 I'd like to call the meeting order at 6 30. It's not the meeting actually I'm calling the town forum to order. Um, So do we have any additions to the agenda for the town forum? I don't believe so. Public comment. What's it is public. I don't know if that could be. Okay. The forum is open. We are ready to discuss the matter of hand. General public. Please start talking. Uh, what are they doing? Things like this happen. Okay. Perhaps we should say for the benefit of posterity that we are discussing the Kellogg Hubbard Library appropriation, which is on Australian ballot for a vote on a special town meeting and elections to be held on Tuesday, April 25th. And absentee ballots are already streaming in. Yeah, I think what I wanted to say was to have been on the town meeting ballot last month, but due to clerical oversight, it was emitted from the ballot. And so we're handling it in a separate election. It seems that we're getting a pretty good voter turnout because. Yes, sir. I think people are getting more used to doing mail in ballots and drop off ballots and maybe they find it easier because I can do it whenever they feel like. It's a convenience. You know, that's how we run. You want to give the numbers and balance into the margin. So 456 have been absentee ballots have been received and just for comparison for the regular town meeting 440 were voted via absentee. We had 792 in total, but as far as absentee goes, we're actually ahead right now. I can tell you that when they the day they has it up in people's mailboxes, I can always hear the blue box dropping them off. And it's that afternoon. It was like people got it. They just instantly filled it out. So how long do you have to vote in the dropout box? We can bring it up until the day of the election. So 5 o'clock at the end of the day. So I'll add April 25th. So on regular election day, we check that box at 5 p.m. Yes, those ballots are then recorded. Yeah, so people can bring it down to the day. Yes. Oh yeah. Or you can vote in person. Yeah, or you can vote in person. Or you can end it in here without putting it in the box. Very good. Thank you for, you know, listening to the options. Now, the only other question on this whole. I'll just put out one is, are they more positive? Are the votes in the affirmative? I know you don't. But that's the question. Are they more affirmative? I know that sir. I'd be more affirmative by having a single vote on a special day. Or would they be more affirmative if you had them at the regular meeting? I know. It's an interesting thought. And I'm just trying to put something. I think you won't have a lot of people showing up. People. We're surprised at the number of absences. Really? I know. People are passionate about their library. I guess so. One way. The positive or negative. We'll find out because we told us to the affirmative. And not passionate about denying it. Never. No, but we've never had it as a separate item. Right. Stand a long day. Right. So when people have more time to think about what their vote. Will they vote still positive? Yeah. I'm just going to say, I'm just glad that we don't fight this year. Yeah. We love it. We love it. Yeah. We're asking for the same amount that we asked for last year. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I know. Reminders of what we were asking for, but our numbers were like a small pillar or anything like that. And, but. Well, we obviously don't have a huge. I see that. You guys. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was. No, I've always tried to be, I would say brevity is the soul of it. To kill the way. I didn't get ready yet. Yeah. Yeah. And that was a little bit of a. A lot of time. Ah. It was a half. And then who's idea was to hold this form for half an hour. We don't have to. We don't have. Yeah. No. No sense. If you've noticed, if you've looked at this, it says listed time. I did actually know. You're very. Very. You're very observant. We have no stated and time on the board. There for three. So. or 639. And we can start our regular meeting earlier. Very good. When you don't lift a specific time, it gives you flexibility. Or you're the chairman. Before we didn't have the flexibility, when Bruce was doing this, it had to be. The forum was half an hour. I said, the meeting starts at seven, so I'm like, okay. Anytime I tried to cut short the poorly attended forums, which they're never well attended to. Not in these publications. We actually had a couple of situations with planning commission forums that nobody there. And I have to sit here like, it wasn't part of the regular planning commission meeting. And do we have to sit here like? Use it to brainstorm creative approaches to town planning. I'm sorry? Use it to brainstorm creative approaches to town planning. Yeah, or there was some very minor changes in zoning or something that wasn't major. When we had our big stuff, that's where we had it up at ENDS that was well attended. But there was a couple that nobody showed up. And we knew that there wasn't going to be a big turnout. Oh, it used to have small talk during one or not. Do you need a motion here? So we can have something like this on. This has been kind of a. Yeah, no one's going to do it into this. And if we do, we can, I'll make a motion to close the forum. Do you need that? Yeah. Do you need a motion to adjourn? Oh, that's right. We need a motion to adjourn. We have to go over other business. We don't have other business to go over. I'll make the motion on number 10, on letter D. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Yes. I always said. It's not like you've let this suit you, while you were having sex with the Burger King. Would you know there's a lot of support? We assumed so. I'm interested that the scheme you all said about whether or not the level of support, the percentage of support will be greater when it's a single, or less than when it is. Yeah, so I'm going to see to last year. Yeah it was pretty pretty high but we'll definitely show you that face. Awesome. Thank you. Yeah thank you. Thank you for attending. Of course I'm watching. O-Triple 25 is out there. His stress level just went way down so I think he feels much better now. Okay the performance eventually ended. Now we can start the meeting. So I'd like to call the meeting to order at 6.39. I don't think we're going to do this but I just want to raise a question and stop the recording in the forum and restart the recording for the meeting. This one will just, we have one meeting I need for this. Yeah. Or Zoom. I mean you can stop and start the recording during the same meeting. You don't have to stop the meeting. No. Recording stopped. From what I've seen it'll create one video though. Recording in progress. I get one Zoom video. That hasn't been my experience in the past but I haven't reported it in that way for a while. Interesting. I'll make a motion that I didn't think it was that interesting. I support that. Okay. Do we have a decision today? Yes we do. We have the wet annual meeting voting authorization. Is that correct, Gina? Correct. Do you have any more additions that we don't know about? Yeah I do have one. They're on wet, annual meeting voting authorization. Okay. Tell us like one minute. Okay. But the one that Carl and I discussed before the meeting was we want to give you a report on fire department emergency services meeting we went to on Thursday night. John was there. Myself was there. And so was Carl. Nobody from the class. Cal Slack was there. And there was four members of the fire department there. We can discuss that. We'll discuss it. Review of minutes April 3rd. Did anybody read the minutes? Hi, Gina. Good to me. I'll make a motion for the minute. We have the peanut gallery here. Don't we make a motion and then discuss it? We can. We can. That's why I want to make a motion to pass. So that's how I usually do it. The motion is going to be to accept it with amendments. Yep. So we'll remember that. What we should do is have a second on then you just call for discussion. Yes. Yeah, I'll second it. Okay. Let's go check the elements. Conversation with Washington County Sheriff. So as you all say, very good overall. And it's just so, so wonderful to have such detailed records of our attention. But conversation with Washington Washington County Sheriff. Second paragraph. Second sentence with Mr. Atteni are explained. I have some language here, which this is too long theater. I can email it to you. But it says Mr. Atteni are asked how the decision would be made to provide the town with a certain number of hours each month explaining that patrols were covered by voluntary overtime in the town's recent contract with Vermont State Police. So just replacing this. The sentence that was there was the one I just read. Which answer are you replacing? So it's the second sentence in the second paragraph of conversation with Washington County Sheriff. It's on page one. Oh, page two. Right here. Got it. Yeah, the one that begins. Yeah, yeah. Mr. Atteni are explained. Yeah. Do you want me to read it again? No, okay. I've heard you know, I mean, it sounded good. Very good. And then on the second page, the second paragraph from the bottom that begins Mr. Atteni are noted. Like it to read Mr. Atteni are noted that he had been told that when someone receives and third page consideration of local emergency management plan. Second paragraph. The sentence. I guess it's the first sentence. And so this language was to add clarity to that spending limit. I'd like to strike add clarity to that spending limit and add to clarify that it was only the select board chair who had unlimited emergency spending authority. I think that was the explanation that we received at the time. And then in the next sentence, sorry, could you repeat? Right. Add clarity to that spending limit and add clarify that it was only the select board chair who had unlimited emergency spending authority. Well, I don't anymore. Right. But this is a reflection of the discussion at the time. Yes. Yes, I am in the discussion. And in the next sentence, that a future chair could spend town funds. So insert an unlimited sum of so could spend an unlimited sum of town funds. And then just strike or infer a town debt because that doesn't really add anything. And then after that sentence, the one that ends emergency spending loophole, then add the sentence and I can email us to you, but it's short enough fast enough to probably get it in. He pointed out that the select board is allowed to hold emergency meetings with no advanced public notice, comma, if necessary. And that was it. Do you have any edits? My, my sections were just awesome. Yeah. Your name was being developed a lot. So it looks like we're ready to go. We already have a motion and we're done with discussions on the policy. I'll favorably say I, I, the minutes are passed to make a third. Okay. So the next thing on the agenda, public comment. Public? No, you're with the old house, the old school house. Okay, no public here, nobody up there. The next item we're going to skip over because we're running early. I know that breaks everyone's heart. Um, so, Coby, is someone else coming to talk? Yeah. Okay. So then we'll have to wait to get to that item. Yeah. And the conversation was central Vermont regional planning. Are they going to zoom in? He's not here. How about discussing the potential law enforcement contract of Washington County? Okay. Are we expecting anybody else to come from the care of the primary? We're just talking about reviewing the contract. Okay, presented. Okay. Let's, let's take that up. Oh, they're here. Sorry. We should do our, we'll do our thing. Um, I would suggest waiting for seven just in case somebody happens. You think anybody's going to call in for your guys piece? No, we're not doing that. I mean, no, no, no, I know that in case. Oh, wait till seven. We're going to do the shares department thing. I know. Okay. I was just asking if anybody was going to talk. Oh, okay. I don't know. Just trying to come to terms. Just trying to see. You're being accommodated. I'm, I tried to be, well, I'm told me to try to be polite. Yeah, that's pretty much very well, but that's okay. So let's talk about the contracts. So, Kyle, you don't have anybody here to talk and, you know, with, we'll just talk about this contract. Correct. Yeah. We've gone with it. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So we don't have any specific hours on this sheet. So that's really the question to be answered tonight. Yes. You know, we have the contract to be presented as 30 and 30 of this year. Obviously that's at the rate of 31-25. We'll be going up to 60. So we have still cheap a lot of money that we can spend this year on this, but I think it's probably prudent to set whatever amount of hours we would want to carry into the 24 at that $60. So compared to, or the state police contract on the hourly part of it? I forgot the amount they were getting. Were you paying them $35,000? It was around, it was around like, it was in the $30 range. Oh, was? Yeah. And we were contracting for 20 hours a month. Correct. But we weren't, the contracts means because they weren't doing anything. We're building our proposed shift to the Washington County Sheriff's Department because I think it's a good idea. And because they'll actually do it. And they seem like they had a really good plan already. They have a good plan. It is going to cost us more money. It is, but with our, if you look at the budget that we have for next year, we have $18,000 is a fiscal 24 budget. Yeah. So at $60 per hour, if we did five hours per week, we would be within our budget because they do charge mileage. We don't know exactly what that will be. But at five hours a week, we'd be at 15-6 in just the hourly rate. And that would give us 2400 to cover mileage. And we can always monitor what that mileage actually ends up being as bills come in. We need to adjust throughout the year, we of course can. But that is almost 15-6 to 20 hours a year. Yeah. It's about $18,000. Yes. So I'm not quite sure that they're going to do the 20 hours. I think they do implements of only three, three, three, so it'll be six hours a week. But then they said they may be able to work with us too. I mean, I, they usually did three, but then they kind of indicated that we get something to know what we, yeah, that what we could do. So it's going to be, they can balance if we do five, you know. When we do six and then cut, or do three and then do additional hours the next week. Yeah. Yeah. That's why I think. Yeah. If it's 18 or if it's 21, it doesn't matter. It goes to 20. So a lot more than we're getting right now. We're not getting any. We're getting zero. We're not paying for it. Exactly. Right. Well, we get paid for that. Unless they were here. So like, likewise, they can't give us the hour. There's a little surety that they're actually going to do it. And I think is that we have to place in town where people have asked us a lot. So we really should do it. And they're willing, and they were willing to actually go where we asked them to go. No. And they also were willing to go in and look at their data to see where a lot of the speeding was occurring. So they were going to just slumber. Yeah. We did have a safe place. Right. But I don't know if the state police actually, they like to sit, they like to be down here, but I don't know, know that they were traveling much on county road. And I think these guys know the county road pretty well. Yeah. In years past, they have been pretty good about going to places that we identified. Right. But right now they're so short of health. Right. They're not doing anything. So it really makes sense to move this off a different. Yeah. Could if we if we closed off prior conversation about maybe having whatever the closed county road day, could we allocate some of these hours for part of that coverage? We can ask them to do whatever we want to do. I mean, as an option, just to kind of monitor that, we took, maybe we want to pick one day this year in the fall to close off county road for two or three hours. As long as they want to meet the requirements, we've stipulated. Right. So maybe some of that could also be. Yeah. Just as a thought. Because who's got to pick for that if we say we don't want to put our law enforcement hours on the county road thing? Who's going to pay for the law enforcement to be there? Nope. I don't know. That's that's my point. They won't go there. They won't go there on this page. We asked them to do it last year and they did. And the police did it as part of the contract. Yeah. The state police. Yes. That's part of their plan. Right. So we actually paid them to be there. Yeah. So you have to come on to be there. That's the point. I reached out to the subject who's in charge of liaison with us. I believe they're the sergeant. And I said, yeah, we're doing this. Could you see if you can get somebody? Yeah. And he tried to get it through the volunteer method and no volunteers stepped forward. So he said, okay, I'll do it myself. Oh, okay. And we saw the pain. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So there's a cost to having law enforcement there. Yeah. Just like there's a cost to having them here. Well, there isn't if the state police choose to go there or go patrol. There's no cost to the town. Any time may ask them to do something to the cost. Yeah. Well, I'm just wondering about that whole thing on the county road, but whatever. We'll see what happens. So I like the idea of doing this short term contract. I was anticipating they come in a year long contract and just incorporate the change in billing into it. But with the short term contract, we have a little get to know you period. Yeah. And we can ask them to come in after they've spent some time here formally on our dime and give us some feedback on what they're seeing. If they want us to go to, I think they said it was a regional planning that has a pace for checking the speeds in the roads. If you want to go to them and have it put out in certain places to get some hard data, et cetera, et cetera. So I think having this contract until the end of June, the end of the fiscal year is a good idea. So we're already two weeks into this, so it's going to be less. Or are we going to make up those hours or whatever? Okay. That is the entire fiscal 23 budget essentially at our disposal for this. So you can choose to do really what you want through this June 30th. If they had the availability to give us whatever you want, I don't know whether they would have staff, but it's certainly an option and it would not adversely affect our fiscal 23 budget in any way. The only thing about 23-4 hours per week just doesn't get in the pattern that we'd like this to happen. So if we just keep it around 20 hours a week, we're not dying for long, unfortunately. We're just trying to get certain spots in town with the speeding, et cetera, taking care of and trying to keep people happier than what we've done in the past. And having someone ride regularly. So I think you can always think that somebody's going to be here. Maybe speeding is going by the old meeting house. Maybe we can do something about it because there's someone that's going to be there. Right. And so that, I think, but I think the 20 hours a month more last is really not the case. Thank you very much. Realistically, this is the 17th. Don't remember whether he said he was doing the scheduling on a monthly basis or it was a monthly basis? Yeah, by the end of the month, they had the schedule to the next one. Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. We're good. More money to invest. All the best. So we're going to make a lot of money. You know, Gina, are there any decisions we need to make on this other than up or down? We just, what? No, and then the number of hours really won't fill this out. No. I'm going to accept the welcoming of the Sheriff's law enforcement contract through June 30th, 2023 at a level of approximately 20 hours a month to be allocated. I guess at this point, we just want them to allocate it as they see fit. We don't have any such requests to that. I mean, we've had the discussion with them and they have that in the back of their mind. As far as where the patrols would be. Yeah. I would even put that language in there. We're just accepting the contract. Yeah, we'll accept the contract. We can always talk about that later. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. At a level of approximately 20 hours. I don't think it hurts to see that direction. No, we're going to give them direct access to that road. So yeah, when I send this, I don't think it hurts. Directly. Do you want some leeway in the contract? Right. And you specify to, to, simply and, Yeah. That's exactly what I'm going to say. You always want to make that deal with the association. Yeah. That's just ongoing conversation. Yeah. I'm going to bring it down. Yeah. Okay. Do you want to read that back to you? There's some chaos there. Yeah, it's over each other a lot. We're really sorry. Some of us trying to raise their hands. So the motion I've got to accept the contract with Washington County Sheriff's at a level of approximately 20 hours per month. Through June 30th, 2020. But don't think that was perfect. And we need a second. I'll second it. Can you put a discussion? All of the favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Okay. We're done with law enforcement going back. Seven. We should talk to the conversation with Four Corners Board. If we do that though, we kind of have to be done by seven, 10 approximately. We do about 15 minutes. Do you think that's efficient? I mean, that's what we allowed to do anyway. Okay. I mean, we should be a little bit later. It's just that we have people coming in just like working on it. So we don't want to make it way too far. Yeah, but take away another 10, five or 10 minutes. Yeah, we're not going to wait another hour. No. So it was fair, wouldn't be a chance. The door's open, but not that wide. Exactly. You've only allocated 15 minutes. You've only allocated 17 minutes. I've moved on the other side. I think we just took one minute. That was free. Okay. Would you like to come forward or do you want to take a minute? I don't know. If you want to sit here, you'll be right on camera. Yeah, I'm going to sit on the camera. You can sit on the camera here. I'm going to pull you out. This is my time off here. Okay. Well, I think we sent an email to the select board to outline what the problem is at the four corners. So you really understand. And it's a major, major problem. I want to stress that because this is a schoolhouse that accommodates the entire community. We're all members of the schoolhouse. And for the sake of the record, please introduce yourselves. Yes, thank you. I'm Carolyn Shapiro, a technically the town representative from the four corner schoolhouse. And so I'm presenting this problem. And then I have Toby who's the head of the board and Andy, my partner who's going to be talking about some of the logistics of it. So it's major. And it's something that also we're concerned about because there could be liability issues. You know, in terms of sensitivities to mold, there are people who cannot go into the schoolhouse like Nona Estrin hasn't been able to go in forever. And there are other people who are also not able to go. And then there are those who would like to go, but we don't want them to come acclimated to the mold and maybe develop something. And so we're thinking, and it was a big discussion we had in our last meeting, whether we really need to close the schoolhouse until we can fix it. And the fixing really is all encompassing. It can't be one little section at a time because then you're allowing the mold to grow again. It needs to happen all at once with everything happening. And I think that is what got outlined is the things looking at that really need to happen. So that's the main thing that I wanted to present. And our budget, of course, doesn't include that. It's like to cover our expenses, our maintenance, but it doesn't cover anything. It's a major repair like this. And when we go for grants, often the grants will say, for instance, we're writing one now for cultural facilities through the Vermont Arts Council, a one-to-one match is what we need. There's no way we can do a one-to-one match for the amount that we need. So what we would really like is for the town to give us the money that will allow us to do a match to cover the expenses. And then we can also go to other places to look for grants, which we have and thought about other ways in which we can raise money. But with the cultural facilities grant, the emphasis is that this is a cultural space and in the town plan, it talks about it being a place for events to happen. And in our mission statement for the Four Corners, it also talks about this is a place where we can have a lot of cultural events and events to happen. So it is what it is for our rural community at East Monterey. And with that, Hobie. Thanks, Carolyn. Hobie Gynne, President of the Four Corners School Board. Yeah, this is a problem that's been creeping up on us when I became President way back in 2008. We took on, we tried to do a kind of a step-by-step process of bringing the building up to more modern standards. So in 2008, we redid the attic insulation. That was all board members volunteering their time. We put down plastic in the crawl space to try and mitigate some of the moisture problems because it's a dirt floor underneath there. In 2009, we also foamed the foundation walls, creating a barrier from the, all the way from the box joist down over the plastic, hopefully again trying to eliminate moisture. 2010, we added gutters and footing drains along the front of the building where the driveway was aiming a lot of water runoff down. And then in 2015, we got a new furnace. That was something that was more or less thrust upon us. We weren't necessarily working towards that end. But anyway, between all those things, we have cut, the primary driver at that point was trying to improve energy efficiency. And indeed, we did cut the fuel usage by about 50%. In the interim, well, we also tried at some point to get the walls insulated, but that was kind of a too high a uplift. It was a $5,000 asking at the time, it felt we wouldn't be able to raise that money or incorporate it in our yearly budget. So that was a little bit left on the side. And so unfortunately, we've had, although we've enjoyed the energy savings, the mold problem has been allowed to develop. Not that we were necessarily aware of that. I thought we were kind of fighting that by putting in the plastic and the foam and whatnot. But in 2002, I think, or no, 2020, we had our first indication there was some mold. It was primarily located in a closet. We dealt with it, you know, spot treatment. That winter I went in, I drilled holes, I checked inside the cavity chamber, did not see moisture. Anyway, we, since that time, it's been step by step that we've had mold reappear in the closet. We've checked it again. We've tried to put in some bags that would help soak up some of the moisture, you know, bleaching spots, etc. But we've come to this point where it's getting beyond us, and it's now pretty systemic. It's in the old building. With that, should I turn to you? I'm Andy Shapiro. My work is as a energy and building science consultant for buildings. I do some forensics in addition to design work and have dealt with moldy buildings. They're hard to deal with. Mold is everywhere. And once it starts, well, to start, the spores are everywhere. They're on everything. When you get it wet, meaning like 100% humidity right there, it starts to grow. And once it starts to grow, it'll stop when the conditions, when it gets dry enough. So it has to be below 40% to not grow. Anywhere over 60%, it grows again. You can wipe it off on the surface. It's in the materials. It's in the pores of the material. When it gets wet enough, it'll grow again. So in order to fix a problem like that, you have to first get rid of mold that's there. But at the same time, you have to change the building so that the conditions won't reappear. If you do one without the other, you're wasting your money and your time. So in order to reduce humidity, you have to dehumidify. And in the crawl space, we would put in the very smallest of a kind of commercial dehumidifier that's very effective and very efficient to keep the humidity down in that area. The mold has been found on all the sheetrock surfaces in the mechanical room and on all the wood surfaces in the crawl space. So you've got floor joists that are rough cut and the subfloor is boards. One of the things that I noticed was that the return air for the furnace goes under the stage, which has just got boards between there and the crawl space so that when the furnace is running, it's sucking air from the crawl space into the building through the furnace system. So we can change that pretty easily by moving the return up to the stage area rather than underneath the stage. So you have to first, at the same time you get rid of the mold, you've got to do the mechanical things you need to do to keep it from forming again. So that means when you dehumidify, you're actually adding heat to the building because you're running this electric motor that's running a compressor and it's pulling out moisture, but it's making heat. So in order to dehumidify a building in the summer in Vermont, you've got to close it up, otherwise you're trying to dehumidify the great outdoors, which is a losing effort. And so that means you have to cool the space. So now we need a heat pump. The heat pump will also have a side benefit, which will cost something like half as much to operate as the oil. It dries the air too. Pardon me? The architecture dries the air as well. Yeah, but it discharges it outside. It does. It about 25% of the effect of a heat pump is drying and 75% is cooling the air. The problem is it runs on a thermostat, not on a humidostat. So once the building is cool, it stops running. And if nobody's in there and it's not sunny, it should be plenty cool, and then the humidity would rise again. Yeah, that involves that. Yeah, yes. You need a dehumidifier. You need a heat pump. And now the building is now pretty well closed up. So now you need ventilation. It's a meeting space. There can be 25, 35 more people in there. And so it should be ventilated. And we can't just keep it closed up without bringing in fresh air. So you can see that this is all of a piece. And then in addition, the walls, which are now uninsulated, should be insulated so that you can maintain the temperature in there and maintain the humidity better. That's pretty much the most of it. It's a systemic problem in the building. I think what I would recommend is that the equipment will be put in to do the dehumidification, the cooling, and the ventilation, but not turned on. Then bring in the mold guys. They do their thing, including crawling around in that crawl space, which this is a wiggle space. It's not in crawl space. It's like this much space between the earth and the floor joist. They will actually get in and clean off the joist. He said, well, we can do it without doing that. And I'm going, why are we going to go to all this effort and leave it on the floor joist? It really should be cleaned completely. So they'll completely clean all the surfaces in the building. That'll knock it back. They get it knocked back. We turn on the ventilation, dehumidification, and cooling for the summer anyway, if it happens to be summer. And then the building should be good to go. What happens in the winter? The winter, it's dry enough. So humidity, it's hard to maintain 40% humidity in these buildings in winter. So there's plenty dry, but the humidity, the humidifiers are on a humidity, humidity stat. Right. So if it does happen to rise, they will take care of it. Scott's got a question. I have a couple of questions. Going back, aside from the detail, which I think we're far away from, you're obviously a 501c3. Yes, obviously. You don't know what the cost is yet. You have no idea what the cost is. I don't think we were providing with any. I'm sorry. Yeah, I've been working on that. I've been getting this. All right. This helps answers the question. What is the, in our budget, what is the town's contribution to four quarters? Is there a contribution? Yeah. Yeah. It's okay. This is your estimated total cost. Yes. Yeah. The things in green are quotes that we have received. What's in yellow is stuff I've estimated up. And just without me, what does it add up to roughly? Down the body, you'll see in the orange, the 60,000. Oh, thank you. I'm sorry, thank you. Five, six, five. Not all of them. And that's without contingency. Yeah, that's without contingency. I was saying we should have a contingency with what's going on with materials right now. People are writing contracts saying, well, here's the labor, but I'll tell you what the materials themselves. So there should be a contingency. What percentage? I'm trying to find. And anyway, at least 10. At least 10, probably. So if we put a rough number of 75 grand, we'll win. And you're looking for 75 grand? Or are you looking for half? No. Well, we were looking, we were thinking about half of that. If we can be successful with our grant writing, we'd be able to match that. And if you're not successful in your grant writing, then we come back to you or something. But we start fundraising and baking cookies. So we're obviously, we have to discuss this. Yes. Number one, number two, we're not really authorized to spend that kind of money on that. So I'm not even sure. You have to vote. I think you almost have to go to a town vote. That's such a big chunk of change. But I just got a couple of questions about how this came about. Did it happen because of the tightness of the building? Are you talking about those? Did you get more moisture? You got more moisture trapped in the building and when it wasn't insulated in any way, the breeze would blow into the building and you would have less of a role? Well, it's close. I mean, it seemed like that's what just happened. It was close for three years because of COVID. We weren't ready for that. That happened because of this. That's true. Because of three years? We weren't. It got worse because the building... So it didn't happen for the 200 years of the day or the 100 years ever. The old buildings that have no insulation, nothing in the studs, and plenty of air leakage. Exactly. So it blows through. That's what happens a lot in these old buildings when you start to pull them up. Yeah, you need to provide the ventilation. Exactly. The hymns. In the old days, it was just put on a jacket and when you moved to the building, it didn't have a hole. And you're... As much. Yeah. And people weren't so tuned to mold problems either. I can't imagine they didn't happen. I can guarantee you don't have this problem in the surface at this point in the building's history. Yeah. Part of it, yeah. Undoubtedly, it's kind of a... I do see a lot happen in these old buildings all the time. You have a problem when you've been doing insulation, you're doing this, you're doing that, trying to make it tighter, all of a sudden bubbled. It's so tight that then you have no problem. You do need to provide... That's right. Yeah. You can't actually... All... Yeah, that's right. Oh my God. Right. Yeah. We can get into the particulars, but I think the point that you just brought up, and I hate to gloss over it, but if we already passed the town budget, we've already voted on it in March. Right. We're having a new vote for the Kellogg Library because it's over the five grand. So when... No, that's because it got left off. It got left off. But also because it had to be a separate item, it couldn't be brought up on the floor. Yeah, it's all over it. Yeah. My statement is if the town has to vote on anything that's outside of the approved budget, let's say over five grand or something, we would either have to have a separate vote, a special vote, or we'd have to wait until March. Well, we purchased a new tract of land without a special vote from the past. I have to say that the role of the stuck word to make a decision on what it's going to do with money is to allocate. So you're not going to select your allocated budget. Say you're allocated by the $2 million. Where that money goes is up to the stuck word, essentially after that. I know it is. I've did this for eight years. I know they have the right to do that. And if that's a select board's job, it's to do that. But we have to talk about this because you can't short other line items in order to fund this. And that's exactly what we'd be doing on your phone. Yeah, it's two and a half cents, but it impacts me. So we have to talk about it. But you have to vote. So in theory, you're going to be saying that. Yeah, you've got other line items. Thank you. Or a plier. Come on. It's a one-time thing. Yeah, it's a one-time thing. I will do this. That's the point. It should be. That's the point. All right. Well, we're just going to have to talk about it. I mean, at length. Yeah. At another meeting, because we've only allocated a certain amount of time to this, right? We've got them to present it to us. We have a pretty good idea of what we're going to do. The report is really good, too. Yeah. So what sort of title are you on, in terms of making your application, getting a response, and so on? Really, much of your cultural facilities is due made first. The application. The application for the grant. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And with that cover? That's a one-to-one match. With that 50% of everything? Well, I forget it. No, but how much would that essentially be? Well, if we asked for $35,000, we'd have $35,000 for the town. So we'd be all set. And I'd be a pretty happy to answer that. Yeah, incredible. Because, sorry, if I could say one thing, I do work at the Arts Council. I think the cap on that program is $30,000. Oh, you might, right? Because I shouldn't say you might be right. Okay, okay. But then it'd be $30,000. Okay, so just to be clear, you're putting in an application. Thank you for that. Yes. But you can do that. Yes. We've got the application. That's right. Then when you get the money, it's when you would need the matching funds. But what you're looking for is a pre-approval from us. Are you going to match them? But if you would make it easy for them and didn't get the matching, you just wouldn't get the money, right? You definitely, you don't have to have a guarantee for us. We have to show when we get that $30,000. I understand. You can apply with that R-OK. Yes. Yes, if you don't get R-OK. If you don't get R-OK. They would, they would like some charity or some. I understand. From us that, oh, we get the $30,000, but we don't have any matching funds. But if they applied and was, and were approved, it's a lot more of feeling to us that it's already approved. Potentially. The same vice versa. My question is, applying to that, you don't have to have a guarantee. No, but I believe applying for that money and my past job, and they like having, when you do the application process, if you say you've got $30,000 already lined up, you know what? That kind of gives a little boost to that. Okay. All right, teacher. We say, well, I don't know where that money's going to come from. They may say, okay, but, but modular has $30,000. So that's exactly what happened. There's a little word you said. One thing I just want to mention, too, is that you talk, we're talking about putting all these electrical devices in. Yeah. Have you ever checked to see what size you're at this panel is? Yes. And then the service section. I haven't. That's an ongoing discussion with, with the record moment. That's a big discussion with, with watchable electric, too, because sometimes gentlemen have a chance of bigger enough to even. Well, that's, yes. That could be one of those supplies. I mean, it's, they have probably a hundred amp instruments up there. Yeah. That would handle it, because there's nothing else on that speaker. Right. White. We have a cook range. Yeah. That's a 40 amp. Yeah. That's, I think. That's what I'm talking about. You're sure? You heard me. You're part of your business. Thank you. Yeah. And I think one of the same people. Just here. I guess the last comment is, this is, this is, you have some green and you have some yellows. And if it turns out, throwing a number, if it turns out to be a buck and a quarter, it's a hard conversation to have when we're potentially looking at 75, you're right. Yeah. As you, as you've been understanding. Well, and I have to say that the cultural arts was, well, the Vermont Arts Council has been very generous in telling us that we know it's really difficult to get these estimates. And so if you give us these estimates, yeah. And then also. It's okay. Right. Yeah. Especially in times like these. Right. Lots of changes. So they're, they're being. No, it is trending down. It is. To be, to be honest. Yeah. Place love goes way down. There's a lot of stuff that's not crazy. So, so from my perspective, I would like, I think we would like to help. And also, I think applying to the grant is extremely important. So anything that we can do to make that better. I think we should. So, I think we need to take attention on this, as a select board to give them the message. Are we going to match those funds? What other opportunities do you have to raise funds? Besides this one? Well, there's always Kickstarter. Right. We've talked about Kickstarter. We talked about, you know, going out to the front porch form of the East Montoya citizens since we're all all members of the school board or the four corners. And asking for donations. And then there are different foundations that I know of that are here in East Montoya that might be willing to. Is there other grant money besides this one up? There's one option to be looking into. It was the one. The Monta Circle Society is one, but it wouldn't be until September, October. They just have gone through their, their cycle. That's 50. And they're almost all 50. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I've thought about that myself. Right. My arms. Right. I think what would really. Contractors. It's kind of a process. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Not that much. And they reimburse you. It is like they give you any money. The reimbursement. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So I think what would really be helpful is if we could on March 1st, May 1st, I'm sorry, say that we have talked to you. And if there were a letter that's saying we're considering this, we understand that this would be very beneficial to the town. And if there's a way in which we can augment the money that we're giving by having the grant. Match. But that's really appealing. I'd rather, I mean, I think that's good. But I'd rather be a little more positive on the town contribution. Because with our money and, you know, in a general amount of money that we have on hand, I really feel that we should do it. That's my. It's going to mess up the town. I do. It's something. And I just think that if you can get $30,000 and we can help get it. Yeah, right. How to give you $30,000? Yeah. That's a good rate. Right. Like that. And then if we have to go fund-made, the extra 10 or whatever, that's a good much. Right. That's a much. This is an opportunity to get $30,000 that we don't have to come up with. Yeah. You know, if you say, oh, we get 60, 70, that's a big, that's a big resource. It's $30,000 not too much. Right. Yeah. And we had some great letters, like Tim Jennings wrote an amazing letter. And then they will also write any news about how the schoolhouse gets used for cultural events. Because that's going to be the big one. Because Michelle Bailey at the Vermont Arts Council said that they've never done anything with mold before. And so it's going to be really important to stress the cultural aspect of this. Yeah. In the age of the building. Yeah. Right. The significance of that building. Exactly. Those are all things that you can stress and then make a good difference. Yeah. When I looked at the building, my feeling was that they shouldn't have people in there anymore until they fix it. One person comes in there and thinks that this is why they got set up. You know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Is that all open or closed? Well, that was our discussion at the last meeting. We're letting at the moment, and that may be a very short moment, but at the moment we're telling people who want to rent it that we have a mold problem. So we're trying to be upfront, transparent about it, but we have not as of yet shut the building down completely. Yeah. It's ongoing. It's a tough, yeah. COVID, we've lost a lot of income. COVID helps support us. So it's, yeah, we're just waiting through it. Well, that's a decision, of course. Yeah. I think that what we're going to do right now, because we've got to move to the next item. It's a side. Yeah. Just take the temperature of this left floor, to say whether it was more or not. And I think that's what we should say. I think we should write a letter, say it's being reported, contribute the money, the math, and be there. Great. I'm going to do that. Yeah. I'm going to do that. I'm going to do that. I'm going to do that. Yeah. I'm going to do that. I'm going to do that. I'm going to do that. I'll be okay up to 30 grand. I'm going to do that. I'm going to do that. Because I'm just always nervous about old buildings and unfortunately. Yeah, but this is just a match. Yeah. This is a match. I understand. But if I mean, if you get the match, we get 30. Yeah. And then it costs 150. Yeah. We're going to deal with that later. We're not saying that we're going to put it on. We're going to say we're going to match $30,000. Yes. Right. For their fund. That's what we're saying. Wonderful. Of course, we should support the effort. But we're not buying it ourselves. No, we can't be sad to do that. So sometimes organizations like to see minutes to be sure that this actually happens. So for the sake of that, I'm going to make a motion. Okay. Yeah. We commit up to $30,000 to match monies contributed to the Four Corners Schoolhouse Association by the Vermont Arts Council for the purpose of mold remediation. Thank you. Sounds good. Second sense. Very good. Do you have a second? Yep. Okay. Okay. All the things we can add. All right. All right. Okay. All right. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. I'm going to learn my day grand. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. I'm glad. Yeah. I'm glad I'm working. So I'm speaking to all the mold. Yeah. I'm going to have my day. I'm doing it. You can take that with you, Parallel. All right. All right. All right. Yeah. So I'm doing it. You love other people. So I'm doing it. And thank you a lot. Thanks a lot for coming in. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for saying that. Thank you. Take care. Take care. Okay. We're running a little late. Okay. Everybody's signing it. We're going to have some visitors. They're probably signing it. We're going to sign it. Okay. Okay. Okay. Sign it. Sign it. Sign it. Sign it. Sign it. Sign it. Sign it. The next item on our agenda is conversation with the slack board candidates. We have three candidates who wants to go first. We have Bruce Chappell, Nick Tosla, and Joey Cushions. Oh, good first. Okay. You want to come up? We have seats. Unless it comes. Where do you want to sit? Sit right there. You'll be right on camera. No, I am. You'll be on the camera that way. And I think that probably will suit you quite well. Yeah. Do you have any questions from any of you? I didn't see any. No. We just took names. Chappell. Yes, sir. Do you want to be introduced? Well, I know a lot of people. Some people say they used to say your name. Yeah. Bruce Chappell. I live on Center Road in East Montpelier at Templeton Firm. I can't do it. Yeah. So, yeah. Oh, do you want me to? What would you like me to talk about? Well, a lot of us would like to be on site. Okay. I guess one of the reasons that I'm interested on the select board is that our family came to this town 235 years ago, settled the community. And over the years, family members have been involved with activities in the community. My dad was zoning administrator. I was the chair of the open space and agricultural committee. And I have to say that I'm pretty proud of the fact that we've conserved an awful lot of land in the community. I have two sons, one of which lives on Foster Road, and I have two granddaughters. And I kind of look to the fact that I know a lot of people in this town. I've been involved this town for over 60 years. When I was a child, this town was a farming, totally a farming community. And I've seen how it's evolved into a bedroom community today. And I've been involved with a lot of things in town. My background is in, I worked for USDA for 35 years. I helped the town out with some environmental things over the years. My degrees is environmental conservation with a minor in soils and hydrology. I just think that I can, I know a lot of the people in town. I know a lot about the town. I know most of the people in town government. And I just would like to be able to be, I think that I have a knowledge about this community that I could offer something. And I look that I've had two generations, I mean, one generation before me, and I've got two generations after me that are going to live in this community. And I'd like to try to do things to make the community as good, if not better. So I only have one more question. Yes, sir. I think I talked about this with you at one point. It's perfectly fine to miss meetings. Happens a lot, not too much, but we do have zoom capabilities. So some days when you're running tight on time and to do something else is fine. But do you think you'll be able to attend most of the meetings? Yes. And Seth and I go back quite a ways. And Seth is the reason why I'm here tonight, actually, and Rose and Gina, I talked to them about it. We operate, the size firm that I operate, we operate, my family and I, is we raise, we have 60 cows and 3,700 maple taps. We aren't at a scale like Seth or Fairmont where we have a lot of help. So a lot of it falls to my partner Sherry, my daughter, Lon Natalie, my son, Seth and myself. Sometimes, especially during sugaring season, it's really hard to, if we're boiling on a Monday night, there's no way that I most likely could be here. During the rest of the year, yeah, I'm going to, all I'm going to say to the select board is I will do my utmost best to be here as much as I can. It's just that sometimes, and anybody that runs a small business knows that, that should happen sometimes. And you just can't, you can't, things go bad. We, things go bad and you just can't get away. Yes. So that's about, I'm, yes, Scott. If it has. Why didn't you run for the open position? To tell you the truth, Scott, you know what my biggest fear is? Is two meetings a month. I've been asked multiple times over the years to run for the select board. And I just, I worries me a little bit. One of the things we're trying to do as a family is to pass the farm on to the next generation. And we've had multiple discussions about how Sherry and I can back out a little bit. And that's, Seth spoke to me. I talked to Gina and I talked to Rosie. And that's the only reason why I didn't, because I just, I'm a little worried about that. I'm also on the board of directors for the Plainfield Health Center and I'm also on the admin co-op board. Those, those organizations don't require a lot of my time. But I can see, you know, my involvement in the town when I was chair of the agricultural committee, you have to make a real commitment to it. And I'm willing to do that. I just, sometimes I just know that I'm not, I'll do my best. But if sometimes I just can't get here. I mean, you must have that happen, Seth. Well, sometimes I drive my trucker down the road. I hit the door. Right. Yeah, it just happened. But, you know, I'd like to say that I've got help sometimes, a lot of times. Yeah. Like, you know, you're going to go home early tonight, guys. Right. And you can bounce on Zoom once in a while, even when you're in Florida. Yeah, I do like going to Zoom. Right. Right. Hacks. But I can't wait for this to be first. I can't keep. Yeah. You have Wi-Fi in the zero house? What's that? Do you have Wi-Fi in the zero house? Yeah. Oh, no, we don't. And it's smart. We don't. So, for the other thing, you know, I'll start to answer your question. Because Judith, who was a member stepping down, she only stepped down at the last minute. Yeah. We had no time to go around asking people to run. But there was an answer, and so it was. What's that? There were an answer, and so it was. There was only a couple of things. It wasn't well advertised? We're telling you now. Okay. No, no. I mean, the deadlines for being a candidate. Okay. And you have to get signatures. And you have to get things. Okay, very nice answer. And so that was, I didn't know what the deadline was. So I thought, well, I'm not going to run. Because I had asked her before. You know, once she said, I don't want to go. She was thinking about it. She was thinking about it, and she was okay. You know, there's just, that happens. It's just, there wasn't much time to get people to run. So it's a question I don't have to ask the other candidates. Exactly. That's what I'm talking about. I thought it was a legitimate question. It is. Until I now that I have the information. Sure. Now is the information. So, okay. Press that question. So, questions for Ruth, because I've already asked. Yeah, let's go. Yeah. So, welcome. Thanks for your hat. You mentioned sharing the agriculture board for the town. You mentioned these other organizations that you're currently serving on the board for. But could you just list the town board positions or other positions for the town you go? I was working when I work full time for US. Yeah. Yeah. I, I just, I just didn't have the time. Yeah. Yeah. I just couldn't do it. And yeah, yeah. And yeah, that, and you know, Seth approached me and then my son about applying for the position here. And, you know, Seth and I, Seth is my younger son who's in partnerships with us on the farm. We talked about it and there's no way in the world he could ever do it. And I thought some more about it and said, you know, I think that's something I could do. As long as you guys have a little flexibility with me. And like I said, I've, I've been in this town. I'm, you know, I've lived in town here full time for 33 years. And I've been, when my grandmother operated the farm, we used to spend summers up here. So I know a lot of the old families and towns. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. John, we're having a voice. I've been listening. That's unusual. I didn't want to use up all, I didn't want to use up all my questions. It's being sparingly word. Yeah. I don't think we've met before. No, it's chapel. I live up here on Quaker Road. Oh, do you know where, where, where jobs? It's just, just, just past right up here behind Wash Electric Co-op. Oh, yeah. McKnight Road is part of it. Yeah. Yep. Hey, what happened? What was the fires thing yesterday? I don't know. I saw. Oh, there were more fires on. Actions place. There wasn't five fire trucks up. Yeah, Billy Actons. Oh, I think. But anyway, thank you all for standing in the minutes. Yeah, right that. Yeah, right that. Yeah, right that. Yeah, right that. Yeah, right that. So, so. It's going to be on the extreme. It's going to be on the extreme. That's one thing. Yes, sir. So, what's the manager in Hartford for years? Who's the what? Manager in Hartford. Who's the town manager? He wants to, he's just picking on me. Oh, oh, oh. Well, no, I'm just telling you. It's a decision you've held. But we do a lot of business in Hartford. We see, we see, we store all of our beef and up in. From what? From what? My bail are going up there. Yeah, well, yeah, yeah. Well, you still. I have to go to bed behind before midnight. And these are relevant issues to. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, so. Okay. Thank you for coming in. Oh, that's it. Yep. And so if you have two more. I'll go on to your right side. Okay. Joey. Come on in. I don't think you're over your head, Mr. Chairman, but. Well, I mean, you aren't done yet. We can deal with it later. Okay. It's not an impeachable offense, I hope. I'm Zoe Christiansen, and unfortunately, Bruce isn't going to be here to hear my lead off, which is a joke my dad insisted I tell, which is that I can count more generations back than Bruce, but that's only because I'm not as old and wise as he is. Probably been here longer, but who really cares anyway. I'd be very interested in this seat because I will tear my basically my whole life. And I grew up on my family farm that is now defunct. So I have a lot more time than Seth or Bruce. And I really care about Vermont and East Montpelier, in particular. And I'd like to begin learning about how I can best get back to the community. And I'd be very excited to learn everything that one could be involved in a group like this. Can you tell us a little bit about your background? Because we don't have a resume or anything. Sure. I have, let's see. I have no professional involvement in any kinds of political groups or organizations. But when I was in high school, I learned how to organize and was quite involved in involving groups for different anti-war reasons. I'm not sure if that's highly relevant here, but I went to music school in Boston, which was very I'm just being recorded, isn't it? Naive, perhaps. And moving back to Vermont was the best thing I've done. I definitely am happier here than anywhere else I've lived. And I've gotten to compare living morally to living in cities. And I can appreciate the difference now. I've traveled a lot internationally and actually learned a lot about traditional culture outside of the United States, which is how I came to realize that I actually grew up in a traditional culture myself. And actually began to appreciate for the first time what it was that I grew up in and love what I didn't know it was that I had when I was a child. And I think that this comparison, this is actually why I want to run for this seat because I grew up with a different type of community when I was younger in Vermont. And I'm really interested to see how it can move into the future or not because it seems like it's fading away that I'm interested in. How to keep the town going. And I'd like to learn about what you do. So you have a music background? Yes. That's okay because I don't have a town in the district with a background. I was also a student at Northern Vermont University until recently for student loan reasons became financially advantageous for me to drop out of the program with an opportunity to wipe my student debt. But I was studying counseling. But before then I was mostly a musician. Same question. Mr. Bruce, are there any other town positions that you've held in the past or is it you've participated in? I don't think so. No. Anything analogous to this lecture? Anywhere else? I'd want to say yes, but I don't think that I could draw a very good analogy at this moment. Mr. Juer, no questions? No, I'm fine on this. Okay, so just one of the questions I want to ask, I think I asked you before, was attendance. Do you anticipate there'll be conflicts in your schedule? I don't think so. It's just going to be a priority. Hey, it's Monday, I'm going to get there. That's kind of what I do. It's like, I'm getting there. It might be a call and use attention. Somebody else is going to do that to me. It's definitely a priority. And I live four minutes away. I'm currently employed in a very flexible way where I can actually choose what hours I work. And this would be the most interesting facet of my life, so our structural part of my life. I don't give it that much credit. Well, I don't think so. I guess this might seem like a stretch, but I think my father was a politician in Vermont for a long time and he brought so much of this home that his passion was reading tax data books that he'd found squirreled away from libraries. So at the risk of sounding absurd, I really did spend a lot of time at home as a high schooler and young person reading about tax and cartoon illustrated books on famous political figures, including Reagan and Marx. So and working in very difficult, large democratic music groups. And I think it seems like working in any group and practicing listening and thinking and coming to an agreement together can share some common denominators in terms of function. Yeah, democracies are messy business. Yes. But I mostly would be happy to learn because frankly, I don't know what it would be like. Any more questions, Zoe? All right. Thank you. Thank you very, very much. Thank you. We have another candidate. Nick Kosla. How are you all? I know Deirdre. And I'll tell you guys in a minute why. And I know Gina will read you now. So Nick Kosla, I don't have quite the longevity that Bruce or Zoe have to this town. We just moved here in August. The reason I know Deirdre is I was recently elected to the Planning Commission. And the whole reason I joined the Planning Commission, the reason I was like to join this like board is, I have a very future oriented and I'm very into setting our roots here and seeing what we can contribute to the community. I have six year old twins that go to school down the block. We live on Vincent Plats. So starting to get to know my neighbors and understanding what this town's about and where we can take it is very important to me. Just having the opportunity to listen to some of your questions and give you a brief overview of my background. I've been doing consulting technology at work as well as done some real estate development work when I was in Jersey. So very high business. I don't know what the question is. Where in Jersey? I grew up in Bergen County, but I've lived in Morris. Where in Bergen? Where in Bergen? Bergen Field. Where in Bergen? I thought I was sort of acting sad. Oh, wow. Okay. Okay. I've got a question. One town away. He wants to go up online. There we go. So look, very high business acumen. I manage a financial P&L for the work that I do. So understanding business cases and value realization. You know, you think about managing the town budget. Those are important things. I have a very deep background in that. I play the role of a CIO for a med tech company for the business that I support, which means I have to understand the needs. How do you drive value? How do you justify a business case? How do you actually present that and prove that the investment's worth it? You think about the legislation and the managing of the town budget. A lot of that is a parallel. Granted, it's not the same stuff, but understanding how to use the money the best way you can. You know, listening to the Four Corners book before and having here you guys support for it, that's enlightening, right? Having the philosophy of how do I help the town? How do I grow it, right? And I do believe there's a population decline happening, right? Because I know the enrollments are going down for school. That's a bit of a concern. How do we effectively manage that, right? It's what this is what I have heard is speaking to my school folks. It's a big ball of ice. I mean, just think of the P&L side of it. The less people there are, the less revenue the town has, that means higher taxes. Well, just like correct, we're not losing a population or we're losing our full age kids and the population is aging. Which was the other plans that I did. Right, which is not a good thing because then how do we combine with on Pilliard? There's a lot of implications. Yeah, that's a big conversation. Yeah, right. So again, in talking to some of my neighbors, you know, they were talking about there's no senior housing or senior community that they can go to. They've lost a lot of friends in town who have left because they couldn't manage big properties. What are we doing about that? Have we done housing study? What's our next path forward? So thinking about those things is pretty important to me, right? Because I want to leave roots here. I want my kids to have a town and a property and a home that they can call their own for generations, right? So some of the reasons that I'd like to run. Yeah, okay. Thank you. We met when I was gathering petitions and the parking lot is popular. It's good to see you again. Thanks for throwing your head in the rain. I appreciate it. So same question to see the other candidates. So you've been here a shorter time than they have, but what involvement have you had in town activities? So currently on the planning commission and trying to get involved in other volunteering aspects. I've only been here since August, so. Right. And I'll have the same question. Your time to commit to the site board. You're okay with that? I'm completely okay with it. I think the first week of May, I would have to take the first five minutes on my phone while I drive. Pick my kids up, but that's not it. That's the only, that's the only. Yeah, so you're pretty flexible. 100%. Yeah. Your kids are in the NES? Yep. Six year old twins. Yeah. I used to teach. I wanted to learn. Nikki and Julia. They're in Mrs. Garibald's class. Yes, I had, I had. Yes, I did. What's my conversation? Well, it's irrelevant. If you've got bad kids, it's still. Well, it could be a reflection of my parent thing and my character. But that's all. That's all completely correct. You're doing a great job being nice. Yeah, but I don't know about his conversation. So I can ask you the reason. Okay, John, what do you have? No, I've, I've got to ask the same question I asked you the other time. I've been listening. No, insistence. Yes. There you go. Are you all right? Um, yeah. Okay. We just went up the hill here, right? Yeah. Yeah. Thanks a lot. Yeah. I'm 95. All right. Pullman Parker's old. I think we're, I think we're good. All right. Appreciate the opportunity. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Thank you. All right. Take care. Take care. Thanks. Appreciate all the input you've had in this role in C. Seven. Big candidates. Yes. You're here. What is the procedure now? Do we, do we have a second session? That's the end of the meeting. We can do it again. The procedure now is to proceed on to the next item. Right. Um, and I think that's probably the central home on regional planning commission Christian Liar. That's you. Hey. Hey. Hi. Hi. Hi. How are you? All right. We're all good. How are you doing? Thanks for having me. Yeah. I'm good. Huh. Thanks for coming in. I'm long familiar with, Eastmont Pillar growing up on or on the other side of the hill in Calis, but new to my current role with Central Vermont Regional Planning Commission. So I thought I'd come in and introduce myself, but also kind of reintroduce the work we do, make sure that Eastmont Pillar is taking an advantage of all those services that might be helpful as you're doing your daily business. So again, Central Vermont Regional Planning Commission, our mission is to assist member municipalities in providing effective local government and to work cooperatively with them to address regional issues. The way I interpret that is we're kind of a tool. We're there to pull out when you need a little extra something and they're not going to have a full-time staff to do that. So that could be work in the transportation field. We do a lot of work there with VTRANS. We've helped Eastmont Pillar with some intersection studies over the years. They're all pretty dated now, but it's a good example. Land use planning, town plan rewrites, zoning law updates, water and natural resources, hazard mitigation, climate and energy work. Just looking at some of the work we've done recently in the region. We've done some education and training. I think five Eastmont Pillar residents were able to participate in that, probably some from your planning commission. We do grant writing. We've helped a lot of our towns get municipal planning grants over the years, but if there's something more specific, USDA Rural Development, something like that, we're happy to get involved and add a little capacity to the GINA or whoever, whatever volunteer committee might need it. We have GIS services we can provide on kind of sort of as an on-call need. Recently working with Eastmont Pillar, we helped with the Northmont Pillar Village designation a little before COVID. We helped with some forest integrity work as part of your town plan. We're getting involved now with the enhanced energy planning with your energy committee. We have the municipal energy resilience program. It's going to come through the region. So we have a lot of technical assistance to offer you as you start thinking about maybe assessments. Well, there's the mini grants in the outreach part, but then building assessments and ultimately implementation grants. So happy to be a source for technical assistance as you move through that. The other big thing we're kind of newer program to us is the Clean Water Service Provider, where we're looking for non-regulatory projects to help clean up the Winooski water basin. It says looking at runoff. Sorry. And basically, I mean, I can wrap it up with that. I think you have been funded before, non-regulatory like you're not part of the permit program. Yeah, that's right. So this is Vermont's in trouble with the EDA for the amount of phosphorus getting into Lake Champlain Winooski as one of the big basins into Champlain. So that's where it comes from. But basically, I'd love to hear about your top issues or if there are any things you see in the coming years or years. Do you have any ARPA money? ARPA money? We don't have ARPA. They didn't give us ARPA. Just thought I'd throw that out there. I imagine at this point, you guys, I figured out ARPA pretty well, but we're doing technical assistance there. Yeah. Well, if you've been involved in Wino, maybe you know better than Griffin does in this. Historic Colbert, Ruhaha, is that your own? We have missed out on this. I don't know exactly who all was involved in that or not. Outside of the paperwork I inherited, I know there were a lot of different organizations involved in that, but. Well, the historical stuff that got put on the project, that came from some historical aspect. Yeah. Because we got the grant to do the cult and we were going to do it. Probably through the presentation. And all of a sudden it was like, whoops, we can't do it because of the driving that was done on the mental stuff. We have a phone call. We were just undersized for an investigation. George, we were going to replace it as something and we were told that that's a history dip. We're looking at, we're doing the streams and all sorts of nonsense. Couldn't you make an offer to them that you would preserve the stone and give it to the pavilion and not put it in the office? That's very funny. You realize how funny it is. Thank God. I just have to lose that. Yeah. I didn't want to be in the office. So I'm going to spend it to New Jersey. You want to ask about it, Melton? I will say you are on the list for the Bridging Colbert Inventory a service we provide all our municipalities. We'll go out there and look at all your culverts, take an assessment, put it in a database. No, you guys, if all goes well and we have the interns available, we'll do it this summer. If not, it would be the summer round. But you guys are coming right up and probably five or six, probably five years at this point. So we're hoping to get to it. That's a question of can we find the staff to walk all your roads? How is this happening? Staffing stuff. We're hiring right now and we'll keep hiring. We're not as bad as some, but finding interns can be hard. I mean, we, you know, you can go get a job at McDonald's for 18 bucks an hour now. Okay, I didn't guess that. So we're hiring actively for our summer interns, which are planning tax, which are out and doing a lot of the field work we do gathering the data we use for municipalities. We went where the skills are available. We also employ those same individuals in the office to do some either GIS work or working on our regional plan, which we're in the depths of right now. We're also going to be hiring for a community development planner. This is going to be a really key position working with all the municipalities on a big thing right now is rural capacity, getting out there, making sure everybody's taking advantage of all these federal programs, IAJA, IRA. And we expect that coming up probably right after the fiscal year starts. So if we had someone who could really begin on sort of that one-on-one level to offer all our municipalities, that would be, I think, a key position. You guys have been a great asset, but just at that point, I think you should have been nine years or so. I know the entire time has been great. Yeah. We're writing grants. We're giving you the majority of our grants and very competitive. Yeah, we do. We do often try to get involved where we count on grants. We are looking for a commissioner from Eastmont Pillar. Yeah, I was just going to say that. We have players as a little bit of a alternate. I'm on the planning community. I'm not on the planning commission. No, but what? Maya Stone is now attending the meetings and is potentially interested. She hasn't committed yet to being the town representative. And Claris is the alternate. I've been attending the transportation advice for many years now. Julie is to be honest. I actually had a later agenda that no one's come forward. So I'm fine being appointed to that. Okay. Julie is to be on the executive floor. Yeah, no, people are very out there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But tell me, she was on the planning commission. She was on the executive board. And you don't need to be a planning commission member to be on the regional planning commission. It can just be someone who speaks to you guys regularly and keeps those chains of communication open. So John, unless he's had much to say, he might be, maybe we should not have made him. John, I'm sorry. Do you want me to do something else? Oh, I'll advocate for the format. There. Take that. It's got your back. That is a shitty idea. Bang, you can clump me on that. We don't leak that out on Orca. This is the S&E's camping down to them. And you know what I'm saying? No, no, no. Yeah. A lot of this going on. Okay. Any more questions? No, thank you so much. Thank you. Just again. Bowen's always... I'm available. Door's always open. There you go. Thank you. Oh, thank you. Thank you. Thanks. Yeah, have a good evening. All right. Take care. All right. So discussion on our annual report. Review of the proposed amounts to be reported by April 30. We have to do our annual reporting. Yes. So what I have presented to you is what I have compiled that I would like to report as our ARPA expenditures in the reporting that is due April 30. So most of it you have already seen. The only couple of new components is number one. I went through all of our V-TEX bills and filled out all the costs that we did in turn to establish our VPN network, which enables more effective remote connection for working remotely. It didn't end up adding up too much, but it's something. So I, it's there. I went through the work to pull the invoices and identify the cost. So it's on you. And then the other piece is we had discussed previously about identifying some salaries and wages costs. The approach that I took was the office was essentially in a state of transition from we'll call it April until August. So I that is within again, just to point out this reporting period is April 1st of 2022 to March 31st of 2023. So I identified all the costs associated with those positions that were transitioning town administrator, town treasurer, zoning administrator, and I included the municipal assistant position in there as well. So total costs of $176,720.75 for those individuals and I'm including that in expenditures. So I have gone over this both with VLCTs, federal funding experts and our town auditors as well who are all comfortable with and approve and support the position I've taken. So the way this will work, some of these costs, broadband enhancement, the town office furniture have already kind of those, those costs were already posted essentially too far with the, we knew that CB fiber was going to and we pretty much knew the town office furniture would be and some of these costs are currently in the general fund or we're in prior years general fund. That was one of my big questions for Sullivan and Powers and that does not matter that we're crossing fiscal years on these, on these amounts for these particular salary costs. So the way this will transact in our accounting records is and I'm going to work with Sullivan and Powers to specifically make sure I do the, the debits and credits right in the books, but we will essentially be posting a credit to the general fund. Yeah. When, as you always do in June, we will be looking at where we end in the general fund for the year and the select board will make some decisions based on the deficit or surplus that exists at that time. So this will be an impact on, on what those numbers will be. So. And we can decide at that point to allocate the money. You can decide what to do with your deficit or surplus at that time. Right. Yep. You have to do it by the end of the month. Correct. So I was understanding from your presentation last time that we had the option of at this point, using the ARPA funds to cover just lots and lots of salaries and wages and commit the entire amount. Yes. And speaking with the auditors with Sullivan and Powers, I think a little hesitant to do that. They likewise are a little hesitant for people for towns to do that because if we were to have a FEMA event or something like that occur, you can run into a sticky situation. If you have FEMA grant funding and things that come into play, if we were to kind of use too much federal funds in one particular time period. So the thought is it's a little bit better to spread it out. And that's what my gut was saying. But until I had this specific conversation and I literally sent him a number that did essentially wipe out our entire ARPA fund. And he was like, they don't want to do that if we have a flood or something were to happen. And I was like, okay, that's okay. Yeah, because I looked at this one. So I didn't really want to do it all right now. So that's why you see this coming in more of a staged effect. Just so I understand. So the idea is if we have an emergency event that we call for FEMA compensation, somebody at FEMA would look at the rate of burn and the ARPA money. It trips you for a single audit and for some additional kind of... Oh, because it's all federal money. If you trip a certain amount of federal money in one year. So the idea is to try to balance this out. So just spread this way. And the particular person is all in power. So I spoke with said, you know, you still got time. So it's better to just go ahead and spread this out a bit to not have... Even though we already have this money in the bank. Yeah, but you have a number of years. But we haven't reported to the federal government that we have allocated the month funds yet. We have until December of 24 to commit the funds. And then we have until December of 26 to spend the funds. I would believe we would commit all the funds by December of 25. And there's a cutoff on that federal money that triggers that whole thing. And then you just do a single audit, which is, I don't know, like nine grand or 10 grand or something like that. So the concept remains unchanged using the money to compensate for salaries and wages that we would normally do so that we would then free up a block of money with fewer restrictions on it. It's just going to spread out over a period of time. So then you have one money in general fund that you can spend on that project, right? Yeah, it's really not changing anything. I mean, I could... It's a shell game. Yeah. It really doesn't change our media plan. All we're reporting right now as a federal government doesn't affect the money that we've received is essentially what have we... What I need to report is what we have committed and what we have spent. I could theoretically, as someone from VLCT told me, they're like, you can put whatever you want in that committed number. You know, I mean, really, it's... I'm probably going to report... I don't have to even give them this detail. I can just report one single line for vision of government services. And that's really what I'm planning to do. I will be creating a PDF document that is... Because I have all of these invoices. I have every... I have cans of checks. I have everything that I can possibly... If you ever get on it. If we are ever audited for this. So I will be creating a mass PDF that is not only all those invoice copies, but for the salaries and benefits. I have a very detailed spreadsheet workbook that has a summary sheet of this in addition to each line item by person. So I'm going to create a mass PDF that is all of this $361,000, just shy of 362, that I'm going to be reporting to the federal government. We will keep that in our record. I'm probably going to save it in a few places. But yeah, we will be covered. And then we will continue. It doesn't prevent us though, even though we've talked about the salaries approach this, it doesn't prevent that if we start working on the town garage, we can call out costs just as I've done here as we move forward. So whether we use the remaining $400,000 and we have salaries show up again or those funds get committed elsewhere, we have time to decide. Exactly. It's okay. Since I hope that you're jumping through and satisfied with the government, yeah, basically that's all. And we're reporting to that. That was really just as long as you all are okay. This is what I'll be reporting. I want you to see in the list. Thank you. Great job. Thank you. So the next item is the financial reporting package, which we've got documented. So really with this, the only things that I'm kind of calling up were starting to come into the final home stretch of the year. So starting to look at this from that perspective, how are we trending on budgets? You know, we all know there were components and areas that I haven't put the math to that we are down a position. So salaries could end up coming in a little bit closer because of that. I haven't actually done that math yet. But one thing that did surprise me is the Lister's payroll. They're nearly essentially at the end of their budget. There's minimal, based on their average, I'm going to guess when the next couple payrolls come in, if not the next one, that they'll start to exceed their budget. We know we have a new Lister. I think there's understandable reasons. That there's been some extra time. I'm not sure what we're looking at here. I did email them essentially an update of here's where you are against your budget. I just honestly don't know what protocol is here. My question would be if we didn't want to go over budget, could we just ask them not to work till the end of their fiscal year? Well, I think that they, I mean, I did share this with Gina a little bit. First of all, I don't think we've ever gone with the Lister's budget. I pulled in trying to put the 24 budget together. I pulled data back to 2016. And I can tell you at least I didn't go back beyond that. I looked at history to 2016 just to get a feel for numbers. And I know they have historically been well under their budget. I was at a select board meeting and then before I was on the select board where the Lister's were going through a lot of conversations with each other to figure things out. And it came to the select board and said, we need another five or $10,000. And the select board defined to provide them with that. But that was the process at the time that they saw that they were coming up towards their budget. They went to the select board and said, could we exceed it? Well, she said in a generally minor that they're going over. We've had new Lister's in the past. They haven't sucked up as many hours as they appear to be doing now. So I think that they need the reins pulled in a little bit. Mr. Hess. And that's full control. Who monitors? I mean, how do you know who audits it? Is it just the honor system that they just come in and sign in? Well, I mean, they fill out time sheets. Yeah, I mean, I don't know how this works. Yeah, they do time sheets. I mean, it's minor, it's legit. Nobody's going to go 20 hours when they're only working 10. Well, they're putting on the time sheets that they're working the hours. They come in the office, they work the hours. They fill out the sheet. I look at the sheets. I mean, theoretically, everyone's on an honor system. Yeah, I mean, that's the time sheet. Except that, you know, of course with, we have one hourly position that is a town employee in the office. And I know when that right now. So you're talking about I knew when she's coming. It is legit in that they're, they're performing some work for the town in those hours. Whether they're fishing or not is the issue. Okay, so it's one of the new, the new list or it's putting in a lot of hours. So do we need them to or do we want to ask them to, if they want to exceed their budget to come to us and make a proposal? That that's what I'm at. That's that was one of my questions for you guys, because honestly, I really haven't been babysitting this that closely. You know, I knew they were, but I do. Do you have experience with anything over the budget in your eight years on the job? A lot of things go go go over budget. A lot of things go under, but then you can sometimes bounce it out at the end of the year. But when you have people working for you that the only control we have over the list of that all is their funding. Exactly. And we can control the amount of funding that they have. And I think that we should hold them to it. Unless they can come here and explain to us that why they need to have all those hours. I would say because it's going outside the status quo or routine. Right. And I don't think that's part of our job to do that. I do too. So I would like to hold them accountable a little bit. We'll just do it in a nice way. Yes. And I think it's really, I'm not even anticipating nice. I always try to be nice. Well, you try. I was successful. Well, my biggest concern I think with this is soon I'm going to be looking at fiscal 24. And you know, how we think we're going to be on that. And if this is something that well, if they believe that this is going to continue, that this position now requires more hours than that's something that I'm just saying. And that's something that's like the government's going to need to know. One individual that seems to be way over. One individual putting on water. Yes, slightly, especially. And that's kind of the blessing of the budget. Yes. Well, I think it's in total, but I mean, I we'd have to look at time sheets for like a Ross. But you put it down three years. If you don't think I don't think we need to discuss the details. Do you want to think about that? So that's a good thing to hold the budget and more come to us and make a proposal to go over. Take my either or we already know it's going to be over budget for next week. Yes. I mean, they they've been averaging 2374 a month and costs. I don't know. I don't know what they're. I know that there have been full days by some. So I think we'll need the time sheets next. Say it looks like you got to be over budget. Can you come into the next meeting and explain a lot? OK, and and not bother. I don't know if it's fair to ask me before. I don't know if practically they can, given the things that they're doing right now. I mean, unfortunately, I mean, maybe there needs to be the brakes. So we need to apply them. So they can't just like, that's not really fair. Well, I mean, that'd be fair to the tenant. But it's worth it has to be done. Right, right. But it's fair enough to have them come in and say. It's a considerable budget to be on that. I think you don't want to know. Are you a bunch of reappraisals that are pricing properties? We're going to be a lot of sites. No, I know. It's just so bad. I'm sorry. Just think about it. They're just doing you. Would you like me to ask them to come to the next meeting? Yeah. OK. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I'll tell you. I'll tell you how I feel about it. You guys don't take care of me. I can't do it. Yes. Sorry. You want to wait an extra four weeks? I wouldn't mind because I'd really like to be part of it. I'm too busy. Well, maybe we can ask them just to curtail our hours slightly. And have them come. We can send them an email that says, hey, we already sent one. You have a budget as far as we know that the budget meets the needs. We can just say it's a matter of concern or whatever. Yeah, I just got a response today to my email from last week saying that they would look at it. But that was, that's all. Yeah, I saw it. That was a list. Yeah. I would feel worth not to put it off until here. I would too. I would. So my next meeting is May 14th, 17th, 15th. May 15th, yeah. OK. But meanwhile, we can send another email that says we'd like to come in on the 15th. Yeah. But meanwhile, we're limiting our hours. Limit your hours. Limit your hours. Limit your hours. Limit your hours. Limit your hours. Limit your hours. Limit your hours. Limit your hours. Limit your hours. Limit your hours. So the slide's forward has to come in on the 15th. Yeah. So we want to put it a limit on the gentleman's time. I was just saying that it was a week. Yeah. I would say, look, we do the fact we're going on with the budget. We're not sure why you're going on with the budget. But we can't meet with you. You know, before the 15th. But we'd like you to back off on your hours for the next two weeks. We're not saying a specific amount. We don't have to say a specific amount. No. But you've got to give them the best result. I don't know how many hours are they working a week? Well, it's all over. Sometimes they come in for 20 and a half hours. Sometimes they come for an hour and a half. Sometimes it's 25 hours. Yeah. It's not something I can even gauge. I know when I started, Bruce told me, typically, because the listeners are here from 10 to 12 every day. But that has been all over the place. So it's something that I've struggled with because it's been an issue for us trying to schedule meetings and whatnot in here. Because he kind of told me you can count on having the meeting room this area free in the afternoons that that hasn't been the case. I'm getting sure you're getting the message cut back on hours. And we're concerned about this. They're going to cut back. We need not extend the budget. We may not even miss the budget. Maybe we'll have to write that for you. Yeah. Great. Yeah. I don't have a blank check. It's language like that in the email. It's going to be very helpful. We are considering whether to increase the budget. Seth said there's no blank check. Sure. Yeah. Yeah, we'll just send it. Yeah. Sure. Sure. It really is. Is that good enough, guys? Yeah. I think I can figure it out. Thank you, Gina. Perfect. Thank you. You always tend to be pretty nice. I am nice. I know you are. Sometimes you can't. I know you don't like it sometimes. I'm a little too nice, but I'm very nice. No, no. So we're just saying you can be nice. We are not so being nice. Okay. And then essentially the only other things I've kind of pointed out here is, I mean, I'm going to be continuing to look at costs. Essentially every place that we are kind of trending over, we knew. You know, we knew computer costs would be helpful with the transition of the staff. There are some things we need to deal with in the building. Toilet keeps fogging. So we need, you know, it has a slow flush. Seth and I talked about this with the Christmas one because of the septic light going off. So there are just some things like that that I'm going to start working through. So if anyone has any plumbers, too, they want to recommend just let me know. If you could let me know. Somebody I could call. But just a little things like that. This shouldn't be huge dollars, but I mean, it's just stuff that we kind of needed to do. It's just stuff we need to do. So, but obviously I will, you know, if anything is of any significant cost. Probably that's probably just trying to get the application. What's his name from the last year? Yeah, Lloyd's. Yeah, I just thought. Yes. Yes. They're great people. Yeah, there's a little. And they're really trying to make a business of it. They're going to, that's to take us. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Okay, so that's it. So I'll be bringing you more. I'll kind of, you're going to be seeing a little bit more of these updates as we get into the end of the year. Because it's going to, we need to, our eyes really need to be on these numbers because we will need to know, you all will have some decisions to make at the end of the year with the general fund. Yeah, we always do. So. Okay, thank you for that. The next item is appointments. I believe we have some things before we need to go into the next session. Oh, we're not doing that. We're not going to go into the next session. Oh, you want, oh, you want to do the appointments as before? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Right. We have some other appointments outside of the select board. Yeah, that's what I was thinking. So how we all want to proceed. Okay. And with those, we don't have, we don't need to call anybody. Yeah. No. Not as many people or fewer. Yeah, we're not getting an incredible amount of response to our open positions. In fact, it's interesting with the ARPA committee and that's not on the list because that's technically for the next meeting, but I've had two people ask me questions about it, but no one has actually really officially submitted in the emergency planning committee. We have two people right now. So not a full. Yeah. But I at least have those two people and then they're going to continue trying to recruit. But so they're automatic appointments almost for us because we need like the funding request study committee. We have three open positions and we have two people that have. So those are decimal brainer, right? We can point those two and then we could point to the Rachel and Renee. And then go back to. Yeah. Yeah. And then the only other thing that I just wanted to mention, and Scott and I have already talked about this, but the acting zoning administrator, we all knew Gene Troyer, you know, was kind of continued on for one more year, more of a favorite. So, you know, it would be great if we could find someone that could do that. I think someone with some familiarity with the zoning regs would be very helpful. So I'm going to reach out to Zach Sullivan to see if he can float this with the planning commission. And then Scott and I have talked about some. Who's the guy that was the chairman of the DRP for a long time? Elizabeth here, you know. I'm Matt's dad. Rick. Rich. So. Poppins? No. No, they're right up here on the reef. What's that? The reef is fine with you. Yeah. Rich. She remembers last week. We just, here's a lot. None of me. You mentioned that when they look and talk with that. Julie. Yeah. I mean, we talk about this is not a position that's very active. No, it's very, very. I mean, it's kind of. But I think it would be it would be helpful because, you know, Jason will come to me sometimes and we'll figure something out. You know, questions on interpreting the regs, I think if there was someone that he could call, it would be helpful. It doesn't happen often. Jeff, Jeff, do you have a good choice, Jeff? Yes, I do. Especially especially if you know what the workload is, which is not much of a workload. It's not. I mean, I'm sure you might say, sure. Yeah. Yeah. The biggest workload of the it's his only administrator who lives in Eastmont Piliar needed to do something with his property. He can't do that. So that's really where the the bulk of the work would be. Yeah. I think we'll have some good interested candidates for this. Is he still in the area? He is. Yeah. But he'd be great. I mean, yeah. Yeah. You might have a time. There's a much tone. So I mean, I would should we do a motion? I think you already did. Okay. To a point, the slate of off the slate of people for our candidates for the funding study funding request study committee and the emergency planning committee as listed. Yes. Yes. Good. All those in favor? They say aye. Aye. Aye. And Peter, we please put the names of the minutes. Oh, the only other question. There's one other position. Maya's not ready to be appointed for the town representative yet for regional planning. But hopefully that's coming soon. Is if you want me to continue with the Transportation Advisory Committee and if you want me to do that officially versus unofficially as I have been. I've had some numbers. If you have an alternative, I'm happy to not. But I'll circle back too. That would be great. Yeah. It's just no one expressed interest. I've been going to the meetings. If no one's going to come forward, I'm happy to do it in an official capacity. But if someone else is interested, then that would be wonderful. So okay. So perfect. Then we circle best. Yeah. We will hold off on that. And it definitely should be more than nothing. Nothing yet. But I think there's been some conversations. So I think I think we'll see some movement there soon. And do you mean? Haven't heard anything from anyone for that one. So. Pretty fast. Thank you, Mr. Member. Because that's, I mean, it's up to the limit that is required. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't. It's technically it's fine. It's functioning. But yeah. If someone were interested, I think it's good to keep these on the radar. Because someone you never know who may be, oh, I didn't see that front porch form post. So I would be interested in doing that. So. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So we voted on the positions that we have people for. So that's the case here. That this, this talk about the meeting that Caroline John was to. Yes. So we have us attending the meeting on 39 of the emergency services and building or fire team, etcetera, etcetera. We start 10 this late. There is. Seem like kind of one meetings. It's Calvin that showed up. No, that wasn't Toby. No, Greg, isn't Greg on the calis board? No. Oh, I thought you just on their board. Yeah. He's on their board. Okay. But nobody showed up on the news. Yeah. Okay. So. So we did say that he said individual meetings that they just like. Yeah. Well, he's trying to bring them up the sphere. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, just for the record, the calis board has turned over 100 percent. Yeah. Two people didn't run again at three. The meeting was updated as far as the budget goes. They're on target. They're taking a lot of money in. It looks like they'll be good on their capital contributions. They contribute the money they take in on the English service to their capital plan for fun. So they're on target. They did ask about the money for the fire truck when it comes in. We had already talked about paying for the chassis when it came in. That's going to be a September. That's a hundred and something thousand. You'll be talking about whether we should just give them the capacity or give them the whole amount that we can make to them, probably the whole amount so that's good. Give them one check. I'm done. And then when the fire truck is built, we're going to ask out the rest of the money and then they have a, say, going to get a loan to a 200 something thousand left. Unfortunately, they've been too gone up so that's going to set the top to the bottom. Though every pretty much I'm trapped as far as the financial. They're really at an uncertainty with the whole outfit is that since high it's left. They've gone through a very round is gone. And he was the he won the election with Ty and then now he's gone. So Albert has taken over nice guy, not a real strong bear. So that's about a concern with Toby who had a side conversation with later who's the president of the business part of it is where is where is that head? The whole thing. So I think that we need to think about a better plan for the future. First of all, the party should not be it's not elected in most parts of this. It's not a popular contest. It should not. You should have confident people. How do you change the rules? Does that have to be voted? Bylaws that we can or they can change or we can change together. But they're non profit. So you'd have to know whether they're with their bylaw. Yeah. They must have been outlaws. Do they have a separate board? Yes. They have some of their separate board can change their bylaws. So it's an either that's an informal process working with their separate board or it's something that we bring up in the contract that we have. So now none of this really can happen without talking to Toby. Toby is those wise man over there. He's the president. He's been involved with forever. I'm really good guy. He's getting older though and he won't be always the steady hand on the reins. And he's trying his best and said I'm going to act. So, you know, there are lack of lack of volunteers which is systemic along, you know, everywhere in the U.S. states. But it's it's he says it's falling off a lot since I left time. It was very organized. A lot of people didn't like his bedside man but he ran a pretty tight ship. That's not happening anymore. Trail is not a tight manager. Nice guy. But, you know, and so they haven't had elections coming up. Who's going to be the new elected chief? So that's number one concern. Number two concern from my point of view is that it's going to be increasingly expensive. I have that paid personnel here. What they do by now is per day and by the hour that's okay. As they said a few years ago, we can do this but it's a scheduling nightmare. It's hard to manage. Eventually they will not. They will go to salary positions. Once you go to salaries it costs a lot. It's going to double pretty much the cost. Yeah, puts it up a lot. So, you know, because we haven't do anything to tell people to kind of manage the budget here. I think we should come up with a thing. And Jeff too, to put some numbers to what you just said. They said that they increase the hourly rate for their ambulance workers for the first time since the beginning. I didn't remember when they started paying but it was a while back. And the rate started out as being considerably higher than the other services around here. But there had been inflation and salaries and wages have gone up. And now they found themselves lower. But with the increase it's a plain vanilla EMT gets $1609 an hour and an EMT gets $19 an hour and a paramedics gets a little over $20 a month. I think you get 18 bucks an hour working at McDonald's. Oh, true. Okay, so let me just put that in perspective quickly is that I was on the planning commission when they were proposing to do this over here. The air ground came in and said, you know, we can get money from other towns as a contact to carry people. And then the money that we take in which is you get paid for the carriers to the hospital because that's just a no-brainer. We'll be taking so much money and we're all volunteers. So this is so much money that we'll be taking in. Of course, what happened was volunteers dropped and requirements to the state for training got higher. So then it got hard for volunteers to commit the time to getting the upgraded training. So then they had to start having paid personnel. Now what they do, two people on paid eight to four every day and two people on from four to midnight every day. And then from midnight to eight in the morning, it's not filled. Okay, volunteers generally. So there's one person I think they say, right? It's probably not. It's always sometimes. So a lot of times. When we met last Thursday, there was a woman on the four to midnight shifts that I talked to afterwards and she was planning to stay there overnight. So one person on both of those shifts. So you do have to realize that they're beating the bushes to get people to do that. And they can't respond with just one person. So you don't have to wait for somebody else. Right. Volunteers, which they hope they can get at two o'clock in the morning throughout the week to two o'clock in the morning. Well, I've been in a junction this five o'clock in the evening but it's just, oh, I'm having a heart attack at two o'clock in the morning. So that's my hat. So I mean, Bruce and I talked about this a lot and it's like, I think it's just, we kind of have to make something different. I think there's it's going to be the closest I think about this thing. So really what I like to do where my friends always want to do, we want to get talents out of the equation because it would cost us more money but it's also easier to do business when it's just one town doing the work. Because what's happening with Calis is happening in Calis. We have five new members they've got no idea what's going on. We have to do business with them because we're married to them. So that's a difficult, that can be a difficult that. So what we did, we proposed to this site forward a couple of years ago, hey, you know, you're paying for a third of that building. Why don't we just take it and will we leave you of that $16,000 a year? And we'll just contract. Was you like we do the other town? Exactly. So that would be a cleaner way to do business but it would cost us a little bit more money. But the thing is, and we would be in control of the future and we wouldn't have to be in bed with the Calis like for and we're trying to do business where people don't even understand what happened. And the Calis like for at the time rejected that. They did. They did. Because they said we have value in the building we're paying $60,000 a year for the next 20 years. Think of all that value. I'm like, what is that going to do you? It depreciated to zero. You're not going to sell that to somebody else. It's real estate and ease of ability. You don't really own it. It was the best. Yeah. So they have a select board that has a lot to do to come up to speed on a lot of issues. And they demonstrated that they don't have times to come to the ease of popular fire department meetings. So they might be welcoming. Well, I think that they would be if we did consent it in a palatable way. Yeah. That you're going to save money and you don't have any value before. And if we got Toby to buy into that concept if we have a week feeding with Toby, we said an hour and half an hour on one of our Genesis talking to Toby about some different ideas. I think that would be a better. Yes. Do you have any idea what the rough rough number all part would be on income? You say you say we would not be getting the $60,000 any idea what type of income that would be replaced. Okay. So I want to tell you about this capital so talking about. Okay. So the way it works now is that they take about a hundred and something thousand dollars a year. They get in from the handles rather than you which is cares. It's not the money they get from the town is a certain contract. So for instance, when they go to Barfield, they get the money when that person gets carried to the hospital. But they also take and say $40,000 a year from Barfield for a contract. But that goes into their general fund for all their expenditures. The money that they get from the carriers goes into the capital fund which is what they buy their toys with. Now I'm going to say toys because what's happened with that fund is they're big boys with toys. I know. I know. So what they do is because we've got all this money sitting in the capital fund. They want to say let's go buy something. This is both on Craigslist. No, this is what happens. I'm serious about it. So what can happen is if you remove that, take the money that you're taking for carries and put that into general budget. So that could pay the salaries, etc. And then when you've got to buy a fire truck, that goes to the town. And the town buys a fire truck, but everyone gets the vote on. So you're not going to be spending money willy-nilly for the new tract of our TV that they bought over there for $30,000. No, you're going to say oh, we need the $300,000. Let's make an articulate presentation to the town fathers. And that will go on the town budget. That will slow down their capital expenses. Okay. So the money that they're taking that's going into the candy fund now goes into the general fund. And then what you do is you get cash out of it. And then you assess each town according to the population on the contract because they don't have any methodology to it right now. It's like, oh, we're going to spend 50. Okay, we'll ask them for $50,000 this year just because Berrytown might charge them this and that. They have no method. So if you have a method, applies equally to every town per capita, hey, that might work. And so you serve as kind of a de facto regionalized service. Okay, thanks. So I'm just, that's just my thought and I could be changed when I'm just future conversation. Exactly. So yeah. Over a year or so, but maybe. Now this is a conversation that you could be contributing to because you've had the experience in Harvard. I didn't want to blow your thunder. That's why you can't. Well, being recorded. You can't. I don't care. It's just not. No, I know it's and it's it's similar to to the town of Harvard with the with their police private in Greensburg. Yeah. They're paying the operational cost a portion and they're also paying part of the capital costs. But when they when they bail, they didn't get part of the police building. Yes. They didn't get any of the cars. Right. They're not giving them an old one. So you're making too much. Yeah, but but but the point is that's I mean, it's so it's very similar. Yeah. Anyway, but what happened was when I heard the police department hybrid is when Greensburg didn't renew the contract. Yeah. Obviously. I mean, so it's $5,000 disappeared. That's right. No, it just has relevance. It's similar. It has a lot of relevance because towns can bail. The only difference here is that is that hard with the police department was a department within the town. These guys aren't. Yes. You're dealing with a nonprofit. Well, that can happen. You could turn them into a department. Exactly. They could be working for the town. And another obstacle we talked about about was maybe scary town has this franchise over the region and they have to find a good scale. Maybe they use a facility there. They run the ambulance service. And then we have the fire. And then, yeah, then our town just stays in the fire department. Exactly. And I think they could manage having volunteers. And then in very town is asked us about it. Yeah. And then we just say, let it go. It's getting too expensive. Well, the thing is, the thing about that, and I won't say more after this, is the residents and the small community support the emergency services because it's so close. So if you have an emergency like John Jewett has a heart attack in his house, they're pretty happy because the man notes is right down here. Well, we did it as an arm where the very town kept a hand. Yeah, that would be part of the deal. They have to see it. So then maybe you could cut your overhead and still have a service. Right. Right. Yeah. I think that's a workable plan. I do too. We just would have to do a lot of negotiating with the parent firm and make sure that we're not going to take away something they really want. And I'm not sure they really want the EMS part of it. Right. It's a pain. Yes. Now, but not only that, the first thing you have to do is get the accounts out of it. The only should they build. And which they shouldn't fall for because it's no advantage to them. So what's the next step with this? It's... Get Toby and talk to him. But do we want to have a select board conversation with him? Do you want to continue your conversation I think the select board conversation should be appropriate. So we can you know, we can ask Toby but it should be I would take it would have to be an executive session because it's almost like a contract. It is. And then the executive session will be probably right. Right. Right. Well, the yeah, because it would put us at a disadvantage. Yeah. Yeah, of course. So we already have a reporting team and a lot of people. Yeah. So so so for the May 15th meeting schedule Toby we need some sit-ups not being no, no, we can have some business at the May 15th. So do you want to have Toby for the May 1st meeting? No, I'll be here. I'll be here. Okay. That's what I'm talking about. But we can ask him would he feel comfortable coming in and talking the executive session about something that matters that we have concerns about. Yeah, of course. Yeah. Yeah. No, I'll reach I'll reach out to him tomorrow to see if he can be here for May 15th. Yeah. Perfect. It's early notices we can Anyway, that was on an alarming to try if I'm sorry about that. It's just a it's a big thing. Yeah. Yeah. So you first work the update on the the truck as you said set around September the chassis expected to arrive at the place where they're constructing the finished fire truck not toying. They have jigs right now so they can be building the truck before the chassis itself or minus so that hopefully they can put it together very quickly once it gets in but we're still looking at November at the earliest maybe 2024 the actual problem will be delivered here. But I don't have any questions. I don't have any I'm just assuming I said a correct this So, um, I think that closes out bad business but we haven't talked about whacked that was on the business so Over to you is not such Okay. Why Why Really? Is it too late for me to look at it? I don't want to look at it. Oh, you're running? Yeah. Excellent. Good. You got my book. There are four candidates and we need to vote for up to three three incumbents and a new vote respond So Don Douglas Jean Hamilton Mary Jess Skinner and Carl Etniere are the four candidates so the select board so typically what you've done in the past with this is you've identified the candidates you would like to vote for you authorize the town administrator to complete the ballot and send the ballot in on behalf of the town Yeah. So the floor is yours to determine your three candidates No question or or or doesn't have or it doesn't have to be three or or one or one or none besides somebody sitting on the select board in this room are any of those other three candidates residents of these more people who does nobody know? Mary Jess Skinner is in Middlesex I don't know the other Jean those in playing people in Marshfield and Mary Jess Skinner Mary Jess Skinner in Middlesex Okay. So none of them are East Montpellier residents I don't think so but I'm not on any but if you know I'm pretty sure none of them are okay Yeah. Because the president is Yes. So do we have any strong candidates? Mary Jess Skinner has been there a long time right Yes. She's like up in the airs so but she's been there for a lot so Hamilton and Douglas are are new also are new candidates are they have been on in touch? No. So Jean Hamilton is an incumbent member she's been on for one or two terms I believe in the past oh here she says she's been a member of the board since 2017 and Don Douglas he's been a board member since 1999 holy cow I missed that yeah and Mary Jess Skinner has somebody said he's been on for a while no I think she has well I'm reading about her yeah she's been on board for 11 years she says yeah so what do we do? Not me they're all good candidates probably well I think we should I think we should we should promote the local person yeah that's fine the new local person with new ideas it's good I would endorse it I would too and I have somebody can be small through it too I would you picked the other two I think last time we voted for two we did vote for two yeah we voted for I don't mind what you do yeah we don't know the others I mean why don't we just vote for one then you know what I was gonna say I made it nothing that says you don't you could vote for one so we could vote for the e-small failure well I vote for you know that I think it's pretty discerning that it means actually three votes for that one and that's right because you're taking away from the other two let's do it sure so good to me also Carl do we need to do a motion suck where to sign us on one candidate deciding on I'm genius get kind of new things that are going to be there to the vote I'll make that get that motion no second on your second yeah and that person that we're recommending is a local candidate yeah Carl Etniar we have to it's got to be you know the name of the candidate sure yeah yep a second now okay all in favor please say aye aye aye thank you our governments or very and our clues yeah okay well we're going to we're rolling now we're going downhill so the next item is discussion on town mayor here in light of COVID-19 I think Mr. Etniar is going to along in consultation with you okay okay early on I hope you can read pretty quickly yeah okay so as Gina thank you for continuing to update us on the local numbers in the memo to us last time we talked about ceasing to take up this issue each time in the meeting and I prepared some language that with with your consent I'll email to the address to put in the minutes and then we can just decide if if that's what you'd like to not have this as a recurring agenda item but what I put together here is COVID-19 remained a serious ongoing cause of illness death and disability in the U.S. and the world the latest figures from the Centers for Disease Control show a seven day average of 1,870 daily hospital admissions in the U.S. for COVID and a seven day average of about 190 daily deaths in the U.S. so even though COVID deaths are down compared to most phases of the pandemic COVID-19 at its current level is still approximately 50% deadlier than traffic fatalities were over the course of 2022 in 2022 had an unusually high number of traffic fatalities furthermore long COVID remains poorly understood an estimate so the rate of long-term disabilities from the disease very wisely so basically setting up saying this is still serious stuff and then it continues not nonetheless the trend is away from any sustained the government response while the select board will examine any COVID related issues that come to its attention we will no longer automatically include the issue in each meetings agenda that's that was great to me is that okay for you guys it sounds like a thesis to me but that's okay here's here's here's here's okay the best part about is we're not going to include an every agenda yeah I thought you'd like that okay okay I don't know that we need a motion on that I don't believe you do come do a consensus on how we put together the agenda in the future yeah okay very good thank you oh my god that costs us $3,500 for those ballots thanks oh no and then there's ballot printing over here it costs us $5,000 now my goodness some of that was for the original oh that's something original okay not in addition to oh good you want those drums since you're right here sure you don't have to go so far off the field those little arms did you want to do that that report the time of this yeah so set the ballot update but we've received 456 absentee ballots for the federal election that will be held on April 25th um town clerk rosie will be out of the office the first week in may she will return to the office on Monday May 8th Denise will work the front desk for Monday through Wednesday of that week we are still working on kind of specifics on you know there will be things that we won't be able to do without the town clerk here so we're going to get something communicated out on front porch forum postings in the office but and then for the two days that Denise will not be here that's getting close to tax payment time so I want to make sure that we are here to take those so Michelle and I will will I already got a bell someone can ring a bell Michelle and I can run out front and take things like tax payment that'll be about all we'll be able to do without and even when Denise is here I mean we will be limited you know things with dog licenses have changed for example it's a new system Denise hasn't been trained on it she's not going to be able to do things like that Rosie's absent so we're working on kind of how all this will look and we'll communicate out as best as we can it's a lot of people know what's going on sounds like a plan and you'll obviously going to post it on the pages oh yeah yeah we'll post this on the website we'll post a different porch forum we'll reply it all over the place here so you know do our best to let people know there have been two permit applications since last meeting I think one was addition to a home and then one was for an actual construction of a new home and then we have the meeting schedule which I think we all reviewed in detail in the last meeting but they're here that's it I have one other thing and since we're talking briefly about the closing of pumpkin road proposal I got a message from Jack Zalendo the rec board that they discussed it again at their most recent meeting and are still um interested in further conversations about it so that some of the members of the rec board and I are going to get together this week so that to answer their questions okay I don't have any questions on the time of the ministry report some of the business the only thing left is only an executive session that we did I moved to and for executive session to discuss it's not mattering we have a second second all the papers we say out all right all right I would say we're all out of executive session and we've come to a decision no action was taken in anything no action was taken in the executive session taken in the executive session right that's just it listen well now and um I moved to a point Zoe Christensen to the remainder of the open select board term ending and town meeting day 2024 but wait a minute see open seat that's the beginning of the three-year term she is that's it's yeah she's getting appointed for the first year of the three years yes yes that's right but did it only those three years the the appointment I still very 20 and I will say right thank you for that part yeah all those that they would please say out all right all right all right yeah I just appeared to have to do that thank you more make the motion we adjourn this meeting of the select board on April 17th not all that was this yeah that's all right oh oh I don't sick on overtime oh you're on overtime that's how you like I was second then overtime farmers don't know what that is all of the favoritly tell all right all right