that yeah it's way easier if you can get them to come talk over the hood of the truck yeah so well it's great it's strange times right now it's it is yeah used to be oh go out and buy a vehicle wasn't that hard to do now it's like oh you can't even find one yeah it's crazy order that we'll get it to you in six months maybe and no guarantee yeah and don't put a deposit on it because we're going to sell as soon as we get it yeah really now i'm serious i know i know um okay so thank you guthrie thank you all for your support again yep and good luck with everything good luck with the weather good luck with the weather yeah um daytime high for you tomorrow is square uh i think it's 75 well yeah but what's the wind chill see yeah i like breeze because you know what it gets hot out there so a little bit of breeze it's really good yeah sometimes i have to sit on the porch because it's just too hot yeah yeah better get a fan out it's really hot playing polo it really yeah yeah yep all right enjoy the week i'm not looking forward to coming back um yes we are no we're not okay have a good evening thank you see you thank you okay so going along with highway operations review a draft fy 2023 project um but we already kind of talked about that did we not did we already talk about the budget we kind of did but what i'm looking at your select board memo yeah so the you've got the final budget in front of you unless you've got a problem with it the thing you need to make the decision on is what you want to do with the capital plan capital reserve fund right funding yes i see that um so our choices were keep it the same your choices are whatever you want to do but yeah if we keep it the same our tax rate will go up to 3.42 percent that looks like what you're saying to 2.31 dollar 90 cent increase the municipal tax rate um revenues up expenses up yeah payroll lines so that's if we keep the capital reserve plus keep it at the same what and what do we vote in the capital reserve every year no what what you've decided to do was carry it on the budget as requested by the cap and improvement committee so you've actually built in a 13 000 dollar increase to that item yep you've talked about possibly not including it going back to level funding right and that's what the red numbers are the level fund the black numbers are the 13 000 increase okay i don't see black the red numbers on my piece of paper but that's fine um so the two so on the bullet on your memo the draft budget anticipates a 4.06 or 3.042 increase overall 2.31 or dollar 90 the dollar 90 is without the 13 000 yes okay right ah and why did they go up 13 000 um i would have to think about it for a minute um what can we do i think that was a that was a normal increase that it was designed to do every year was to go up to keep pace with paving and keep pace with other purchases that are there so we don't run negative and i don't think you're running negative no but eventually you have to keep it's not it's never a good idea not if if you put money in the capital fund you put the same amount in every year it's not a budget increase if you take that if you cut that one year the next year is going to be a budget increase so you're not going to get away from a budget increase if you just for one year it's not sustainable so i think that we were going with a normal increase because it it it wasn't really an increase it's not increasing the budget i understand that but the thing is that this year we've got um our payrolls gone up significantly right so i'm trying to soften that impact with the tax rate increase well i don't think that i i think that if you want to do that it's appropriate i i i just think that we left it as it was yeah oh i'm not sure that we've increased it every year have we bruce yeah we did the same thing last year we skipped the planned increase so this is actually two years worth of incremental increases oh okay uh the other thing about the capital plan is it's it's i'm gonna say optimistic about spending money on paving that we haven't spent because our paving plan was based upon repaving a lot sooner than we have so we've built up a lot of money in our capital reserve because of the paving um because we haven't had to repave and we've gone on 10 years without having to repave i know what that we're going to have to but we also have a lot of money in there that the thing is the thing to keep in mind that you know several years ago paving was pretty inexpensive yeah it was going to be now because the price of well products we've gone way out of sight so if you cut the budget you may end out coming back with bids this next time around are going to be kind of surprising astronomical yeah yeah that's what i think that's why we were chose to to fund it right the other thing to remember is that you have quite frequently directed a portion of your end of year surplus to the capital reserve fund yeah indirectly you've always overfunded that particular launch right right and of course that may not happen the next year you know but you can always choose to pull it out of the capital out of the reserve fund and utilize it we have a we have a uh emergency fund yeah your fund balance right yeah no it's not our reserve fund contingency fund contingency fund we have one anyway so we probably wouldn't pull money out of the capital reserve i don't know what does everyone think about the 13 000 increase for the capital reserve fund i mean i'm not that worried about one way or the other i just thought we have so much increase in payroll that i'd like to soften that a little bit benny any other select board members have any strong thoughts on that my gut would be don't soften it by taking money out of the capital reserve i would keep just my gut feeling yeah especially if we declined an increase last year in the capital reserve is to put it in this year yeah i mean that's yeah i like the idea of softening the the increase but i'm with amy i'm not sure capital reserve is the place to do it i don't have another candidate yeah there aren't any other places yeah i mean that's basically our only huge increases is payroll and more of the fire department and in the capital reserve i mean those are the main increases that we're looking at but the payroll is pretty big but the municipal rate 2.31 or 1.90 it probably doesn't make that much difference so we could keep with the addition to the capital reserve and go go with that and go with the 2.31 cent increase in the tax rate yeah and just depending on how this year turns out you also do have the option of increasing the even though you're not showing it increasing the the unbalanced use yeah essentially giving back surplus right when we make the tax decision come july and august right so we're not making a final decision but what we're doing is trying to make a more or less final decision on the budget right and the town warning all right well i'm okay with the adding the 13 000 in this kind of pennies to me in a way and i do understand that there will be increased costs coming our way on paving trucks are expensive blah blah blah expensive are going up so going along with what john said about increasing every year you're trying to keep up with inflation etc and of course inflation is huge right now probably our best bet to put the 13 000 in the capital reserve very additional so well i mean i'll go along with that anybody else i don't think we need a motion yet but you you can or you can wait regardless if you're okay with this as it is now this is the number that'll go in the the warning or yep next time yeah but we're not approving the warning yet so i don't think we need a motion okay okay so do we have anything else to talk about on the budget side of things review of draft fy 2023 budget the just want to highlight the signpost uh they've upped their request mostly because they we told them at the time but they made an error when they it's it's now three years ago when they zero funded themselves they asked us not to do one right they've now realized that they didn't understand how their own budgeting worked and so they are essentially at the bottom of the barrel when it comes time to our appropriations showing up in december so they're hoping to pump things up just a little bit to try to avoid being at zero in november right and i just i don't i love the signpost everyone loves the signpost but is there is there any talk about all about taking that online unless you specifically ask for a paper copy i mean it seems like the printing and mailing costs are a hundred percent of the costs and i don't know if most people really value the paper copy that much i would love to read it but maybe i don't need that and maybe this isn't the forum to have that discussion i don't know but many people like the paper copy yeah many people do but you could opt in perhaps and not just by default send it to everybody in town unless you opt in maybe i guess we can yes rosie i can i can mention that at our next planning meeting if you'd like thank you that'll work okay so um anybody else have anything on the budget i don't hear anything so we're going to move on so the next item f is discussion on 2022 town meeting consideration of options for conducting 2022 town meeting and forum so everyone is seeing that the bill is out to allow towns to go to australian ballot or to move the date i guess the governor is going to sign it soon he's expected to sign it so it looks like we have some options in front of us the option that we chose last year was to mail ballots to everybody and we had huge participation that way we had 1200 people vote that was tremendous um it was a huge success in my book we had a lot of people participating in democracy by the power of the vote um i personally would like to see that continue since we have the option this year i don't know what everyone else thinks so we'll do either select board members think or members of the public have tuned in this meeting about east mouth failure doing what it did last year having as many forums as possible where people can tune in to talk about the issues and then go to mail ballot mail and ballots to everybody in town and conduct our town meeting that way by australian ballot i don't see that there's another rival option to be honest correct yeah we we could try to delay the date as we talked about last year but this virus is so surprising and thong thong's predictions so we might pick a date that has even more viral activity than the town meeting day hey rosie's got something to say yes rosie another reason for not postponing town meeting is that we have to have an election anyway for the center vermont career center so we'll be at the polls regardless of whether there's a town meeting or not right and this lines up if we can do our town meeting when you people at the polls it lines up it's a twofer or a threefer um right to me that works it's efficient people usually vote on those days they like voting in that day it doesn't move anything around so i would i would say that we we made a good decision last year when we decided to postpone any controversial discussions to a time when we could actually discuss them and would argue we're doing that again this year so not making any any big changes in town governments even though we're authorized to do that via australian ballot this year i'm not sure about that so i'm not going to touch that for the moment jruth has something to say i want to see what she had yeah i just wanted to concur with what's been said before i think the path of the virus is unpredictable and i don't think that we should delay it pending a future when the pandemic becomes endemic um and i i also agree with you that um we had a large turnout of mail-in ballots and i think it was successful so that would be i i think we should do the same this year yeah um so i think so too anybody else have anything to say on that i agree totally with with you folks with everybody else okay the board so bruce should we make a motion on that right now i wouldn't bother because it's it's just in the morning again okay it's more a case of are you okay with doing the forum at 7 30 on the Monday night before the official forum uh the way we did it last year how does that line up with the school there at 6 30 okay so we're at 7 30 okay yeah yeah that sounds good so what we'll do for the next meeting is the morning will be essentially what you saw last year we'll just throw out all the yeah non-compatible parts that are in right now that's right and we will set up the zoom meeting and do all the rest so that it's all in that morning for next time yep that sounds good um so that kind of covers that item oh do you want we want to cover we want to talk about what's on the morning i believe that's the next bullet on the agenda is discussion on 2022 town meeting warning i have a warning in front of me here i don't but i can find one um yes yeah i i have it hold on am i no i'm not um sorry i'm still okay i'm not muted i apologize um yeah i had a couple of questions um regarding the two options for the um town payment of property taxes oh yeah um that i i don't have anything with the first two highlighted articles um but i do have one with respect to the current article seven and the alternative article seven um and i guess i would yeah um is the purpose of the current that folk can the payment is on time if it's postmarked or received by november 15th is that what the current deal is yes okay that's not what we say we can't just go to the top um just that language is directly from statute the lcd this particular version together i agree with you i think i think we needed yeah um but but anyway that was my question if we're going to go through it i guess i would be i would opt for the alternative version because um because of how the mailing is um that would be my suggestion but i don't have a strong opinion on it but i i hear you what you're saying about that was the recommendation but that's that's not what that sentence reads um it's due or postmarked not due and postmarked so the alternative version has something that we hadn't considered until we got to see the November payments payments yeah is that the 5 p.m date may be old-fashioned we got a large number of electronic payments between 5 p.m and midnight and it seems silly to stick an arbitrary time in there when people are taking advantage of the online options and they're doing it after they get home from work right now right so can you do it for 12 p.m or 12 a.m. just 11 59 p.m. yeah yeah yeah i mean we do have that version and i personally um avails myself a bit this year so and um yeah if people are able to pay online it's a fairly um efficient process and you know it's it's it's being processed that day so as opposed to being stuck in the mailbox and you don't know when it will go and you'd have to actually go to ensure that you're postmarked on time you'd have to go to a post office so Judith the history of this is that we have had the alternative version uh for a long time up until a couple years ago and then uh some residents at town meeting sprung on the town the idea of uh the article seven the first version listed here on the warning and uh arguably that should not have been taken up in that town meeting because it wasn't properly worn but it was and the select board had not been prepared for it because it wasn't worn it did pass at that meeting and nobody on the select board at the time liked it because we were afraid that yeah it's it's too vague uh something's postmarked on a certain date but you know things get lost in the mail what happens if it comes in two months later for example or just disappears altogether how do we handle that um however um we didn't get a chance to discuss anything at town meeting last year and we looks like we won't have a chance to discuss anything at town meeting this year uh our delinquent tax collector Bruce has reported that this posed almost no problems and well there are almost no um payments that came in very long after the the dates in question uh so it seemed to work pretty smoothly so in accordance with the principle of waiting till we have a town meeting with people in person to make modifications that have been made at a town meeting with people in person doesn't seem like it's big damage to keep it in place i'd like to go back to the alternative version with the the removal of the time on there as we've discussed but i'd like to wait until sometime when we can get together in person and talk about it just out of fairness to the people okay so i'm a little unclear on this so the current version does allow people to make a electronic payments after five and before midnight of may 16 that correct correct and that sounds like it's pretty darn good idea yep i think i haven't heard anybody oppose that so let's do that the the issue here is a postmarked or just do and it says postmarked i think all of us all of us that i've heard from are in favor of having just do on a certain date and i'm saying let's wait and make that change when we all get together we have a town meeting again i think because we talked about this last year and we decided that since that was already passed on the floor whether they like it or not it would just be confusing at this point so okay we're gonna stick with the current version because the few people that go to town meeting haven't had a chance to discuss it the 1200 people that voted on it last year did have a chance to vote on it so that was good so we're just going to keep it like that not presenting both versions to be voted on no right no got it okay so let's go to the next what's the next controversial okay so going down on six i believe is also something that we need to discuss yep the second constable the first constable and the second constable if needed being appointed by the select board instead of voted on by counts people and again with this i think this is something that normally would be voted on and town meeting uh on the floor we should wait i i support it and i would like to wait i'm gonna just correct you on a one point okay if you notice i put it in the normal australian ballot area because that one's actually by statute in australia that is an australian ballot what oh okay really bad right oh okay um in which case i'm fine with it yeah my statute that has to be an australian ballot i'm actually fine with it too because truth be told i mean not that many people are how many people would have researched that anyway and you're right i mean how many people voted on meeting not very many oh no no i'm actually okay with putting that on the ballot not on the best statute yeah okay so we'll scroll down scroll down here um article eight is that a controversial article yeah yeah i i've opposed it in general and i i think we have people who are willing to serve in the office of town auditor as elected officials i think we've heard from town's people that they want the option of voting for people for offices and i personally support having more offices that people can get elected to and serve the town that way as long as it as long as it works and you know i've been part of the charter committee that's recommended changes in the um the treasurer and the town clerk from elected to appointed positions for reasons which i think work were good in those cases the auditor is is different and one of the differences is that oh we uh it's a group of people who are working together it's not one individual who uh is is in question there and so if there's one person who's having a hard time functioning in the position then we've got two others to uh work on on the position as as i said it's worked out so i would like to to uh keep it the way it is and even if we do decide to change it uh i'd like to see us wait to talk about it at home maybe it's a big change okay so we've heard from kyle um let's hear from jewish she has her hands up um i i would concur with uh corals recommendation um i too share his belief that if we have town's people available and capable and able to perform these functions um then we should look to them to perform those functions um i also think it's a a fairly big change and it may be controversial and to do so i think we should have it discussed on the floor so i would oppose adding it to the australian ballot okay so i'm gonna look at it from a different angle what does a town order to do and we also hire an auditing firm already so and what have other towns done in the area with this position so bruce maybe you can fill us in a little bit on that as you saw i know they gave you a lot of back there is no town in our area of our size that still has in-term offers they hire professionals right like we already do we do every year so i'm not sure it seems like redundant to me um let me hear from john he mentioned what they did in hardwick i'm always interested town of our size experienced man like john jewitt in our midst he can do some gems of wisdom well we essentially we don't use we don't use our own auditors we use we we contract it out so um so we don't have any auditors that we make use of i can't remember i can't recall now if there's people there in name only but i've never i was there eight years i never saw a town auditor aside from the contract auditors come into our office so yeah so that's that's my angle on is what they do other towns have let them go they don't have the position anymore i don't understand why we have them i i guess it's beyond me i thought it was to write the town report that's okay yeah so i guess i'm not seeing the you know i think that having our local folk perform it i think there's more accountability and oversight and it also may save the town money but moving to the issue at hand whether it should be on the australian ballot i think it would be a big change and i think that people in the town may want to um discuss this issue so i would propose that we not included on the australian ballot that we delay until we are able to meet in person with folk to discuss it you are aware jude there's a few people that go to town meeting right yeah there's a hundred and a hundred and something people go to tell me and we have a forum where we discuss this stuff and we still have the forum as many forums as we can have for people to discuss this so i'm not thinking we're shutting the door on anything we have a forum we have a lot of voters that can weigh in on this many more than you would have at town meeting because you only have a hundred some people that go there we had over a thousand people voting last year so when you say not have anybody weigh in on it i'm not sure where you're coming from well we had at the beginning of this conversation we started talking about not including on the australian ballot controversial topics this would be a controversial topic because we are eliminating town positions or elected positions um so to be consistent with that policy and that um way of determining whether there should be a change on the australian ballot or not then that would be a controversial topic that's what carl said that was not my position and i'm not sure that's anybody's position and it's not a policy it was what we said last year that's all consistent with what we said last year well there are at least two people on the select board who would have agree with including it okay so we've discussed yes that's fine yep perhaps others want to chime in yes with john what do you think i would say if you had it on on the ballot and people voted it down then you'd have what they what the people of east moth they wanted to do they passed it if they approved it then you have their decision i don't think you necessarily have to sit in an open form and argue about it one way or the other um for the most part um these these positions don't usually become an issue until you don't have someone to fill a position and a lot of towns are having a hard time filling these positions because you can't even fill positions you know people are companies having a hard time finding employees and we and the reason they was changed has been made in some of the other towns is because they couldn't find the people to do the work um and in this case i think if people didn't agree with it they'll vote it down if they agree with it they'll pass it right and we're going to have a forum before town meeting um to talk about this just it's going to be a pre-town meeting we're required to do it and we should we'll talk about it and if people want to discuss it discuss it maybe they can convince other people to vote against it i mean that's a whole part of being a democracy sitting down and talking with people and if people have good arguments for or against then they they may win or not i don't know so i don't have a problem with it being on the ballot i don't need it so amy i haven't heard from you i don't have a problem with it being on the ballot either um all the above exactly what you said yeah so we have three of us there are sort of four and we have two people are against it yeah i'll i'll chime in again i agree with john that you know this is something to look at when you don't have people who are willing to do the job and we do have people who are willing to do the job uh who want to do the job and i think there's no reason that the select board should ask the town to pull the rug out from under them while they're willing to do that so putting it on the ballot is an implicit select board endorsement of making the change and i don't see we have a reason for doing that uh uh we've talked about um opportunities to discuss this yes there are forums uh sess you make fun of the number of people who come to town meeting you also make fun of the number of people who come to town forum which is usually about one sixth or or one tenth of the number of people who come to town meeting uh in in normal years and i think having the opportunity to discuss this in person is um is huge for democracy people listen to each other people change their mind i've been very proud of the discussions that our townspeople have had at town meeting and listening to each other coming to good decision and third uh sess you asked what does this position actually do well the the statutory requirement is really that they produce a report the town report and you know we have somebody who does a very good job at that in this position as as an elected auditor and i think that we should support her in continuing to do that in that position um there's there hasn't been any talk about discontinuing the person doing it that she could still be paid whoever's doing it to do the town report i just don't know why we'd have three auditors doing something that we hire professionals to do and their job is to do the town report that doesn't make any sense to me now i think you're confused on what the internal auditors do they they don't duplicate the external audit they do other things like produce a town report we don't have a cpa for producing our town report we don't have our internal auditors doing an external audit they're separate they're separate functions now what what Judith and i had a discussion with Deb the other day about a number of things that fill in one of the auditors and uh you know one of the things that she said was she doesn't want to make work she wants the auditors to do things only where they're useful and she saw an opportunity for them to be uh help correct a material weakness that the external auditors identified by uh doing monthly reconciliations and apparently Ed has stepped forward to do that so that's another task that apparently they're doing right now to help respond to critique from our external audit we could hire somebody else to do that too but we've got residents who are willing to do that as elected officials i see a hand up here and the hand's been up for a while that's uh ellen canadler your hand is up it's michael michael your hand's up i can't hear you are you on mute yeah you're muted michael dwayne you're muted muted can you hear me now yes thank you okay thanks we're calling on you what's that we're calling on you okay uh two things uh set the uh your farm is still standing thank god okay which one the one in floor you want to hear it yeah okay um and i just want to just just to comment about the discussion that's been engaging about town meeting and the auditor and these positions and voting i just for what it's worth i just want to comment our quote from the vermont supreme court when they were discussing the dissolution and of all of our local of many of our local school districts which is don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you lost till it's gone so i'll just leave it at that and thanks for the opportunity to comment thank you so we're just talking about trying to put this on the town warning uh the auditor thing i thought it was valuable to have all the 1200 voters that voted last year to weigh in on something that i thought was democratic that's my take on um and i didn't think the auditors did anything carlos correcting me on that they do the town report and they do some internal work i'm not sure what it is i haven't seen them in the office much but um i'm going by what other towns have done in the state around us is they've eliminated this position they've done it they have professionals to do the auditing and they don't have town auditors anymore that's all i'm saying and if we can have a form about this i think it'd be great there's a hand raised oh we have a hand raised here today yeah um yeah i think i'm unmuted so um i want to appreciate what judas and carl have been saying and also the policy that the select board had for last year that nothing controversial would be discussed until people can be in person and um the last town meeting i attended in person there were upwards of 250 almost 300 people there and there were several very lively discussions and they reflected conversations that they'd been having for months on whatever their particular issues of concern were and had been so while it might have been only 250 people they all talk with their neighbors and i think that process is really important and um i haven't been it's not been as easy for me personally to attend the town forums and and somebody made reference to the fact that they're less well attended i think it's great i really appreciated what you said seth early on in the meeting about um having multiple forums to make it more inclusive because i think inclusivity is way up at the top of the values towards empowering people towards democracy and i mean some people pay no attention to local governance um but i really think that local governance is at the foundation of the larger democracy that we are supposed to be reflecting as a nation and um the other thing that i want to say which is really related is that um this pandemic is really taking the stuffing out of a lot of people it was challenging last year and last year you acknowledge that it would be wise not to put any controversial issues up for australian ballot because you are acknowledging the challenges of the pandemic and the toll it was taking on the residents of east montpelier and everybody else and i want to say that a year later so two years into the pandemic it's equally bad in different ways it's really taking a toll and so i i think it would be really important and a value statement of our town to just i mean i don't see what the urgency is if you might hire the current auditor anyways to do the same thing i don't get why it would be an urgent thing because i personally feel it would be a very controversial issue to me you know like the town of hardwick is i think i see it as being a lot larger and a lot more commercial than east montpelier and east montpelier is its own unique town and um i think residents want to elect their neighbors to hold positions when they can be filled that way so i don't see the urgency of putting a controversial issue up for australian ballot when we're still in the thick of a pandemic and can't meet in person on the floor to have a conversation so that's i have strong feelings about that i have strong feelings about democracy and democratic process and empowering citizens to engage we have a lot of volunteer committees that don't get voted on or whatever and elections and town meeting are really the foundation of citizen engagement in our communities and within local governance so i'm throwing my hat into that ring in a big way and i i hope that the select board can just wait uh for the more controversial issues so the the only thing i can comment on renais i've never seen 300 people at town meeting and i don't think 250 as a matter of fact the figures in the back of the town report are usually under 200 so that's the only thing that i was going on is the what's published and that was considerably less than 200 and that to me is is nice to have town meeting but i think that getting people to vote is important and when you have 1200 people weighing on an issue that's a lot better than just under 200 that's democracy in my book is having a lot of people vote and using the power of the vote and when you have less than 200 making decisions for 2500 voters that doesn't seem right so that's all i'm not i'm not going to argue about any more on this issue i don't think we have to make a decision tonight on these uh on these items do we on the town morning bruce actually what you're doing is setting up what's going to be presented to you at the next meeting right that's what i thought you say you want this on on the morning it's going to be there you can take it off right but we still have the power to take it off or on yes yes um so it's the same with article nine the same argument same issue town listeners um we're probably going to have a reappraisal next year or two um it's a tough job many people of many towns have moved to professionals because of the complex world that we live in the complex issues on assessments etc are becoming hard to do with local untrained people they get elected to a position that you have no power to oversee so that's that's an issue um you know i'm just presenting that issue i i guess i'd like to hear from our listeners as to whether what issues whether they perceive them to be complicated or that they don't have the ability or experience expertise to handle the responsibilities of the lister of the lister position i guess consistent with the auditor question um you know these are as a select board it seems like we're being asked to um authorize removal of of um these elected positions and if you know as carlotte indicated if there are people who are qualified and able and willing to fulfill these responsibilities within our community and having community members evaluating their you know their neighbors properties they live here they know the area um and we acknowledge and honor their work and their effort um that furthers the democratic process more than eliminating the position but i guess before we i i i would want before we as a select board vote to include this or not include this as an item for voters to vote on removing this as an elected position finding out from the listers whether they're overwhelmed whether they're whether they feel that they can handle the duties as opposed to kind of a conclusions regarding that things are getting more complicated and they can't handle and other people other towns are doing it we're fortunate in this community it sounds like that there are a lot of volunteers who want to perform these duties and rather than um acknowledge or expressly or implicitly deny them the opportunity to perform these duties by authorizing these items on the australian ballot i would opt to keep them and and also bring in the listers and ask them you know is this something that you can handle going into the future that's my thought i just have just a couple things um the the changes that went that occurred in hardwick okay and hardwick is quite a bit different it's more commercial we actually have our treasure and our payroll people are all are all accountants that's what we hire um so they do the work and we're we were very comfortable with them being able to do the work and then we contracted with external auditors um as far as the listers were concerned um as far as the auditors were concerned in hardwick there was no one who wanted to do the auditor's job so there was not a big issue when we decided not to utilize auditors anymore it came to the point where we could not find a third um lister to do the listing no one wanted to do it they had a couple people who got more qualified to came in and tried to do it and it got too dangerous for us to continue in that manner because damage can happen to your grand list and it never and you can never repair it it happened in some cases so in that case the two listers said look we don't want to do this anymore no one came forward who was qualified who wanted to do the job we even increased their pay and everything and at that point we said we went out we said look this is what we're going to do we're going to hire an assessor we turned around we hired the assessor we kept the auditors on for another i mean excuse me the listers on for another year and a half to work with those people that we hired and nobody had an issue with it at all the last thing i'm going to say is that this year they decided to consider appointing the town clerk and and a town treasurer and at that point people did not agree with that and it was going to require a charter change but we didn't go to town meeting with it because the meetings that we held before that had enough had enough people attending who were against that move that they actually took it out of the charter change so that the whole charter wouldn't go down so so the whole the whole thing that drove this in hardwick was the fact that we could not find people to do the work and and i so i so i understand what everybody else is saying here that if we have people actually want to do the work and are qualified to do the work that's the really important part of it is then there's probably not necessarily a big problem having those people in those positions it's where you don't have qualified people and you don't have people to do the work that it becomes an issue so i mean i didn't clarify this for this i just want to let you know that's the way we did things there we didn't just arbitrarily do it so one of the things that mas said last time he said takes five years to train someone to be a listener i know that it's a complex job um and i know that we're coming up for a reappraisal so that's what i'm coming at i think rena is going to hand up yes thank you um so i'm not currently a lister but um when the last town-wide reappraisal was coming around the select board appointed me to work with the current listers at that time and even though i had been untrained um i have common sense and maybe above average intelligence maybe just average intelligence i don't know how to judge it but in any case for the first however many months um i was supporting the listers in reorganizing the office and the files and setting up files for the state mandated um contracted appraiser to come in and as i did that i learned other aspects of what it was and i happened to have had a background as i i said this at a different meeting i don't know if everyone who's here now was there also but i'll say it again um my background it was in agriculture and particularly in the kind of land trust purchasing of development rights and so even though we had a professional appraisal company coming in because they do appraisals all over the state they don't know our town the way residents of our town know the town and they also don't have to answer personally to their neighbors um so one of the things that um i felt like i brought experience in that was not necessarily specific to listing i mean there's a lot of overlap of skills was understanding the value to the town of preserving our agricultural lands and also understanding the lost value to the property owner when they sell their development rights and that's attached to the deed and it really took me i don't know how many months at least six months maybe more than that to work with the contracted appraiser to help him to understand how he was thinking of value on those properties versus how we in the town think of them and um and to me that's very important and um it's not the same as current use in terms of taxes and you know ross is coming in now i see him so he can speak for himself but um um it did i was only a lister for four years i i was uh appointed for my first year elected for a three-year term we got through the statewide appraisal i learned as i went there is a training system by the software companies by nem rick and by the um the um oh valuation state valuation pvr thank you yeah i'm a little rusty i haven't done it for a while i think i i think our last reappraisal statewide uh state mandated was uh 2005 and this is 2022 um yeah it it didn't i was pretty well trained after three years so didn't know everything didn't need to know everything because there's a head lister but if people remember what happened when uh rosie suddenly passed away i think it is important in our town to bring new listers on and then to look i mean we have so many people new people in the last year and two and three years who bought properties in Eastmont Piliar they want to get to know the community i think this is a perfect opportunity to invite volunteers to come in and do the kind of tasks to support any um position in town so that they learn how the town works because vermont is one of the very last places left that still has a functioning citizen democracy and people need to learn how to do it and so i mean that's how i feel and so when we get down a little further about appointments and the lister vacancy i've already thrown my hat back in the ring i'd be glad to do that again i know deb fillion threw her hat in the ring i think someone else had thrown their hat in the ring so yeah so i i just to conclude i want to appreciate uh john jewitt reflecting on exactly why hardwick had to privatize some of the positions that really are currently elected positions that reflect local governance and we're not having that problem in our town and so that's like yeah let's not try to fix something that's not broken thanks thank you in a um so we're we're kind of on schedule to get done with this discussion um we can discuss it the next meeting we're not finalizing anything tonight we can talk about it some more we can think about it we can talk to citizens is that okay with everyone that we kind of stay on time here can get to the next item yes that we're at right now okay so thank you for the hearty discussion it's interesting and we'll see what happens at the next meeting so the next thing on our what's that before you move on yep we're setting a warning i need a default option here but we haven't agreed one way or the other on this i have to sign it so what's that it would be better for you to take a struggle of your board members so that we know the default position okay so i for one would like to put these two items on the agenda just because we get a lot of people weighing in on it and to me that's the democratic way to make decisions to have as many voters decide as possible not to select few that go to town meeting so that's my position i'd like to put it on the morning so that's me i think judith and kyle pretty clear they don't want to put on the warning that's correct judith and kyle that's correct john and amie we haven't heard from you john would you want to put it on the morning well after after that statement that i made i would say probably i wouldn't want to put it on the warning till we have a chance to discuss it okay so it sounds like in uh so that's three people don't want to put in the warning and then amie where were you on that i'm kind of with john i kind of switched my mind there really isn't a hurry so i'm okay okay so it doesn't sound like we're gonna put on the warning proof okay okay okay so going to the select board report what are the well you always try to highlight what has happened in the town um that we had some hand in so have you come up with a list of positive changes yeah okay so let's think what did we do this past year that would be of interest to the town residents coming up later on our agenda to discuss again so it's uh you need to think about the uh the mask mandate yeah that we considered earlier in the year and after hearing feedback we decided to take no um no mandate action on but it made some recommendations and then uh pass the mandate later in the year and we i think a bunch of our files electronically in the process of doing that so right a bunch of our land records and at all we actually did that last year and later this year we have more files though we have more files to do yes okay we allocated the money last year but we're still in process of doing that yeah we and you know the other thing we kind of overlooked this but um every single year we support the library we support the um the several agencies that help older citizens in town um and a lot of these groups that come to us can ask for assistance i think we put a lot of money and a lot of effort into supporting these agencies and nonprofits that make people's lives a little bit better and be smart clear and i don't think we talk about that enough i know the older people really appreciate twin valley seniors you know it's a place where they can go they can get a good meal meals come to their house but several days you know like four or five days a week and i think that's something that we should just maybe let people know we're still doing that and we're going to continue to do that sort of thing and in fairness what we do is we ask the town's people to vote on that support but you know we we queue it up for them to do that right if we put it in our report that people are going to understand us that we're supporting it yeah yep the other thing is the mail-in ballots i mean that was pretty exciting for me is that we've made that decision and we had so many people participate we should probably mention that in the report and the elections went without a flaw even with the covid protocol yep so that should be mentioned in our report and that we we did everything by australian ballot last year i think voters should understand what choices we evaluated when we made that decision and what we decided to do and why yep so what else is there of note thank the road crew yep and we got a new grader i don't know where why we didn't use it much but we probably better not mention that it wasn't last year that we got it though so we already put it in the report oh okay can we get a lawn grappler yeah i i think good i guess the um the committee the sustainable roads committee is going to get its own report but um but our log grappler is to help support their work in the road ash the ash removal yeah definitely supporting the eab problem yeah and and we we probably could discuss the fact that we're going to have some opera expenditures coming up too sooner or later and we need to talk to a lot of people about about what we plan to do what we'd like to do with that money i'm sorry what was the expenditure john our fun our money okay yep we haven't really talked that much about it lately but yeah we we do have we will have to make some decisions on that eventually too i think that's a great idea and you know inviting folk to provide their you know feedback and maybe even yeah we gotta narrow that though because there's very strict criteria with that money and we don't want to be inundated with a thousand applications for opera money yeah i mean maybe we can just reiterate you know the three factors or what you know very broadly what they are just to let folk know that we'll be evaluating that and you know deciding what to do with the money so um should we mention cv fiber in this report now it's coming east up there and that we've been supportive of that great i think yes i think so too and i don't know if this is relevant but would it make sense to just have a little bit of a blurb as to why we decided to keep the money for now in the capital reserve the 13 000 because of you know anticipated paving costs going through the roof etc etc i think that's more topic for the town forum so minor the bottom part of that report always has an explanation of okay that kind of stuff yeah probably in there so i think that pretty much covers it unless somebody can think of something else sounds like sounds like plenty i don't want to choose the vote right i want you to choose right okay i mean bruce will be tasked with writing that up and then we always go over it we spent something we spent some time on over the course of the year was the inter municipal agreement with callus and the fire department but where we ended up was so little different from where we started out i'm not sure that that merit discussion in our town report what do you guys think i think that that we did spend a lot of time on it i don't know if you need to point out that nothing really happened from there well it did kind of happen i mean they they chose to put it on the floor and not bury in the municipal budget yeah well they haven't chosen that yet but they have that they did no they chose it oh they're warning has it okay okay yes yeah they chose it they said it tonight yeah okay yeah that is a difference we want to give our do we want to use our select board report to talk about what callus is doing for our common fire department i don't know i don't think so anything else that's enough isn't it that's plenty and you know we don't want to make it too long anyway so that sounds good to me if bruce can craft something up and then we can look at it we usually do before it gets included in the town report that sound okay bruce that you're gonna write it this year yes you want me to write it okay i'll make sure you get it by the 24th yes yes ellen canadler or michael dwayne can you hear me yeah thank i was just thinking with the comments about the inter municipal agreement it might be worth mentioning you know it's been a topic and it's come up and if callus is doing something different and there was a lot of back and forth that might be just worth mentioning it in the select board report hopefully callus puts in there in their report right not everybody needs my pilli not everyone needs my player is going to read the callus town report though okay yeah but i'm just wondering why we're mentioning something that callus is doing on their end we didn't do that he's not yeah i'm just putting it out there it was something the elect board spent a lot of time on yeah it's a contract it's a lot of money people vote on it yeah so okay we'll think about that anything else from anybody all right so we'll move to next item age discussion on recruitment of town treasure candidates um so we have a committee and don't we need to start advertising ruse that's what this is about we do get advertised we have the job description from the last time and i think we all agreed at the last what's that notice i don't know if you saw it but there's a notice on the web post oh good but that's not the only ad that we're going to have out well the question is where do you want to put the ads what yes target date are you waiting for that kind of stuff um where where would we put it if we don't use you said don't put it in times i guess i didn't say don't put it in right it's not really an appropriate place for town treasure right uh i think seven days job listings a lot of people look at people do look at those that's really extensible isn't it seven days it was last time that was the count third yeah did you get any um any buzz from the town first posting that was on there did you get a lot of applicants but it's not something to do yes john i'd recommend you post it in the vermont league of cities and towns newsletter you could post it in in hampshire cities and towns newsletter um and just because you'd get people you know from northeast kingdom probably you get some people from central vermont um there's probably a couple of other newsletters out there that i haven't thought of yet but there's there's a bunch of municipal ones out there and that's what we did when we were looking for a town manager we and yeah this is not quite the same but it's still a pretty important position in town and be good to post it like that yes and i don't see anything wrong with putting in the times argus but i don't think it gets it's seen you could do indeed you know online too with indeed and things like that you know i think i know so indeed you get a lot of crazy people applying too and would it hurt to put it on front porch forum or something like that in case someone local was yeah so i think we should advertise immediately okay we're yeah now the other question is is there any point in the committee meeting before we have applicants you probably want to meet before you have applicants just organize yourself get your questions together okay so we should meet right away i think we should meet i was going to propose we meet on monday the 17th but um who else is on that committee that's here uh rosie and amy you're on it right yeah there's three people out that is a holiday oh it's oh it's a holiday oh well um we could meet on tuesday the 18th anybody want to do that you're talking about this month correct yeah okay in a week in 11 in in eight days well i guess they if it's a holiday then you don't want to meet but it doesn't matter we meet on tuesday then and that takes care of the holiday judith um i just had a question just looking over the um listing so bruce this is kind of borrowed from another listing that you had or is this the product of the committee's work i can't hear you i'm sorry i just created it myself okay um i would just recommend where it says in three references maybe the names of three people who will serve as references it's unusual for people to carry letters of reference and just so that it's clear um that that's what you're looking for if that is what you're looking for and you you can always ask for references after you you you get you narrow down your your your numbers to uh maybe two or three people then you can ask for references at that point you know you don't always have to ask for references right at the beginning of your your search and and just for the heck of it you could you could look at the romont leaguer cities and towns where they do advertisements for town officials all the time and look at some of their ads i i did the same thing and i i learned a lot from reading their ads um and they'll also review some of your they might review your ads for you and they would probably look at your questions as well and i think that judith should look at the questions too the interview questions and stuff when you guys have them put together all right um so you want to be able to ask the right questions and make sure that they're appropriate and yeah and and you know you'll likely want to have you know a set of questions that you ask every applicant right same definitely yeah we've done that before okay yeah so the question is do you want to meet on the 18th yeah that's right that's seven o'clock seven o'clock yeah now the in-person option is there and there's zoom capabilities also that correct it can't be yeah or i gotta offer the zoom option right now we do who's gonna administer the zoom it's a good question that's a good question is rosie um did she do things like that in the office yeah oh hi rosie are you still on the meeting yeah she's still here are you going to be are you going to be in person rosie to do the zoom meeting i can be if you need me to i was going to come down to the town office so there'd be two of us there and i think that'll work you mind doing that no i don't mind you can set it up ruse can show me what needs to be done yeah okay so seven o'clock on the 18th we'll have a meeting of the committee sound good sure sounds good to me okay because i just want to get this going we don't have a lot of time we've got a lot of stuff to do right right okay um so that takes care of age well have have we answered the question that bruce asked about uh is monday february 21st the date that we want people to apply by oh is that your question bruce yeah yes yeah or can we do it sooner than that i think that it would take at least that long okay okay then we'll do it that way sounds good i'm for doing as soon as possible so set the date the 21st is the soonest and we'll set it for the 21st okay my favorite okay sounds good um let's see the next item discussion on town management in light of COVID-19 consent consideration extension of mass mandate sounds like we're probably gonna have to in light of current figures for whatever effect it has we're not sure but there's as much we can do one way or the other they did rip down the sign in the east monthly or home center no one has a mask on but what can i say it does leave there some people have masks on some don't in the bank they're wearing the mask those are the three pieces i've been into the post office they're wearing a mask they're pretty well masked up a fox market we're masked up yeah the home center seems to be the least compliant i probably shouldn't go to the home center to get my petition signed huh you ever know many of the people there are not east monthly residents however no i know i'm just kidding yeah in dolly's there's a few of them i don't know if i dare go in there either if i remember you said you didn't want to get the petition out there and i told you i'd do it for you it's all right you're gonna help me i will okay so there's no more discussion about mass mandate etc doesn't look like it i moved to extend the mass mandate for i think we're only authorized to do it 30 days yeah i would second that all those in favor please say aye the ayes appear to have or they do have it um the next item is appointments we've probably got to go in executive session for that i moved to enter executive session to discuss the personnel matter second all the favor please say aye hi hi the ayes appear to have or they do have it so how does that work we just all leave all the people leave they're not part of the select board and that's it and then do you want us to come back or is that just it you're going to deal with it all at another time um hard to say um i have a question do we have other items beyond this that changes in grand list due to current use updates i don't see that on here maybe i'm looking at maybe i'm reading something wrong okay warrants and i'm sorry i was review i apologize i apologize i was looking at the minutes my forgive me never mind yeah so there's nothing about current use okay so um we're gonna go in executive session so i see a few people on here still believe do you do you expect any action i have no idea can i say well is there um is does the administrator know how to create a breakout room for the select board members so the rest of us can linger and be invited back after your meeting or actually put us in the breakout room that may be the easier way to do it yeah i'm sorry this is Judith again if i'm i'm yeah which i am there i do see items beyond the town administrator report the zoning administrator report and warrants yes warrants are on there yep so i'm just wondering perhaps we can cover those items before we cover the item for which we will be going into executive session so members of the public can continue to participate okay go out it's just an idea throwing that out there sure um we don't usually have the public doing anything with warrants but we can um so let's see there's warrants left and there's other business which is the main site those are two things are left but we can do them if you'd like um so the first thing are the warrants so we're not in executive session we're going to do the warrants so the public can participate um okay so um we'll have to appoint someone to sign the warrants um Carl's there Amy's there okay so i can make a motion that we uh that we appoint Carl Carl to sign the uh the January 10 to yeah uh 2022 for it yep we have a second okay Judith seconded it and that would be all those in favor of is Carl is i didn't quite hear all that um signing the warrants the 2022 January 10th warrants all those in favor please say aye hi hi the ayes have it okay so that takes care of the warrants i mean everyone of course can look them over and the other thing is the addition to agenda which was the humane society um i'm just looking for that item well oh it's on your memo right Bruce where is that i'm not seeing it but i've got some of here oh yes at the bottom of the memo it's the only missionary report the only application fee waiver for central remand made society um so that is the putting a new shed next to the parking area um so the application requires a DRP here in santa fees 320 the town has since central remand made society moved to town waves only fees given that the town's not charged i think that's a good idea because they do not charge us for their services so um the last test waiver was 2015 for the parking lot expansion i really would urge strongly urge the uh select board to grant them uh waivers they don't have to pay for the application santa fee 320 they do all the work they do for us for free i think we should respond in kind yes john i make a motion that we uh offer a way or implement a waiver to the central remand humane society um for a permit for a new shed structure we have a second second we have a second for maybe all some favorite please say aye discussion is in order at this point um as animal control officer i have an ongoing relationship with the central remand humane society and i'm happy to uh to talk if you want about the services that they provide for us however as i'm animal control officer then i think that's a type of conflict of interest in this space and i will refuse myself okay i support this but i will refuse myself car could you just briefly describe this service that they provide for us sure so the the chief service that they provide for us is that um when we find a dog or a cat whose owner is unknown and uh we decide that okay the owner is probably not going to show up then we can take the the animal to the humane society and put it in their system for adoption and we have um both both i and the second animal control officer have a number to use a code number to use so we can get in there in the middle of the night if we need to and place an animal into their care so that's very very comforting to know that we have that um that ability in addition um we we talk to them about uh how to handle certain animal control officer issues that a goat shows up in somebody's driveway and they're afraid that the goat is going to jump up on somebody's car on their car and cause damage to it so they want to reunite the goat with their owner what do i do i call erica the operations director at the humane society that's more in her capacity as um as an animal control officer in other towns but she's at the humane society it's really a fuzzy line there great thank you sure so we have a motion before us all those in favor please say aye hi hi guys appear to have it they do and carl abstain so it's four four eyes and one abstention um so i think that takes care of the items that we have on our agenda um was i'm sorry was bruce going to talk about the town administrator report or did i miss that we haven't gotten to that um we could i'm looking at it right now yep we've got the appointments we've got the town management we did that the warrants so bruce could give us the arpa updates and the washington county stuff in the media schedule if you want the arpa update is very simple the rules are now out the rules read like um i cannot hear you bruce i'm sorry i can't hear you yeah i it's i i can hear you uh carl and excuse me um yeah carl and amy i can't hear you thank you can you hear now yep okay so the arpa rules were released uh they read like code of federal regulation rules so their dense and blct has the page staff to to interpret them for us that's what they're in the process of doing and they have asked that people hang out wait until they release their guidance before moving forward because apparently there were a number of changes in the final rules over the interim rules but bottom line nothing about the dates has changed so you still have plenty of time to to run a reasonable process to get public input we'll have more to go soon and did the vermont league of city and towns indicate when they'd be providing a guidance these just came out last Thursday evening and so when blct put out their notice they basically said give us a few days to read the things uh so no they didn't give us a date okay thank you and then Washington county yeah the the uh budget meeting that they always hold that from what i can see nobody ever goes to uh is in theory going to rubber stamp the budget that they sent out last month and we got a call from bev hill the the treasurer the county treasurer to give the estimated levels that's what got put in the the budget for tonight and she does not expect any changes so that's for better for worse that's what we're all going with not just east pump failure uh meeting schedules we got another special meeting on the 24th that will be the budget and a warning sign off night and that's about it the special forums unless you choose to do it an extra meeting will they'll just be two this year one on the 14th one on the 28th we could do a special one if we wanted in between those two dates but you could but it's a holiday again oh that's right so this isn't done on the select board memo of the 14th but um are you thinking there'd be a town forum on the 14th as well what kind well the way we did it last year we just advertised it as part of the meeting yeah right uh we put it on from porch forum and stuff like that but it was nothing special right whereas the February 28th one is one where we're obligated to do some special things like start it at the time that we say we're ready to start yeah stuff like that yeah okay that's all okay what's that I said that was all I had okay so it looks like we're done with everything we possibly could be done with uh before we go into the executive session great thank you yeah no problem so now we need to have the motion to go in executive session for a personnel matter I'll make that motion again I'll second it again all those in favor please say hi hi okay and so will there