 under the reports, motions, and ordinances, if we can at the, there you have this. Let's try to find the uses of this. Under the V-Trans temporary bridge rental agreement, we will include the remains of the society who is looking for approval for a coin drop. And we also are going to add in there, just so it's on the record that we have, two liquor licenses to approve. And we also want to add an executive session to talk about personal matters. Anybody else want to add or amend or make it any more? I move we approve the agenda as amended. Second. Okay, all in favor? All right. Next we'll open up the public comment or inquiry. So this will be the time that if there's something that's not currently on the agenda that you'd like to bring up, we'll put the comments on. Just make sure when you do so, even though we know a lot of you stand up, state your name for the record. So Lisa has it. And sometimes in here, because there will be some presentations going on this evening, sometimes in here the acoustic levels in here is very challenging. So at any point, if there are issues with hearing somebody maybe just raise your hand or something like that, make sure we speak clearly when we have our turn to see things, especially with the windows open, it adds to it. So it will be pretty challenging. So is there anybody have public comment or inquiry? We'll move on. Our first appointment this evening is a combination of Aldrich and Elliott as well as the state of Vermont representation in regards to our continuing discussion in regards to the water master plan. I think probably maybe to make it easier for those who are here this evening that want to hear kind of how we got here. It may be better to have Tim and Patrick maybe kick off this discussion on kind of why the town of Ethel is doing what they're doing. And then after that, Aldrich and Elliott can kind of take us through where we're at in the process and what our next steps are in keeping our schedule with getting to the bond vote. Again, my name is Tim Raymond. I'm with the state of Vermont drinking water and groundwater protection division. My position there is on the operations section. Operations engineering and capacity development section chief. I've been an employee of the state of Vermont in the drinking water program for 30 years. I first became aware of the town of Ethel's water system immediately following Irene and the state of Vermont agency of transportation was offloading all the rock debris for maintenance of 107 and 4 all the flooding there. That time I met your town manager, Delbert Cloud. And at that time the water system was experiencing some water quality issues with polyporn bacteria and I started to become personally familiar with the condition of the water systems infrastructure which was immediately identified as being I put it aging, need of some attention and some repair. And following that time there spent a number of water line breaks in leaks and that sort of thing. One of the functions that we provide in the drinking water division is we conduct routine inspections of the drinking water system approximately 173 years. In that sanitary survey inspection we try to identify operating conditions, maintenance issues that address the quantity and the quality of water provided to the end users of the system. The most recent inspection that we conducted was in April of this year. We identified a number of sanitary issues of concern, necessary repairs or replacement issues for the water system. We've been working with your town office, your town manager and their consulting engineer to approach a planning phase for engineering improvements that can best serve this community so that they can continue to provide both an adequate quantity and quality of water to the users not only today but into the future. As we get into this presentation we're happy to talk more about these sanitary deficiencies that we identified during the inspection. Did you have something you want to say Pat or Patrick Smarr? He's from our engineering section. I'm with the Vermont drinking water groundwater protection. I work with Tim. I'm the engineering section supervisor. Tim and I both performed the sanitary survey that occurred in April and we're both very familiar with the system, the infrastructure and the deficiencies and challenges that the town's facing. I'm also happy to answer questions throughout the evening. Good evening. I'm Wayne Elliott from Maldridge and Elliott. You can't hear me up there just raise your hand or give me a taller. I've been very busy over the last few weeks here with the town. I've been busy in the field marking things and meeting with trees. I've got Mike Maynard here from my office. We've been actively working on a project over the last few weeks to make sure we keep everything on track here. One of the big things we've done here is gotten the project scope nailed in so I'll just give you a really brief overview of what's in there right now. Starting on Main Street just to the west we're going about 2,500 feet up to the intersection with Marsh-Pont Road. So that's going to be a new 8-inch water line. All the water infrastructure in the right way is going to be new. New water line, new hydrants, new valves, new service connections. The gable storage tank up here, again another sanitary survey item is need to run underground power up there. So we're going to run it from the public railway up to the tennis courts, up the hill to the reservoir. I'm going to have automatic level monitoring up there and some other liner site improvements. We're also going to add water level monitoring down at the Boulevard Storage Tank. I'm not going to extend underground power up there but that's going to be done by solar so the two tanks can work together. But the gable is going to be the primary one because of the underground power service. And then on a lot of the side streets here, a lot of clean up. There's a lot of cross-country lines, dead-end lines, small galvanized water lines that come in all over the place, serve multiple units. So water line replacements, I'm pushing dense more about 1100 feet. That's going to be a combination of 4-inch and 2-inch for domestic. Then on Avon and Leverie Road, again similar water line replacements about 700 feet of 2-inch and 4-inch. Again, both those areas, we're trying to put the new water line in the Pollock right-of-way so the town has access for future maintenance, going to be new services, curb stops and other purposes. And then the last item we have here is there's a new sample station that's going to be located down on Pleasant Street. Again, another sanitary survey item. So those are the major components of the water system improvements. So the next thing we did here, we've been working on very actively over the last couple of weeks is updating the construction cost. We have several of these water improvement projects going on around the state. So we use, you know, bid taps from the projects that we've done that we have ongoing. The estimated construction costs. The other thing we do is we extend it out to next February, March of 2020 when the project would be advertised for bids. The construction cost is just under $2 million. It's about $1,993,000. I do want to stress that we're still working on that a little bit. That could go up or down a little bit. It's not going to go up $500,000, but plus or minus a few percent. And the reason we wanted to kind of nail that in or get it closed so we could, you know, explain to the board where we're at tonight. And the other thing we've been trying to do very actively over the last week or so is kind of dial in the state funding package, which we all think is very positive news. The total project cost right now is about $2.8 million. So included in that total project cost is the construction cost. We included 10% construction contingency, which the state requires. We have things in there like legal easements, town administrative costs, short-term interest, engineering costs, permit fees. So that's how we're getting from the $2 million to the $2.8 million. Available funding, primarily using the state drinking water revolving loan funding program. A little complicated, so I'll try to simplify this as much as we can. So what we do is we put the total project cost. We met with the state middle last week and Theresa and Tim were there. And we kind of went through the total project cost, what they can offer, what's available, and kind of the next steps here. The first piece of that is what they call additional subsidies. So for this particular fiscal year, this money has first come first served. There's about a little bit under a million dollars left. But off the total project cost, the $2.8 million, the town currently qualifies for 25% at the top. So that means that's money that the town doesn't have to pay back at some point in loan forgiveness. That is first come first served. One of the triggers is that town needs to have a positive bond bond, which is why we're looking to November versus March, so we can try to move things a lot. So that's a significant, significant amount of money. The second piece of this is what they call disadvantage subsidy. And what they do is they run the calculations. They include the town's current O&M cost debt. They look at your current water rates. They also look at the median household income of what's within the water service area. And what they used to do, it used to be a sliding interest rate from negative to plus 3%. They don't do the negative interest rate. But what they do is they attach additional subsidy to that to try to bring the interest rate down and get you to qualify for this subsidy. So at this point, the town qualifies for 50%. So the remaining costs out of that initial 25%, 20% of that is coming off the top is loan forgiveness. The town isn't going to have to pay back. The third piece of this, which is very, very new and kind of Bethel raises question a few weeks ago and the state's been working on this, is that there's a newer piece for lead-related components, which is also 100% loan forgiveness. So that's the third part of this. We don't have numbers for you tonight. Something that we're still working on. We're working for the state, but especially these areas on Main Street and the side streets where you have galvanized pipeline, getting rid of that is going to qualify you for this additional forgiveness out of the loan related components. We've got some more work to do there, but that is again great news because that's money that's coming off what the town is going to have to pay back. So at the total project cost, so number one, the additional 25% subsidy, the town is looking at about $675,000. So that's the first come first serve piece that's coming off the total project cost. The disadvantage subsidy, which is about 50%, that's a little bit over a million dollars. So out of this whole funding package, even before we fine tune the lead-related components for goodness, the town is looking at approximately a million dollars left and that you would have to borrow for the water system improvements out of the 2.8 million. That all cleared everybody. I know there's a lot of parts and pieces, but we think that's great. I mean, it's a great funding package and this 25% loan subsidy hasn't been around. It was there last year, it's in there this year, but that hasn't been around in the past. So very attractive funding package for the town. So right now the anticipated loan payments, and this does not include the lead-related components for goodness. We're trying to be transparent and be realistic. If anything, we'd like to be a little bit conservative at this point. With the additional subsidy, which is the 25%, we're looking at a little bit over $25,000 a year for an annual loan payment. That's at 40 years. That's a 0% interest. Without that additional subsidy to 25%, that would jump up to almost $34,000. So that's roughly the numbers that we're looking at. That does not include the lead-related components for goodness. So for whatever the town qualifies for that, that is going to come off those annual loan payments. The recommended bond amount is 2.8 million. That does have to include all the loan forgiveness and loan subsidies. So even the town doesn't have to pay some of that money back. That's also going to be included in the bond authorization. We also have a tentative schedule with some milestones. These are all based on a November 5th bond vote. We're looking at tentatively September 23rd for the Select Board to approve the bond documents. There's a public hearing scheduled on October 28th. And then there's a couple other things that are required to tap into this 25% loan subsidy is getting a construction loan application. So we're shooting for November 2011, assuming the bond vote passes on November 5th. And then we have to submit the permit to construct applications. We're trying to get that in early December and set the town up for the best opportunity to tap into this 25% additional loan subsidy. Okay. I don't know if anybody on the board has any questions with that field. So I guess on the 25% loan forgiveness, is this a pool of money through the state of Iran? That is. Is this recharged every year? That's basically the way it is. So this year it became available as of July 1st for FY fiscal year 2020. When that's gone, it's gone. It's first come, first served. Okay. And let's assume that, you know, the town hits all the benchmarks here in Milestone. I mean, are we sitting in a position where if the bond vote is voted through on the 5th that we're looking at receiving this money or is this, do we have any idea to engage that? And hopefully the issue is that there's other projects around the state that are eating that fucking money. Some already have positive bond votes. Others are probably voting in November. We're trying to lay out the schedule to give you the best opportunity. When it's gone, it's gone. But we're trying to lay this out so we can accelerate things and move things to give you the best opportunity to qualify for that. If the bond vote doesn't pass in November and you have to go to March, it's probably gone. Ashley didn't feel like what we did meet with felt like we were in a good position for that because some people, you know, we just were pretty far along in the process. And as Wayne was outlined, we could have a couple of those documents, the loan document and the permit construct. Those are parts that have to be in. So she felt we're definitely in the mix for the 25%. We just really need a positive bond vote on November 5th. Is there a chance if we didn't get that money in this fiscal year that this project would be ongoing in a way that we can apply again? Or does it not? Probably not. But you have to have the whole funny package not in place. And when you do the construction loan, you know, you have to have kind of everything ready to go and it can't be retroactive because there is money left over from a prior year but you can't necessarily tap into that if you're already under construction. And then the lend-related component, you know, right now we're not talking about it because it's kind of more unknown what exactly that might be. Do we have a guesstimate of what piece of pie of that 2.8 million this represents? Is it 10% or 25% of what we're doing? We haven't done the numbers yet, so I'm hesitant, but we think that's a pretty significant piece. It could be as much as maybe half of the 1 million that's left over. So it's sizable. It's not 5% or 10%. It's a pretty good size number. Why we're not trying to... This is the first time the states really kind of agreed to this. This is very, very new. So we've got some work to do with them in each of these areas to present the cost, but it's a sizable number. It's not 5% or 10%. Would you guys speak to that? Well, what I can tell you is that we know communities contain, you know, contain piping, lead-containing materials, but you're not unique in the fact that most communities say, yeah, we might have some, but in order to qualify for this forgiveness, you actually have to identify it. So you're scampering right now to be ahead of the curve and actually identify the problem which you already know exists. So if you can meet these deadlines, you're highly likely to qualify for this lend-of-bate night. So does that cover just removal or removal and installation of replacement? Removal and installation. So it's not just a wild line, it's a paid restoration. It's all that that goes along with it. So that's why it's a pretty big size number. I just want to add in that similarly to the 25% additional subsidy that Wayne was talking about earlier, this money that's set aside for addressing lead-containing components and drinking water infrastructure, there's a limited amount of money that's available in that pot, so to speak, it's available on first-come, first-served basis. Similarly, it's set up that you need to hit certain milestones and you're ready to proceed with construction is a key component of that. So if the town, with a successful bond vote and moving rapidly ahead through construction permanent bidding and construction, that puts you well positioned to be in the mix for getting that money. But if the project's deferred, that money may not be available in the future and other communities may come in. I actually, my name is Pravee. So I actually have two issues. First, with regard to the lead, the amount of money that the town receives, if I'm understanding it right, it's not relative to the amount of material you're pulling out, you're going to test and determine how much contamination there is and then that amount of money will be decided based on the scope of that project. About 100% of the work associated with removing the lead containing components is eligible. What we don't know is how much of it is in the ground. So does the amount of, I guess my question comes from your question, the amount of subsidy that the town receives is it relative to the amount of material that you're removing? Yes, for the lead. So it's like a recycling program, almost, basically. It applies to the outline of the pipeline so that's still a ton of dereliction where Tim's finding this on a weekly basis with some of his late participants. So that's a little bit of the unknown is just kind of make sure we verify and understand what's there and document it. So if I understand this right, I think it's really important that the community to pass this bond code understand that it's not this program that we're just deciding to do. I mean, as most of you know, I get a lot of questions at my store and I don't think that many people understand that this is not an optional program for Bethel. So I would ask the five of you to put out there that this is why it has to happen. The bond has to pass. Otherwise we're going to miss out on a 25% subsidy and all this other stuff. I don't think people are going to get that. I think they're going to hear $2.8 million bond. The pound is on the book for the whole thing. They're not going to understand all these contingencies. So I would ask them to do some kind of flow chart, some kind of something that shows that it has to happen. It's not going to happen. That's part of that. That's going to be part of the public education outreach. Tonight was just to give you guys just a really rough overview. There's going to be, you know, one of the things we do is we do an information flyer and it's a Q&A thing and it's exactly that as wise as required. It's because you've got to see an attorney serving and you've got deadlines and this needs to be done. That's going to be distributed around. We have talk this could be... It's going to be mailed to every, all the residents. I totally agree with that. Tonight was just to give the board a brief overview of where things are at and these guys will also be at those meetings to talk about the need and why it's required. In fact, the town is under an operating permit that contains a schedule of compliance that requires certain work to be done to address these sanitary deficiencies. Irregardless of the identification of whether the materials are lead containment, their lines need to be replaced. Great. So I mean, in other words, you know, right now, regardless of if we do it next year with taking advantage of the funding that we currently have, the town needs to go forward with a project. And I guess, typically when you wait 40 years or 50 years to do work like a waterline and you don't have any type of schedule like we haven't done, you know, usually you're going to pay two or three or four or five times the cost because you waited so long. You know, there is an opportunity for us to do a large chunk of our waterline right now and, you know, and come away with, you know, our contributing factor being, you know, limited compared to, you know, I don't know if we could afford $2.8 million, but, you know, I'm sure that we can afford, you know, a half a million to a million dollars, you know. So a little more appetizing. I think it will be very important in the community to make sure that the information, well, obviously we'd like to have as many people here as possible. We know that doesn't always happen, but it's going to be very important to get the information out, correct information. And if you hear people, you know how it is, that someone gets a piece of information and they pass it along to somebody else with a little different information, eventually it's, you know, $12.8 million. You know, so it's going to be all of our parts here to make sure if we hear that in the community that we correct that. Because, you know, this bond vote won't be a town meeting vote where we stand up and, you know, vote for it after we just talked about the article. This is going to be, you know, $12.9 million and E8 and A, you know. So there could be a lot of potential uninformed voters that, so it's going to be really important that, you know, the board, the town, and Argentina will make sure that we get the positive information out there. And we will also talk about a little bit later tonight, you know, possibilities of having some more meetings. You know, we are required to have one informational meeting prior to bond vote. You know, it might be more beneficial to have multiple meetings to, you know, get that information out. And we will use from Porch Forum and Facebook and, you know, and Zoe DeMarco's here today from the Herald, put an article in there, and we just want to say thank you for supporting the bond, and that's great. And that's what we need is people out there, you know, talking about it, but we certainly realize, you know, it's a marathon not a sprint to kind of get all the information out, but certainly are you going to send a mailing? We are, yes. Yep, in October. And we'll have that diagram in the mailing? I'm not sure. That may be difficult to reproduce, you know, to make it readable. I'm not really sure. That's probably something that Tim and Wayne and Mike and I will hammer out, but it'll certainly have all the questions and answers about. But you'll have like a charge showing how much, the 2.8 million, and then 25% reduction. Yep. And that way. I think that's very important. I agree. I really agree. That way people can see that, and hopefully by then we'll have some idea more about the lead and to see what that number looks like too. So, absolutely. What about the apartment buildings and people that are like water-wise, is it going to be out for a while? They will be during the construction, yeah, you know, trying to communicate with people. We have a full-time person in the field, you know, the town will have staff out there, trying to minimize that, you know, obviously the businesses and impacts. Try to get the new water line in, get it there, get it tested, start to time people over so we can minimize that. But, you know, we're going to have to reconnect people, so there is going to be some disruption. Want to make sure we communicate with people ahead of time as best we can. So, yeah. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, it's gays, it's gays, but yeah, yep. But, you know, we want to say it's going to be next Wednesday, it's going to be from one to three, or it's not going to be gays or weeks, absolutely not. But, just to make sure we coordinate because either the business to be out for a couple of hours, yeah, maybe there's a better time, maybe there's a better time for data to do it to make sure that communication happens. So, will there be at some point in the background of the logistics and some ideas about what stuff will happen first where the digging will begin? Dates, rough dates? There will be some general stuff in the contract. They're going to have a duration. We are going to have a basic sequence of work. We have to be a little bit careful about that because we can write certain requirements and we definitely can do that where it's appropriate. But, we also can't necessarily use the methods of the contract or we can kind of tell him where to start which way to go. But beyond that, you know, he's going to get the work done within that window. And then it's important for the guys in the field, on a weekly basis, to communicate and say, you know, next week we're going to be working on this in order to start these property owners. So, property owners are absolutely up to get them. One other question I had was so you said the total project cost was $2.8 million the, you know, current estimated construction cost was rounded up as $2 million. So, and of that 800,000 that's left over, that goes between the 10% construction contingency, permitting, engineering costs and that, do we have a breakdown of what we think that will be and we'll get a chance to look at it? Yeah. Is there anything else unforeseeable that we could run into? I mean, I've been a part of these types of jobs in the past and I've been through some nightmare jobs. I know that we have concrete slabs in the downtown. That is anticipated. Okay. I think we spent quite a bit of time at the 30% review meeting. We, initially what we were doing was we're trying to map the existing conditions and that's been a big help from Tim's standpoint is like just verifying what's where and we found that with all the utilities out there, we had some pretty limited routes within the waterline. We are going to be under the concrete roadway. That was really a better place for because of separation from existing storm, keeping existing waterline in service. So, we did look at some options and those had different costs associated with them. We do have in the budget to remove the side of the concrete roadway and put back a full roadway surface there. So, that is accounted for. So, the completed project will still have you know, half concrete roadway underneath it. From an eligibility standpoint, the state is in the business of this program of paying for roadway reconstruction. So, they'll consider that part of the eligible that you have to do with the waterline in. But not really beyond those limits. And everybody will have a curb step now. Yes. When do you anticipate having the Paul's point? When do you anticipate having the timeline not only for the entire project, but when you're going to hit certain sections? Because a lot of us here are business owners on Main Street. Sure. Generally, follow-up passes in November to put this out to bid. Probably late January, early February, open bids in March. Got a contractor on board in April. It's probably going to be made timeframe before there's, and that's going to be a little function of the weather. He's going to determine when he's start. You know, at that point, you'll have a real detailed schedule of the work and where it's starting and where it's going. Yeah. Are we anticipating multiple-year project? Not at this point. So, it's feasible if it started in May, then it would be done by November or something like that. The only thing I could say maybe is maybe some of the top course of data or maybe some of the restoration and maybe some of the stuff that happened to the following year, but as far as we anticipate all the waterline infrastructure to be done in the next calendar year. You said something about average income in the town, and then you also said something about the border rates in the town. How does that affect the overall cost of the project? Well, absolutely. And that's why the town qualifies for the 50% additional subsidy a 40-year term and a 0% interest rate. So, that's all factored into that calculation. If they didn't, then it would be more like, worst case, it would be a 30-year term, plus 3% no subsidy, so because of those factors and the formulas that qualifies for the state for that that disadvantage subsidy. The thing I just wanted to say and a little bit on the gentleman's point here is it's great the project's got to be done. The town's got a sanitary service, so the funding package has got to be done. One thing I don't want to make the pitch tonight to say it should happen because you've got a great funding package. That's great news and I think we're excited about that that there is a great funding package and opportunity out there, but the project has got to be done regardless. And it's kind of working out that I think the funding package and the timing is working very favorably for the town. Obviously everybody's concerned about the impacts of the water customers and we all should be rightfully so. So, that's a nice excitement for the whole thing, but we need to remember the project and work's got to be done. I'll amplify that because that's very difficult for people to talk about other than me because I am a state of a non-regulatory person, but essentially non-compliance with the schedule of compliance that's been issued to this town could subject the town. Not only do they not have the benefit of a good funding package, but they could incur financial penalties for not being in compliance and still have to make the improvements in the future. Something we're avoiding, I think. Any, I mean business owners on Main Street, if you were sitting here, you know, we're going to be having the impact. We just went through a real bad summer of being impacted by other projects that were going on around us that had to be done. I understand this needs to be done because when the water main breaks I got to boil water, it's not fun. So I'm all for it. I think this is a great idea. Has anybody looked into other ways of getting funding to help us as business owners? Because we're going to be heavily impacted. There's going to be no parking, nobody's going to want to come downtown. Is there anything that we can do as maybe as a side group working with the town? Anything that we can kind of work with this and try to make this happen? Has anybody looked into it yet, or is anybody looking into it? I'm not aware of anything. I've been through a couple of big digs, and I haven't seen anything for that. I'm certainly willing to look again. Some of the things I know that we have done that could be done is, obviously, A, keeping all the business owners informed. B, is doing some working with you to do some offsite signing so that you could still have signage in different locations that you have a zoning permit for, to let them know that you're still open for business, to utilize certainly the town's Facebook page, to do some advertisement, and to do maybe if you don't have a front-reform account in town, also echo that as well. But certainly we have had offsite signage. I know in some cases businesses have still done okay because they have all the construction people and they're going to eat somewhere, and so they certainly have picked up people there, too. I'm personally not aware of any money but I'm happy to look into it further to see if there's some sort of subsidy, but definitely keep in mind off-premise signage if you want to put up sandwich wards, that sort of thing, and a couple locations, certainly the town would be in favor and certainly encourage that. But I will look and let you know. I think one thing that's in favor here is when you start talking about downtown sewer lines or utility projects, then that's why I brought that question up earlier was usually there are multiple-year jobs and so it's not just you're going to take a one-year hit in the downtown and you take a multiple-year. A lot of these are two-if-not-three-year jobs. So I think by looking at this at this would be a 2020 project and that it would limit the impact of the downtown for one-year season rather than multiple-years. You know, I think it's more favorable to us than a normal project. But I'm definitely going to look into that, Dave and let you know. I can certainly reach out to other towns and someone had mentioned that to me that they thought another town had been received some money, but I'm not sure if it was really the local chamber or where. One where they did a little railroad bridge that impacted this actually and I know that those folks got the businesses that were impacted by that project received some funding. Now whether that was railroad funding... I was just going to say was it railroad money? It could have been railroad money, I don't know. There is actually grant money available through B-Trans. There's no federal money available. But it's only available when the main street business district is completely shut down. And they'll be one lane and traffic open. Along with that, obviously that's not going to happen. Is there a way to incentivize this contract so that it doesn't drag on forever and ever and ever? Can we say give them miles, give them... Well sometimes there is deadlines, right? If they don't need deadlines or their incentives that financial penalty isn't... There's a duration and at the end of the day there are penalties so they go beyond the deadline. At this point, I know you know this and I'm going to say to that camera that the businesses on this main street are extraordinarily fragile, right? So if this drags on none of us are going to make it. I mean, you're saying 2020, that's really scary to me and I know it is to these guys too. So we need that this project needs to go quickly. Especially if you're digging up half the road with all the concrete and everything. It's probably hard to find that has all the businesses on it. Right? I don't know. Do you... I think it's on the banks. It's on the north side. It's the bank north side. Yeah, this side. Yeah. I mean, I would... I guess we'll definitely look into exploring some options on for the downtown business owners. I mean, I think probably the biggest one that comes to my mind is parking. Parking is pretty limited as it is. And our street is very narrow. So I would say once construction activities gets flowing in the downtown there probably won't be any parking on those streets during construction because you can't... It's not wide enough now to park as it is. So I think we'll have to come up with some ways of figuring out where we can park in the downtown. Yeah. We'll see. There's a couple ideas, but I mean, I'll do a little research on board to see what else is out there. And if you can think of anything besides off-premise signage or any of the things that I've already talked about, let me know. Call me, email me, whatever. If you have some ideas and ways that we could assist in promoting your business during this time, let me know. I'm certainly open to all sorts of suggestions. Getting a business owner downtown, I say, yes, let's go for it. Let's do it. Be happy to put information out on my counter because there are a lot of people in town that aren't on internet. So if you can put together something that we could have on our counters, I think Brad would do the same thing. Absolutely. And we'll do that. Thank you. We'd be happy to do that. It's going to impact us, but in the long run, it's going to make things a lot better. We'll do the mailing and then we'll have that. Harold is going to do more than one article. We're going to try to keep it out there and then do that. But again, if you think of any other ideas for business, as to promote your business during construction, let me know. And I think if we are heads together, we could probably come up with some creative thoughts and do that. Chris. We might, oh, sorry, Chris. So we might also be able to get all of our representatives of the mob failure and see if there's some state systems that's available. I've been talking to them. Yeah, we'll talk to them. But is it Jesse? Yes. What's that? Oh, I can't. Oh, I see. I'm just wondering if any part of this project has I am a meter installation as part of it. If that's an idea or on the table. It's not currently no. Can I talk about this or maybe Tim, but currently no, that's not because of the cost at the 2.8 million. It was cast. We did find out today there may be some requirements coming down the road with drinking water that may require some maybe some additional distribution system meters because we currently have a couple distribution system meters, whether it's going to require additional ones at this point. We really haven't nailed nailed that now. It's not a state requirement and everybody sends it to the cost and it's a big, you know, big increasing cost of water customers to have the water meters. It's better though for the system overall. It's not going to reduce the cost of water customers because this town still needs to generate enough income out of their water rates to cover their fixed costs, which are typically 65 to 70% of their operating budget. So, you know, I just fixed costs for instance being like electricity. Yeah, staff, labor benefits. How much is the electricity? I don't know, but the fixed costs are typically 65 to 70%. Right from day one in your budget year before you start producing any water, you're going to pay 65 to 75% of fixed costs regardless of how much water you produce. And if you look, and we've gone down this road before, but, you know, in a small town like ourselves that has a small water system, our fixed costs are higher than probably most identities just because we have limited users on that. And we've gone down this before that our fixed costs for the system is over 75%. There's actually a chart up high that you all have. The challenge right now is the variable cost that's left over is such a smaller piece of the pie that by adding in the cost for the metering you'll, one, you'll never get the financial benefits to having a meter because of that because of how small our system is and also what it would end up doing at the end user would end up having to be more responsible for their water usage. So what I mean by that is currently we're on an EU system. So, you know, you can go out and water your plants or whatever you like to do. If you're on a water meter system from what we have seen through the data based on how small our percentage, our variable cost is left over is not only would the end user have to pay more money to have a meter on their place but then it would restrict you on the amount of water you'd have to use. So it would be kind of almost a double negative based on our current system if we did go with the meters. How do you base the price of the water right now? How do we base the price of water? You're absolutely with too bad, too bad. Yeah. So take the total budget for the EU divided by the number of reserve EU connections and everybody pays an equal piece of money. That's really not fair because then somebody who is using very little water pays the same amount as somebody who's using a great deal of water. But at Chris's point it's there if you want. It's that much. It is. At this point we've decided as a town that it's not financially benefit to go ahead with those. So again Tim Raymond drinking water division. My concern is the town should look seriously at what the cost of some sort of metering approach for the distribution system would entail. My concern on behalf of the community is future regulations are very likely to include a requirement to install distribution system metering. And I'm saying distribution system metering versus service metering. It's up to the community to decide how they want to proceed now. I say now because you're right now you're looking at a drinking water state revolving loan and you've got fairly favorable funding scenario. If this requirement should come into effect within the next five years you would be expected to then provide some form of distribution system metering and you're not likely to have as good a funding package. So at the very least I think you should run the costs and present the information so that you can talk to your user base about that. What's the difference between your distribution metering and residential metering? Well residential metering is basically you have to be meeting at every single residential commercial business. Distribution metering might be some strategically placed meter vaults that meter the total flow of water. Again, meters do nothing more than report where water is going and where it's not going. Billing is a totally separate issue on how you decide to charge for water. And can you use a meter to come up with an approach? Sure. It's a traditional method that's always being used but you don't necessarily have to use that. It is important to know where your water is going and where it's not going. If you're a water operator and you're trying to sleuth out where all the water is maybe going unneeded or non-revenue paying water. And I know Tim will probably attest to this but you know once we go forward with a new delivery system here in town that we probably will see some savings over time based upon not having those leaks anymore because we are losing water in different places throughout the town which means pumps got around longer everything costs a little bit more because we are losing water. And once we have a new distribution system in place to stop the leaks we probably will see some savings on that. Again, that's on the variable end of the usage but we will see some. That savings can then be used when you calculate your next year's budget to not have such an increase. Right. I can speak to the cost of the meters just so people understand. We're not talking about light power here. We did water meters in a community last year so it got bit prices about a third of the customers at Bethel so I just took the numbers from that and extended them out. This is a very basic meter reading system. It's not anything fancy like the remote. This is still walking across the street. You're looking in the range of $650,000 to $750,000 to have meters installed and that's all in with all the other costs. We have not gone out to figure out how many meter pits, size, larger meters. Again, basic reading system. So very, very rough numbers. That's not going to qualify for any more loan subsidy or forgiveness. That's roughly $40 a year for an equivalent unit or residential customer. So you're not going to save any money on your water bill because you've got a meter and you're going to have to pay on the data of those meters. Then you've got the additional staff and maintenance costs of taking care of those meters for the next 25 years, 30 years which have a 25 or 30 year life so you don't want to borrow money for more than 25 or 30 years because you're going to have to replace the meters. You don't want a 40 year term or a 30 year old meter so that's the rough kind of magnitude of the cost you're looking at for meters. So I just wanted to go back to the beginning of the meter talk. We talked about the difference between distribution metering and residential service metering. Being that it is coming down the pipeline, do we have any of the distribution metering included into this? No. It isn't currently. The problem that we may have, the first big problem is we have two outhouses, two reservoirs so any of the inline meters that we put in can only be on the dead end legs that goes out. We have five of them anything that happens in town we're going to be measuring the water when it fills the reservoir and then we're going to be measuring it when we distribute it. I'm kind of struggling with it a little bit. I understand the concept and I do appreciate it. I'm not sure Wayne and I have talked about and Mike Maynard have talked for a few minutes but I don't know what the payback is or the cost and some of these streets have 25 ounces. So we'd have to be leaking substantially but we also need to look to the future if it's a regulation coming down so this talk just happened Right, this is right I have not happened in my system and that's what I've been saying for five years so this is not a common thing the other places have been doing up until now so this is a kind of future requirement potentially down the road and there's hydrological logistics with flow going in different directions and getting things sized it's not quite as simple as just dropping meter structures so I wanted to just revisit the schedule here so right now we have the fifth fifth of November just kind of working back so the fifth of November is our following time which makes the 28th of October right now our public informational night and the select board here to be able to adhere to that the 23rd we would have to sign the bond documents the bond documents need to be signed it was 30 days prior to the vote so if you did do it on the 23rd you could do it at a special convention option but all you're hearing has to be within 10 days of the bond while the bond document is signed just for the date of the fire okay so in terms of the board here the decision for the board would have to be made at the next meeting and I know we had talked about potentially putting another meeting in there for the 16th we wanted that depending on questions from the public at this time how does the board feel about either staying with the 23rd to make to sign the documents or does the board feel like we need need another session to talk more about this or any questions that haven't been answered tonight that we need answered to make the decision we would say some of it is of course just so you know if you haven't seen one before the wording of the bond vote is interesting because you stopped me if I'm wrong in a couple of years but the wording is it's pretty wordy because it does say that you go out to vote, you're saying for the total 2.8 but you do put in additional language to say that may be reduced by you know subject to disruption of rates based on different ranks so you're still going and all the documents are based on the 2.8 and then it's just acknowledging and educating the voters that well we have to say for the whole project because it's forgiveness that that actually will be reduced when it comes down to payments and I'm not sure is there one year on warranty like is there before the payments start maybe that's just a comparison so one year from the so your first loan payment wouldn't be due until this is a recent change it's basically the end of 2021 and that's driven a little bit when it's substantial completion but assuming it's the end of next year so just so you know when you read the bond the wording of the bond vote itself it's a big question and that's kind of just so we're all clear that's how it's written out and certainly the bond documents go out before the before the bid before we even have the bond votes so the signing of the bid documents the bond documents has to take place regardless of whether or not the bond vote passes yes so keeping it 23rd seems to make sense okay it's just whether or not we want to do another meeting well I think at this point it would be if we have questions that are answered then probably tonight is probably the best night to get that information or at least present that question we can get the proper information back for the 16th that we chose to do that you know I would think at this point I mean it's to move forward which we need to in one way or another you know that we would be prepared on the 23rd as a slight more design of the bid document of the bid bond the bond documents and I think that Wayne is going to forward with the bond vote the year on the 23rd okay yeah so it's not a big deal but if you had questions before that we could certainly I could collect them and get them to Wayne and if Wayne could be here he could answer them via email and I could distribute those to you on the 23rd if you had questions between now and then if you didn't want to have an additional meeting on the 16th you could kind of collect your questions well I think that the meeting on the 16th was for informational purposes for public more questions so there was more meetings we had about I think my concern at the point would be well I mean I think I would be ready to move forward at our next meeting with signing I guess my concern would become more on the informative and making sure that I know we have to have a public informational meeting within 10 days bond vote but I'm thinking that we may want to look at two of those and maybe try to figure out how best we can reach a majority of the voters to inform them of you know some people are going to see 2.8 really might only be 800,000 that they could come up with you know so we get a it would seem that you're going to add an extra meeting you might want to add it in October because then we have more information and certainly have a better handle on things so maybe you don't do the 16th because you obviously have a lot of information and the idea is that we could always do add it in one I'm thinking add it in one in October yeah yeah yeah typically it's perfect why do we have a second meeting but you do want to probably do it about a week before you know you know 6 or 7 weeks out and you know people aren't really in tune thinking about it too much but it was great just to get people an overview but I wouldn't recommend you probably do that about mid-October about a week before the other one people are going to start thinking about it you can get them ready kind of for the vote and if you do that first one you can get an idea of what the questions are come back in the second one if you want to customize and respond to people's concerns but getting them closer to the vote I think is more effective so doing one October doing it the 15th you already had on the agenda you could do on the 22nd and then again the 28th so the bond holds for the 5th but you have to, he's saying a week before you're scheduled informational right which is the 28th I guess what I was looking at is we have the 28th which covers the 10th day but I was thinking the 28th and then you have one the night before oh you mean the night before the bond vote oh I'm sorry I thought you meant I thought Wayne was saying 5 days before the 28th like doing it earlier on October I would probably recommend you have one in the middle of October I think it's a little bit more effective just because you're starting to put the flyers out you get information out to people the problem is if you do sometimes you have to do one the night before the bond vote but if you've got questions or people have concerns it's kind of hard to address them after the fact I mean they walked out of there that's a good one I mean totally up to you but I think more commonly for doing a second one like we're probably doing one because we had it you know you've got one at 28 you're doing it early that week at the 21st maybe you know the 21st of the second and then doing the other one on October 28th okay that's a good idea I would ask think about getting the literature out to the public a little earlier then so that people have time to look at it and digest it and have questions about well I had October 17th for some reason but around that we had talked about that so we maybe shoot for the 15th or something and then there may all the people have them and then in that mailing you would say we're going to have an informational on the whatever 21st of the second and the 28th and so people realize you have boom boom and maybe we have a page on our website dedicated to it so people that are perhaps you know really can find on the website all the information in your history of doing these is there a better day of the week is that I mean if you did a weekend versus a weekday I would recommend a weekend I mean most typically Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday nights you know people are busy people have kids in school and I don't know if one night is better but typically we would see in space because you're not going to people aren't going to really start paying attention or forming a decision to have questions until two or three weeks out which is really the middle of October and the challenge you're going to have with an November vote whether it's not an election it's getting people frankly getting people out to vote that's the most important thing regardless of what their position is it's getting people to vote that's the most important thing because there's not anything else in the ballot and as you recall with this the entire town votes but at this point in time some are some so getting people out to vote is important especially for this November election that's one of the reasons we go to the fifth is because people there are elections other places on the fifth so people get thinking about voting and so it obviously makes sense so how did it when did it come that it would be just the water users who were going to be bearing the cost but I think we talked about maybe doing a percentage out of a thing possibly with all the taxpayers we had and then when and it was something that Tim and I had talked about after the meeting was we kind of were looking at the number obviously that it's tricky and we talked about that I think Chris had even said you know it's a concern when you're trying to spread the payment out onto the users as well as the taxpayers because it could make the bond a lot more difficult to pass but once we saw the number that was in the bond payment it wasn't you know you're talking maybe what was it less than 20 bucks a year it was $4 $4 $4 a month $4 a month and so that we were looking at and then we still you know fingers crossed have the ability to even reduce that further possibly by the galvanized money so it didn't seem like it was necessary to open up that can of worms because we've had you know continuing increases to the water users exactly over the past year that's why I asked her to come up with that report and so that's why we looked at that because it is it's obviously something you want done you need done and if the cost had been substantial then we were certainly prepared to crunch numbers and come up with some options to how to meet up but um so that's how we kind of had come up with this and the whole town has to vote because the whole because the whole that's the faith and credit of the town that's applying to the bond that's why everybody votes but that was a discussion that Tim and I had it's certainly because the number just looked so good it's harder it's a big rock to push uphill when you're trying to push that onto the taxpayers as well will there be any language in the actual what voters are voting on that is explicit about the fact that the burden will be only on the water users and not on the taxpayers that'll be information but it's not in the question no it's not on the bond documents specifically it's just at the amount because the town is authorizing the total amount it is definitely on all the information flyers sometimes we'll put it in bubble letters but it's very clear when anything goes out just can be transparent people kind of understand who's paying who's not any further questions or anything on the board okay thank you for coming today I would because alright thanks no I know it we're still thanks Tim thanks you that's right it's still a lot of young folks yeah thank you great thank you thank you I'm sorry, no. Crystal, call again. Sure. One up. A lot of calls. So, man, and twin, I'm sorry. Crystal, call again. One, two, three, four, one up. One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, and one, two. That's what we thought. And I think, during our crisis, there was somebody known to help the sector body. It was so big. So yeah, this one's the combustion problem, but the other big thing that everybody saw was action on the side streets the data is you put measuring on the three worst contributors to the gravel on Main Street. So what, where I'm going with this is right now, we call it JLAA, has identified all the infrastructure in the side streets in both cases. They know where it is. I've talked with Therese about it. We do have a running item that addresses this issue. The highway rehabilitation. You know, you guys have called it paving or something crisp. And the black top is already going to be ripped up. And we're going to lay down the end when the project's over if the bond vote passes. So there is really no better time to put some storm drains into the streets than right now. If the bond vote passes. Now just to be clear, this, as Tim is saying, is the, this wouldn't qualify as part of the funding for the water. We would have to put that in, but still the ground is open and you know, everything else has already happened on the mobilization and the whole thing. So, and we don't have, I don't remember. I'm sorry about the idea of a rough estimate. Well that's why I asked Wayne and Mike if they would just stay for a couple of minutes just if you guys had any questions you could fat them off. How does it end up, if the town did this additional work, how does it end up affecting the contractor that's doing the water mains at their schedule? Well, so we haven't necessarily got into the details of it yet. There's a couple ways you could do it. It obviously wouldn't be eligible for the state funding, but you could put it into the bid and it could just be identified as a non-eligible cost with its own bid items and units. That's probably the cleanest way. I can't see this works very well if it's, you know, done separately like that kind of stuff. As Tim said, they got the street dug up and you know, they need to do the paving restoration, all that kind of stuff. So that's probably the cleanest way. We haven't talked about it too much, but have separate bid items, non-eligible. So you guys know what the cost is and you know, kind of make a decision on that moving forward. So you basically just be a different bucket of money out of the whole thing. I guess in terms of the repaving piece that would be the contractor for the main project, are they then affected if additional work is being done? Does their schedule get pushed down? Yeah, we would have an additional time in the contractor that's not much worth it. We're talking about using the same contractor to do the goals. It would still be the same, maybe one day or the other, but we've got to put it down. We've got to ground it up. You bid them separately. But it would be the same. Yes, it would be whoever's installing the water would also install these. But separating them across the house so you could see it was possible. It would be. And Wayne and Michael could do estimates on what? I think there's one thing we have to be careful of. But knowing where all these roads are at, the fix isn't quite as simple as just putting storm drains. Because these roads are very challenged to begin with. Putting storm drains is one thing, but there's going to be a lot more costs associated with this project than just those structures themselves. Because these roads here, either right now the roads pitch to the opposite side of the storm drain or there's not a ditch to get to the storm drain. They actually lay out pretty decent if you light people up on them. Some of these are pretty challenging to get water to them now. Yeah, pushing the pushing drive ahead of a black top ditch that went down the way and now the black top has disappeared. And if you have a catchphrase on the corner, we'll pick it up now. And really it should be black top drainage again. That's the one that Dave Sanborn had brought to our attention last time. And I'd given it to Alan to go take a look at. And some of these are existing structures too? There are a few that are industries. The one on pushing drive is all the way to the up-behind deal right out national. And then you've got one car right at Liberty Stable. Avon is already pitched, so you could just do a cross-send across the street to grab it from the left and swing it over to the right. So it's not a done deal, but it's just definitely something to think about because it makes sense. Well, as we don't do it. Yeah, and if you don't, and you look like idiots later, if we cut up brand new pavement. So I like the idea of, you know, which is something that Chris has certainly been talking about, which is being more proactive and reactive. And I certainly appreciate when Tim mentioned it. I was like, oh my God, of course, you know, we got to look at this and consider this. Well, can we get an estimate on what we think? Yeah. I figured if I threw it out there so you guys could talk about it and think about it. And, you know, I put the pictures and stuff so you go left on your own or whatever. That's great. I mean, I have no skin in it. It seems like it makes sense. I mean, a majority of these roads look like they're, they've seen the end of their life anyway. So it's time for them to be rehabilitated in one form. Yeah. There is strong grades of running along Main Street in the necessary places to catch it. Yeah. And we're already digging these up for the water lines anyway. So, you know, you already have the road cut up. It makes sense to get the most bang for your buck while you're in there. Okay. Let me, I would say just, you know, I guess my opinion would be to, you know, figure out what the estimate would be. And then, you know, I guess we can, before we actually put that bid, we could have a decision on, you know, maybe this is a $100,000 project. And it gets added into, into that. So are you essentially, if you want to take, do you need to take to vote? Are you among the board or are you just looking for way to do a cost estimate? Yeah, some ideas on the numbers. Yeah. I mean, I think as long as it's reasonable. I mean, and obviously we have a couple other areas that have been identified that, you know, right now might be a little higher priority. Oh, I understand that. But being that we're going to have the street dug up anyways and it might make sense to invest that. And you've also dug a year so you've got another budget cycle you can plan to pay on or what after I've won them next year. So there's a couple of things that kind of makes it enticing. I think, I think one it would be, we will be starting our budgeting like, soon? Next time. So it's, it's starting right now. So I think it would be helpful to have a cost estimate before, you know, before the end of December. Because then we could potentially put it into our next budget. Yeah. I guess that would be the deadline. Does that work for you, Wayne? Yeah, we probably need a decision. Okay. As soon as you get an estimate, just email it to me and I'll put it on the next agenda and let them know. Absolutely. As soon as you get the number, we'll do it. But I was just really happy because, you know, the slack board and Chris, you know, certainly been talking about being more forward thinkers and more proactive. And so when Tim came to me, you know, on this, I thought it was great. There's, there's somebody who's looking at the big picture. And so I think it's great. And this was so happy that you thought of it. Thank you. Yeah. And then if all these rows were like just freshly paved and you're like, oh boy, like we just did these rows. But you look at them and they're all like pothold and. Yeah. So it looks like they kind of need time. Yeah. Because all the water lines going up through there anyways. So yeah. So when you do the cost estimate, obviously on some of these, you know, on these, we're doing a portion of work underneath the water system. Yeah. But so I'm assuming that the cost estimate that you give us would be anything outside the scope of that word. Yeah. And, you know, and I would say on some of these, because they are, they're small rows. Yeah. They're not very lengthy that we may want to just look at to see means it's open, you know, do we, you know, pave the whole road or whatever, you know, not just. I think. Yeah. Not to get ahead of a little bit, but there is a little flexibility to take instead of going to depths of payment to kind of use the same value and maybe get some overlay work out of it too. So that's something we can just kind of see what the disturbance of both those utilities are. There is some flexibility there, Chris, you know, with the state, what they'll apply for that. And there's two of these rows that every time it rains that we get complaints of material discharging, not water, but material that flows down the street. So they have been identified as problem areas. So I guess they, I mean, can't, I mean, can't hurt to do an estimate and then we see how that might not fit into the budget. Yeah. All right. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Any further discussion? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. A little FEMA project update. Oh, no. Sorry. Well, Rachel won't be here this evening. They, their guests are not doing this activity as said in the email that Chris and I received. They asked a postponement for now. Oh, I know. Sorry about that. Thank you. Thank you, Wayne. Thanks, Mike. Yeah. I'm not sure. I got, I thought the email said they weren't going to do the activity. Yeah, it's not like they were going to cancel it, but. Yeah. I'm not going to swear to that. I'd have to reread the email at least some of it, but I feel like that could take away from that. I know that's why. Yeah. So must be they decided not to. Yeah, you're right. Good point. So that I must be right in my takeaway that they're not going to do the event. So, FEMA update. So the, the Louisville Campbell Whittier piece, the contract that says it's completed, we do have one culvert that we're going to be installing. So the culvert at the end of Campbell Campbrook intersection area. That culvert had washed out during the spring flood event and another culvert was put in in more of a temporary fashion than a permanent fashion. So, so we've been trying to figure out what we want to do permanently there. And what we decided to do is to put another permanent culvert in there and at the same time that should alleviate the issues that we have there with the site that we talked about last evening. So the contractor is going to is going to remove and reset the existing culvert deeper because at this point only has just a couple of inches of cover on top of that. And the existing culvert will take care of any of the spring water runoff. And then the storm water runoff will be caught through the new culvert. So we'll work on that here in the next couple of weeks and then that contract will be done. Based on, you know, that the contractor be completed. The Southwest Quadrant pieces, which is Frank and Thayer, Dunham, those areas, we just finished that up last week. There might be some minor, some minor touch up work through on those, but as far as the contractor, we've completed work there. The East Quadrant, which is the Sanders, Arnold, Christian Hill, North Main Street. So that contract's ongoing. Mo has been heading that one up. And I would say they probably have another week left. All that's left is the new bridge in Colorado. Yeah, so that is 90%. So, you know, within the week, that should close up on that job. Northwest Quadrant, which is the Gilead sections, you know, Viom, Gilead, a little bit on McIntosh. That is on its way, I would say, is probably, you know, almost 50% of the way there. So we shouldn't have any issues with, you know, initially we had that scheduled to be done by the 15th of September. It's probably going to be more like a week later than that. But we've also added other responsibilities to that contractor, so we're not going to hold them responsible to going over the contract. But it should get done in a reasonable time. The Camp Roof Pave-In will start tomorrow. So the next three, four days, seek alternate route, even though it should have been already. But we all know there's a lot of people traveling back and forth that don't live up there, right, Doug? So I don't know too many people that own semi trailers that live up there, do you? But we see them go by here all the time. So they're going to be posting signs down at the bottom again? There are currently signs there. I mean about paving, not going paving or anything like that. Well, you have, so you'll continue to have the message boards that says, you know, Camp Roof is closed. You'll have the delineation at the bottom of Hill, continue to say that's closed. Inside the work zone packages will be signed. So you'll know that. So what you will see is that, you know, it will, you know, three or four days throughout the project, you know, you will, you know, there might be some areas that will be delineated off not to drive in overnight type deal. But once we get, once the contractors in sections that should get done within a 48 hour period. So if not, you can call Bo as he's heading up. So it should go rather, rather quickly there. And then there's been some incidental work going on on that road that I would say at this point majority of that has been completed. There's some permanent work that's going to have to go back out on Camp Roof, which is rip wrapping that huge culvert near Jim Ford's and possibly over the bank near some guard rail. That bank there may be eroded sums that may qualify for some permanent work, which would be the town would be on the for 10% of that. Certainly the rip wrap needs to take place near the big culvert that would need to be redone. I have spoken with an email to Chris Bump because he and I went up and looked at those areas about what we need to do to start that process because you don't want to do it too far away from your event or federal highway and not pay for it. So the other bids there are the Bethel Mills pump station. I think that's maybe completed. If not, it's definitely wrapping up, but I think it might be done. I forgot to double check with Tim Mills today. Geico, the road to the reservoir, is that will be done, you know, a couple, three weeks, I think. So that rounds out all that. Oh, no, it doesn't. The p-vine, the slide, and the culvert on p-vine, the engineering, I put those bids are out. And I can't, I wanted to say they're due this Friday, but I swear to God on my calendar in front of me, but those two are out as well. Actually, maybe it says right here. So those are out to bid as well. I think that maybe rounds up all of our stuff that's out. And even though the contractors that were contracted to do the individual FEMA jobs may be wrapping up, doesn't necessarily mean there won't be any activity going on those roads. Right. So they're going to do, you know, punch list type activities with their town highway department on other things that may not have been covered under FEMA. So, yep. I'm sorry, I didn't hear you. They may have done two jobs that were done last week on Camp Brook Road. Two jobs that were done last week on Camp Brook Road? The stone job, the old Douglas House. The Culver. Joe Russo's House? Are you talking about the Culvert? The stone worker on it? And the, um, up by the, a little bit further up were the guardrails. So the one, the job that was done below Joe Russo's House? That Culvert. Has anybody looked at that? I haven't been out yet, no. Somebody out of him? Okay. The stone's higher than the road. And there's no ditch on the lower side of it, level of the road. Okay. My opinion. Yeah, no. We'll go all the way. You've got it. So when they come in and pave on Camp Brook Road, are they going to fix any of the ditching that was repaired during the, so it's just box cut and paved? Yeah, box cut. And then that's on the town to fix the whole road. There'll be some minor shoulder, um, aggregate stuff, but as far as, and that's why I said there's probably going to be a little bit more ongoing there because, you know, once the, once the pavement's put in place, there's going to be some areas that probably going to have to go in there and some minor ditching is going to have to tie things together. I did take Chris Bump through there last week, or the week before it all kind of runs together right now and had him look at some stuff to see about maybe doing some additional ditching, to do some additional work, and he, you know, wasn't. I just assumed that would be one projected pave and ditch or something. Yeah, they, I tried to get some additional ditching work done through that, but they were saying, wasn't as part of the April and they were saying it was maintenance that needed to be done so I couldn't, you know, so I'm going to end up, I think we're going to end up having to do some ditching with the road road there. I think we'll do, and Camp Brook Road will be, you know, somewhat similar like the other contracts that we have out there that even after the contract is gone, there's probably going to be some work that's going to go on out there to make the FEMA work tie into the existing conditions out there, so, and we'll have to go out and take a look at the. Because he's right, it needs to be ditched. I mean, I went up through there and stopped and walked parts of it and, you know, and Ryan's right. It needs to be ditched and. Some of it was, I'm sorry, some of it was. Some of it was from the repairs that aren't a flood, you know, they just filled in. They just filled them in. And so the ditch is filled in too, you know, so I'd think what should have been part of the project. So we'll have to walk it when the pipe is done and then send the road crew up there to do some, you know, to add that we haven't, the only thing they had done was build holes, certainly in, you know, piles. They hadn't done much on cambrook. They were focused elsewhere, but you're right. There's definitely, but I'll go out and look at the culvert. I'll be back in town, but so, so I'll go. Thanks. I'll take a look. No, it's a good one. Any questions in regards to the FEMA work? It's coming along. And then we had the Penelope Bridge. So as we had talked about two meetings ago about putting the temporary Penelope Bridge back out for bid, did you have any updates to the move forward? I have the bidder stand as it is that north road property is a little bit better and they're going to move forward with the contract. And also below that is the contract for us, for you to sign for the temporary rental agreement. And in that temporary rental agreement, Chris, states that the municipality acknowledges the need to return the temporary bridge to the state as soon as possible and to that end, agrees to expedite reconstruction or replacement of the existing bridge. It's pretty open-ended. It doesn't give you a specific time frame. So north road properties, which is Dylan McCullough, is the low bidder on Penelope Bridge. And I did have a conversation with him earlier today to make sure that he was all set to move forward with the project. I didn't think they did that type of thing. They also had worked with another bridge installer to talk through the bid and some assistants putting the bridge together. So they were kind of working with another, which was exactly what St. Ange was working with WB Rogers. And so some of these were working with local contractors. So I'll just read out the big results and then we can talk about an award. So yeah, north road properties and their bid amount was $166,400. The next bidder was Cold River Bridges and their bid amount was $181,555. The third bidder was AL St. Ange. Their bid amount was $191,800. They had Daniel's construction, $197,400. $197,400? Yeah. And the last one was Chesterfield Associates and they were at $346,000 even. Those are the ones that bid $331 last time. Right. But the FEMA projects are tricky because the way in which you should award the FEMA jobs is by little bidder. And that's the way that we've awarded all the contracts to date. I guess I have a little bit of concern. I have a little bit of concern. I mean, I want to use the local people whenever we can. However, having someone get into constructing a bridge that has no experience doing it kind of concerns me a little bit considering that there are two well-qualified bridge contractors that are another $15,000 to $25,000 off, which really isn't a whole lot of money when you're talking. And for us, town-wise, it's maybe another $2,500 that's done. So I guess it's a little bit of a tough... I did ask him and he'd spoken to Winterset. So he was working. I wasn't sure if Winterset was going to bid. They were certainly received packages and stuff to bid. And he has a connection with someone at Winterset. So my impression is that he's going to have assistance from Winterset who is building a bridge currently in Pittsfield to assemble a bridge. And I spoke with him and he said, yes, that he was good with the number. And I tried to compare the two bids between Cold River and North Road. It's hard. Everybody bids it differently. So where one is higher and one is lower, there was no... He wasn't comparing apples to apples. So it's difficult. But I mean, obviously, if he goes over, you know, this is it. I mean, it's not like we're going to add to that contract. If he goes over, he loses. You've got to group the pretty much, you know, in the same ballpark. Yep. And I mean, I don't know everything about his business, but I don't have the feeling that he has the necessary expertise or experience or equipment for that matter. I'm just not sure through FEMA if we, if you can reject a bid on that. I mean, it's a little better. He's significantly lower. I don't know. I can certainly speak with someone. So what is entailed in this project? What's entailed is... And then slide the bridge across. Right. I mean, because what they're doing is they're removing the abutment that's closest to the river. Closest to the river. Jesus in the river. It's closest to the road. Excuse me. Then they're moving the deck. So that's all excavation work. They're just breaking it up and taking it out, right? Then they are busy. Yes. They're building the drives. The... What's the word I want? You know, up to the bridge. Approach. Approach. Thank you. So the approach is the bridge. They are putting concrete block, they're setting in the river to be the middle of the bridge. And obviously you have someone here that's going to be there from the state. The technical gentleman will be there. And then they're putting bridge together. And he's obviously there. We'll receive that. And that's what's going to span the 100 foot. So... It's a Bailey bridge, right? Yeah. Or maybe bridge or Bailey bridge or whatever the rub storm is. So yes, a lot of the contract is excavation. They signed a work performance bond. Isn't that right? Anybody doing these projects? They just... Well, no, they signed a bid bond. So, you know, what that means is if we went ahead tonight and awarded, you know, to a certain contractor and then after the award, you know, let's say they signed all the documents and then after that they get out there on day one and say, well, we can't do this. And we're out of here. Then the town would be allowed to cash in on the bond or in this case the check. So, however, it's such a small amount of money. You know, in this case it was $7,000 or $8,000. That the town would keep. But then it pushes everything out, you know? I mean, you know, the leads are turning and falling out of the tree area. So, I don't know. I think it's just challenging. I don't know how the FEMA process... Well... I think typically you're supposed to take the little bid. I don't know if you have to, but typically that's the process. I can have a conversation with them. What you could do is you could make a motion to authorize me to award the bid to either... It's either going to be North Road or Cold River. Cold River. Then we could go... You could just authorize me to do that. I can have a conversation with certain of the FEMA to find out what the happen was here. Dylan was here and now he's not. I wish he was here. If I'd known you were going to have this discussion, I would have asked him to stay. I mean, I think, you know, we want to award to the... Of course. Well, one to the little bid because it's a little bid process, but also to a local company because that keeps money in this area. But, you know, we're not talking about ditching or grading some roads. We're talking about putting in a temporary structure. So, you know, again, I just have a little bit of hardware and trying to... I just see this thing, you know, not happening the way you want it. And then, you know... Yeah. So that's your option, I think, is you could make the motion to authorize me to award the bid to one of the two lowest bidders. I can call, talk to FEMA, talk to the state tomorrow and sort it out. Tomorrow or Wednesday. Tomorrow I'll be in a local books class. So tomorrow afternoon or Wednesday I could make... I could do some emails and try to get some answers here. So what's our... What happens if we award to a little bidder and it turns out it cannot be what it needs to be? Meaning that they can't complete the project. Or can't complete the satisfaction. Well, it's, you know, it's going to be tough because you're going to have to bring somebody in when, if they leave the project, then you're... somebody's coming in and you have the balance of whatever you haven't paid out to try to get someone else to finish the project. But, I mean... It would end up being a lot more expensive because you're going to have that with anybody. Otherwise somebody else would do it. And you could have had that with the project that you've awarded so far. Right, no. I mean, you run that risk on anything that you do. The other companies, I mean, obviously they have experience, you know, doing these religious... But if he's bringing on people from an experienced rich company to actual do an installation, I don't know, that's a different story. That says, you know, you can do that. Right, and then maybe that would give you more comfort. I'm not sure. Do you have any experience putting these bridges in? Where's that? We put one in the back road to Stockbridge. How large of one was that? It wasn't as long as this one. About the same size? It was as long now. What kind of equipment do you use to put... install that one? They're going to need more than he has. I'd be obviously... You've got to get a crane, especially that's 300 feet long. It's 100? 100 foot. You've got to get a crane to pull it across. But they were saying, and that actually in the discussion of this with engineers, they weren't saying that. Because I know some people didn't want to bid on because they were concerned about the power lines and one of them was saying, well, we can't put a crane in here and somebody else said, well, you don't need it because you could put something, another piece of equipment on the other side to pull it across. Because you could slide it in? I don't know. Yeah, then you slide it. I don't know, I don't have any experience. That Mill River did a bridge up in Grandville for the state. They did a really nice job. Yeah. I mean, and... I said Cold River, I want to keep saying Cold Hall. Cold River obviously did the high bridge. Right? Yeah. And, you know, obviously, nice person. It's Jimmy Holler and he called and, you know, offered some assistance earlier on. But I can talk to... Let me talk to some people tomorrow. I just think since you don't know what you want to do, you could make that motion and I can sort it out tomorrow and Wednesday and make an award by the end of the week. I mean, I hate to put a floating motion out there of one or the other, you know. I'd rather make a decision than pick one or the other. Yeah, but I'm not sure, since we don't know the FEMA rules right now, I'm not sure you're in a position to make that motion. Well, we can make it contingent upon... If you make authorization of the bid to north road properties, contingent on the dual approval of whatever FEMA in the state, then obviously if they say no, it would automatically go to the next bidder. So you wouldn't have to put an either or out there and you could just put some caveats on the award. Dylan McCullum. Dylan McCullum. I mean, I just... I don't know. I'm just a little worried on the bridge and the things. Okay. Then why don't you make a motion that's contingent on whatever. Contingent on state and FEMA approval and we can make... Then I can make the award because obviously if they say no, it automatically goes to the next person. What do you mean if they say no? No, it wouldn't go that way. It's going to go to the next little bidder. So if they say no, they're not comfortable, it's automatically going to... I'm automatically going to award to the next person, which is the next little bidder, which is cold river. I'm saying as if the state... If he withdraws his bid, you mean? No, I'm saying if the state says... Maybe I word that correctly. If the state and FEMA says that they agree with you that they're not comfortable and they want us to move to the next bidder. I don't think the state's going to weigh in on that. I'm going to ask the opinion of the state and see what they say. Okay. Well, I can ask... Let me just ask and see what they say. But I have to find out from FEMA what the rule is. If anything, I would be more comfortable with awarding it to cold river bridges contingent upon FEMA allowing us to award it to the second little bidder. I guess that would be the way I would look at it. And again, I think we all like Dylan and we'd rather have the local contractor do work around here, but I just... I mean, he hasn't done one of these. In some cases, correct me if I'm wrong, but in some cases when you're bidding out these bridges, it'll say in there that you have to be qualified for so many years of experience or to do certain things like that. Which it didn't say are. I mean, we sat there at the bid opening. There was one bidder that showed up and was $47,000. And obviously he didn't really look at it. And he ended up costing his bid or his bid back. So I mean, it's one thing to bid something and it's another to actually have done the work and have some experience in it. I mean, I just think it's the difference in the problem. For everything that we've been through with this bridge and we're behind, obviously, the time frame of getting this in. And I think, I think unfortunately in this case that we'd be taking a higher risk by using a contractor that doesn't have the experience when we have two other contractors that are second and third that do have a lot of experience. I guess I would entertain a motion to accept Cold River Bridges $181,555 bid contingent upon the OK from FEMA allowing us to award it to the second low bidder. Second. All right. I know it's a hard one to swallow because I'd like to give him the word but I just feel that because it's probably too much risk for us. So once you ask FEMA and they say, OK, you're good and obviously our motion stands if for some reason FEMA says, no, you must go with the low bidder then our motion is overturned. Is that the way to award it? Oh, you know. Well, the same thing happened last time when we decided that the low bidder was going to be McCullough. We awarded to both bids to McCullough on Geico and Pump-Out and then he pulled one. So he's like, you bid on both, you won both and he's like, yeah, well, no, by only going to do one of them. So then the next one just went to the next little bit or so. And if you could, you won't have an issue of discussing our theory behind the award or you can have... Oh, with FEMA? No, with Dylan. Oh, no, I don't have a problem. Or if not, you can come see me. I don't have a problem. No, I have no problem at all. All right. Everybody good with that one? Was there a new completion date on the bridge installation with that bid? Like, yeah, on the bridge, yeah, it has to be in November. I think it was like 26, 24. I don't have my FEMA schedule. I don't have my FEMA schedule. I just wanted to update that and put it in your packet, but I'm not seeing it. Anyways, it's end of November and obviously you have to be out of the river by October 15th. That's why we need to... Oh, yeah, because of... Yeah, because the river work has to be done. November 22nd. There you go. So October 15th, you have to be out, or yes, out of the river by October 15th. Any further discussion on that one? The temporary bridge rental agreement. Everybody had an opportunity to read through that. That's going to need a motion to authorize Chris Jarvis as the chair to sign that. It only has one signature line here. So that's just for the rental of the bridges through V-Trans. That's 150. 150 per month. Yep. Approximately. 100 foot. Yep, that's you. Okay, I would entertain a motion to authorize myself to sign on behalf of the town for the rental of the temporary bridge of V-Trans in the amount of $150 a month. So... Uh-huh. So if you could pass us down and have Chris just sign the top, then I'll notarize your signature on the bottom. All right, and then before I forget here, we added a few items to here. We have an application for a coin draw on behalf of the Humane Society. And the date in which they'd like to do it is the 21st of September. It's a fuller festival. It's a fuller festival. It's going to be a tough spot when I have entertainment up there at the bench, huh? I can see why they want to. Oh. Hello. That might be a little too congestive there. They do have a rain date for the 22nd. So that's Sunday. That would be better. I don't think there's any plan on Sunday at the bench, huh? No, I don't think so. We're shifting it up a little, like, closer to the school. Close to the GW. No. Well, we did in the past. We established that as a coin draw areas because of the lowest... seems to be our lowest speeds around that area. Because the speed picks back up once you hit Pleasant Street. What time? Like, what's the time? They were looking for nine to three. Oh, wow. So what... Do you think if we made a motion to approve it based on the rain date of the 22nd, that they would have an issue with that? I'm sure they would, but... That they would have an issue with it? I'm certain they would. Or do they want to pick another date and come back for us? They also usually put up a stand at the bench on a table and you get somebody dressed up like a dog or... I would tell them that they get Sunday the 22nd if that's not a date they want, they can come back. They're approved for the 22nd, but they could do another day. Another 22nd. All right. I would entertain a motion to allow the Humane Society to set up a coin draw based on the rain date of September 22nd from nine to three. All favor? All right. I need to sign this. And then we have... So we can get it... Typically, we just sign these, but we're going to make sure we give them into the meeting minutes. We have some liquor licenses here. One of these is for Tessie's Tavern and the other one is for Toe's shoes. Well, it's not Tessie's anymore. Yeah. Two roads... Yeah, it just says a DBA. I think it says Tessie's DBA or vice versa. Well, because they're leasing it to the new entities because they still have to hold the... Yeah. I think if you look at the license, it has a DBA on it. Well, yeah, they're saying Tessie's Tavern LLC on here. Right. And they may still be the... Right. Okay. So, sign. And we have the slept board meeting minutes of August 26th. Are there changes or amendments to it? Are we good to approve it? Yeah. That's good. I got one. You got one? Yeah. It says better move to a turn in 30 seconds. That's a good board. Oh, that's... I think it was... It was... It was brainered. Yeah. I was probably just typing away. I was typing away. Which one was which? It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Thank you. So I entertain a motion to approve the meeting minutes of the 26th as amended. Okay. Sorry. Mom, would you give us the multiples? Just give you both the multiples. All right. All in favor? Aye. Actually, you're here. Does it say right? Does it say right? No. Okay. What did we get? Is it the same? Yeah. We can see it. It's good if it's amended. It's the same. Great. Okay. So... It's all ended. It's all ended. Motion to approve. Okay. Okay. And there were a few other communications in our packet. The Wreck Committee information. Yes, we may want to have Jose come soon again and visit us. I'll just kind of get an update before he's at with the grant for the charging station. Well, there was some talk amongst themselves. He had a note come to the board meeting, talked to his committee, and so they haven't... They're talking about they have not requested time to come back yet. Okay. So they're... I get CC'd on stuff in between. We want to see if within the next month or two he comes back and just gives us an update on... Yeah. Because he's not the chair of that committee anymore. No. Oh, okay. But I'll reach out to him. I'll ask. Because that would be helpful to kind of see where they're at. Yeah. And maybe they're moving forward and they're, you know, just where at in the process they're at. All right. We're going on for a little while. Yeah, we'll be good. You have a good point. The... I guess it was under other communications, but we had the current budget cost review in there. You have one alone. You didn't get that? No. Okay. What? Okay. Yeah, it's in there. It could be in the dark. Not in my pocket. What was in your packet? You're missing the budget status report. Everybody else got it? Yeah. Wow. It's not fair. Here, Paul, I'll give you mine. It's in here. Let's kind of tell you something, Paul. I didn't have one question. Okay. I got to find that. So under... You know, Paul, there's two in mine. This is difficult. I... Sorry, still. I did not go in by hair, so there you go. Maybe she put two in mine and none in yours. Sorry. If you have any questions, email me. So I had a question in regards to... On page two of A, under the... Okay. It was on three of A, under the other public works. Yep. Could you just clarify... The cemeteries? So I had three. One was the cemeteries. That's a building. Okay. Yeah. That's, you know, if they've been paid for mowing. Okay. And then... So under the backhoe and the international... Those are loan payments that were made. So are those loan payments made... Because they're already at 100% of the year. They just made once. Yeah, they just made once. Okay. I just wanted to make sure. All right. Other than that, everything seemed to be in line pretty good. Okay. Anybody else have any other questions? And we have the constable to report. I don't know if we were all close to getting some of the... Statistics. Dad statistics of... I think he really likes... All that, but it's important. There was quite a bit of data there. So you're thinking he just needs to be a little more concise and has it not given you so much... Well, I think he was trying to share with us some... And these were like... Isn't it a little different pretty much every time you hear a report though? Well, he had this regular report and then he put in some... A couple pages though. I guess they would be like traffic stops. Well, it's just... Race data. So it breaks down by race and breaks down by... But it had his information and then it also had our prior constables information. Sure, Mark. I don't know if this is just any data that... I think he was just trying to give you guys information on how many tickets he did. Yeah, data that's collected at him, but I don't know. So you don't need... It was information overload for me as well. So I'll just tell him. I'll just tell him. You don't need the race data totals. Okay. On that, when I was talking with him today, because I said, Jesus, it looks like you need to get some new tires for that. He just mentioned that he was able to pick up two sets of tires. He was. For that cruiser that the state was going to throw away. Yeah, from Joe himself. He says they're perfectly good tires. So he's got two sets that he's going to put one of them on here and one on here. So that should save us some money. It does, yeah. It's just what the savings and tires do is some repairs. It needs to be done as a cruiser. So wash out. Yeah, Joe was great about it. He said he has to get rid of them. He can't resell them. So it was great. Yeah. That worked out well. It's nice of him to think of us. So I have a couple of questions. I don't know if you can answer. He sounds the 30th. So traffic control camp for a road for six hours. Yep. Is that having to do with construction? Yep. And then we'll get reimbursement out from Federal Highways. And then the other one on the third. So he's got the radar. Okay. And then 830 on the camp for a road. Pleasant Street, but that was eight and a half hours. So what, what else? He did. He doesn't really say what. Right. I think he did a bike race for somebody. He did a rape. He did some, a detail for someone. So we'll get reimbursed for that as well. He's been trying to find a combination of ways to generate a little extra revenue for us. And also give him an extra time in the community. So some of these like being a part of some of these contracted events they'll pay for his services, which in return we collect some revenue. But, you know, kind of gives him more time in the community as well. So he was just talking to me. He thinks that he was going to be able to pull down a grant. And I'll be talking to you about that. He's about pulling down the grant for some extra patrol time. Through the, um, the council. Yeah. He thought that it would probably increase, I don't know, maybe an extra 10 hours a week for the patrol. Yeah. Because he is, we, we were unable to get our own equipment grant, you know, to do some of the particular ticket work. But the state had me put him in contact with the, it was the Rutland County Sheriff. So he's basically in the subcontract from them. So, um, he's working with them. And that'll be the case. He'll get some hours in that whole through them. So we weren't able to get our own contract. And those are more like targeted type events. Yeah. They're like a DUI. DUI. Yeah. So. It's called OPOC. You know, protection grants. So we would call it. Okay. Yeah. So yeah. Pretty good. We have any other business coming for the board? That's okay. I'd like to mention the cemetery. The cemetery, the property owner, just above it, Kirk White, has had that ditch be done. And I'm not sure we blocked the culvert. We did to the culvert that was dumping water on this property. But it looked lovely to me. So the water shouldn't go all the way to the road, culvert, and go around the front. So it would go down across the... That was nice of us. It shouldn't come down the road or across the corner. Well, there's a culvert that comes down about 30 feet from the road. It goes in a diagonal, which hits the culvert ditch right in front of the cemetery. And that explains better the ditch to you. So no longer will it be going into the cemetery? Well, it shouldn't be. It should go all the way to the road. That's great. But there's still not easy access to get into there. No, they know about that problem. Making progress, anyways. Well, told them about that problem. So they're aware of it. They have to clean the downside of that culvert. I think they did it pretty soon. That's really plug-in. That says a lot of culvert movements. Okay, so they're paying a motion to enter an executive session to talk about personal matters.