 All right then maybe I'll go ahead and read the the script for the COVID authorization to hold a meeting electronically and that will give a little more time for other folks to to join in here. So as chair of the Rochester Select Board I find that due to the state of emergency declared by Governor Scott as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and pursuant to addendum 6 to executive order 01-20 and act 92 this public body is authorized to meet electronically in accordance with act 92 there is no physical location to observe and listen contemporaneously to this meeting however in accordance with the temporary amendments to the open meeting law I confirm that we are providing public access to the meeting using the zoom platform and all members of the board have the ability to communicate contemporaneously during this meeting through this platform and the public has access to contemporaneously listen and if desired participate in this meeting and you can find the links either on the town website or on the posted agendas throughout the town or by contacting the town clerk to specifically send you a link for that. So is Dan recording this meeting? It says it's recording yes it's recording and we also have orca media on the line here too and the hero and the hero so um and that was the bed that said I will um hand the helm over to Dan and open the informational meeting um in the events of Rochester's modern town meeting and by Australian ballot this year so take it away Dan. Okay thanks to and I don't see anyone in the waiting room right now so I think we're well present and accounted for for those that don't know me I'm Dan McKinley I'm the elected town moderator and the select board has asked me to this facilitate moderate this meeting this evening informational meeting so I'm going to start with reading the warning notice and the agenda where the public informational hearings legal voters of the town of Rochester hereby notified and warned the select board for the town of Rochester hold two public informational meeting hearings on Monday February 22nd Thursday February 25th at 6 p.m. and purpose is informational hearings review and discuss articles 11 through 31 as presented in the FY in the excuse me 2021 town of Rochester annual meeting warning these public informational hearings will be conducted via zoom for information on how to connect we've already found that clearly um voting on all articles presented on the warning including the election of officers will take place by Australian ballot on Monday March 1st 2021 for information on the annual meeting and the Australian ballot voting please see the warning and notices to voters herewith on page seven and eight so note that we are covering articles 11 through 31 this evening and for clarification for information about these articles opportunity to ask questions the select board we will not be covering those articles which will be electing officials to the town those will be on the ballots on March 1st and with what I'm going to remind folks that I will continue will follow Robert's rules of order wait to be recognized and there are how many of us 28 of us in the meeting so do my best to recognize you as you wave your hand or if you can see on the bottom tool panel I'll call it there's a button called reactions you can hit that and then there's a raise your hand function on there if you want to raise your hand I'll try and call on folks as I see you raise your hand folks that are on the phone it's going to be a little more difficult so you might just have to sort of blur it out or try and try and fit in and we'll all be courteous and let each other fit in as best we can if folks have a lot to say in the interest of time we're going to leave as we do a town meeting maximize anyone's time with the microphone two to five minutes that would be a long time for an informational meeting just so that we have leave time for everyone to get an opportunity to speak let's see you let us have my notes I think that's it and I think what we'll do is just order in an orderly fashion go through each of the articles and ask for questions clarifications or the for select board or town officers any questions on how we're going to work through this I got one in the waiting room hang on so first on our list was article 11 shall the term of the town clerk be changed to three years effective in 2022 pursuant to a state law any questions so it might be it might be helpful there's some background noise if folks mute their microphones until they're ready to speak because the big deal is the voting sounds like manzanita's got a some background noise there there you go thanks all right any questions about the town clerk term one I'll move on here in some background noise and when someone's beginning to speak or if they've got background noise your box lights up so I can see that on the phone numbers people that are calling in I can see your phone number box lights up that way I might know that you're trying to speak or maybe you need to meet your microphone so we can hear your background noise let's go on to what will be article 12 shall the term of the town treasurer be changed to three years questions comments nine will be moving right along through most of these i'm sure article 13 shall the voters authorize payment of real and personal property taxes in four installments um august 16th november 15th february 14 may 16 by the delivery of the tax collector before 4 p.m. on those dates anything anything see nothing moving right along with that article 15 or article 14 shall the voters authorize total highway and general fund expenditures of one million nine hundred one one million ninety five thousand six hundred and forty six dollars of which seven hundred and sixty six thousand eight hundred and thirty three shall be raised by texas i'll say something i'll just thank the um the um budget and finance committee for all the hard work they did to come up with this number and then to make it as real and as um efficient as possible so um i thank you all for all the hard work on putting this together let me just check the waiting room again i don't see anybody article 15 will be shall the voters appropriate 45 625 dollars towards operating expenses of the rochester public library let's see any um just a housekeeping thing here i'm seeing that i have there are two panels of of screens and i'm only able to see one of them i don't know why i can't see the other let me try something different okay there it is so i'll try and toggle back and forth between the two panels to look for people's hands raised and okay i'll say something again then that um this number for the library is level funded from last year which was a a big help in keeping the budget um keeping it um moderate so thank you for that library and i've got a quick general question if i may go ahead this lizzie shackleford here um i just um and we are fairly new just in for a couple of years now to town so i'm not sure how the informational meeting in the and the town meeting usually go but um are on any of these issues are there are people planning to kind of give the yeas and nays to them not vote on them but kind of comment on any of the you know whether these because we're getting amounts but you know i appreciate the dune just chimed in on this amount is more or less or stays the same from from before um i'm just wondering if there's any information that helps people um you know whether these are you know good things to to vote for or not that's a general question but just for giving this weird form i'm not sure how it normally goes yeah yeah lizzie i think it is a weird format and it's i mean typically um at the informational meeting it's not a place where we um you know go into um deep um discussion about the merits of the article it's primarily for information like stuff like doing the sharing um i don't know if others have thoughts on that um um fanny haws i have two two observations for lizzie number one if you go a couple of pages later in the in the warning you'll find the notes from last year so that's an easy way to compare these numbers to what we did last year and then of course for each one of these departments and there's a there's a full page report somewhere in the in the warning um excuse me dianne could i ask a question quickly sure i thought um i had to leave the room for a little while i'm sorry but it was necessary so um have we just as article 15 the library have we gotten any farther past that or no that's where we are right now have there been any um significant remarks about any of the other articles nope there hasn't been any any questions or anything um dune just um uh noted that the library number was that was level funded right dune yeah thank you very much very too yeah pat go ahead thank you um on your on your Rochester town report 46 is the annual report from the library trustee on page 47 are all of the budget figures from last year look two years ago last year and this year so uh you have that late front of you on 46 to 47 i mean and i i appreciate that that's definitely helpful i was just wondering if there's like any you know kind of we're doing this because you know because our budget is smaller we're doing yeah if any if there was going to be any explanation for the decisions that came in but i guess this probably isn't the isn't the place for that but i'll just i'll do i appreciate it it is it is the place for that if you have a specific question yeah um yeah at a rate lizzie at a regular town meeting in the auditorium that's when people get up and and ask questions get answers etc okay oh yeah so if um you know if some of these numbers are up or down or or if they're flat it might be helpful if um the board or any budget committee could say you know why that was or if you wanted to add any color to the article that might be helpful for folks it is a little bit strange because we will not be able to have um that that um discussion that we usually do at town meeting that lets us know how new friends are thinking about these articles but um that's the uh state of state of the town all right i'm going to move on to um the next uh to article 16 which was is uh shall the voters appropriate 69 479 dollars to provide ambulance service from white river valley ambulance 767 4248 or ask them yeah if um whoever has the phone number ending in 4248 um you've got a lot of background noise going on um if you can mute it'll be great then i won't have to mute you and you'll be able to speak when you're ready go ahead pat um i was just commenting on this that the on page 40 38 um the appropriations are laid out as to what they were two years ago last year and this year if if somebody wanted to look um last year the uh white river ambulance was 68 340 and this year it's 69 479 so it's just a modest modest increase about a thousand from last year okay yeah go ahead frank yeah it just should be noted that the only thing the select board really has any control over there is the article 14 all these other ones are put in the library is on their own uh the uh white river ambulance they do their own budget we don't have any control over those so that should be noted okay thanks frank i'll keep us uh moving along as long as i don't hear any um see any hands raising or anyone shouting out article 17 shout the voters vote to appropriate 20 thousand uh 400 dollars to continue funding the fast trash recycling program uh receipts of recycling and trash with residents paying for trash per bag um from july 1 2021 through june 30 2022 um and yes right go ahead i believe that one was level funded also okay correct do yeah i think so and and also i um i think i read something recently that now you have to pay for recycling if you take it to the transfer station i don't know if anyone else saw that so if that's the case this makes it an even um even better even better deal for us in net yeah yeah nancy we'll have to pay um at bevel now for recycling and this does make it quite attractive for us here uh into being quite friendly there is also in here a report from the Bethel transfer station and a list of their charges including the recycling which i think is three dollars a visit thanks nancy the only thing we pay for here what our recycling is um i pay three dollars a bag for actual trash but the rest right have to pay i think it's good and they're very very pleasant accommodating people all right and uh move on article 18 shall the voters vote to appropriate 8 000 to continue funding the town building reserve fund is this um up or down or about what we've done previously i think it's um is this the tad down didn't we do 10 000 last year we wish it was much higher but this was one of the tools we used to keep the the increase in the budget to a minimum yeah there's um we could use four times as much in that in that fund all right i'm gonna move on article 19 shall the voters vote to appropriate uh one thousand dollars to continue funding the tennis court reserve fund go ahead nancy well just for information we've been doing this um every year and we're trying to keep the surfaces of the tennis court um in good shape um the courts were redone in 2012 i believe and but we're seeing wear and tear on them and our our estimates on having them resurfaced are upwards of um seven or eight thousand dollars so we're just trying to put money aside on an annual basis to work toward that amount thank you nancy all right moving on to article 21 and i had a question for the select board we used to vote all these um funding all these agencies and groups as one um and we've switched that at the request of townsfolk or how how did that come about you're muted pat i believe that came about when they changed the uh the town meeting rules uh regarding covid um that they came it came so that we were required to vote on each and every article separate um and so we will probably get back to that once we get back to normal rick yeah one of the reasons why we did it is because you can't you can't alter any of these figures that we put in on the voting um these are going to be all straight up yes or no questions when you vote for this so we felt it wouldn't be appropriate if we lumped everything together and put them all as as just one article to vote on so that's why we put them all separate thank you um all right so we'll go through them one at a time shall the voters vote to appropriate um the requested sum of three thousand dollars to the central vermont council on aging okay 21 shall the voters vote to appropriate requested sum of 2066 dollars to the claire martin center i just want to make a a comment okay julie um the numbers for the appropriations have stayed pretty level so they haven't increased in any way nancy was there something you no i was going to say two okay all right uh was there a hand raised from the from the phone from the 4248 number no okay um article 22 shall the voters vote to appropriate the requested sum of $100 to the green up vermont seeing none hearing no questions moving on shall the voters vote to appropriate the requested sum of nine thousand eight hundred and forty nine dollars to the quintown senior center okay uh shall the voters vote to appropriate the requested sum of 250 to the irons county parent child center speedy 25 shall the voters vote to appropriate the requested sum of 250 to safe line ink yeah article 26 shall the voters vote to appropriate the requested sum of $1,300 to tri valley transit form release stage coach okay article 27 shall the voters vote to appropriate the requested sum of $100 to vermont rural fire hydrant and article 28 shall the voters vote to appropriate the requested sum of $4,800 to visiting nurse association cruising article 29 shall the voters vote to appropriate the requested sum of 800 and oh okay i saw a comma there but it oh 875 dollars to the white river partnership questions article 30 shall the voters vote to appropriate the requested sum of $250 to women's safe article 31 shall the town of rochester be required to inform its residents when sources of radiation such as that from cell towers and 5g antennas are being proposed for installation installation within its town limits let's see the phone see a phone lighting up 4469 number did you have something there no um dan go ahead martha i found it confusing because i thought the town did let people know i thought that kind of thing was public information when it was proposed but um it it it is actually anything that is proposed gets um put up on the bulletin board in town and if anyone um pays attention to the the planning board meetings or minutes that that's all public public knowledge i guess what this is um requesting to be go farther than that um well i i can this is deb more i can um make a little statement about that if you'd like me to to explain the rationale comes from go ahead deb so in um the city is all around vermont uh the telecom companies are in fact placing deploying um cell phone towers and um small cell antennas which are meant to convey 5g into homes and the infrastructure is going up and i think in some cases the towers have been completed um i'm not sure about that but at least it's it's ongoing and all over the place and in many of these places the citizens just don't know they're they have not been informed or have they have not been informed clearly enough so what this is trying to do is to make sure that that will be the case um and i've prepared a short little explanation about the rationale of this article should i do that should i say that um well if there are any questions go ahead pat well there's four minutes left deb has four minutes okay just be a couple minutes so this this article should be considered as a right to know question for improving the communication between our town government and its citizens whenever a telecom industry giant submits a proposal for new wireless infrastructure deployed uh why well there's a time factor involved for citizens to have any agency concerning placement of cell towers and small cell antennas in our community our town government has the legal right to make decisions about the placement of wireless infrastructure and those of us who petitioned want to want that right to be respected and facilitated by our town office so we are not a special interest group um the there's the concern about impacts of wireless infrastructure is a public interest shared by many in just a few days during a week of severe cold in a mid-January pandemic over 50 registered voters in Rochester signed our petition our belief is that a citizen should have the right to know and the right to have a say about what goes up in our neighborhoods aesthetic impacts can affect property values and with the new small cell antennas thousands of studies document serious health impacts to humans as well as birdsbeeds and trees we don't need another health crisis what we do need is internet connectivity that follows well-thought-out safety standards that's all thanks to Nancy have i missed something is there's something going up in this town that i'm not aware of and is that why this article is on here no this is this is preemptive this is trying to get ahead of the game because the telecom companies are basically they really are sneaking in and just doing this very quietly everywhere that is the problem and luckily i think we've we've it hasn't been happening here that i know of but it's just kind of preemptive i mean it's going on in grandville right now they're trying to do two giant cell phone towers in grandville so we're just trying to be up on it a little bit more and say you know hey let's just all be aware of what's going on and and so we can all have a say about this well i guess a question i have is to what extent is the town notified something like a cell phone tower of course that's a big invisible and invisible but the smaller sub antennas is that something that these companies tell the town about anyway i mean how is the town to be guaranteed that they they know that oh that's a good question i think what they have to do is they have to apply to the town for permits and there's a whole lot of jurisdiction there's a whole lot of things that the towns can do to have some regulation over these and most towns are not aware that they have these powers and so i mean that's down the road a little bit more but i mean i think that's how it starts the telecom companies come to the town and ask permission or to get permits this it's just going on everywhere go ahead pat yeah i'm i'm kind of thinking that uh this will be like a fourth or fifth check mark on um on the process um i believe that they have to go through the public service board in order to place the cell tower in vermont um and then they also have to apply through act 250 um to go through uh get get into the state and the our own planning board so um this this would be a fourth check mark to make sure that the public is aware um because the public service board does uh open meetings information meetings um act 250 is also very transparent organization um and we meet all the time um and the planning commission meets once a month so um this would be a fourth or fifth check mark to make sure that people are aware that's what well yeah well locally but also i think the telecom companies have been basically steam rolling this thing and through a lot of these things they they it's that's really been happening so it if that's a good way to put it i guess that it's a fifth check mark you know just to make sure if um if i could um take my moderator hat off for one minute and speak as a planning commission member over the past i would say i don't know i'll say six or so years maybe eight years there have been two cell towers proposed um in town and have gone through um the planning commission we have had hearings on them and provided input to the public service board and neither one of them was constructed so um by any commission does have that um that responsibility to review those and that's done through a hearing that town members going to look for um mark um alexander has a hand up mark um yeah hi um a couple of things i wanted to say um some of the newer um wireless communication systems that um companies like at&t are starting to build are not giant cell towers they're actually small boxes that are mounted on like telephone poles in town so i believe that they're because they are so small they're actually able to bypass some of the regulations involving cell towers so i think that's that's another reason why it's useful for us to be aware of these things being built in our town because they actually may not uh um you know have some of the check marks that you were talking about earlier um and and i just wanted to add that um we can treat this as sort of an issue of commons i mean if we were if we knew that a company was planning to build say um like a power plant on the edge of town we would want to know about that because it involves you know potential um if it you know affects on our commons such as our atmosphere so i think we did one way of thinking about this proposal um article 31 is to think about in terms of commons and the way we would think about other large projects um that would affect our commons barb i guess it's a question of uh the timing of the notification and in a sense it should may not necessarily have to be fourth fifth or sixth but maybe the first go-around when something is proposed or thought about being proposed to the town of the planning board that would be the time by you to say okay we are now in the process of looking at this as opposed to we have looked at it we're considering it and now we'll let you know about it so to me any indication whether small boxes or big boxes or any other major um intercom or whatever you want to call it facility uh could could go out immediately um so it's not a yay or nay situation it's just a timing that says this is what's going on and this is a time maybe to be aware of it and then the discussion can follow as the process continues is that a yay or nay man any other questions comments on this um can you hear me oh yeah go ahead hi this is jonah marie um i was just going to make a quick comment um i helped get a lot of signatures out for a few and i just feel like i just want to make sure that it's never construed as that this is somehow a bill to stop something it's basically just as everybody has said so eloquently um a right to know and to leave it that and for everybody who said well there's already there's already measures to inform the public um that's all true and so then that's great but if but then this just adds another mechanism for people to be informed and so i would say it feels like it's you know too much there's nothing wrong with people being overly informed if anything if that's even a negative thing what i think it's a positive thing so anybody who might be against it i would wonder why they were opposing people just being informed um and so i think it can't be anything but good for our public our public good of our town to be informed citizens and to know what's going on and and to be active so that's all i have to say okay thank you um mark your hand is still up or is it up again okay dan i have a quick question if i go ahead missy yeah i i i'm clear if these smaller antennas if the town actually gets noticed about that it seems like it's unclear and i guess my question is somebody who is who is uh chatted with a few people about that this being an unnecessary extra layer is is what the burden would be on and the expectation would be on our our select board to meet this new notification requirement if it's something above and beyond what we're already meeting but my biggest question concern is you know what is the obligation if if these small antennas are being put on you know let's say private property but i i imagine when they installed our 5g that we have a small antenna outside like is that something that the town gets notified of and then would be required to inform others of as well so i'm just curious um you know if there's an extra burden for our town to then have to find out what the what the companies are doing you know with very small antennas that are related to private property and i just don't know the answer it's that's my question it's not a lobbying one way or the other i'm just not sure i don't demore i don't know for sure about this lizzie but i don't think it's as simple as that that people can just go putting 5g things privately on their property because i think there's a lot of infrastructure involved a lot of infrastructure involved so i think it's a town thing and i don't think like one person in the town can get 5g nobody else i'm pretty sure that's the case i'm not positive that i just said the truth but i think i did um and the other thing i just wanted to say about the uh small things um they're not so small i mean there are these things that are on telephone poles or anywhere in front of a house but if there's nothing to put it on they can put them in right in front of houses without people there's a picture that got sent around just a couple weeks ago of this couple in texas i think who woke up one day to find a giant thing right on their front lawn i mean this big giant rectangular thing and that had something to do with 5g they didn't know about it they didn't ask about it they i mean did nobody ask them it was really hideous there's there's a lot of infrastructure involved and it also includes you know cutting down trees and just all kinds of things that are involved with setting up infrastructure for 5g it's very complicated and and awful actually you mean they could just put that on somebody's private property without any yes apparently that's what's been happening apparently yes i mean that's where my question comes in like has 5g i remember when ec fiber came in they're like hey we've now got 5g here and we have we have 5g and we we have i don't know a lot about how this works but like for example you know dan or dune or pat did did did ec fiber come to you all and say we want to extend 5g down this street that's in rochester and so then you know would that be i just don't know you know which kind of level of antennas we're talking about i guess so that's why no no no could i could i just answer that the ec fiber does fiber optics they would have nothing to do with 5g and that's certainly not at this point they're the opposite of 5g you want you want fiber optics to your house you get fiber optics to your house you're really lucky you get the best safest clearest reception and um that's what that's what everybody should be going for that's not the same as 5g 5g is wireless but that might come with the complication ec fiber provides us with what they market as 5g wireless in our house so i i just don't understand which parts this you know this notification would apply to and that's why the language to me it raises some concerns about what exactly are we are we are we applying it to if that makes sense yeah um mary mary mograph do you want to go next over our time limit pardon me are we over our time limit no we're not doing a time limit on a topic okay i'm sorry pardon me yep um go ahead mary sorry um we also have ec fiber and when it was installed we had a dead spot which was right where our television was and the normal hookup for ec fiber is 4g the guy came out spent all morning here and he put he gave us a second option and that is labeled 5g and i said the same thing i said this is 5g uh like we're hearing about um that's going to go up on telephone poles he said no it's totally different it allows for a stronger signal in a shorter distance which is pretty much what 5g will be it is all about when they they have strong signals that go from one telephone pole to another but this really has nothing to do as deb says with um with the 5g um system that that everybody is talking about that would be external that would be for cell phones primarily that's my understanding all right thanks mary um mark did you want to go in uh yes there's some confusion about the terminology 5g um the 5g that ec fiber is talking about refers to um a wi-fi signal uh frequency there that is a 5 that's a 5g in that case refers to 5 gigahertz it has to do with routers in the house um it's uh um it's a faster it's a faster wi-fi than was previously used which is sometimes called 2.4g it's unfortunate confusion but it has absolutely nothing to do with 5g cellular systems there's they're completely different so there's no so easy fiber is not connected in any way with a 5g cellular service thank you mark nice to have somebody who knows what he's talking about thank you my addition on that then is you'd have to find a way to make that clear so that somebody doesn't come to our select board and say our neighbors have a that this teeny tiny 5g antenna why wasn't i notified about that because that's related to something different if that if that makes sense all right um sounds like we've got as many questions as we have answers there but like folks look like you're ready to move on that's the last article that we were going to go over during the informational meeting and now we'll move into the regular select board meeting