 Well, it's the thing that keeps going. Okay, here we go. All right, winter rose maintenance alternate plan. Can you see it? It's on the screen. I sent you guys a question and I never got an answer. I had two roads bank more of being one of them. We are doing this because I thought those were like secondary. Well, there are two roads there. What he tried to do was he's dead and rose. Oh, so they are we help and I talked about it. I don't be talking about this the meeting. Yeah, they, those, these are all dead. That's why Martin isn't on it as well. And they are exactly on it. But it's not a dead end because it goes into East Montclair, doesn't it? And it does. It does. And George, George road is it is not dead end is all the way in callus. George road. And two people can't talk at the same time. George road is what Rick. Yeah, George road does as well. Good thoughts on that. Well, George road has four houses on. That's, that's like, that would be like Martin too, right? Because this doesn't, does this say dead end rose? I forgot. I read it. It doesn't. Not in the policy. It doesn't. We just call them the V category B road. This is what Alfred thought, you know, Alfred and Toby determine where they thought these were the logical roads to take off, you know, in the event. That that can be expanded upward if it needed to circumstance is dictated. Yeah, starting point for plan B, you know, so I mean, I rely on Alfred and Toby, they know what would be the priority for them. Where can they cut their sir or do service most effectively. Is this kind of what you do already. Anyway, it's just not writing. We don't cut any roads. Right, but this plan B is that these will get them less less if there's a big event. Yeah, but this isn't, isn't this kind of what you already do, but this just reduces it to this reduces it to in writing. That right. Yes, that's what that's what was actually. Okay. And then back we only have three drivers or or truck breaks down or. Yeah. Okay, so this is something that is already done this just put this what's it in writing. Does anybody have a problem with this we said we would attach it to the winter operations plan. I think it's fine I think it's great. We did a long version and a short version one was more for the plan. And then one would be one that we actually used for a post it like you know, and that's, and then we would just insert a date and Alfred was against putting in the time and I tend to agree with that because it's so you know, but I put it in the text we can believe that you know what I think what we would do is he would give that estimate on a, you know, by event. Yeah, if we, if he thinks we're okay this we're going to have a three hour delay and start the song. Then we can put in that, you know, it's literally a judgment call depending on what situation. Yeah, and then situations are going to vary. Yeah. Okay, something happened in the form. So do we, I think we need to make a motion to amend this to our existing winter roads maintenance policy, I guess I'll make that motion. Do you want to first do you want to, should we do any finish editing on this is a first graph. You know, so we can. I don't know where we would make any edits. Substantially in the form. Yeah. Okay. Just in your motion that you move. Yes. Okay. You move it substantially in the form in the form that it currently exists with the labs. Any augmentation is out for this might realize we might want to add one. Substantially, whatever you in the form called it. All right, so I made a motion you have to put the amendment I accept. Is that are you seconding. Yeah. Okay. All those in favor, please say aye. I just did. Oh, I didn't hear you. I'm sorry. Okay. All right. Anything else on road. Have you had anybody for that other position? No. Are we still advertising it? Yeah, we're going to have, yeah, we're still going to have. We're still advertising the. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, is there over anybody over. Okay. All right. Town meeting threat. Thank you. All right. The morning. Is that so everybody can see it or. Make it bigger. If I make it too big and you can't. The Jim comments. Oh, there's that little error. Okay. So this Jim Barlow has reviewed the morning. He had a couple of comments. I'm assuming everybody's looked at this. And Jeremy on the comment. About. Tam clerk. Do you have an answer? What's the answer to that question? You got to unmute Jeremy. Judy's term. Of course. I was elected June 30th and a special election. Her term was to end 2023. So that I will be running. Then. Okay. That position will be election again in 2023. I did. There's one thing I did. Can I say one more thing about that? Yeah. The one thing, the, the one thing I did notice that I don't have on here is actually to elect. Town moderator. It's under article one. Oh, it's article one. Hey, look at that. So that's the one and we could do an update when I, if you guys want to know about. Consent forms that we received. I have, I did not receive a consent form for anyone running for the election. I don't think they usually have to. We just elect it from the floor. So I don't know how that would work. How did we do that last year? Presuming there's a floor, but last year. Gus Selig was on the ballot. Right. But normally, I mean, I'm just trying to think we, we elected. So we must have passed. So I'm a ballot for last year. Best was on it. Correct. Yeah. Yeah. I remember that he needed to do a consent form. And it's the deadlines today, right? Deadline was 5pm. I do believe. S172 might give us a little bit of leeway. There is some language in there regarding waiver. Deadlines. So that might be a possibility. But I'm not sure. Otherwise, I'll be right in. I don't have an email. That should be good enough. He spoke with him and he's interested in doing it. It's clear. I don't have an email. The deadline was 5pm. Okay. But you said, well, we can check with. How about I call them and ask them to send the email now. But that would be. So that would be a case by case basis of the secretary of state would look at. I don't know what. What they would. I don't think it's going to make a difference whether he does it tonight or tomorrow. We're going to have to get clarification on what the extension means. Correct. All right. And, and if it can be done from the floor, that sounds. More fair. If it can be done. So the issue is that we won't have a, have a moderator, not for this meeting or not forever. No, we would just, it says to, usually it says, it says to elect the moderator for the ensuing year. Technically the year would end on town meeting day. And that's usually when we're doing things from the floor that the moderator would get elected for the ensuing year. So I think we just, I think we need to get clarification from the secretary of state's office because I don't think anybody thought anything about Gus needing to file a consent form for moderator. This can't, we can't be the only ones have this problem. I'm on it and I can update as I know. But help me out here, Jeremy. What is he moderating? He's moderating. He's moderating information. Right. Which is prior to town meeting. And he's still from last year, he's still not. And he can do that. That's all these moderates. The only effect of our doing it. Is it mean that next year in town meeting, he'll be able to run it. If we don't do it, someone's going to have to nominate and next year from the floor to run that. But that's how we really do it anyway. At a normal town meeting. Right. But then if we haven't, we'll do it from the floor for the next year. Yes. If we have a special. If we have, I used to do it from the floor for that year. Right. But we changed it to say the ensuing. I know, but I'm just saying historically, historically with it. Right. Showed up who wants to moderate. I will. And what I'm saying is it's not a big deal. It's not a big deal. It's not a big deal. It's not a big deal. And. Yeah. If we have to have a special town meeting for everything. We wouldn't have a moderator. Right. And what we would do is we. You could do it. We could do it. Right. I mean, I hope there's a way to extend it. And I'm wondering whether. We need a motion to extend the deadline to the extent. Permissible under state law. Okay. Is that a motion? Yes. Okay. All right. If we're good. If we're going to do that, how do we make people aware? The deadline. Right. Sure. Jeremy is going to check and see. If. S172 can make it makes an allowance for something like this, but I think what your question is, Sharon, is how would we let other people know what the deadline has been extended? That's exactly right. So we could Jeremy could check. We could post something on front porch forum saying that the moderator position. Blah, blah, blah. And you have until. Whatever. February. Yeah. Something or other to run for the office. However, the problem with doing that is we need to finalize the warning. So it can get to. Laura. To finalize so this can go to the printers. I don't know. I think we're tripping over our diapers here. The moderator in a traditional town meeting can be. Elected from the floor. From motion before at that meeting for that. Right. So if we don't meet in person next year. Then that can't happen. If a select board member were to reside from office midterm. That office is filled by appointment. We, this is a position. No different from my, to my mind. It's an elected position for where they're because of a technical reason. There's nobody to fill it. So we, as a select board. And so we could just advertise. Yeah. Next year. We're going to point a moderator. We're taking out locations. And go through this. Yeah. I mean, let's just a point. I just think we're tripping over. Like I said. Okay. This is not important. Okay. So I don't think we need to. I think that. That makes sense. Okay. All right. So let's move on. Following organizations. So there was a typo. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So there was a typo. Sharon brought up Rick's name. Article 11. It's spelled articles. So wrong. Is that been corrected in some subsequent version? I don't. I don't. We haven't had a subsequent. Yeah. We'll work on. Okay. So Jeremy. When he can. I'm sure Jeremy, you're keeping track of this, right? The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The article has been reworded article. What was it? 11. And I've already fixed Rick's name. Okay. And he fixed the type of an article 11. Yeah. Okay. And. Moving on. We have the article. Article 18. And that had to do with. The. Comcast from. Decades ago that nobody could really find any information on. Article 19. Oh, appropriate. Okay. And article 21. To appropriate. Shall the town vote to appropriate. Well, he's cost out vote. Shall the town appropriate. Okay. I don't have to cross out here in line. That's weird. Yeah. That's where it is. Okay. So. Article 21. This is for the fire truck. 22. Woodbury fire department. And he's, and what Jim did is he just kept it because we had appropriate. Woodbury and vote. East not clear. So Jim made them consistent, which makes sense. The fencing at Robinson. And old West church cemeteries. And then down the article that you wanted on here. And then down the article 26. And. There's Rick's name and generally is already correct. All right. Anybody have any comments or questions or issues? Okay. So I would make a motion to approve the warning. As edited. Reviewed by the town's attorney. Okay. Wait a minute. Oh. So I had checked with Rick to see how he wanted his name in print. As a select board member in the town report. And he asked that it be Richard King. So this should probably have his name as Richard King. And Mark. And Mark uses the middle initial B as in boy. Okay. So those changes need to get made. And you know, just what bar you're right on. Put place. D as in David for my middle initial. Because our eldest son, though we call him Kayla, his name is actually John T. As in Thomas. So you're John D. On D. You're John D. John D. John here. Okay. All right. So Jeremy, when you get that. All right. So folks, let's. Vote on the motion. And then I have a question for Jeremy. After that. All those in favor, please say hi. Jeremy, when this is ready, would you send us an email so we can come down and sign it? Yeah, absolutely. Actually, if you want, so just so that I'm clear, the motion was to accept all the changes as is what Jim Barlow put in. Just go ahead and accept everything. And we're good. And the name changes Mark B. Richard King. And John. I put those in already. Yep. Okay. Great. All right. Now we need to talk about. How we want to conduct town meeting. Last year we did a zoom informational meeting. Because nothing was open. Pretty much now. Everything's open. Vaccination rate in our area is pretty high. Although the COVID cases right now are pretty high. So we have the option of doing a hybrid informational meeting. We've already voted to. Do all the other stuff by Australian ballot. So now we need to decide whether we're going to do the informational meeting hybrid or we're going to do the informational meeting totally zoom. So let's have that discussion. One at a time. Sharon, do you want to go first? Yes, I will go first. I, this is the second or third time that I've been at home on zoom. While most of the group, most of the board is in the room there. It is very difficult to. Hear what's going on from the board from home. Which, which makes me prefer, believe it or not. So stick with me with this thought. I prefer. I prefer to be on zoom. In this environment that everybody be on zoom who can be on zoom, but that we offer. The town hall. Option for people who. Who prefer or for who have looked who's electronics or who's wifi or who's internet service doesn't really allow them to participate. Certainly I want us to be able to offer that. We want to be able to, We want to be able to offer that. Possible. Egalitarian participation. Unless everybody we're in the same room, it's better to have most people in the same, in the zoom room. Where we are all more unequal footing. Okay. Does that make sense? Thank you. you know, a hundred minutes. But I think, Sharon's right, I think just the quality of that is so bad and the difficulty. I tend to go towards Folsom. We're all witnessing how difficult it is to be in between. I'm very flexible either way because I really would love to have the opportunity for to be in the audience, but my tendency is to go full Zoom because I think that the quality will be better. Okay, Mark, I agree with what's said so far. My feeling would be either we go all Zoom or we make sure that what they're going to speak, including the full select board, is on Zoom, but we have someone here, maybe one member of the board. I don't know if someone staff person here, for people who don't have access to a computer, they could come and sit here and they can send chairs around. They can look at the screen. From our end, if the whole meeting were on Zoom, let's say everybody matters, all the answers to all the questions were on Zoom and the chairs were turned around near that screen, they could see fine. And if one of them wanted to ask a question, the staff person or one of the members of the board who's sitting here could help them assist them with the out to ask a question. Because everybody, it's really a Zoom meeting with sort of a little of a tendency here. I mean, I think nothing like that. I would like, you know, I think we can encourage people to do Zoom. Donia, thoughts? Well, I first want to say that the legislature, the house committees are doing hybrid, and I would say that what they do is as important, but at least we go towards what we do here. I agree we have a fiscal issues we need to get serious about getting stuff hanging. I think it doesn't have to be beautiful. There's some ugly stuff for the time being, and maybe if it's so ugly, then maybe the folks who we're friends of will... This guy's doing his car. I don't know. Oh, yes. Oh, hold on. Hold on. Where's the orca? I don't know. Yeah. Okay. Are we recording this? Yes. Yes. Orca media is here also on Zoom. Oh, they are. Okay. Yes. All right. So I guess I'll continue then. Yeah. If that's the case. So I think it's of the utmost importance that we provide hybrid because I do know well, Doug Lilly was here last meeting in person because he cannot and does not Zoom and many of the older folks in our community and the less financially able people in our community don't Zoom, don't use computers, may not have internet service. So I think we have an obligation to them to give them an opportunity to participate in their democracy as well. So we kept talking because we have a study, sorry, that orcas recording. Orcas, orcas out there. We're keeping a recording. Yeah. Orcas recording. So we started, I'm sorry. So the other thing is, you know, I think when we put our warning out and maybe this is an adjustment, I should have thought about then rather than now. There should be a notice on that warning that in the event because if we do without the hybrid, what it also does is it protects us if there's internet service loss, we lose electricity. What do we do during the town meeting? So if that were to happen, we need to have people need to know they can come here or come somewhere. So we need to have that. The info session. So Jeremy. So I think we should have the hybrid made available. I like what Mark suggested. Yeah, I think that could work. I would be on board with doing the hybrid with really making sure that we're saying that if you could possibly do it by Zoom, please do, but we realize that not everybody has that capability. So this is open. We can spread the chairs out. But what I guess I want to know from Jeremy is does that information need development warning? Just to be clear, we're talking about an informational meeting right now. Right. Yes, that's all we're going to do for town meeting years. So it says please see the information on here and notice an agenda posted here with. Yes. So okay. So there's two things. There will be something in the town report that will be basically essentially the warning will be this entire town annual meeting warning minus the first two articles, I would suppose. The other thing is we did on here currently, it says Saturday, February 26. I know that we were discussing the need to move that to the 19th for a couple of reasons, including the fact that if we have it on the 26th, that will not allow enough time for anyone who wanted to attend the informational meeting and still mail in their ballots. We won't have time to do that. So I think the date that you and I were talking about Denise and maybe within the thread was to have it on the 19th, which is 10 days before town meeting, which still meets the statutory deadline to have an informational meeting. Right. Because the 26th wouldn't work because that's not 10 days. Well, it would be, it has to be within the 10 days proceeding, but I think that it's so close that you would basically be required to show up at the poll or you would have two days to drop the ballots off at the office here, because that won't be enough time to mail them. So there would be a concern there. All right. So we can talk about, we can go back and make a motion as to when to hold the informational meeting. Let's get through how we're going to hold this informational meeting. What I'm hearing is it sounds like the board is on board with doing mainly doing a hydrant, encouraging people to go to Zoom, but no, but letting people know that limited capacity will be available at the town hall for the informational meeting. We would require folks to wear a mask. If they're coming in person. Is that what I'm hearing? Yeah. Hang on. Hang on. Let me get really, let me get really clear. Are we doing, are we going all the way, which I would support to what Mark suggested, which is, I guess, if we can do this statutory, legally, if we can do it on Zoom, then all of the board can be on Zoom and we've got some support in the room to make sure people can participate. Is that what we're talking about? And we can figure out the support that doesn't have to be part of the motion. No, I agree. But the board is going to be on Zoom is what I was wanting to make sure is what we're doing. Really a Zoom meeting modified for participation. I think what I'm going to do, Sharon, is I'm going to go in the kitchen of this building, of this bottom floor. I'm going to close the door and I'm going to participate by Zoom. But I want to be available in case something messes up here to see if I can attempt at least. You mean that for the informational meeting? Yeah. Okay. But we can figure that out. We can figure that out. Okay. So all those and more. Okay. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Okay. All right. Thank you, Sharon. All right. So now I need to decide, we have to read a side on the public informational meeting. And it sounds like February Saturday, February 19th. Started at like maybe 10 last year. I'll remember for sure. Katie, do you remember what time we started last year? 1pm. No, I'd have to look it up on the website. What day? What day are we talking about? Saturday, February 19th for the public informational meeting. And I just asked Katie if you remembered off the top of her head what time we started last year. I think it might have been 10 o'clock. Good news. Yes. It was 1pm. I'm sorry, what? It was 1pm. 1pm. Okay. I would, I would, I like the idea of 10 though. I know. But then last, in the last time when we did that, then we couldn't get back into the document. Really? Yeah. That's why you keep it up. Yeah. Okay. So is there a motion to hold the public informational meeting on Saturday, February 19th? Katie said, or Jeremy said 1 o'clock was when we did it last year. What's the board's pleasure? Okay. 1 o'clock is there a second? Okay. Can I, can I make one before we take the motion for that vote? Do we know what the out there is? Is the school board doing a treaty at the same time? I don't have any idea why they aren't probably going to do anything in person. No, that would be the question. They tended to work in the mornings, but that's when it was terrible. Yeah, I don't know. Jeremy, have you heard anything on the school board informational meeting? I don't. I have the school board warning. I have not heard about when they're doing their informational meeting. Okay, then we should let them know right off that we're going to be doing ours at 10. Let me pull off. Let me see if I have that, if that information is on the warning real quick. I have that right here. Denise, Denise, I heard one, but I, but I, and then I heard 10. I would, I really would want to weigh in very strongly for 10, because I will confess that we have tickets for, well, for my own personal reasons, I would really love 10. What are they doing on their cell phones? Is there, okay, either way. So you want to do, okay, one, my hearing is one o'clock, is that what I heard last? I don't care if someone said one, and I said 10 is fine. Well, I think we need to know when the school might be going there. I have that information. Okay. According to the Washington Central warning, Monday, February 28th, at 6.30pm will be the informational meeting to provide information on the articles to be voted by Australian ballot. Okay. So there's no conflict. All right. So are we doing, are we doing it at 10? Or are we doing it at 11? We're doing it at one. What's everybody's pleasure? 10. 10. 10. All right. Is there a second? Second. All those in favor, please say aye. All right. Okay. Jeremy, is there anything else from the board for town meeting that we haven't covered? In the near, so yeah, I'm going to need to get this warning signed. Also, we've got, we've selected the date, so that's great. I haven't heard, have you guys, is there, I don't know if you need to vote. I'm assuming you need to actually have a vote to hold, to have everything by Australian ballot. That's the language in S172 says that the legislative body needs to hold a vote. I don't know if we've, have we had that vote? I haven't heard that. The other thing is that- I thought we already did the last Australian ballot thing, but we can do it again until we don't get in a, in a mess. What's your other thing? It wasn't because I thought we tabled it the last meeting. And then the other thing is I just, I guess I just need to make sure that I can have a set of eyeballs or two once the ballot is prepared before it goes to press, just to like, I just would like somebody on the board just to double check and make sure that everything looks good once it's all put into a ballot. I don't, it doesn't require a vote of the board. I just am seeking a volunteer or two who wants to just look at this before I get 1,200 or 1,300 of them printed out. Volunteer Jeremy. Perfect. And then other than that, I think we're good in the near term. The deadline's coming up pretty soon. So the main thing for me is just getting this warning out. And we have, I have till the 30th to post the, both the warning and the voter checklist. So I think, yeah, where everything's moving forward, we're a few drafts in on the town report. So I think we're, we're moving in the right direction for sure. This is extremely helpful to have this vote now so that I can, there are a bunch of things in the report that I can't finish until I knew the nature of our meeting and when the date and time of our informational meetings. So this is all very helpful. I thank the board for that. And Barbara, you had your hand up? Yes. The 30th or 31st, whichever Jeremy just said is the last day to post the warning. However, the deadline is earlier than that for the town report to go to print. So we should, we need to look at the earliest last date, which is this, the end of this week. Okay. But I think we're, I think we've got everything covered, right? Yeah, we're good. I actually, the, the warning is done. I've accepted everything. I have a draft. So getting those things signed and out the door. I mean, are you, you're at the town office right now, right? I could print it up and walk it over. So yeah, I mean, we could do this tonight. Yeah, yeah, if you could do that, if you're at the town office, you can print it and bring it over. So the entire warning, the town report, whatever you call it, needs to say something, you know, like mention this, maybe it's in there, that there's a loss of internet service or a loss of power or both that the informational meeting will be held in person here. And we'll just deal with what we deal with. I don't know how many people are going to stop it after, but we need to, I don't know what we'll do to the rest. I don't know. I don't know that we, we didn't do anything like that last year, but that was different because everything was closed. I mean, I suppose the announcement in front porch forum, that if there's a loss of, if there's, but if there's bad weather, so that there's no power, then people might not be able to get here. Well, that's every time they do it. So, or do we, you can't tell me. It's an informational meeting. So it's not, it's not, the voting's happening by Australia. Set an all of that time of day. But you can't, you can't do that because you have to hold the informational meeting so many days ahead of town meeting. Well, then can we set the date? I thought it was within 10 days or tell me that. I don't think I think you can do it the day before. You could, you could do it the day before. And I think maybe we just have to see if we cross that bridge if we get to it. If we have to cancel it, we have to cancel it. We'll have to post something on from porch forum. I don't know. That's just my thought that Yeah. No, no, I get that. Yeah. Go ahead, Joe. Um, if we structure it, uh, and I'm sure Katie could speak to this, but there shouldn't be only one host. We should have a few co hosts. If one computer goes down, the meeting continues. I, I, I, unless there's like a legitimate power outage or something. I would have a hard time. I spent an entire year running zoom for the legislature. There we'll have, it should be set up so that that if one hosts power goes out or they're knocked out for some reason, that there are other hosts. The meeting should continue. Katie, when we did the meeting last year, we had, um, Cliff was pretty much hosting it. We didn't have, we had people in those helping to admit people on the last app. We didn't have more than one hosted. I think Jeremy's talking, yeah, I think Jeremy's talking to the fact that we can always assign a co host like we do for these meetings. Cause once in a while, my power goes out, but the meeting doesn't crash. Okay. I got you. Yeah. That's easy enough to do, but that's just part of the zoom. That's not what I was speaking. I was speaking about if folks cannot access. When we're talking about that, folks running, I think this is two different issues. I think there's two different issues done. It's two different issues. Yours is one issue. This is another one. I know, I know that. That's what I'm trying to say. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Um, all right. Is everybody set? Yeah. Good? Good. Um, and Jeremy's going to print it and bring it over. We'll sign it. Um, all right. Are we forgetting anything else folks on town meeting? All right. Doesn't sound like it. Denise. Yes. This is Barbara. So has the board voted as to whether or not they're going to hold a public in person town meeting or is it just an informational session and no public town meeting? It's an informational meeting that will be encouraged to be done by Zoom, but we will have it available for people to come in person, limited capacity to come in person to the town hall for the informational meeting. But there seems to be some doubt as to whether we voted to go to virtual town. To an Australian. Right. That's separate. That's a separate issue. So that's not what you're asking. We don't have a town meeting. So we have a ballot. Right. There's an Australian ballot question. That's not what I heard Barbara say. She is saying anything about Australian ballots. She said. But you're going to have an in person town meeting. Is that, was that discussed? You said Jeremy. There seems to be an impression that Jeremy said to us the legislative body has supposed to do that. It's under the impression that we haven't voted to do it. Okay, right. So what I was getting at was that we, on Barbara's question, what we have to do next is to vote to put everything on a Australian ballot, even though we think we already did it. Let's do it again. Okay. Second. All right. Any further discussion? Can I ask something? Yeah. I see that there's a motion from the January 10 meeting that the board made specifically, like it was a motion and a second. And the board discussed best practice for public participation and decided to actually vote on it in this meeting. Does it, does it matter? Should I read you that motion or can I write down what you just said now? I don't know. What does it say? While the select board strongly supports the in person town meeting because of the COVID situation and S172 is authorization, town meeting 2022 will not be held in person. All the articles that will usually be voted from the floor will be on the warning. At least one informational meeting will be held before the meeting on February 26, 2022. If the governor does not sign S172 into law, a different plan for town meeting will be made. Okay. And then, and right. And then we did decide that we wanted to leave that out there for one cycle because we wanted people to have a chance to show up. February 26 is not the correct date. February 26, we learned is not a date that we can use. So we're redoing that and saying that we're going to do it on. February 19, we already made a motion and we voted on it. We said we were going to do a Zoom hybrid meeting for the informational meeting at one o'clock or 10 o'clock on February 19th. We now need to just confirm that we're going to put everything on by Australian ballot. Yeah, and that's when I moved. And that's when you moved, you said you did. Confirming our decision to hold Australian ballot. Straight Australian ballot. All right. All those in favor, please say aye. All right. Aye. Okay. So now, I think Jeremy's probably knows way over here, but it doesn't seem like there's anything else. DuPontown meeting. Cliff is on board to help us set up the Zoom. Cliff Emmons. Yeah. Cliff Emmons said he would help us with the public informational meeting like we did last year. So we've got one of those under our belt. So it's not really a whole new learning curve. And the informational meeting on Zoom last year went fine. Okay. All right. Next up. Are you ready to move on folks? All right. DRB. Thank you, Ashley, Scott and Megan for joining us. And Mark, would you like to ask the DRB candidates some questions? And for clarification through the public, DRB is the acronym for Development and View Board. And Denise, for the record, are you stating that you are recusing yourself? That's what I did last time. I just want you turn the floor over to Mark. So I wanted to make sure Katie has a chance to document if that's what's actually happening. Yep. The same as last time. Thank you. No worries. Could you give me a favor and change the view so that we can see everybody? You can just see the people that were interviewed. Sure. I can do that. And I think, Ashley, if it's okay, I'll start with you. Just need to figure out how to make it a full screen. I think you have to take the document down, right? Yeah. You line up with your entire screen. I know. And like I said to John, who was the most brave in my year before, last time I did that, then we couldn't get back into the documents. Let me just see if I can minimize it. Well, now we have your screen on the screen. You got to stop sharing. I know you're very charitable. Please don't share. All the share of brownies. That's the candidates that are on Zoom. The candidates that are on Zoom, it may be helpful if I ask some questions, start by asking questions. We're on Zoom. Go ahead, Mark. So, I'm Mark Mahaly. Thank you for coming. Appreciate it. You want to tell us a little bit? First of all, can you hear me? Ashley? Ashley? Where's Ashley? You're not even... Oh, Ashley, there you are. Can you hear? Yep. Okay. Can you hear me, Ashley? Yeah, I can hear you. Okay. And other people, including Sharon, may ask questions, because I think if she's on Zoom, you'll probably hear her better. But you want to tell us a little bit about yourself? Tell us why you're interested in the DRB. Sure. Thank you. So, hi, everybody. My name is Ashley. I moved to East Calus from Montpelier in November 2020, originally from Rutland, Vermont. I have lived all over Vermont, Brattleboro, Burlington, Montpelier. And I have been working in statewide politics in some form for about eight or nine years now. Worked for a lot of different organizations doing workplace policy advocacy. Worked in the hemp space for a little while and now work primarily in electoral politics. And I've been wanting for a while to get more involved locally. And so when I had, I saw the postings about needing or having open positions on the Development Review Board, looked into it a little bit further and seemed like a great opportunity to do that. When I was living in Burlington, I would occasionally attend the Development Review Board meetings there. And so to the surprise of many, I found them very interesting. So it seems like a great opportunity to get more involved in the Calus community. So happy to answer any other questions as well. Do you, by the way, I think you've sort of answered this, but you kind of know what the DRB does. And are you at all familiar with, ever had any reason to become familiar with the zoning regulations in Calus by any chance? No, I haven't directly been involved. And I mean, I'm familiar in the sense that I've done some reading online and Denise sent me some information, but I haven't directly been involved with the Review Board as an individual or resident of Calus. Erin, you want to ask some questions? I'm passing at the time. Um, the, there is kind of going right into the weeds, Ashley. Thanks for being here. But there, so the DRB does work, as Mark kind of, as Mark said, on a framework that's, that's, it's great because it's based in statute. And then there's a set of regulations that you apply in a, in a quasi-judicial. You're really sitting as a hearing, as a board, you are a hearing officer for an application for development. So I think I'd like to hear a little bit about your, yeah, your excitement about stepping into that kind of an arena. Yeah, I mean, I think that, like I said, I've been working in statewide politics for, since I graduated from college, got my master's in sustainable development with a focus in policy analysis and advocacy. And so I've always been in all the work that I've done, been really committed to, you know, engaging with Vermont's communities, working, like I said, primarily doing advocacy work with small business owners on workplace policy initiatives. And given that the majority of my work has been focused statewide, I think that it moving to Calis and living in this community has made me want to, you know, get more engaged locally with folks and with the community. And so I can't speak to, you know, passion about, you know, engaging with zoning. I think just generally, I think that is a role where I would be committed and do good work. I take it from what you said, that you do a writing experience, right? I'm sorry, could you repeat that? If you do have writing experience. Writing in what regard? You know, that you have worked in situations where you have to write memos or documents of one sort or another. Oh, yes. Yes. A lot of that. There is, we don't want to ignore John and Rick. Maybe I'll ask one more question and then we can tee it up for one of them to weigh in as well. There is a lot of training available, Ashley. And so what's your, what's your ability to participate in training and kind of immerse in a little bit of onboarding before you step right in? Yeah, I mean, I expected that to be part of the process for sure. I definitely have the capacity for that. Great. Thank you. John and Rick. Ashley, where do you work? I work for an organization called Alliance for a Better Vermont, which primarily works on, we're basically a donor table and we work to fund infrastructure projects for the left. And then we work during election season, we have an independent expenditure pack and we work on statewide elections primarily in coordinating independent expenditures, a table of independent expenditures in the state. And then I also have my own LLC doing government relations and work primarily through that with cannabis clients and other, I have a variety of other clients in the government relations space as well. I don't really have any questions because you seem so qualified and so very bright, Ashley. I'm just excited that you're willing to take some of your precious personal time and donate it to them to assist us in getting the people's work done. So thank you for stepping up. I really appreciate that. I do have a sort of a question and a kind of a I guess a statement on what you think. You know, one of the difficult parts of being on the DRV, actually, is that sometimes your face with very sympathetic proposals by sympathetic people, but they simply don't comply with the land use regulations. And so you have to say no to a neighbor, you know, somebody. And I just, that's part of this job. It doesn't always happen by any means, but it does happen. And I want to know, are you okay with that? Yeah, of course. I mean, I definitely understand that that's a component of the role. And, you know, having worked in politics for eight or nine years, there are always two sides to everything and you can't always make everyone happy. So you get used to that pretty quickly. I mean, that's the nature. Do you understand that when you're in the DRV, Sharon said you're kind of a judicial officer and that you're applying the law to individuals. So they have rights and, you know, you have to call it as you see it. That's a quasi-judicial nature of it. Do you understand? Yeah. Okay. Yes. Any other questions? No. Okay. Well, thank you so much, Ashley. Yes, thank you, Ashley. It's nice to meet you. We'll be in touch. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Ashley. We have, we actually have two other DRV candidates. All right. All right. So I was going to say Megan. Megan Sullivan. Right. Megan and Scott. And Scott Vowch is here as well. Can you guys? It's on the agenda, Sharon. Yes. So, Megan. Thank you. Thank you so much, Denise, for pointing out to me what's on the agenda. Yeah, Megan. Megan Sullivan is here, right, Megan? Can you hear me? Yes, I can. Hello. Good. Hello. So, Megan. Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you well. Probably better than you can hear me. So, tell us about yourself. Tell us why you're interested. And if you have any particular experience relevant to what, to the Design Review Board. Sure. So, similar to Ashley, I moved to Calis a little over a year ago now. I came from Burlington, where I was about 10 years. And I pretty instantly fell in love with the town and very much wanted to see how I could be helpful and get more involved. So I kind of spent the first year really just getting away the land, getting to know neighbors and getting a feel for the town. And when I saw the opening for the DRV pop-up, I thought that that would be a great way to become involved. And something I'm sort of interested in is, in particular to subdivisions, I don't know how much the board actually looks at those things in comparison to the zoning. But I'm kind of intrigued by some of those subdivisions of the town, in particular my own plot. And I wonder how those decisions came about. And I'm hoping to greedily kind of learn from the experience and get more information on that. And I'm also hoping to maybe sort of be, if I'm able, a voice for other folks who otherwise wouldn't be able to come to the table at a place like a DRV meeting. And I also very much enjoy reading and interpreting policy. I did that quite a bit at my previous position. And it's, I don't know, kind of like a fun odd game to interpret and interpret appropriately what it means. What was that prior position and what do you do now? Oh, sure. So I actually admittedly have no political experience. But my previous position, I've worked in social services for essentially my whole career. The part where I had done quite a bit of policy work was at the Burlington Housing Authority. There was a lot of cleanup work that needed to be done and their admin policy and such. And there weren't many folks who wanted to sit down and go through it all, which is totally understandable as it can be a little dry. But presently, I am a social worker for DCF, Child Protection and Safety Social Work. Karen? No, keep going in the room, guys. Do you have any, do you understand what the DRV does and have experience in any land use, in land use in any way yet? This, I'm asking you this by way of information. We're not disqualifying candidates who don't have that experience. We just want to know. Oh, definitely. I both have some experience and both I'm hoping to learn more. So like I said before, not trying to sound greedy, like I'm just coming to gain information for myself. But I am hoping for a very nurturing and learning experience with this. But some of these experiences I do have are with my own land. We own about 30-ish acres. And so we've been learning a lot about managing that and what that looks like and are even attempting to create our own forest management plan this year. And we hired someone last year, so going for doing it ourselves, which is both scary and exciting. And I just lost my transpire. I was going somewhere else with that. It may come back to me. You know, if you may. Sorry. I was just thinking, I'm also hoping to incorporate. So I, most of my career has been in social services, but my education background is in environmental sciences and soil sciences, which I discovered I didn't want to do career-wise, but I'm very much still interested in the subject. And I'm hoping that that could somehow be intertwined into the DRB, especially in relation to just a lot of the natural splendor, if you will, in the town. Do you, I, you may have heard of this when I was talking to Ashley. You know, the DRB applies the land use regulations of the town to individual applicants and individual developments. And in that sense, you're kind of sitting like it really, it's called quasi-judicial. Have you ever heard that term, quasi-judicial? I have, yes. Yeah. And so you are, you're almost like a judge. And do you feel comfortable in that role, including possibly turning down otherwise attractive applications because they don't comply with the town's zoning? I do. I do feel pretty, very comfortable actually, and really any sort of social setting, even if it means I need to assert a certain sense of power to abide by regulations. Has your work led you to do any writing memos, reports, documents, because that's part of this job? Yes. I do quite a bit of writing. In my previous position, I did a lot of policy writing, and now I do a lot more writing that's different, but more, I read a lot of affidavits, things of that nature. A lot of writing, I think. John, Rick, you, or Sharon, other questions? Well, this is for all the candidates to kind of hear my perspective. I think it should be pretty much everyone's perspective. As Mark said, when you sit on the DRB, you are actually judges, and you're judges and jury, in fact, and you're supposed to compare an applicants posed project. Again, a project that would have triggered DRB jurisdiction. Many, if not most, of the development has been a single-lot development or two-lots development of the size that did not and does not trigger DRB jurisdiction, DRB generally, not always, but generally, reduced projects of a larger scale, like four remoral billing loss will trigger DRB jurisdiction. If I own a farm and I'm proposing to put three houses on my hayfield, and I'm going to continue to live on the remainder of the farm, that's four lots. It's not three new houses, it's four lots. So three new houses, three different lots, and I retain mine, so that's the four. So you'd be looking at projects of that scale and larger, by way of example. You, frankly, based on what we've seen, it can be very difficult, as Mark has kind of alluded to, because you're not far away in my pillar, reviewing some Act 250 project down in Southern Vermont or some other area. You're actually reviewing your neighbors' projects. If a neighbor is right next, when I say neighbor, I mean people in your community where there's a project proposed right next door to the person who's your best friend, we might have to do what they call a refusal. You might remove yourself because you feel conflicted, you don't feel you can be providing impartial judgment on that project as before you, or you're otherwise uncomfortable ruling for or against it. But at the end of the day, a project, as Mark has said, may not pass monster. There's going to be range of discretion and range of interpretation, and you and the other judges on the board will review a project. You'll have hearings to take in information. There'll be parties, and when all is said and done, you're going to deliberate, and you'll deliberate in private, they call executive session, and the outcome of that deliberation will be a decision, and it can be a yes as proposed, it can be a no, or as many of these things work out, it often is a yes with conditions. So the applicant, the developer, whatever the applicant agrees to those conditions, they then move forward with that project, and they're not going to claim it, they can appeal your decision to court, and it's heard de novo, as if you never had your hearing, it's heard again, all starts from the beginning, but which can also be frustrating for you, you'll pour all your heart and soul into it, you know, make the hard decision, and only to see it appeal, and some judge who has very little connection with the community can make a totally independent decision that may not be in alignment with your community values, and you have very little say. So just so I was going to put that out there so you know what goes on in these hearings, and frankly, you know, anybody applies for a permit here in this town, likely it's going to have a whole cohort of friends we've seen, and those friends show up, and they think it's like lobbying the legislature, you're not the legislature in this role, yes, lobbying the legislature, you can convince them to go one way or make changes to propose law, but here the law is written, and your job is to administer, to implement the law, and not to want to go cave or skew your decision making based on kind of the emotional arguments that are not factual arguments that are brought to these hearings, so I just want to kind of put that out there, it's a very, very difficult job, and it's going to take some time, you're going to have to prep, you're going to have to really, when you get a project, you're going to have to immerse yourself in the rezoning regs, and by way of connection, the town plan is reviewed against our regs, as well, our regs actually incorporate by reference many parts of our town plan, so it's a real learning experience, it's very, very important if you love your town, it's probably, I think, more important than what we do here at the select board, because you are going to have a huge effect in your role on how our town develops, and whether it's developed in accordance with these zoning regs, we're not, so anyway, so I'll get off my podium, I just more of an educational thing I wanted to put out for you. Thank you so much. When John gets off the podium, I want to step up. I'm off. And the reason I'm asking is that the green light on my screen is consistently on the room, doesn't seem to be moving around, so it's hard to follow where, whether you're hearing me or not, so another point to make along that line in the challenge, and a difference between the Development Review Board and a legislative body is all of that lobbying that John talked about is actually absolutely not permitted when you're sitting in a judicial role, so having those offline conversations with the parties or even anybody else is really, is not okay, and you probably know that, but it's worth saying out loud so you have just a chance to know it as you consider what you're moving into. So any more questions that you have? When you're done interviewing Scott, I just want to say that we do have a recorded training that we did maybe two years ago that the town attorneys did for the DRV, so that would be something that you could would need to participate in and before you could actually sit on anything. Thank you. It's online. Yeah, it's all recorded. It's not, you just have to watch it. Any other questions of this candidate, any other questions of Megan? Megan, do you have anything else that we forgot to ask or anything you want to say? Don't think so. I think we covered it all. Great. Thank you for your time. I really appreciate it. Thank you for so much, Megan. Thank you so much. Nice to meet you, Megan. Yeah, thank God. Stay on. All right, Scott, there he is. There. Well, Scott, in all fairness, despite the fact that we already know a lot, tell us why you want this, what your experience is, etc. I would like to help the town. When I first put my name in, it looked like there would not be sufficient applicants or individuals interested in being on the DRV. So frankly, I am all in favor of the wonderful young women that you just interviewed, and I hope you will put them well ahead of me. I would like to be on the DRB or an alternate if there are vacancies. I am a really old guy. My experience with planning and zoning in Calis goes back almost 50 years to when Jonathan Brownell first convened, invented the planning commission. I have been on just about every board and commission having to do with planning and zoning, except the DRB. So I am not making a hard sell for myself, but if there is a need, I am willing to sort of... Well, thank you, and I just for the other candidates, I am not being discriminatory by not asking Scott for his experience, because we are all familiar with his experience, which as he said is extensive in almost every role of this town. And Scott, I really appreciate not only everything you have done, but your willingness to step up here, either possibly as an alternate or as a member, I really appreciate it. Do other members have any questions of Scott they wish to... Well, thank you, Scott. I'm pretty familiar with your background. That's excellent. Thanks to all the candidates. It's exciting to have people that have this interest in these skills. We like to develop them more and, you know, for the betterment of the town itself, too. Sharon, do you have anything you wish to ask Scott? No, I'll set the... Just for the other candidates sake, so they know who one of their colleagues will be. Scott, we're an alternate. You're very likely to be sitting on a project with Scott sitting beside you or between you. Scott has served on Cal's Planning Commission as Vice-Chair, I believe. It's not made by go awful with Scott. He served for multiple terms on the select board with some many of us that are still here. And beyond that, those are his official positions. Scott has volunteered for innumerable boards and efforts, you know, work efforts, including the hall we're sitting at that's all beautifully renovated. Scott was one of the folks who was instrumental and not only seeing it revitalized, but even finding the financial resources to do that. So he's got huge depth of experience and he's got a big heart and a real big commitment to this town. So you'd be very fortunate to work beside him with Scott. So, thank you. I'm right in saying that now this matters closer. We're going to discuss this at a later time. It's up to you if you can make your appointments tonight. I'm effective when? Well, they would be effective if you, depending on who you put in what position. But when they'd be effective? Immediately. Immediately. Okay, is, have you heard Denise anything from the other candidate we interviewed? No. I have. You have? Go ahead, Sharon. I did. I talked to her. I spoke with her. You guys hear me? Yes. Would you speak with? Sam Colt. I spoke with Sam Colt and she, she, she withdrew her candidacy. Okay. Okay. So, is the pleasure of the, yeah, right. The terms are three years. Terms are three years. One of them. But we are midterm. Yeah. We're, that's my question. I just want to know if we, Denise, you're testifying essentially here, if we appoint someone to a vacant term that expires in 2022, then we have to reappoint you after town meeting. Yes. Then you would reappoint them after town meeting. Appointments take place after town meeting. Oh, right. And the term that expires it. So, one of these people that we appoint, and we put them in 2023, we don't have to reappoint. Until the next year. Until the next year. Right. And everybody else, these people and Brian, they're all, they're all, they have to be reappointed after town meeting. Right. Okay. All right. So, I'm going to put a motion on floor. Just so for clarification, there's a, there's a vacant term that expires in a few months. Yes. So, that person, when they, when they get reappointed, and we hope that you're interested in this for more than three months, that when we, and we're going to reappoint you in 2022. So, the person that winds up in the, the slot that expires in a few months, they would wind up with a three year term plus say two and a half months. The individual that gets appointed to the term that expires in 2023, and then gets reappointed, they'll have served four consecutive years at the end of their full term appointment. So, just so you know. Hang on. Hang on. Can you guys, I'm looking at the spreadsheet and either I'm not interpreting the spreadsheet correctly or you're working from different data. So, Katie, what, what I'm seeing in our spreadsheet is that we have two vacant positions on the actual board, one of which is a term ends in 2023. And the other one is a term ends in 2024. So, this, this information that I have that they're looking at sharing is what I got off the website. So, the information on the website can very well be wrong. I would go with what Katie's got on a spreadsheet. Okay. So, that means, that means then for clarification for the candidates, we have two, we have two open positions on the board that are currently vacant. And either of those positions you're in, you would be serving for at least a year. And one you would be serving for a year. The other, until the term ends, they are all three-year terms. So, you've got one more year on one of the terms, and there's two more years on the, on the other vacant one. And then there is a, there are two vacant positions in the alternates that maybe we don't, we don't need to talk about right at this moment. So, I guess all of which is to say that if and when we make an appointment for these open vacant positions, we would expect you to, that your commitment will at least be to serve out a term. And maybe that, should that lead us back? Well, maybe we should ask if you were both aware of what the terms, and I don't mean that the, the contractual terms, but the, the length of time terms that are currently vacant. You knew that they're three years, Megan. And Ashley, this all sounds familiar to you. Okay. It should be asked. Go ahead. Does either of you have a, does anybody have a particular preference for one term? I'll tell you what, what I'd like to do, I'm going to express an opinion, and I'm going to ask one of you three to make a motion. Okay. My opinion is, first of all, I think Scott's proposal to serve essentially in favor of these two young candidates is excellent and that he would serve as an alternate. So, I, and I feel that each of these two applicants, Ashley and Megan are wonderful and that we are blessed that we have new people who are coming to this town who want to get involved. And I think they both should be appointed as members, full members, and Scott as an alternate. I really just think someone should just make a motion as to who's in what term. Well, we, Sharon was doing that. Sharon was asking if either of the two ladies had a preference as to, I mean, what's the lot? One, one expires in 2023 and the other is in 2024. So, you each would either get a year and a piece or two and years and a piece experience in deciding whether you want to be reappointed. And generally speaking, like all of rural America, it's very unlikely that there's going to be heavy competition for your reappointment. So, do you guys have any preference? If you don't have a preference, we'll make it. No, I don't. I'm fine with either. So, how about picking? Pick one. Ashley, pick one. Paul, dude, I mean 2023 is fine for me. Okay, there we go. All right, done. So, all right, I'll say what. I'll make the motion. Thank you. I'm going to move a motion with three parts. One, I move that Ashley Norr be appointed to the term which expires in 2022. 2023. 2023 that Megan number two, that Megan Sullivan be appointed to the term which expires in 2024. And that Scott Bassett be appointed as an alternate to the term which expires in 2024. That's my compound motion. We have a second. We have a second by Rick Keen. All right. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Aye. The motion passes. Congratulations. Thank you. And thank you for putting up with us. Can my condolences? I mean congratulations. Nice try, Mark. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you, Scott, Megan and Ashley. And I turn the meeting back to the chair. Okay, so let's move on or significantly behind schedule. Do we want to, I mean with that town meeting figured out how we're going to do that, do we want to schedule a public meeting to discuss to gentlemen, to just, I know I called you gentlemen. That's not a good sign, right? Well, I don't know. Where's you're a gentleman? Oh, the camera. That's what I thought. Do we want to schedule a meeting, a public meeting to talk about facial coverings? I did check with what little businesses we have in town. The town office already requires a mask. Maple corner store and community center require masks. Adam and co-op requires a mask. Cali's elementary school. No visitors are allowed. The kids in the staff wear a mask. The post offices can do what they, they can follow. I don't think we combine the school because that's their separate. Yeah, right. Yeah. Or can we find the post office? And we, you guys never want to finish. Okay. Without interrupting. I'm getting tired of it. The post office follows the federal regulations. They have complied with like an adamant maple corner. They have complied with wearing a mask just because, you know, they're here in town. Um, the garage is the only other place that I can think of in town that probably gets very little public except for, except for salesmen who come into the town garage. We can require masks here. So I know that, you know, it's been brought up. Eastmont Pillar has a ton of businesses and we don't, and they have a policy. So I'm asking the board, do we want to schedule a public meeting to discuss face coverings? It might be that we need to schedule something separate because it might be a lot of people might show up. I don't know. We could do it, you know, an hour ahead of a select board meeting. Are folks hearing from constituents in support of face coverings? I haven't heard anything. I haven't really heard. I think people are really respectful for the most part that I've seen in wearing face covering. So I don't know, you know, I don't know if we want to open up this can if we don't really need to. I would ask that or suggest that we don't act to require masks because as you said that people are wearing them anyway. And I've not heard of any pushback on that. But if even one person or one proprietor asks that we get on our select board agenda and have a allocate time for the hearing on this, that we'd be open to that at a future select board meeting. But that I don't think we need to schedule that proactively. Okay, Rick. Oh, Rick. I would agree with that. I think if we know that it seems like people are pretty respectful of this around them. Okay, we're admiring the chair. I really feel that the major practical reason, the major practical reason to have a mask mandate is to give back support to local merchants who are feeling like, you know, they're, they don't want to have to make that decision. And I certainly personally, I have to say completely in favor of wearing masks. I know there's some cost to that and some question about it, but I come down strongly in favor of wearing masks. I think that this board has lots of important issues in front of it. And I don't think I, I don't think I want to schedule a hearing when the effect of a resolution would be not to change the status quo in any way. I am concerned that if they're to hear from anybody, any merchant or any one of the individuals that you, the people you just mentioned, Denise, again, I think we should bring it up and deal with it right away because I would be strongly in favor of helping them. But I don't think it seems to be necessary right now. Right. Well, I've talked to all those people that I've, all those groups that I mentioned, Sharon. Yes, no, I thank you for, for even bringing the discussion up. I appreciate it. I was going to ask for it a few weeks ago. I have noticed as well that the establishments in Calis seem perfectly comfortable and successful in requiring a mask. Our, our, we have not required masks in our meeting and we don't have to go into that tonight. I really appreciate what I, what I, what I think we should talk about is, is the technology challenges of our meeting. It is, it is, it is hard to be in the room and it is hard to be here at home. I, it's, it's, and that, that relates to the COVID issue. If we're going to continue to meet as we are in person, then I would want a mask requirement for the town hall or for our meetings and, and I would want to couple that with some changes in the technology situation for the meetings. Okay. Thank you. So what it sounds like from, if I can recap what I'm hearing is that we're choosing at this time to just leave things out there. Well, hold on, point of clarification, I think it's our policy that we want masks now in our town buildings. Is it not that? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think. This is, this is all, this is about mandating, or we should use that. That's it. We'll have a good call. It is, it's like requiring masks for buildings other than town buildings or in addition to town buildings, um, such as the country stores, uh, the town. So that's what I'm just saying. And that this to be clear, if anyone's watching, that it is our policy that we have a right right now, um, we are exercising our right to require masking in our town. This is our town building. So we now require that in a town office, which includes the clerk's office and the town hall building where we're having our meeting tonight. Should we ask some kind of resolution just supporting any business? I think we can have it in a minute, so we support that. But I guess my question for the board is, I don't think that the town garage probably has the mandate right now. We could let the town garage staff know that they need to post signs. So people coming in, I think probably the most people that come in are salesmen that masks are required. Agreed. Agreed? Okay. All right. So I think as long as that's in the minutes, I don't think we need to make a motion. I don't think so. But I do support the idea. I mean, we'll have to see how this develops. But if it looks like this is going to go on a long time, I think Sharon's made a good point. I think we have to think either about improving our technology or just going to Zoom. I mean, we did go all Zoom for like a whole year and it was fine. Yeah, I mean, my experience is that there's an almost, I hate to say it, egalitarian nature of an all Zoom meeting. First of all, people don't wear masks and you can actually see it. Right. But also, you don't have this problem of the people who are on Zoom feeling like, why don't I chop liver? You know, I can barely hear and I can't, don't never know whether people hear me. So I'm not going to talk about it more now. Well, egalitarian mark for the people who can access Zoom and people who know it's anything. But just to reiterate, I've been watching the YouTube, I've yet to testify, but I expect I will, the House Natural Resources Committee of the Legislature. And they now, and I was at the committee room the first day of legislature this year, they have a really good setup. They have a screen as we do in the front of their room. And they have a camera that sits above, like a real camera, not an hour with its head rotating. And they are really good. I don't know what they have for microphones. But, and you know, it's softer surfaces. No, you can do it. It's really good. And we should think about it. You can do it. You can curate a meeting and you're the best technology to do it. That guy right there. The best technology is when you have a human being who's wielding the camera and zooming in. And you have all that. Okay, all right. So let's move on because we can make it better. Yeah, we can. Yeah, we can check in to how, how can we make it better? Okay, but let's do that. Okay, so can we move on? Count my way seven. I think Josh was here. I don't know where he went. Josh? No, Gary, do. Yep. This is, this is the Belts and, and Gary's Belts, I have seen my dad, Gary. I just want to say one thing just for the record. I'm the IT guy for the household, the Schultz family, which is scary. I brought my laptop over, we're using my laptop and the Vermont agency transportation back comes with ID and required to use when I'm testifying the legislature. So I don't know how to turn that off. So I just want you all to know that I am in my course too, but certainly me, I'm in no way representing the Vermont agency transportation right now. So. So is your, is your father. Just so you all know that. Is your father then representing the agency transportation? No, nobody's representing the agency transportation. Okay, you got it. I was just going to call up the draft notice. Hopefully this works because unlike you, Josh, I am not a technology guru genius. Never have been, never will be. So we need to look at, I think most of us, because we live through ancient roads, I know Mark and I think you did too and Sharon and Mark and but there was a bunch of work that was done by a committee called the part committee. And the documents that I put in the folder for tonight are those documents just so you have a history. I mean, some of these roads like this one go back to, I think one of the documents I saw was like 1840. So Gary Schultz and Jill Schultz have asked us to just continue town highway seven, which I learned and didn't know was called Gar Road. So the process for doing this is we don't have to have a survey. We just need to, in our notice as is laid out here, say where this road is, we need to do a site visit as public. We do not have to walk the entire length of the property. We need to give notice certified mail to the property of joiners. I believe that the, I believe that the letters to the commissioner of forest and parks and the planning commission just get set either email or regular mail. I was going to try to call up the nap. Jim Barlow, the town's attorney has helped with drafting this notice. We need to decide we have to have 30 days notice before we hire, before we schedule the site visit. And then hopefully immediately after the site visit, we would convene to the town hall or zoom or both to have a hearing. We can't take testimony at the site visit. The testimony would happen at the hearing. This map here, oh, where'd it go? This is a really old map. I don't, can everybody see it? The documents are also in the folder, but it's, it looks as though over here on the left hand corner on the left side, there's town highway seven, town highway eight, town highway five. And looking at all of this stuff and talking with the town's attorney, it appears that town highway, I don't want to get this wrong. You see the town highway five or town highway eight is actually the west county road. And the town highway seven does not go into Worcester. So that's makes things a little bit easier on our end. And we don't have to, I bet it doesn't go through the Worcester. What else would you like to see? Mark's looking for clarification on what we're attempting to do. What is the action which we have to do today? We have to vote to proceed with this process. As requested to discontinue, it doesn't mean we agree or disagree. It just gets the clock going to get the notice out. So I brought a calendar and we'll be cutting it close if we did it because we have to send things by certified mail and the mail the way it is today. I mean, I think you got a lot at least a couple of weeks, maybe. If we were to do it on Saturday, March 5th, I think that's cutting it close. We might want to wait and do it like March 12th. So what I need from the board so we can finish completing this notice is to know what time, what day, who knows what the weather will be like. Who knows what the weather will be like. We may want to do it a little bit later in the morning because it could be a little cold. So maybe we're going to do like 11. Oh, you know, I would not be around if that's a bad weekend. Okay, good. So what about the following weekend works? The 19th. Yeah, I got you right just a second. The 19th, which is a Saturday. Is that good for other folks? Sharon, is that good for you? The 19th of March or February? March. As far as I know right now, while I'm talking, let me ask a question. Denise, you said it doesn't mean that we agree or don't agree for clarification. Are we compelled to launch a process or do we have a choice? And I'm asking for information. I have no stake in this, just clarification. I believe we would have a choice whether we wanted to proceed with the process. Gary asked for it a while ago and he actually asked for it back when we were doing ancient roads. But then this wasn't part of that ancient roads process. And then he reminded us that we never acted on this. So here we are. And we as a select board, a different iteration of the select board said to Gary and his wife Jill that, look, let us get to this larger slate of road reviews, ancient road reviews, whatever you want to call it, and get that behind us. Yay or nay. And then when that's done, we'll revisit yours. And frankly, we can fall through on that commitment. So here we are on that commitment to engage in this process. So that's where we're here, final. Okay, Reed's been wanting to ask a question. Well, it just has to do with what we're talking about at the moment. It's two ways, as I understand it, that this can be initiated. One, the landowner can initiate with a petition 5% of the voters. Right this way, that's apparently we're going to do it, which is the select board does that on its own initiative. Right. Yeah, that's right. So there's a choice. Yeah. Okay, so thank you, Reed. Yeah, the other thing that's relevant again, I think it would be much more useful if the ground was there when we did the new examination of the site. And that will only bring us a couple of weeks beyond what we're talking about. I have to be honest with you, I'm going to be away for two months and I'll be back first April. So that would help me, but mostly I think it's a lot of interest in this road. And it would be good if people had a shot when we go look at it to actually walk. Yeah. I certainly didn't really understand the road until I walked it. Yeah. So we could do that. We could do it in April. First week in April should be no snow. First week in April, you know, Mark can have a lot of snow. It would be good to also do it before the ground is much season. That would be yucky to try to walk the road and it's much easier. Well, the good thing is that visibility is as good as against the snow in there. So, all right, so what am I hearing? I want to push it to April or we want to stick with March 19. So there's an April 9th. Is this Saturday? Yeah, 16th. 16th is a Saturday day after tax day. Why don't we do that then we'll all remember. Tax, not the 16th? Yeah, after tax day, 16th. That's pretty safe. 416th. 10 a.m. Okay. All right. Got it. It also gives us more time to get this in there. Done up in the mail. Yeah, where is that? So, okay. So we need to make a motion. The board needs to make a motion to proceed with the request to look at this continuing town highway seven. So, I'll second that. Okay. Any further discussion from the board? I'll watch me when I have the days. Okay. Yeah, we should make an amendment that we've chosen Saturday, April 16th at 10 a.m. for a site visit. And then we'll have a hearing after that immediately after. Okay. That's going to be a friendly amendment to the motion. Okay. Thank you. All right. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Okay. Great. Thank you. Get this done. Denise. Reed, did you have something? Yes. It's Gary. Hi, Gary. How are you? I'm good. How are you? It's been too long. I know it has been. I got a quick question for Reed. I think he thinks there's a lot of interest in this. Where is he getting that from, Reed? Well, I know the Trails Committee is interested. Yeah, I just wondered what the interest was from the Trails Committee. He wants to know what the interest is from the Trails Committee. Well, I think that. Can you hear, can you hear Reed here? I'm trying. Okay. You want to? No, I don't. Reed, speak to that. Come speak to the owl. The wise owl. The wise owl. I think the Trails Committee is always interested when a potential walking trail is under discussion. It's one of those situations. I don't think that they have any serious plan for it, but I think that they are looking toward, you know, maybe two or three centuries from now. They try to look ahead and generally in the past, when we've had road discussions, the Trails Committee, particularly about it, the classifying roads Trails Committee's opinion has been solicited. I think that's certainly that Denise's habit. Well, okay, I'll tell you what I told you when you came by the house. My land's not posted. Anybody that wants to walk on it can walk on it. I got a snow machine trail on it and never tried to get anybody off. So it's wide open right now. So I understand this and that certainly would be true as long as you're the owner. This might be the discussion we would have at the public hearing to see what other options it would be to discuss trails and things like that. And of course, assuming that Trails Committee members would participate in this, it will be well publicized as it's happening. I just want to say for the record, it's telling the unsuitable as a trail right now. And it's a hard job walking on it. It's wet. It's washed out and so on. And I don't think it's likely to become popular overnight. Okay. So that answer your question for now, Geir. Yeah, I just didn't understand. I mean, nobody's ever been interested with the exception of the occasional visitor on four wheelers or a mud truck or dirt bikes that are looking for an old road that's based on the map. I always figured if this thing went out, we got, you know, if it was thrown up, we could just take it off the map and I don't wind up with people in my door yard at 10 o'clock at night looking for an old road. Okay. All right. So we're scheduled. We'll get this notice out and make the record available at the town office, which Jeremy already has, because he's the only one who scanned and sent me a bunch of stuff. So everything will be available at the town office. If somebody wants to come in and look at the documents, they need to call the town office and make an appointment because they're only letting a certain number of people in at a time. All right. So moving on, Denise, can I stick my, can I get in there for another second? Yeah. Different subject. John, you might know this or you might know it too. Do you know we lost Tex LaRosa? Oh, I did not know that. Yeah, we lost Tex. Oh no. When did that happen, Gary? Within a week, I think Tom Willard told me. Oh no, that's sad. It is. Okay, I'm out. Hi, Jill. Thank you. Thank you, everybody. Yeah. All right. Thank you, Travis, for coming back. Select board. We interviewed Travis Shores at our last meeting. I'm sure. There you go. No, it's still there. No, it's gone. Oh, I just need to make it bigger. There we go. Sorry, everyone. Thank you. Okay. Thanks for coming back. Travis, the board interviewed Travis last meeting on the 10th and I didn't know if there was further questions. I was thinking about our currently we have a constable that does not have law enforcement authority and I don't know what that would really look like. I know Travis has a lot of experience and a lot of ideas. I think Travis, you may be looking at bumping up what the constable's role is, am I right? In talking to Wilson, he is currently a certified law enforcement officer. Okay. All right. That's good to know. So I asked Travis to come back because I didn't know that people thought about it. If you had any more questions or thoughts on the role of the constable, John? So Travis had a lot of good ideas. Thank you, Travis. As you know, we have zero constables, but it's really important to get at least one position filled and hopefully if you get appointed tonight, which I hope you do, then we will find you an assistant or you will help us find an assistant. So speaking as one select board member, I would like, but we should have a conversation. We should have a sit down with you in terms of your plan going forward in terms of training and role and responsibilities that we should have a more in-depth discussion and come up with a plan program, if you will, for how you're going. You'd like to see the constable program develop going forward series. Thank you. But also, again, I would like at minimum for that program, again, if you've borne out a larger conversation with select board, I'd like to see men on that program, at least in the initial stage, get you to the point where you are as qualified as Wilson Hughes was, because my understanding is we now have an ordinance that allows us, I think, we're still trying to clarification, allows us to ticket, not once speaking to the animal. I'm sorry though. There's been livestock ordinance, whatever we call it, and there's a provision in there allows the fines to be assessed. And my understanding is it's not a requirement. It's at least best done by a law enforcement, someone with law enforcement credentials. And frankly, someone who knows how to manage those types of situations, which can be very difficult, particularly when I think of not cattle with people sensitive, beefwadding every three years, but a horse with a name and a personality and brains, frankly. So highly sentient that that can be a very difficult situation. So someone with, you know, in that training in that regard, you know, in school. So that that being said, it then includes me to remind myself that I would like us to also point Travis to your point tonight, the console to the animal control officer position. Yeah, I think that he actually, Travis, did you actually agree to do that for me too? I wasn't clear that I didn't put that piece on the agenda. A couple of things. I set something out to the board kind of looking at my short term plan for what needs to be taken between now and when I can actually effectively execute any sort of law enforcement authority. And in that kind of condensed version of my long term plan, it shows things like the trainings that we'll have to go through in order to be a constable to be able to write people up for anything as well as being trained in as a officer to, I forget what the word was, a humane officer. And there's something tricky right now in the state of Vermont when it deals with anything involving livestock. And as a beekeeper, my bees are actually also considered livestock. And if you ever want to write or investigate anything to do with livestock in the state of Vermont, you first have to consult the Secretary of Agriculture before you can do anything at all. So town ordinance is not withstanding. Huh, we did not know that. Meaning get a sign off just a blanket. Yeah, basically if someone calls and says that there's something to do with livestock and it violates the town ordinance, that doesn't mean that you can't do anything about it. It just means that before you do anything about it, you have to consult the Secretary of Agriculture because horses are still listed as livestock as anything like cattle or goats or sheep would be. Each and every time, each and every incident. That's what the state statute. You're going to interrupt Ant and Tevitz in the middle of his bird program. Yeah, I think we I think we need to know what that there must be a statute. We need to know what that statute is because our town attorney is the one who drafted our ordinance. So I'm sure if like one chat with the Secretary would cover any future incidences with that person in violation or not. But the state statute does say under the humane officer's duties, what they can and cannot do specifically. And everything falls underneath the humane officer's abilities, which also can be the town law enforcement officer by the training that we undergo down in one area. But you first have to consult the Secretary on anything to do with livestock. So anyway, I think delineated that I plan on assuming those roles if I'm appointed and I have no problem tackling that future conversations that I put at the end of my summary was saying that we would have to then talk at a later time about what sort of the equipment to be able to effectively execute those roles looks like from a paperwork perspective all the way through to a transportation perspective and a holding facility perspective that can either be at least held in house. But that's a later conversation for now. My perspective for all of you was just starting out, giving the okay if that's where you want to go with it. For me to first just initiate this training to get all trained up so that none of these things are questions anymore. Okay. Yeah, you said training for LEOs. Official sponsorship for the Academy. How does that explain to us how that sponsorship works? I think simply it's just a written something from maybe the chair of the Select Board W. Denise to Ken Hawkins down at the Vermont Kernel Justice Training Council saying that I have been appointed constable and that I'm okay to receive training. And that's really all it is just a formality saying that like, you know, because they used to allow guys to show up just on their own. And actually there was a fee they could pay for a while. They stopped doing all that years ago. And now you have to be officially recommended by a police agency or a town administration. Yeah. Okay. And our minutes would reflect that. So that's the work. And there's no fees or if there There is no fee currently to attend the criminal justice training council. That was going to be my question too. Is there a cost to the town for that? And how they're doing the trainings in person with COVID? They're doing a hybrid version like everybody else, unfortunately, they're doing some of the classes are going to be by Zoom for the ones that are just purely academic classes. For the ones in person, they are, they redid their statutes down there now and they require face coverings and the whole deal. So kind of like our public schools, everyone stays mask and tries to stay as much as they can away from each other. But for some of the stuff, they have to get down and dirty and they can't do anything about that any other way. So for most of the most the in-person stuff, I'll have to go down there and actually travel through the academy for 10 days. And is that still in Pittsburgh? Yes. And how long is the training? The training is it's two weeks Monday through Friday for the initial training. After that, then it's a series of like 56 hours with a field training officer and additional classes I'll have to take by either driving to Pittsburgh or going to a local law enforcement agency like the Sheriff's Department or I've already talked to Montpelier Chief Brian Pete and he seemed receptive to have me come and ride with one of their guys and do in-house training with them as well. Oh, okay. And so you really have to do much of anything until I've taken this training? That's correct. Well, I can execute the actual things that a appointed constable that's not a law enforcement officer can do. So any town ordinances that need to be enforced, executing any injured deer, dealing with, you know, any firework ordinance or something like that, I think those are still covered underneath what a constable by state statute can do. It's just attention and arrest I would not be doing until after that 10 days. I think one of those other duties is assisting the town health officer if needed. That's correct. Chair Wilson has told you stories about. Rick, questions? No. John, Mark, Sharon, questions, comments? I guess it's just as a comment, I would support appointing Travis to be sufficient. I think that the extensive material that he prepared for us helps convince me of his interest and his knowledge and the effort he's made. When I say I support him, it's the point that I support him in substantial part because of that knowledge expressed in that writing. I can't say at this point that I would agree to everything proposed in all of that writing. In other words, Travis, I would feel we would need a separate meeting with Travis aside from whether we point him to me, of course we should appoint him. The question is, we need to meet with him at some point and sort of go over this a little more. I mean, I feel comfortable with his training. I don't yet feel comfortable knowing exactly how far we augment the role of the officer. I think that's something we need to talk about. What I was going to suggest is that Travis come up with a plan. I know you put it in an email, but maybe some kind of a step by step plan. What is your goal? You say here that you talk about public engagement and a badge and a patch and a decal. I think this is something we have never had in Calis before, so this is new. We want to approach this, I think, in a way that like you said, public engagement, public involvement, people get to know what this really means and you mentioned, you know, like you can do speeding tickets and things like that. We have never done that before, so we would have to, I would want the board to meet with you and have this plan of action step by step because this is, you said this is new for us, that there's somebody with this much energy and enthusiasm to up the ante a little bit on what this role is, so I would want it all to be really clear. I fully agree with you that, you know, I am fully willing to take things slowly. I used to live in Calis, you know, 20-some years ago as well, and not much has really changed, so I know things that they move very slowly and as the child of law enforcement officers, you know, I saw kind of the good and bad that came out of cops essentially turning Calis and not the town of Calis, but, you know, harsh toward their public and that's kind of why I'm stepping into this and I think I articulated that before is that I see a need for a different kind of law enforcement and public kind of peace officer and I thought, you know, we can talk about legislating it and we can talk about, you know, the written part of what we think people should do, but I thought I put my money where my mouth is on this and say like, okay, people are scared of police officers and they're scared of getting speeding tickets and they're scared of the culture of policing that as it's existed today and there's been some fantastic research put out in terms of the history and origin of what policing looks like to people of color and so those kind of things, I want to have dialogues with people, you know, openly, maybe even in a forum format where people can like weigh in and talk to the constabulary me or whomever else is there, the select board as well and take a look at, you know, what some of the concerns are and what the reasonable approach is to that is and how we are integrating even sort of mental health into the equation. Most of the stuff seen in Calis alone involving anything that's keeping quasi violent absolutely had a factor of mental health component and as somebody who worked with criminal youth for years out of the Claire Martin Center, I was in those homes and saw that and saw that, you know, what you don't need is somebody to be scared of an authoritarian figure. So that's kind of where I'm coming at this from and I'm happy to see you guys and talk to you more about what this looks like. I guess what you're hearing is we want to take this slow step by step. That all being said, first off, there's just so you know, Travis, I don't know if you knew or remember everyone who used to live here, there is local precedent to Constable, the former Constable Woodbury and Brush actually it was the same step approach, their select board said we're going to go slow on this but eventually he was fully trained including on radar and the town of Woodbury bought radar equipment and bought a huge Jeep and put a sticker on it because they had a chronic issue with speeders quite frankly, granite trucks and trash trucks were included among those speeders and he was pulling them over because they couldn't get enough state police or sheriff coverage to do their job. You know, it's just the sheriff has been there for us as much as they can but they have limited resources and it's not how much we're willing to pay, it's how many hours they can allocate to our town. We take all the hours they're willing to give us and it seems like increasingly we get less and less hours and you know, I would look forward to the day where for instance we had a Constable trained up enough that they could do radar on county road or when you're just driving having gotten your newspaper at the Maple Corner store and you're coming the other way and you got somebody going 50 and or 25 on county road heading into Maple Horn which is an issue that you could spin around and pull them over and at very least this is when we're warning okay with warnings every day all day until the morning to become paper tigers but you know kind of hearing what you said about the headpiece stick and stuff just it's just more about educating that's what I think is important but we have had speeding issues. Yeah but I'll be free and radar and LiDAR as part of this this long course of training I'll be undertaking so I'll be coming out of this with the ability to do that if I have the equipment to do so but again that's a future kind of talking. Right yeah. We need a motion. Yeah we do. I move the appointment of Travis. Shores. Shores. Shores to the position positions of animal control officer right and Constable. Seconded by Rakeem. All right are you ready to vote select board? All right all those in favor please say aye. And you opposed? Travis here. Thank you Travis. We will look forward to you to coming up with I know you sent an email but it would be helpful to have some a different kind of plan. Well we should sit down maybe in person even. Well that's what I'm getting that's what I'm getting to if he hasn't come up with a plan and then when we then we can meet with you and have something to meet about. Yeah we'll have a little agenda this later okay. Sure I can look forward to that thank you all for the appointment I really look forward to. No thank you. I mean this is really amazing. Now this communication I'll have with you is I think to put you in contact with Ken Hawkins down at the criminal justice training council and then I'll take to a break. And please hunt for a deputy would you? Yeah hunt get that word right hunt. Okay select board it is 9 30. Do you want to do anything else? I am not prepared to do a bunch of minutes tonight. I'd like to move to the executive session for five minutes. Five minutes. Personnel matter. I know five minutes is not going to matter. Well it's it's going to be up to I will be two minutes. Okay. So at least three minutes for. So let's say 15 minutes it's going to be really. All right that was a motion to go in. Wait just a second do you anticipate the need for returning to public session for. No. Okay so everybody orca Katie.