 We'll meet to order, see if we can't get this thing rolling. First up is public comment, anything not on the agenda? See you in a minute, we'll approve the agenda. Hi, motion. Before we do, we have something to add to executive session that came out of something we did yesterday. So it would be to add a pending probable litigation item, it's a 1DSA 313A1E. And before you go into executive session later, you'll need two motions, so we'll read the motion. Client, if necessary, motion entered. I will second that motion from Stephanie to approve the agenda. Is it under the rules in favor? Aye. I accept this consent calendar. Any wants? It would have been the ones that we had sent last time. So yeah, there was an A-roll warrant. And then last week would have been the last A-Q one, I think. That's not very good. Yeah. Motion to approve the consent calendar. I accept. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. First up is first Friday public assembly permit. Got some additional information today on this. Yes. So I'm Peter Reid, the board president of RACBC. Yeah, I sent out a brief document. But basically, we're trying to address some of the concerns that had come up before. And I guess to summarize them, first, the volume of the music. We're going to address that with bands, and maybe with the type of bands we select. So we will make sure that that doesn't get over the top, and people can actually carry on a conversation in the street there. We have hired a one security person for this first event to basically patrol, and we'll orient them on areas that we want them just to keep an eye on, backstreet, and hopefully keeping an eye kind of in the restaurant area to make sure that we don't have any liquor infractions going on. We're also contracting for a porta potty. And we're working on where that goes, but I think I've got a spot right through the little corridor going to Backstreet there on the other side. And we'll also put some additional signs up to try to alleviate the parking concerns, direct people to the municipal lots. I'm not sure that's going to be 100% effective, but at least we'll try to do that. In terms of the resident parking, there's really not much we can do. But we will try to be nice to them and hopefully they will cooperate. So that's basically what we've done to this point. We have hired a downtown program manager. Stephanie was kind enough to introduce her around to a few people in town. So I hope that will add to our resource to be able to manage these a little better. Not that there was anything wrong with them last year. It's not good. It's a work in progress. That's right. And certainly as we go along after the first event, we were glad to take feedback from anybody on how it went. If there's issues that come up, we're glad to address them as we go forward. But that's basically where we're at together with the information we provided at the last meeting. Any questions, concerns? Nobody has questions. Any motion? A motion to approve the permit. The public assembly permit application for first Friday. And I will second that subject to the conditions that Mr. Reed has expressed in terms of what they're going to do. Good. Those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. Step up to a point of view to the recreation commission. How many do we have on the recreation committee now? Yeah, five out of the eight slots, is it? There's three open. It's on the website. All right. So we have room for both of these. Does anybody have any concerns with either the parties wanting to be on the recreation committee? I think as long as they are willing to be supportive and helpful, that would be great. I'd like to move the appointment of both parties to the recreation committee. Second. Those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. Grant applications. There are two in this round right here. They're both for our fledgling police department. The bigger one is it's under one governor's highway safety program umbrella, but there are two pieces to that. So there's destructive driving, so DUI enforcement, speed enforcement, destructive driving education. And then we do get access to essentially reimbursement for a drug recognition expert as part of this whole package. Unlike the other grant ones where you have dedicated patrols or activities, that'll be one that we get reimbursed for as we use it. And so JM, who's the second cop of our two cop force, is a certified DRE. So it would be sort of using those services. So it pays for all of the employee costs we put in for a grant amount. He's done a few of these before. Historically, you shoot high and end up somewhere halfway from what the ask is. There are no matches for anything except for the education pieces, in which case the match comes in in the kind of contribution. So many of our officers would go out and do whatever the education activities would be. Otherwise the state reimburses us for those relevant patrols. We keep track of those separately. So total ask is closer to about $50,000, $50,000 to $60,000 when you total up all the different potential salary pieces. If we got a full ask, I'd probably end up somewhere in the 20 to 30 range. The grant's not live until October 1st. But we had to submit the applications. Take a little bit of a gamble. We've done this before. But usually we'll ask for permission before we apply for the grant. Sometimes the grant deadline's falling between the windows. This one did that. So it's one of those retroactive requests for approval. If you say no, then we'll pull the application. Tomorrow. So there's that one. That's through the state. The other one is through our insurer, the LCT passive. They do safety equipment grants. So that's a little less than $6,000 there. Most of that's for taser cameras. And by the many ways, this just sort of replaces what we were going to use. I don't know what to start up the money for. And there's gloves, light and safety vests. And then when it says batons, it's not the swinging at somebody type. It's more of there's an accident. We need to light them up at night. Right. Lightsabers. Yeah. You can do a lightsaber battle. You can do it on each other. Yeah. Wow. And then I'm happy to have the board. I'm happy to have the Tar's Vader. As long as we get to test them first. I'm sure they're okay. I think we're good. That's a similar one with the deadline. Those also don't have a match. To approve applying. I'll move the application for the grants. Second. Okay. Posed motion carries. This next one is a request for speed and traffic enforcement. And I've read this, Trevor, and I'm concerned that it's not ready to come to the board. I think it needs to be looked at by Scott and possibly John. See what that looks like because we're not going to have the whole picture. I want to know from the highway side what some of these things mean for their maintenance and their activities, but also from the law enforcement side. Will they work? What does that mean? How does that even function? Don't those have to be approved by the State Department of Transportation? Yes. Yeah. So there's a whole process. Yeah. And it's not, we can't even consider it at this level at this point because we don't know, we don't have any of the stuff we need to look at it. What is the process for applying for those? Does it come through the local law enforcement agency? Well, I think the law enforcement looks at it from what they can, what can and can't be done there, what works, the highway needs to look at it from, you know, some of these things are going to be maintenance nightmares on their side and then look to be trans to what's allowed on the state highway. It might be an expensive application location too. So what are you talking about? So just to pick the movable speed bumps. So when we did the paving on School Street, we took out the permanent ones. They were maintenance, headache, they were difficult to figure in the winter, but the idea was that those are going to come out and at some point here, late spring or the summer, we're going to see some of the movable ones go in. So they were placed like for like in those locations and provide that speed control on that kind of side or accessory street where they found the floor. So that's an application that's in our control, but if you wanted to put those, the idea was to do something different or like that. On the section of 66A beyond the central street bridge that we get to the golf course, that's all V-transits. Maybe the VR order of what's okay and what isn't. And then in the class one town havers, we probably just want to make sure that they're okay with whatever we do. I mean, they're mostly our responsibility, but they're technically serious. Each of these has a little more research and whatnot that needs to be done before we're ready to even have a conversation about them. So if you want to take that one back, maybe we'll connect with Amanda just to make sure that we talk through what she's got in here understood and some of the ideas. I think so because I don't think it's ready for prime time at all. And the state has certain things they allow, certain things they don't allow. There's a traffic committee at the state level that has a say on all this. The same as they do speed limits. There's quite a process to doing any of these type of things, especially right there. But I think it needs to go to those folks and not before this board. Okay, well, I appreciate that. I do have some additional information for you all to consider and that might help you when you go to these other entities. Honestly, at minimum, there is probably $410,000 that you can be gaining in revenue by purchasing and deploying one speed camera probably at the Central Street location that's for Larry who's not here. If you were to do this, that money could be used to not only pay for the system, but also part of the police force which we all recognize is going to need a huge bump and that would alleviate raising taxes to the point that is going to be necessary. So I hope that you will consider this. As far on the backside are the costs associated with one camera probably about $44,000 for one. Are you looking at issuing speeding tickets by cameras? Yes, ma'am. You can't do that in Vermont. It's not allowed by the law. Well, they issue red light tickets. So why not speeding tickets? The law doesn't allow it. Does the law not allow it or has it just not been done? It doesn't allow it. We've been through this many, many times. State law does not allow it. Talk to Larry. What's that? Larry might be your first thought. Will. We can't even enforce violations in a construction zone based on cameras. Okay. Well, if you reviewed the information that I had sent previously, if you clicked on the link that talks about the three towns that issue 25% of all of the tickets throughout Vermont. Again. Now, that's a non-automated, that's a non-automated way to issue tickets. Certainly not generating the amount of income by an automated system that would catch every single person. 24 or 7. So there's money to be made to pay for some of the things that we already know that we need. So I ask for reconsideration at another time, perhaps the law could be changed. I mean, I really don't, I don't understand why it's legal everywhere else and not here in Vermont. Somehow those people figured out because it's Vermont, you figured out all the things we do here that nobody else does. So there are certainly other things that you can look to do, like rumble strips. That's inexpensive, can be done by your own personnel. You don't even... So right now, rumble strips get a lot of complaints from the people who live near them. They're loud inside people's homes. Do you understand how loud speeding traffic is? I'm telling you, we have gone back and filled them in because of the noise that people have near home. Between 45 miles an hour down to 25 miles an hour which is the speed limit on Central Street is significant. There have been speed studies and noise studies. So I understand that not everyone will like it, but it will solve a lot of problems. It will slow people down. Police are a deterrent, so are rumble strips, so are speed bumps, etc. So it's not only for the people that live along those streets, but it's for the pedestrians and everyone else that lives and, I guess, enjoys this town. It seems like this issue has not been addressed properly in the past despite many attempts to make it known. So that's why I decided to bring it to the Select Board ahead of time hoping that we could get somewhere. So if there's something else that the Select Board would like me to do to research if they don't have time to do it, I'll be happy to do so. I think it's safe to say we can toss it back to Trevor and John and Scott and see what's going on. I do think that the earlier suggestion that you talk to our state reps, Jay and Larry, Jay Hooper and Larry Sakowitz, because power hands are tied to a large degree at the municipal level by the state regs, particularly when it comes to state roads. I'm John, the traffic or John is part of the highway and roads crew, so he'll be able to tell you which roads on here are state roads. There's discretion for and then you can outline it from there and he's pretty amicable and easy to work with generally. The highway safety grant will boost some of our, hopefully some of the enforcement capability and there are two pieces of equipment that hopefully will come with that as part of those grant applications that make it easier to perform speed enforcement. One is that all of the radar so if the cop car kind of pointed right at it once someone travels through that field moving just to the handhelds will allow us to more effectively enforce somebody who might be speeding before they find the hiding spot and then mobile speed car that you've seen around sort of the bigger signage ones that provide that sort of short-term knowledge to turn, it's not a long-term fix in that case but in short-term applications that can impact draws their attention to it. The little one that's right there, the bridge it helps you probably people have become accustomed to it. I did find that the cameras with the digital readouts that tell you what your speed is at least as far as my driving are concerned are very effective because I drive from Randolph to Woodstock a good deal and go through Barnard and there are Barnard is another one of those notorious towns for nailing people for speeding but they have going into Barnard from Bethel and then exiting or going into Barnard from Woodstock there are cameras at each end there are the speed signs at I'm calling them digital speed signs at each end and it you know when you see that you're doing 42 and suddenly it's 30 and similarly in Woodstock going from Woodstock to Reading past the Woodstock Elementary School coming out of the village it's 25 miles an hour up until the Woodstock Country Club and they have signs on both, digital speed signs on both ends and it does it does slow you down there's no question about it but I also understand that those are expensive and that there's a whole process you have to go through to use them well I can tell you they're not nearly as effective as one would hope on Central Street it's just not and it doesn't slow anyone coming down heading towards the interstate either as soon as they go through that four-way stop and especially past Mound Street they are flying and this has been an ongoing problem I'm sure long before I moved here but certainly for the last four years that I have let's move on through the agenda have Orange County Parent Child Center request for a bridge loan we've got some information in your packet Sarah is here to present and answer questions you've been calling it a bridge loan is what we think is sort of the easiest way to describe the request there was a request for this project correct how much does that work I don't believe an application has been submitted because I don't believe that that's gotten to that in the process but it was intended to be around 100,000 I attended the last ARPA meeting and they were going to come out of it and ask them for a dollar now up to this point yeah and they did you know they've scored all the stuff in Orange County this project was up to a really, really high analyst so so that process to me seems to be dragging I would have thought we would have had priorities and whatnot from them by now I think they're coming to the next meeting I'm not sure why we would go with a loan versus just awarding them ARPA money what's the difference between today and June 8th or 9th or is there one just what's happened because of the way that the state is administering grant funds that came out of their community recovery and revitalization program we have $3 million that's coming in at the end of this summer but we need to be working from now through the summer to that's when construction is supposed to start and we are depending on the CRRP award to help us with that because the other funding is federal they want to wait until we have a commitment from the federal funding and getting a commitment from HUD despite the fact that it's a congressional earmark so it's in the budget that was passed in December the money's coming to us we don't have a letter from HUD saying this is the money you're getting and this is when you'll get it it's a process and we're in the middle of working through that process USDA is going to be guaranteeing the loan for the construction part of the project that's a process we're working through that process we're hoping to get an obligation in June before the next rate move so what it comes down to is timing is we need to be able to pay our bills from now until I think what we said is that we do have funding we have funding that can get us through the end of May but come June it's problematic and we can't put a stop on it because if we put a stop on it we lose all of the contractors and everything that we have lined up for this summer and it's a child care project so they need to have they need to be in next July and we're already kind of up against that sort of deadline of having them in so that parents and schools their agreements for the pre-K support that they provide can all be finalized so it really is a timing issue and we're very gun shy now about funds that are coming because we've been waiting for a couple of years for some of these funds and so when it was actually trying to follow up on the status of the ARPA pending ARPA request to see if that might help us through the cash flow in the French period but it's just seems that a request now for kind of emergency cash flow support will be a more timely timely processing of funding prior to an ARPA award is made when an ARPA award is made I think the select board has the ability to give the ARPA award pardon I think the select board has the ability to give that ARPA award it doesn't make sense to me to go through the process of spending admin time developing a loan agreement and terms and all that for $100,000 to keep them afloat if the ARPA award that's already being given a high priority in the process is for $100,000 ARPA award from the panel that doesn't So if you have funding coming in what was the funding from ARPA is that kind of extra money or is it there's no extra money what we're trying to do we're trying to diminish the amount of loan of debt that we're carrying because what will happen is the rental payments, lease payments from the child care center will go to service any debt that we're carrying so the more we can decrease the amount of debt then the more flexibility the child care center will have to actually pay their caregivers fair wages and provide more scholarship funds to students who are clients who are coming in so right now at the stage we're in right now it will go toward final construction design drawings and engineering it's all the stuff that we need to have in place as construction manager that needs to happen so that we can actually break ground the end of this summer does that answer your question? what kind of scholarship what would the scholarships be for? it's just to diminish the rate that it would cost or fees for families that are low and moderate outside of normal subsidy outside of subsidy that those families could possibly get for the families that are kind of in the middle ground there and it would be through OCPCC as opposed to through a state program and that's a mandate a certain percentage of the seats and slots at this facility have to be available for low and moderate income families in order to qualify for the funding so the request is for $100,000 which would take quite a bit of admin time I think because we had to do an agreement we had to do all that what would the process be what motion would we have to create such an invoice system to pay on which is much less of out of out of just respect or politeness to the ARPA committee that we've appointed have they made a recommendation? sounds like they're getting close Matt Morowski I went to the meeting and Matt Morowski is the chair now and during that time they were talking about this being one of the highest priorities yeah I mean we don't have this illegal obligation to respect their recommendations but I think we do have sort of a collegial one on the other hand I would much rather see you get $100,000 of ARPA funding than taking on as you just suggested that yeah this is the request is for us to give them a $100,000 loan so the only thing we're giving them a loan for is if the ARPA money is coming to them we can't give them a loan out of the general fund we have no other fund to give them the money from well we could just bypass the loan process allocate the ARPA funding and if we're giving them a loan we're saying we're just waiting for the committee to catch up which to me is a whole bunch of administrative paperwork for no reason because we're saying we're going to give them the money if we're giving them a loan towards the money so just give them the money can we press the committee for a decision given the timing here to try well it sounds like it's one of their top priorities some of them aren't going to make it a fund list some of the ones I've seen I can appreciate without specifying anything particular Trevor what's the turn time or drawing up an ARPA fund distribution not loan we'd probably essentially run it through an AP process is how we've envisioned it at least in rough measures the only ARPA funds we've deployed from the big award to date are for police department stand up and essentially what we did is move them into a capital reserve and we've spent out of those so there wasn't anybody going out of the house directly and spent as we've purchased stuff and we've paid for it so we run it a little bit like that system and that there'd be some kind of invoice that would appear in an accounts payable document that you approve and the treasurer signs the checkout to that and then we've got some listing for that and then we might create an account code that's specifically for ARPA awards like free business days to the week I think within a week and a half to two weeks would be safe depending on where we are in the cycle and what else has to go I mean Miss Kaila and she's pretty efficient so we've been doing AP runs more often than we had in the procedure so it's certainly before Memorial Day based on where I'm at do you potentially draft that while we maybe get a vote or speak to the chair of the ARPA committee and is that a possibility for them to the meetings or do they have to wait for a meeting they're going to do a I mean their advisory to you so I guess it's what's the question we're asking them this is what we're going to do in Louisville alone do you have any objections or are we just sort of this courtesy notice do you have any objections what happens if they say no but you've already decided and it's at the end of the day you're where the buck stops well other than ruffling feathers I mean it sounds like their feathers are pretty well set on this anyway so why not just grab the bull by the horns I agree with you I think we're making it too complex if it's already their top priority I'd probably say this and provide notice we intend to do this if there's a clear path to getting something done I'm just not an in the weeds person I think it's just a phone call to math and say hey understand this is your top priority it was a loaner give them their award we're going to give them the award you can remove that from your list and move your priorities on I also think as a person who needs child care I was really hoping my kids into this it is so hard I think one of the biggest challenges for families and our community is child care to the point where it's taking people out of the workforce moving them away it's bringing them in poverty it's huge and other communities are incentivizing the development of new child care programs through the economic development committees and so on it's a massive problem in this state and I don't see a reason for a one or two month delay just out of politeness or protocol or whatever especially if they've already identified this as one of their priorities I think a nice polite notice to Matt jump the gun here this is different than the police when this had been in their water supply for a very long time where that one was in response to emergent conditions and it didn't make sense operationally and I know I did ruffle some feathers there but I mean once in a while you have to ruffle some feathers alright I I guess do you just want a motion to approve emergency approval $100,000 from ARPA funds and nothing else does it is emergency is red font red font I will second the allocation of $100,000 in ARPA funding in lieu of a loan thank you motion and a second all those in favor aye opposed motion carries is Randolph center fire department fire truck discussion you just in time so I'm Tim Angel Randolph center fire chief so our pumper truck is the oldest of all the fire trucks in town right now it's a 1997 when it was originally purchased I think the life of it was supposed to be 20 years we did some refurbishing of it 10 years ago or so to bump that up to 25 years so it's 26 years old we've been talking to dingy machine and Cornish New Hampshire who made the fire truck originally right now they're two years out on new trucks but unlike a lot of the manufacturers they will if we decide to buy one the town decides to buy one they will guarantee the price right now a lot of manufacturers are saying who knows what the price will be in two years if you want to order one go ahead so you know that we have a price 400,000 the truck is basically going to be same as we have now we're going to make a few adjustments to the control panel on it there are a couple of the minor things but basically it's going to be the same truck it's going to have a plastic body instead of an aluminum body the last truck we got the old has a plastic body and it's working out great for us a lot of them are done that way now the truck we got 10 years ago was a dingy truck we've had great luck with them as I said they're in Cornish New Hampshire very good people to work with we have a problem we just take the truck down to Cornish New Hampshire which is only half hour 45 minute drive and sometimes they'll even send somebody right up to our fire station to work on other than other than that I don't know if you have questions about it Larry did call me last week and said he had a couple fire departments wanting him to put a bid in on a truck their fire department said he has never dealt with before and he would rather have our truck in the line than one of these other ones but if we're not going to say yeah go ahead and build one then he's going to bid on these other ones one of the challenges we have and Tim and I have talked about this before too is that after buying the truck for the East Randall fire department when you look at the fire equipment reserve which is where we primarily tried to fund these from after this years which was worth about $109,000 and then we've got another $110,000 that's scheduled to arrive sometime after July 1 so as you start to think how do you get to $400,000 we're only going to be sitting at $219,000 to $220,000 as of June 30 of next year and that's if we don't spend any other money out of it and there's other equipment that we could theoretically from that reserve and then if we look at the next year even if we increase transfer slightly which we were planning to do for this year but as we balanced every other priority they stayed the same put an extra say $5,000 and you have $10,000 and now you're up to $335,000 to $345,000 so you're still trying to inch your way up to the $400,000 line and then we'd essentially spend it all back out of the challenge when you look at this truck and all the other trucks that are of that same end of useful life spectrum we got four or five of them that are there or close one that's close and four that are in it I think in terms of that best practices range obviously use, condition, mileage other things factor into what the right number ends up being but with that funding mechanism we don't come close to one let alone four pumper tankers and if there's an aerial truck conversation at some point so there is a logistical challenge to that in timing and essentially you'd be committing to fiscal 25 having some fire equipment reserve increase of probably at least $75,000 to $100,000 before we even looked at the rest of the budget so we probably have to make that up somewhere else where that gets passed on directly so there's that's if we need nine trucks in the Randolph fleet nine in service, yeah we haven't sold the 10th but it's not the service, it's the old East Randolph one it's just sitting there right now it could be close to fiscal 26 before that truck actually got delivered to we have to be able to make that transfer just because we're right on July 1 we usually make them a little later in the year so it gets into just how you juggle it all out and then if we do that we're back almost to square one a little bit behind where we are there and that there's about $50,000 now in that reserve and other trucks in line so it's just solving the two different but connected math problems Trevor and I also looked at well is there another truck in the fleet that you could just replace tires with but the only ones that you would are just about as old as our truck but somewhere we've got a so we replace yours and then Randolph Village is going to say well we want ours replaced and if you look at the others in the fleet they're just as old as ours so we want ours to be new like somewhere that cycles what's got to break because we don't need nine fire trucks for the town of Randolph that's excessive you know it's where does that where does that stop do we agree that we're going to eliminate you know two out of the fleet to replace one you know is there I think we somehow got to get to that that piece because at 400 to more than 400 like yours is 400 because you don't want all the extra seating capacity the Village wants all the extra seating capacity which adds 100 to 120,000 to their truck so theirs are over a half a million so you know at that dollar value and we've applied for grants for these and we get told you got way too much equipment to begin with so we get eliminated from the competition early like somewhere that's a hefty price per truck to think we're going to float one well it's what one every other year if you're going to be in a cycle of that many trucks Larry did you told me that custom capped pumpers like the Village has you pretty hard to buy one for under 800,000 right now but now that if you look at the number we have if the average is between 15 and 20 years we've got every two years we have to come up with between a half a million and 800,000 to replace a truck there's probably no reason why the pumpers can't go at least 20 years maybe 25 and tankers can probably go longer than that Tim I don't know anything about fire trucks what is it about them that over time brings them to a point where you're like we need to replace this truck are there particular systems that start to fail is there like what is it about the system of a truck that gets you to that point part of the problem is lots of times machinery if you don't use it everyday it doesn't last as long it's something you use everyday you know it's not good for trucks to just sit around doing nothing the like as we had one of the fire calls we had yesterday the transmission was slipping on this truck that we want to replace hopefully it just needs filtering and the oil changed and the transmission it's like a garden hose let it hang out for any period of time the gasket in it dries up then you go to put it on and it springs a leak so if you think about a fire truck in all the different places water goes through them the pumps, the different pieces on them you let it sit I'm not sure what Randolph centers they all have their own schedule but I can tell you Brookfield's a little bit but one meeting is business one meeting is training so once a month you might do something but your training might not be with that truck so if you don't have any calls it could be two months before you run anything through it so that all sits then you fire it up and it's dry it's got whatever challenges I guess my question really is though obviously any piece of equipment starts out new it's great for a long time don't need to do anything to it at a certain point things start to wear they start to fail sometimes you replace them sometimes you don't sometimes you decide you can live with the problem sometimes you fix it and sometimes you're like this doesn't pay to fix and different pieces of equipment go through that kind of a process in different kinds of ways I know what it's like for like automobiles I guess my question is how does that work when you're talking about a piece of equipment like a fire truck like what causes you to say at a certain moment okay it's time to replace this truck whereas two years ago we were okay we're in two years from now oh my gosh we don't want to get there you know what I'm saying yeah so the east ramp up on it's because it had mechanical failure with the truck itself so the truck itself would die going to the fire that's you know that's an easy one right you you put mechanic work into it I don't know how many times it went the luckies and had a sizable bill and then it would die on the next call you're hearing Tim talking about the transmission is already slipping on that one so sometimes you can take the body off the truck and put it on a new cabin chassis you know you go back years ago in the what 70s 80s it was the old highway truck they take the old highway truck and they put the body on it and the fire department would run that around for a few years and then your highway truck would transition again and if your fire truck needed replacing you got the hand me down from the from the highway truck and you know it wasn't good enough for the highway but they put it on their fire truck and then pretty quick that would fail most times it's the actual truck itself that starts to fail before the equipment that's on it but by the time you get ready to go the equipment's getting old sometimes it's obsolete you got NFPA egg standards on some stuff you know you hear them talk about their air packs and what not can only be 10 years right turn out here in air packs the other piece of the puzzle is that I'm not sure just what the figures are but you get up over 20 years and it's hard to to get a truck certified by NFPA standards the combination there's more and more regulations what is the commitment that dingy has voiced or estimated if he's going to commit to a price now even though the truck won't come for two years as you said do you have a specified number or an estimated 400,000 that includes the cabin chassis we're we're waiting on another price on cabin chassis I don't know that it's going to be any lower just the cabin chassis itself it's a freight liner it's 107,000 we priced a Peterbilt through Lucky 2000 but there's a freight liner dealership right down at 11 so as far as the cabin chassis goes it would be pretty easy to get that service to if we needed to just to be the person that makes people share things there's no conversations about hey can we have one of your pumper tankers somebody else in Randolph that doesn't ever go over well I'm aware I had to bring it up you know when like the air pumper was getting worked on at one time when the Randolph Village fire station burned down our pumper was getting worked on so one of their pumpers was up to our station that's the only reason that one didn't burn up too you know you could everybody everybody wants to protect what they have I mean I have my ideas and the other chiefs have their ideas the answer is yes they could could you ever come to an agreement well you might have to if your truck is no longer able to function the town almost nine trucks I think the answer is we have to figure out something if it's pretty according to all the things you've told me for our one time training it seems pretty universally agreed upon that we have more equipment than we need and so we need to figure out a way to share because at $400,000 a truck or minimum that's a lot of money for equipment even if we really need it it's a lot of money but you can argue that this is surplus seems like we need to figure that out Randolph is unique geographically from a lot of many other town that I know of I mean I live probably as far away from here as you can get and still live in the town Randolph takes me a good 20 minutes to get here I don't think that's that weird I mean the town's all across from honor all kind of around the same size but you've got two valleys mountain in between we're coming to Braintree too I understand that in the geographical location I'm just wondering if the surplus of equipment is preventing fluid funding from grant services that might allow for future funding to get these faster so if you consolidate or sell or whatever is done you might open up those grant funds that you said we keep getting disqualified for so that one of these seriously hurting trucks can actually get replaced or in a more timely manner you probably aren't going to qualify for a grant unless you could get the number of trucks down to like four I'm not what's that? Six Six is the magic number and we're at nine and what do they base that six on is it the number of calls a year types of calls population geography yeah when the village station burned we went to FEMA to try to get money out of their fire fire grant program which will replace trucks and that's when they told us that if we had six they would consider participating but we had nine we could just move them around share and we would be just fine so that's what I said it might be a case where we say let's get rid of two and we'll replace one you know if we took the older ones and got rid of it and replaced one truck to start us in the at least heading downward in number we're hardly alone in having hills and dales and valleys and mountains and sprawling geography to to deal with they go up through to Websterville and down in their village and up to the top and part way down headed towards Northfield and when they got three who's that Williamstown three trucks three trucks in the ambulance I'm not sure but even that you know their main part is in one valley and they go up both sides and they don't really have anything past the top I think the question is does having something down on the other side whichever side you want to call it equate to the need to have six more trucks and three separate fire stations and you know three fire stations with two trucks in each one to me seems like the right balance if you have a major call I believe the protocol is to call more than just one station anyway so you know at that point you've got at least four of the town's assets if you have two in each station possibly six possibly mutually depending where it is coming in you know so I think you're I've talked treating some about this if you still have three stations you really need to have four trucks with pumps on them because if one pumper goes down then that extra pump could go to that station that's your primary first response getting water to pump on the scene so it's important to have one functioning at all stations they're going to be the primary response so that part does make sense then your next one is water capacity and if you're going to get down to six trucks you're probably going to have to eliminate the latter truck but we have those in surrounding towns right Northfield's got one Northfield's got one yeah Northfield and Williamstown their towers and as big as ours I'm not sure I'm not sure it could reach some of the buildings we have that's more than 800,000 to replace that 1.3 million last I heard but the latter trucks we bought have been used ones you can buy there's some cities Burlington they replace their latter trucks every 10 years I believe and you can buy one of those for 40 to 50% of new how hard are those used to name between the the one we have now came to everything like I'm thinking of Montpelier rolls a fire truck with an ambulance Burlington does the one we have now came from South Burlington I believe it had to it was sent up to Canada to be rebuilt they had the latter trucks have they call it a talk talk box which is a big box inside the whole body that holds the latter and they had to build a new one for that and I don't VTC was then on VTC purchased the first latter truck and the one we have now I'm not sure whether it was a town bought the truck and VTC paid to have it refurbished or vice versa one or the other but you know how money is with Mont State colleges right now the leadership will they give us a whole whopping $1200 a year they make it rain for you right I'm not sure what the right step is here it might be worth a discussion with the other chief son what does this look like and how do we get down to a realistic number and a replacement plan you must see some modeling maybe different plans if we took a truck out of the village and moved it to Randolph center to get us until FY26 when we would have the $454,000 in the reserve fund what would that look like is it we get rid of the truck that's the problem for Randolph center we get a different truck moved up there then we have a new one built that's moved up there for them kind of helping us move that number down trying to think of ways that we kind of get to a goal there's no reason our truck won't last another two years prior the problem with bringing a Randolph village truck up to our station is that none of their trucks are made so you can put chains on them there's not enough clearance on the wheel wells put chains on them and we have to go out on the interstate quite a bit you need chains on when it's icy the interstate is probably the most dangerous thing we do it's ridiculous what takes place on that interstate very much ridiculous that's another one of those driving responsibility down to the town this is a car fire it's an accident do we get paid for that no no and it's terrible because the cars do not slow down and they could give two craps that you're a fireman standing there we don't get paid for that so our son came around the corner of the front of the fire truck one day and a car hit the flashlight hanging off the side of them and they don't slow down they don't stop they just keep around no one we've had instances where the guy sitting in the driver's seat had to put it in gear and move ahead quick because the car was about ready to plow into the back of them it's awful I just don't care that we don't get compensated for that that's unconscionable we don't even get finality and grants we get nothing you can bill insurance companies and we did we had an instance where a pickup truck cut off a milk tanker truck and the milk tanker piled into the guide rails and leaked diesel fuel everywhere I had three firemen got diesel fuel on their gear and once you get diesel fuel on it, there's no washing it you throw it away and we were out there for six hours and we build the pickups insurance companies and I don't, what do we get training you remember? 15, 16,000 yeah we build them we build the batteries on North Randolph Road one over the batteries went down into the brook and then we build the the one by the pull-off just south of the Randolph exit was that building supplies something it went everywhere so we have gotten some compensation from you it's your larger ones you go out and it's a normal accident and you're basically providing traffic control we haven't done the tracking and build the insurance companies for that it's the larger a lot of the more commercial vehicles impacted that would go after in that case it was the pickup that caused the accident so they got to pay the bill but it was the commercial truck that caused all the the damage and the need for response when you get into hazmat cleanup and whatnot then you're into a lot of money because you got all the pads and they got to take them away they're hazmat that's a hefty bill it three sets a turn that hazmat stuff doesn't cost the town anything because the state gives us all that those mats and everything and gas bills at drinkers they have barrels there that we put all that stuff in they paid for it didn't we have to do something to put the batteries into special tanks didn't we from the North Randolph thing and they sat around and that was a that was quite a yeah Larry is there a way to research when they respond if we're just missing something from the state that we can get like if there's possible compensation from the state that we're missing it was none we've been there we've met with public safety we've met with people on it there isn't I think every fire department that covers the interstate has tried to get money from the state I feel like one of Bolton and Richmond just tried it or had that conversation without much luck as far as charging people I don't think it's right to charge a resident of Randolph right or in a town we do mutual aid with we all pay for the fire department through our property taxes it's like paying for an insurance policy that's what it is except you don't have a choice I did talk to Carol Bushy one time and she told me it's becoming more common for fire departments to charge I mean this is just a personal story but our fire alarms went off when we lived in a different state and we got billed because they had to come out and go through the house and it was minor there was nothing wrong but we pretty have to bill for that whole trip from the fire department that was for our house the ones that you're out all the time because at malfunctions there should be a fee for you know if it goes off the way it's supposed to I can see it but you pet something after the second or third time we usually threaten them and will the bell and then they'll get it fixed McDonald's is good for that a couple of them broke out there too so do you recommend meeting with the chiefs to figure stuff out they're all going to have to get on board I don't I don't see us able to have a replacement cycle for nine vehicles as the price goes up it's worse and I think we'd have a hard time justifying keeping nine in the fleet but you know we look at what does that look like here's the vehicles we have now what does the replacement look like to get us down to a reasonable number give the fire group a task to do you know my perspective two is you can't have the majority of the equipment in one corner of the town either no that's why I think you got to go like two two and two the big calls you're all there's going to be more than one of your called out where you need the extra fleet come up with a few models and I'll join you even to sit down with the chiefs and have some type of a conversation about what does this look like it's a tough conversation but we got to have it we can't afford it well it would be nice if we could get a representative from the select board to come to the fire commission meeting that hasn't happened in a long time no it happened when we had two of the members on the board yeah Mike and Matt I think that's one of those optional committees it's not the way it's set up it doesn't require a liaison sounds like in this instance and this one that does in the last couple of years we might meet every other month just just to say you did I've gone before they've been very nice to me so far so did you bring snacks with you? I'll bring snacks next time we'll get Trevor to run a few models and then we'll sit down everybody and what does that commission meet? second Tuesday maybe in June just to those first two full weeks of June I wouldn't be able to do it in person my wife's out of town for those for training third week when I ship the kids out to their grandparents probably before that totally you know if you want to meet some half Monday night you might be able to get the three chiefs together you strand up meets everybody don't they? we have somebody somebody goes to the firehouse every Monday night we have a meeting on the second Monday and training on the fourth Monday so we can get something going for June so we don't delay it very long we'll put something I think actually there's five Mondays this month that's what everybody needs there's five Mondays alright we'll get something we'll get something for them thank you if you want to schedule a meeting with the fire chiefs for sometime in June let me know do you have a meeting request for sweet scoops? I'm planning to recuse myself I'm a member of the building manager for that building and have my studio there business inside the building this looks to me like the same as what we approved last year just no umbrellas I didn't get any compliance last year except for the umbrella the year before I guess it was the umbrellas right the same as last year that's what's in the year before it was the umbrellas that everybody bragged about did we get the certificate of insurance? if he's presuming you approve we would be making a little contingent before the ceasefire that's ready to be done that happens pretty fast we have a motion to approve the outdoor seating for 15 north main group sweet scoops oh second all those in favor motion carries offering an RFP for the north wells and reservoir interim projects we've got a contract signing scheduled for tomorrow afternoon we got confirmation the other day that our congressional earmark has moved through the right channels and it's moving into its deliverable phase so that will come to us through a stack grant I think it is a state tribal assistance grant that flows to us that way so our funding is all lining up well but one of the things that we're going to need is about a 240 day window from contracts signing to substantial completion if everything goes well if there are any other changes if that happens with this project those will be the first times that we don't encounter weirdness but we'll take it but I think project funding because we refer to it as a Frankenstein's monster just because there are four distinct funding sources they'll all be similar requirements but they're all going to be different they're all going to be reimbursement based so there's an SRF loan and a half, voters approved that 17-18 time frame I think it was and then we've got the Northern Borders grant a state CDBD grant and now this congressional earmark making up the rest of that substantial funding right there so because they're reimbursement based we're going to have to pay for some of these things up front and then there might be a period of jockeying for reimbursement based on prior experience that seems to your first request is a lower percentage of what you put in and then you fight over the rest and keep fighting until you get it all so we'll need some funding to keep going so we'll look to borrow it's probably going to be bond anticipation I don't know what they call it but that's essentially what it'll be maybe against the SRF loan and that'll keep us liquid throughout the project that's essentially one half of the project cost is equal to our largest funding commitment and we can get that going pretty quick we'll run it like we've run tax anticipation note processes before we've got nine lenders in a list that we'll email it to and we'll make it available for an open bid based on the amount we've got it's unlikely that there's somebody out there other than that it's mostly all over the banks you can think of kind of thing that operate in our region or near enough by and then we'll look to have that lined up by June 1st and then we'll start signing and it won't be mobilizing much before then but it won't be too long after that either are we good with the rates currently charged in the water district to cover the loan and anything else that we've got to pay for with bringing these online? I think we're going to part of this process some of the things we may want to do as we get a little closer to mid to end of summer and sort of track where the project's hopefully going to land and take a look at those rates take a look at what the debt service will be under any one and a half and figure out we are due for rate changes on both the water and wastewater side because we haven't touched them in a while so they've been sufficient fund operations so there are any concerns there over the same time if we had more long term costs without any coming off what's the status of the late fees going back on to the water and wastewater bills at the meeting we had for water maintenance they haven't done in 8 months with staffing we're able to start to process those now that was from last spring through into the fall in particular there wasn't anybody to actually assess them if anybody that did I should say so are those just going to be a wash and forgiven or are townsfolk going to get retroactively late to feed now I think at that point because it was our capacity issue it would be I mean that would have been one of the ideas was that we hadn't been able to do it to suddenly have a bill show at the same time what we're going to have to do is engage some folks who have been most of the customers on that list are chronic first time on a first time attendee kind of thing and so we'll have to also dig in with some of those one of the tools that we'll probably revive in the summer is the tax sale process which we've used for late water and sewer payments but primarily for dealing with taxes very almost militant about it's use for a while and then just as staffing allowed or didn't allow we hadn't done it provided some extra grace we haven't seen huge spikes dealing with people at the point or with the chronic ones it's time to show the stick part of the program okay do you need to retain a motion to authorize the RFP? all those in favor? aye motion carries now for the managers report we went out and just to add on for the paving RFP we went out and took a look at John Changra the highway super night today a variety of different roads with all kinds and types of shapes and sizes but looking to make sure that the paving candidates that we've talked about make the most sense east Bethel roads and the primary that's what we went and got the applied for the class 2 grant for we haven't heard back on that the idea would be that we would do all of that it was in last year's list but it got moved out because of some of the cost we don't get the grant we were talking about how to split it essentially in half and do some repair work and which have to do first but it should be added with it heart race is one that's got some interesting spots and it's been a long time since the scene there's some water runoff and some other issues so that was one that came up I'm going to try to maybe grab the remaining section of Thayer Brook that we haven't gotten yet and then if we can even squeeze it in maybe a section on Beanville Road figuring out which way we want to work from there and if not we're going to Fiscal 25 and we start to build around that as well so we're still working towards that trying to get those out a little bit earlier if we can get those out around Memorial Day we'll be a little bit earlier than last year which hopefully puts us in the queue to have the work done earlier last year there was a bit of an aberration though in terms of how that all shook everything from weather to contractor availability to scheduling that was an odd one any year before was the opposite it went fairly smoothly and quietly so hopefully we can give back to that program and then nothing to add from the stuff that's in there we're going to look to buy a truck for buildings and grounds that was in the capital program it's similar truck to the one that we bought for Highway so at some point we may ask you in the in-between if you're okay with that we'll wrap the patient in the noon type of thing so that's in the mix beyond that so many different things happening alright entertain two part motion to go into executive session the first motion is to find that executive session is both proven and necessary I move that we find executive session is connected with both it should be separate as well we've been advised we'll be going to executive session pursuant to one BSA 313 to discuss the appointment and evaluation of a public official well first you have to do the one in the finding and then you can combine the two reasons into one motion and again misunderstood your question so your first motion would be to find that executive session is both necessary and prudent alright the second motion is to go into executive session with the two citations oh we can bundle them there yeah that was coming up I move that it's necessary and prudent executive session second all those in favor motion carries okay I have right here consider a motion I move to consider a motion to enter executive session pursuant to one BSA what's that little thing section thank you 313A1E pending litigation legal and one BSA section 313A3 appointment evaluation of public official a second thank you thank you we are done