 Yeah, here's our quorum. There, Jeff. Good evening. Hi, Jeff. Stormwater Education. Are the signs that we put on the rect trail part of that? There's a program, the regional program for stormwater education that we contribute towards. So that isn't money we spend? So, well, the money for those signs I think was part of the grant separate from the regions. But that's what that's for. Ready? Okay. So, I will call the meeting to order. It's 7 o'clock by my watch. The one on the wall is a little fast. We have the minutes of July 24th, 2018 to approve if there's a motion. I'm going to approve the minutes of July 24th, 2018 with any amendments there, too. Is there a second? Second. And page one. Page three. Two minor corrections. Under the manager's report to the next to last bullet and bullet maple tree by, I think it was the old, but church was taken down that town. Yes, that's correct. Number 12, the last sentence, the last two or three words, it should say the red barn, gardens, listen road. Anything else on page three? If not page four. That's pretty short. So if there's no more corrections and all those in favor of approving the minutes of July 24th, 2018, say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed and one abstention. Ten abstention. This is the time of the meeting for public comment. If anyone in the audience has anything to offer on any issue, this is the time. And if you would please identify yourself. Of course. My name is Mike Finifrock, Williston resident, live at Unity Lane. I prepared a statement today. I would like to read. Excellent. I sit here before the select board today to address the centerline rumble strips on North Williston Road. In light of the whore memo and in conjunction with the select boards vote tonight to adopt the MUTCD, which is the manual for the utilization of traffic control devices. I'm asking the select board to take action and repave North Williston Road from Unity Lane, extending approximately 0.25 miles northbound. I believe you've all received a copy of the whore memo and the agenda packet for tonight. The whore memo states that the contractor hired to install the rumble strips did exactly as the Williston DOT intended. Meanwhile, the fact stands that the document that went through due process, the documentation the Williston DOT submitted to the select board, does not have rumble strips starting approximately in the same location in which they are now installed. The Williston DOT explains that this misunderstanding is simply a distortion on their map. The Williston DOT did not inform the public they intended to install rumble strips at this location, and a public that is misled cannot have informed debate. The letter further states that citizens' opinions aren't always consistent with best design practices for safe roads. At the last meeting, I did not issue my opinion. I pointed out a simple fact that rumble strip installation was not done according to publicly available prints or to the RSG recommendation. Williston DOT has highlighted safety to defend its actions. In response to their safety claim, I defer to the Federal Highway Agency's best practices and the manual for utilization of traffic control devices. These documents demonstrate that the Williston DOT's actions have actually reduced safety on this road segment, particularly for pedestrians and bicyclists. This is an opposition with the select board's desire to make North Williston Road a safer bike corridor. Furthermore, the Federal Highway Agency's best practices are intended to prevent an installation in this exact location. The Federal Highway Agency would consider this road to be an unwarranted public disturbance. Since the DOT states the only remedy is repaving North Williston Road, I remain optimistic that the select board will take immediate corrective action prior to the close of 2018 paving season. I have some bullet points that I want to bring up in regards to safety. These are the key points that came out of my research into centerline rumble strips. There are two important definitions. The first is the location of the road. The location of the road extends from Unity Lane, 0.25 miles northbound. That would be the segment that we are discussing. The second is the curve within that segment of road, which is defined as a sharp curve. Excuse me, I am extremely tired. I haven't slept well in a month, so my speech isn't great. The sharp curve is referenced in the horror memo. He defines it as a sharp curve, and it's further supported by the Federal Highway Agency's geometric design standards for roadways. The key points about centerline rumble strips. Each point that I give will be cited. I unfortunately was unable to print enough memos for everyone. I will forward a more in-depth analysis to the select board when I get home. The MUTCD contains no provisions regarding the design and placement of longitudinal rumble strips. Longitudinal rumble strips are centerline rumble strips. Any rumble strip that does not go into the lane of travel is a longitudinal rumble strip. So the manual contains no provisions regarding the design or placement of longitudinal rumble strips. The reason they do not include requirements for these rumble strips is because there's still debate within the FHWA if rumble strips are a legitimate form of traffic control. Furthermore, they have not made a determination on whether or not they are even effective traffic control devices. Any claim the DOT has to the efficacy of rumble strips as traffic controlling or calming devices is not supported by the Federal Highway Agency. RSG's presentations have all stated that rumble strips have no effect on vehicle speed. The MUTCD and FHWA's supplementals state that rumble strips should not be used on bicycle corridors of narrow width, such as this section of North Williston Road. Rumble strips make the corridor less safe for bikes and pedestrians. The FHWA states, and I quote, it effectively moves vehicles closer to the bicyclists who may be traveling on the outer edge of the lane. It is recommended agencies maintain at least 14 feet of pavement beyond the edge of the centerline rumble, where the vehicles and bicycles are expected to share. North Williston Road is a designated bike corridor. RSG and the CCRPC, the Chitton County Regional Planning Commission, both state the road needs to be widened to improve bike safety. Outside of very specific types of accident prevention, the FHWA does not make any claim that centerline rumble strips make roads safer. The Accident History Study at this sharp curve location in North Williston Road did not demonstrate a history of crashes that could have been prevented with centerline rumble strips. The FHWA does not believe that centerline rumble strips are appropriate for narrow pavement regardless of bike traffic. North Williston Road meets the minimum road width standard for collector roads. It was also again deemed by RSG and CCRPC to be too narrow. Both groups suggest a wider road. The FHWA, which is the Federal Highway Agency, states that agencies should discontinue rumble strips in the vicinity of intersections and major driveways. Note, Peterson Lane is in the center of this sharp curve. Rumble strips are not discontinued for this intersection. The FHWA states that placing centerline rumble strips in tight horizontal curves requires additional consideration. Horizontal curvature can produce additional incidental contact and associated noise with the rumble strips due to drivers intentionally cutting the curve short. This is especially true where the operating speeds do not correlate with the super elevation, which is if the road is banked or not, and as we all know, this curve is not banked. Or where the percentage of large vehicles is high. The FHWA states that corridors with high volumes of large vehicles, such as dump trucks, care should be taken when installing centerline rumble strips in curved roadways as their tire size and weight causes considerable noise, and they are often forced to off track around sharp curvature. The FHWA points to states that prohibit the installation of rumble strips on moderate to sharp curves that are in the vicinity of any residences. There are three residences in the vicinity of this sharp curve. The whore memo asserts the fact that the strips are now in place and acting as intended would suggest they are in the right location. But the FHWA contradicts this claim and states multiple times that sharp curve installations do not improve safety and only serve to generate nuisance noise as cars intentionally cut the curve. RSG's proposal does not demonstrate rumble strips were warranted in this exact location of Peterson Lane. It omits rumble strips from this location. In the final presentation states clearly rumble strips have not been shown to reduce speeds. The Williston DOT staff map that they made publicly available also omits rumble strips in this location. The paperwork without the rumble strips received the select board votes. The FHWA presentation continues. Studies have, and I quote, studies have shown that when rumble strips and approximately 650 feet prior to residential or urban areas, the noise impacts are tolerable. At a distance of 1600 feet, the noise generated from rumble strips is negligible. Note, this implies that at a distance less than 650 feet from installed rumble strips, the noise impact is intolerable. There are three homes within 650 feet of this sharp corner installation. The sound is designed to carry long distances with strong penetration power. The FHWA describes how the design of rumble strips is disturbing to residents. They provide best practices to avoid unnecessary noise. By not following these best practices, the Williston DOT is subjecting residents of Williston to untolerable noise that is designed specifically to wake up and alert drowsy people. This harms local residents' sleep quality, and as we are all aware of the research, including that of the National Institute of Health, it correlates poor sleep with cardiovascular disease and pair immune response, stroke, Alzheimer's, and other health issues. As I said, I will forward more in-depth analysis to the select board after this meeting. I have not had sufficient time to finalize the document since I realized the horror response went online. In the meantime, RSG and the CCRPC warned the select board that installation of traffic calming measures that are not warranted or backed by independent study opens the town of Williston to lawsuits and liabilities. The Williston DOT had a representative at the meeting who seemed to be aware of this fact. The DOT employee even reiterated this warning back to the select board. The DOT actions have reduced safety. They do not adhere to published standards. RSG hired the company that the DOT hired themselves, not one that I've hired to do an independent study, but the company that the DOT hired clearly published findings showing rumble strips at this location are not warranted. The DOT's actions have created a liability for the town of Williston. I am aware that this select board is sympathetic to my situation. On February 20th, this very group questioned the cost-benefit analysis of centerline rumble strips by stating and capturing in your meeting minutes quote, rumble strips are noisy, and there have been no head-on collisions to warrant the need for rumble strips. In the horror memo, and I quote, citizen input is very important aspect and should be considered. However, citizens' opinions aren't always consistent with best design practices for safe roads. I've listed the facts. It's not my opinion. The rumble strips are not FHWA-approved traffic control devices. The Federal Highway Agency and RSG State, they will decrease pedestrian and bicyclist safety. The FHWA suggests discontinuing the use of rumble strips for any one of the following reasons. 650 feet from residents, in-sharp curves in front of intersections on narrow roads, and in any curve that experiences large vehicle traffic. All these reasons combine describe exactly what this section of North Williston Road near Peterson Lane is. The Williston DOT provided misleading information to the public. They implemented traffic control devices at a location without public debate or select board approval. It is clear the Williston DOT did not follow best practices approved by the Federal Highway Agency. The Williston DOT ignored the expert advice of the team they hired. I assert that the Williston DOT needs to remedy this unsafe public nuisance prior to the close of the 2018 paving season. Thank you for listening to me discuss the rumble strips on North Williston Road from Unity Lane and extending northwards approximately 0.25 miles. Any questions? I'd like a copy of your comments. You get a chance. This is a copy of what I read. Like I said, I have not been able to formalize my final document. I did email this to RSG. They emailed me back saying that I captured their intent and I have no glaring hairs. So I did run this by the experts themselves. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. And we will take this under advisement for sure. We're not able to discuss this tonight, but thank you very much for your input. Thank you. I haven't slept in a month because of these rumble strips. It is a very disturbing noise. Thanks. Anyone else who wishes to make any public comment tonight? Seeing none, we'll move on to the interviews and appointments. We have two people for two different positions tonight. Amanda Payne, are you here? I want to come up to the table. Amanda is interested in being on the community justice board. And we do have your patient here. But if you could just briefly tell us a little bit about what's on the application, as well as your interest in being on the justice board. Sure. I don't really remember what I put on there. I wrote it a while ago. Probably too much. I'm interested in being on the community justice board. I'm a firm believer in restorative justice as a way of repairing harm and building community. I think restorative justice really looks at the person holistically and not just at the crime. And it really allows people, you know, we're complex humans and it allows people to be held accountable to their community that I think promotes change and growth. Questions from the board? You listed some very compelling, if you will, qualifications I think that you have. The one that kind of struck me that I was just hoping you would just spend a minute on is you said I've been working on restorative practice research team at UVM. Yeah. Yeah, so I'm in the counseling program at UVM. Okay. I just finished my school counseling degree but still working towards my mental health degree. And we are working with the Burlington school district and looking at their restorative practices in their public schools and looking at how effective they've been in helping them flesh that out a little bit. Okay, so I get it. So you're focusing on the, on the Burlington schools. When I heard the UVM research team, I was curious if UVM had a program that looks at restorative justice. Specifically. I just misinterpreted. But there are aspects of the UVM community that are looking more at restorative justice for sure. Yeah. That was it for me. Any further questions? No, I think it's a great set of qualifications as well. Of course, she comes recommended to us by the police department as well as the criminal justice director as well. So if there's no more questions, there might be a motion in order. I'd move to appoint Amanda Payne to the community justice board for a three-year term through June 30th, 2021. That's right. Discussion and motion. If not, all those in favor of the motion say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Congratulations. And thank you for your willingness to work on this. Of course. Thank you very much. So Erin Covey looking to be on our equation committee. And again, we have your application here, but perhaps you could expand a little bit on it as to your background and your interest in being on the rec committee. Sure. So currently I work at the community health improvement office at UVMC. I would say I do, I'm a regional coordinator for the self-management programs, and I serve on the Chinatown County communities for health team, which kind of talks about how we can come together and create more, you know, movable towns and connective towns and engage community partners. So I come from that aspect of wanting to just engage community partners and have more connected towns. And when I moved here a year ago, I moved here because of all the parks and all the wonderful rec programs and how everything's connected. I came from Underhill and it's disconnected. I mean, but it's a little, anyway. So I have that aspect and I also have a six-year-old son. That's my other qualification. That's a great qualification. And he's really enjoyed the schools and we live right in town and we've just really enjoyed the rec department. And he just spent all summer at the rec camps. So I've had nothing but really wonderful experiences. So when I saw that posting, I just felt like it combined my work aspect and my work passion with being a parent. So I don't know if that's necessarily qualifications, but there it is. Thank you. Questions from the board? So I'm going to ask a question. Sure. I like the way you expressed it. School-aged kiddo. Anybody who puts kiddo in an application and that you love the rec department also or the rec program also. So could you just maybe spend a second saying what you love about it and maybe what you have discovered that you think could use some work? Well, I really enjoy the comprehensive programs that they have. I work at my work on my current job with a lot of folks from Cathedral Square in Sash. And I know that they have a lot of postings. They work closely with folks posting on the programs. And they have just really, I feel like a comprehensive list of things to offer, various age groups. They have adult. They have aging population. They have the younger generation. A lot of youth programs. As for what I would grow with that, I feel like there's a lot of wonderful free community resources that I could help tap into just within my knowledge of being in the self-management program and knowing what other resources are out there with my working with community partners in my current role at my job. So I feel like I could help connect that a little bit more to see what we can offer Williston and what other programs are out there as well. Okay. Good. Thank you. Any further questions? If not, thank you very much again. And is there a motion that we may? I move to appoint Aaron Hovey to the Recreation Committee for a three-year term through June 30th, 2021. Second. Second. Is there any discussion on the motion? If not, all those in favor of the motion say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Congratulations to you too. Thanks. Moving on to the Vermont Community Development Grant application. So we have any much with us tonight? It's a very brief explanation of what you're asking us to do. This is a rerun of what we did last year. That's exactly right. Thank you. The town was gracious enough to be the lead applicant for our VCDP Vermont Community Development Program grant application for the Old North End Community Center at the St. Joseph's, the old St. Joseph's School in Burlington. We actually applied in December or January. They considered it in June. We were not funded, the 300,000 that we requested, but they encouraged us to come back. Partly the reason we weren't funded was because we hadn't gotten close enough to our fundraising goal. Our goal is 2.2 million. We had raised 1.3 when we met with them. We're now at 1.7. And the board hearing will be in November, although the application is due in September. So we'll be that much closer. So we're feeling really good about it. We're here to ask if you would reapply. Good. Succinct. Yes. Questions from the board regarding the project? Maybe to Eric, just, is it basically just to reapplying with the same forms and new dates that we did before? Yeah, I believe so. And I was looking, there isn't a public hearing required because it's a reapplication. So there's a resolution the board would sign tonight for support of the application. But no public hearing is required? Okay. The public hearing from before is still valid. Okay. And I think that answers my question is there's been no substantial change in the project. There's been no substantial change. Yeah. Right. Although, yes, we've raised more. We've raised more. We're getting closer. Okay. I meant the project itself. The project itself is still the same. Great. So maybe by the time they consider the next one, you might be there or close. I think we'll be very, very close. That's what my fundraising folks are telling me. Great. They have great confidence. Good luck. Thank you. Is there, there is a suggested motion to, regarding the resolution. To adopt the resolution for the Vermont Community Development Program grant in support of proposed renovations to the former St. Joseph's School in Burlington. Second. Sorry, discussion on motion. If not, I was in favor of the motion. Say aye. Aye. Thank you very much. Thank you. Moving on to. Catamount Community Forest plan. Linda has a. No random to us, which I hope. Everybody's read. Plus the new draft of the management plan. So perhaps you could give us a brief run through of what the changes are. Sure. So. Basically. The most. Significant changes have been to. Condense the background information in the plan. As was requested so. In several. Sections. That information has been pretty dramatically. Condensed. And so, so I can just go through. The. In the admin. Okay. So in under. Local regulations. I took out a whole section of where. I'm just describing the. Bylaw regulations related to the. Ag. Rural residential district. And instead of just. Sighting that information, I just make a. Page 17. Sections. Title geology and natural communities are combined into a single section. Titled features of ecological significance. And this new section. Basically takes information. From the. Recent ecological report that was completed by the. Land trust. When they did their assessment of the property in 2017. And. And. Cut out the section titled rare species and exemplary natural communities. Because it, it, there are no rare species. And the only exempt exemplary natural community or. Vernal pools and vernal pools are referenced elsewhere. In the plan. And then the section. That's where it's been condensed. And then other. Other. Oh yeah. And then. Let's see. The project backgrounds. Three paragraphs were deleted. Just after the educational uses subsection. Because they repeat information presented elsewhere. So. I believe. Those are all the areas where the plan has been completed. And. Other changes made. Notably on page nine under the administration of the cat amount community forest. The committee has made a. A strong recommendation to appoint a standalone. Committee to oversee the management of the cat amount community forest. The conservation commission. They. Express that it would be overly burdensome for the conservation commission to be the sole. Manager of the cat amount. Community forest. And that they. It would hinder their ability to get other work done. If they had this responsibility, because it is. Pretty, pretty big. Having a standalone committee would also. Make sure that. Multi. That multiple stakeholders would have a direct. Direct input and certain degree of. Of control, I guess. Okay. If I interrupt while we're on this. Sure. So I get the I get the point about the conservation commission is hesitant to take on this responsibility. And I also get the point that. When I first read this, I was like, wait, why not the conservation commission commission? I don't get it. We have other public. We have other conserved land that allow recreation activities on it, but it doesn't have its own separate board. But you explained it from a workload standpoint. So maybe it is a valid point that just to have conservation. You know, orientated folks, people are appointed to be on the conservation commission because primarily of their conservation views. So if you look at this community forest. What does what do you envision or what does the committee envision as the makeup of this, you know, committee? I mean, how many people would, who would be sought to be on it? That type of thing? I think that the, the makeup of this current committee, I think at the outset, we, we tried to have multiple stakeholder groups represented and they are or they were represented. However, I think this committee could be a little more balanced, have more balanced representation and might and probably should be smaller, like limited to seven. More balanced, but smaller. Yeah. If that's possible. Yeah. I think it's possible. But, but yeah, those are the two main recommendations. Get a better cross section of the population. Yeah. And the interest groups, residents, I think are all on that road, right? For the most part, there were, there was, except for the person in Christmas Lane. Sorry. There was, I would say, sort of an over representation of residents on that road. I wouldn't say that everybody was on the committee was lived on that road. But it definitely was there. It just made me get the demographics of the entire town, you know, somebody from the population group, right? Yeah. I would, you know, like from somebody from the rec committee, someone from the conservation committee, perhaps somebody from the planning commission. If one of you wanted to sit on the committee, that would be great. You know, so town committees and then a more general representation of different areas of town, perhaps, are different groups. Sounds great. So this would be a later date. They select what actually would devise a plan to how many people should be on the committee and also select the makeup of it. Yeah. When do you envision this being done? So I think, you know, as soon after the town acquires property would make sense because there's going to be a lot of decisions that have to be made right away and just, you know, a lot of initial work that's got to have to happen. So. Idea of the time scale now. Do we know what the funding situation is? The financing issue or? I have an update actually. I may have, it was in the manager report. I think they're about 60,000 short as it stands today. Very close. The K-1er believes that there's a number of different ways that she may be able to come up with the money and it's optimistic that that will happen. There's a number of other things that still have to happen though. They have to finalize the appraisal impacting us, but that could easily affect the closing date on the property. So I tried to get a date from her today and she said there was, she said she hopes to do it, but have the closing before the end of this calendar year. In the 64, sorry, that is with the town contribution being the 600,000. Yes. Yes. So we're for, I'm pleased with where we're at this moment. But there's a possibility of adopting the plan tonight. If you wish to do that. I'd move to approve. Sorry. I was going to say, did you get through all of the changes or just, you just went through the, there's a few changes on the second page. I already talked about condensing the plan. So the historic and cultural resources, the same thing was condensed. The section dealing with hunting. We received some public comment from Vermont Fish and Wildlife staff who felt that the language in, in, let's see, in the last paragraph was somewhat misleading and offensive. What page is that? That is on page 34. So basically the language dealing with the ratio of hunters in the state to game wardens and, you know, just, just some conjecture about their ability to, you know, enforce hunting regulations. That, that was objectionable to a member of the Vermont, the staff member of Vermont Fish and Wildlife. And she requested that language come out. So we took it out. It doesn't really change the substance of the, of the, you know, that section too much. And then in the action schedule, some items were added by request. Let's see. So an action item was added at the request of Vermont Fish and Wildlife to begin monitoring the deer winter area under the guidance of Fish and Wildlife Department. And then also by request of Vermont Land Trust, an action item was added to plan for development of a permanent access trail from the Governor Chittenden Road to the parcel south of Governor Chittenden Road. And then a change to the numbering to say year one instead of 2018, year two instead of 2019. Just in case, you know, just to give the town more flexibility depending on when the closing actually happens. Any other questions from Linda? Any, any attempt to get any further public input? We have not done anything other than post it on the website. We're open to any direction you might have for us to, you know, to solicit public comment. There's various ways that could be done. We could put out a survey. We could simply post the plan and make greater efforts to publicize that it's posted. So we're, you know, we're open to some direction to do that. Maybe we can ask Eric as our local television specialist and town cheerleader can, what would you suggest to do there? To get the word out because, you know, we want to get some involvement and get feedback. I guess there's a couple. We'll hinder this effort. Yeah, we can use some electronic outreach on porch forum, social media. I think, trying to think in this stage, too, where the plans had an adoption stage kind of feedback from the board, if there's specific areas that if we were to ask some questions, what those questions would be to ask at the stage as well. And, you know, perhaps it could be more like just asking what it is that the residents or the public wants, you know, in the future, like what kinds of activities that would be great if you would do that. So I'm still disappointed we didn't embrace some of the other activities, but I understand we're still open to looking at those in the future. So that's why I want to see public input, some process. One of the things that's disappointing is how little public input we get sometimes for big activities. This is the biggest acquisition the town has done, isn't it, Terry? Quite a bit. I'm not sure if it's a property or a property. Yeah. So, thank you. Are you looking for more public input before we? No, no, this is kind of for the future, because, you know, to start getting public input, you know, because as I think Melinda stated last time, it isn't a stagnant thing, right? This is just a starting point. No, it's a living document. Perhaps if the permanent committee is established, that might mean that that committee is to solicit input and work. However we want to do it, you want to do it. Melinda, I assume you would be staffing that committee. That's a question. I don't know. We'll have to deal with that issue. That's not something to get the committee formed and figure out what we want it to do. It sounded like Joy was ready to make a motion. I was going to move to approve the management plan. There is a second. Is there a discussion on the motion? That was a lot of work in a small amount of time. I think that's one of the lessons we learned is, you know, good and bad, and congratulations to them for getting this far, but that was a tall task to ask them to do. Is there a discussion? If not, all those in favor of the motion say aye. Aye. Are you opposed? No. Thank you, Melinda. Now it's just $64,000. That's just pretty cash. Probably not. Yes. It would be good. No, 264 actually. So it's almost. That's $400. But your point is not. Yeah. So it's almost $745. And I think, you know, it's a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of I think, uh, people who I think, uh, uh, people who are buying the traveling questi are probably here, so will move on to that on the agenda. Bruce are you leading off on this and then introducing stand happen. Somebody here from CCR And Rick is here from Stantec. And I mean, you have my memo in front of you, but before we do that, I think I would ask Rick to go ahead and give us a little spiel first. Thank you. Rick Bryant with Stantec as the principal engineer on the traffic calming study we did for the Chamberlain Lane and Brennan Woods neighborhood. We do a synopsis of the work that was done. Basically, we were interested in speed. We talked about traffic calming can be for multiple purposes, but the issue brought to us was this concern about speeding in the neighborhood. Our task was to assess the magnitude of the problem and propose alternative solutions. This is the area that we're considering. We have Mountain View Road at the north end, Route 2 Williston Road at the south end. It's made off of Talcott Road and others to get to the neighborhood, but Chamberlain comes to a point at Hand and Drive and then it continues as Brennan Woods Drive. So it's one continuous Route 2 street names, but as you can see, it's a connection between Mountain View and Route 2. A bypass for some people when they're having trouble traveling north-south on 2A. So in addition to looking at speeds, we did take a peek to see if in fact there's a lot of cut-through traffic in the neighborhood. Why might speeds be on the high side? Well, this is the typical cross-section. There's a sidewalk on one side through out, separated by a grass strip, which is good for pedestrian accommodation, but what's left over for traffic is a 30-lane road, 30-foot wide road in two lanes. 15-foot travel lanes are- Is that a 30-lane road, a little different? Excuse me? Yes. 15-foot travel lanes are fairly generous. You're in a parking stall. The parking stall is probably only eight feet wide. So you can imagine in 30 feet, you could have three, even four cars going down that road. So that much space makes a driver feel comfortable and tend to drive a little over the speed limit. So to measure what was going on, we collected some speed information with the RPC's help. They set the equipment out to capture speeds on Chamberlain down near the just above-vision circle, where there's a bit of a straightaway and above the circle where a hand-in-drive comes in, turns a bend and we have another straightaway and we captured vehicle data at that location as well. What we saw, a couple of numbers here, each location, Chamberlain at the south, Brennan Woods at the north. These are the average speeds we observed in here, the 85th percentile speeds. Typically, when you're setting a speed limit, you work with an 85th percentile speed. You know some people are gonna go over the speed limit. Just a fact, life, you deal with the design for the 85th percentile. 15% people will be scoffed while you live with that, right as satisfied with the 85%. So we would like to see this number match up with the speed limit of 25 miles per hour. As you can see, we're 33, 34, 32. We're well over the designated speed limit. Even the average speeds came in above the speed limit. The other aspect I mentioned is the potential for cut through traffic. We basically did counts at the north entry point and the south entry point to, excuse me, to see how much traffic's coming in and out of the neighborhood, the kind of area circle in blue. We count rooftops from a map and say, well, can we know how many trips a day or trips an hour a household generates? So we can count the houses and estimate how many people should be coming in and out of this circle. By counting either end, we compared it to when we found out that generally the number of cars coming into the neighborhood matches the number that we would expect due to the number of houses that are there. The actual number entering was a little bit higher. So we would estimate 10 to 20 vehicles maybe are sneaking through on the day that we did our survey, okay? Which we think was a typical day, but there could be days when something's happening on two way where it's a lot worse, other days it may be better. So you did this on one day? This was just a single? One day survey, yes. Now, we were out there multiple days doing different things, other counts, just field observations, watching traffic. This is a man in the survey or out there actually counting cars? Yes, yes, we sat at the intersections at either end here. In fact, I sat at this end, my office mate was down at the other end at Ishim Circle. So we were tracking cars coming in and out. Generally you know what cars are coming in and out from either end, whether they're going all the way through or not is to physically sit there and do it. This wasn't the principal focus of the study. Again, we were looking mostly at speeds, but we just wanted to get an idea of what was going on from a cut-through perspective and we kind of saw this as not a major issue. There's people passing through, but it's not the dominant flow of traffic, by any means. It's not being used as a major thoroughfare. Doesn't seem to be, no. So after looking at the speed data, we basically held a community meeting to see what solutions might make sense. The concern being, I can put some ideas on the table that may be very effective, but I'm not driving through it every day. It's the residents who live there that have to deal with it. So what may sound like a good idea in terms of slowing down traffic may be a bad idea if you have to drive over yourself every day or have to live next to it. And there's maybe there's some noise associated with that treatment, such as a speed bump, vehicles going over the bump will make a little bit of noise. You can just speed hump, there's a little different there. So we wanted to put ideas out in front of the community and let them react to them, knowing that we don't have all the answers, that the answer for one neighborhood would be different for another. So we let them give us some feedback. And we put a couple of options on the table in front of them. And to be honest, the first one I'm showing you, the speed hump was actually the preferred strategy for the neighborhood residents that came to speak to us. And we had a very good turnout of, I'd say like 25, 30 people, so I guess. It was a well attended meeting. We were impressed at the level of interest. Did you get the people that were, I guess in front of or around where the speed humps were being proposed? Yes, yes, we had the conversation about people, you know, would you want this in Farnia House? And they said, by all means. It was very, not that everyone's gonna be happy with that. That doesn't mean it's, because the locations haven't been definite yet. So the people that they may end up right in front of may not have necessarily been in the meeting. But they did understand that trade off and they were siding towards, let's do this, let's not let the noise or whatever issue stand in the way. So speed hump was what was preferred. We did, you know, offer them what they call a speed cushion. Looks like a speed hump only. You have a little cut through for the fire truck can get through and not have to slow down if they're in a hurry. There's chicanes where you build into the road. These little islands that forces you around and it basically makes it a one-way road for a short segment. So traffic has to pause and wait for the kite of clear to come in the other way. Very effective, but also inconvenient. A center median is another way to kind of slow things down by diverting the traffic left or right as opposed to a hump that makes you go up and down. The idea is shift the driver, make him feel uncomfortable going too fast. Another quick curve extension is to just kind of narrow the road. People told us that on occasions they would park on the street even though they have a two-car driveway and garage, they'd park on the street, make it a little narrower. Their kids are out playing that day. They want to help slow the traffic down. This is sort of a permanent solution in that same vein. And even speed feedback science is a solution. This one shown here is solar powered so it could be there permanently. And we went through this evaluation matrix. I don't go through all of it, but basically we talked about benefits, how effective these strategies might be and the cost, what it might cost to town to implement some of those things. So again, we tried to explain the community, the positives, the negatives, the trade-offs, and they surrounded around the idea of speed humps. And then the issue was, okay, how many and where? And based on their feedback, we put together this sort of, I call it a recommended approach as opposed to a plan. Again, we haven't nailed down the exact locations. There's a lot more work that would have to happen to do that. You don't want to put it obviously in front of someone's driveway or next to a driveway. If there's a catch base and it's collecting storm water, you need to know where that is. A speed hump can function as a dam and restrict the flow of water along the street. So there's details that need to be ironed out, but conceptually, what we're suggesting is on the straightaway sections where we've documented higher speeds to look at two speed humps. And spacing optimally is about 500 feet. You don't want to go much longer than that. You don't want to get too much narrow in that. The other thing to consider is we've got a stop sign at one end, and this is Mountain View over here, just help and orientation. We've got the traffic circle. We've got another stop sign where hand and drive comes in and of course stop sign again up at this end. Those things are traffic calming devices as well. You've got to come to a stop sign or sort of what you're going to slow down. So the spacing of these, we kind of view these as speed humps as well. And when you do the 8 bit 500 feet, we think we can make two humps work on this section. Two humps would work on the straightaway section on Brennan Woods Drive. And again, ironing up the details, this could move forward. And it would be responsive to the community comments and the data that we have on hand. Now, there's a third section here with speed humps shown, which is a little different in the context of, we didn't have any speed data for that segment. So we can't say with any certainty that people are speeding or not, but the people who came to the meeting were adamant that there were issues there as well and felt that there should be consideration for doing something at the northern end of Brennan Woods Drive. Again, we're working with your public works towards a policy that says, we'll look at these issues, but no action until there's proof or there's evidence. So our sentiment is that's a possibility, but there needs to be another speed survey done to determine whether there's a real issue out there. We would move forward with that. But if you were, again, I think you can get, within 500 feet or one other, a couple of speed humps, and that would effectively slow traffic on that last little straightaway. That straightaway has no residences, right? That's next to the Brennan Fields? It is. And it was interesting, as I mentioned, I actually sat there and did the car count up at Mountain View and was looking over my shoulder at what was going on at the ball field. The traffic was moving pretty quick for a while, and then a couple of ball games were starting and people were first filled the parking lot that's there, and then they spilled over onto the street, and there was enough on-street parking that people were going through there very slowly, actually. Either looking for parking space who're just concerned about the cars being on the road, kids getting in and out of cars. So the activity itself tended to slow traffic down when you wanted to move slowly. When there was no ball game, people may be driving faster. Then again, you don't have kids in the area as well. Question about the stop signs that Bruce, I thought you said once that stop signs aren't supposed to be used as traffic calming. I was glad somebody caught that, because Rick said that. Some stop signs, and he's a traffic engineer. I'm going to bet he's going to sit here and tell you they're not supposed to be used for traffic calming. What he meant to say was that by them being there, they're de facto, they're going to make people stop so they're calming traffic, but you should not use stop signs for a traffic calming device. And those aren't proposed stop signs. Those are what are out there today because they're presumably warranted for other purposes to make the intersections operate safely. Any comments or questions from folks in the audience? Yes, sure. The 15-foot wide road with the 15-foot line width. 30-foot wide road. It's 30-foot wide road. There really isn't a centerline painted, but you split it in half, you get 15 per direction. So that 30-foot line width, if you add six feet to North Wilkston Road, is what RSG suggested we widen North Wilkston Road to. So that road's six feet wider than the major Sherwood Road. And traffic only goes 30 miles an hour, 32. Traffic was over 30 miles an hour. Yeah, it's posted speed is 25. Correct. It's posted at 25. I think I already did percent of it was 50. Or 35. I mean, it's just you can have it. He's talking about North Wilkston Road now. Oh. Okay. Wider roads and it's reasonable speed. I think it's really reasonable speed. It's a public transportation also. It is an essential road, so it's an essential road. But it's not an essential road, so it's a transportation. So. So my question is, did you say that residents park their cars on the street when their kids are playing on the street? Not routinely, but some of the people who came to our meeting said that they have done that on occasion. But they didn't say their kids were playing on the street. Not playing in the street, no. But just the times when the kids may be out in the yard, whatever, or in the neighborhood, and they felt they could help make traffic move slower, they put their car on the street instead of in the driveway. Because we don't want to encourage kids to play on the street. Not suggesting that. I do, yes. That was great in the 50s, but we have too much traffic. I grew up that way. So it appears that the people who are speeding are the residents of Brandon Owens. Very much so, yeah. Okay. You can say the same in Southridge. Yeah, I'm sorry. We did make that comment at the public meeting with that the enemy is us. People who are, there's not that many cut through vehicles to suggest that it's outsiders who are speeding. It's people who live there and just aren't being very thoughtful. And these types of devices will remind them to maybe be a better neighbor. So the staff recommendation is to proceed with the speed bumps. Yes, in my memo, the recommendation is to recommends the outcome and findings of the stand tech report. The traffic on the devices suggested and report our speed bumps at very quick. Jerry, maybe before we go over the serums and letter. All right, Sarah, yes, Sarah. Will the Duff Roos respond to it? Yes, I don't know if you saw it or not. Sarah Mason did send a letter. Sarah came and saw me. Sarah came and saw me in my office. Okay. At full third of it and didn't say anything about it. Okay, well she sent an email to select ward sometime late this afternoon, essentially saying that she lives not, well essentially she lives off of Talcat Road. Sees the traffic that comes by her area. And it's making the same comments that, since the speeders are the people who live there. And there were some other comments that she made about the people not, as you mentioned, people are not cutting through any great numbers are not cutting through the area. And is it cost effective for the town to put in speed humps to regulate something that could be regulated by themselves? So what else was there? I don't have it in front of me, but. I do. Yeah, she suggested placing speed tables in Upper Brennan Woods Drive past the roundabout. We'll also drive people to hang a left at the roundabout and use hand and drive as well. Thus pushing the problem off to another street within the same neighborhood. She did say that to me today and we've heard that that, we've heard that before. And one of my comments to Sarah today was that may be true, but I don't believe that. And I'm not trying to shoot myself in the foot here, but I don't believe that's going to be true in the wintertime when Han and Drive is a hillier road that people are going to necessarily go that way to avoid going over some speed humps on a road that, you know, certainly before we got there and treated it, would be easier to drive one than going down a hill or up a hill on Han and Drive. But I mean, it could very well happen. Anytime you do traffic calming, somebody's not going to like it and try to find a different route. Do we know how much noise, you mentioned they cause noise and even though people say, put them in my front yard, if it causes noise, it's going to cause a problem, right? And is there any practice that minimizes the noise while... It's so slowly over them. It's when you're driving over them fast. When you do the speed limit that you're supposed to be doing over them, noise is an issue. It's the people that aren't going to do that speed limit over them, but certainly they can bounce their car. But you don't want to go the speed limit over them. I mean, there's some in South Burlington on the short road. Slower than the speed limit. Yeah, you have to go slower than the speed limit over those unless this is something different. These are speed humps, which again, you can design it for a... If you put the speed limit over the ones in South Burlington, you're going to make noise, especially if you had a truck with anything in it or, you know... And which ones I put most of them in in South Burlington. So if you told me what streets you're talking about... What's next to the auto dealer? They're the fancy car auto dealer, the imported car auto dealer. There's a little short street between Roots and Roads. Oh yeah, Shunt Pike. Shunt, thank you. Yeah. You have to slow down for those. Those aren't speed limit. One thing to keep in mind on the premise that people are going to divert to hand and drive is, again, we think these are people in the neighborhood or on these roads. So if you live in the neighborhood, you're most likely not going to... Most people are not going to drive over all four speed humps. You'll go over one or two and then you'll be home. That's the language direction you're coming from. So yeah, if you look at the plan and you see six speed humps and think, oh my God, I'm going to hit all six, you might want to look for an alternate route. But if you realize that, no, I'm only going from A to B and I'm not going all the way through the neighborhood, I'm going over one or two of them every day, that's more bearable. You slow down when you get there and you don't think about taking an alternate route. And speed humps, speed tables are supposed to be put in so that you can do the 25 miles an hour over them. Yeah. Oh yeah, that's... I mean, they're to keep you at 25 miles an hour, not to allow you to go... That doesn't mean that I'm not going to argue that there's probably something that may have been a little higher or whatever that you feel like you need to slow down on. But the whole idea behind that is that you keep that speed limit. And that's part of the rationale for the 500 feet. If you make them too far apart and someone is slowing down a little bit, have plenty of room to accelerate before the next one. Do you want to keep them close enough that people don't speed up in between but far enough apart so that it's not too costly to put them in? There's the cost of installing the house and maintaining them and the cost that they may transfer to our road equipment because the plows hit them and I mean, it must cause wear and tear on our town vehicles all so that these people can teach themselves how to slow down in their own neighborhood. I just want to respond to the condition of the trucks. Well, the guys when they're plowing better not be going over 25 miles an hour anyway. I'm not going to say that it doesn't ever happen. Wow. Well, they will definitely slow down but they'll definitely slow them down. I'm not going to argue that. They'll have to slow down just because they don't know. It's the same as going over a manhole that may have raised or lowered a little bit. I mean, lower is not so bad but if they raise and you haven't made any speed, you can make quite a bit of damage so. Yeah, if you want to go to it from a maintenance standpoint, I mean, I can't sit here and say that we want them but I can't sit here and say that we don't want them either because if that's what is required to do traffic calming and make people do the speed limit and that's what you guys want to have happen and we'll live with it and make it work. But to think that it's not going to have anywhere and tear on our equipment, it will eventually but once again, you know, average plow speeds are 15 to 25 miles an hour. They're not flying along anyway. They might be on some of our bigger roads going a little bit faster than that but that's, so you're going to hear more of the argument from the fire trucks, emergency vehicles than you are from the town trucks, the plows. You know those guys don't want anything in their way, including my guys. You don't want anything in your way but you live and adapt. So right now the proposal or recommendation is for four speed bumps, even though six are shown. Okay, and analysis down the road will show whether the additional two might be warranted. Correct. Okay, so in the cost is about 15 to 18,000 per speed bump, is that? Yes, is that? Am I reading that? I just want to make sure I'm reading this correctly. So we're looking at 60 to 80,000 it sounds like for the installation of these speed bumps, or speed humps, speed humps. So that would, the concept would be to build it into the capital budget next year. How would they be, I guess I'm asking the question. Capital item or we're going to start putting this stuff in our regular budget. When would, if hypothetically we were to say yes tonight or in the near future, when would they be able to be installed and how would we pay for them? Money would have to be included in the capital budget. Okay, so capital budget, yeah. Okay, so that'd be next year. Well, it depends on the budget deliberation. Right, I get that, right. It may not make it through the budget process. I get that, yeah. But if the money does make it through the budget process, who's going to answer when it could be installed? After July 1st, and the way we do our paving program is we don't, and one of the reasons we get a little bit better cost is that we don't dictate that they've got to be here this time or this time. We say they've got to be done by November 30th or November 15th, I don't remember exactly. So that's a pretty wide window, but that's when it would be done. And I would certainly put it out as part of our regular paving to try to get a better number. We'll probably drive the cost of our asphalt number up because, quite frankly, they don't want to do it. Oh, interesting. They don't like paving the money. But if they want a $500,000 contract, too, then. Possibility of grants being applied for for these kinds of things. Extra traffic on them. I honestly don't know, Terry. I mean, we're always looking at grants and stuff anyway. We certainly, if we found something or thought there was something that could be used, we would certainly do it. But I can't tell you that I know of anything that's out there to do that with. So what you're saying, you've done the study, you've done the due diligence with the neighborhood, you've gone and basically the majority or this was the most preferred option. From the audience, I don't know who's here from Brennan Woods, maybe just the, nope, nobody? I know, from Ryan Woods, but I've found a town that will list out. I understand. Yeah? So if you, if we're considering a motion, there is one suggested for tonight. I would move to accept the preferred alternative for the Brennan Woods Drive Chamberlain Land Traffic Comming Study, as per the second discussion on the motion. The only question, and it's, I actually support this. I kind of, there seems like there's no rush. I mean, we have to go through a whole budget process first. So, I mean, I like the idea of maybe between TV or the medias, they'll run a story and do this at a future meeting, a near future meeting. So you think this is giving a little more time? Yeah. See if we generate any interest. Some compelling reason why traffic stop lights are imperative that they be put. Are you moving the table discussion for tonight then? Yeah, that'd be great. The motion then made and seconded to table. This is a non-debatable issue. All those in favor of tabling the shoes, say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? So we will table this and bring it back sometime in the near future. Thank you. Nice job. Yes, I would just remind everybody that we're getting ready to do budgets. Pardon me? We're getting ready to do budgets. This is how. Yeah, I was going to say. September one, we're getting our capital. September one, we're getting our capital budgets to start working on. So we're going along to the Maple Road traffic calming study. Bruce, you're doing this one too. I think we have a memo from you on this. Yeah, we have a memo on, since this was already talked about before and the results of that study were to do nothing but then I know that there were some other questions about doing some different things over there. So I put together this memo and still recommending basically that we go with the report, which is to do nothing through that neighborhood, but to talk a little bit more about the manual for Europe on Traffic Control Devices and that if anything else is going to be considered to make sure that we're following that manual because there's been some suggestions about moving the stop sign from the corner of Village Grove over to the corner of Maple where it runs east to west. And if anybody were to consider doing that, certainly we would have to have a study done to see if it even warrants a stop sign. And then if it did, we would also have to be realigning that intersection because it's the way it goes now. Maple Road was there and Village Grove was built into it so to make it a true T-intersection, it would take some work on Maple Road and basically split Maple on the two roads. You may end up renaming a road or part of a road just because you don't normally have a road that goes in and makes a 90 degree bend usually, it usually a change. We have, I'm sorry. But your study right now says do nothing. That's what the report says, to do nothing. But we have said that there are some signs out there that could be used which are the share of the road signs that we could put up over on Maple Road just to let people know that there are other people, let travelers know there are other people using that road. There's no such thing as children at play or watch out for children's signs or anything like that anymore. That's basically what this memo was just to point out that there was some consideration. So if this is a possible solution short term anyway to see what happens with it and if we get more information or if there's a problem or in good shape, if it doesn't, we may be back talking about it. Questions for Bruce and us? So basically the ideas were agreeing to do nothing? Well, the motion will be to install the signs that Bruce was talking about, the share of the road. Is there a motion? Yes. I move to accept the recommendation that the share of the road signs be installed on Maple Road. Second. Second. Is there a discussion on the motion? Chair, are there people here who are here for this agenda item? Is there anybody here from Maple Road? Yes. You wish to speak on the? The same road signs that may be a nice simple answer to try first. Good, thank you. I guess, Terry, I'm trying to understand why we would put the signs up if the study says nothing, right? Not to do anything. Because they want something, but they don't want speed humps or something else and the residents would like something. And while the study says don't do anything, those signs may be just what they need to achieve what they want without having to go further and spend more money. And it was a great compromise by Bruce. We wouldn't spend money if the report says not to, I mean. So I guess probably not much money. The share of the road signs, Terry, are pretty simple and quite honestly, it would be something that we may even put up without ever coming to the select board and asking for permission to do it. Sure, are they inexpensive? I'm sorry? Inexpensive. Yeah, I don't know, $35, $40 a sign or something. I'm not sure, plus the post, probably $120 all together with people putting them in and everything, I mean, not a huge cost. Certainly something I can absorb in our budget this year without having to go to capital or- Certainly make a bunch of residents very happy. Well, I think so. Have a good road. Is there further discussion on the motion? If not, all of a sudden, favor the motion, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Kind of one opposed. And we'll move on to the traffic calming policy. Well, Rick and Bruce are talking about this every now and then. Well, I think I'm going to start, and maybe Eric will chime in and Bruce, as you can see on our agenda, this is a popular topic these days. And some people really want traffic calming and some don't. The bottom line is that people are speeding and the whole concept behind traffic calming is to slow people down. That's just one technique, enforcement is another, certainly, but that has limits because you can't have police officers on every street all day long. And as soon as they're gone, people tend to go a little faster when they're not around. But speed enforcement certainly is an important part of an overall program. So, given the fact that we seem to be getting more and more of these, and I think that trend will probably continue, I thought it might be useful for the board to consider adopting a cohesive policy. This is just what you have before you is just a first try at this. And I think, I suspect there'll be significant modifications to this as we move forward. When we first approached this, I thought this would be an easy thing to put together and turns out it wasn't so easy. There's a lot of different moving parts and we already have comments from regional planning which I think will be useful. They're not incorporated in here. But what I suspect is if the board is interested in pursuing such a policy, we'll take the comments from the board and begin to incorporate those along with comments we get from various other groups including regional planning as we move forward. And we can have Eric walk you through the draft. And Bruce, you can have a quick run through. I'll be quicky, very good. I'll focus on the, sorry, on section five, the evaluation process section. I'll kind of hit on the background and the purpose of the beginning here. So we took a look at this. We're trying to think what's a good way to kind of put a rubric together, how to classify these issues as they come up. Obviously there'll be different responses that are appropriate for each issue. So what we've got here to start is this rubric which defines different levels of response. And then we're calling this to respond to each level these toolbox measures, these larger categories. And you'll see as the levels increase from level one to level three, different toolbox measures are included and then measures are added. And we're thinking about within these measures there's various mechanisms you can use. For example, enforcement, the obvious mechanism is having the police presence there although only temporary. So thinking this, how this process would play out, residents, group of residents contact the town, they raise an issue, then staff would work to define which level that would fall into. Everything would start at a level one and that gives staff an opportunity to decide if there's further information to gather, most likely a traffic speed study. Then after looking at that, following a level one, it would be either education or enforcement. Then if that study shows, you know, we should take a closer look at this, staff would decide to either bump it up to level two, which adds enhancement or level three, which adds a formal traffic calming study. So staff would put together an implementation plan or recommendation that would fall into one of these levels. And to go a little more detail, level two, what you add to it. I also started level one, the education. I found some research with other policies around the country and looking at education measures that are out there. Various things like a neighborhood safety campaign, a neighborhood pledge program to slow down, a sign, kind of a yard side program, our radar speed cart. I think, you know, hearing competition about the Prenton Woods situation. Tonight, some of this education pieces may be appropriate treatment for that neighborhood to consider as well. Seeing as that it's an internal issue and some neighborhood education might be beneficial for it. So then when you go up to level two here, you're adding enhancements. And we're thinking of enhancements as signage and kind of what we're calling temporary measures. We've talked with the idea of speed humps. You can get temporary speed humps as well to put them out on a trial basis, get some feedback, see if they're making an effect, see what the resident's reaction to them is before you're formally committing in a capital budget, you know, multiple thousands of dollars to make that investment to see if it's gonna be worthwhile over time. The only caveat to those is they're not in winter time. Yeah. And they're not obviously, that's why I'm saying that. Something we could use in the winter the temporary ones. Good morning, interesting. I'm sorry? Well, would that be interesting? In a bad way. And then you get to level three, which you've seen tonight with the Brennan Woods and the Wrapping of the Maple Road where this formal study, which we've gone through in detail in an appendix C to the policy, which kind of runs through all the multiple steps and multiple meetings, discussion, the board ultimately deciding a preferred alternative recommendation. So these levels are built on the attributes of overall cost, level of public involvement, enhancements or fiscal changes to road and implementation, ease and speed. There'll be public involvement at each stage, some more than others. For an educational component in any stage to work, having that collective neighborhood bind is really gonna drive it. Especially if there's a homeowner's association and neighborhood, they're a potential partner to work with on some of these pieces. So we're trying to think of varying levels for this. This is a start. We've kicked a number of ideas around. I guess the other piece I should mention is staff would put together an implementation recommendation, but if residents, we're not amenable to that, there's an appeal that mech is something we like to put in where a petition could be signed by 30% of people in the area and for to appeal that implementation decision to the select board have further dialogue. So I think I'll stop my comments there. There's a lot to this. So that's kind of a broad. What do you find to be? I think this is excellent. I mean, you're absolutely correct. As Williston grows and you're pushing traffic off the main roads, it's a big problem in a lot of neighborhoods. I live in Southridge. It's a huge problem over there. So I think setting together a policy is great. I like where you're going with it. Any specific recommendations from members of the board tonight? We'll discuss this further and then I'm sure I'll comment. We're certainly coming back with some updates on this. Can I ask that we get a good analysis of the information the gentleman brought in about the rumble strips and the issues those caused? So actually, why the- The United States was to add a few opinions here. Policy? Let me finish. So to make sure that we come back and analyze why we ended up with a solution we did if it's causing these problems and there's another set of facts that oppose the facts that we were told which incended us to approve putting those in. So I want to make sure if we come up with a policy, it's a good policy, right? And that we don't end up with issues at the end of the day. It prevents this kind of situation. So that would be my feedback. And that's one of the things that I was hoping to accomplish with this is when we ended up with the decision after we've gone through the various steps here, it's one that the majority of people could accept. I mean, it's not just the majority, but you can't create something that causes a problem for maybe driving people out of their homes as well. And I don't know, I'm not making a comment on the specific situation, but we have to make sure that we understand what happened there and can we prevent it? I suspect what this is designed to do is exactly that. There was no policy. And so by creating one, then hopefully you're good. Well, I've read this and it basically goes through the process I think Bruce went through. I think that he shared with us through to do what he did with North Williston Road. So I would say that maybe we need a little more here. So, so that's... I'm sorry. I'm in favor of coming up with a policy. I would caution though that any policy is never gonna, it's never gonna prevent mistakes in the implementation of things that things are gonna happen that are wrong. And I don't think a policy is gonna change that fundamental fact of nature. But that being said, I think we should have a policy. I do, one concern that I always have with things like this is you have a policy that is not specific enough and it doesn't help. You have a policy that's too specific and it can be used to gum up the works when there's an obvious common sense solution to something but it doesn't fit exactly with the policy. But that's the nature of governance I think is finding that balance. But so, good luck. You're all part of it too. Please send how that was coming back around. When we were putting this in, we did find that as a challenge. We'd have, we had one of our early versions was two or three times as long and we cut it back and then we added stuff and cut it back and so it needs, it still needs a lot of work in my mind. And so comments, including comments outside of the course of this meeting, whether it's from board or from citizens are certainly welcome at this point because we'd like as much input as we can get. So how will we get that public feedback? Well, I think it is a big topic in many neighborhoods. I know it's a topic in my neighborhood and we've never solved it. So other than really ugly means and that is people having to call the police and certain people who always speed. By the way, that does solve the problem. It's an uncomfortable thing for neighbors to do to neighbors but it actually does solve the problem. But nobody really wants to go there. So, Jeff, you have some comments? Just a question. I know in here, and I don't know if the answer is yes it should or no it shouldn't but would it be appropriate to have a section in there that talks about how these will be paid for? It talks about, you know, there's a cost but that's all it says is there will be a cost and I wonder if there should be any thought given to paying for these? Actually, I think there was. It may be more the appendix that goes through the more formal traffic calming study process. I think there may be language in there talking about after the board approves that study, after the study as we saw tonight is approved or it's been tabled tonight but to go to a future capital budget or when there's money allocated in a future budget and it may be it's inappropriate to have it in this policy. I don't know the answer to that but I was looking on page 11 then step six and it says permanent install and escalation or modification and I assume preceding that has to be how are we going to pay for it? What pot of money is it going to be used? Is it going to have to be a capital budget item or is it going to be something we can do out of the operating budget? And maybe the answer is we don't know. You can't determine that and thus it's not part of the policy and that's a fine answer I just was wondering if how are we going to pay for it should be part of the policy. I think that's got to be the answer. We're not going to know until we get there and see how big the, how big that is. Big projects are going to be capital, small projects may be operating. Yeah, I, it just, it's it, if there was something missing from this policy this is what jumped out at me. I think the appendix, maybe I don't have the appendix. The appendix, I think the intent behind that was to use that as a way of prioritizing that you have multiple projects and limited funds. Right. Because otherwise that would be the only function that would fall. I mean who knows, we might actually end up building a traffic calming line item in the budget but projects will have to compete for that amount. Interesting. So many of the audience have a question or comment? I have a few, so I read through the policy. Could you speak a little louder for us? Yes, so I read through the policy while I was doing research and a few polls that I saw was the global adoption of the manual for utilization of traffic controlling devices. There are some traffic control devices that are not recognized yet that are starting to be used by the specialists or the companies that come in and tell us how to control traffic. So it would basically prevent the town of Williston from utilizing these types of traffic control devices. And Rumble Strip is one of them where the manual clearly states they're not approved because there's no defense form but people aren't using them and our interstates are filled with them. There is a lot of supplementary information on the Federal Highway Transportation Agency but you then have to become way too specific with which one to pick. But again, I just caution against the global adoption of a manual that doesn't include all of the traffic control measures we want to use. Second, I was worried about cost because there's gonna be roads like Williston Road it's huge, it takes a ton of money to do anything on that road. And then there's gonna be roads like Maple Road I saw on the list today, which if any speed homes went on a Maple Road that's $18,000 for four residents or whatever. It's a very small road and the cost per square mile of road is huge versus absorbing costs assigned to Williston Road would easily be absorbed per square mile. I wanted to know if residents would have to come up with that money for these timing projects. Globally, would Williston all have to pay for the tiny little road that doesn't get used to it? It would be my fear. The next would be the appeal process. 30% on the road is kind of a global statement. Once again, Williston Road miles, miles long it goes from one end of Williston to the other. You have to get 30% of those residents to sign on to the one that might only happen over the first two miles. Kind of seems hard to justify the 30% line. I can understand in the village that that's where 30% of your residents are but what if this happens down towards the Richmond border where there's one or two homes? You now have to get 30% of all the roads and roads to sign them. Maybe there's a way we can set a range. And then the last is, how is the scoring transparency going to be made publicly available? You're aware that Williston Road is a state road. We had no control over that. Okay, I'll change it to north, Williston Road. I got it. It's miles long in some areas. It's very highly densely populated like near Tamarack and the village. And out by the railroad tracks there's four homes per mile type thing. So we need 30% of people buying to get a crosswalk near Tamarack. Walking all the way down Williston Road to the north Williston Road to the railroad tracks isn't going to help you. Anyone else who needs that same crosswalk at the railroad tracks, no one at Tamarack cares. Thank you. So I think the consensus is that we want to continue to work on the plan, the policy. During the course of your weeks, if you have any thoughts, I think that is peace, pass, and law. I have a question before we go from that. The manual for, is it universal traffic control? Is that what it is? A UTCD manual for your home traffic control devices. Is that a spec or is it a recommendation or how is it used at the state level or? The manual, it's a federal manual. Federal document is adopted by the state of Vermont as the manual, they adopted as the manual to use for within the state of Vermont. So that's why we are using that. And if rumble strips aren't in there, I wasn't aware of that. I'm going to find out for sure not that I'm saying somebody isn't correct. And I'm also going to find out why then, if that's the case, why they were even putting a report that we were given to be used. So anyway, we'll figure that one out. But the manual for your home from traffic control devices is basically the manual adopted by the state of Vermont. And I would not recommend it at Town of Williston, do things that are not within that manual. It shouldn't be the experiment, is what I'm saying. So on more roads, Chapman Lane Distance Units, and Eric, you wrote the memo to us, I believe. Well, yeah, he wrote the memo. I guess I'll introduce it though. Goes back for too many years, I'm afraid. It goes back to Ted Kenny's first tour of duty on the select board. When the proposed discontinuous of a short section of Chapman Lane was proposed, a hearing was held and a safe visit was held on a buggy summer evening. And the section of what we're talking about serves one property and it really is part of a driveway for those who were there. I know you'll recall that. At the very beginning of the driveway or near the beginning is a culvert. And I guess as best we can determine, part of that culvert is on town property and part may be on private property, but it's been accepted as a town culvert. Eventually draw the line, but yes, we've, yeah. And the culvert has been problematic in the past and frankly needs replacement. I think there was some technical information that was shared with us at the time and I think we concurred that it needs replacing. So we haven't done anything with it since then partly because it just kept falling lower on the priority list and things are getting moved up a little bit faster. Now we have a little bit more staff. So anyway, what we're proposing to do is to replace the culvert and then proceed with the discontinuance. We would have to hold another hearing, another site visit and we have a draft agreement which we share this with the board. Okay, this has not been reviewed by legal counsel and it's not been reviewed by the property owner. We are meeting with the property owner later this week I think. On Thursday. They have received a copy though. Yeah, they have a copy. So, and we're not asking for off at this point for any authority to assign this, but we would like to take the for discontinuance and hoping that the two processes will kind of flow together in the end. But the draft agreement was designed to actually have the culvert replaced regardless. But that if we do replace the culvert, we don't want the property owner fighting our attempts to discontinue the route. So that's kind of the way we have it set up. We don't understand right now whether they have an opinion on this. Well, back when we talked about this several years ago, they did have an opinion and they were seemed inclined to accept this approach, which is why we're doing this. Whether they've changed their mind since then, we don't know yet. Do we plow that 250 feet or we do? Like with a contractor. With a contractor. Yeah, we can't do it with a town truck. It's too small. Can't turn around. Yeah. Back in the day when we were, the select board was looking at this before, was any decision ever made? The select board did not make a decision. Okay, so this sort of just sat. Sat waiting for this draft agreement to be put together at a meeting with the landowners. Okay. Okay. And then the other piece of this is the town would be responsible. I mean, it sounds to me like no matter what, the town will be responsible for replacing that culvert at a price of some 10 to 15,000. Okay, so whether we discontinue the road or not, that needs to happen. Okay. And the other factor is that we don't have to go down and replace that culvert. The culvert itself as it sits today is not in bad shape. It may be undersized and for that kind of reason it may need to be changed. But it's not way up here on the list of projects for us to go down and do. We were saying we replace, we would replace this culvert, make it a bigger culvert to then turn it over to the property owner so they wouldn't have any issues in the future with the culvert. We've only ever had a backup there maybe once and that was the last time we dealt with this was 2011. Oh, right. I read it here. So it's not an ongoing type problem that we have. So the culvert that's there serves a purpose. It's undersized as most culverts are by all the new stormwater rules and all the things anyway now. So the proposal is and the permit we got is to make it a five foot, it's a two to three foot culvert now depending upon who's measured it. But we have a permit from stream bank alterations now to replace that with a five foot culvert with a couple feet of it buried so it'll form a stream bottom in it. Okay. And then it should handle whatever water for a long, long time so that the property owner then doesn't have any concerns or issues or difficulties with it. And I don't mean to ask these questions tonight. In this process, will those type questions be answered and by those type questions, I mean, if there was a problem down the road, would the town be liable in any way? Cause we're the ones who installed the culvert. These are just things I want to know before we vote on this. All right. The intent is for this agreement and discontinuance. Whether this agreement does that or not at this point I can't say because this has not been reviewed by legal counsel. And I'm sorry, I don't remember. I remember doing the site visit. I think I remember it being buggy. Yeah. I think it was. But I don't remember much else. Is there any benefit to the town to not discontinue maintaining its ownership of the road for lack of... We do lose a little tiny bit of money because... Non-monetary I should say. Is there any access that the town will lose that someday down the road we may be sorely disappointed we lost? Okay. It's a part of someone's drive. I still just feel I need to be comfortable. And this will be answered as part of the site visit too. Okay. On a non-buggy night this time I assume. Oh, I think we're hoping for early October. It was like all evening. So the $14.95.70 is money gap from some... Or per mile, I should say. No, that's... Per class three road. Yeah. Where do we get that money? State. That's state money. We get money for all classes of highway. Class three, class two, and class one. We don't have any class one, so we don't get any. But every class two or class three, the 70 some miles of class three and class two highway we get so much money per mile from the state. State taxes. Yes. I thought they would maintain their roads and we had to maintain ours. Sometimes, sometimes that's their whole highway budget. The state. Yeah. Not Williston. What's that? Not Williston. No, let's hope not. So Bruce, you're recommending that you said that the culvert isn't a problem. It's not gonna fall apart. But it's undersized for Irene 100 year storm. I don't know what Irene is, 100 or 200 year storm. So the idea is to replace this as a goodwill gesture to get them to agree to... But we will have to replace it at some point. I'm just saying, if we weren't doing this, it's not, you know, at the top of our list. It's lower on the priority list, yeah. So it would have to be replaced at some point if we kept ownership of it. Once the road is discontinued, the property rights are handed over to the adjacent landowners. So these folks are going to make the agreement with us. They'd be responsible. Both of them. The culvert does have to be replaced. It is the town's property right now. So we might as well eat that cost because we're gonna have to eat it sooner or later anyway. And we might as well put it in the same thing as discontinuing the road because the town gets fundamentally no actual benefit from having this as a town road. It does continue to expose us to liability because under my recollection, as an understate statute, towns do not have sovereign immunity relative to bridges and culverts. I'm sorry, what does that mean? Means that if you get hurt because a town culvert fails, that you can sue the town. Okay. Which is not, other than that, towns have a lot of sovereign immunity where they can't be sued because of governmental stuff. But this is not allowed. Okay. That being said, that's a very tiny thing in my analysis. This is just the right thing to do. Doesn't sound like we're near there, but it might be a good faith thing to do and turning over the road. Yeah, I think so too. So would the chair entertain him? Yes, I would. I'd move to adopt the resolution to investigate the discontinuance of a section of Chapman Lane as presented. It's your discussion of the motion. If not, all those in favor of the motion say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Moving on to the charter revisions, which we've talked about before, but Rick, we have bought this back on the agenda just to make sure that we are still forward with this and give a tad of chance for Leon on this. So yeah, as Terry said, we did review this. I went item by item through the proposed changes. And excuse me, and there are several questions. One, the board wants to say changes in what's being proposed. Two, when do you want to put this to a town vote? It could be done. Most likely, the soonest it could be done would be March of 2019. And I think there's one other thing I want to comment because I think there's a newspaper article in the observer that may have been somewhat misleading. It's kind of left leaders with the feeling that we are proposing to change the town clerk's position from elected to appointed. And that is not the case. All we're doing is trying to take the legislature out of the equation really because either way it would require a town vote because we have a charter to change something like that. Now we take a town vote and the legislature to weigh in. And if the charter change, then it would just take a town vote to do that. Not the legislature would have a say in it assuming that this charter change got approved. So I just wanted to make that distinction because some people may have misunderstood that from the article because the town clerk was speaking against that, but what she was talking about is making that change now. She is supportive of the change in the charter that would allow the town to vote on that in the future if it's so chose. That's an important distinction. If we were to approve the going forward with this, it would be reviewed by legal counsel I presume. Yes. If we were to put it on the ballot for March and it was approved, it would then go to the legislature and the chances are good that the legislature would act on it because there'd be enough time between March and May for them to do that. Also, I want to point out as a reminder, this, if the board wants to move forward to public hearings in a minimum will be required. How much about whether we should move forward or not? With moving forward, I'm just trying to envision the process. So the process is first legislature reviews it and it isn't approved it, but they take some action on it that allows the town to adopt it if we get the positive vote from the voters. That's the last part of it. Everything else goes before it gets to the legislature. It has to have a town approval in order for the legislature. Okay, but that wouldn't happen till March. Yes. At the earliest and then it would go to legislature. And then once they, I don't know what action they take on it, what that's called. It would have to be passed both the House and the Senate. Okay, so it gets. Be signed by the governor. Yeah, it gets approved, adopted, whatever the word is, legislated and then it goes into effect. Yes. Okay, all right. Agreement to go forward. And moving on to the deposit account resolution. And Rick, are you talking about this or a signature or? Well, this, I can talk about it. This is really simple. This is just a formal step to set up a checking account for the Chittin County Public Safety Authority. The board has already authorized the manager to sign the agreement in the September arrangement. And so we need to set up a checking account. And this just, we set up a checking account. The board needs to approve signature. And Terry would be the one that would be signing the account. Questions for Rick on this or? And that's very simple and the motion will be in order. I've moved to adopt the resolution to establish a deposit account for the Chittin County Public Safety Authority as presented. Second. So discussion of the motion. If not, all those in favor of the motion say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Moving right along to the manager's report. Quick question. Have I submitted the Chapman Lane resolution for signature? Yes. Okay, good. Then I'll just have this, I think Terry, this is for you to sign. Looks like it has to be notarized out. Okay. Not signing it tonight. Not by. All right. Just a couple items to touch on here. The first item I just wanted to mention is in my written report. Thanks to a declaration by the federal emergency management agency concerning a May 5th storm that caused some washouts on both Butternut Road and Oak Hill Road. We will be getting reimbursed for some of our costs incurred in referring to damages. In fact, most of the costs will be in reimburse. So that will, the total estimated damage is 25,000. So we'll be getting about 23,000 back from that. So that's some good news for our local taxpayers anyway. Also, we've been approached by, on a different matter, by Verizon Wireless about the possibility of leasing some space inside the steeple on the Old Bridge Church. We are, I've set up a meeting with Verizon officials next week. We are involving the Old Bridge Church trustees and on the discussion, they've already given us a list of questions and concerns they have. So we'll be working through that process. And if we are able to work out those issues, we'll be kind of back eventually for permission to lease this out. So, lots of questions that we still have, but. Do we know what kind of a lease agreement they come up with? What would they pay the town and how long is the term? You know, I don't know the answer to the length of the term. The preliminary number I saw was 24,000 a year, which is about equal to our total budget for the brick church per year. So. I'm sorry, is this 5G or is this, you know, standard LTE or? You don't know, okay. That wasn't me yet. So I think it's part of their 5G upgrade. Okay. A lot more frequent antennas, many, many. A hall here, which is not always great. Because of the thickness of the walls. But anyway, that's. Epic. And then I guess the final thing I want to touch on is to look up some tax receipts that information came in after this report was prepared. The final numbers are very favorable. We ended up with just about $300,000 more than we have budgeted. And so the economy continues on its current path. Those numbers, I'm sure we'll continue. Although there are certain concerns out there, one being opening of other places like Target. But then some of that may be offset by internet sales. It's hard to know because the state will not share that information with us. They claim it's confidential, proprietary information and won't share any specific numbers. So what you have is what we have in terms of predicting. My only prediction is that when there's a downturn in the economy, these numbers will go significant down. Yes. And that's a safe bet, but right now things are good. So I guess we should enjoy the $300,000 that we took in this year above and beyond what was budgeted. And that's all I have. Thank you, Rick. So under other business, so we have a couple of catering permits, I understand? First is for a wedding scheduled for September 1st at the Isham Barn, and the caterer is American Flatbread. And it's, as I said, for a wedding, and the staff has no objections. Thanks for that. Motion to be ordered. So moved. Second. And discussion of the motion. All those in favor of the motion say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Second. And the second is for a wedding at the Isham Barn. And the caterer for this one is 802 Cocktails, LLC, doing business as 802 Cocktails. The date? The date is September 29th, and the staff has no objections. Any questions for Rick on this? If not, a motion is in order for this one. Second. So moved. Second. And discussion on the motion. All those in favor of the motion say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Anything else? Is there any other business we need to talk about tonight before we talk about the collective bargaining agreement with firefighters? Something real quick. Ricky, send out the email concerning the Alliance Church. Yes. And is there any additional information you can provide? No, just what was in, okay. Well, I'm meeting with the church representative Thursday, I think. So I'll have more information. I have a sense of what the issue is about, but I'd like to wait and see what they have to say before I. Fair enough. Fair enough. So the only thing I had was a note I sent you, Teri, on the Huzinga thing. Is that something we take off in the executive meeting? We should take that up probably at another meeting. And discuss for what we would like to know about the issue before and then we can go forward with it from there. Okay. So we have the last item on the agenda is the collective bargaining agreement with firefighters and Rick has sent out information regarding that. If we have questions regarding that, we would need to discuss that in executive session. If we don't have any questions and we're ready to go ahead and approve that, then we can do that right now in open session. I'm sorry to say that again. If you have questions regarding what Rick has sent out and the agreement that is being recommended to us, we would need to discuss that in executive session. So even if we have questions about the dollars? Yes. Yeah. Because the concern is that if the board is inclined to not approve it for any reason, then we're still negotiating and we don't want to tip our hand to the union as to what the position might be. But if the board's inclined to approve it, then either way, the approval has to take place in public session. I guess I do. I mean, I know nobody wants to go in executive session if we don't have to, but I guess I do have some questions and I know Jennifer's here too. She's here because of that. I figured this wasn't her Tuesday evening entertainment. So we would need a motion to go into executive session. One is free. So moved. Seconded. Motion is made and seconded. All opposed there. Does your motion include inviting Richard McGuire, Jennifer Kennelly and Eric Wells to attend? When I said motion, it had that, you know, emphasis added to it. So we would thank you though for clarifying. We would include Rick, Jennifer and Eric in the attendees. All those in favor of the motion say aye. Aye. Any opposed? No. We are in executive session and we'll get downstairs. Thank you both for coming out. Yes. I want to reach past you. Thank you. I think your party could.