 Good evening everyone, welcome to the select board meeting. It's November 14th, 2022 at 6.15. This meeting has been warned in three places. It has been posted on our website and has been emailed to the very long list of people interested parties. We are operating on Zoom. We ask comments to stay at a three minute length, but then if there's further conversation, you can have another three minutes. So that's set in place. We're going to be looking at the prior minutes from our select board meeting that was on October 24th, 2022. I have read them over. I have two typos. And instead of pursuit, it would be pursue and then build design documents should be document. And Frank at the very bottom of page one, if you print it out, it just says about, it should say about. That's it for your English lesson today. Thank you. So I propose that we accept these meeting minutes with the corrections. Seconded. All in favor. All right. Aye. And they are ready to be posted. We do have guests and because we're on Zoom and some might be on the phone, do you want to state your name? Starting with me. Yes, we always start with our guests. And do you want to be on the agenda for a specific reason? Just visiting. Awesome. We like that. Come anytime. I have no agenda. Okay. So we're going to move on to our new business and the select board members that are here tonight are have reviewed the treasurer's report. This is a formality that our auditors want us to take a look at it. So we're publicly stating that we are looking at the treasurer's report. We are not quite halfway through the year. But from my point of view, we are on target. Some are a little over. Some are a little under. So I think it averages out to about 40 something percent. I also recommend that we bring this treasurer report with us to the budget and finance committee. It's a useful tool for them as well. So if you want to go ahead and say that we did a review of the treasurer's report. Sure. We can accept it. Yep. I accept the treasurer's report as we reviewed. And I'll second that all in favor. Aye. We have formally reviewed the treasurer's report. Number two on our new business agenda has, we're going to kind of skip over that. Our committee member or select board member, Dune is in the process of taking care of that, investigating that, looking into the FEMA compliance certificate. So we're going to skip over to that. We're not sure if it's completed or not. We'll wait for Dune to give us those details next time around. I think he signed that paper in there. It's due on Thursday. So I think he's all set because he signed that form that's in there. Yep. Okay. He just needed some photos to send to me and then I could file it all Thursday. Dundale. Yep. Number three on our list is the Brookfield Generator Maintenance Contract. There are two maintenance contracts. One is for the generator here at the town office. And the other one is for the generator that is located down at the school that serves the shelter. We have some proposals to look at. We are making our decisions and assigning that contract tonight. Yeah. And we are going to. I'm just writing about. You got them? Yep. That's what the school and the town office. The town office is 383 and the school would be 673. And that is the best and final offer for what it's going to cost us. Those are for services for one per year. One year, one time, once a year. Which is referred to on the contract as program one. So I move that we do sign these and accept these contracts for a one year period for a once a year maintenance program. Do you want to second that? Yeah, for the year 2023. Yes. Yep. All in favor? All right. So we can go ahead and sign that. And the cost of that is $1056 for the year for those two. Two of them compelled to circle the one we want, but I will let you do that. That we're going to be putting into the budget or did we have? Yeah, we're going to have to put a new. Only the office will be new. But I think they covered it under both emergency. The school is in there already? The school is under emergency generator maintenance. It is, okay. So I almost feel like they could both because they're both emergency. It should be together? Yeah, we could probably put them both together. I think we need to look at in the future to do all of them at once. But it's only one year anyway. Right. Okay. But I mean, get them all at the same time. There's what? Fire department's got two right. Thank you. The auto store's got one still. We've got five and all. We've got five and all. Seems like they can talk. Halfway decent price. Right. Because they do them all in a day. Do them all in a day. Yeah, there was discussion about. Yeah. Bundling. If someone need to look into I think in the future. This is kind of a quick. Well, we're working on 24 now. Right. Right. So we should resolve it. We should at some point quickly. Number four on our list for this evening. We do have a driveway permit request. This comes from Keith and Joanne Mills that have property on Corey Hill Road. They are looking to put in a culvert between the road and their driveway. We are laying our eyes on this. We are pretty much secondary. We're gonna be handing this over to John Champion to look over it. And once he gives his blessing, then we can sign off on that. There's a small map on the side. So once we have that, so we're gonna pass this off to the highway department. And it'll probably circle back around to us so that we can actually approve it. And that might be in hopefully our next meeting. I'll get that to John. You want it? Yeah. Just leave it in a bio. Yeah, I see Brookfield service wrapped around it too. Yeah. We need your copies. We did have an issue that was resolved that was on our agenda. The West Young Drive that is up Bethel Mountain Roadways. There was an issue with a landowner utilizing the right of way for the town trucks to turn around. So the town highway department was asking perhaps if they could clean that area up. Frank has been addressing it. It is just about all completed. And we anticipate the possibility of there not being a problem. There's still a little bit more to go. If we get the snow that they're talking about on Wednesday, I guess we'll know for sure how that turned out. So we're forwarding that one as well. Number six on our agenda is approve water sewer truck use increase in doing reviews for personnel, town personnel. I took it upon myself to offer a larger stipend to our utility operator for the use of his truck. It's not just wandering around town. It's bringing water samples down to Lebanon, going for parts all around the state. And we all know that the price of fuel is a lot higher. So I suggested that we increase the stipend to $65 per department per month. And therefore per select board meeting. Okay, good. Each select board meeting twice per month. Perfect. And so we wanted to make that a public statement. So I propose that we approve that increase in stipend. $15 per meeting, per month, twice a month. Is that what it is? It's from 10 per. 10 per. It went from 55 to 65. Oh, okay. 10 twice a week. 110 to 130 each time. You wanna second that? I do. All in favor? All right. Aye. We'll give a hand up on Zoom. Go ahead, Martha. You're on mute. Sorry, Patty. Could you repeat this briefly? I have down that you said you felt the truck. Who is this? It's the town's, our own water and sewer truck. You're saying? No, it is the truck that personally belongs to Terry Severy. And he uses his vehicle when he's maintaining the water and sewer system and everything that surrounds that. So he gets a stipend for that. He has for quite a long time. And so we're increasing it because the cost of fuel is so much higher than it was the last time. So we said on you felt that Terry Severy's water sewer truck should be the stipend for that use, should be revised, $15 for, I'm confused. 10. Sorry, my phone is ringing, but I can't reach it because if I answer it, sorry. Go ahead. $10 for water, $10 for sewer department. $10 per department, per twice per month. Current. Okay, thank you. I'm sorry about that. No, it's fine. I just wanted to make sure I got it correct and I don't always hear as well. I apologize. Thank you. Okay, do we have anybody here from the library? That's a no. Nope, nobody on Zoom either. We did have a letter from them. Right, there's a letter. Requesting that we do the, I'm sorry, I think he went mic'd up back up to me. Somewhere right in there. Yeah, I already read it, you know. Right there. There it is. Shall I read the letter? No, they're just worried about the exterior painting, the first floor windows and the roof leak, which we're addressing at times and Jeff is looking into it and I've also had conversations and we're moving in a direction towards addressing these issues. Okay. So we recognize the trustees of the Rochester Public Library's message to us that was dated autumn of 2022 and we are once again going to try very hard to work with them to get these things repaired and buttoned up. The other issue we have with the library is we receive some notice from our insurance company about the library of things and what the ramifications are about setting that up and what kind of insurance liability it taxes on the town and I think a further discussion on the board's part and with our insurance company is in order on that because I think we need to make a decision on whether or not that should be allowed through our insurance. I know they have a waiver issue there but even with a waiver, I'm not sure that the liability is enough to protect the town on that. So I think we need to have a discussion addressing that in the future on whether that's a permitted use or not for that building. It might be wise for them to also contact other towns because this is a program that is basically pretty statewide now and see if other towns have gotten extra insurance for the items that they lend out. Right, so I think we just need to make sure we're okay. Highway Department, Frank. Yeah, John's just been doing the repairs and hauling some sand in the downtime, getting ready for whatever storm's coming. We have had conversations with going forward with the grant stuff that we got coming up and he's planning on attending the meeting with Rita and Cricket and the two girls here, Julie and Kristen and myself and John's going to attend too to see if we can't get a handle on the grant system coming up and that's on Thursday at 10 o'clock. Call it Friday. Friday, Friday at 10 o'clock? Okay, sorry, phew. Your Thursday. My Thursday. Okay, I gotta remember that. I've had it on Thursday all the time, okay. We did have some feedback from the partnership about the waste, stormwater system that was installed at the town garage. We haven't seen them as built until we do, we're not gonna deal with it. And I think that there's a lady coming from the partnership on that meeting on Friday also, but I'm not positive. I thought there was another name on that. There is another name on that. Christian Palatier? No, there's some lady from the White River Partnership I think coming and I'm gonna have, we're gonna have a pretty good discussion about that coming up due to the cost of long-term maintenance of that stuff. Right, and one of the notes that's here, it's a handwritten note. Right, that's my stuff. Okay. So, and that'll be addressed Friday if she shows up, but we don't have an as-built and we haven't signed any papers because of that. And I requested the as-built. We're still not signing the papers. Not until we get an as-built. And that would come from the engineer? That was called, I called Kristen from the partnership and he said he'd get me one and I haven't seen it. So, we're not signing the papers until we get a chance to look it over. Okay, that's a good amount from the highway department and utilities. You're up. It's about highway department. What about this parking over here to the cafe? You know, this weekend, if you look, there were two pickup trucks with crew cabs on them and longer beds. And Saturday, the cars parked all the way up to where you go up into the church. We've been hard pressed for a fire truck in between them. You wouldn't have made it by staying in your lane. You couldn't have made the swing. Because of the addition, it's pushing cars further out into the road. They're four feet or better out in the road. I mean, how can they park like that? I mean, you look at where the handicapped one is, that's a good two feet in the down road. So it's not the addition that's a problem. It's the parking spaces that they've made that's the problem. Who gave them the permission to have them parked like that. I mean, that park lengthways to stay on there, you know, just to stay out of the road. Yeah. But you get a fire over there, you know, and then cars there, it's gonna be your guys' liability that they're gonna go after, not the fire departments. Because some might gain permission to put those lines on there. I don't even know if anybody gave them permission. I don't think so, but I mean, it needs to be added. One second, Martha. You need to address it. When you're ready, there's a question on Zoom. Martha, what can we answer for you? It was about the parking spaces. I noticed that myself, because I have to park in a handicapped space because I'm a walker and everything. And I normally used to park around on the other side next to the ramp facing in. And now it's a different one. And I noticed that those one facings in, the last time I went to the cafe for lunch, there were several, I mean, it was like over parked. And I mean, it's good for them that they've got good business, but I didn't know whether they were, they had chosen to put those there themselves, those spaces or whether when the highway crew from the state was here repainting everything and making lots of lines all through town, if maybe they just put them there without asking. I don't know. I just wondered myself. Did they just do paving there? I think they didn't. I think Charlie did it. Charlie did it. I believe when they did it, he has his own. Oh. Own line. Right, right, yeah. He did the hardware too. Yeah, yeah. But that's what's creating the extra, the issue. Yeah. But then long pickup trucks that is a completely jolt. Yeah. They sometimes park right there in front of the church and they're still out on the road. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, there, you can get around, but I mean there, the other day it's been, like I said, it's been hard to pras to get fire trucks up over the hill. Right. We can see maybe they'll just Crosses through those two spots or? They can put signs that only compact cars can park there. I mean, you can literally direct what deep will park there. Well, not the tension. That's something that they'll have to address and we'll go from there. We'll move tight with them and get a handle on it. Yeah, we'll put it on our radar. Keep an eye on it and see where it's going. I mean, it's obviously gonna die down a little bit. Yeah, but I mean, it's not gonna go away. It's gonna come back in force next year. It's always an issue in this town. Parking is always an issue. Any other utility information or news or updates? Fire department, our trucks in over the Middlebury and I gotta go over tomorrow to see what they give us for our old truck with it. And they're looking to get paid so I'd like to have you guys give me permission to sign some papers tomorrow. Well, we've already approved the purchase. Right. I think we better do that. I need to have you guys, I mean, the last one I bought is had to go to a meeting and you guys gave me permission to sign the papers. I saw all the sale papers. Good. So I'm moving to give you permission to sign the documents to obtain your new fire truck pickup truck. Right. All in favor. All right. Our bodies in, but it's not being painted. I'll trade mine then. No, no. I could, but it's gonna be a ford and I couldn't do that. You couldn't do that. You couldn't live with it. Well, that's good news that it's in. How long has it been on order? Ordered it in April. Yeah. So, yeah. Not bad. Eight months. Do we have Jeff Gephardt? No. Nope. Okay. Well, we do have all Catherine Sheiklin with us. And Catherine, you could be up to bat. Are you going, I did print out the committee status report if you wanted me to read it or do you want to go through it or how do you want to proceed? It's completely up to you, Fatty. I'm here to answer any questions. So I can do an overview. I mean, it's three pages. So maybe it's a little lengthy to read, but I can go over the gist of each of the categories. Yeah, why don't you do that? We can hear you loud and clear. Is everyone here, Catherine? Well, okay. The floor is yours right now, Catherine. Okay. So I'm reporting the most recent developments in the Rochester High School Repurposing Committee progress. The project continues to move forward. And as I said in my letter to you, it's not unlike the White River with lots of twists and turns and highs and lows, but we are still going forward. And yesterday, actually, 12 members of the committee were asked to pose for a photograph where the whole committee was asked for, but 12 members showed up to the high school at 11 o'clock. And they were photographed by a seven days photographer to accompany an article by Rachel Hellman that is, I believe, scheduled to be published in this week's edition. She's doing a general story covering the effects of Act 46 across the state and how towns have had to pivot to accommodate closed districts and empty school buildings. And they interviewed Vic and I. It was, I think, late August, but maybe it was September and the story was put on hold until now. So just an FYI that's supposed to come out. And I wanna report that there is a planning grant fund balance. Sarah Wright, she submitted a requisition most recently and said that the state will be depositing a reimbursement into the savings account of the town set up specifically for this planning grant. And that within 10 days, the town will need to transfer the money into the town's general fund. And then Sarah has to submit documentation that that money was transferred on time. And according to her invoices on file, it looks like we've spent of the $50,000, $33,523.55 and the two rivers administrative services will charge an extra $1,691 to the grant, leaving us with a fund balance of $14,785.04 that the committee does intend to use towards the fees for project manager. She cautions us with that number could be made smaller if any future Dubois and King voices that have not been received come in. So once we receive a confirmed project manager fee proposal, we will then apply to ACCD for the $10,000 extension on our current planning grant, which Nathan Cleveland has already approved, but a requirement to submit is to have the actual bill. So the environmental assessment occurred last week of October. There were two consultants appointed by two rivers down at the school to do the brown fields and hazardous materials review. We have not yet received those final reports, but as soon as we get them, we'll make them public. The historical preservation has yet to approve our preliminary review form that was submitted in late August. I believe that would give us a waiver from the archeological and historical review. They are waiting also just to know the degree of ground disturbance that expects to happen. We know that there's an underground 10,000 gallon underground fuel tank, and there will be some ground disturbance related to that, but I'm waiting for the full report to know the extent of the ground disturbance, and I think that's real that they really need to know that, whether the tank is going to be physically removed or whether some other means for decommissioning it will be used. So as soon as we get those reports, we'll be able to respond to them. And Sarah has said that if necessary, the development of a work plan for phase two, which would be testing would also include maps of exactly where the test pits will be dug. So all of that will be coming through pretty soon. I submitted along with my written report, the draft of the Brella application and the notice of applications that would have to be put out by the town, all from Sarah Wright. The application still requires some more information as well as attachments of a deed and feasibility study. And so I am asking that somebody, that a town representative work with me to finish this application sooner than later and get it in. It's very important that we do get it in if we want the state with two rivers funding and their funding is quickly diminishing. So, but there are other departments, they expect that their funding will be updated and there are other departments with funding for this. So that's, I don't foresee any kind of problem. Dick, about the floodway issue, Dick Robson has reported that Du Bois King has completed the Elevation Survey and Dick has requested that Andy Randy, excuse me, Otis who is the head surveyor, Du Bois King provide a map showing the subdivision boundaries superimposed on the FEMA map. Randy responded that he would provide this map, but he did not say when we can expect to receive it. And Dick has requested this three different times and says he will continue to press Randy for it. I've asked him to copy more people on those requests so that Randy understands that he's not just dialoguing between Dick and himself, but that other people, I mean, we need it. We need this to go forward. So, so Dick distributed the project manager proposal and we have not received any committed responses. We did receive responses and most of those folks said that the project as we have described it in the RFP is so complex that they just couldn't submit. So we're circling back, we're revising that proposal. We've had several meetings with people, especially Liz Curry and Tom Appel. Tom Appel has offered a free of charge to help us revise it. We're going to break it down and do it in phases. And we have met with Mariah North from the Vermont Rural Economic Development Initiative called Ready about applying for additional grant writing funds. We received an email confirmation today that Ready is willing to pay for a consultant to suggest fundraising opportunities for the project. And today I got an email from a grant writer and principal of the third sector associate by the name of Diane Meyerhoff, who reached out to work with us, paid for by Ready funds. That will basically help us create a funding map, which we need. And Liz Curry, who is a seasoned project manager and a grant writer with interest in the project and interest in the town of Rochester has introduced us to the federal new markets and tax credits program based in the US Treasury Department. This program targets community development projects in low income census tracks and where the building is located qualifies for that. So this is a complicated financial and legal program, but there is a statewide nonprofit real estate development corporation called Ever North, which guides its applicants through the process and finds investors as limited partners who receive tax credits for their participation. And Vick and I are going to be meeting with Liz to learn more about it. And Patty, if you're interested in jumping in on that meeting, let us know. So we met with Eric Law from the USDA community facilities. I'm just gonna refresh anybody who doesn't quite remember that when Senator Sanders funded our project, he funded it through one of the only two available accounts for construction and that was the USDA community facilities. We did not qualify for the healthcare account. And out of the 16 USDA projects that he submitted, only two were approved. But as his office promised, the USDA circled back to work with us. And Eric Law came to tour the building on October 20th and he spent quite a bit of time with us after the tour as well, really bringing us up to speed on the next steps that we would have to take for grant eligibility and one of the primary steps of that is to have the preliminary architectural report. And I've notified our tenants of that, speaking of our tenants, the childcare folks, which they formed a nonprofit called the Next Generation Childcare. They redid their survey that was done in the beginning part of this project development. And the number of families who need and want childcare have virtually doubled. And also the regulations for childcare are now 35 square feet per child. So they have recently toured the building with the fire marshal and are gonna get back to us with his report. But Greg Dawkins and Dick Robson met with them to talk about the feasibility of literally isolating the rooms identified for childcare from the rest of the building, heating them through a heat pump. And we've been told by the architects that childcare could then go in sooner than later and they would not be disturbed with any kind of future construction or change if we set it up this way. So we now have to really sort of see whether this is a feasible idea. We'll talk with Jamie and the school board, et cetera, but I've been told by every single person that we have worked with and talked to that childcare is absolutely essential in economic development. You can't even separate them. And so this is a very important piece for the future of Rochester and the Quintown area where there is very little childcare options right now. So let's see. Building heat, okay. So at the end of September, a task force was created that is composed of members of the school district and our committee as well as representation from both Stockbridge and Rochester's like boards. And one of the RSUD member, Bill Edgerton had proposed a three-legged strategy that would divide the funding responsibility into three different sources. And this committee is one of those sources. We have launched a fundraising campaign that has had different levels. We are, Mitch Scanlon is developing a monthly calendar of events. We have now gotten an appeal letter out drafted, it's been printed and everything it'll go out tomorrow. Patty's gonna do that to the alumni. And so things are going, we're doing the best we can to raise what we can towards that. Each group is hoping target to raise 22,000 each. So we'll see how that goes. And I think that about sums it up. Any questions? Are you still with me? Yes, we are. Yes, we are. I'm with you. Okay, well, so sorry it wasn't a shorter report, but we've had a lot of work. We continue to work extensively on this. You've been busy. Did you wanna drop off that mailing at the hardware store? I'm just gonna bring it to you tonight. At the end of the meeting, I'll just come to the parking lot if you don't mind. Yeah, come on over. I will. Okay, Martha has a question. I just wanted to say thank you to Catherine and to Vic in absence, et cetera, all the people on the committee for their hard work. I mean, it's taken you a long time and you're still not done yet, of course, but it's a lot of work, but I think it's an important thing you're doing and thank you. And it also gets a lot of good transparency to the town. Anybody that's interested in how that is all going, we can refer them right to this meeting. So thank you for that monthly input and update. Sure. Black pleasure. Is there any other business? Things are quiet on Zoom. Calling once, going twice. Looks good and still here. Shall we adjourn? Yeah. Meeting adjourned. All right, I'll be right over.