 Recording in progress, okay, thanks All right Welcome everybody. I am going to take a motion to come out of executive session now All in favor say aye Okay Sorry, can you hear me now? Guess not Okay, thanks all we were doing was moving to come out of executive session, so Let me get my agenda here Actually, sorry before we move on I'll entertain a motion to Authorize issuance of the RFP as written with a few minor changes as discussed in executive session Can we have a second? Okay, I'll second all in favor Hi, great. Thank you. What I knew it with Jamie of staining. Yeah. Yeah, okay Okay Dear all right Any additions or changes to the agenda Well, I Neglect I'm sorry I wasn't sort of as focused as I should have been when I built this agenda this time We I do want to say that there's some action under a couple of these for example We may modify The dog decision based on what happens tonight and I didn't do that as an action Do I need to can I add those to the agenda now? Probably not Right an action item Can I add that to the agenda now so that we can do it today Oh Yeah, okay, so that's a possible action we're also the financial report when Sandra gives the financial report There's some things we may do we may actually authorize her to take out a short-term loan Why is the phone ringing? Michael if we lost you we're gonna lose you because it's doing something like to make a cop Um, okay, can you just cut him out? Okay We've got minutes of June 26th, and you see them listed there 7 10 7 12 7 15 7 19 all the emergency meetings We've been having It's on the agenda Gabrielle Anybody have any changes I don't see why we can't do them all if there's no changes just do them all with one motion Actually, I would like to pull 7 12 unless Jake Aho ever sent you that information you have Okay, if you read them there's a spot where she says Jake what what was this all about so I would say we put that one off So I would take a motion to approve June 26th July 10th July 15th and July 19th Do anything with that G ETS? We just remove that sentence. I like that even better And and the 7 12 meeting with the removal of the reference to Jake Aho All in favor Thanks, okay public comment people can we can't see everybody Can they raise their hands when they're not being shown John Bray Band wants to speak all right. I guess that works then anybody else want to speak want to do comment John we we've got a really full agenda So please try to be succinct if you could and just a sec Jamie you wanted to say something I just wanted to say I think Michael's still on the phone We're not gonna get to the rest of the Curtis pond stuff until 7 30 or so so I think we should release Yeah, absolutely. I don't know if you're still there, but I think we're good on that for now I guess he's gone Okay, all right John go ahead One two two things to talk about briefly as Andrew quest it Have to do with Adam and Village The first is informational the new squash culvert relatively new last seven eight years It's a high capacity culvert that was and that is intended to prevent Over-topping and accommodate flood waters. It worked really well Except that it is more than a half full with with debris gravel and sediment As is the stream channel above and below so I just want to put that under radar that culvert is now a small culvert again Yeah, yeah, that we're gonna start cleaning that out this morning and then things came up So they'll be excavating it and and just in general the way to report those things is to call the road crew Right is that right or did they go through to call the town garage and put it on the phone? So and they get it on their list Thank you. The other piece is I'm sure you're aware of this as well the actual Historic culvert that goes under Hagger Road that caused the wash out second time in less than 12 years Maybe 10 That needs a serious look down the road now. I know you're all full up But I heard the contractors say well, there's nothing that can be done there because it's historic and stuff That that is the reason that route got washed out. So anyway, just want to put that on your radar and I'll sign off Thank you. Thanks John Okay, anything else All right next item Modification of the dog decision so have you all Had a chance I'm not gonna pay attention to that. Have you all had a chance to look at Inga's request? I'm sorry. Elsa's request. Thank you All right Well, I'll read it so everybody knows what we're talking about we had in the order it required Elsa to put Self-locking the locks on all the gates Elsa Says that this is going to be difficult on the double wide gates. Would you like to speak Elsa Elsa to explain what you're asking for? Recording in progress Oh Well Cole doesn't have the authority to change our order so that's what yeah cold you want to weigh in on that But Elsa says that it's not possible to put a self-locking lock on a double what gate Is that I Understand that to be the only request you're making is that right? Yeah Okay questions discussion no, so the changes to go from Self-locking gates to padlocking the double gates and What That that one was I'll Okay Anybody oh are you and all the other parts of the request have been met and you've seen if you've seen you're using the Dog walking I Okay, would anybody like to make a motion Somebody like to make a motion Sure And would you also as part of your motion I'm I'm gonna have to write something up, and I'll just sign it would you authorize me to sign it and Discussion all in favor. Hi. Okay. Thank you. Thanks for coming David how are you feeling? Yeah Yes, you're on and we all got this letter Oh, yeah, thanks for coming cold Oh It'd be nice to get pictures once locks are in place Okay Okay Colds I'm gonna be signing up for some training some pretty heavy-duty training soon Yeah, thank you To see the fire Here we are progress et cetera and The biggest question everybody asked me is why am I going to get serves? so Because our engineering design has On the design zones houses on the unfortunate Privilege of having as many as the codes of zones So there are five zones in Calis to the one is ready for Meeting the paint The For those on the zoom, that's the west side of town Five years now The hatched area on the map, which is supposedly the first service area We have not received permission to attach to the power poles 14 Power The other hatched area Just very clear on this The money we received from the state power funds Only allows us to go to on grid households. So there's a cluster of off-grid houses So they're not we did we designed for all those houses The other thing is The so far for us, this is important because our operating revenue is what is going to sustain the business over time And so we're happy so far. I think 42 people signed up for service Rose Yep, so the 42 that I've signed up are in the pink or can anybody from any of the The the orange will be open up in two weeks But the service won't be in until September I am having a workshop two workshops this week I'm hoping to explain a lot of details about subscriptions Conduit, how do I connect? Why do I why would I change from Comcast to? All the various things. How do I get TV if you don't buy TV? I need a phone service do not need a phone service Most of the questions I'm getting are answered on our web page and I frequently ask questions It's a lot of work A new question every day that we have to deal with we didn't think about It's been going so pretty well the other update is since I last talked which is less You now have a Integra doctor Jeanille Smith And she's pretty She's doing and we hired an operations manager Who has a long history of the in the fire business This stops We just made a job offer to Person to be our community out each person today We still champagne telecom is our operating partner And they'll be the ones doing the host visits determine what you need and how much it's going to cost to connect Most connections will be it's within 400 feet, and it's above ground It's beyond that is a dollar per foot cost for extending the fiber beyond Explanation The other thing is Proved by the previous Discussing how that money would be used and then it talks about paying for the cost of Connecting the town office All these cows right center $200,000 Remaining Partly about how that money is being spent Most generous Well since I wrote this in the early version We had a permit a weapons permit to put the cabinet that has all the electronics So the electronics of the substation are all in now The electrical connection get down on Friday. Are we talking about the one like can't help So happen People sign up Check the distances check where you want the Device on the other side of your house Some you already have cable you already have a box. That's where you want the box You should tell them at that point if you want a different place on the side of your house That's the time. It's always On the installation includes the Wi-Fi router in your house if you want that technician to Scan your whole house to see whether you can use and utilize the want Wi-Fi extenders They'll do that for you. You'd have to pay for the extra Wi-Fi extenders Well, David, you also submitted this you wanted us to talk about which service we wanted Oh, well, we need the infrom I don't know do we I mean I this is Greek to me, but $479 You're also the intent of it. You're probably not going to use all that capacity at this moment. But over time, I think you probably will. In the town office, one gigabit is probably more than enough. I mean, the town hall, one gigabit is probably enough. They had a lot of you in here. Is it easy enough or possible to swap between plans over time? Yes. The town office at one. And a year from now, we clearly needed more, we could go up. There's no contracts. I mean, if you hate us at the end of the first year, you can get rid of this. You can actually update it down for years and more. Okay. Good question. The ARPA fund that covered the NZ agreement that obligates us to installing, the loss of installing at the office hall, garage, and museum. Is that just getting the fiber to the building or covering the subscription costs? It would not cover the subscription costs. There are extra costs to make the network. Make gesture donations at the town office, especially. Yeah. I guess I'm just curious how much information we need to make those, to facilitate those connections and then knowing that the subscriptions are going to be relative to each organization's desires. Can we go ahead and make those connections and do that work and commit those funds without anybody committing to a service level or a subscription? Yeah. I have already reached out to all those organizations. All the Kent Museum has said they're doing. Yeah. So, okay. I've sent two messages to Kent. But yeah. So the quarterly accounts will show you where the money has been spent. I don't know. Just a question about this. So the undergrounding of the GMP wires is, so you're going to go up on the poles and then they're going to take the poles down? We're not going to do that. You said that's crazy. You spent that money. Yeah. They wanted to do that. They're going to ask us to pay $350,000 for new poles in the swamp. And you said, no, I don't think so. And so the undergrounding, delaying that area until I put it on the ground, what will happen is we'll put it on there for GMP's electricity. Then we'll have our own conduit that will go in at the same time they're putting in their conduit. The same thing I think that they'll fear and consolidate will go in at the same time. And they're like different colors and they have your stamp on them or something? When they get up on the pole, they're all uniquely identified, yes. How do they do that? Because I mean there's going to be a lot more undergrounding everywhere. Is this your first underground with CV fiber? No. We actually are using the underground on lightning retrofit. That was by, that was a two conduits run last year by Delfel. Delfel is connecting all the substations and power facilities in the state of Vermont. So they had to run the fiber to the substation and then to Worcester to the power plant there. And so they put into, usually when you put a conduit you put into instead of allowing us, you know, charge to use the actual conduit. We are also putting underground in Fwester Hill. We got, so last year we got permission I think for five different road permit, road right away underground permit for the town hall. I think none of them have been done yet. I think that's the best way to get across the road where they are. But if you haven't seen that record, I will make it available to you. The record? The permits. You've got the town issue permits. Oh, like the memo that had the thing with the, you do the town hall. Yeah. The memo for actually the public road permission to have a sign off on these. Because it's the one that's being done that stands right away. Is there a time frame with the right of way to do the work within a certain amount of time or are they still within that time frame? They're still within that time frame. I think it has nothing to do with that. I think this is a no-brainer for both these buildings regardless of the answer. But I'm curious if either Barbara or Sandra know what we currently pay for internet. And the second part, it was in here. Yeah, that last round of bills, I just sent her out. Oh, yeah. I thought there were 260 something. Do you know? 266.53. Is that for both? That's telephone and internet. They invoice for town hall and the town office together. Yeah, there are three there. So the number beginning 10, 5, 18 is for the town office. The number beginning is for the town. And the numbers beginning 60, part of the 25, it might be 31. 61, that is for the bill. So that's $601 then a month for the three facilities for telephone and internet. And would we be switching our phone to go through CV fiber? So you can do the phone through CV fiber for $35 a month. Per line. Per line. And you can do multiple lines. I assume we have multiple lines. We have four lines at the town office. I would defer to R&D technologies on this rather than B20. R&D? R&D. Yeah. Okay. I mean, not everything, but once you have the internet and install the internet provider, and I'm assuming that everything right now, since it's coming through, it's consolidated as a voice over IP for it. Is it a hard line? Do you happen to know? Pretty sure it's a hard line. Is it a hard line? So there might, once we have higher speed internet, it will probably be in a more competitive position to shop around the voice over IP system, which will likely have hardware costs and a contract. So we can talk to R&D about it. We can also talk to Watesfield Telecom. They don't necessarily like you to be within their service region, but technically, as long as you have an internet connection, they can provide you with a phone service and hardware and that sort of thing. So yeah, it'd be interesting to kind of compare what the offer is through Watesfield Telecom or CV Fiber or really anyone at that point. What is the current speed that you're getting from consolidated? I have no idea. It can't be much. I could do a speed test right now, but it probably can take us all off. Yeah, I don't know what it is, but it's not very fast. Well, when we make a decision to go with a tier of service, you'll want to check the requirements that Nimric has to be in the cloud, their upload and download requirements. It would be desirable for the town to have that ability. When David and I were talking about the different service levels for the various facilities, that's kind of why it's one of the reasons we were leaning towards a two gig connection for the town office specifically so that those who are facilitating cloud-based services or remote connections, whether it be for financial services or for planning commission and zoning administrators or an administrator who would more easily be able to access records with better connections, they may not need as robust connection, but if there are multiple people trying to get that from the office at the same time, that would certainly justify the higher level of connectivity at the office given the amount of resources that are stored there. So the one thing about cloud-based, I don't know if the town's moving most of its records to the cloud yet, one of the beauties of fiber, if you put a battery backup in, you end up having a service when even there's no electricity, so there's some benefits there, especially accessing your service, I mean your data. So I did run a speed test and it's 6.1 over 0.58. Other questions? Would somebody like to make a motion? Are we ready for that? Or do you need to gather more information? I confess I'm barely following this discussion. I guess the piece I feel like we're not ready to decide is the phone piece. I feel like I'd be ready to decide the internet piece. Yeah, the possible action is approved changing internet provider. Right. We can do that and circle back. We may want to take a closer look to see what we likely are in a contract with Consolidated. So I think before we commit to a specific service level, we might want to see what our cancellation options are for Consolidated. I mean we can of course add another service and bring it in and start utilizing it, but we may not be in a position where we can cancel our Consolidated connection quite as quickly and that might influence which one we want to pay for for what amount of period of time. So it would be good to go maybe a couple more weeks and have a conversation maybe with Sandra and then also get a better idea of what we have at the town office before we commit to certain service levels at each facility. And then we can make a very sweeping informed decision kind of next time we circulate. Do any of you know off the top of your head if we're in or any of you were in contract and for how long? I can look at it and find out. Yeah. I think the last few lines were added when Judy was tampered. I don't think there were any. I think that's the last upgrade. I don't remember the length of the contract. They're usually like two years I think. There were four lines. There were four when I started there. So it was before me. But also the internet could be under contract. I think it was a lot to bundle. It's usually a bundle so your pricing for everything is going to be bundled and then the contract also the phones are likely owned by them. If we signed a contract though we may own the phone. I'm not sure. So it sounds like we'll take this up in two weeks and figure it out then. All right. Great. Thanks David. Yeah, thanks David. This is one thing before we move to the next item if I could. What I'm going to say hello to this power group back here. Look who's sitting here. Three town clerks and transgender. And also I can only see a few people on Zoom. One of you who are on Zoom please be sure to write down everybody in attendance so you can pass that on to Rose. Yes. Thank you. All right. Thanks. We're going to move on to the or curb cut. And Larry submitted this was he's already done it. Is that right? And we're out of time. Larry did it. Yeah. He did it badly. And so then Larry resubmitted it with what basically ended up being his curb cut. The guys went in and kind of fortified the road which held up beautifully under the rain several weeks ago. And currently the agreement, they didn't want to write anything on the new curb cut. The agreement is that when Larry is done and ready for us to finish it off, the town crew will come in and finish it off. When he's done with what? So like we don't want him to finish the part that blocks to the town like typically. Oh, when he's done with his driveway. When he's done with building his home and the big trucks have come in and done all their work and it's ready to be completed. The town crew will come in and he did submit a check for above what we had done already. Okay. So he's willing to pay for it. And it's just, we don't want to tempt him by writing down this and that and just we'll go in. Okay. But there shouldn't be much needed once he's done. It's looking pretty good. And his description of where it is is correct. It is where it is. Okay. Thank you. So what we want to do is putting a condition that when he's finished with his home and driveway, the town will come in and do it and we will, at his expense. Yes. Okay. That'll work. Any questions? Great. I'll take a motion to that effect. Or actually Rose, did you get all that well enough? That when Larry has completed the work that is being done on his property, our road crew will come in and finish the curb cut at his expense. And also as part of the motion that is being done on his property, we have to have three of us sign it at least. Okay. I can't see what's in your hand. This is the one, the permit application to move forward. This is notice of a rule to proceed to construct curb cut. So let me think. He can wait, Candy. He can wait on this. We'll just sign it at the next meeting. Okay. Because we still have to write the conditions. Okay. But we'll still take the motion, so we can go ahead and get it done. So someone's going to make the motion that when Larry has completed the work on his property, the road crew will come in and finish the work on his property. We'll finish the curb cut at his expense. Do we have a second? Go ahead. All in favor? Aye. Okay. Thanks. Donna, you've been doing an amazing amount of work and you called all these people today and collected information about salary. Are those the hard copies? Yes. Okay. Oh. Donna is going to talk about hiring a new pressure to replace the one we all love and beg to stay, but she won't do it. Stay, stay. So I kind of forget where we left off. So I'm going to talk about how to work with the government and how to make the road work. I'm going to go to the government and I'm going to work with the government and I'm going to work with the government So I kind of forget where we left off. So I don't know if you want to talk about the job description, the ad, or jump right into the salaries. I think the job description is pretty much what we went over last time. And then you worked on the ad. I mean, yes, the advertisement and the salaries. So I think that's what we want to focus on today. Does anybody want more than that? And Sandra has reviewed it and agreed that that's pretty much right. I thought the job description was ready to post. So the advertisement, so we thought we would post this to indeed a callus front porch forum and other towns front porch forum, town website, the Vermont Municipal Clerk Treasure Association, the VLCT website, the Vermont Government Finance Officers Association, and word of the mouth. And one thing we need is an email address for people to respond to. So I have talked to Tegan about it. The committee was thinking jobs at callusvermont.gov. But I think Tegan was thinking that maybe we could use a email account just to add another email address with the Vermont.gov might cost something. That's if we wanted to check in with you all to see if you wanted the expense of another callus. Remind us how much that is. Was it 20? The basic. I mean, we weren't just thinking about just for this position, but going forward, you know, what does this record want people to respond to when there's other jobs? I think it's about $12 a month for this. No, that's the standard. So it's less than that. Probably like $8 a month or something. But the other thing that we can do is set up in alias for any of the other accounts. So we can make up an email address. And it just lives underneath one of the other accounts. Would it be going to the hiring committee or the hiring committee? Or the person who owns that account. Yeah, I mean, it would go to the person who owns that account. Or we can make a distribution list that goes to the hiring committee. So there are some freeways that we could do it. The alias way, they can even set up like a filter so that anything that's coming in from that address goes and it won't have its own inbox. It'll still go into the owner's main inbox. But you can arrange for there to be a folder and filter so it automatically pulls it out of the inbox and sticks it into a folder. I don't know if you could do whatever you all want to do. I just wanted sort of your say before I got to arbitration. My vision had been that everything would just go to Donna. And then the hiring committee would review them and then interview some of them and bring us a couple of names that we just wouldn't have much to do with it until then. Are you seeing it differently? Well, I just don't know if you want people contacting my personal email and me representing the town. She can set up a callusjobs at gmail.com email address that doesn't then infiltrate her personal and it has an identification and it's free. It's just not .gov email address. It's a Gmail. Well, is there some reason we need the extra security? I mean, why would we pay for it if it's that simple? I'm happy doing a Gmail if somebody would just set it up for me. I could do that. Yeah, we could do that. The filtering thing makes me nervous. It makes me feel like a resume, all those resumes that are going to pour in are just going to go off somewhere. They would like it to be set up and might be Tegan's inbox as like an alias, a temporary alias. I would just go into a folder and she could forward them to. And that is also fine, yeah. Or we might just be able to set it up as a distribution list that just, it would just go to Donna. I don't think the distribution lists have to be internal. And so that way we have an email address that's a distribution list that then just goes to one person or however many it can go to two people. And then that way Donna's email, personal email address doesn't get revealed publicly. I can send it. Do you want to ask Colin maybe to see if a distribution list could be used like that? And then it would just go directly to Donna. You sure, any input on the advertiser? On the ad? I think it looks great. I think you might change a little bit for, you know, these particular places that we're going to post it, but this is in general. So the vision for a full-time treasurer is they continue to be the delinquent tax collector and like to make it. Well, I have to do it. Thank you. Because if we were to have a town administrator, would it still be a full-time treasurer job ordinarily? I believe so, yeah, so it's a reason. I mean, we aren't at that point yet, really, about the town administrator. I mean, that's a dream for some of us. You just want to be careful that job pieces of the job are not overlapping in both of those positions. And then you're taking from your treasurer, your treasurer's position, and then you have a full-time person that may not have full-time responsibilities. So you just want to be careful how you describe the town administrator job. Yeah, I mean, I have a draft job description for a town administrator and it's separate from that treasurer. Well, I mean, I'm just thinking about a full-time treasurer. Right now, we have a part-time treasurer who is extremely competent and has institutional knowledge and can do the job really well part-time. But presumably, we have someone who gets hired who's like pretty good at, you know, I'm just trying to think, like, are you still the Dillingman talk collector? Because that's a chunk of time, right? So it just seems like you would want that to be part of the treasurer position potentially if we were hiring full-time. And the way it's broken out is that it's two different jobs and she's paid two different salaries for those two jobs. But we can change that, couldn't we? Because if we're hiring a full-time treasurer, I think we're gonna want to get a full-time position. I know it just seems like going from part-time to full-time, we just want to make sure it's a full-time job. I think we need you to find the full-time is, I think in the past, and then of course we have the not up-to-date personnel in the annual. So in the past, and I also, I don't think I have it with me, did some research on talents around us and I think a full-time, usually full-time office staff was like 32 hours a week. I don't know if you remember when you were the real town treasurer. I, when I was hired, I was hired for 32 hours a week. And without going into a long story, there was a select board administrator who owned a chunk of what is often treasurer's work. When he left, that work came to me and that job then became a 40-hour a week job. Can you say what some of those things were? Budget, HR, run and payroll, and that, but so then 32 hours a week, I would just be popping out checks, providing reports, signing, you know, acquiring loans. He would check, the idea was he would be checking the time cards and putting that information in. I would run the checks and sign them. He would be signing people into benefits. He would be working with the select board at budget time and he was responsible for the town report. And so that, I mean, I'll be honest with you. I was looking at a retirement job when I was like, oh, this would be great, 32 hours a week, no stress, all the higher end analytical stuff is somewhere else. And it was paid at that level as well. It was $38,000 a year, so which I thought was just fine for basically a very low level, low stress, like end of job life type job. And then it became something much more, which I think this job description describes. If you don't go all the way forward with a town administrator, I mean, your treasurer is gonna be performing those higher level tasks. And that salary shouldn't reflect that. Did the last town administrator also act as road commissioner? No, no, no, this, it was a- So it was pretty different. It wasn't administrator, it was a select board assistant. Yeah, that's right. The person didn't work out, and then of course Sandra had to pick up the slide. Yeah, okay, sorry. But it was 32 hours a week. We may not be talking about somebody filling those same functions then. Yeah, okay, that's. I mean, I think it is a really good idea to think about the other positions in the office in relation to a new structure that would have a town administrator, but we haven't gotten there yet. I know. Yeah. I know, we've had one or two other things happen. I know. Well, I look at it as a full-time job, whether it's 32 hours, 40 hours, 38 hours. I mean, the other thing is it gonna be salaried or is it gonna be by the hour? And I think it's gonna end up being paid by the hour. You do. I think you're gonna have to have, you're gonna have to have a HR lawyer look at it. What's your grade, Sandra? I'm not gonna guess that. There's a statutory requirement for what becomes hourly and not hourly. Which I have one there. You're salaried, I think. Supposed to be supervising two people. Two people supervising some. This one person would not be supervising two people. Right. One person. There's some supervisory requirement to be salaried. Right. It's two people. Oh, wait, taken salaried? Taken salaried, she's exempted because she's an elected official. She's exempted from overtime. There are a lot of people, I don't know, unfortunately who aren't even entitled to unemployment insurance. Well, our road through is all salaried. They're not supervising. They're hourly. They're hourly. Oh my gosh, are they are salaried? Do you think they'll be put in 70 hours or something? If somebody's interested, I can read the test for a salaried employee. They must be compensated on a basis not less than $684 a week. The primary duty must be managing the enterprise or managing a recognized department. The employee must regularly direct the work of at least two or more full-time employees. The employee must have the authority to hire or fire other employees. I mean, I think you were paid by the hour. I was salaried. So was I, but we didn't really know what we were doing. I mean, it seems like the position that makes sense for salaried because the hours necessarily fluctuate throughout the year. Yeah. Okay. But if we're not allowed to, I think we can't get together. I think somebody should look into it. I think as long as payroll is outsourced, the way it is currently that this job could be done in a 32-hour week, I really do. With the understanding that that will expand like probably beginning in August, through the end of January. And that's taxes, budget time, town report, town meeting. So we'll expand and then it will contract again. And I think a 32-hour a week is based on the fact that NEMRIC, which is going to be doing payroll and monthly reconciliations. And we have to have NEMRIC for separation of duties. Right. The monthly reconciliations are, that's a best practice piece of this. It's how you're getting your clean all this. So we don't have anybody in the town office that is like the HR person or the hiring, firing. We don't have anybody like that? No, we just started jumping around. This is the last quarter, that's the hiring. That would be me. Yeah. It's hiring. What the treasurer does is the human resource onboard. If somebody is hired and also does the research behind if there's raises in Blue Cross Blue Shield or other benefits changes, usually that's the treasurer that follows that those changes and reports the select board about it. So the bare minimum has been done by Wendy with NEMRIC and Barbara kind of working together to do basic onboarding and that kind of thing. But I'm sure we're missing a lot of these statings and things. So during the years that Sandra was an employee as treasurer we considered her our HR administrator doing the ranks that they just noted. We've never had an HR director. Somebody who really understands the entirety of HR, HR law and can help us write a updated personnel policy and so forth. So she would administer those HR functions. I just have to say that the town's HR policy actually originated with David Healy and Stone Environmental. Well, I took it and here's what we got it. What do we need to do tonight? Well, I guess, is it okay to go out and start advertising? And then do you want to talk about salary? Let's just have a quick conversation about salary. Why don't you quickly walk us through what information you gathered? Yeah, there's a lot of information here and it starts out with the past treasurer salaries. And then when I set you today on the very last page is what other towns have been paying. And you've got most of this by calling them and asking them, is that right? I go to their town reports. And then I've also gone to the Vermont and the city's intense compensation survey from 2002. I think Eastmont Pillar's interesting because they reviewed and increased their salaries right after COVID. And they're paying their treasurer $62,000 a year. She does, I think she's like also their HR person. It does a lot of HR things. I don't have her job description, but I can get it. Well, it sounds like we need a little more work to figure out the salary range. Would you agree? Or do you think this is? I mean, do you want the committee to talk more about these figures? What do you guys think? I think, I know one thing that Marianne was really concerned about is that she wanted the wage to correspond with people's background. And their education. But if that was true in the past, none of us would have ever been in town treasurers. I think we have to realize this is a municipal treasure. It's not national life in the state of Vermont. So you wouldn't pay any attention to their background? Well, yeah, I think at this point we have to. But if somebody came along who had been a municipal treasurer who you've never, I've raised this salary for them. Yeah, so you agree with Marianne that I was trying to get clear? The proposed college treasurer wage scale is relevant, but we might not find somebody who has a relevant bachelor of arts, but we might find somebody with a lot of experience. Yeah, and we would negotiate at that point. But this would give them some idea of what we might be willing to talk about. Right. I just don't think we want to be too rigid. Yeah, this is kind of a framework to start. Cales population, 1,800. What is it? Cales population, 1,800. 1,800. Did you do it long, long time ago? Yeah, I did. Maybe a little bit higher. That's around 1,600. Yeah, it's been around 1,600. I thought it went up like 100 or something. It could be 1,600. 1,600. 1,600. 1,600. That's a lot of money. All right. Let's close down the anti-treasurer. Would you like the hybrid committee to get together again and kind of go through the process? Well, I'm ready to say send this thing out. Let's get going. Yeah, yeah. What about the rest of you? I don't know how we advertise it without having answered to the salary question. Well, we say commensurate with knowledge and experience. Well, except that when they start getting all these resumes flowing in, that's going to be people's first question. And Donna's going to need to go back to them and say, well, we haven't really decided that. Well, can't we figure it out? Aren't you meeting on a range? You can say a range. Okay. A range. Yeah. It's also, you know, it seems like other jobs in the town should have a range. I think Mary Ann also wanted to say something. Oh, is she? Oh, she's there. Oh. Yeah, I'm here. People are concerned about credentials as a benchmark. Some agencies choose to equate years of experience with college credentials. So two years of experience on the job, for example, only might be equivalent to a year of experience or three years might be equivalent to just some other marker. Normally, that's in the personal policies. In the personal policies. Oh, right. Well, it sounds like the committee should meet again to talk a little bit about what the ranges should be, but you should get the ad out now. Okay. At least that's what I'm suggesting. Okay. Have we only wanted to say something? Well, I'm just curious. How about you made earlier about if any of us had to have experience as treasurers. None of us would have been treasurers. I'm just curious. Did, I guess there's two of us. I'm just a psychologist. Okay. So Judy, you were there. Now, Sandra was a treasurer at Mr. Solution. Yeah. And I was an assistant treasurer. Okay. So I'm just curious. Did you have three years of double entry about keeping experience? Absolutely not. I transferred colleges to avoid the math problem. But the thing is, when I started, the treasurer was both the clerk and the treasurer and was voted in. And then when I became, when I took that position, very soon thereafter, I asked the town to vote to separate the two positions and have the treasurer be hired by the select board. Has somebody experienced what it is to be doing a job? I just want to add that we also lived through the delinquent tax collector being a separate person than the treasurer. And I would not want anyone to have to live through that again. So you think that the treasurer should be the delinquent tax collector? Absolutely. So that should be what happens on November. And they have to, and their phone was at home and it was a disaster. Is it part of the job description? No. It's a, I guess we need to find out if, legally, we can have that be as separate or not. So Sandra, when she was a real employee, she was paid $10,000 a year to be a delinquent tax collector in your, in the fiscal year 24 budget. I think it's $11,000 just put in there. Why couldn't it just be part of the job description? I guess it can be as long as... By statute, there has to be a delinquent tax collector. Yes. How to have a delinquent tax collector. The only caveat I have to having the same person as a delinquent tax collector and the treasurer is to, I would say, you wouldn't, I think you have to show some sort of salary because otherwise a delinquent tax collector gets paid the penalty. And there is clearly, in my mind, a conflict for to be paid a penalty if you're the treasurer and you're determining whether something is late or not. And there are calls that have to be made that there just are. You are benefiting yourself if you are declaring a parcel late. So we want to avoid that. And what you might do, what I think is appropriate is to have a separate budget line and that position is paid regardless of penalty. So you don't put your treasurer slash delinquent tax collector in a position where they could be called out for conflict of interest. It's really... You just don't want that. We did that in Worcester. There was a separate budget line. It can be the same person. I will say not everybody is going to want to do that. That would be a question because collecting delinquent taxes is a very different... It's a different skill set than just doing your treasurer job when you're interfacing with folks who are struggling. It's a bill collection. And not everybody is going to want to do that. It's a different kind of communication. And everybody approaches it differently. But you would want to ask that person if they would be willing to do that. I think I would just be very well prepared to discuss whatever the salary range or the hourly range and the job description along with the delinquent tax collector because I think a full-time treasurer and what I hope will be another full-time decision with some sort of administrator is just like... Whatever it is, if it advertises full-time, we want it to be a full-time job. I'm not going to listen to tax collector duties, which I think is... I don't know if it's... Is it a stature? I think we're ready to say, yeah, go ahead and start advertising and have a meeting to talk about what the salary should be so that you can answer the questions as they come in. Does everybody agree with that? I don't think we need to vote on it. Just let them go forward. Anybody object or want to add something? Okay, seeing nothing. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Thank you so much. You probably wouldn't be ready to come back in two weeks with anything, but let us know if you do want to report or ask a question. You're meeting on the 7th, do you think? Yeah, that's just because we have to set the... We're going to need to start raising money quickly. Yeah, yeah. Lots. Yeah, so Sandra would have that ready on Monday, and if we... Yeah, if we wait longer, then it'll be longer before we can start collecting money. That's why we wanted to do that. Okay, thanks. Let's see, Sandra, you're up to talk about things like that. Yeah. We ended the year report. It was in Google Drive, and family, we ended up hard copies. Do you think there would be an extra hard copy up there? Yeah. That's okay. I have an extra one here. Thank you. There's really no scribbling or calculation or projecting this is an unaudited end of year report. We ended the year ahead by $400,000. $405,000. $405,900. Oh, $405,900. And 52 cents. Sorry about that. Some of that was balanced from the previous year. Is that right, Karen? Yeah, it was balanced, right? We were originally projecting somewhere around $500,000, and then we were going to go past by $80,000 to $120,000, which is right within what you were expecting last time. So you had started out your year with... I'm just going to round these numbers off for ease of conversation, $521,000 plus. We did go, a budget and revenues were in the red by $115,000 plus. So we ended the year again with an unaudited fund balance of $405,000 plus. And that is very handy under the existing circumstances. I'm happy to take any questions. I do want to let you know that Toby and I are in contact very frequently trying to get a feel for what the monthly, weekly expenditures are going to be to cover FEMA. So one thing I have done to assist the board is to... Femric is ideal for this purpose. We've created a separate fund for FEMA expenses. And what I'm going to be able to do is track those non-budgeted FEMA expenses independent of budgeted expenditures. So you're going to have materials contractors over time and some supplies that will be thrown in there, although supplies are not reimbursable, like for instance the pads for the fellas to keep track of their time. Sorry. Oh no, that's all. That's their fabulous and that's exactly what they need. So we're going to be able to see in its fund 97, if I start to resort to a number, that's the FEMA number, we're going to be able to track it order by order exactly what we are spending on non-budgeted FEMA amounts. The community bank N.A. reached out to me initially, shortly after the event to say, we are here for you, we're working with other towns. When if you need us, let us know. I reached back out to them, Toby and I are thinking that a line of credit between three and $400,000 probably would be right. Waiting to hear back from the government. There's a different section of the government banking division that is going to be working with towns. And I am probably, and maybe the next meeting will be talking about a better feel for what the board would like to do, keeping in mind that by statute, you may take a loan for less than a year on your own motion. Beyond that, there has to be a town vote. So what you are able to do with this line of credit is to take this line of credit at this point in time, draw from it as you need it, and hopefully be able to pay it off within the year after reimbursement. However, when you look at the process, and I just need to say this because I, you know, will I be here at that time? I have no idea, but you do have to be aware that the obligation process which allows FEMA to reimburse us looks like it's six months to a year out. Best case scenario, according to Kim, I want to say, Karnachi. So if that's the case, it may need, you may need to put this on the warning for town meeting to have the town make this be a permanent loan. It could be. I mean, it's just possible. We won't have reimbursement in time within that one year. So the intention, of course, is that we will. Now, we would be drawing on our fund balance between now and the time taxes come in, which we're still hoping. Even if they do the Lodge That Grand List on Wednesday, I still have enough wiggle room to get that tax rate set and get you folks to review it and motion, make that motion by August 7th. If we go much past Wednesday, maybe we'd have to tweet that, and I hate to call you back in for a special meeting, but it's actually really important to get those tax bills out at this point in time. The legal requirements for payment of tax bills is that they cannot be due any less than 30 days from the date of mailing. So, you know, that's our wiggle room with that. Now, we start to get taxes in all during that, no, wait, stop. People start to pay their taxes very quickly and they don't just wait until September 15th. If we mail it out August, we're thinking now August 11th is the possible mail out date based on the setting the tax rate on the 7th. Once those tax bills hit mailboxes, we frequently, I mean, that's it. That is go time where we are seeing tax checks come in. So, we are not languishing that deeply into our fund balance. At this point, you have a really big board order. It probably took your breath away $122,000 plus. So, let's talk about that. I thought that might give you some pause for concern. $62,000 of that is a check to the East Calus Community Trust. That check is posted to the amount of money that we already received from the state. It was dropped in our account on the 20th, $62,000 exactly, and we're writing a check against that balance. So, that is not town money. Of that $70,000 or so left, $33,000 is a FEMA contractor expense and Toby has recalibrating his estimates, recalibrating, recalibrating. I received a new estimate that dropped what he was thinking that we would be spending, which was close to $1.7 million within the next six or seven months, down to $800,000 in contractors. And that's because he had some new information from the contractors in particular with regard to Moscow Woods Road. So, it looks like $300,000 to $400,000 in a credit line may swing us tidally. We're also looking at the FEMA reimbursement of 25%. Now, I have a document you're going to need to have on your very next board meeting, please. And that is the certification of town roads and bridge standards. This was not done by the old board for this year, but I am going to trust that you, the new board, will get this done. We need this into the state. Why? Because this is an extra 10%. So, the town's responsibility shrinks from 25% of $800,000. That's a big number, too. 15% of that $800,000. And again, don't hang your hat on these numbers. These numbers are best guess projections at this point in time, and certainly could change I mean, we can only guess what it's going to take to get these projects done. Tobi is really sharpening his pencil. We communicated over the weekend. We communicated this morning to try and be able to give the board as much solid information as you can have at this point in time. So, let's dial it back. If it's $800,000, somebody do something real quick for me. What's 15% of that? Is it $120,000? Is it, it is, right? What do we have? What do we have? We have a fund balance of $405,000. Okay, so it is, I don't think we're, I think we're going to be, I think we're going to be fine. I think we're going to be okay. What an octopus. I, look, so you, Anne has heard me say this before. Callus has been here for how many, how many hundreds of years? Townships. 1781. Okay. You do the math. You do the math. That is a long time and it has been up and it has been down and it's going to be here at least that long or longer unless I always say the comment, you know, comes in this way. Wipes us all out. So this is, we're going to take a breath and we're going to know that this is a moment in time and we're going to get through this. We have great credit. We have great audits. I think we're going to get another clean audit again this year. You have two clean audits behind you. You have a great relationship with the bank. We have a super fund balance walking into this and there's every reason to be anxious. I mean, I've had two nightmares already in the last week. There's every reason to be anxious. But everything is really going to be, I think it's going to be okay. And as I've said before, it's a decimal point. Move the decimal point back to the left and like make this manageable in your mind. You know, you have a lot. This is, you know, it's a lot for me too. But I think the numbers, we're going to crunch these numbers and it's going to go okay. That is my spiel for you tonight. Thanks. So there's two things you would like us to do tonight. Do you want us to authorize the line of credit? Oh, no. Well, no, no, no. I certainly want to have one more little, one more conversation with you as to the amount because we'll have to pay the interest. The interest is not reimbursable. That is on us. So with lines of credit, if it works the same in a municipality as it does for private individuals, you will be paying the interest. I think only on what you, I don't know if we pay the interest on the full amount or only on what we have now. That was a question I had. How does that compare to taking out a loan? We don't know yet. Yeah. But I, you know, maybe you don't want to take out a loan. Is that reimbursable? Interest reimbursable? No. It's not. No interest is reimbursable. Only costs for repairs. So what this town, road, and bridge standards is a document that you need to remember and your select board assistant will help you remember, this needs to be done every year and filed with the state. And this document acknowledges that we, our road and bridge standards are compliant with the state best practices, the minimum established by the state. There is a book for Jamie and Toland, you probably already have heard of it, the Orange Book, right? So this is out of the Orange Book as it was revised March 29th, 2022, section seven. I'm going, this is blank. If you need Toby to help you fill it out, you're supposed to just circle yes, yes, yes. But there's evidence in the record that this was submitted to the prior select board sometime in February of this year, but there is no evidence anywhere that it was signed. And so we're asking that it gets signed and we get that to the state. The select board signs it. So it's a town record and it's very important that it's done. Can I just read it over with the guys? Oh, please. Inside it, yeah. I mean, I know that we're doing it because we do it to the local roads, the rock local roads. You have that. You can't fire Toby. Toby's really good on that stuff. I know he is. We were on, that's part of our discovery process this weekend. Did that get done? Was it ever done? Fortunately, the wrong form was filed in 2022. It was the form that was used before July 1, 2019. But you know what? It still says the same thing in a very brief way. But we want to get back to using the current form and let's make that happen. That is definitely something you want. So in your records. We've got the words on the desk. So, road commissioners, can I put this on the next agenda? Can you guys get that done? Yeah, we'll do it in the morning. Oh, I mean, I just got a review with the guys in the morning. I know that we're doing it. All right. And maybe Toby should take a look at it. Okay, good. I see on your agenda, because you'll motion to file that certificate. That's why I don't mean to overstep, but it's actually important. And I wanted you to have it. Okay. Thank you. And you'll want to come back to us in a week or two about the line of credit. I'm hoping to have more information from the bank by August 7th. We're going to be not writing any bills again until August 7th. And the checking account is at Stasis between now and then. And if we meet August 7th, do you want me to put it on the agenda for that? Yes. Unless I tell you that I have nothing to say, but I can't imagine that I won't. As I said. Because I always ask them to say, answer my husband. Or my kids especially. They would tell you. But as Toby is sharpening his pencil, it's helping inform he and I and then collectively you to figure out what we think we need is a line of credit. I'd like to just dip into that situation once and be done and feel secure that we have enough. Right. A quick internet search does reveal that with a line of credit you only pay interest on what you borrow on the line of credit. What you take each time. Yeah. I think that that's the way it works privately. I think. Yeah. Okay. So, you know, with municipalities sometimes the rules are a little different. And I haven't talked to anyone. Yeah. Questions for Sandra? I think the. Oh, T. Why don't you go first? The governor announced the thing about we would be getting our money from the state sooner than we normally did. I printed this out and highlighted it sitting on the desk over there. But we would municipalities would be getting their towns. State-aid from highways? Not a. I don't know. It seems like refunds or our money from something that we normally get later in the year. The education property tax probably right. I think so. I'm trying to remember now, but he said it's a thing we did back in 2011 and we're doing it now to kind of jump start having them. I didn't know he would see that yet, but I can talk to you about it tomorrow in the office if you're there. Or by phone. Or by phone. Or scan it to me and let me see it. We've already received our state-aid to highway. The first chunk of that. That was earlier this month. We've received the municipal portion of the property tax adjustment credit. That's a small, relatively small amount, but if maybe they're going to pay the state-aid to highway quicker than wait until the second quarter. Or the third quarter. Go ahead, Dan. I think Toby's supposed to be spending by the office tomorrow. I just have a little concern that he might not have. All of the costs that we've approved so far, we've had like Jordan's hooked us up with someone who brought truckloads and truckloads and truckloads of materials that stuff is incredibly expensive. And the two projects on like Singleton and Moscow are going to be. And I don't know if he's talked to that contractor or not. I don't think so because I've been talking to the contractor a lot over the last couple of days. So I'll try to touch base with him and make sure that he knows of all of that because we're trying to do a lot of pre-loading so that when we start knocking stuff out, it goes faster. We can get the roads up. I think he's working on contractor contracts. Yeah. And I've talked to Robert connected with our... Yes. So he's... We don't need contracts for materials. We need contractors for the contracts for the... I'm talking money that we've been spending on the costs of things. Yeah. Okay. Because it's been kind of, I don't know, non-traditional. We've been stockpiling a lot of material and being very creative to try to get what we can. I think that's one... And that's a lot of money. And I don't know if he knows about all those different little... There are a little hidey spots that we've been... Oh, well, you better be careful. I mean, it's all going in, but I don't know if they've sent a bill. Like, the guys have all the stuff that we can track off, but... Not everyone is sending a bill immediately, so... Yeah. I think that's a really good practice. If we need to, if we need to, we put those bills on a 30-day... You know, we see that bill date and we don't pay them for 30 days. If we need to do that, we typically, when the bill comes in, we pay it. We don't have any issue with that, but if that doesn't... If we need to slow things down from a financial standpoint, 30 days net works for everybody. It's very smart, too, I think, to stockpile stuff right now because you're in deep competition with other municipalities. And I am so happy that you're pulling the... Let's pull that trigger on getting that job description of the add out for the treasurer's job because anybody with any skills, I'm afraid, is going to get sucked up to help with FEMA administration. So there's already a short job pool and I'd like to see that add out. Okay, other questions for Sandra? Just responding to Tegan's thing, what it says is the treasurer's office will be accelerating 11 million in state payments to 40 Vermont towns most impacted by last week's flooding. So just state payments. It might be property tax adjustment, credit sask, real... That's ambiguous a little bit. I don't know. Other questions? Oh, David has one. I just want to say the last two hours in Northfield, I think it took them a lot longer than a year to get their FEMA reinforcements. Northfield had a mess. We are organized. Hey! I don't know if they were organized, but Toby and I have... He is organized around this and that's what it's going to take. They're going to come, they're going to sit down in the office, and they're going to go incident by incident. Where's the material, where's the invoice for this material? Where's the check? Where's the cancel check? Where's the contract? Where's the insurance certificate? And Scott and Charlotte are coming up to speed off quickly too. They're going to be fine. So fill out those forms, everybody. Okay. Thank you, Sandra. That's it, right? Remember, move the decimal point to the left. Actually, do we have our FEMA person yet? The name of our FEMA person? Yes. I do not know yet. Nick, we have a FEMA person, don't we? Now that there's a regional person assigned to us? No, he was sort of a courtesy call and every question we asked him he replied, we got to ask the state about that. But it was a specific person. We have to ask Kim, was it? Oh, at the state? Yeah. Yeah, Kim reckoned it. No, but we need our FEMA person. Yeah, there's usually like a regional... She, I believe in Kim, is the representative for FEMA, for from the states. That's how... So she's going to be the person who Callis works with, at the vault and looks at the individual paperwork with you, that's what I'm asking. I do know that person has been identified. Okay. Yeah. All right, let's move on. Thank you. Thank you. Select Board reports. Let's see. Roads. Because we haven't talked about them enough yet. We have them. What do you guys want to tell us about? And how are you doing? I'm putting them back together. I'm trying to send out the email, preferably the day before, but we're doing and keeping the fire department posted. Haggit roads open. Probably not 100%, but it now matches the rest of Haggit Road. So that's a positive. Have you all been seeing those and sends out a list every morning and sometimes even the night before? I don't know if everyone says no. Well, they go to Barbara who puts them on the website. They go to Barbara and they go to Sarah who puts them on the website. Sarah puts them on the website. I was, Sarah's putting the whole King Kubot also, no selfie. Yeah. Okay. That's a good list, too. Well, no, that's how we're doing like every day. This is what we plan to work on, you know, you may end up having, well, repeated beaver issues like on Gray Road. So we start off the day before we're going to do this and then the next day it'll be like, we did 80% of this and then we've wrangled some beavers again or whatever. So it mostly, here's where we'll be. And it's who's going to be there? No, no, I don't get that. You have to go on the website to get it. I mean, we should just send it to the whole. Well, I can try to relate like it's one of those things. I've got to get that, the cyber person. You know, I try to hit the people that I, maybe you can send it to the guys. So what I start doing is I'll start, she's having a little bit of trouble getting it to the select board. So she wants to email you all. She asked me to do that. So I'll start doing that. Okay. I'll forward her dangling warning emails to all of you. It's a random pornography of people I tag in it. I just remember I got it off the computer. You're so, I just kind of... Because the road condition map, if you look at the road condition map, it doesn't tell you what's being fixed. Right. So if you ask the translation for the public, it's just a little different than knowing what's on the list that day. Okay. And the guys are still working overtime all the time? Today, they went home at five. I was like... And they got Sunday off, right? And they had Sunday off. And the animated co-op made them coffee and treats and left a message on Sunday. And I'm like, I'm so sorry I make them take a day off. It's good. It's good. It's good. But... I have a question. Have we contracted with a company who drives a truck that says Perry on the side that's hauling dirt? So we have, I know Justin Morgan out of Danville has contracted... Like some of them are subcontracting with additional people because dump trucks... We need so many dump trucks. There's so much. So he's got people that he's bringing in that aren't part of his company. The reason I'm asking is, somebody is now driving a truck through town at a very high rate of speed and we've gotten a lot of complaints. Whereabouts is it? Mostly North Calis. Is this a blue? Because I live... I think it's a... It's either dark blue or black truck hauling dirt and he blows through and two of my neighbors have tragically... about tragically flagged him down and said, you have got to slow down. You are driving too fast. So there's a big blue truck that I think said Perry on it that passed me a couple times when I was biking around here Sunday. Do you remember what roads would help me put it down? It wasn't one of ours. It was Sunday? It was Sunday and it was bringing dirt to... There's a washout on a driveway half up Elmsley Road just this side of the estate. And it looked like a big culvert or bridge out and the truck I saw that I think said Perry on the side and was dark blue was dumping at that private site. Okay. I told them I would bring it up to 9KZTown as contracted with this business and ask them to please slow down. Okay. Any questions for the road commissioner who's been doing the roads while the other one's been doing the dam? Okay. One other quick road thing that I'll just mention is the Woodbury Mountain Road. That's right, yep. The two-year-round full-time residents on Woodbury Mountain Road have approached me and asked if there was assistance in fixing their road which is quite washed out. And I said at this time there really wasn't because it's a class four road. But they are working on lining up a contractor to fix it. And I said we'd be flexible on the right-of-way permit process and that as soon as they had a contractor lined up, I'd connect them with a road crew member and get them to give the thumbs up and hopefully fix it before we meet again in two weeks. Does anybody have concerns about that? So they'd be telling what? So they just, they're gonna have a contractor probably either Chris Sayers or Hans Propow who are both very qualified come in and fix Woodbury Mountain Road. And I said rather than wait two weeks till we have another meeting to do an official right-of-way work permit. I'll have the guys look at it and do that thing. Just have the contractor have a conversation with one of the road crew members and get a thumbs up on the plan. Okay, and with class four roads, like I know it hated in the spring, someone had been doing construction and it got really tore up and so they just dump gravel and then one of the other residents kind of... Yeah, they can do that would ask the... Yeah, they can take a look. John Ray Vann has his hand up. Oh, okay, John, yes? Just as a reminder, I just want to make sure whatever standards were applied to Larry Moore in terms of his manipulation of that class four without permits. And now you guys have made clear what your expectations are for work on town roads, both in advance, getting advance approval and in terms of whatever material requirements you would require of Larry Moore and however else you require Larry Moore to conduct business. I expect that anyone who works on a class four will be held at the same standard. That's all. Okay, thanks John. That's why we're having him connect with the road crew, yeah. Okay, nothing else on roads. Let's go to Curtis Pondam. How's it doing? Curtis Pondam is still standing with all this rain. There is water going over the spillway again. So the water level, which we pumped to below, average water level is back up to about average water height for this time of year. It's flowing over the spillway as it's supposed to down into the rocks. They seem to be holding stable. I think we're in a pretty stable place with it right now. It's at least until we can build the new dam next summer. The question that I was hoping we could discuss tonight is when we met with dam safety the night of the storm on the dam. Ben Green was there with us until 11 o'clock at night or later. And he outlined four steps that dam safety would recommend us take in sort of elevating intensity to save the dam. And the first was the tarps over the top, which we did and they worked very well. And the second was digging the trench down Camp Road to relieve water and let water go around the dam and back into the brook, which we did and it worked very well. The third was renting the pump, which we rented and we ran for about a week, pumping 10 million gallons a day. All of those things contributed to helping the dam stay as sturdy as it did. Oh, and then the fourth was building the rip-rap wall beneath it, which is sort of a wedge that braces the dam up. That's constructed. It's holding very well. We just got the bill for that. It's about 11,500. I can't remember if I sent that to you. But so the last thing that he recommended was building a siphon over the dam, which would allow us to either keep the pond level down one to two feet below average from now until construction or would be in place so that if a big storm came up, we could draw the water level in the pond down four days before a big storm to increase storage capacity so it doesn't overtop again. At what cost? I didn't get an exact estimate, but from the bits and pieces I could get from the different contractors, it's between $10,000 and $15,000. We learned from him earlier tonight in the executive session that that siphon likely would not be the one that would be used again during construction. That was one of my questions, is if we build it, will we use it? Do we need it anyway next year for construction? And he said there was a chance that it might be used during construction, but that it would depend on the contractor we select and the way they want to do things. So both dam safety and the Du Bois and King engineers are saying the absolute safest thing you could do would be to relieve some pressure and build a siphon either to keep the pond level down or in anticipating of a flood event, but both are also sort of saying it's up to you, that's the worst case scenario, you really need it if you don't do it and there's another flooding event, you'll regret it, but if you do it and there's not another flooding event, you kind of wasted your money. Is it going to be reimbursable? Is it going to be reimbursable given the fact that it was precipitated by the emergency? I don't know if anything but getting into a weird... The communication seems to be shifting from FEMA to start putting things like this out to bid and to start normalizing the operations for these types of repairs and knowing how much we have to spend on just our roads infrastructure and knowing, I guess, having gone through the flood event and the stabilization, I think respectfully, I think going through the RFP process and seeing where that stands and where we stand with whoever the contractor selection is and then having that conversation after that to see if that contractor would be comfortable setting up the siphon that they would be using for the reconstruction process sooner than later but then be comfortable with the idea that they may not want to engage in any construction activity because they assume the liability of its function and the dam, et cetera, et cetera but the dam survived the flood event. It has some new armoring and it's a calculated risk to maybe not spend $15,000 for something that is going to likely have to be reconstructed. Okay, Nick, go ahead. I'm going to start by talking about my conversation at the dam and then he said, you want to get through the river, you want to get through the water and then he kind of drifted into and you know, you could do a siphon and I started to feel like it was an adult and suspenders kind of recommendation where they want to cover their face, they enlisted every single state to think of that might reduce the risk but I didn't feel like you could do a siphon, you could do a siphon. So I felt like that he was trying to say it was optional but he didn't want to write that one on paper. I agree and I think he actually did go even one step further and say, if you're only going to do one of these things between the riprap and the siphon, definitely do the riprap. That was clearly the most important thing and yeah, the siphon seemed almost... So if we did build the siphon would we use it after the dam was reconstructed as well or would it just be to get us through the fall really? It would really just be to get us through the fall and potentially through the spring till construction starts. There's similar structures within the new dam that will allow us to reduce pond level if we need to for... Can you sell a siphon once you've built it? It's pretty specific. It seems pretty specific and it just seems, given the proximity of all of the other adjoining parcels like it just seems like it would be a commitment on the town's behalf to infrastructure on something that we have already explicitly say that we want to minimize the output of resources into until the construction process has completed and given that that particular piece of infrastructure is scoped in the temporary structures associated with the construction process I think it's a measured risk to say we're just not going to forego it and we'll revisit that throughout the year the balance of this year and into the spring of next year and leave room for dialogue with whoever the contractor is if they're comfortable starting that installation well in advance to the cofferdam and the rest of the things in a way that's efficient then maybe that makes sense to do but until then maybe not. Shall I take it nobody wants to make a motion that we build a siphon then? It seems like a lot of money for yeah or something. Anything else under the dam? I have a question so I know the last time that Marge was here and other people from the association they talked about still waiting for the six permits and you know this whole process and what you have gone through it really kind of leaves a bad taste in my mouth like oh my god we almost lost the town of Kalamaz and now the state is like right there till 11 o'clock at night have they given you the six permits that you need to construct this dam? No we don't have them all yet. Do you have some? We have some and there are some that we have tentatively but they're still in the 30 or 60 day public comment phase so they're coming together I think we'll have them all soon there's one the primary core of engineer one is delayed because the historic review found that the new dam would have a negative impact on the historic nature of the dam and so it has to be sent to their office in DC for final approval so there's a few permitting headaches still outstanding and I 100% share your frustration excuse me I want to thank you but I think we'll have them very soon okay I think we've done IT we talked about CV5 or Jordan anything else oh yeah was in the state, did you do any other dams in the town as a result of this event? Yes they met with John Reese and did the East Calis Dam I think they're doing every dam all over the state as you know including the one we own together I do actually have a list of the permits that are approved and not approved it's a little long so I don't know if you want to hear it but I have it March updated and sent out okay well it's 8 o'clock so let's not anything new on Shed v. Calis? Not anything that's worth discussing there are just evolving circumstances outside of our control but none of them really changed the track of the process so at this point we we had filed for a motion to dismiss the I guess defendants our roles of kind of reverse race she was suing us for relief and we are in a process of having that dismissed and they rebutted the dismissal request for dismiss and we have responded to that so we're just waiting for the process to play out in the courts we could know relatively soon there's nothing really left there's no legal processes left to slow that down so we're at this point just waiting for the court to respond I believe and there's some organizational stuff that we need to kind of prepare should things fall in the town's favor and we want to proceed with further actions we'll need to have those things kind of in place so not working on that but we're still largely in a holding pattern I noticed that two of the things that really went way over budget this year were legal fees for animal control yep for sure that is a large portion of it right now because that same firm is handling are the legal fees for that and union negotiations there's overlap there's some overlap I know there's some other things but that is definitely a large portion of it and speaking of union anything to report yep so we have a meeting tomorrow it's supposed to be our final negotiating meeting with the union we're relatively confident that the outstanding stuff should have a good chance of being resolved in the next meeting should that be the case so I believe that commission has the authority to tentatively agree to the terms and bring that to the board for ratification which could potentially I guess go on the August 7th meeting agenda don't hold me to that entirely I guess but there had been some all starts at the beginning and there's still a decent scope of things to agree on so in the event we can't make it through that we may need to set an additional meeting then there's just kind of like some escalation from there but at this point there's no indication that we'll need that so that's going pretty well we did this last week though didn't we have one scheduled in the middle of the right in the beginning of the we had we had an internal committee meeting that would have been like a special meeting for the committee that we had to postpone but there wasn't largely anything to there wasn't a counter proposal to consider so right now our counter proposal is in front of the union and we'll hear whether or not there's anything to negotiate tomorrow tomorrow okay which the last item is to decide if we are going to meet August 7th and if we do we could try to conduct a few other things but I would envision that as a fairly short meeting unless you would like to replace that would be a regular meeting no we usually meet the second Monday right so because of the months it would be three weeks between meetings instead of two okay yeah I will be gone not following Monday which is the 14th one thing we could do is replace the 14th with August 7th and then say do one two weeks later but yeah I guess so I think there are going to be some bills there coming like I have one for material and stuff that just came in today that didn't get put into the board orders plus the potential for ratifying the contract ideally so I I guess I would propose seeing if we could do a reschedule of our normal meeting to the 7th with kind of a limited scope of items right if we does that make sense to you why not just have a regular select board meeting like maybe we do the public hearing that day if we're rescheduling yeah we should have a meeting on the 7th do as much as we can and decide that night if we need to meet the 14th as well do you think we are ready to do the public hearing by the 7th I didn't want I was assuming the town was kind of preoccupied the 7th is two weeks from now we're talking about the future of callous discussion I kind of I'm getting the feeling things are calming down enough that we might be able to do that so that will be a regular meeting that's kind of scheduled anyway so I don't think we need to vote on that we just understand that we're going to meet on the 7th and then we'll decide about the 14th later and we have to set the tax rate yeah we can't set the tax rate until the grand list has been lodged and they were supposed to lodge that today did they Barbara they did not got delayed and they have to get it Wednesday okay so that's why Sandra was saying assuming they get it Wednesday she can then do the math to figure out what the tax rate should be and if they want to mail it by August 11 then certainly we should do it by August 7 yeah well that's the reason for pushing it up so yeah I just think of our meetings as every other week anyway so in my mind August 7 okay and that is the end of our agenda except that Sandra I mean so Barbara wants to say something so do we need to have a clarification about Toby's thema hours oh gosh I forgot all about that why don't you go ahead and explain the issue okay so at your July 12 or 15th I remember one of the select board emergency management meetings Toby brought up a question about whether or not he could turn in FEMA hours to get paid by the town of Calis hopefully reimbursed by FEMA that would be over and above the monthly stipend he's already being paid to serve as the highway grants administrator Toby and I came away and Toby and I did not discuss this at all we've since learned that we both came away from that meeting thinking that you guys approved Toby nodding your head saying yes you can turn in your FEMA hours and get paid and this Ann felt like that wasn't the agreement that the agreement would be that he that in since he since while he's working on FEMA he won't be doing the regular grants administration so his regular grants administration stipend would cover his FEMA hours Jamie was confused the entire conversation Jordan started to make a motion but then Jordan but then Ann said no we don't need to vote on it but I believe she said we don't need to vote on it because she thought nothing was going to change so there's a lot of confusion about what the select board will or does want to approve for Toby to turn in FEMA hours for the town to pay him and then add it to the FEMA reimbursement and what's the rate he works and so when he's doing his grant administration on a monthly stipend it's regardless of how many hours he puts in it just we average it out over the year that's at a 30 hour $30 an hour rate he is willing to do his FEMA work at $25 an hour and he will not charge for mileage and as of Friday when I talked to him that had been Friday Friday was Saturday he had logged 49 FEMA hours and I believe he turned those in today and I need to do payroll in the morning so I was wondering if I was putting him on there so I don't know what you guys understood maybe I was the only one who missed it but what do you want to do I understood that we would be reimbursing him for emergency hours that's how I took it so is everybody fine with doing that let me just ask it that way it's not unreasonable I think it's a lot to ask I want to volunteer for given that could I have a motion I move that we pay Toby $25 an hour for the time he spends working specifically on storm-related road recovery retroactive to the date of the storm Rose are you okay that's storm-related what else do you use then retroactively to the date of the storm two weeks ago today that's right okay second all in favor okay and with that is there anything else did I miss anything else I'm going to just double check and Tyler is supposed to be getting an extra $200 a week retroactive to the end of the storm okay meeting adjourned oh no I need a motion sorry was somebody moved that we adjourned the meeting and Tegan there is also Dana's retroactive calculation of sicken vacay time of time of hire somebody moved to adjourn so second all in favor thanks everybody hands only 810 always started early