 it's like okay okay ladies and gentlemen I make it to the five o'clock sharp welcome everyone hi um first up uh guess I guess okay um we have one guest Eli would you introduce yourself please yes we're going to hear from you welcome thank you um um with that uh we need to approve the minutes of the November 7th 2023 regular select board meeting is there a motion it's the weakest approval I've ever heard is there a second that sounded like a squeak if you had a long day I have very very long okay thank you I didn't hear it it's to approve the minutes yes so do we have a quorum of those now we do right okay so we'll do who was there for that one well I'm not going to be able to vote on the 7th so let's vote on the 7th all those in favor of the motion to approve the minutes for November 7th please say aye hi anybody opposed we have approved the minutes of the 7th thank you uh motion to approve the minutes of October 17th has to be either Vic Liz Peter I'll move this I'll move that one for the October 17th and is there a second okay good um okay we need to vote all those in favor of approving the minutes of October 17th please say aye hi anyone opposed no we've done it the eyes have it there's this that was the 17th that one I can sign that one yeah we're going to get them in yeah uh reviewing and amending and approving the agenda for uh November 21st today uh okay is there a second okay thank you Victor it's been moved and seconded to approve the agenda today I have one uh I'm sorry I have one quick amendment which is just an update on uh on Welch Park that I'll do under other business um is that acceptable to the people acceptable to you Liz and uh yep Victor okay so uh the motion is to approve the amended uh agenda for tonight's meeting all those in favor aye aye sorry did we need that motion right yeah we did uh Liz made the motion Victor seconded oh we also have another amendment here I didn't read down far enough I'm sorry so we'll do that as a second uh if you want to do that now Sarah might as well write approving Brian Montgomery's application for FEMA buyout no big deal is that right here no oh it's already on the amended agenda okay so we're good okay okay wait but should I move no no no no no we voted didn't we well no we have to we have to approve Brian Montgomery's application oh yes yes yes yes I'll move that we approve it okay is there a second I will do that we're going to move by Liz but seconded by Victor is there anything to know about this Sarah of any interest no how many does that make on this on this road or in in the town probably the 16th yeah yep okay all those in favor of approving Brian Montgomery's application for FEMA buyout please say aye aye any opposed I will sign everything that's on point in time here I got all kinds of stuff okay and we might as well go ahead and do this uh amendment to the Vermont grants and aid can you tell us what that is please it's a Vermont it's a grant it's a highway grant we got last year October 22nd for uh for $22,000 and you just need to amend it so that is it's really just the words so it says the grant more details hereby deleted and replaced in its entirety with a revised part one retail attached and it's on the other side of that and there's nothing that I can see that's changed except it's moved the due date so the grant was originally from 2022 was due 2020 to be completed 2023 now we'll be able to be completed in 2020 so it's extending the date yes they extended the date because of what they to do this summer okay so do we have a motion on that I I amendment to the Vermont grants and aid moved by Randy so second it thank you victor it's been moved in second at all those in favor of that motion please say aye aye any opposed okay we've done that okay I've got paperwork in front of me here like you wouldn't believe but I will carefully go through it ellie elie welcome why don't you uh we used to right here sit over here so the owl will see you the municipal technical assistance program and we sent out a couple of examples of what we've done with some of the towns this is a program that's run out of the office the agency of administration and so regional planning missions are there to kind of help towns municipalities with different projects that they prioritize and we're there to help with applications administration of those grants if towns were to get those different grants that we might apply for and so there's a little process that we go through there is a there's eligible projects so those are listed on that form that I sent out to everybody water and wastewater infrastructure housing community recovery workforce development business support climate change mitigation and resilience projects and then there's this other tightly in those other categories but we can run by the um agency of administration and they may or may not approve for us to move forward with municipal technical assistance on those projects um so kind of our first step is to you know checking with the town if yes you know the town says yes you want to work um want us to work with you um or not you opt in or out and then we go through uh needs um assessment and match that up with funding opportunities that are out there and the reason this is coming to Middlesex now is there was a first round there were four towns that were approved they opened that up to more towns um in Middlesex was in that bucket of towns and that was based on the flood impact yeah okay so community recovery could be town roads yes so that's the thing that jumps into my mind I don't know if anybody else water supply and wastewater doesn't pertain to us I think that climate change mitigation and resilience could potentially be paired it we did something with the town hall how what are the times on these like what is the deadlines here so it depends on the funding stream like we would match up to funding okay um so you know that us helping with applications and those sorts of things would depend on whatever deadlines that are attached to the funding but this program is a is a two-year program that so the the program itself is this m-tap right yes okay yeah that's the municipal tech yeah okay looks like it runs through March 31st of 25 yeah okay I would think we would want to participate and when you say um technical assistance does that also include like helping write the grants or is it absolutely okay yeah and it's only these grants that are here no these are I'm sorry let me let me just step back these are just examples from another town that I've worked with oh and I wanted to give you guys an idea of what a scope of work might look like so this town had their five priorities that they picked were emergency generators solar array heat pumping solar storage EV chargers and then they had a water project and so we're working um okay so you would you would come up with a list of and I'd work with you on a list of priorities that you have and then we'd come up with a scope of work um and then a match that to funding opportunities and then the fun happens when you start you know write the grants and those sorts of things okay so you guys have enough staffing now to do that because for a while it was really tight it was tight and Claire Rock left yeah oh she did Claire rock so who's doing the brownfields you I'm doing brown and we are hiring a new land use um we just hired a new transportation planner okay so we now have Christian still there right Christian is still there yeah sitting in the head seat right um so we now have two transportation planners okay we have our energy planners Sam lash um oh yeah and then Brian Voight is our natural resources planner and Lincoln for Asia as another a newer natural resources planner okay good um okay so yeah you're doing the end okay yeah so the first step in this is for us to say we want to do it and then come up with the list that's right yeah opt in or out and then come up with a list of priorities and I could meet with whoever to you know kind of look at what those priorities maybe narrow it down or or with this you know we had a list of priorities that we combined some of those because they were in the same kind of arena for funding so like I'm guessing something like wow so some of these fundings are small yeah um but you said this is just an example this is just an example and some of those are small like the okay you know it might be that they were looking at how to get an ev charger so it might be a combination of funding sources okay gotcha um did you are you doing anything with the murph so murph is Sam's okay that Bailey wick and um so this wouldn't go towards murph but like this is an example of where Sam and I work together to see what she's doing for murph okay and where the projects you know might okay there might be some coinciding so this this is more about um so your thing is around these particular um technical assistance that's with the agency of administration yes and it's okay and they're really the you know kind of have a lot of narrow scope it's a wide scope but it's definitely to be eligible they need to follow right these categories but it's also for like a municipality so like i'm thinking like Russ and his group wouldn't be able to take advantage of the housing right because they're not municipality right but what municipality would be doing housing it would be working with a municipality who's maybe partnering like say you wanted to work with down street or something to have a some kind of housing development happened in the middle sex okay well you could do it like a revitalization program or something like that that the municipality is putting together and pushing forward exactly yeah and supporting yeah or yeah okay like yeah i would say we probably want to like do we have to say tonight yes we want to sign up it's just a yay or nay yeah yeah there's an opt-in or opt-in you don't have to do it tonight but it does have to be um a select board meeting let's have to come to a select board like a vote yeah oh so let's just vote for it and there's i think so there's there's nothing like we get into this and we decide that there's you know we're not too many hurdles or anything like that like we're not locked in then you know locked in it's already it's a program through the agency of administration so it's already paid for its free technical assistance basically yeah i mean there's so many different programs out there one of the first things that jumps to my mind is that you know typically the programs that are out there require some sort of investment from the town and the outlook that we're facing from like the FEMA and the things just everybody's like trying to pull from resources so i think even though there are grants that are paying for the majorities of projects one of the things that i worry about is just uh the town's responsibility piece while it may be small in the grand scheme of things there is a limited pool of resources there yeah so yeah and that would be dependent on the funding you know picture if there's a match or something you know maybe it's not a good fit for middle effects you know but it feels like it feels like some of the work that that your team would be doing would be looking at how you may be able to braid or stack funding from various programs exactly not to make the most of any sort of match the town might have to bring the table for something it seems like there would be value and even exploring what's available right i mean for instance uh we're facing a significant match from FEMA and all our road work and we're hoping the state is going to help us out with that match but they haven't done it yet would this potentially apply to some of that um i don't know about the certainly that certainly uh community recovery yep i mean i think that i mean you know you look at a grouping like climate change mitigation resilience you know to me that's not isolated just to like building infrastructure or anything but it also you know theoretically could be expanded to the road infrastructure and resiliency there and the effects that climate change just have on on that infrastructure so i mean if if it could be you know tied into all that where we have a huge potential huge match you know we're looking at you know somewhere between what 250 to 750 thousand dollars for potential match and the work that we've we've got coming from or have already done and what's coming down the road um you know i don't know if you were aware we had to take down a three million dollar bond to help pay for yeah sorry line of credit to help you know pay and generate cash flow to help do get this work completed and without any understanding as to what what that match may be from the town you know right now it's 25 percent is what's expected but there's been lots of conversation around that changing so yeah yeah so this could i mean i i could you know spend time seeing what could be stacked to to help with that scene was out there also have my finger on the pulse of when new funding streams come through um you know matching them to projects um so yeah okay you're going to make the motion was uh sure i'll move that we um say yay to being uh to working with um central my regional planning commission on the m tap m tap is that what you're talking about yeah m tap program is there a second to that motion our professional seconder mr goire thank you all those in favor of the motion please say aye aye any opposed okay thank you all right yeah we'll be working with you yeah nice to see you nice to see you too yes so this application is my understanding for the so this is is that you get a yay from us in the in the meeting here but are we responsible to start this process so you can just connect with me on what the prior priorities are okay so we need to make a list yeah basically okay priorities yeah so we should maybe put that on the agenda for our next meeting where everybody can be thinking about it does that make sense did you hear that sarah okay thank you thank you okay highway report gentlemen female staff sure the uh all seasons as hopefully by the end of today they have completed the safety work on east hill and center road there was a culvert that was added to center road for them to do and i guess that's going to be weather dependent but that's the one going up towards uh p card corners yeah it's just above brook road on center road do the culvert there that really yeah oh yeah it's bad so they're going to see if they can do that but whether depending on it we could be so it could be winter tomorrow we could be socked in anytime so as far as that safety contract goes on east east hill and center road they were in good shape um other than that culvert that was added um on the second contract they've got some ditching and some ledge removal to do and again that'll be weather depending but other than that they should be in pretty good shape that was davie road that was davie road and upper sunny brook oh that led you and as far as the other female work that i've been working on a pile of stuff for vik and eric and i to get together and try to finish up stuff so it can go out to bed future projects starting up next spring yeah because now's the time right we have a sense of how many there are how many how many future projects for spring remain yeah i mean uh there's depends how many we combine right but there's uh i've got a list one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve thirteen fourteen fifteen sixteen seventeen roads now some of these can be combined if there's smaller projects so it's in the one project but there's some of them that are going to be pretty pricey east hill for example i've been working on that one but that that's going to be up towards a half a million dollars let's complete that what's nineteen culverts that have to be replaced from nineteen culverts is a huge number and then did the well that there's some ditching and ditch stone that needs to be done but they are you know like five thousand yards of gravel to put on the road afterwards and that is nefima nefima people did a site visit with eric and that was in the meeting afterwards and that's one of the roads so those numbers go up real quick so they you can say that this is because of the flood it is because of the flood i mean but people are driving on the road right now right now you can drive on the road but the roads the road has pretty coarse material on it this here is a top dressing i think it's four inches and part of the thing is mitigation there may be some culverts that are are going to be upsized right okay so sara how long can we ask for money from fema like two years or something well you can ask the treasure but the um we have to get in some of these projects by january 14th and we have gotten those in that's the debris removal that's done that's obligated that means in washington dc and it's good to go the uh b work is what we worked on on tuesday we did some dorinda and steve went through the laborious project of going through every single time sheet and eric time sheet uh looking at equipment material slips and invoices to match up road by road what was spent who who worked when how many hours what equipment did they work on how many chainsaws were involved and there that was submitted to fema last week on friday and then we had a meeting on tuesday jerry asked for some more followed questions and now he is going to put together his report with fema they're going to take out some really big projects that are over two hundred and fifty thousand dollars because those will meet with extra scrutiny from washington dc and try to lump the lower level ones together there do you want to meet projects there were the days that were 250 was it five five yeah so those are big ones like culprits hill brick road and they probably won't be compensated at any time soon but the hopefully when they get the smaller ones together and put them together we should maybe we can have a faster track on those i guess then my question is for like these that come in the spring like how they're how far we've got two years from the date of the event was three so two two two and they have to be first fema approved to work like it's not like you're like oh i'm going to fix this and hope that fema reimburses no we have to put them out to bed yeah no i know but like we had we had we had a list of roads that need to be worked on they approve that we they already know what needs they already know perfect well right but yeah they know so this so to be clear this sea list that's what steve just gave us that list for right that sea list has been estimated cost and tanned over to fema and is already in their queue so to speak to review and give us approval on right so to answer your question you know theoretically they would approve that before we authorized anybody to do work on it but in the meantime we need to be getting bids to get actual cost on that work and be on on the list to get done because before you know what there's not anybody's gonna be able to do it because we're not the only town doing that okay and we also like this all seasons were uh jerry from fevo was saying i think that because it's safety work you're trying to make sure the school buses don't sign off the road you might be able to get that under the b category right so this stuff that those invoices in as soon as possible so that we can get that done in half so do we have you mentioned half a million dollar just for east hill do we know what the those 17 rows those overall do we know what that number that estimate is not yet we may need more than three million dollars it's going to be significant that's for sure but you were just made it mention that uh pima approved this before these go out to bed and you award these i think that this is work that's from they move from the phase of emergency work to permanent work so they are going to be a part of all of these roads sure like they've already been sort of approved by thema well they've got them yeah and they know they're on the they don't look down we had to put a number to the roads and to each culvert individually when you say a number you mean a budget number and now we'll once we get this work done we will go back to that sheet and update those numbers so that they have you're moving from the budget number to the bid number right so steve do we have the box culvert or culverts on lower sunny brook on the list they are on the list to be updated i have submitted for a new hydraulic study down there because that'll be determined on what gets put there same with portal road and same with east hill yeah thank you along those same lines we contacted uh got contact with uh jaren borg borg it's jaren right i believe jaren jaren borg he's the uh stream operation permit guy and he's going to give us a permit we haven't i haven't seen it i haven't seen it we're checking on it yeah and to take the gravel 200 feet if we can get either way on mccullough hill and the bridge at the bottom of mccullough hill yep and the only thing we can't do is he wants to make sure we don't go all below the footings but we won't so we can do that gravel we can use right yes or what yeah that's our gravel we're recovering it absolutely right yeah if you want it i think we want it it'll cost you you want to spend the money so and i'm not so sure about that being a fema participation he didn't know right yeah i just need some clarification what you mean by taking to gravel to up 200 feet you're taking it out of the river yes okay so when you're taking up 200 feet where you what does that mean from the bridge upstream 260 because it came down in the flood yes and downstream if you get to us yes both both way is 200 so 400 feet total 400 feet total of gravel in that in the brook you're gonna you that so why i'm sorry i just want to be clarified right 200 feet so why wouldn't why wouldn't fema pay for that it's a recovery it's a recovery well mitigation it's a hazard mitigation at the very least it's hazardous hazard mitigation right right you're preventing future we just need to get clarification in on that to make sure yeah yeah before we recover too many yards of that material yeah right but we got to hire somebody to do it right right yeah yeah we can't do that huh yeah we can't do that it's like you need a crane you're a big mother excavator okay in trucks yeah it's gonna be wet it could be so it's awful wait till it's covered with full of ice and we have to also at the same time repair the uh stone fill that's on the west side of the bridge yeah that rattled down due to the excessive water of july 9th and 10th and and and i know we talked with Bridget and i forget who those people were that she had here but evidently nobody got a hold of uh of jurin so and the other thing was that big root ball that's uh in the river in the in the great brook yeah up by by uh don jones's and they will they don't they wouldn't they they wouldn't participate in that they wouldn't they wouldn't uh because that's on private land so they know it's the brook they said you could go in huh even though it's the brook it's on private land that's right if you want to go in the they might help the uh property owner i mean they might give the property owner a permit they're not going to help anybody but if they want to take it out but he wasn't too concerned about that he said that uh it's not a big deal it's uh because the water can get uh underneath it and around it and around it what he said until the next one until the next one until a bunch more debris comes down it gets hung up on that thing yeah and we have a dam there we yeah we didn't uh critique it we just yeah tell me what he said we just got to keep our eye on the prize boys and prioritize prioritize prioritize because there's an overwhelming amount of stuff that we could do if we had unlimited funds he did uh advise that we get a professional uh arborist mm-hmm to unhook that if we do because it you can get killed pretty easy you do that or use a big big machine with a thumb yeah yeah you're talking about that rubon yes there's a lot of pressure on that all different ways yeah there you go there you go are we able to show them uh um all three trucks are on the road ready to go for tomorrow and the salt shed roof is done what's the weather forecast snow till freezing rain or no i don't think you're gonna see much of that snow than rain we might get three four inches yeah not too bad okay i have my snow tires i'm totally not ready i have my snow tires on you gave your snow tires on you we are thank god i'm already and it's four wheel drives good job i don't have that rear wheel drive anymore that's all i could say they're gone anything else board members um okay guys thanks guys thanks thanks steve it's great to see that worked on on east hill those two covers were scary both of them the one by weeds and the one down the hill yeah bad okay monthly meeting with a mont pilier mont pilier middle sex volunteer fire department and budget workshop so gentleman uh busy month for us 13 calls the fire department thanks 13 calls for the task squad combined and single um all the vehicles were out um numerous times the big thing um you may have heard about the rk miles fire uh we did support that with nine people three vehicles um one of our folks was working with berlin up on their tower we got praised from waterberry on a good job that we did right so i think that went well i didn't print out what they have on the police department the city and fire department have write-up thanking everybody i haven't printed those out yet but if you want to go to facebook pages and see that um there's a list of all the calls we did have a an f-250 truck fire those never go well um the rear wheels probably are salvageable as is the tailgate wait what kind of truck fire a forward f-250 gas engine with a our gas with a full tank so we put at least 3000 gallons trying to get it out um when waterberry got there they used foam to try to get it out and then we finally went to dry cam just smother it and get it out oh no it was uh not a did not want to go out and that's just gas i don't even i don't even want to think about lithium oh here it is oh nine um most of the stuff was within well not on the interstate um it slide off and uh report a car fire but it was just overheating um we had to get an air pack uh belt uh fixed the they replaced it that was under warranty and one of our gas meters failed um when we went to a call so and then one came up we used that one um i just got the estimate back on that and it's going to be um $1048.90 to get a new meter that those prices have jumped tremendously is with anything else but we need it um i did find out that it was the o2 sensor that that had the problem um it was the sensor was uh two years and six months old and they say well they die around two years old our experience is yes but we get a warning that it's failed it doesn't eat the meter up but we're getting a new a new gas meter because we need to have one on each side of town um as far as the rescue um the new radio is installed we had to go with a different radio because the configuration of the cab um the one we had wasn't going to work so that's installed it works um it's insured and then sarah and i are working on registration because dmv is not the friendliest place online and they won't answer their phone as to which form we're supposed to use to fill out and apparently now they're charging um $12 for a five-year municipal price at least that's what's on their website i don't know so once that's um that's done well tonight we're going to talk about when we're going to do it my guess is probably next weekend start swapping it over and uh configuring that but we're happy with the truck right very where yep right uh eric will be really happy when it's out right now it looks like we have three fire apparatus up in that well it's not in the building anymore where is it out back um so yeah we're we're once we get it registered and get it on the road and then we'll get middle sex put on it then we could sell the old or give it a wire no we can scrap it it's got value to it so even tires are good um so that's about all for the fire department i do have a question i don't know who can help with this who determines the house numbering on the roads we have an even 11 coordinator which was shed because we have a have an issue that i found during the possible pond um reaching there's a house on center road at 611 right across the street there's a driveway and the house is way down behind that house from tomorrow right across from zedan and they have a street sign 560 if it's based on driveway location i'm thinking that should be like 610 because when i when i looked for gps address on that house that didn't have one so when we had our evacuation plan going that was a well this is where the house is but there was no street number to go with it um so i just trying to i i think that's a wrong number for that house because i was under the understanding that it's based on the driveway location not how far back up in or left or right the house is i would think it would be it's the intent is to find the end of the driveway once you find the driveway you're going to find the house right hopefully if the driveway doesn't do one of these yeah yeah yeah um so if if you could check with him and have him get in touch with me so we can figure that out because i don't want to get a a call for 560 whether it's fire or ambulance and it not showing up and we can't we don't know where that is yeah i'm sorry it says it says 560 no it says 560 i think it should be 610 or 612 because it's across the street from the big white house on the corner there before deep zedan no 560 z911 is not right i don't believe so all right and 611 is across almost directly across the street from that driveway and uh thanksgiving christmas and new years are coming up great time to change batteries mark the month and year on them and your smoke detectors carbon dioxide detectors gas meters if you have them and even if you have a hardwired system replace all the batteries because one dead battery will set the whole system off and then we spend an enormous amount of time taking each one down finding out which one is the problem thank you for the reminder in fact i just thought about it the other day i was like oh thanksgiving is a good time to change my batteries that i haven't changed in probably three years so thank you they won't always go beat with the battery warning they might just go off right and then we will come up and say we can't find anything let's check the batteries we have your budget request yes that's thank you um basically i tried to keep everything status quo um i did raise up fast quad money because we are now required by the state as emergency responders the emt is correct i'm not not all the fire department just the emt's to carry epinephrine which is epi that's up to date and also narkin and we have to purchase that through suppliers so Eric can you just tell me should this actually say budget fiscal year 24 25 right in the green column yeah did i oh i probably didn't write it okay i'm okay i was very confused i was uh i was looking at that too okay so 24 25 okay so yep and i think durin and i figured out that we're figuring that the radio dispatch um cost is would we say it was six or thirty thousand thirty thousand six hundred and seventy eight forty three plus three thousand and seventeen yeah so how much thirty six thousand so it'd be about thirty three six seven six seven eight yeah so not twenty eight no no thirty three what i'm sorry thirty three six seventy eight forty three i believe is the number we came up isn't it isn't it unbelievable what a percentage of our budget that is and it's unbelievable how it goes up relentlessly every year that's also including the extra that we're paying towards the um future yeah oh that's right tower or something is there any other questions on this no how much is that contribution that you guys made for the future uh three thousand this year it'll be three thousand and seventeen dollars it's a it's a payment towards the future upgrades of the dispatch system the interest rate is staying the same on the fire station but we don't know i was not i i didn't change i didn't change any of that because i don't know i'm gonna adjust those you'll see all those adjustments when i plug this into my sheet yeah we wouldn't have yeah i don't have that information it's like five years i think five more years yeah it's about five more years was it a 20 year no i don't know was it that yeah four years yeah yeah i was wondering about that it's not because i've been when i talked to the bond bank they were talking about if we did a bond for the town hall repair you could potentially like make it sort of seamless between the two bonds so it wouldn't be as hard on the voters because it was you can like put off interest for two years or something like that and i think you have a lot of tricks i can do yeah there were some tricks that they had up their sleeves 2030 so that's six six years seven well seven years yeah so that was over a 20 year no wasn't wasn't that built in 2000 wasn't two of that it was four nine three no it was after 2004 was after 2004 yeah i joined the department in 2004 i want to say it was like 2007 it could have been a 25-year bond yeah it says it matures in 2029 yeah i have here but yeah it's it's the year it's probably but it's in the 30 budget f y 30 right yeah okay so that's where the five years yeah okay reads that way um i remember i was on the select board when we broke ground down there so and i thought that was like in the early wasn't that like early 90s no something like that no it was it was well after i started really i wasn't part of the planning but i remember down there was shovels a couple years you me mary um mary alexander i believe yeah probably i've been here since 2020 and i voted on that bond on that bond really i'm pretty sure yeah 2020 the years the years 2000 sorry 2000 2000 years they do roll by don't they do that would be late 90s so that probably would be maybe yeah that's about right yeah so uh any update on the heating situation down there so far it's working i'm gonna text sam la i'm gonna email sam lash and ask her what it's like she like a month ago said we're getting ready to schedule and there's like it's like the pace of a snail why does that surprise you i'm like well it's making me feel now it's making me feel a little more hopeful about the murp being extended for years to come i mean it's just like like they never extend please they never extend yeah no they already said they were thank you gentlemen okay no you are welcome i'm right behind you how you doing yourself a good evening can we get the order for the order somewhere right now uh yeah no they're here here don't yeah don't don't put them in this man send them right now yeah that's a good idea the game goes away i'm gonna sort of make you do the walking oh i thought you gave them this sorry i could be helpful before you go do you want one of these yeah that's not yeah this is budget status not the budget yeah good thank you Sarah correspondent Sarah wait that wait that we're done with the budget people yeah wow the need road situation quickly yes on the way the what the need road situation so we last left which never ran they sam had sent some oh right she says Samantha had sent some videos of rocks being placed on Zach French's property by Zach French the cheat that Samantha said we're within the not the traveled way but within the right of way adjacent to the travel but in the roadway in the road and the board made a decision to write a letter to Zach French saying giving him a certain time to get those rocks out of there i tried to do that letter and in the middle of my my brain wasn't working very well last week i just said to Peter i can't write this letter i don't i don't i just don't have the skills i don't have the skills with the highway ordinance or title 19 we'd give it to rob our town attorney send it over to rob our town attorney that was friday or thursday night thursday or friday and then on saturday i was here uh evelyn prim wrote and asked all you guys for any correspondence or communication foya i sent her the video of the the Samantha email which is the last thing i think i had and then um at the same time evelyn said rocks have been moved uh zach she complained about the fact that they hadn't known about that this was coming up in the last meeting that you know i don't know but anyway she said why did they put the damn rocks there why can't they just leave so i forwarded that to peter and to the town attorney and said you guys deal with this now and i haven't heard them but i did samantha was in the office on monday and i did and she did confirm that the rocks were moved so that is where we left so the temporary crisis is over i believe so until next time well and then the pictures of the um uh alleged samantha and steve driving on the lawn because it's the right of way it's technically where the road could be when they didn't need to they could have stayed on the driveway but instead they were making a point to annoy each other and i think we should have nothing to do with that okay well anyway i personally think that i haven't heard from you so i so rob was already to write a letter to zack but i think i haven't heard anything i'd say we can i would i would say we should send a letter and just say you know please per our agreement do not put any rocks logs whatever the parked cars in the right away i don't think we can do anything about but can we also send a letter saying don't drive no we can't because it's technically the spot that i mean that is just it's basically childish behavior right on both parties as far as i'm concerned and the only thing that we as a town could potentially do is send the reminder to zack to or even to both parties to not put stuff in the right of way and that things like like here's the reality their front door is in the right of way we can't tell them not to put their front door their cars are in the right of way people do that all the time we are not going to police that right we can't and we just they have to learn to live together as neighbors and we cannot tell them that they can't park their car in a driveway that has part is part in the right of way we just can't there's no rule that you i don't think there really is a rule that you can't have something in the right of way or in the roadway if it's not people park their cars in the roadway if it's not preventing a car from going by there's rocks in the right of way everywhere right you go and you look in any right of way there's big rock there yeah i know i hit one right so like i you know it's like all right yeah well i guess i'm looking for a direction from you guys i mean there are two arguments here the one argument is that the town maintains its rights its rights of way and in that by you you know it's you can't it's hard to be that's why i couldn't write that letter because i was thinking there are so many people who are on class three roads that are in the right of way like you know our friend on berg road just got a beef car right you know so i don't know but if you do you guys want me to go back to what do you want me to do because i don't really feel well here's the other could we just talk about one other part of this issue while we're doing this okay um i think we should throw up that section of the road and the reason is i'm sick and talk number one reason is i've had enough of this childish back and forth but the real reason is as a class four road theoretically we have to replace that bridge or that color and we're not doing it and if somebody goes down there and drives into that river that creek or whatever it is there i see potential liability for the town and i'm not interested in spending the money to replace that bridge and or culvert so if we throw up the road then we no longer have to do that we make it a trail but you throw it up you throw it up at the the point where that no i say throw up the whole class four section right from paul's right from paul's right we can because there's two houses we've never set that precedent we've set the precedent of one house i don't know you could do whatever you want but i guess my question is do you want to throw it up or do you want to downgrade it to illegal trail okay those are different i think we want to turn it into a trail i think that causes far too much i mean we don't retain it now no i'm sorry i was going to say that that will cause more strife trying to share the the land boundaries so i think if we can turn it into a trail that's that's a neighborhood problem not a town problem i know but i guess what i'm trying to say is they use it like to get access for wood and stuff like that i don't want to i don't want to be jerks about it i think we're downgrading to a trail is fine because we don't have to maintain anything what about just putting a couple concrete blocks in front of that and with a with a sign does that do a way with our need to replace the culvert or bridge i don't think so i mean if they say we want to start growing corn in that field and we need and we need access and there's no you know the bridge is out and we need our bridge replaced i think we've got to replace it but i would throw it up i i personally starting at the at the waterway at the waterway yeah you throw it up there then that really what it is the trail is on the other side that's a town trail does the does the class war road extend beyond that that yeah it goes all the way down to the industry it goes all the way yeah big field there's like a field yeah it's a big field yeah wow that's huge i mean and i guess i mean we have not we we literally have done nothing out there i mean what was bringing this all to the to the four is the idea of the bridge or culvert yeah that seems like you should do that that makes sense right i mean the only reason we wouldn't well no even if we if we turned it up into a trail you could still if in you know a hundred years from now somebody wanted to develop it and upgrade it and upgrade it you could right it's when it's thrown up that you can't do that anymore okay yeah i think we should do a trail but i don't think we should do trail necessarily um all the way from the beginning because there are people that there are two houses on that and i think that's setting a precedent that is not a good precedent i think one house is okay but two houses yeah but there are no houses after that but right there's no houses where no it's blown out there's nothing there no there's nothing what what uh what does it take to to reclassify moving it back to a roadway later the same process we could so i mean you know it's it's the process but it's not an impossible process i mean if somebody if somebody was going to put four house slots out there for instance would we consider doing it would we make them pay the cost of repairing the bridge and then we take it over who knows what we do well from the towns and it's not a big deal for us we just haven't got to a public hearing and you have rob's letter about the wilch park drive right i do i'm going to bring that up at a minute same type of thing so there are a couple of ways you can do it but if your developer came down there and brought that land then they would probably have to petition the board and they would have to have public hearings and they you could get them to pay the cost of surveying and upgrading the road and you know bringing it up to standards you know similar to similar to what we did as i still call it skinner road whatever it whatever it is there layland farm layland farm road yes okay so where did you guys leave me on that letter what do you want me to do i think we told them we were going to send a letter we ought to at least send a letter and say our understanding is that the rocks have been removed steve has a question who's on that you can barely see it but steve is on there with a oh there is this yeah yep okay steve hi this is actually samantha bowlin i just wanted to mention you guys were you kept saying um right away so what this is all about is the road but i just want to make sure that's clear to everyone yeah yeah yeah you're right samantha yes we keep we keep screwing that up i apologize the roadway is a right away no there's a difference in the width what's roadway compared to the center of the road okay so if you throw the road up what do you call that section from samantha's driveway to paul sermanera plus still class four still the class four stays as a class four so you still got the same issue no it's the no because because the bridge is beyond that or that is place where the bridge was what that is correct i understand that completely but i thought the the idea was to mitigate the back and forth between oh that's okay well i don't disagree our policy in the past has been one house right i don't think he just i mean i don't i'm just looking for i'm just looking for clarity i'm not on one side i don't care which way we go whatever it is but but i just want clarity that's a no for myself okay thank you well i agree with i agree with this although i will say in the past we threw up class three roads didn't we didn't we like isn't merit no we downgraded them you did do we downgraded we downgraded them to class three to class four well we didn't we downgraded them to ownership so that they owned it themselves um we plan rose well we threw them up yeah like bolio road there was one we downgraded and that was bill reineke's driveway basically and that warren road and that was because there's a big culvert there's the culver right if it had gone out would have taken out the rest of culver hill road so that's you that was the one but otherwise like at the end of chase road to kacy ellison store step you discontinued it we had absolutely no business doing the the back road that wasn't our road to throw up so so this is the so this is the difference we threw those up because we were plowing them and they cost us money and they were driveways and we and they were yeah they were basically private driveways but they were all class three we never threw it so so now the question is can you turn a class four into a trail that has people's houses on it or does it have to be a class four like like why don't we turn it into a trail it was the last thing it was the we're not plowing it anyway the end of dole but it's the don't forget the burges and culverts is class four we're responsible for maintaining the burges and culverts we don't plow it i think what liz is getting at now with the two with the two houses is that if you turn it to a trail from paul's driveway beyond to the made the whole thing a trail instead of maintaining the class four to this point i believe that's where yeah that is where that is where i'm going so if you don't but the question is can you turn a place that's a class four with homes on it into a trail well it sounds oh you because like legally you threw up folio you didn't turn those into trails you just threw you threw them up and they all i see what i see what you're getting at yes i don't think there are any restrictions on what you can do with those those roads but that's why that process that's why the public process is so extensive and timely time consuming so you need 30 days notice you need to warrant an agenda you need to do a site visit 30 days notice for public for public hearing then you need to hold a public hearing and then you need to write a convincing argument why you decide to do what you do so it's a really time consuming process really right but there's nothing that i can see in the statute that says you can't take a class four road and take it to and then they have to come up with their own driveway agreement you can just share that road if you want to you could say we're not even going to do a legal trail guess what we're just going to just continue the entire road goodbye so we're giving up all right yeah and i don't just to be just to be clear to everyone and i think i've got this right i don't want to be sure i ever write if it's a trail that means there will be continued public access yes people can walk okay the minute you throw it up and give it to the landowners then there's no public action that's correct that's i was just going to say that okay i just want to be sure we're yeah i'm thinking right about that because that's a long road that goes way out there and i would be i don't know how it loops around or connects to colby or what happens out there but uh i can't remember i've been out there i walked out there it's not it's yeah it's a it's a definitely it's like a logging road trail kind of thing and then it just goes into that big field um that i think zack i think zack owns that field yeah and so i think for the sake of keeping some ownership on it if we were to consider doing that we would consider doing a trail not throwing it up i think throwing it up takes away any future possibility not in our lifetime necessarily but of like you know development and i don't throw in our town filling it out yeah making it a trail is a different conversation i think i could get behind that working it through yeah i like the i like to i just i just don't want the risk of somebody coming to us and say i mean i don't know what it would cost but based on what we've been paying for these flood repairs it'd be big money so the one big question that i have around uh if it's a trail or not um just thinking about let's say residents wanted to walk this and whatnot uh do the same boundaries play into the trail as the roadway and right-of-way boundaries so if somebody was coming through when they parked along the side of the roadway i don't know the answer to that i think there is in title 19 there is a broad measurement for really good trails yeah it's narrower okay and do trails allow cars on them right so then we can't if we know that a trail doesn't allow a car on it we can't throw it up into it we can't turn it into a trail because they are driving on it i don't know i'm not a lawyer um yeah i can ask no i don't think that's true it's a it's a legal trail it's on his land right now right no up on one of the bare swamps there we're not a man but if it's a trail and that's their access and they don't have but they drive it's the right of way that was being driven on all the time wasn't it yeah it's down great to do a trail and you on a trail that you're limiting access to their house that's what i mean that's what i said like if you really can't then we're not gonna do that we couldn't do that oh yeah i remember that i bet you do oh yeah but um well i guess i mean there's no reason we're gonna make a decision we can't make a decision on this tonight anyway so if you could just check on that issue of whether you're allowed to drive vehicles on trails certainly there's a lot of that going on i mean you're gonna need a plow you're gonna i mean it's like this is their you know basically can the trail be a driveway or can a driveway be a trail didn't that happen up where marty mcman and joanne flanagan that was wasn't that and they were driving on it that was a class four road though wasn't no i think they turned it to a trail yeah but yeah they've been driving on it yeah i'll ask yeah thanks again you know you've got enforcement issues last time you downgraded a class four road was it was in dole and road do you remember when you did that yeah yeah and that was because there was no way the town could do any maintenance there you couldn't even get the that one was totally impassable though when you but i can't believe that we've got we can't get any equipment across we can't get any equipment to this part because there's no bridge right there's no bridge steve has another question but it's not steve it's samuel samantha about this steven this time so on mead road there are actually four residents now paul's in-laws have also moved in and built the house there also before you can even have a hearing according to state legislation you need five percent of the voters for the town to sign a petition before you can consider changing or reclassifying the road before you have public hearing either two if you guys think you're going to sit you find it totally okay to sit on your ass for an entire year and not enforce state legislation on the things that are happening on this road and then turn around and just give up whatever kind of level of control you want over the road so you can just wash your hands of it i find that completely unacceptable i'm not surprised i'm just gonna clarify that according to title 19 there are two ways to change the classification of the road one is by petition and one is so the select board can make its own motion to follow the process not to make a decision but to go through the process so you just to clarify you've been through this before right so i don't believe you're correct about that petition steve i can uh i got the legislation right in front of me if you'd like me to read it to you or do you already know this piece of legislation as well steve do you spend your evenings reading these law books anything anything that pertains to an issue in my life i read the law about it and i do the research on it yes you would certainly submit that to us yes you're not going to read it to us tonight but i will i will send it to you and i believe we have contrary information if we're not telling it okay and i'm not going to turn but we have we have taken we have taken action downgrading and upgrading roads quite a few times over the years and there's never been done with a petition that i can remember or aware of anybody else victor you i don't remember traditions i remember the public comes and they can yeah it's a public hearing right yes well i can tell you is to the best advice of our attorney we will follow the state statutes however we do any of this stuff and if you disagree with our attorney then i guess you need to hire your attorney and go after him somehow i'm sorry about that but it just you know you keep saying there's some statute that does something and then then we never get it or never hear about it or our attorney disagrees with it or who knows what steve i'm not trying to be obnoxious but i've been sitting on the select board for a long time and we've never had a petition about a road that i can recall this is actually sam and steve can send to that legislation but he has actually tried to read legislation during select board meetings you've actually asked him not to um and i have asked him not to and i guess the frustrating part is i'm going by our road policy and and state laws just trying to keep stuff from being altered in the roadway and placed in the roadway and i feel like if the answer is to try to make it a trail the entire meat road to trail i don't care past if you're considering like where the bridge is in the stream that i don't care about but if you're considering i think that's what i think that's what we're talking about our our uh our policy in the past it's been only only roads with one house uh get downgraded so you've got depending on where we drew the line you either have four houses or two houses so i don't think i don't think there's any way any way the select board is going to support trying to trying to uh downgrade the road that goes to your driveway and to zaks driveway the bridge where the bridge is out is another issue yeah i and i agree with you there i just feel like i've been coming to you guys for health for for quite a long time and i'm a middle sex resident so this could happen to any middle sex resident and i feel like if the response is because you can't get someone to follow our policy to just change it into a trail and kind of wash your hands of it that does not we're not we've already discussed well you're not changing the road where it goes to your driveway and to zaks driveway into a trail okay thank you okay thank you the sense of the board was we're not proceeding any further with that unless somebody brings it back up um so sarah you want a letter sent yes yes and i also want to have the movement have movement made on turning the rest of that road into a trail okay so moving right along here you have a copy this letter from our attorney talking about uh and this pertains to well far oh okay i'm sorry i'm sorry so i what i will do is have sarah send us to all of you no no i've got it right here i just didn't know since i needed your permission since it was from a lawyer to you oh well so what this talks about is is a ways to change the road at welch park into a town road and so to me his recommendation is if you look down in paragraph one two three four i would suggest a dedication and acceptance approach that avoids at least some of the cumbersome steps in the statutory process you can you can all read that but that makes good sense to me and we need to start doing that we have the the wastewater permit has officially been transferred so this is the last step before we can spike welch park so really my report is you should read this over and then we'll we'll discuss it but uh the reason the reason we asked sarah and i asked roth to do this was so we were absolutely clear about the correct way to do it because we start reading through those statutes and it's confusing so peter what happens with the insurances and things they just all go away because there's no longer a road park is that it i'm sorry insurances and all of that it just all goes away gone all the all the individual landowners including us are going to take responsibility for our portion so that yeah so hallelujah that all goes away the one dangling part of simple in this which i don't understand and the state is just unbelievable is i said why does the town have to have a separate wastewater permit for that road and they said it's because it has to be transferred to the town and then subsequently the town petitions the state to just include that because we have a wastewater permit for all our town road and short of that i mean isn't this just crazy short of that they have a process where they're at least wave the charge for the permit but it makes no sense for us to have a separate permit for that tiny little piece of road with two digits on either side of it but anyway we can we can jump through those hoops basically writing letters and and doing stuff with this but we do need to do this dedication and acceptance process and i would recommend we start by guess what we should do is have some time for you guys to read this over just so you get a good uh island every every time he's he writes really good letters when you read what he says makes sense okay don't you want to read sarah it's really helpful yes because it's not i'm just going i'm not going to labor this but i'm just going to read section the one line in the statute that says the select board may also initiate these proceedings on its own coalition regarding upgrading or no say that again please the select board may also initiate these proceedings on its own coalition so in other words whether you're going to upgrade or downgrade the select board can start that process if the select board says no we're not interested then five percent of the voters get together and say we either want to upgrade or downgrade then the select board must go through the process right correct yeah that's the why i've always understood why didn't we think of that so it sounds like we should put that on the a future agenda yeah next time i would say because we need to so the quicker we can get this done the better off we're going to be and it's going to take some time so should we start like the process yes okay unless unless you want us to wait you want us to wait so everybody has a chance to go over this some more i should be told i'm not going to go over it anymore okay i go ahead go ahead with the dedication and acceptance probably the good news is the expensive part of this was likely to be the survey and we've got a survey yeah yeah yeah yeah we yeah notifying me a butters that makes sense to me yeah continuing discussion about whether to proceed with a bond vote in 2024 are we the town hall renovation action unlikely okay so um via is emailing me because they you know they're planning right they're planning for their next year and like their next quarters of what they need to do for work and um and i so so the next step would be to do um the design phase which is the $40,000 $45,000 design phase so just so you know like what you saw you know for the pictures and all that it's just like a layout right it's not that it's not the design right and so um and the the costs that they gave us is you know an estimate right it's it's really common materials yeah and it's you know plugging into us you know a software system and saying okay based on what we've done this is you know in today's dollars two million whatever it was too and and so i emailed her back and i said well you know the board seemed to think that we didn't want to spend another 45,000 dollars if the town was just going to turn it down right and it would be a waste of 45,000 dollars whereas davin sandi and i you know really think davin particular understands these things quite well he thinks it's quite important to do with the design study before you go to the bond because you get a much more accurate picture of what it is that you're actually going to be doing i think and you get a you get a more accurate cost now we could there's a couple things we could do we could say we could go to the town with a higher bond estimate than what we think we'd actually pay because that's like what because you're not actually taking that money you're just voting that you can go up to a certain amount now you'll notice in berlin they voted down the bike path bond when that bond was most likely not even going to come close to what they would actually borrow because they were counting on getting grants and so there's a chance you're not going to get the grants right so you want to make sure that you have enough money to pay for it if you're going to actually do it that's i understand that line of thinking but that is that is tough tough tough to say to the voters is you know we hope we hope we're going to get grants so we're not going to need to spend this money but we want the authority to spend the money just in case oh hope's not a good strategy right hope is not a good strategy right and so the so so the reason for spending the 45 000 up front is because we will get a more accurate picture of what we're asking for or we say we asked for that estimate was 1.5 million wasn't it um because we the one that that the guy sent us right um you know we could say well um you know if we do enough educating for the voters we could say we could you know we could look for a bond up to 2 million when and that we have you know scheduled to apply for these grants that would bring that potential cost down without having you know a full picture of what this this project may cost us but i totally get like not wanting to spend 45 000 that is for nothing right um if the voters are going to vote against it um can't you ask like a non-binding question and just hold the voters as to how they feel are they willing to spend up to x number of dollars for a town hall renovation well that's yeah so well yeah actually not actually go for a bond vote or anything like that with a you know a number just say look we have preliminary design it's been estimated it's going to come in this and just make it a non-binding you know vote just to see where people's thought processes um and then spend the free and then and then if you get a positive result from that go for the 45 well here's the problem with all that is that the is the funding the the time sensitivity of the funding right because it this scenario potentially puts it off by a whole year right and or we have some special vote that i don't think is entirely fair to the town because that it relies on people to actually like show up and i'd rather it be a vote either at town meeting or in november um not like some random time in the year to get a hundred people voting on the town hall i don't want that to be the case i want there to be as many voters as possible so um so and the other thing too is is that if you vote for it it's not that we necessarily take the money out right then right it's more about like getting the approval from the voters to spend up to get a bond for up to that amount and that bond probably wouldn't happen before winter the winter series of bonds um and it would coincide closer to the murp funding and i mean then the idea is finding people too right i mean finding someone to do the work right i mean there's there's a lot here a lot too and um and so i mean i i totally see the the worry of spending 45 thousand of like arpa money or whatever it is that we would find to spend on it and then having people say no um but i don't want to i don't want to wait i don't want to i i would rather just go and do the bond vote and see if it passes and if it doesn't we go back to the drawing board or we just do murp stuff right and we say okay this is what this is what we're gonna do we're just gonna do some murp things and and be done with it by the way i'll interrupt this broadcast to say it's warmer in here with these windows i can really feel it sarah can you yeah absolutely i can totally feel it's a huge difference we were saying that we were saying that let the last last meeting and it wasn't anywhere near as cold as it definitely makes a difference so anyway i guess what do you guys think well i know we can't vote on anything but what are your thoughts so here's my my comment and i've thought about this a lot is i was involved in i believe all of the school renovations three of them and we had real designs and you know estimates they were definitely estimates but real designs uh before we went for the bond vote and we spent the money to do that and davis like we really need to do this like that is like that's usually the process is to be is to come with this as much information now the reality is is it going to change someone's mind probably not but what it does for us is it gives us a more realistic ask what we don't want to do is ask for two million and find out it's actually three million right and then we're in deep doo doo we have to come up with the next million hopefully it's not that it's not gonna be that much i mean come on that's what we hired them to do to give us a really yeah a realistic number yeah and so i mean that would be just crazy if they'd come back with that kind of difference and there's things that you can't you know you could probably be like okay well we're gonna do the cheaper window alternative to the the more expensive um but you also are like well if you're gonna do this you want to do it right right i mean you want to make it the building that we are in we don't want to spend 1.5 million when we could spend two and get a building that is you know really that much so useful i mean they are dead set on the 45 thousand right i mean there's no saying can't we do it for 30 000 probably no i don't think so yes sir what would you think about putting a special article on the town warning for the meeting for this cost and that would give you a chance to start pitching to the town about the town hall for innovation that's what i was kind of saying that's what you're saying but that that puts us off to a bond vote for november but i think you know this is a big sale this is not some this is huge right i mean the way murph is going now it's probably not i mean murph is neat we haven't even gotten our assessments yet and you can't even do your application until you get your energy so it's probably going to be extended so it's going to be extended it's really about murph it's not about me anxious to get this done i understand that what i'm trying to think of is i've already gotten some a little bit of blowback in the town from people making little comments you know right um you've probably heard those comments haven't you i probably have yes so i think you gotta i think we've got a big sales pitch to go i mean i just don't think okay that's my that's my sense you guys are just like we're members you live in town as well my sense is like oh there's already like and maybe people would also like to be able to weigh in on the design i know you had a public hearing but not many people came if you had it at a town meeting people could say well wait a minute there's not this there's not that why do you know there's more chance for yeah i mean already i went to the meeting on saturday for the um the food pantry and everyone was like why is it so small our little food pantry and i was like well that can be changed you know if we really want to so i i'm fine with that um but are you saying it would be a discussion not a vote i would say that you would warn it as a special article just as you would warn warn special article for the 45 000 should the town have spent 45 000 to design to pay for the design of uh or detailed design to refine the design okay but could it be a conversation instead of a vote no you would have it as with actions no then we'd have authority from the voters to spend the 45 000 and then the voters would decide whether to allocate that that's fine but i guess my question is can we have at somewhere in that town meeting a discussion about yeah just like you do you just forgotten because it's been two years of no no town right it hasn't been three talk about anything you want well i know but i mean it's it's usually not something that you talk about unless it's a reason for an in-person town meeting is those kinds of discussions do you stand up there opens it up to the no i know but if it's on the ballot it's not on the ballot it's a floor vote it's a special article okay that's what i'm asking i thought you said it was gonna be on the ballot i'd be able to talk about it oh okay yeah the only the only thing that would be an article at the time meeting all right the only thing that's going to be on the ballot is going to be officers yeah okay the board decides to i'm sure if you're there we will discuss it oh stop that it's annoying okay guys it's 6 30 okay so we need to well we need to look at the rules i'm okay with that i like that idea sarah and endurinda i think that's good oh okay dick is there only one thing in this design well too that is the first question we've got to answer yeah eight because you gotta have a quorum of the entire number right what's the total number she can come down she's good she looks sad okay well let's just review so we have full select i got so much bigger yeah we're done adjourn the select board thank you all and we are convening shelly's here she'll see them out of here right so they don't have anyone to be here okay this part of the public okay so i think we're okay with the quorum it's going to just run through it bring a vlct form of the minimum number of members of the board let's be correct the form form for the board of abatement is either the majority of the total number of the members of the board so the total number of the members of the board is five select board members five jps two listers two three four also mean four five eight i'm shelly nine jan ten quorum does it have plus one it is either the majority of the members the board or the treasurer a majority of the listers is willing to get two there's one a majority of the select board members i think we're good are we good the applicants do you feel like we're good yeah okay yeah we're good all right what do you remember Heather? i've got my rules right here i'm i'm reading them thank you for the rules um so this is the hearing uh isle weaver and renay woodwork at 15 lower sonny brook road and middle sex remodels and a request for abatement um at this time i need to ask the applicant and any other witnesses and the listers uh to take the following oath so are you all ready for this okay under the pains and penalties of perjury do you solemnly swear affirm that the evidence you give in the abatement hearing under consideration shall be the whole truth and nothing but the truth i do okay thank you um for the applicant do you have any questions about how this uh hearing will proceed uh next i need to ask uh the board of abatement members to make any disclosures of conflicts of interest or if they need to recuse themselves and next ask the applicant to identify the statutory abatement category under which the abatement request is being made and then present his or her testimony and other evidence followed by the testimony of any other witnesses on behalf of the petitioner so on the part here i'm sorry the backside of the application oh yeah yeah yeah reasons for abatement one through seven you checked out the box property was lost to destroy that i presume that's accurate good extent yeah this okay so so now you basically present your case so uh we've got reflected uh we have a different estimate hello we cannot hear this it's oh actually could you take that right there john that that microphone that's what it is oh that's over that that's for orca where's our that's the owl it is the owl that's pick them up no that's also orca hold on a minute wait a minute jam can you hear me yes okay maybe just talk about it um we got flooded back to like ten uh sense of repairs damages that two different estimates uh to get the house back the way it was average out to 110 thousand dollars that's not including the debris that's on the yard which is the neighborhood of two thousand cubic yards so on and so forth uh the property has now been listed as high risk our tax assessment is just under 170 and i guess simple way to think in we've got 110 thousand dollars worth of damages uh actually it's a lot more than that because we're talking probably 30 to 50 thousand dollars worth of excavation work yeah not to mention um abatement to we would have to if we were to remain living there we got a it'll be an additional 40 thousand dollars to to raise the house to a level that would satisfy any loan rate etc so that's on top of the internal damage we also got the i think this is from the town the substantial damage estimator that i got which we were at you know which doesn't coincide with the the estimates what we got but it was like over 50 property damage um total plate i think here it's like 83 thousand is without doing a lot of intensive assessment i believe um on the town's part yeah this is kevin tomsen yeah i got that signed here we had a foot and a half of water in the living quarters two and a half foot in the garage and i brought pictures because i did state you guys wanted pictures and all of that and i would love to show you if you want to see sure if you want to pass me yeah that's fine there's some other stuff that's a 73 inch swimming pool i took out the loans that weren't pertunable to the because we get a lot of i hope so the footage of um the surrounding property but that's like this is not just uh obviously yeah when they come around well peter are we allowed to ask questions or is there a time for that later yeah there'll be time for that yeah so bridget we can't share these with you guys at least i don't think we can there's no way we can right did you uh we did we were denied um i've applied three different times and they're playing there for the buyout no no this is yeah for a buyout yes yes we did we are still waiting to hear anything about in regards to that we applied for a FEMA assistance as well and have been denied so you receive no money we received like two thousand dollars for relocation to find a temporary housing when it all happened that's it um i think my most recent time to the FEMA disaster center and berry resubmitted stuff because there was some question about we did not have flood insurance but our mortgage our bank did and they were holding it up waiting on the bank the bank finally stated that it was not our flood insurance it was theirs but they now are they denied it because now we haven't received that money other than two thousand long so sure we end up on any yeah we don't want to take any so here i think what you do is you should divide this hearing of like the time when people can start asking questions that those guys are done doing their presentation then people can ask questions yeah sure so you're not living there we are oh you are living there we have made it livable we've got plywood floors and we don't really have walls and we've got we don't have cabinets we just you know we're living very rustically for the time being did you live there from the event of the flood straight through camp and trailer we lived at camper in the driveway and when did you move back in september yeah roughly it was getting cold it's got colder today is your intention to uh try to live there or do the winter yeah we don't really have a lot of other options so yeah we're gonna live there through the winter and we we don't have a furnace but we have the wood stove going um but we're gonna live there until this whole fancy gear camp right now we have for water we got well water the wells yeah and i had the water tested and we we had to um treat that yeah we had to treat all that but it's good now okay and so have you like thought out in your head you know we see what your full year tax bill is like a request for a specific amount or are you requesting an abatement in full or if you're not kind of uh no haven't went that far um yeah but i mean it's i guess simple math were 80 of the assessment did you pay your first no no we had brought this up in oh i think when we got the tax bill days after we got the bill and said it was going to be put off till november so we figured we'd put the payment off till november and being in the high risk zone now um i need to resell the property and if it does you know we do take the buy out the property is basically worthless so i guess that being said yeah 100 percent i mean it's a place to live right now but it's not much different than the people down here on the curve living in the town a little more my stomach septic system at the house is my operations don't jinx it but yeah it's working everything's gone wrong so yeah it's for for right now yeah it is any other questions board members you have children yep piper nine-year-old we're behind there she is hi hi i heard it piper so can i just ask about what funds you received do you have a receipt anybody from female or you just like $2,000 relocation assistance the initial that's it the bank had flood insurance on it no so no we did not the mortgage was paid off what does that make the mortgage that we had a mortgage insurance no we don't have flood insurance we didn't get any money from FEMA the bank come the okay i'm sorry i don't understand the mortgage part so so they so because of the flood your mortgage was paid off yes because they held flood insurance on the mortgage okay how much is your mortgage 25 grand do you have any mortgage now no we we own the deer camp and how many how many weeks were you without outside of your home do you think about 10 i guess the comment i would make about the mortgage situation is as much as that's not putting your cash in your pocket as my accountant has told me many times forgiveness of debt constitutes income or constitutes reimbursement in a sense yeah yeah but you no longer you know you no longer have that debt but i i believe it's irrelevant for what we're here for possibly yeah it's too different yeah no no no i i don't just took this too much to explain that to FEMA yeah it's just that we have not received any federal funds yeah that's what i'm getting okay but is the reason that you didn't get something maybe this has nothing to do with today's conversation but is the reason that you didn't get anything from FEMA because something happened in previous flood and they told you to get flood insurance this house has never flooded since it was built so you weren't in a flood we're in a flood plain and had to have flood insurance but the way the flood insurance works you've only got to pay you've only got to carry enough to cover your mortgage but you didn't have that the bank did so the whole thing is irrelevant i mean it's kind of wondering if that's why FEMA no no no i'll tell you why is because unfortunately when i filled out the application of FEMA directly i i said they asked me if i had flood insurance and i said yes even though we didn't but i didn't want to like why because i knew the bank did i should never have done that that's why and so i've had to read i've had to appeal and appeal but they will deny you if you have a period in the wrong location they will deny their it's a really people think it's so easy to get it so it's not just flood insurance i mean when they have to really pay it out yeah exactly and another thing is if we were to get a loan through sba which is in cahoots with FEMA they would tax on anything they gave us to the loan so we that's why we don't want to take any that 40 some thousand they claim they give you yeah you don't put on your if you're over that 40 grand you'll end up paying it back if you're under you're great you'll and if you don't mess up really if you're over the 40 grand and you have to take out an sba loan because i mean it's a great interest rate and you know they're i mean that's what they do they make you fill out the sba loan with the FEMA application i mean they like force you and of course they want to throw all this money at you but come to find out the last time it was at the disaster the drc oh yeah by the way if you do get this and you take out an sba loan we're going to tack that on to the at the end and i was like oh okay so that's so the 40 000 isn't free no only less than 40 or if you turn down the sba right and you didn't take the loan correct exactly yeah it's like a trap it's it's quite a they don't tell you that it's really bad and it's been a full it was a full-time job for 10 weeks trying to navigate that so it is what it is but the thing from the bank i keep saying it's irrelevant because if you don't have homeowners insurance they do the same thing it's not just specifically flood insurance right you know you're required to have it they send you a letter and say if you don't have it we're going to buy it for you well that's part of your as well or anything like that yeah they put it on restaurant right yeah i think you just hit the nail on the head that if you don't carry the insurance they'll purchase it for you you're paying premium yeah yeah but they hold the insurance right and they take and they take the money absolutely yes yes quite a racket but if your house burned down they only give you everything they would well no what we have or they only give you 25 oh you have homeowners yes okay if we have the whole difference yeah yeah but it's it's comparable because if you didn't have homeowners insurance they would send you a note and say we're going to buy it for you yeah right so okay so yeah we're open for suggestions just uh hello yes exactly how long were you not able live in your house 10 weeks okay and we're in it right now it's it's camper in our driveway and right now i mean we we took five 16 foot dump trailers to the dump that we paid for of personal belongings kitchen cabinets appliances flooring floating floors do float right now we have plywood floors uh i've reinstallated the outside walls and got sheet rock back up just because cold weather is here we don't have a furnace we have wood stove shelly do you have anything to add to this discussion shelly can you hear me okay now yeah um the only question i had do they have electricity back another has a water been tested do they have water we tested the water uh we never lost today i powered out a bunch of stuff again you need to speak up i'm sorry it's it's it's working yes we do have electricity there's some questions i think i need somebody to come in and assess it but yeah yeah is your hope to stay there is your hope to stay there or you haven't gotten it all depends on the the bio oh right and we're going to stay until we figure that out okay but yeah that's kind of a little bit okay now one more thing um i know i talked to kevin thompson on on some of the other properties and because it's over 50 percent you folks if you had to try to rebuild um my understanding there's a lot of work we've got to have it above the ground a certain footage so that it doesn't happen again is that correct yes yeah three feet minimum which we've gotten quotes and it's about 40 000 dollars anything else anyone applicants board members listers um i i guess i'd like to know about the property itself was there any damage to the the land yeah we've got over 2000 cubic feet of mud muck still on the property that everybody is just kind of ignore to say the least i actually got a call from the state yesterday with talking about coming in and helping with um debris and the sort of something i've got to call them back but at this point again it's we've got i don't want to spend money 1.7 acres yeah uh some spotters two and a half foot of silt the whole yard is covered the average down a foot at 44 000 square feet and made us a foot deep it would be 44 000 cubic feet divided by 27 it's over 2000 cubic feet yards yards yards yards yes okay i was trying to figure that out yeah yeah yeah the property is complete mud um it's i first said a few hundred and somebody said you better do some math yeah 150 truckloads basically sitting there roughly yeah two thousand it's over 2000 yeah you divide that 27 and i think you're 14 yards a dump truck right somewhere in there yeah depends if the ot's out or not yeah does does the abatement include the education piece or only the municipal okay so if there is nothing else uh we are going to go into excuse excuse the petitioners and witnesses and we will go into deliberative session and we will let you know thank you very much thank you we're just down the road you drive by and look at