 I'd like to officially call the meeting to order, whatever time it is, a little after six, one minute after six. The legal voters in the town of Granville are hereby warned and notified to meet the Granville Town Hall Tuesday, March 5th, 2024 at 6 p.m. to transact following a business. So I am looking now for a motion to move Article 1 to the floor. Is there a second? Second. Second. Can you hear me, okay, Lou? Article 1, to elect all town officers as required by law. A, to elect moderator for a one-year term ended in 2025. Annominate Kelly Ufrol. Second. We have a nomination for Kelly. Raise your hands, she's right here. Anybody want to know who she is? Second. Anybody else want to throw their hat in the ring? Move the nomination seats. How do you second that? If there's no objection, we'll close nominations. All in favor of Kelly as the moderator say, aye. Aye. Opposed? Not me. Thank you so much. All right, we have more business to attend to. Just so you all know, my name is Kelly Ekron. So as we move through the meeting, just be aware of my name's Kelly. And as we go through, I'll also ask for names because I don't know everybody's name. As we move forward, B, we're going to move on to B. So the next election that we have here is to elect a select person for a three-year term ending 2027. This doesn't need to be done by a paper ballot. We're prepared with a paper ballot. Do we have anybody opening the nominations? Yeah. I'd like to nominate Mike Aramow. Mike Aramow, okay. Robin seconds. Okay. Any other nominations? Nominations seats. Nominations. I move to close nominations. Second. All right. We don't need a paper ballot. I move that Cheryl writes one paper ballot. We can't do that for this. No, it's unopposed. We don't have to do it. If it's unopposed, there's only one person running. We don't have to do it. We have to avoid voice. Voice. And then we can file one paper ballot. All those in favor of the nomination? Aye. Any opposed? I had a bite bite. All right. Congratulations Mike Aramow. It's life worth it. To elect a second auditor for a three-year term ending 2027. Anybody move? Who is that person? Robin is the end of her term. Does she want to continue? Are there any nominations? I'll nominate Robin. So we have a nomination and a second for Robin. Any opposed? I do know that Robin would welcome if someone else wanted to do it. I'm just saying. I don't know if it happened. I don't know if it should work. Who seconded that? Aye. Okay. Sorry. Any other nominations on the floor? I move nomination C's. Okay. Any second? I'll second it. So Robin has been elected. Oh, we have to paper ballot. All those in favor of Robin? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right. Robin Hagerman. Three-year term. Thank you. All right. The next point of business is D. To elect a first constable for a two-year term ending 2026. Any nominations for constable? I nominate Mark Belial. Mark Belial. I second. Seconded by Roger. Any opposed? Any opposed? Any further nominations? I think that's good. Any further nominations? It's harder than it looks. I move the nominations C's. All right. Let's open it to the full vote. All those in favor of Mark Belial? Aye. Any opposed? All right. Mark Belial. The next point of business is E. To elect a second constable for a one-year term ending 2025. Any nominations? Anybody want to move that? Well, I would nominate the president. Jeff Lombra. Long road. Jeff Long road. Does he got an admirable job? I think he does. He's kind of a watchdog for over in his little neighborhood over there. He don't like people around. He's the first one that's lived for generations. Jeff, just for reference, the second constable that we've elected doesn't have any law enforcement authority. He's just wanted a point of contact for us. He's a great contact, I believe. He does a good job as far as I'm concerned. Since he's not here, I would elect him. I move nominations, please. Do we have a second? Okay, all those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? All right. Jeff Lombra is elected. Does the second constable? Point F, to elect a delinquent tax collector for a one-year term ending 2025. I'm nominating Indianum. Indianum? I second. Any other nominations from the board? I move the nominations, please. All right. All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? All right. Nancy Meadham is elected. Linked tax collector. For the next year. Point G, to elect a second cemetery commissioner for a three-year term ending 2027. That's my term, I believe. I think it's me. Who are you? Open nominations. I nominate Mark, if you will. I second that. Any other nominations from the board? Any motions to cease nomination? So moved. Second. All right. Four votes. All those in favor? Mark Belial is the second cemetery commissioner for a three-year term ending 2027. Say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right. Congratulations, Michael. Aye. All right. Okay. Quick point of business. I just wanted to, as we opened up the meeting, I went directly to the elections of town offices, but I do want to just kind of put some points of order into the meeting. So first off, again, to which you all know me, I'm taking over Roger. My name is Kelly. I'm pleased to be the new moderator for the town. According to state law, we are governed by Robert's rules within our meetings, but there are a few things within Vermont state law that also are important to our meetings. First of all, only warned articles will be addressed during the meeting. Once an article has been decided, whether it will put it up or down, it cannot be reconsidered after the assembly has taken up work on another article. And also, while Robert's rules require a majority vote with a paper ballot as we go through, it does request for people to request a paper ballot if that is so needed. If that is a concern, raise the concern. And I repeat to you, work with that. Can I see if I show up hands? Anybody in the room who's not a registered voter in the town of Brando? All right. Anybody who's not a registered voter, just please understand. We've not had you vote on any of the articles that we're assessing or we're addressing tonight. And we are going to enude. Do you want to allow the state reps to sign first and talk? Sure. Do we have anybody here? Do we have any non-voters, anybody who's representing the state that might want to address before we start? I was just about to write you a note. I'm Senator Ruth Hardy. And I'd love to get an update on people like that. Sure. Great. That's great. And the theater. I love it. I don't know where to stand. You can stand over right here. Right here. Yeah, that's fine. That's good. Stand in front of us. You're the one talking. Thank you. Hi, everyone. Thank you, Ms. Moderator. And I'm Senator Ruth Hardy. I'm one of the two state senators that represent you here in the Addison district. And I am trying to attend the town meetings in this corner of my district. I was at Hancock this morning, Rochester last night. So here I am in Brandeville. And thank you for allowing me to speak and for having me at your meeting. I wanted to give you a little update on what we're doing in the legislature. And I'm happy to answer questions if there's time, or I can just hang out in the back of people on a chat in the hallway. But at the beginning of the session, we had three big priorities that we wanted to try to address. Housing, continuing to put funding into housing and also do regulatory reform to allow for more housing to be built, especially in town centers. And there are several committees that are working on housing. I am not on any of the housing committees, but there are still several committees working on housing. And I can give you a little bit of information on that if you want. Also, public safety. And public safety can be defined in various ways depending on where you live. Public safety here in Brandeville is probably very different than public safety conversations in Burlington. But our judiciary committees are working on a variety of sort of criminal justice reform issues and public safety more broadly speaking issues. And then the third one is recovery and resilience in the face of flooding. And that is obviously a lot of towns were really impacted last year in July in particular, but also in August and in December with flooding around the state. So those were the R3 priorities at the beginning of the session. Fortunately, school funding issues have kind of reared their ugly head and that has sort of taken some of our time as well. But in the Senate, we serve on two committees, and I serve on the Health and Welfare Committee that's been doing a variety of bills. And one of the things that we're going to be turning our attention to right now is the opioid epidemic and trying to figure out more ways to really address that head-on. I also chair the Government Operations Committee, and that's the committee that I wanted to give you a little bit more information on. We have been doing a bill about the government response to flooding and natural disasters. And a lot of what's in the bill is really how can government be more effective at preventing and responding and recovering from flooding or other natural disasters. And it includes things like making sure that our first responders are well-prepared, well-trained to see at least one first responder, probably several in the room. I saw an ambulance on my way here. Pardon me, two of them left because of the ambulance. And included in first responders in our bill are public works employees because during flooding a lot of times the water system employees are the first people on the scene. I wanted to make sure that they are in the loop and they're included in the planning and in the training. And also in the benefits that first responders get should there be an unfortunate tragedy or a death relating to a first responder during a natural disaster. We also include provisions to improve and expand our first alert and 911 system to make sure that everybody is in that system and that it also translates for people who are deaf or hard of hearing or don't have English as their first language. So making sure our response systems are working better. Evacuation routes, shelters, a lot of different things that we had to unfortunately employ last year. There's also a grant program for municipalities to apply for to improve their infrastructure to prevent future flooding. So there are a number of things in that bill really related to our government response. The other thing that our committee is focused on is updating our open meeting law. So as you know all public bodies, your select board and others have to follow open meeting law to make sure that you all have access to those meetings to participate and to watch what your elected officials are doing. During the pandemic, we allowed those bodies to meet fully remotely and that expires at the end of June. So we're trying to update that to provide a little bit more flexibility for some of those boards to continue to meet remotely. But for the main boards, including select boards, to still have to meet in person so that people have a place to go to watch those meetings. And even if some of the people are participating remotely, there's still an in-person location. That came after a lot of testimony we heard from select boards and school boards and people from all over the state about it and really came to a compromise that we think everybody can live with. There's a lot of towns, including possibly Brandville, that doesn't have very good internet. So having all the meetings remotely was really hard for people. Yeah, great internet. But there's some talk about requiring us to have remote access. That is not going to happen. That would be harder for all our public bodies to... From a lot of people, I can tell you, the Vermont League of Cities and Towns did their job well. We heard from a lot of towns, we got testimony actually from your neighbors in Hancock and Rochester about that as well. There was a moment where we were considering requiring hybrid, but we backed off on that. But you still have to have an in-person location. What we do, and if somebody wants to call in or somebody can go out with the snowstorm and we certainly allow that, but we do not have remote access for all our meetings. Right, exactly. You won't have to unless somebody requests wanting to call in, you have to accommodate them to do that. So that basically sounds like you're doing what we are going to ask you to do. But we needed a great big zoom in the whole vineyards. You don't need that. Every public meeting would have to go by that. That would be a burden. Yes, we heard that loud and clear. So we got you. Thank you. So those were two of the big bills that we worked on. I just wanted to touch on school funding because I'm sure you've all heard, or many of you have heard about the possibility of large tax increases. You guys are in sort of a different position because first of all, your vote, I believe, is in May. You're with Hancock and Granville or in the school district together, right? So there's a little bit more time for your school district to prepare. And second, because you're a tuition-only district, you don't have a lot of flexibility. You sort of have to pay whatever the tuition is, unfortunately. But what we passed a bill a couple weeks ago that removes an unintended consequence of a bill that we passed a few years ago that was making school districts sort of add more to their budgets and raising it up a little bit more. We've told them they need to back down and a lot of school districts have. So that has decreased the tax, the potential tax increase somewhat and that we're going to continue to work on it. So hopefully by the time you all vote on your budget, I'll have more good news for you. But we know it's a huge issue. We know that it's something that we have to continue working on. It's sort of a perfect storm with inflation and the cost of health insurance and the federal funding drying up for schools, but the need is still being there. And the property value situation and the common level of crazy being kind of off-kilter because of the pandemic. So just wanted you to know we're continuing to work on it. And what we did a couple weeks ago did help lower the potential tax increase. That's what I got for now. If you want, I can answer questions or I can just have you back for a few minutes in case anyone wants to come and talk to me. Give a couple of minutes if anybody have any questions. If not, thank you, Ms. Hardy. You're welcome. Thank you all. I hope you have a great meeting. Thanks, everyone. And please reach out to me if you have questions. Thank you. Is there anybody else who's here? With that, we're going to move on to Article 2. This is the select board report. We hear that and act upon the same. And for that, does anybody want to move on? I'd like to move Article 2 to the floor. I want to thank the senator for coming tonight. We usually get a rep that comes from over in Randolph, but it's great to have a senator. I don't know if last time we had a county senator. No, thank you. Well, it's my pleasure. It was really an honor to be here. Thank you so much. And I'm going to take a picture because you look so blue up here. We don't allow that. Everybody, happy town. Thank you. I want to thank Rachel for three years being on the select board and certainly Roger first. We're still one of the smaller towns in the state with under 300 people. I mean, we live on all contractors to do everything. You know, our only paid people are our town clerk and senator. You know, we have no real paid kind of staffing, a lot of road stuff and we'll get into that just a little bit. But I really want to thank the contractors that are local that help us out with all the work that we do, that we have to do. Two rivers out of regional commission is the local regional planning commission. And they help us both on municipal and road work with grants and getting our request for proposals out contracts and also that they're very helpful. This, this building, I think is finally pretty well stabilized for the point of while. We did the steeple a couple of years ago and that should last us another 40 or 50 years with some painting that will be required. This summer we had all both the upstairs and downstairs windows have all been redone. We had a grant from historic preservation that got storms on them all now. And I think we're finally airtight and the envelope of this building should last for a while. We are bound by being on the National Historic Register. And so that's quite a few complications and requirements when we do this stuff. We're in the midst of getting grants for handicapped accessibility. This building does not conform to handicapped accessibility requirements. The front door and the stoop needs to be redone. If we ever want to use upstairs, it needs to have some kind of accessibility to an elevator, a chair rail or something. And we're doing a complete overview of what really needs to be done for handicapped accessibility. Hopefully we'll get most of that paid for with grants. The town clerk and treasurer got new computers this year and that was paid through ARCO funds, which are the pandemic relief money that was given to the state and the towns. And we'll get a little bit more on how we're spending some of that money in just a few tooth. The fire department needs the building down there. We're looking at trying to find some grant money to put water and sewer in there. It's tough to have a public building without a bathroom. And so that's ongoing. And again, we're looking for grants to help us with that and stay tuned for that. We're really lucky to have two meeting places that people can access this building right here for parties or weddings or whatever. It's open for residents to rent it. And also the corner school, which has been renovated and has Wi-Fi and events that can be held there. So that's another great place to hold events. The select board report is on page 15. We can always use volunteers. We need so many more people out of our 300 people in town. You know, it's tough to find people to fill positions and help us out. We've got 16 miles of class three dirt roads and they're pretty muddy right now. I am hopeful that this being our third mud season, it's only the beginning of March that maybe we're beyond the worst. I think the frost is getting out of the road. There's a nice hole that just opened up a mess than hell. So be careful. You see cones there and we'll get that tended to tomorrow oil. But when we had major problems in December with mud, you know, and try to do as best we can, trying to get repairs and stone and whatever is needed. I want to give a big shout out that we have people plowing our roads. This winter done a great job and, you know, we were in a three year contract. The price obviously did go up, but we're in a three year fixed contract on that. And I think that's going to be, Shane elbows done a great job. And, you know, unfortunately we didn't get a whole lot of snow or fortunately we didn't get a lot of snow. I don't know which ever side you're on with that. But I don't think we're over with that yet anyway being the first week in March. We follow the town's procurement policy. We go out to bed with most of a lot of the work we do is with state grants that we get. And accounting is paramount to make sure that we have all the eyes dotted and teeth crossed. We have a no match grant from FEMA and the state to take out dangerous trees. On the side of the road you'll see some orange blazing on these trees. We were hoping to get that done before winter. But these are trees that are right in the road either blocking right away or a sight distance where they're actually right in the road. So hopefully we'll get those taken out this spring. You know, we do general maintenance all the time, grading the roads. You see, you know, it used to be like twice a year now. It seems three or four times. We've got to go out and grade it. The gravel pit here in town, we're still hoping to get gravel out of that pit. But we've had to truck gravel over from Middleburg. And that adds time and expense to doing all of that. The Hanley Road, which is over in East Grandville, which is part of us. I don't think anybody from East Grandville is here tonight. But all 20 or so people that live over there, that's in a flood plain. They get flooded bad. We've met with the river guy over there and trying to come up with a, again, trying to get grants to help reduce the flooding that's there. Hanley Road is about a half a mile, not even a half a mile long, but it comes right up across the railroad tracks under Route 12A. And it's a pretty dangerous spot. So that road has to be maintained also. We still struggle sometimes with some of our visitors and Airbnb's and just people coming from down south that don't have cars that are good for our back roads even in the best of times. But not much we can do about that. The class four roads, our roads go up into the National Forest. One big thank you to Vast that built two bridges last summer. So that now Kennedy Road, you can go all the way up to the government road and it's all connected. Whereas until they put those couple of bridges in you couldn't get through. So and the town goes all the way up to the government road. If you ever have any questions on the roads or you know, we'd love to have people go out and help clean out their ditches in front of the yards and keep the culverts flowing. It's always a challenge for us to do that because like I said, it's pretty much all contractors. And the only other thing I want to leave with is that we are going out to contract and we're going to repave our paved roads. And we're going to add 100 feet onto the bottom of the puddle duct in Guadalupe where it comes out of Route 100. So that that should improve it greatly. We're going to be paying for that using some ARPA money and some capital road project money that's been carried over over the years. So we should be in good shape for that. Richard. Yeah. All this turmoil we're having with roads, I'd like to report a tremendous success. Last year you had you and Kenny did a small section of road in front of Judy Wood's house on North Hollow Road. I don't know, 15, 70, 500 yards. That was one of the worst spots on that road. I know because I personally graded it myself for three years in order to get out. And that is the only way you would be terrible about it. So you think they're really dead spot. That is perfect. There's not a single puddle, rut or anything in that section. So you've demonstrated something that really works. I don't think I got to say much more. Thank you for that. We're not at this point yet. We're not quite at that point yet, but sure. But I actually just wanted to ask you to say that I wanted to commend Rachel Gregori for her service as a slide board member. Thank you. Are there any good points of discussion related to the slide board? Before we move on to Article 3 of this point. I'd like to move Article 3 to the floor. Second to motion. All right. Article 3 is on the floor. And Article 3 dished out the town of Prandtlville to accept the budget of $405,886 to meet expenses and liabilities of the town and authorize the slide board to set the tax rate sufficient to provide the same. And with that, discussion? Now I'll ask what is this? Yes. Yes. To answer what that is, I'm going to take off my moderator hat for a moment and put on my auditor hat. On your chairs, you will see a report, which is an amended report to reflect the actual year-end P&L statement for the town. There was an error in our system with a new report that was printed and published in our town report for the year. So pages 21 to 23 in the town report, this is to amend that report to have the correct information. There were some trial-adjusted entries that were made that affected the report that was in here. And just to be completely honest, it was just an error. The actual report is reflected on up here. And this is what's in here. From the audit perspective, myself, Robin and Roger, audited the books this past year for 23-23. And physical year NA-22-23, we did not find anything significantly different from this report. And the adjustments, the same looks different between the report that's on your chair and that we've updated online as well. And what's in the town report was reflected in the actual monthly statements. So, honestly, this is such a correction. Yes? Hello, I'm really glad I'm here. Peace. There's not a single question. So the first, I have a question. So, the first one. And if I'm looking at your, that wasn't new, audited, it looks like you want to make a real difference. Is the fact that there now, office, outside audit, wasn't budgeted? How often do you normally budget for audits? We had that budgeted just for that year. So that was the first year that we'd had an outside audit in many years. And it's something we will probably do on a routine basis. We don't have it scheduled. We decided to do a formal audit when a long-time treasurer, Kathy Werner, retired and we had a new treasurer come in mid-year. So that's why we paid that money to have the full audit done. I mean, I'm all audits. I was just wondering why. And it's not my budget for the next. So we're going to go with that crap-fuck local audit, which is kind of a great job. Moderator has that one. I had another one on the, and I hope this doesn't cause a big problem, but the right page. Here we go. Page 18. I don't think that is right. Page 18, the total should be $406. And $6 off $520. Which comes from page 16, line 5080, the website for anything. Page 16. Page 16, line 58, the total for the fiscal year, just coming fiscal year because we want $60 on the fiscal year. Oh, yeah. And then on line 90. 90, 20. The cemetery building. Website maintenance. 3,500 and 3,360 is $480. That's $470. That's $110. Those are the only jobs off. I think we found our next job. Well, I did do business. I did work at NYCC. And I was together, I guess I was curious about the buildings and grounds. The only thing I had really sizable increases of the cemetery building and the buildings and grounds. They're up like 40%. I'm sure there's a story I was going to know. We had to go out to bid again, and that's what came in that. But we are into that budget right now, so I wasn't going to go through it line by line, but thank you for pointing that out. I'm a little embarrassed that we have some spreadsheet errors in there. At least it's not huge. So if you look through, go ahead, Roger. Well, I'm just concerned that he pointed out some small errors. How would we go through in the proposed budget and check if there are larger errors? Well, he's on the proposed budget, yeah. We're on the proposed budget, yeah. But I'm saying, I mean, there's a budget that would begin July 1st. I think it's important to remember, everybody, that a budget is the best guess of what we're going to spend on each line. They are not etched in granted, as some people might think. And at the end of the year, some things will be over and some things will be under. If it's a municipal item, then it goes back to the tax base. If it's over and if it's under, then it gets carried forward to the next year. The roads get dedicated as we vote every year to put into a capital fund. So that whatever is either plus or minus on the roads ends up in the real capital account. And these are all done through Excel. I'm surprised that he's got some errors. I've looked these over pretty closely. I didn't catch it. I think what we can make of that, there's a couple of adjustments right now and have a different bottom line vote. Or we can leave the bottom line vote as it was warned. I'm not sure what we should do with that one. I think if we make an adjustment to what wasn't warned, we're limited on about the percentage off that we could be. So it would have to be diminuous. Otherwise, we can only address the one article. The question I have is, is there in the final column of the proposal or is it in the add subtract column? The error is just that 144 versus, you know, which way is in that wrong? It's going across into the proposed budget. So we're right now off by less than $200. Yeah, it's less than $200. $120. Is it in the favor of a lower? It's more. But I agree. But it's not just a guide. This is not a really good thing. But thank you for coming to this grant. You're going to be voted on next time. If we need help. I was just wondering if it pertains to this, because it's a line item in our appropriations that we would be given $1,000 in the regular budget. But then article seven is asking us to vote on whether they're going to become a tax-free building in town, which is around $500 to $600. Depending on how much more improvement happens to it, it's the way it can be taxed on. So that would be, that we would be giving $15 to $16. It's just making that aware of when that vote comes that it's already been given money in this vote. Can I address that question? Sure. So first of all, we've always been tax-free. And in fact, we are final with C3. We don't actually have to come to the town. I need to ask for it. So that has always been true. Secondly, really glad you brought up our guests. I don't know. I don't know why it keeps coming up every couple of years, because it isn't actually necessary budget. But the second thing is the reason that we increased it this year, and you can read about it on page 47, maybe. The Court of School, yeah, 44, we are finally at a point where we're unable to offer some real program. And last year when we talked about this at the town meeting, it was, you know, a question came from the floor if $500 is in fact enough money for what we are trying to do. And we didn't raise it at that point. But this year we came to the town to say, in fact, our operating expenses just for like utilities is about $1,200. The town has been very generous. We really appreciate that people have supported the Court of School. We've gotten in the last, since 2019, a lot of grant money to improve the facility. I want to point out that there is a handout back there with a schedule of programming that we're hoping to run this summer. So we're really trying to make the Court of School into a real community builder. So the extra $500 will be going towards that programming and also to help offset that $1,200 cost. I really don't want the appropriation number at all. Yeah, no, but I appreciate the opportunity to talk about the tax thing, because it has always been that way. We've been a number of profits since the beginning. Next, what is your name? Marilyn. Marilyn? Yeah, I didn't go to town meeting last year, but I think last year the Court of School Resource Center asking for the $500 was a warning article. But this year it's a budget line item. We decided to put an item along with all the other donations that we make as a town. So we didn't have a separate warning article to show for that. Roger. Yeah, I'll just speak on behalf of the Court of School. I'm the president of the board of directors. And we did encourage the select board to have it as a regular line item. And I'm always curious to know, does anybody here object to the mission of the corner school or is something we can do differently? I think we should invest in a fence. Months flatter down. Yeah, right. Because we're really open for anyone who wants to combine and take a look at what's been done. We've been working on that building for almost 14 years. Cheryl, was the select one when we transferred it from the town to the nonprofit? For a dollar. I have a picture of Cheryl holding the dollar. So I would just say to anyone here who has any kind of idea for how we can go forward or any skeptical opinions, please let us know. Do you plan on being open more often or having more than... Please do take a look at that handout. And we are getting to the point where we may be able to be open in the winter but it's still very expensive to keep that building in the winter. We have a heat pump. We have one heat pump with two heads. The main room is not well insulated at the moment but we've got a grant from the council on the arts to put storm windows in the summer and then we'll work on replacing the tent to the roof. Once we do that then we can continue insulating the walls but we have to do... Most of our funds come from the Division of Historic Preservation or matching grants or the preservation trust. So we do plan to be open May through October this year and maybe if it's warmer in there because of the storm windows we might be able to be open all along. Do you have any regular hours or just for when you have the presentation and the puncture? It's a completely volatile organization so I suspect for the future it will be... You have Wi-Fi. We have free Wi-Fi and you can access it just by sitting right out in front of the building in your car if you want to. Or if you want to be inside the building you just have to get in touch with any of us from the corner so we'll let you in. And it's great high speed internet and it's there for the benefit of the community. Which part of that $1,000 is going to no cost that. Any further questions? My name is Diana. I had a question about winter roads. There are strong LWOs and they take a massive job and I think everyone's really happy with it. But the increase from $50,000 to $68,000 it's a 36% increase over the current year budget. Is that written into the three year contract? It should stay the same for three years. There's no escalating clause at every end. And we did go out and bid on that and that was the low bid. I think we were probably getting a deal at $50,000 and we were not getting the quality that we got in this year. So for 2022-23 it was $50,000? This is his first winter so it's this year. So before this it wasn't him? So that's the biggest increase in our budget. It was $18,000 increase on that winter contract. Six month contract. The first snow for the last snow. They take down all the trees when they come down. He's responsible for the sanding and keeping the snow wing back which has been better than I've ever seen it before. I think because the snow now is mostly in the ditches there will probably have a little relief from a real bad mud season but we're right in the midst right now. It's a little early. And sweeping up the sand at the end of the season too. Any further discussion in the back? This isn't a discussion. The lowering clause is going to close in 12 minutes. We're going to call in five minutes to see if anybody's building a tunnel. So we'll meet them. Good. Any other questions on the budget? I think we've hit the highlights on the we try to keep it as close as we can to this year's budget. We talked about mowing in and the plowing are the two biggest increases. Thank you very much. I got a question. On the, let's see, item. The sand in the ground. On the roads. Cut. 813. 15. 18. Okay, let's see. Gravel you have. $50,000 in there. Yup. Item. 52020. Yup. I've been asking the question probably for almost two years that the bull mill owes 12, $15,000 in gravel. And I don't understand why we don't ask for it and or else reduce. Get the money and so we can get a tax break on some of this stuff. Well, I mean, we'll go ahead. Can you want to talk about that the gravel? We will get the gravel out of that pit. It's the same story. We're we're going to get the gravel out of that pit. It's been taking some time to the working are getting their active 50 permit. However, we're going to get the gravel out of there. Whether or not they have the active 50 permit and it's coming this spring. We just have to get a little bit bigger pile so that the guy that comes in crushes it will actually come down and crush it. Then we can take it out. Wouldn't that be legal to take gravel when you don't have a permit? We have a flooding that happens throughout the area. I don't like it any more than you do. But we need to we need to get some closure on that part of it. I don't know why it's taking the time to get the permit and it shouldn't take this long. I looked on the active 50 site and there's a lot to do with well water engineering and all that stuff. Wouldn't it be easier just to get the money from the contract? The the problem I had had the conversation with Jeff about that and if it doesn't come to fruition then we will get the money. It's not It's been going on for almost a year. There's talk that there could be up to half a million yards of gravel still there and hopefully he'll get his permit together and we'll be able to get our gravel locally. It's less expensive locally and certainly a lot less environmental impact than having all the trucking going across 125 to middle barrier in other directions. We're trying to be patient with him but as you said we will get that gravel this year so it'll be a wash. It doubles the cost of the truckload of gravel to go and get it in the middle of the barrier or the water. The trucking costs and the diesel so we'd like to keep it low if we can. We're not involved in the permanent problem but hopefully that gets resolved and we will get our 700 or 800 yards this spring. State of Vermont turned off our stormwater rain path when we were no longer a manufacturing place they decided to do that we did not decide to do that and now we have to go through the whole process again to get it back on to get the grant to go back because the building is still there even though it's not being used as a manufacturing place anymore and it's not something that we ask to do. It's something that they get on their own and now they want us to pay for it all over again to get it back so he's working on that and we're trying to get it to go through the state rigmarole and that's what it's happening and we can get you a check and you can supreme somewhere else. We did do some work down there to help implement that. All right any other questions on our budget? Anybody move to I'd like to move to the question. Question? All those in favor of adopting the budget as stated usually you can actually say the number. Just in point of order you should read the order. The book and then ask for a vote. Shall the title of the grand vote to accept the budget of $486 to meet expenses and liabilities of the town and authorize the select board to set a tax rate submission to provide the same. We'll go to vote. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? All right. I'll move. Article 3 and next we'll see if anybody will we're going to take a recess so anybody to move to take a recess for 15 minutes. I'll move to your recess. Okay. So people ain't going to vote. We can check on the issue. Next question. Can you please So cool you I'm sure I'm sure I'm sure I'm sure I'm sure I'm sure I'm sure I'm sure That's a good idea. You want us to grab the bird? Okay, we're going to bring the meeting back to workers. We're going to move on to the next article, which is Article 4. Shall the town of Brande will vote to authorize the treasure to apply ace or plus remaining from the highway budget's current fiscal year into the highway capital investment funds? Any second? Second. Alright, any discussion on that? No discussion? I think it was mentioned earlier that this and one of the other, Katie, can have pluses or minuses that they can be carried over to run an account. Is it typical to have hundreds of dollars in this? The highway funds have to stay dedicated to highway. And municipal can be used on either highway or municipal, although we keep it pretty well separate. The municipal budget, if there's a surplus or a deficit, it gets carried forward to the next year. The highway goes into a separate capital fund, which we have about $150,000 of capital funds in there now. A lot of that is due to not being able to get the gravel over the years. We will be trucking it if we have to this summer, because we really need to get gravel on the roads. The 700 yards that are owed is just a small amount of gravel that we need for our roads. A tenth. A tenth. Not going to do it all in one year, buddy. Any questions? Good question. Move to vote. All those in favor of adopting Article 4? Aye. Any of those? All right. I would like to move Article 5. Great. Article 5, shall the town of Granville vote to increase the highway capital investment funding amount of $6,000 for the purpose of repaving town roads? How much? How much is in that capital investment fund? That will be $36,000 as of July 1st. Including this $6,000? Yes. The paving of the roads, the contract that we have is for about $130,000 to do the paving. Close to 140. We did get four bids for that, which was amazing. That was the low bid. Pike Industries is going to be doing it, which the big pavers in the state of Vermont sort of surprised that they bid on it. But they were also the low bidder. They would get that done. And this article would just help us pay for the paving. The rest of the money that we need for paving will come out of ARPA money, the pandemic relief money, and our capital surplus in the highway department. One more question. How much is left of the ARPA funds at this point in time? Right now we have about $90,000 in ARPA funds. We bought the computers for the office side of the ARPA funds. I'm hoping that we can use some of that money for math for our handicap accessibility project. But I think we have to have those ARPA funds committed this year. So I don't know how fast this handicap accessibility granting is going to go. But if not, we'll use it either for... We can use it for other budget items, set budget items, or we can use it to help us pave the roads. But there won't be any impact on taxpayers. And was that my July 1 when you said... By the end of the year, by December 31. Thank you for that clarification. And those ARPA rules have changed all throughout. So, I mean, it's been a nightmare. It's nice the federal government gave this little town $90,000. You know, they gave a lot more based on population. And, you know, that money was very tightly scrutinized when we first got it a couple of years ago that you could only do this or that with it. Now they've opened it up that you can offset budget items and other issues with federal money. But you've got to use it by the end of this calendar year or you lose it because back to the feds. I had a question about the overall capital in Colorado. Is that entirely for paving or is that also for wrapping? The main part of what we've had to carry forward over the last couple of years is the gravel. We've been remiss of putting gravel down on our roads. We've been doing colorful work. We've been doing sections of roads. But our roads need, like Ken would say, how many thousand yards? About eight. Eight thousand yards, he says, okay. So that five is for paving and gravel. Right, right. Dedicated to roads. We did a calculation a few years ago to figure out how much gravel per year would take to maintain the roads and onto a steady maintenance program. And that was about thirty-two hundred yards for the amount of miles of roads that we have. And we've been going backwards for the last few years so we need to get caught back up. Any other questions? Okay, I have a question. So this is my last urban question. And is the value of the select board to determine how those monies are used? Do you have to bring that to us at all because it's completely up to you? It's up to the select board. Is there a possibility that, like, do we have to, like, read the agenda for the select board minutes in order for us to know when those are being allocated? Because it's a lot of money and there might be people in town who would be interested in how that's going to go. We've had our call on our select board agenda every meeting. So, you know, we've been looking to predict the project. But you haven't dispersed a lot. The only thing that's been dispersed out of it is the number of monies. Yeah, we've been talking about it since summer about potentially using it for the ADA acceptability because it seems like that's something that at this point should be here. Other bigger towns I know have formed, like, subcommittees with citizens and having it almost, like, in a grant style, like, a simple formulated form. That's for hundreds of thousands of dollars. I don't know, you know, with the 90,000... I would... Overall budget of about 400,000 dollars now, so that's about a quarter of our budget. It seems like it would be something that the town would want. Yeah, I would love if people brought other... I mean, I know I'm stepping down, so I can't say much. But I think it would be great for people to chime in and, like, have backing up meetings of what they really want the ARCA funds to go to. So that's not just three people deciding where that 90,000 is. Does the 90 have to be spent or just plans to be spent? Because I imagine forming a committee and voting on it may make it more difficult to have it. Yeah, I don't... My understanding the latest I've heard is that it has to be committed in contracts by the end of the year. That we can't just say, well, we want to use our handicap accessibility next year. So, you know, there's... We've had it on our agenda at the board meeting and we've talked about every select board meeting and anybody's got better ideas by all means. There is still time. Okay. Any further discussion on Article 5? Any questions? Call the question and move to vote. Call the question. I'll second that. All right. Article 5, shall the town of Grandville go to increase the Highway Capital Investment Fund in the amount of $6,000 for the purpose of refaving town roads? All those in favor? All right. Any opposed? All right. So moved. You're the last year to see that for a while. I think we'll move Article 6. We'll move Article 6. Second? I'll second that. Article 6, shall the town of Grandville go to increase the Municipal Building Investment Fund in the amount of $5,000 for the purpose of re-painting the municipal complex? Any discussion on that? Any questions? Call the question. Call the question. Okay. Shall the town of Grandville go to increase the Municipal Building Investment Fund in the amount of $5,000 for the purpose of re-painting the municipal complex? All those in favor? All right. Any opposed? All right. That is passed. I'd like to move Article 7. Article 7, shall the town of Grandville go to exempt the Karners School Resource Center from property taxes for five fiscal years beginning July 1st, 2024 and ending June 30th, 2029. Any discussion on that? Call the question. Sounds good. Okay. Moving to the town of Grandville shall the town of Grandville go to exempt the Karners School Resource Center from property taxes for five fiscal years beginning July 1st, 2024 and ending June 30th, 2029. All those in favor? Any opposed? I'll move Article 8. Great. Article 8, shall the town of Grandville go to authorize property taxes be paid to the treasurer as provided by law in four equal installments with due dates beginning October 14th, February 13th and May 15th. Any discussion on that? I'd like to just ask just a question to the could the dates align a little bit more with the state federal estimated taxes or is this kind of I think those dates are set up so the town clerk's office would be open. Right. Oh, that's right. Yes. Any further discussion or questions on that? Any further questions? Okay. I second that. Great. Article 8, shall the town of Grandville go to authorize property taxes be paid to the treasurer as provided by law in four equal installments with due dates beginning August 15th, November 14th, February 13th and May 15th move to vote all those who are in the equal Alright. That was fast. Anybody I'll move article 9 Second. Great. Article 9, shall the town of Grandville go to authorize property taxes will bear interest at a rate of 1% per month or fraction thereof for the first three months after one and one half percent per month or fraction thereof from the two due dates of such tax pursuant 32 Vermont Statutes VSA 5136 Any discussion on that? That's right. Call the question. Alright. Shall the town of Grandville vote that overdue taxes will bear interest at a rate of 1% per month or fraction thereof for the first three months and thereafter one and one half percent per month or fraction thereof from the due date of such tax pursuant 32 VSA 5136 Was it a favor? Any opposed? Alright. That is passed. And? Any motion to bring a proposal to transact any other business to come before the meeting? Any other business that anybody would like to bring forward? I'm sorry. I know. I just want to know this wonderful to see lots of younger faces in town. That's the first thing I want to say. But it's also a little sad to not see some of the older faces in town. I was involved in why we moved this meeting to the time that it now is. But I begin to wonder if we're excluding a lot of the elders in our community who find it hard to come out at dark and I'm just wondering if that's something we might want to revisit for next town meeting the time of day that we have it. I'm just putting that out there. I also miss the days when we used to have a real community supper around town meeting and I just want to put that out there that it would be really great to really think of this as a community event or community proper. We had a supper when we had a school meeting Alright, well I'm well aware. And how much do you call me every year until we bring roles? How do we decide? I think it can be decided that we post a warning next year time and place. I know we used to put it in a warning to have our town meeting next whatever. But I don't think that's required anymore. And if we put up that question now people have time for a beer or to share that and maybe bring forth ideas over the next We've talked about Saturday we've talked during the day but then people work on it. It's a conundrum but this is a small I heard from people that stayed more in common tonight because of the bud. The bud? The bud. It's kind of small. I like my directly. It's project. If I could go on with this one about the idea of continuing it with the way we sort of have it. We wanted to maybe try to say 5.30 until 6 o'clock but what about we can have some younger, more adept people in our community to provide transportation to the older people that maybe don't want to be the ones driving before our own little fairing service to get some of the older people to come to me. If we start to say at 5.30 if we could do something like we did today just find a logical point where we could break and still have some kind of a plot lock gathering that we would get a time frame of how long it would last maybe half an hour or 45 minutes it would still avail us of that socialization that I think is very good in all of the things that have transpired over the last years and I still think we should be out of here by at least an hour to say like 8 o'clock or something like that. I just want to thank Cheryl and Nancy for the snack. Yes. Before we close the meeting Christian. Regarding the time in the meeting it's because we now have both I can't make it on a Saturday or you know it's really nice to work with them and see them through to other times but meeting is with now 6 o'clock it was comfortable but you know I'm going to get out of work till 5 at the Manor Valley so I hate to see if it turns into a day meeting it's still only a 2 hour meeting or 3 hour meeting depending on what's on the docket so it's when it's combined with voting that would shut down some voting for some people that were trying the day or on weekends It's a canal drum. I wanted to personally thank Robert and also for all the help and helping we prepare for this as well as wish you a happy birthday. Oh! I'd work as well. So if you haven't noticed also those of you who have pets we are having our annual rabies clinic it's March 27th in our usual place the Hancock Firehouse from 5 to 7 so I always pass whatever and then some of the town clerks I'm not sure if Cheryl's there I'm not for sure but we'll be able to register your dogs as well so just see where it's the cheapest way to do it not bad to be there we've got all that stuff If any of there are points of business that anybody would like to share before we adjourn alright, well thank you all I have a question so there's some discussion about like teenagers coming on local talent stuff I don't know if we want to maybe encourage that to get some younger younger people started I had that for the first time 16 year olds 16 year olds for both it's a great idea I think that's good we'll get to it next year alright did anybody move to adjourn? I'm mostly to adjourn alright thank you so much see you tomorrow