 I can start this like we're meeting where July 6, 2021. Other businesses to the agenda must be going to change. Just, I'd like to add a brief discussion on the. We follow up there. CD fiber. You know, fiber optics or whatever. Any particular body. Any where on this. It's CB isn't boy. CB. CB. Yeah. Yep. Okay. And could we add an item to approve the minutes of the. June 21st. Session where. Well, we can discuss that. You can just add it under consent. Yes. Which I say basically the man should indicate who attended at the meeting was held and what. Purpose of the board training and that no actions were taken. I dropped those today. I forgot to do it. Okay. Okay. All right. I make a motion to approve the agenda. As amended. Second. Any further discussion. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Consent agenda items minutes from June 7th meeting. In the addition of the minutes from June 21st. So. We just make a. I make a. Amendment to the that the June. Thank you. That the meeting. The training was attended. By all five members. Of the select board. The. Town manager, Bill Shepplett and the town clerk. Carla Lawrence. And the. Purpose of the board training was. To discuss. Issues of. Inclusion diversity center. And we didn't take any action. Consent. Make a motion. Make a motion to approve the consent agenda items. Second. Any further discussion. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any further discussion. On to public. 703. Allow five minutes for the public to speak in any item that is not currently on the agenda. If we could limit discussion to two minutes a person in case we have more than one person. That would be great. Anyone hoping to speak this evening. Move on to our next item. Can we go right to conservation commission, even if we're early? So. I go to that. Just make sure it's on. Yeah, so the. Check check. Is really for the people in this room. Kind of talk toward. Out here. That's where people there will be able to hear. And that's ran. That's. That's for. My name is Alan Thompson. Chair of the conservation commission. Thank you. Today, Tracy Sweeney's in the. Audience and Billy big door and perhaps others are also. In attendance here. Just wanted to give. Our group a chance to. Introduce ourselves and introduce what we've been working on. The last time we spoke, which has probably been over a year. From now. The strongest concerns that we've had. And we've been dealing with. Even longer has just been. Land use and land fragmentation. That. Greatest initiative that we've been dealing with is shoots. The Hill wildlife corridor. And our. The Waterway conservation commission's partnership. And partnering with other organizations to help bring the shoots. The Hill wildlife corridor to. The general public has been continues to be a good success. Rather dormant over the last. Year, but. At the end of. 2019 and early 2020. We had successfully helped to. Conserve and have easements donated. On. A few hundred acres worth of property. Over four properties. And with the partnership. Which includes. Waterway conservation commission. Stoke conservation commission from land trust nature. Conservancy. Fish and wildlife. And. And stolen trust as the primary leaders. We are. Re-initiating some planning phases to help kick off another kind of. Round of. Priority projects. Our role in that is really. Engaging. In educational offerings. We had hosted many public events. Prior to 2020. Three or four a year. And that was mainly our role in organizing. Those projects. And. We had also this last year work to. Create and draft. Zoning regulations for to be considered for the. Zoning rewrite. And those included. More specific recommendations. For the shoots for the wildlife corridor. Currently those are in the hands of the planning commission. For consideration, but we hope that. The planning commission. And subsequently the select board in town. Will consider. The shoots for the whole wildlife corridor as a. Important place. For wildlife and to use as a framework to think about. Land connectivity. Within the town. Wildlife can be a. Kind of synonymous with our own use of the landscape. Where. Bear. Deer moose have a place to roam. Those same spaces are used by. Recreationalists and hunters. And loggers. Forsters. And so we. Have been using the shoots for the whole wildlife corridor. Because of its. Strength and popularity as a way to think about land fragmentation. For the last few years. This year. I'm sure you're aware that. Real estate has. Real estate transactions have been. Different. And new to us all prices are high. And. There's been a lot of land sales that have been going on. And. We haven't necessarily seen that subdivisions. Have been. A result of the land transactions. But when land sells high. Price. In order to. Recoup that price land subdivision. Is going to be quick to follow. Over the last year we've seen a lot of folks. Kind of. Reinvest their time outdoors. Boating and hiking and hunting have. Really, really increased. The conservation community. Has. Heard from a lot of. Of waterway residents with their concern about. Kind of the state. Of. Of water barriers. Land resources and the availability of the use of. Of. Our wild spaces. Similarly. Waterbury. Land owners. Who. Have increased interest in things like. Their own recreation or carbon storage and climate change. Are. Thinking. I'd say more proactively than we've seen in the past. In. Their interest for conserving their own land. And so we. We even in this last year have been receiving many calls. Or. Five to 10. Emails or phone calls with Alan. Or dear conservation commission. I want to conserve my land. What are the options. And we. As a municipal organization don't have a lot of. Direct resources to offer. Landowners but we have kind of. Networking and. Sharing of information. And so we help those landowners. Guide a process given phone numbers and contacts. A lot of town forest questions. Can. Waterbury have a town forest. Can my property be a town forest. That continues to be of interest for. Waterbury residents. Especially from those who seek additional. Recreational offerings. Other land related. Interests. Are as the hope Davey. Disc golf. Issue that I'm sure you've heard about. We've we've been. A little bit on the back seat in our involvement with that. Recreational. Recreation committee. Is seeking our involvement in that. Were I personally having a hard time figuring out how best. That. How to navigate that situation because organizations is. A little new to me and probably new to everybody here. Who has the responsibility to do what. To identify environmental concerns. We've been asked to do by the recreational committee. But. Not really knowing what the purpose of that park is. Has been a difficult. Place for our conservation commission to decide. How to. Evaluate environmental issues when we don't necessarily say well. We also want this space to serve. XXXXX. So. Maybe this is a message to encourage. The select board to think about. Creating a little bit of a. More of an organized structure around hope Davey. To help help with that help facilitate. Who has. The authority to do what to control. Were. Involved in water quality testing. Of. Thatcher brook and Winooski river. As part of. Friends of the Winooski river. To test essentially for the impacts of road salt. And our waterways. No. Results yet. But. It's. Speaking from. Personal experience. It's kind of a marine environment. On the roads. At times. And salt is a. Can cause some serious environmental issues for our waterways. And downstream habitats. I doubt that has kind of town wide interest. But the conservation commission is. Is thinking about road salt. And on our roads. Our. Education interests continue to be focused around. Land. Fragmentation. Land use. And land health. Invasive plants have long been an interest of ours. Keeping our public engaged about. How to keep. Our forests healthy or our. Farm fields healthy. And invasive plants out of those spaces. Where possible. I think. I think that's a good summary of our. Activities to date. And using those as. A general themes for what we're hoping to do in the future. We have. A full. Almost a full commission. With a few open seats. With one new board member. This year. Which is great. We've kind of maintained a strong presence over the last. Few years. Always welcome for more. And certainly more input. And. Certainly available to help. Think through. Complex issues that includes. Environmental issues natural resource issues. Our mandate is. Rather widespread includes. Cultural and recreational. Issues as well. But our work today is mainly. Focus on natural resources. But we're here to serve and. If you have any. Requests of us will be happy to entertain. Questions. Being a former commission member. I don't have a lot. I just want to commend you guys. I think it's good and really healthy. That the commission is kind of turned over, you know. For a while it was getting a little. Little stale, which is always. You know, it's a healthy thing to turn over. You get new perspectives. I think it's really good. I like Mike edges. Article about invasive. In the old newspaper, I think that was really important. And I think. We're trying to do our part with the new mowing. You know, that may help a little bit with. Some of the invasions and. I know I support, you know. You know, all of your activities. Thank you. Thanks. Thanks for coming tonight. Yeah, I have a couple of questions. One that. He's probably sitting there. The fishing game. That's part of the court. What is the story with that. Maybe we could. Well, I don't know anything about it. Privately owned. 20 acres. When this, you know, when any real estate sign goes up, I. Generally take notice. And. It's been there for a while. Why that hasn't turned over. I'm not sure it's a nice piece of property. But it is part of the corridor. It's part of our. So the shoots will help wildlife corridor. Is essentially a 10,000 acre box. State land on the east and west. And kind of. Develop land on north and south. And within that 10,000 acre box. Are. Tendrils of connected for us that we've considered. Priority corridor areas. And within those corridor areas. We've decided that. Is where investments can be. Spent. That's where we're targeting our land conservation. Education efforts. And hopefully being. Using those areas in our. Zoning. Zoning regulations. In that parcel is an efficient game club. And the energy mill area. Those wetlands and that forest. Is a part of that priority. Coror. Within the shoots will help. Coror. And then Mike mentioned the mower. I guess my question is how do we. Work with the commission. I'm sure there's already work being done. But what is that route of. On. Identifying an invasive species like that. Not weed. And then understanding a strategy. And utilizing the equipment that we can. Help provide. And work. How does that all. Play out. Typically. One way to do it is that. Vermont A&R has training. For municipal crews on. Planting invasive plants. So the select board can mandate. Or recommend that the. Town highway department. Sends employees. To those trainings. Another way to do it is once informed. About what invasive plants are. Is to. In the case of roadside invasive plants. We only have. We can only manage it right away. So it's not. You know you can mow the right way. The right way to do it. Being aware of flowering times. And mowing times is. Is it really important. The mowing. You know when the mower idea came up. We were thinking mainly about. Wild chervil and wild parsnip. Along Little River Road. And preventing that spread up the road. Mowing. Before those go to seed. Is essentially the task. And nobody except. The town highway department is going to be able. To schedule themselves and their mowing. Timing. When to do a little bit of a road and others. And other places will flower differently. So they have to be aware of it. And. Put it in their back pocket as. To help them schedule their own mowing. And I know that was discussed because we were. Just leasing it previously and we couldn't time the flower. So we have. We own the machine now. We have moved up our mowing. We used to rent it in the middle of the summer. And a lot of those plants that already flower. Before we mow. We're mowing. At least twice now. And. We're trying to mow for those particular species. And you're right. I mean we've got. A 50 foot right of way. And of that 50 foot right of way. We're mowing. Maybe six feet or. Eight feet on your side of the shoulder. That's as far as it. And I think probably the idea with that. And you can correct me if I'm wrong. Is just. Preventing those plants from. Going to seed. Because they're right along the road. They tend to be able to be carried with equipment. And vehicles. People even walking through there. So. Getting those seeds. Before they go to seed. It's been important. But as Alan just said. You can see it on. In particular. The trouble. There. But. Below the road. Right. And. Some places it's really important to do it. In that kind of first or second week of May. Which is. In the case of other vegetation. It's a very early time to mow. It's not a very. Productive time for vegetation. Necessitated second. At least a second. To kind of just create line of sight and safe. Road travel. So we mow. Most of the road sides have had a double pass. Now that. To mow down these invasives. Gone through. You know it's not. It's more efficient to go with the mower and just mow. With the mower head. And just keep going. And extending out so. We go through and mow right next to the road and then. A couple weeks later. You know we get through the circuit and come around and then mow. The. The next swath outside of that. And we've done that for these early mowing. And. And you know. From the perspective of maintaining a roadway. You don't want trees or shrubs and things like that growing up. So we. Last year I think we mowed again later in the year. But. We've got that. Scheduled so. We're doing what we can. Municipal crews related to invasive plants. Effect. Also affect the spread of invasive plants through. Moving earth. Fixing fixing ditches and even. Kind of spreading early winter sand. Especially. The both of our sand piles. Have. The same pile behind the. Train tracks in the same pile. Have. A tremendous amount of invasive plants. Especially. Coming up the sides. And if that sand. Goes into a truck and goes on the road. We'll have frag mites. The next growing season. And the frag mites in particular. Is an extremely detrimental plant to have. In both. Kind of a natural ecosystem. But also a kind of a land use environment. If it gets that gets into your hayfield. And you hope to grow grass. Or anything. You're done. And it's no accident that most of the frag mites. That's in town. Is within a very close radius of that. Sand pile. And it probably was brought there because. That frag mites was in the source pit. That where we got that same in the first place. But so being aware of how the stuff. Moves. Is is one of the first parts. Of all that. Alec had done a really good job. Of fixing that. Sand pile. And that pile. Because it was really close to the water for a while. And not weed and barberry were kind of coming. The peripheries of that side. And so. I was pleased to see the changes there. But. In our training. Changing the mowing. And if we're going to move earth. That has contaminated soil. It can't go. Back into. Back into. A space that you don't want it to grow. Because it's going to grow. It's a challenge. Is no question about it. It's hard to control. It's in a lot of places. We try that sand pile. In the center. It's mostly. On the lower portion of the sand pile. It grows up. And we take most of the same out. From. Side that's closer to the highway garage so. We're. Not actively. Trying to work in that. For a mighty section of it. But it gets through. It's no question. You just don't know. Right. In terms of salt use we have discussed it. Not just from a cost perspective but environmental concerns. We know it. I don't think it would be maybe good. To get more education on that. As a poor. The environmental component to salt use and what other options. Maybe out there. As long as safety is no. First. I think that there's a lot of discussion we've had about. That's where the challenge is because again. I mean. You know sand is. We don't. Add salt to our sand. So there's not a lot of. Additional salt in the sand. But. When you spread sand instead of salt. And that ends up. On the shoulder of the road. And then it ends up in the ditches and in the streams. You know the. Sand has a. Really. Significant impact that it. You know if you silt up. Gravel beds in Brooks. Then the fish are going to have. You know the invertebrates have a tough time. But. That goes all the way up the food chain. In the. In the. So it's it's a challenge. And I know Chris isn't here tonight. But. These are the mind that we shouldn't. Maybe we shouldn't put anything. Just let people. It's winter and drive. This. I would say that everybody needs to. Figure out the impacts of salt. I think folks are aware that it has an impact. To the extent. Of the extent of that impact is generally unknown. So we're interested in. And learning a little bit more about it ourselves. It's. It's a safety risk. Salt works. And. The impact of salt on all kinds of water. Natural resources. Wells, etc. It's all not good. And that's what we have discussed extensively. On, you know. Mitigating what our use of salt might might be. And. It's a it's a it's not an easy issue. You know. You know, I have definitely, you know. Environmental concerns over the use of, you know. Use of salt. I'm a little bit like. Yeah, maybe we should all need to slow down a little bit. But. I also don't think there sometimes you just have to apply salt. You know. Just for a safety aspect. And then we have. Along. We've got town or state roads here that probably are going to. Change your salt behavior anytime soon. Right. And some of those. State roads have a greater impact on the environment than the town. Right. They're using those brines and stuff like that. Closer to waterways. Closer to some of our. Exactly. And less use. Less paved surfaces on the town roads. But I was talking to my kid. Is about that. And he said we don't put salt on the roads to melt the roads. We put enough salt in. In the same bits so that they don't freeze. So that we could move. That's not correct. No. I'm pretty. I don't think we have salt to the sand anymore. We used to add salt to the sand to prevent it from freezing. I said that last fall. And I was told. That we don't do that. We do apply salt directly to. Paved roads. When we. When we. When we apply salt we do not. Apply salt to gravel roads because. It permeates through down. You know. The surface and it would really tear up those roads. So. Salt does not go on gravel roads. We use it on paved roads and the challenge of course is. With warming. You know salt doesn't really work. All that well if it's below. You know if it's 20 degrees. So. Is more of a race. It is. But. It's that. 32. Degree snow and it's really greasy and if you don't. You know put some salt on it can be very slippery. So. It's finding the balance point. How many members are on the commission right now. It's great. I'm going to throw out 7. Of 9 seats. 7. 7 9 seats to open seats. Have you had any troubles recruiting. Most. Most boards are having problems. 7 we've been at 7. We've we for the last 5 years. We've been at or above 7. And we even. We even added. To change your bylaws to add a couple of seeds to account for. Growing interest. Okay. Growing interest and also. Probably. Yeah, you know just getting more bodies. At the table. We thought was helpful, especially considering that there are some days when folks. Have other things to do. So just one last thing. From from me. Just so you folks. Mullet over. You talked a little while ago about. Town forest. Can we have a town forest. Open land. You know. Just to remind everyone. Why is. About 60% owned by. The state. Forest and. What's the other one. Forest. 60% of the land area and water is already. In. Forest or. State control that way. And I'm not suggesting at all that we shouldn't be worried about the other. 40%. Where we all live because connectivity. Anything else, but. I sometimes people are surprised at that. The amount of. Open land that we have, which is. In those state forests. But with regard to. You know town forests. I worked in a town before that had one. Why bring. Does not have. Town forest per se. But. It's open and available to the public for recreation. But. As you indicate, there's more and more pressures. So all of these open lands and people. The. Recreational opportunities that. People are seeking. Much. More high intense uses. When I first moved to. People would go up into the watershed. They might cross country ski. There's a lot of so showing up there. There was a lot of people that would go up and hunt. I used to go up there and fish. But now. There's mountain biking. There's really high intense. Uses for. In cross country ski. But. The. Recreational opportunities that people are seeking. Much. In cross country skiing. And just to let you know. The commissioners, the elected commissioners. Are starting to reach out. Maybe you've had a conversation with Dan. Sweet about this, but we're. We're talking with the people from water. Because. And it spills over a little bit to the whole dating. Discussion is that. Having. Ownership. And multiple. Different people wanting different. Different uses of the same property is difficult. To manage. And. You know, Mark and I were in a meeting last week. And. You can have all the regulations and rules that you want. But if there's nobody out there to kind of. Police it and enforce it, it's it's difficult. So. I'm just letting you know that. I'm not here to say we shouldn't have a town for us. But. One of the other things that. I think it would be good if the conservation commission. Would consider is. How do we manage these public lands that we already own. For. Conservation. Good land use. Management practices and first and foremost that. 480 acres that. If I don't it's a water. It's the public watershed for. For the. Thousand. Water customers that this community has and. We've got a. You know, we've got forest management. We've got a watershed management plan. These are all public documents already in place. And. Trying to. Balance. What those properties are intended for. Why they were purchased in the first place. And also be welcoming to the people that want to. Use it. For recreation. It's becoming more and more of a challenge. And I just. Want all of you folks. To know about that. Agree. And it's an intimidating challenge. And the hope David. Proves. Very challenging. We don't. It is. You say your number one if you had one issue. That you would pick as your top issue. What would you say that would be. Land fragmentation. Land fragmentation. Building. The. We're still. You know. I think it's mainly because of our. Interest and strengths as a commission. To. We don't the conservation. Doesn't have currently have any authority over. EFUD properties. Over any parks in town. Our involvement in recreational. Committees or recreational activities is. Is. Pretty passive. And we don't have a designated role. Any of that stuff. We we haven't. We've only been recently asked to participate with hope David. That's kind of the first. Partnering opportunity that we've. We've taken advantage of. Then. Or been asked to do. And so we would certainly welcome. Playing a role in thinking about. The watershed. Or other other spaces. And you know just to throw another twist. Almost. All of that. Stuff. You know it's not even in. So. Does the commission. Have any. Issues with the reservoir use. Because. I know I've seen I'm a user of the reservoir. And over the last several years. I think the pandemic has. Accelerated. The. I don't know if you want to call it overuse of. Of the reservoir. But we're seeing more and more use and more and more conflicts. At the reservoir. Have you even talked about. Anything of that. It's probably safe to say that conservation. Has not. I'm a I'm a neighbor to an access. Yeah. Spot. And conflicts abound and my use has. Dramatically. Been impacted quite negatively. The conflicts. Mostly are where. Our vehicular conflict. There's not a lot of. Very accessible access points. The ones that there are get overcrowded. I mean. I use the reservoir quite often myself. And. I've always been pretty happy once I get out on the water. It's you know there's people right. But you can. I can go places. Fish. And. Exactly. I remember the quiet use things you people. Wanted to have quiet use on July 4th and 3 o'clock in the afternoon. You go out any morning. Between 6 to 8 o'clock you. You could have the reservoir almost to yourself. We. We don't. We haven't spent any time on it. But. Okay. Thank you. Before we wrap up is there anything we can help your group with. From a board perspective. I appreciate the question. I think knowing that. Private landowners. In particular have a growing interest in. In conserving their property. And finding solutions for those landowners is. Is. Something that the conservation commission is helpful with. Is. Interested in helping with. It's of the municipality. Can help by. Providing just. Verbal support. For that concept. A lot of organizations won't want to concern. Take an easement or take a donation of land. Unless it's supported by the town. And that might come through a letter from the select board. It might come through evidence with the tech within the town plan. It could come through financial support. As a financial match. Where a conservation project. Requires X amount of dollars. And some of that needs to be. Come from. From the municipality. We I hope that we will have. Some zoning regulations come in front of the town. And. We will need the select board's support. On. Considering. Increased. Regulation on land that protects wildlife corridors. Particularly shoots will help wildlife corridor. So. Does that create a new. Map designation. On the zoning map. Yes. I think what we're proposing to do is. Is modify. The ridgeline hillside. And slope district. And expand that to our. To include our shoots of the wildlife corridor. Priority areas. Very similar. Language but it would expand the jurisdiction of that. Which tends to be a density. Limitation. Minimum maker size. Yep. In. The land owners. That's other kind of qualifying statements. Like no one do adverse impact on. Wildlife habitat. Or wildlife corridors. And that that becomes a challenge. When. Landowners. Either on the periphery. Of. The municipality or within a forested ecosystem. Want to build a house. And that house requires road. It requires power and it requires. And you got cut trees. And. Fragment forest. And we would ask the conservation commission. Asks that. That development gets cited in a way that minimizes. That impact. Or in some cases has no. Undo adverse impact. How hard is it to create a rule book. For. Land owners to understand. And select boards. I think that versions of that rule book already exist. In. Probably. Steep slope. I know for hillside it's like. Sight lines. Steep slope. Maximum slope. The rule book. Is not certainly not specific to water. Or the shootsville hill wildlife corridor. But it is. But it does apply to wildlife habitat. And wildlife corridors. And generally to the idea of fragmentation. And how. Municipal language and municipal regulations. Can and have been used to protect. Fragmentation. Protect against fragmentation. It's an A&R guy. A&R. VNRC. Was either a joint author and something. But. I can help. Links or copies of those documents. Ultimately it's in the hands of the DRB. To kind of. Determine. And. Deal with. Project when they come to the table to. Not only. Pay attention to wildlife corridors. And the language in the existing. Regulations. But understand what that means. And know how. How residential development. Commercial development impacts those resources. It's not easy. Not everybody knows. I'm not going to write a book. I think. I don't have any questions. Thank you very much for coming tonight. Appreciate. Everything you're doing. If we can. Help please. I think. I'd like to understand more about. Especially the salt. Conversation as we. Plan for winter. We didn't use much last winter. So. You said you were doing some testing. Right. Well, we are doing testing. Yep. We just started. Yeah. Yeah, we were. Yeah. A question of procedure and open meetings. Are we back to mandatory. Open meetings. Yeah. And how about this technology. And how about this option. Per. Per commission. Your only requirement is to have a. Physical meeting place to be there. Somebody has to be here. So one commission. One could be there and everyone could be on zoom. If he ever showed you. Thanks everybody. Thank you. Thanks. Yeah, thanks. Select for business. Okay. Yeah. Continue discussion. At our. Two meetings ago about the event at Murphy's barn. On August 7th permit. Yeah. So this is actually different. They have the event. That you gave the permission for in June. No issues with it. This is. Just the second event. So. Yeah. Staff's recommendation. Approve it. There was no issues the last time. Similar hours. Yeah. Five to eight. With. 75 minutes show. Estimated attendees. Same. I think. I think it's the same. Okay. Okay. Second. Motion. Make a motion to approve the entertainment permit for an event at Murphy's barn on August 7th. Okay. Second the motion. It's been moved in second. Any further discussion. All those in favor, please say aye. Hi, hi. The. Just try to remember that. That's. The permit for Waterbury Arts Fest on September 10th. And 11. Karen. Our W. Arts Fest. September 10th and 11. They'll be. We're requesting permission to close Dose Street to particular traffic from Maine to Union and railroad. As well as bid well line to foundry from. 10 a.m. on fries to pretend to. 5.30 p.m. Sunday, Saturday, September 11th. They will communicate with all the residents. They will kick off the festival with a Friday night block party. At 5 p.m. Live entertainment till 9.30. They're requesting a half hour extension to the noise ordinance for that evening. It's part of the block party. There will be tent space on Stoge Street for a beer garden. And they'll be directional signs. Entry points to town directing people to specific municipal parking locations. So this is really just a return to normal. We have had this arts fest for a number of years. It's pretty typically been in July. Because of the pandemic. They weren't sure exactly when things were going to reopen. So they scheduled it for September. You know, there's not been issues with this that had a few, you know, there's, there's always a few complaints from people who live in the neighborhood in particular. A few years ago, there was a little bit of a dust up. The complaints were a little bit more vocal. And Karen Nevin was concerned about that. And it has really worked hard since then to try to be a lot more outward thinking when it comes to the people that live and work in that community. So she's actually developed kind of a template in terms of going out and need to communicate with these people by this time. And I actually took that template and shared it with the people from the car show so that they could go out and do what they want. So I don't think this is a problem and we shouldn't do that. This is the cover, but she has a whole packet of how everything's going to work. Kinding of stuff. Just kind of curiosity. Why was the extension of time for no other reason? Just because we need to celebrate some more. I'm just curious. Yeah, I can't even remember. She references the noise ordinance and it might go to 9.30 or something like that. So I didn't go and look this up. So I have a little problem, I think. I have to recuse myself because I might beat the beer garden. You are? So you can't? You can't? I don't think I should vote on something that's financially... We can bring it up again in the next meeting. At least there's time. Except for that, you won't have any issues with it. I mean, it sounds like it's almost the same thing we've done for the last number of years except for last year. Yeah. Okay. Next meeting. See, discuss road closure, Rotarian wage July 19th, 9.15 a.m. to 10.45 a.m. The closure will allow for a ceremony to celebrate the return of Amtrak service. Right. So it's pretty self-explanatory. That's the first day that Amtrak service will resume after being shut down since March of 2020. There's been a couple of test trains that have come through the community in the past three months or so. I've seen two or three of them. So they're going to come through Waterbury. I think the train is supposed to arrive at 10.15. They're going to have some people from the state and potentially I know there'll be people from Amtrak here. I'm just going to have a little celebration in front of the railroad station at Rotarian Way. I sent an email to Ann today and Barbara's going to help find that out if you haven't already. But this is the second event return of Amtrak service that I'll have been involved in. There was an interruption. I can't remember which year. I don't remember why. Rebecca Ellis was chair of the select board. And Shulman was governor. I don't think so. But we'll figure it out. That's not for no anyway. Are they just doing the Waterbury or is there one in Essex and one in Montpelier? I'm not sure. The more celebrations they have, the later the train will be. Who's putting the ceremony on? Is it Amtrak or RW? The Amtrak will be involved. But I think the idea is that all of this stuff starts at 9.15. And it's pretty much over when the train arrives. When the train goes. The event will be. Lisa says that there's celebrations at every stop. That's what I thought it might be. Is the work they're doing in downtown Burlington. Is that Amtrak? Because right now you can't get to downtown Burlington. You end up in Essex. That's a whole different line. That's going to go from Rotten to Burlington. Different tracks. Any further discussion? We'll take a motion. Take a motion to approve the road closure. Taringway July 19th between 9.15 and 10.45 for the Amtrak celebration. Is there a second? Second. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Discuss road closure. Stowe Street August 28th. August 27th. Sorry. It's informed. Stowe Street August 27th. 4 to 8 p.m. This closure is to commemorate the 10 year anniversary of Tropical Storm Irene. And the end of a decades long reconstruction effort. Normally the completion of Main Street reconstruction. So again, self-explanatory. I spoke with Bart Farr back right after the new year. And said, you know, this is the 10th year since Irene. We've had a lot of stuff going on. So R.W., she and Karen at R.W. talked about this. And I think it makes sense. The Main Street reconstruction project, if you haven't noticed, has been finished by June 30th, which was the original intent. It is scheduled to go out through the end of August now, I believe. And the reason why it's going out through the end of August is because of the month and a half or so that they lost at the beginning of 2020 when the governor wouldn't let even construction companies work until the end of May. So they're finishing up the Main Street project. But there's a lot that has happened in this community since the flood. Obviously we cleaned up from the flood. The state complex was torn down. They built the $140 million complex over there. We built this building. We built the roundabout. We replaced bridges over the interstate bridges. We reconstructed Route 2 in Bolton. We reconstructed Route 100 to Stowe. And we reconstructed Main Street. And every single year there's been something big going on here. So this will just allow us to kind of take stock of where we were and where we are now and say, great. Great. This is also an RW? Yes. RW is taking the lead on it. The town's involved as well. But we have that. Okay. Motion? Yeah. I enthusiastically make a motion to approve a road closure on Stowe Street on August the 27th from 4 to 8 p.m. for the commemorate the 10th anniversary of Irene and our decade-long reconstruction of our town. Second. Okay. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Great. Just remember your call. I'll put it on the calendar. Item E, discuss additional racial equity training. As we discussed earlier in the consent agenda items recently, the board went through some racial equity training. I think we all agree that more could be had, but it was a great first step. So you have Bill, you said you followed up with Mary on that? Yeah. So even before the training that you had on the 21st of June, Mary and I had talked about the possibility of a prospect that there might need to be more than one session. And without going into details, you were all there on the 21st and the other two board members who aren't here tonight were both there. And while Mary had a pretty well laid out agenda for a variety of reasons, all of which I think were good, you kind of veered off that and you talked about things that were kind of prescient that you felt you needed to talk about as a board and as individuals. So the classical training, if you will, that she had prepared was not delivered, so to speak. I think Mary thinks it would be helpful if you would agree to meet again and allow her to kind of take you through the agenda that she had set up. Obviously, I think it's safe to say that free-wheeling is acceptable that she's not here to just say, look, we've got to get through these items and we can't fear off. It's kind of a dynamic fluid event and I think she thought it was very much worthwhile. So she has penciled in your next meeting, July 19th, as another training night. Initially, when I had talked to her about that, is the 19th their next training? Is that a one? Yes. Okay, all right. Because we had thrown out some other dates as well. There was some talk between Mary and me about, well, is this training something that staff should be involved in? There are other elected officials. There's a whole other municipality, some of those boards that have expressed interest, but I think that from my perspective, and I'm only speaking for myself, given what you did at the meeting on the 21st and where you didn't get at that meeting, I think you should just reserve. If you're going to do more right now, I would just reserve it to yourselves. I think the board could benefit from going through the agenda as she had laid out without having staff involved. I mean, I think this is pretty, it was critical, I think it was very helpful that it was really just the board and Carla and me the other night, there was things that could be said and you didn't have to worry about, you know, as if I would step on somebody's toes, who's a staff member, or a member of an elected body from a different board. So that's the question. A, are you up for additional training? Do you want to take this to the next step? It's your choice. And if so, do you want to do it as early as the 19th or we've got lots of stuff on our agenda to do, just like the 21st, if you can have that meeting, we'll get to it in a minute. You've got this issue with the Harvard Board vacancy and you might have to have, based on the school board's timing, if you want to be involved in the process, you may have to do something on the 19th with that and you could do that and then just move into your training. You can ask Mary, we'd like to do it, but we just, a different date is better. So it's really your choice, but that's where I've been with her. My personal opinion, one I thought the training was excellent. I do like the idea that it was a little freewheeling. People got to express opinions and I think that was good, that we spoke among ourselves and the two town officials. I think like Bill, I would like to continue that, but I don't think the 19th is a good idea for the fact that we have, we have the one article that we passed on today that we couldn't vote upon, so we need to do something on that and I'm almost suggesting that we have something like out of our normal loop of meetings. That's my opinion. So you're doing a completely non-meeting night? Non-meeting night. So we keep on doing the business of the town and this is kind of, I think it's important enough that we have a special meeting for this and it doesn't slow down any progress that we have for any town business, my opinion. I'm off for doing another training. I really liked that one. If we don't do it on the 19th, I'm gone the rest of that week so preferably not during those days. And I don't know if she set up how we were sitting, but I kind of like my personal opinion if we would sit in like a round table kind of thing so we can look, I don't know. She had set that up. Oh, okay. Well, maybe we can bring it up. And just a side note, talking about the school board, have we received any letters of interest from anybody? One. Next on the agenda? Yeah, just... Is there the option of having the training from like four to seven, instead of seven to ten? Yeah, oh yeah. She wanted it. She would, you know, and it might... I think, you know, she's... We talked about that in terms of logistics and, you know, she ended up staying overnight which we ended up paying for. I'm not sure that she would drive back here if it was a four to seven thing, you know, it's, you know, she's got to get here and she kind of joked and says, my days of, you know, driving to a venue and then having the meeting and riding all the way home and kind of over. So it might not make that much of a difference. I haven't explored any other dates with her other than the 19th. The 19th was picked when we were first starting to try to even meet on the 21st. It was just a date that was thrown out there that she had kind of kept. My guess, Katie, is that she's fairly busy and if it's not the 19th, it's probably going to be a little bit further out than that. I don't think it's going to be like the 20th or the 20th. Okay. Yeah, I mean, I think I have similar thoughts of Mike on this except that I do want to not get caught too far down the road. I do think that, you know, there was a discussion that she was going to send us. Did we ever get the training, the training? The slides? Yeah. I don't think she said that. Yeah, so, I mean, I do think that, like, there's work that we're going to all have to do outside of those trainings. And then I am a little concerned in pushing it too far out. I think it's important that we continue and get back onto her training program just to see everything that she was trying to talk to us about. I think I could go either way on this one, but I also don't know the availability of the other two board members and I think it's important that all five of us attend. I'm a little concerned about the four of seven just because if we're in good discussions, like, you know, that backs us right up to another board meeting. Bill's looking. Well, it wouldn't be before year. Yeah, I did. I did. I did. I did. I did. I did. I did. I did. I did. I did. I did. I did. I did. I'm trying not to do it as a substitution for a select board meeting, but an additional date. I'd be in support of I think that's something. Well, so here's the other option. You could, we picked the 19th because it was a select board meeting night and everybody misses once in a while. Chris and Danny aren't here tonight. But the expectation is on the 19th, normally you'd all be available because that's a select board. So if you want, we can keep the 19th for that. We might have to do the Harvard thing. We could meet at 6.30. It depends on how many candidates we get and whether or not you want to interview. So we could do that earlier and then have that meeting. And then just select board meeting on 26 or something. And then just push the regular select board meeting off to the next week. I'd be in support of that. I think knowing that potentially if we say no to the 19th that we're going to be pushing it to August or September. All right. I agree with that. If we have to do it like the 26th or something like that, let's just... And I guess what I'd suggest then is that if it all possible if the board could keep from 6 to 7 available to do the Harvard stuff if we have to, and then start the training with Ferrari. And then if we only have one candidate if we don't need to meet with people we can just inform you that 7 o'clock is fine. But maybe for now we can try that if we have candidates that you want to interview we could do that from 6 to 7. It's okay. No motion needs to be made. No. And we're well outside of the warning period for those meetings. Moving on unless anyone else has anything. Item F. Discuss vacancy on the Harvard board and process for appointing a new member. I guess that's Steve. Could you get Steve because I'd like him to be here for the CD5. It's after this. So I think you all have heard Michael Frank resign from the Harvard board. He was just elected too long ago and I don't really know I've talked with Michael but he's not on the board any longer. The law for filling vacancies allows the school board to fill the vacancy which is a little bit of a I think it's bad law personally because you're going to have the Harvard board members from Watesfield and Warren and other five times other than Waldberg who get the right to choose who Waldberg is represented as and I don't think that's fair but that's what the law is. So the current law leaves the school board with the authority to appoint and they are supposed to seek input from the select board. It doesn't really define what input is but Cory Smith from the school board as well Kate McHallister have both reached out to me they have put those out asking for people to send letters of interest if they are interested they have received what they would like to do is share those letters as they come in with me I can get into the select board and if the board wants to interview those candidates and then make a recommendation you have to accept your recommendation but that's the process that they've kind of laid out I think that's really the best we can do given what the law says right now so there's no action that you need to take tonight if what we laid out a minute ago works for you as these letters come in I'll forward it to you and if we get more than one and you want to interview yes we get closer to the meeting we'll push it into view we don't need to interview and then we'll figure it out as far as morning meetings are you going to throw your hat in the ring though? am I going to? I can't prohibited by law I think you'd be a good fit though oh ok I added in there the cv5 murder that's the next item I just asked Steve to send in on this so several meetings ago at the request of I can't remember the gentleman's name some colleague I right Dwayne Peterson right we had some input on a select meeting about the fact that there's a lot of places in Waterway that don't have really good connectivity as far as internet is concerned and they realized the cv5 was out there and wondered whether the town had any had any affiliation with it and we hadn't so the select board agreed to join and has expressed its willingness to appoint a delegate and an alternate to the cv5 report Steve drew up this nice ad that we've run on the website on front porch form and today nobody including the people who were here at that meeting have volunteered to serve on this board you know I talked to Steve about it he's kind of in the know on this a little bit from some of the other hats he wears with the regional planning commission and the like but like most staff members you know Steve he's already are you the chair of the planning commission now I'm currently chair of the central regional planning commission just now became the chair of the attack so Steve's got the translation advisory committee all of his commitments here with the planning commission and the drv and he's already the talents representative to the regional planning commission and to the transportation advisory commission I don't have anybody I just want you to know that that we're not kind of shortening our responsibility but if people are interested in having this happen having a role we need somebody to go to meet while I'm on one of those roads I'm sure I could probably I don't know if my neighbors are aware of it but I could put it out there that would be great so I think for right now if you do talk to somebody and they express any interest at all the reason I want Steve here at the meeting now is they should contact Steve because he does more information than anybody here in the municipality about this so I mean if someone asked me that you know they're more than willing to do it what is the process from when we did the other day like is it identifying continue to identify the houses in the community that don't have broadband which I'm sure from an educational perspective everything there's a reason for trying to do this but then what is the next what are the expectations that this is it a company or is it a really good company? Well CB Faber is I think a non-profit as I understand it so they meet monthly the board meets monthly they might be a municipality they might be a municipality you're right I may be wrong something like that well there are what's the proper name that the legislature set up for these community broadband there's a name for those types of organizations so they fill that role so they've done a lot mapping and analysis already this fellow Dave Healy who's their representative from Calis I believe is a geographic information system specialist and he has done a lot of mapping and analysis already so I think really a delegate or an alternate alternate delegate would need to be willing to attend a monthly meeting to follow up on any detailed potential projects in Waterbury in terms of advocating for Waterbury with the board and so they wouldn't take any steps forward unless somebody represents Waterbury on these meetings well that's how we become active that's correct they wouldn't take steps forward but Waterbury's interests are not being represented yeah that's a good way and I'm sure I shouldn't say I'm sure but I wouldn't be surprised if there's some talk at these meetings about identifying potential funding sources now with the the American Recovery Act and the potential infrastructure acts that are coming down the pike even though there's arguments whether broadband is should be considered infrastructure or not between Republicans and Democrats you know I think that we're just we just don't have a seat at the table right now and I'm not sure because we don't have a representative they probably know that you don't have service on your road but they also might think that you don't care because your time isn't involved right now so and I think we kind of we kind of miss the boat when this first started taking off and it was really way back while this building was still under construction and there was just there was a lot going on and we had stuff that we were concentrating on and this didn't kind of rise to the surface and it wasn't until folks who came here a few meetings ago said she was you know we could benefit by something from this so just letting you know that nobody raised their hand to say I'm interested in being appointed at this point he suggested that Steve or Bill you give her information to put it around the bottom okay way to publicize it do a short order okay I could do that when they connect these maybe islands of non broadband areas do they allow other people along the way to then because fiber is not up in the center even is it other properties join yeah I know in the discussion that I had with Dave Healy that there is an action of coming into Waterbury Center from Stowe potentially so other than Comcast cable and which is cable obviously and then the fiber that exists that consolidated has that's in the core area there is not fiber so presumably it would be a new service that would end up serving certain areas I mean I live on Ripley Road and I'm a Comcast customer I don't have a big huge need but I have pretty good internet service yeah cable is good would someone like Bill Butler who represents Bob Butler yeah who represents the town would he like to be a good person potentially anyway I just wanted to bring it back to the board's attention that we haven't dropped the ball it's just like nobody has perked up yet so if there is any way you can help get the word out we'll work with Lisa yeah I'll be glad to work with Lisa sure okay that sounds good thank you very well I love that one thankless job well it's all important it's very important but there are a lot of jobs that are volunteer that are just you know people don't run for anymore I guess I always say volunteerism is not dead but it's well I think stretched in is a good way to put it too okay I'll be back sure alright moving on to managers items discuss the American Rescue Plan Act okay we talked about this just briefly a second ago so the American Rescue Plan Act has been passed and signed into law there are a lot of interesting and compelling items that are included in that Act some of the stimulus checks that we've probably got back months ago part of the pre-course to that so for the purpose of tonight's meeting this Act is really the first time since I don't know 1983-1984 1986 I think we were still getting federal revenue sharing which was a direct payment from the federal government to every municipality in the country and President Reagan decided that direct payments from the federal government weren't good it would be better if they made payments to the states in the form of block grants and then the states could divide that money out and that's where the community development block grant funding and program came from when federal revenue sharing was shut down in the 80s all of the federal money that we have received from mid to late 80s through now has always come through the state and the state has been able to add strings and their public policy initiatives get kind of attached to that through this aqua bill which is now law municipalities will receive a direct payment from the federal government that does come through the state treasury but the state doesn't get to put any strings or any kind of caveats on the money so there's going to be $100 per capita that's going to be distributed to the municipalities of this country and that means Waterbury is in line to get almost $540,000 it will come in two payments one probably within 60 days of now and the other likely sometime in the first half of 2022 could be late this year but yes it would be 2022 so I don't want to belabor this but the deal is that federal government will send us this money if the select ward passes a motion to accept it so they're giving times the ability to say no we don't want your money send it somewhere else I hope that we won't do that we have three years to decide how we will use the funding but we have about eight more days to decide to take the money July 15th we have to let the state know that we want the money July 15th I've put together on this agenda that I sent out to you on the night that you have at your tables there's three motions first the select board has to decide to accept the funding if you decide that you want to accept the funding then you have to appoint an authorized representative to contact person for the program I think it's all pretty simple and I would recommend that you do it there are some rules and regulations as to how this money can be used but the best one and the easiest one and the one that I recommend that we will use when we take our money and take it is that it will replace revenues that were lost due to the pandemic and there's a complicated formula they asked you to look back three years and to see if your revenue didn't increase by at least 4.1% per year and if your revenue didn't increase by at least 4.1% per year from 2018 till now they considered that lost revenue so we have actually received less revenue than a 4.1% increase we lost revenue last year so if we take this money and we use it as to replace that lost revenue essentially what we'll do with it is put it into a fund for it separately put it in a single bank account that we have but we'll have to create another fund and then because we'll consider it lost revenue we just get to appropriate it through our normal budgeting process in 2022 so we don't have to come up with what we're going to use to do X, Y or Z we can have these conversations but as a normal part I think it will be quite a simple process and with that I'll stop talking and let you ask a question if you have any and if not ask you to take action on those 3 bullet points Is there any strings that we need to be concerned about? No There's a little bit of reporting requirements that are necessary but there's no we can there are a few things that you can't use it for directly right now but because it's lost revenue from our perspective we have much more free reign over how we're going to use it going down the road and frankly we can pretty much use it for any government project that we want whether it's infrastructure whether it's staffing or what have you but it's pretty easy for us it's really no strings attached If it's no problem can I just consolidate the three into one motion? I think you ought to do three motions just because the direction that we've gotten from the federal government is these three motions need to be acted on so I'm just a John Dewey pragmatist I understand I'll make a first motion I move that the town of Waterbury has its allocation of the coronavirus local fiscal recovery funding from the U.S. Treasury along with the award terms and conditions and assurance of compliance with the civil rights requirements of accepting these funds Second Alright it's been moved and seconded Any further discussion? All those in favor please say aye Aye I move the select board appoint the municipal manager to serve as the authorized representative of the town of Waterbury as required by the coronavirus local fiscal recovery funding from the U.S. Treasury to sign the award terms and conditions and assurances of compliance with the civil rights requirements as of July 6, 2021 Second Second Any further discussion? All those in favor please say aye Aye I move the select board appoint the municipal manager William Sheplup to be the contact person for the coronavirus local fiscal recovery funding award from the U.S. Treasury to the town of Waterbury Move to the second Any further discussion? All those in favor please say aye Aye I got a red light Alright Steve on this one Yeah Steve's coming So we're all set with the coronavirus stuff All done Get it in three What were the revenues lost besides the pool? Well the major one was that you reduced the tax from 55 cents to 51 So that's 320 thousand But then you know they were higher going tax tax delinquency was higher than it usually is in terms of a percentage rate and there were recreation fees that went down I can't remember the zoning fees may have been up a little bit last year Yeah we had a surprising amount of activity it was up a little bit But anyway the tax the tax rate was the big thing Alright So we're moving on to item B Consider reorganization of planning in the zoning department and this is a continued discussion that we had the other week as we're retiring Yeah So pretty straightforward we talked about it a couple weeks ago Martha Staskis came into the planning commission that night to talk about what this would mean Initially Steve about this concept thinking that maybe there was an opportunity to kind of cut spending a little bit wondering if we did some things differently that we could cut back on a number of hours Martha raised some serious concerns about that at that select board meeting there was some general discussion by the select board I spoke with Steve after that and I think that given what he just said that 2020 was a really busy year I think that it was a little bit high in the sky to think that we could really cut that time back I mean the proposal that we have will allow more than one person to actually work on zoning applications whether we actually have two people doing it at the same time is a different issue but I think for for now I'm going forward the idea that we're going to be able to do this with less than two 40-hour full-time people is probably not reasonable to think that they both have Steve's a salaried individual right now so like me there are many weeks that he's putting in 40 hours he's going to board meetings and the like Dina is an hourly employee she tries to she tries to work her schedule so that on the weeks that she has board meetings that she doesn't come into the office and they work quite a bit but there is over time that does happen in Dina's situation and I just think that it's really feasible to do what we're doing with the number of applicants that we have and all that's going on with the planning commission with the the zoning bylaws and things that Alan talked about with the conservation commission so I think staffing levels are going to have to remain right where they are so with that I set out the job descriptions and had conversations with Joe McLean at an attorney to make sure that this concept can work in a town like Wattery because unlike Stowe and Williston who have an organization structure like we're proposing those two communities have charters this structure is spelled out in their charter and they clearly have the authority to do it so I was a little concerned that we might want to follow the law but Joe McLean looked at it and said that he believed it would be okay to do this and that we may now so Steve had written the job descriptions Joe tweaked them a little bit and I think we're all set to go so Dina is her last day is Friday I've already told Steve whether the Select Board approved this organization structure or not tonight he's going to be the active zone administrator at the end of the day Friday and we won't have Dina's position filled for a little bit of time it's not my strategy to in this case take months and months to fill the vacancy with money there will be a little time that goes back and forth in the best case scenario it takes about a month to fill a position so it's probably going to be a little longer so Steve's here I sent out the job descriptions if you have any questions staff's recommendation is that you approve the infrastructure where are you putting these out where are you posting the jobs we haven't done any we haven't ever I know like where are you going to we put the we'll put it in the newspaper we're going to Times Arias we're going to run about we'll probably post it as a job site that we can post to the planners association we have a listserv that we'll publicize it on we're also part of the Northern New England chapter of our association so we'll post it in those areas and try to cast a fairly broad net we really would like to find somebody as planning background as well as zoning as well background I think we've talked before about wanting this to really emphasize customer service and yet it has to be someone with some good technical skills, ability to read plans and that type of thing so I think we're hopeful that we can find someone who has a broad range of skills Bill and I were kidding the other day about how we're really jacks of all trade and we're hoping that this reorganization plan will keep really a teamwork approach where both I'll continue in a number of different roles but this new position would also have some flexibility and be able to focus primarily on zoning we really want to reactivate the enforcement program that we have and also be available to assist with some of the planning functions as well. Alyssa is here as well on the call. We had a follow-up discussion at the last planning commission meeting that I thought was very helpful they had some good comments that have been incorporated in the job descriptions and I know they've advocated for the assistant position to be full-time and I mentioned that the select board and Bill were fleeing that direction as well so I'm on the DRV and I'm pleased to hear what I heard this evening I'm here for this purpose I've served now for about a year and I think the volume of work and the complications of some of the jobs that we're dealing with it's hard for me to fathom that we would be able to function with the current workflow with just one employee the decisions are not simple the subjective appeals they're complicated in a lot of ways regarding the process and I appreciate the notion of trying to be as prudent as we can be in delivering the services but I think we would be dropping the ball if we did not have two qualified people substantially full-time it was never intended to go just to one person Harry but you know right now both Dean and Steve work 40 hours and I had some thoughts that maybe the second person could drop down to maybe 30 or 25 but I think given the current climate as you've been here the whole meeting you know Alan Thompson was talking about real estate is really booming there's there's going to be interest in subdivisions there's a lot of development happening and we're right in the midst of the zoning rewrite that can't be forgotten either because some of that has a lot of impact for that particular property that Alan was talking about the one that you brought up so anyway yeah so the other thing I wanted to add is that in our discussions with Joe McClain the attorney he wanted to make sure that we had an acting zoning administrator position description so I currently serve currently serve as acting zoning administrator I've been nominated and by the planning commission appointed by the select board at the beginning of the pandemic so I can go back into that role under that current appointment but in the future with the current structure we want to make sure that it for any reason one of these people goes on leave or there's a reason why we might need an acting zoning administrator we want to make sure that there's a position description so that's been added to the whole package or reorganization if you will but it's not a reposition no it's not the acting will not be necessary unless for some reason both of the people are absent due to the best to have the job description in place that was very clear with a good description of what the duties were but there's no intention of having three positions I really like the idea that treating this whole thing as a team I think that's one really important to have a team have backup I also think it's good for potential succession that he may not be working that much longer I'm retiring a year from this trying to be kind no that's fine but I think it's really important that there is a potential of the person working for succession also sometimes if we would have that person say as part-time sometimes people truly want part-time work they don't want full-time work so that succession might be kind of potentially interrupted I think the descriptions were well done of the jobs and I'm very much for it the only thing I may want to suggest is we may want to look at advertising in seven days seven days is a really good place for stuff like planning and stuff like that one it's a free newspaper to people to advertise but you know it would be a good place to reach I think the planning types that's a good suggestion good idea otherwise I think you're on the right track good thank you is there a motion involved in this yeah I think we should just move to go forward with the restructuring of the planning and zoning department as recommended by staff so moved second alright it's been moved and seconded any further discussion on the topic all those in favor say hi hi since Dean is not here tonight congratulations Dean on her retirement yeah well she's in the other room ready for the development reviewer meeting tomorrow we're teaming up during your meeting but I'll let her know okay thank you thank you all the time and I found both of my jobs on 7 days so strongly seconded okay thank you thanks right item C consider letter of support for the Vermont employment growth incentive veggie by MTX group perspective new business hoping to locate in the water yes so Mark Emilio of revitalizing Waterbury Alyssa's successor reached out to me last week and told me about this company MTX group and their desire to come and locate in Waterbury they've been working quite heavily with the Central Vermont Economic Development Corporation Jamie Stewart there we are members of that corporation contribute $2,500 a year and they serve as economic development Clearinghouse if you will working with communities and trying to work with the SBA Rural Development I'm sure Mike has much experience working with the regional commissions around the state anyway this company wants to come to Waterbury I don't have a lot of real great information about them I marvel as I get older how much less and less I understand about what companies do out there so they're a company that they have a lot of government contracts they I just took this off of their website this this map and this app this app allows clients to manage the entire case management life cycle from initial contact by internal or external stakeholders through resolution and follow up features robust functionality to configure workflows tailored to business needs escalation paths and centralize all items needed and handling feedback or help cases that's all one sense a highly intuitive system enables all stakeholders in the process the ability to collaborate together and then they list the list of benefits so I don't really understand almost anything that I've read there it's a high tech company they they do systems analysis for big organizations lots of universities a lot of government companies is kind of a list of some of their customers Brown University City of Chicago the business school Iowa Department of Agriculture New York Port Authority State of New Mexico and so on they have a as I put in the memo the other day they have basically if you will corporate co-hit quarters I think one is in New York State and the other I believe is in Texas they're looking to establish some additional regional hubs and they're looking to come to Waterbury if they get this veggie grant which is basically an employment incentive grant that's the way it will be viewed from their perspective so they're hoping to start off with about 100 employees in Waterbury they'll be recruiting people with technical degrees from colleges and universities software engineers and other computer analysts and the like my understanding is the hope is that they will move from 100 employees when they start up to about 250 over a 7 to 10 year period I think the location is likely somewhere in Pilden Park is where they're looking and I sent to you the draft of this letter that I have prepared which basically is telling the Promote Economic Progress Council which is the organization that decides on the veggies that we support this company coming to Waterbury so and is it the belief that this letter will help hopefully they're looking at other cities well from what I understand I had a conversation with Jamie Stewart from the Economic Development Corporation last week and they have decided that if they come to Vermont they're coming to Waterbury this is where they want to be here they haven't said if they don't get this they're not coming but obviously there's incentives for them and the way the grant works kind of I don't know how much it is every year they get measured on progress towards the goals that they had in terms of what they've laid out to the Economic Progress Council and in this case it's a number of jobs and their gross payroll and light and let's just say it's a $50,000 incentive over a five year period after the first year they'll measure and if they hit the target that they're supposed to get in that first year they will get one fifth of their total and then the next year it's kind of it builds upon itself they would get that same money plus some additional money for the second year and then when they're about halfway through the cycle that's when they'll be getting the most money coming from that grant and then as they move forward and they allegedly or theoretically need the incentive less it will go down the bell curve and they'll receive less money so over the five year period they'll get the whole amount of money that they applied for and I'm just $50,000 in five years out of the year I don't know the parameters of this but that's how Jamie explained how it worked so from our perspective it's they're good paying jobs they're people that will be in our downtown presumably some of them are going to want to live here and the company is excited about Waterbury because of where it's located and all the things that all of us already like about being here and it's an attractive place for young professionals who they hope to be recruiting for these jobs so I can't tell you that it won't cause some unforeseen problems down the line in terms of growth and you know I've already heard how tight the housing market is and everything else but it I think there's a lot of potential benefits for us just I just thought that's what I just did I just looked up their business rating and they're rating A plus which is to me is real because there are companies like this that are very much smoke and mirrors and usually the BBB rating if it's if it is a more marginal company won't be that high so that gives me a lot of comfort and we love good paying jobs here in Waterbury that's what our community needs it's exciting to hear that I'm assuming these were offices that were previously Greenland coffee roasters I think so it's nice to see infill I think I need a motion for the signature on the letter that we received right I make a motion to approve the letter of support drafted by the town manager for the veggie employment growth incentive grant for MTX and authorize authorize bill shepliff second second any further discussion all those in favor please say aye aye I like the acronym veggie all right Stowe Street bridge schedule alternatives presentation okay so the bridge at the top of Stowe Street that comes off of room 100 ends at Lincoln Street functionally obsolete structurally has some issues that we've dealt with over the past number of years we did some debt work there a while ago we had to do some refurbishing of the structure that takes the sewer line across that bridge anyway we have this bridge has been on the radar screen for the town and the trans and the regional planning commission for a number of years and we're moving towards getting something done we're still a long way away from construction but just as the agency of transportation came in I think it was sometime in 2020 to talk about the bridge on route 2 that goes across Little River at some point here not too long they will fall and start working on that they have been analyzing this bridge and they have come up now with a proposal part of their process is to have an alternative presentation to the select board we've chosen Monday August 2nd which is a regular select board meeting night probably take a half an hour or so and tells me that it's a 176 page report that has been boiled down to a 40 page or less executive summary so they're going to talk to you about what the alternatives are to replace that bridge how they might go about doing it and then they'll tell you what their recommendation is and then also tell you what that's going to mean in terms of detours, pedestrian access so you have to agree to allow them to hold the meeting so that's really what I'm asking to do tonight is to just agree that on August 2nd you'll have this meeting Is August 2nd a select board meeting or is this a special meeting? Is there would this bridge be eligible for money outside of what we're getting in the town? Could be. That's what the idea is for infrastructure around the country let's get some in Waterbury I need a motion I make a motion to schedule a August 2nd meeting with Feetrans to hear about the replacement of the bridge on Stowe Street on Statue Brook at Lincoln Street Second Any further discussion? All those in favor please say aye Aye Yeah so unlike the bridge down on Route 2 this bridge is a town highway bridge Right So there will be even through the state bridge program it's an 80-20 match but there'll be other opportunities for funding I'm sure but the difference between this one and that one is this is going to cost us somebody that one down on Route 2 is just inconvenience. Alright thanks. I to me set the tax rate and bill it sent out an email in a second. Yeah So as I indicated in my email to you we've got the information for the homestead and non homestead tax rates for education from the state the homestead rate is 6.18 cents higher than it was in 2020 which is about a 3.5 3.6 percent increase the non homestead rate is $1.75 6 that's up 2.46 cents from a year ago so the non homestead rate is up 1.42 percent we have a nominal increase in the grand list not quite 8 tenths of 1 percent we budgeted for zero so we beat zero which was nice the $7,694 a04 that represents 1 percent of the aggregate taxable fair market value in the library so you add a few zeros there but the total if you want to know what that is that number will likely come down slightly I'm not worried about it enough that I think we should set the tax rate higher but just so you know as always the assessor Dan sweet has to get our grand list to the state in time for the state to do its analysis to come up with the education tax rate the listers have a grievance after Dan sends that over to the state so the 7.694 804 is the grand list as it was lodged the listers had a grievance hearing on Friday last week they had four property owners that grieve I don't know the outcome of all of that yet but I believe they will make an adjustment to at least one of those which would lower this grand list slightly but that's the process that happens every year to set the tax rate based on this number excuse me that should say 2021 tax is necessary for the general fund highway fund and library fund not 2020 and the total taxes that the town is authorized to raise well not the total tax that the town is authorized to raise but when we look at the budget and we look at the tax amount that was necessary to balance the budget it's $4,039,610 and last year it was proposed at $4,0199 so you can see just as we budgeted this year we're about $140,000 $150,000 lower than we had approved a year ago we gave away $305,000 last year so only bill 3.89 $4,000,000 as opposed to the $4,000,000 or $3,000,000 so if we set the tax rate at $0.52 which is my recommendation that's about almost a 2% increase we have authority to set the tax rate at $0.53 at the town meeting the voters gave us the ability to set the tax rate at $0.53 the reason I'm recommending rounding down we're still dealing with the pandemic of course there are some businesses and property owners that have struggled more than others so I think the board was cognizant of that when we put the budget together this year we tried hard to keep the tax rate a little bit lower we all understood that a year ago we had a tax rate of $0.55 we chose a target of $0.53 this year which was $0.02 we set a year ago but still $0.02 lower than last year the $0.52 tax rate that I'm recommending however is because some of the significant fears that I had about state revenues seemed not to be coming to fruition so it's still possible this could change but it's very unlikely the state has sent out now already the memos for both current use and for pilot payments so for current use we budgeted $35,000 payment from the state which is significantly lower than we got last year the state is telling us right now all indications are that we'll get $105,000 $105,605 so we've actually going to have a windfall on that limited line of about $70,000 more than we budgeted on the pilot we were even more conservative we budgeted we budgeted $180,000 it looks like we're going to get $351,000 so that's $171,000 almost $172,000 more than we our worst case fears were so between those two alone there's about $240,000 of state revenue that we didn't think we were going to be getting this year $240,000 divided by the grand list is about three cents on the tax rate now there are other revenues that we may not hit our targets on recreation programming right now but that money's coming in really well we don't know what tax collections are going to be there are people that are still hurting out there so I think it's reasonable to round this number down to 52 cents we're going to get $540,000 from the opera money that we'll be able to basically drop to our bottom line at the end of this year so I think right now going into 2022 my guess is that we'll probably have a reasonable surplus and we can talk about how we can use that to the benefit of the tax payers how much do we use that surplus next year towards keeping the tax rate manageable how much do we put into financing and infrastructure but that's a discussion we can have during the budget time we do have a few things in our budget this year that we're going to be at least nominally over spent on we put money in the in the fire station capital improvement plan to repair the siding on the water center fire station we've done that work that came in nominally $10,000 more than we budgeted maybe we had a boiler in the highway garage that's when they estimated it ultimately they didn't think they were going to have to change out the heat exchanger they ended up doing that so we're going to be over there we've already talked about paving we decided to do a blush hill as opposed to Stow Street this year we're going to spend a little bit more on paving than we had initially planned upon so I think 52 cents it's a 2% increase 1.96% increase over last year's tax rate on the municipal side it helps take a little bit of the sting out of you know rather 3.5% increase on the residential school side so all in all I think this is a reasonable number to pick if you are really feeling like that's too much because of what we're going to get in pilot and what we're going to get in pilot use we probably could back off a little bit just like we talked about last year every time you roll the tax rate back eventually you have to catch up to where you were before and that puts pressure on the next year so I think 52 cents for the municipal is a reasonable compromise it's only it's not a full penny down from what we need we need 52.497 so you're only about a half a cent really it's a full penny from what we told the board is it's going to be but we need 52.497 with this grant list and as I said that grant list is probably a little bit higher than it ultimately will be for discussion on the recommendation I have no problem with bills I think bills recommendation is spot on the only question I really have is this would be for an August and November tax collection yeah so we will if whatever gets approved tonight Karen Petrovich the tax billing clerk is planning to write the tax bills get all of everything ready to go and the tax bills will be going out next week I think next week yeah bills to be out a lot on Thursday next week I did include on here by the way so the veterans exemption over $10,000 that's something that we have had for a number of years about probably 10 years and that adds a fraction of a penny .0018 cents to the tax rate basically there's $13,000 $13,000, $14,000 to give away to the veterans there the hunger mount child care center that's at the bottom of the page there so the settlement that we made with them on their tax assessment appeal last year just so happens it's going to cost same amount as the veterans exemption so it's .0018 for that one as well so those two things will be added to the total tax rate Bill could you just refresh my memory is the veterans exemption for all veterans disabled veterans so if you're a disabled veteran and I forget what the disability percentage is but if you qualify state law state law exempts the first $10,000 of property value property taxation that's across the state Waterbury has agreed to do it up to I think $40,000 so the above 10 we have to pay for that on the school tax that's why I thought it was for disabled veterans not all veterans Katie any comments I'm just wondering if Chris or Danny would have any questions about this they might but they're not here I know I'm good with it we have a we have a letter going out to people that needs to go out whether they read them or not they could have made it they could have made a comment by email or something to the chair typically if it was that important to them they would have reached out and said I'm concerned but it seems like the recommendation bill made they're in support of I'm fine with it I think it makes sense I'll take a motion I make a motion to set the town tax rate at 52 cents for the coming fiscal year second add the veterans and the remote child care there will be a veterans exemption of .0018 for veterans and .0018 for the hunger mountain child care center straighten out the words are you good with that it's been moved and seconded any further discussion all those in favor please say aye aye it's 906 we had till 10 I didn't know if we wanted to move any of these topics up for quick discussion I know that there was a comment I know but that's why it's there can I add something to that? yeah I think if you want to add things we can add it either in the meeting or out of it just a reminder that that even exists there that little falling ground I would like to do that if you did add it to the agenda and discuss it I'm just saying to add it I think that's what you're asking add for future discussion discussion what would you like to add? just like an update on the senior center haven't heard from that gentleman and what their position is and if they're programming we talked about possibly a donation bump last year it's a good idea and then I would like to add to that conversation surrounding Hope Davy and the disc golf disc golf recreation area I think that's coming to a head in the select boardings you get involved I'm going to that next recreation meeting that's taking place at Hope Davy when is that? I believe it's the 7th something okay actually it's the 14th I'm out of town unfortunately but yes I think that needs we need to be involved in that we can talk more offline individually on that one thing that maybe we can talk about really quickly is that noise ordinance in the downtown just because this meeting was full of a bunch of agenda items with so I don't know I guess my biggest question on the noise ordinance discussion is that do we have anyone have noise complaints come in and right now who is the state police are we asking to try to because right now it seems like that's the biggest problem with something like that is we don't really have that's the biggest problem we have with all my ordinance is how do we enforce them I ask for it to be on the agenda as well as my neighbor who is not here but these areas so when it is in this area that is available for discussion because we are warning it so we can discuss it I know you're going to be at these meetings because Orca is now making a film so if you're okay with us putting on the next agenda I'm happy to do it or we could quickly try to have a discussion now but if you want to involve your neighbor and have it more on an agenda item I just wanted you to know that we're aware of your concerns and I think it warrants discussion as we entered especially with some of these events going on I would like the whole board to be here we can never guarantee that well okay usually they are yeah usually we have more than three yeah it's just usually very loud parties and fireworks and they happen which makes it even more difficult over the weekends when there is no police coverage and the police the state police won't cover it anyway we have police coverage on the weekends on Saturday doing the day Sunday but it doesn't matter whether it's on a weekend or a weeknight the state police don't generally they're not going to go out and enforce they're not going to write tickets if you call them because I've had experience I had a next door neighbor last year that you know it's an Airbnb and the people there were unruly and they were outside and they were yelling at each other and it was one o'clock in the morning and the police they came so they'll come if you're complaining about an event that's happening right now but they're not going to enforce the local ordinance okay so we'll throw out a full agenda item in the future is that okay okay unless there's anything else I will take a motion to adjourn I'll make a motion to adjourn is there a second? second great any further discussion? all those in favor? please say aye thank you very much everyone