 We'll call that meeting to order. And first item is public comment. This is comment on anything for the liquor control board. Approval of the agenda. And move we approve the agenda? Second it. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. Approval of the minutes from August. And move we approve the minutes from August? Second. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Opposed? Staying? New business, the Class 3 liquor license for the black crim tavern? Class 3 liquor license is a license for beverages other than wine and beer, which is all currently an option at black crim tavern. We have not had any problems related to drinking at black crim tavern. And if the board would like, we recommend that it approve the permit. So moved. Second. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Opposed? Other than this, if we approve it? So moved. Second. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. All right. So that was two minutes. Two minutes for the slick board meeting. That was last time. There's better right now. I actually like that one. I'll call it to order the regular slick board meeting. First up is public comment. This is comment on anything that's not on the agenda. Hi, this time we're quick. Tamara Morgan from Kimball Library. And just wanted to let you guys know that our children's programs are going gangbusters. We've got nine public story hours on Wednesdays and Fridays. Legos on Wednesdays, Magic the Gathering is a usual thing on Thursdays, middle grade book clubs, is happening. There was a fairytale festival up at Killington that both our children's librarians created this enormous life-size candy land and slept it up to Killington. And from all reports from kids and from librarians, that was just pure joy. Just amazing. It was a great day. Nice out. Lovely. We're going to close on Monday for Digit Secret Day. And the programming, in terms of going forward, we'd like to try and form bridges between maybe the rep committee, schools, to try and bring the library into places where it isn't, or where people don't think of going to the library. We had some summer reading kids, some teenagers that have to read a book over the summer. And they came against their will. And Courtney and Kay kind of listened to them, tried to figure out what they wanted, what they wanted to read, what subject matter might be, and got them to read. They were very happy about it. Mostly what I'm saying is our children's librarians are amazing. And also that we're moving Kate's hours up to 15 hours, because the program that they have going on is just too much for one. And I think she was at five, maybe eight to 10 hours. So now we'll do 15. That's the report from the library. Great. Thanks. I had a question. Average number of participants in this children's program? Kate said about 40 a day. Well, a 40 a session. Perfect. So yeah, lots of little ones. Glad to hear that. It's been very, very popular. Thank you. You're welcome. Rick, will it be agenda? If I may ask the board to consider one change, I heard from Josh Jerome, our economic development director, that he's working to potentially apply for what's called the Working Communities Challenge, the Boston Federal Reserve. This is a program that is similar to the R3 program, except that it provides funding for consultants to work directly with towns and committees. If the board would consider this, it would ask that they add Working Communities Challenge to the grant section. Sure. Change is to the agenda. If not, any approval of it? So moved. Look at that. Second. A little bit of favor. Opposed? Abstained. There is consent calendar from the hearing minutes from August 8th, minutes from September 1st, October 1st, warrants, and a cemetery council. Move to approve consent calendar. Second. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstained. Pre-structuring of the Economic Development Council. We have here today Peter Reed, who is a chair of the Economic Development Council. He's been on the council for some time. And he has been working with Josh and several other members of the community to potentially restructure the council so that it better provides for what grant up has become. Well, thank you. So I don't know if you've got the write up. Did you distribute this at all? It should be in the, I could be asked. So a brief write up of what we've been talking to. Just a little bit of background, I think the, I've been on the council for about three years, a little more, and I've been chair for about two and a half. And in that time, and I think somewhat before that time, there was a feeling that we weren't really a very effective organization in moving Economic Development forward in town. When we had some good discussions, we bring people in. But we met once a month and there wasn't a lot of momentum. And going back to the R3 process, I mean, there were two things that came out of that that sort of framed where we're heading with this. One was the need for an Economic Development Director, which we've now achieved, not anything to do with Economic Development Council in a big way, but I think something we were pushing consistently. So that made a huge difference in the way things operate in town. The other one was the concern that there were a lot of Economic Development groups in town that didn't really coordinate, cooperate, or get along in any way. And we had a lot of wasted effort going on in this space. And there was a need to pull those groups together in a better way. So the outcome of that was to look at what we had going on in Economic Development Council and try to expand out the population of people that were involved in it, and bring in some of those other groups in a little more coordinated fashion. So for the last three meetings or so, we've been doing that. So we've kind of maybe gotten a little ahead of our speaker here on this process, but I think it's been working well. The list of people that we've included is attached here, but I think we've been able to, while keeping the same group that was already there, bring in some new people from the private sector like Dan Bennett, bring in RECDC, the Chamber, RASTA, and a few other people that I think can really help to broaden the whole effort on Economic Development. The other thing is that we don't tend to be a group that makes big initiatives and takes boats and positions. I see it more as a coordinating committee and a place for people to push things along and share ideas. And I think now with Josh on board, it's a forum for him to discuss with business leaders in town what's going on and what he's doing and where we can help and where we can push things in a more coordinated way. So that's the way that we've been operating for a while. I think it is working. The other part of our ask is that given that we no longer get town funding, we're not really a town-driven committee. I'm looking at this more as a private sector and nonprofit coalition to move things forward that we're asking to remove ourselves as an official town committee, which on the one hand alleviates the need for some of the blue sky laws and meeting laws, which I don't think there's anything we're doing that's kind of hidden behind the curtains. We invite anybody to come to a meeting, but it seems somewhat unnecessary at this point to go through that process. And so we're asking that piece. And I think that also puts a little bit different spin on the tone of the committee, making it a little more private sector community driven rather than seen as an arm of the town for better or for worse. Certainly we will do anything we can to cooperate with town. Gulf and I were just talking about a project that may involve a couple different pieces, one of them being the town, but typically I think the things we're doing are more local businesses and helping groups work together on events and things like that. So that is our proposal. Glad to take any questions or comments. One of the intents of the Economic Development Council was for them to look at policies the town could adopt that would help with barriers or different things the town could do to encourage economic development. If we do away with this council, are you guys proposing that that either come, how do the towns meet that piece? Because this is part of the whole chapter, Sonny's sitting here in the town plan and it was a huge effort that this group was identifying. Well I think the town policies and maybe streamlining things is something that we've looked at a little bit. I don't think we really got into it in a big way. I think our three group also has expressed some interest in working on that. And we had some initial meetings on that and involved Marty a little bit and obviously she's not here anymore but we've really haven't pushed much on that but I think it is something that needs doing and would certainly be something that we could take on as a council and maybe involve some of the R3 resources that are still perking along to try to do that. I think the challenge is maybe the time we might have within the town government. I know everyone's a little stretched and I think Josh is a resource on this potentially. We initially, when we looked at doing this about six or eight months ago, we thought well let Josh get his feet on the ground before we start jigging around with policies. So maybe the time is right now since he's been in the job a while and has a little better sense of it but I wouldn't wanna let that go. So, you see now I've had a lot to do with this over the last 10 years. So initially when this conversation started 10 plus years ago, the concept was to have a person like Josh in his position and have an advisory committee which pretty much is now what we have here on the list that would work with that person. And so that was the original intent years ago and it's been derailed and sidetracked and changed and moved all around and it's kind of like now we've all come full circle here and we're back to where the original concept started. So I'm not sure whether we, I don't know what the word is, on sanction or remove the council, okay, or decertify or whatever. I think that what's been going on for the last three plus years has been very positive, very productive. It's brought a lot of things together. The R3 process has been certainly instrumental in this. So I'm not quite sure we decommission you I guess would be the word but I'm kind of thinking that initially when this all happened was that a group of folks would kind of work with the economic development director. So I don't know quite how we get there but this was the concept years ago was, okay, let's pick a bunch of people from different organizations. We now have that list here. So how do we keep them in play and move this process forward because I think it's working now. I think it is. I think the one thing I'll say for Josh is he's reached out to everybody on this list probably by now and has built his own relationships with them. So I think he's getting the advice that way. Well, now he's got 10 years or 15 years here with their ear to the ground so that he can kind of, hey, what's going on at the Ethan Allen building or what is going on here? Does this person need some assistance because they're starting a new business? So he's, those ears are very important. What's the negative to it being attached to the town other than you gotta get your agenda out and follow the economy around? There's that part of it and I think that we've basically gone out to six or eight people that weren't on the council before and said, hey, come and join us and work on this process with us. And I think what I've seen from the Arts and Culture Committee, for example, starting that involves some overhead that to me is not really helpful, to be honest. And as the chair, and we don't really have a secretary, I'm the one that kind of does it and get the friendly reminders. So if there was some administrative help, maybe? Maybe, I don't know if that's, so there's that part of it. I think part of it also is the, maybe the perception angle, but I don't know if that's as big a deal. So I'm, you know, this was kind of the sense of where we wanted to go, but I don't think it's something that is a make or break thing when we're cleaning the area. So if you're more comfortable having us stay under the auspices of the town and are okay with having 15 people on this rather than seven, I think we'd have to deal with the process for new members and things like that. Right, term limits and those kind of things. A little more ad hoc in the group in the last four, five, six months. Because I think after a while, you kind of know the people that are interested in doing this and have the right connection to grab them and say, come sit down with us. I don't think we necessarily need the select board to give the review and blessing of those people, but that's just my opinion. What we talked about this some too, when we were talking with Tom about this committee is the membership that's recognized as one thing. So then you have people that are interested in. And can still participate. Without being officially, I mean. But the official membership to me is sort of an artificial thing. It doesn't add anything to the equation. You're not betting these people. You're just making sure that you're not having some crazy person maybe jump into the committee. But I think the committee itself, the council is perfectly able to go out and identify the right people and pull them in. That changes too, right? Depending on what your topic is or what you're working on, that made more different. And we've had pretty good participation so far. Yeah, no, it's. The other problem with the council, initially we were, we had a couple of members that weren't coming very regularly. We were, you know, it was kind of flagging in terms of energy. So having a bigger group of people, and I think you see everyone at the table and you're like, well, I better show up because something might happen and I'll miss out. So. I think that's exactly what's happening. Yeah. It's a little bit of a peer pressure. So, how do we deal with that? Because this is working. This is really working. I've seen it. You know, it's moving towards this goal of, you know, a lot of community involvement. So I don't want to derail it. Yeah, I mean, I certainly hate to stand in the way of something which is gaining momentum. I mean, it brings up really kind of an interesting question of, you know, for town committees in general, like, where is it important for a committee to be officially a part of town government? And where does it make sense for it to not be? And I'm not sure we've ever really had that discussion. And, you know, if there's really good reasons for this council to be attached to the government, to be good to know, that doesn't sound like we're really coming up with a lot. But a couple of things that I saw as determinants, one would be, are you getting funding or not? And now we're not. And the other one is, are you making decisions on behalf of the town that are in some way binding, which I don't know if that happens in other committees, but at least things come back to the select board. But there's sort of an agreement reached at a committee that then comes back. And we're not, you know, we're really not doing that. We're just trying to just foster the communication more than anything else. I think there's two different things going on here, though. Right, so you have your group that's working on different projects that are not really connected to what the original intent of that committee was. So you've taken a committee that's original intent was to look at policies that we needed in the town, people that we needed to connect, where is the town willing to make an investment in infrastructure or in grants to help, like we did with LED Dynamics and whatnot? And what's happened is the more appealing stuff to work on for lack of a better term is what you guys are working on. So the committee's all kind of going this way, but we're still sitting over here knowing that there are things that we could be doing that might make it better. How do we determine where we put our investment in expanding water and sewer or those type of things? Those aren't the one thing all the time. And you guys have kind of moved. So there's almost still that need, which I think is part of town government, which is when are we willing to step in and apply for a grant and what does it look like for is there, should we have a more defined policy on tax abatement, for example, in some of those type of things? And that's the fact. Group was originally part of their charge. Right. But I'm not sure the group ever knew what the charge was. Well, the group never did that. They never did it. I think it might have been part of the original push, but it never happened. That piece of that didn't really evolve. But we still need it. We still need it. And that's the group that would be working on it. So when we talk about what's the, what we need in town government from it. I totally get it. You have a great group of people here that could probably be charged with that task and get some input back to us about those kind of things that we need. So it's our responsibility to give you guys the direction that you need to work on. That would be helpful because I don't, I mean, since I've been on the committee, we've never got anything back saying, hey, we got this issue, could you help us with this? Maybe it was implied in the charter and you thought it was happening. But if there's specific things that, to select board of the town office, things we can help with, we're glad to look at it and take it on. I mean, we're dealing with volunteer labor here, so there's a limit. Like every other committee. And most of us. We do get some kind of paycheck, don't we? Minimal, very minimal. Okay. Well, but maybe it's a, you could also say that from the town perspective, Josh could be tasked with those and he could look to this group to help him with it. I mean, it could be set up any different way, but I don't know that being an official town committee versus not, that is really any different. Although there are some town functions that we still need to achieve there somewhere. So to be treat this like the arts council situation, do we care how many members we actually have here? We have a lot of community engagement here. We don't accept that we want to make sure that we don't leave them in a position where they can't ever do anything because they don't have a quorum. Correct. So that's a... Well, we don't necessarily need a quorum because we never make any decisions, so it's great. Okay. Well, you're advisatory. I mean, we really don't think both sign anything. No, I know, we don't. So we agree on things that we should all be behind. We have talked about a lot of things that are, you know, part of the whole process to move the community forward. So I'm not in favor of disbanding you. I'm sorry, you're going to have to still break your warnings. But I think it is... Post your agenda. But I think it's fair for you to want from us a charge statement. Yeah. Okay. And... I think we can do that through Josh, don't you think? I think that we can, and maybe what we do is we try to draft that and then get it to you guys to review a comment on it and whatnot and bring it back here for next month on those areas because I think Sunny's group should have a sit, kind of be some input in it too. And so... Yeah, Josh would be a good conduit for that. The liaison between, you know, Delfel's working on the chairs committee stuff here and so I mean, there's a lot of collaboration, I think, happening within different organizations now. So this is another piece of that puzzle, I think. So... If we stay as an official town committee, are you okay with us having a more fluid group of people? Yeah, all we can do is when we do that charge. I'll send you a draft of some of the things that we've done so you can see kind of what it's like and then we can put one together, you guys, and then it says how many members will just adjust that number. The good news is I think it's moving and it's working. It's working. That's the sign. Now if we can only get that enthusiasm for the listeners office. Peter, the other part of it is that even as a town committee or council, anybody can show up and work on it whether they're an official member or not. Right. And if you're never taking a vote on anything, it actually doesn't really matter, right? People are welcome to show up and they're welcome to help. And... It's true. Whether they have some sort of official status is really a formality, right? You need to get yourself a secretary. You can take the minutes. I mean, that way at 15 people maybe. Maybe you can. That's our next meeting. That's what I'm getting here. I'm just trying to get out of that part of this. We're trying to adjust also to get change our meeting date so Josh can... Yes, so Josh can be involved. I think that's a good start for him. So we're working on that as well. Peter, the only other thing, just a quick question. I saw our recreation, financial education, medical representatives. The only one, this is selfish. Is there anybody from industry, technology? Currently, no. But I would love to have somebody from any of the companies on Beanville Road or anywhere else to join in. If you have suggestions. I'm not asking you to go on. Bill may want to. And we have talked to Bill on a regular basis about different things. Okay. Now Bill's been engaged. Yeah, when we were doing the business surveys. One nice thing that you could do, I think maybe for all of the select board would be as you have your meetings and you start and you get your attendance together, would just to be to put us on your email list. Just so that we know when you're meeting and what you're going to be talking about and if there's something on there that one of us is like, oh, I have some real input for that. Or I'd just like to know more about what's going on there and we know something about what you're doing. Yeah, an adult load comes pretty regularly as we drag him into his office but works out okay. No, I'd appreciate that. Okay. I'll do that. All right, thanks. Thanks, Peter. Thank you. Assembly permit for the safe and safe Halloween. So last year, we made a switch to the safe and safe event and the switch was done. Town staff decided to close down Main Street to make it more pedestrian friendly, to make it so that the kids and the families can walk from one side to the other. It was somewhat successful and I think the participants were a little confused and someone on the street from mostly the walkout and the sidewalks. I think towards the end, people began to become accustomed to the fact that cars were not going to come out and they really started enjoying the theme on the road and more of a novelty stuff. The rec department decided and the coordinator of the event decided to continue with that same tradition this year. So this permit reflects the fact that the road would be closed from four to six PM, which will allow children and families to be under along the road. Barricades will be placed on either side. And safety, again, is of paramount concern and we will make sure that although the Sheriff's Department has not yet signed the permit itself, but they would be a partner. How'd it happen? Oh, okay, so I'm sorry. The version that's in your packets does not include the Sheriff's Department signature, but they have already on the back. Oh, so the only signature that we're missing is the health officer signature. No, we have the health officer signature. We don't have the police departments. The police department signed the already health officer. Oh, yeah, thank you. Oh, okay. Look at that. All right, mistake there. You can just like copy and paste, right? Yeah. We did hear a lot of public positive response from last year's event compared to the five years' event. I think people just, it was something new that they had to think about the road closure and they appreciated it. Scanning momentum. Mm-hmm. The Sheriff is asking if you're gonna have detour signs in the comment. We're gonna coordinate with RACDC, who's a partner on the event and then also with the Highway Department staff. And the detour route is essentially just travel down Pleasant Street and if anyone needs to continue down South Bain Street, they could turn right onto Railroad Street and then turn left back onto South Bain Street. Or as an alternative, they could also turn right on School Street, head down Summer Street and continue on South Brees Square. Pretty simple. Stop at a house on Summer Street. You ready to get excited? Yeah. They'll be out there waving. Get off my lawn. Yeah. Hey. Hey, Asia. Well, they handle you out with dental supplies. Okay. Wow, hey, what's wrong with that? You got all that sugar, you gotta brush your teeth, right? Okay. All right. I'll make a motion to... Excuse the house that gets egg later. Oh, okay. All right, I'll make a motion to approve the assembly permit for distancing elements. Second. All those in favor? All right. All right. I'll make a motion for these. Do we feel legal action with 330 Hebron Hill? This is more of a briefing in if the board would be interested in entertaining a request, also a request. We have continued with notices to both properties regarding the condition of all the property itself. 330 Hebron Hill, a representative of the property did visit my office as soon as they received the initial notice. I explained to them why they've received the notice. I also explained to them the appeal periods. They commented to me verbally that they would appeal, but the town never actually received an appeal. So according to our attorney, not curing the issue within seven days and or appealing the decision within 15 days makes the violation an official violation. And so because it's been greater than 15 days, the town now has the option of continuing with this property to court to force the property owner to continue to clean the property. The town has not been invited to visit the property to point out the issues that exist. So if the board would like at this point, they could authorize me to speak with our attorney and then continue with the legal action. So have you been up there recently? I've driven by it. I know that they have made some... They've made significant progress compared to what it is. It was. I also know that. They moved it all out back, but it's... Yeah. They have made progress. I mean, it is. It's 90% better than it was. Okay, I heard that. I didn't know where it went. I always worked on School Street. Why not do it there? So it's up to the board. We could wait another month to see if they continue to clean, but I feel it is a part of a pattern where something is done and then it comes back and then something is done. I do know that one weekend I drove through the property just to make sure that something was happening and I saw that there was an ongoing fire. I saw the smoke. I reported to the fire warden who then shared with me that there was no burn permit. There was a visit to the property. They didn't confirm that there was a fire, but could smell that a fire had occurred at some point somewhere. So they may be trying, and I think that could have been a part of the trying. So. Yeah, so I know they weren't burning anything illegal because I went to check several times. And then the first two weekends, they did have a permit for it. I don't know which, so I don't know if it must have expired when you checked. Me personally, this property, I mean, I drive by it every day and there's no garbage anymore. They've taken care of the dumpster and they had garbage bags just piled up there and it's not there anymore. So it to me, it appears that they're actually making effort. I mean, I don't know if they're continuing, how far they're continuing or whatever, but it's definitely more progress than what I've seen in the last 10 years. If it could help the board, something to say about the following property could maybe help the board with the decision on the 330 Edward Hill Road property. The town realized that we had sent the initial notice violation letter to 10 Dudley Street to an address that was registered with the Lister's office. However, that address is different from what is with our Water Waste Wider Department. So the letter sent to the address recorded with the Lister's office, that letter was returned back to the town as non-deliverable. So our attorney indicated that the best course that he would suggest is that we restart the notice process because these are the type of technicalities that would cause the town to potentially lose in court because we didn't send the notice to the right address. So if we restart the process for 10 Dudley Street through the notice of violation, it would give us an additional month for the property on Edward Hill to see if they continue with the progress. It gives us more time for the board to see if more changes happened or if it's gotten worse over the next 30 days. Are they making any progress whatsoever, or are they still going the wrong way on Dudley Street? Dudley's progress at all. Nothing's changed. I know last time they'd added to it or something. Yeah, it's more noticeable now because the vegetation has died, so now we could see more. I don't believe any more has been added, but that's because I don't think it can really add any more. It's up higher. It's a lot. Yeah, it could have gone up higher. I do know that the Department of Environment Conservation has added the property to a list called the SMAC list, which means that they recognize there's a problem, they just won't do anything with it until they have time to go back to the property. They're willing to take the town's lead, and if we continue with the property, they will come back again. But no progress has been made. The only issue there is that we sent the initial notice of violation to what could be an incorrect address. Okay. My preference would be to wait on the Edward Hill especially if they've made as much progress as they have. I'd go one step further and send them a letter of encouragement. Thank you. Keep it up. So you're doing a good job. Continue to move forward. I think that's actually a really nice, would be a nice idea. To me, it's not about the money, right? It's about getting it cleaned up. It's about getting it cleaned up. They've made progress, and it wasn't like they just picked up one corner. They really... I hadn't been by it, but I heard that they were making... It's different. I got some emails from some of your neighbors up there that thought things were moving well. It's probably moving well. So, yeah. So... So, yeah, I think... Yeah, kind of like, okay, start the process over with Dudley Street. Get the right address. And with them, I'd say, hey, you keep on moving. You're doing a good job. You know, I think you're gonna be okay if you get this taken care of. So, wouldn't you agree? Yeah, I like that idea of the letter of encouragement. I think that's recognition is good. Yeah. Okay. Good to know. Whether they're in a panel on the back. Just say we're doing... Yeah, keep on making progress. You're gonna save yourself that. Fine, here. I'll give you the fraction you need. Yeah, whatever you want to go. Okay. Yeah, it does. Thank you. Next up is Budget Committee Discussion. Turn this one over to you, Pat. This was your request. Budget Committee. You wanted to talk about giving direction to the Budget Committee and about adopting a livable wage. Oh, okay. You're talking about what our priorities might be in the budget, right? And one of the things I would like us to look at is see what we're paying people then on. And what it would cost to bring that up to a livable wage. It's one of the things I'm interested in. I don't know if there are other people interested in that. I'd like to see data around that. It would be really helpful. It may not cost us that much if we decided to do it. But I think it's... What's a livable wage? They usually figure about $15 an hour. Where does that number come from? Who picked that number? I don't know. And what ad do you know it's livable? He's not livable wage. I mean, it's all by definition. I can have one person who has a standard that is higher or lower. I think that's generally what people talk about as a livable wage. So when you talk about what it takes to get to whatever the definition of livable wage is, are you looking at all the impacts of that? What are you talking about? Looking at all the different areas of that's been an impact for the budget or in... I think you'd have to in the end if it's something you wanted to do. And so is that a budget committee exercise? They seem to develop the budget, right? I think in action, given the information, that's probably more of a cliff exercise. Who's paid what and how much it would change. What do you do if you say your livable wage is 15 and I'm a seven-year employee and I'm at 1501? You wouldn't go down, but you'd have to decide what would happen. Yeah, I'd have to be part of the conversation. Well, I mean, where do you... You'd have to be part of the conversation. This is a pretty lengthy conversation. Yeah, this is not a light issue. This is a pretty meaty issue for sure. So there's a lot of definitions I need here and who qualifies for this living wage are we talking about? You're talking town employees. I've had numerous discussions with people at the state house about this and no one yet has told me that are we paying high school kids this living wage? Are we talking about high school and college kids here? Because I can't get an answer yet. And all I keep hearing is, the constant rhetoric is, well, all these companies are coming into Vermont, Walmart and Home Depot and all these companies and they're coming here and they're paying minimum wage. Well, Vermont has the right to set a minimum wage law. I'm not sure that this little wage thing and this minimum wage thing are tied together. I'm still finding, trying to figure out what it is. So as a business owner, if we're gonna say $15 minimum wage, that means I pay high school kids coming through the door 15 bucks an hour because I'm not doing it. Okay, I'm sorry, but that's not gonna happen. Because high school kids have come to work from here, entry level employees and therefore, I think they should be entry level and pay scale. So I'm still waiting for the definition of how this all plays out. This is just what I'm interested in is something just for the town. So it wouldn't affect you. But you gotta define that. But you gotta define that. Yeah, I mean, who qualifies for this? What's the qualification and do we have employees now who are below that level that you're talking about? I don't know, I have no idea. That's why I was asking. So it's like, I can dig through this and I think it's perfect example. I think you're right, we need more data. And I think that if this is something that we wanna pursue then, this is Cliff's job to kind of put this together for us. I can say that most of the staff members would fall under the supposed $15 wage below are summer high school employees that are volunteers, not volunteers, but work at the pool on the camps. The other group that does fall under this category is volunteer firefighters. They are paid a much lower rate because I think their firefighters are 1073 an hour. But if you're gonna say our scale level, right? So now you're into that whole discussion of if you were looking at the high school student looking to help out at summer camp versus a firefighter who's dedicated 30 years or 10 years, 15 years, whatever, and the skills and the training and all that. It's not an easy discussion because if I've been here for, and worked my way up and I'm now paid 1501, I'm gonna be pissed if somebody comes in through the door with no experience, no anything and gets paid 15. So I'm not worth a penny more than somebody you've got to invest a huge amount of resources in the training. It may create challenges for us if... It's gonna move up a scale. Yeah, it would be a bump up a scale for all the firefighters. Well, for everybody. And for everyone. So we're not a volunteer fire department anymore. We don't have volunteer fire departments. We're not that part of the equation. It's volunteer, if you wanna be on a fire department, is that what it is? Well, as long as I've been on it's volunteer paid call. I see. Right, that's what it's been. Okay. Well, I'm just asking the question. And I don't know when you made that switch. Yeah, I'm just curious and it's how it kind of works. It was, the switch was made when the interpretation was that it had to be, they had to be paid when they were there to be covered by workers. Work is comp, that's what my understanding was. And so you don't get paid as a, you get paid for the hour for when you're there. And then it's not even for the whole time you're there. Right, meetings or trainings to get an hour and you might be there for. Well, even calls. We get toned out. We get back to, and as soon as we clear, we're off the clock, even though we may have two, three hours of cleaning up. It's not what we're doing. That was the work. So we could fix. We could probably, because it's not a lot of time to talk about, but I think that's the point of this discussion here. I think really what, I think it's not, I think it's reasonable for us to be able to say as a town that we are proud of the wages that we pay our employees and that we feel good about it, that they're paid a livable, dignified, whatever you want to call it, wage, fair wage. And it would be nice for us to be able to know that for sure, that we're really doing that. If we are doing that right now, we feel like we're really feeling good about the way we compensate the people who work for the town, then great. But having a process that we go through, we might identify places where maybe we're not doing that, and that would be a net benefit to the town. And exactly how that would play out. It could be very complicated. It could be really hard to make decisions about it. It doesn't mean that we don't go down that road and just at least take an initial look at like, what do we really have going on? And are we doing the right thing? And it could have repercussions. We might decide, yeah, in an ideal world, we'd like to pay everybody this, but for our budget, that's just not gonna happen. And so we compromise, that's the world. We live in a world of compromise. But if we at least make that effort and people feel like they're being treated fairly, it's hard to see though, it would be much of a downside to doing that exploration. I agree. So to me, I think before, I mean, it sounds like a lot, I agree, lengthy discussion, deep dive, right? But maybe there's just an initial check. One, what is quote, livable wage? What if it is a 15 grade? And then, is there really an impact to the town? How many fall below that line? And if it's all kids, not kids, young people working at our camp, is there any other process that has to go after that? Or not? With the exception of our summer youth, we typically would typically calculate hourly rate as adding benefits and- Yeah, I would say that has the whole benefit program here. Yeah, all of our employees, when we count the benefits that are available to them, and hourly rates are, they far exceed $15 per hour because the town contributes for their health care, retirement and everything else. Vacation. Yeah, if we were to take that into consideration, all of our employees are far above already the $15 an hour. When we count what the town pays out of tax revenue, and that's part of the conversation. And the IRS counts it because if you get a gift, technically you get a Christmas bonus, you're gonna get that counted into that. So I'm just telling you, it's like, I think we're already there, okay. It's my opinion. But I would love to see the data. I'm agree with you, I think we just need a look and say, yeah, we're good. I'd love to be able to tell somebody who I ran into in the street, we're doing right by the people who work for the town out there to be able to look them in the eye and say, yeah, we're doing a really good job with that. Yeah, exactly. So yeah, I'd love to have that. I don't know, because I don't know the answer. If you've sat through the union negotiations. Well, yeah, well, I wasn't gonna go there, but yes, that's. But they, we did comparisons, right? And we've righted it, the contract prior to this one, we went through a whole graduated scale on highway folks and on the water wastewater folks. Bring them up to a peer. So maybe that would be great information to share with the rest of us. Yeah, I don't know, I threw all that stuff away when the contract went through. But you have the data, Cliff's got it all. If the board would like it, the next briefing from the finance director I could ask him to focus on the hourly wage, like either an average or without names of employees and I'll violate any laws just to say, these are the wages and although all that stuff is public information, isn't it? The wage paid is the actual dollar buyer is, some of the deductions aren't, right? So, yeah, it gets sticky. Like if you have a child's order, a court order withholding or all that, none of that, you can't publish any of that data, but you can publish the rate and the. The hourly rate, their benefit package, that's all public, so you can share that, we can have that. I think it's a bar, there's a line that's where the livable wage is, and then there's a graph that shows. Exactly. Above and below. It's a bar chart. It's an easy one. Yeah, it certainly doesn't have to be names as I see it. Yeah, we don't have to put any names. I can certainly ask Cliff to do that. I just can bring it to the board for his next briefing. Okay. I'd like to see it. You would. I wanted to do something on other, on priorities, issuing priorities from the select board to the budget committee. I was questioning whether you'd done that in the past. Do you give them any direction? Just say, go at it. Well, the budget committee doesn't actually, doesn't report to the select board. But they come up with a budget, right? And which they ask us to approve. They don't really come up with it so much as they provide oversight for the budget process, right? I don't say it, and then they help develop the first draft of the budget that then comes to us. But the interesting part is they've never presented it to us. They develop their budget, and then the town manager brings it to the select board. The budget committee's never brought it to the select board. The select men are still responsible. We're responsible for the budget, but we don't have to take their budget, right? I mean, it's an odd process. One of the requirements per their charter as created at a town meeting, I think he was thinking, 1996, was that the committee was to present, as Trini mentioned, their budget to the select board. And over the last, at least under my tenure, there was some contentious conversation about them coming to the board and actually presenting. At some point, it became that they would choose to communicate to the board, as opposed to have formal presentation, PowerPoint, whatever it is, because it was very vague. Their charge was very vague. So I think now we're in a different place that I would like to remind the board, they are elected officials. And the select board can make a request, just like they could make a request of a select board, that they are newly elected and independent from town oversight, other than the voters. So the budget committee is a body that exists by virtue of a town vote that created it. It's not, okay, cause I was only impression that it was... And on the board, oh, not yet. That's how it was created in so many years ago. Kind of as an oversight. I didn't know that. I've sat on the committee. I mean, basically what we've done is, you get together once a month and you take the current budget and you take the current expenditures for the year and you're just kind of looking and you were tracking, it's like, okay, are we in place? And truthfully, it was basically run by the financial manager. So the budget committee made recommendations going forward into another year, putting together what they thought should be worked on. And so I sat on there with a couple other folks and we thought, you know, we were gonna try to figure out how can we save money at the town garages on heating oil and stuff like that. And, you know, those were pretty much just discounted conversations. So I didn't serve long. It wasn't happy. So it didn't feel to me like we were really accomplishing anything. So that's my take on it. But it was created by the voters and so there it is. Any more discussion on? Can I just say so? It sounds like the result is they just come up with a budget. What we did when I was on there was we reviewed numbers on a monthly basis to see how close we were to tracking what that year's budget was. So if we saw something that was slightly out of whack, you know, we needed an explanation for that. So if something's tracking, you know, 50, 60% higher than what it was actually budgeted for, what's the reason? And so that's kind of what we did. And then towards the end of this year, you know, we were charged with, okay, so now where can we, you know, where are we gonna fix? What can we, is there places where we can save? And, you know, truthfully, it was like, you know, we were talking about fuel oil for the garages. You know, what's the contract? You know, are we able to buy it at a better rate? But the conversation really when it came down to it was done by the finance manager who presented it to the town manager who presented it to the select board. So the budget committee was basically more of an oversight to make sure that things didn't look out of skew, but, you know, it depends on, you know, if you've got an active financial manager, I'm really not sure why we need a budget committee, but it's there, so. The reason I'm asking is because we are responsible for it in the end. Yes. So I'm wondering, is there a process and it sounds like there is a process. And it was basically reviewing what was going on on a multi-basis. Well, they do work with Cliff and Adolfo when they put in the budget together. They all sit around together and get feedback back and forth. And that's what produces that first draft that the select board works for. My name is also Interaction with the Capital Planning Committee. So, Capital Planning Committee is looking at projects. You know, where does that fit in the budget? You know, what do we got that we've, you know, did we pay off a bond? Can we take on another one? You know, what are we gonna fix? So we're gonna do this road. Yeah, so those are things that were discussed to develop the budget. Board would like I could also ask Cliff to share more of his participation with his short time with the town with the Budget Committee. I know that we have new members on the committee or at least a new member that's become very engaged in the process. So I could have Cliff share from his perspective his involvement with the Budget Committee over the last, well, since March of earlier this year. You had a different makeup now than what it was five, six years ago. So, you know, it's, you know, a different financial manager, so different folks. It may be, you know, that it's, the process is working better now. I don't know. It'd be good to give Cliff's take on it. Yeah, absolutely. Any comments? Working Community Challenge Grants? Well, the application for the Working Communities Challenge is not due until December. A letter of intent is due in early November. We are hoping to have, at the very least, both I of the Select Board so that it will strengthen our letter of intent to apply for the grant. And we do find this because the letter is due before the next Select Board meeting. We are hoping to engage with our neighbor towns, believe Brookfield, Braintree, and a few other towns that we're hoping to create a more regional group which would strengthen our application. We have been working with the R3 Chairs Committee who is very interested in seeing this go forward. We have engaged Brookfield. We have engaged other towns. They all seem very interested in joining Randolph in this process. So, we're hoping to have that letter of intent completed by Josh by the deadline, which is early November. And again, that won't lock us into applying. We can always come back to the Select Board before the November meeting and say, this is what we've done. These are the towns that have also voted to be a part of this group. And if we move forward, then we're all applying as one as opposed to individual towns. I'm gonna add a little bit to that because I've said a part of this. So, this was a program that's put together by the Boston Fed. There was a presentation held here, I think it was July, where they came to present. And so, what it is, it's their way of trying to figure out how to engage and move communities forward. One of the challenges is, you have to be a community over 5,000, which we're not. But they don't care if you cross town lines. So, and the money's, this first phase is for a planning grant, correct? That's right, yeah. First phase is a planning grant. And then, if you're successful, once you've submit your application through the planning grant, then what's available out there was, I believe it was three years of approximately $100,000 a year, if you receive this. So, one of the things that was talked about in this meeting in July was, what are the needs of the community and where would this money really be beneficial? And so, one of the things that we touched on was the need for childcare within the entire region. So, we've had those discussions with Damien. So, this was possibly a way to make that a bigger focus and move that childcare piece along farther and faster. So, we think that has a really good potential to be able to score some good points. And so, engaging Brainturi in Brookfield and then possibly it could even be broader because we're in Opportunity Zone, we might be looked at a little bit more favorably. So, those are some things that we were kicking around. So, I think it's got some potential. And, you reached out to somebody in Brookfield? Yes, we had this elect board chair in Brookfield. Okay. I contacted, Josh had asked me to contact Megan and Brainturi, so I reached out to her and so I got her to chat. And so, Josh is supposed to be reaching out to her to get Brainturi engaged in this because that seems to be a very common problem throughout the entire state is the childcare issue. So, we thought if we're a core community here, maybe we could score some help in the childcare department. That's my part of it. So, it would be helpful to have a vote from the select board to authorize us to submit a letter of intent. Doesn't necessarily have to be a vote to authorize a town to apply for the grant. Or it could just authorize me to, without a vote, just to submit a letter of intent. So, if you, oh, I would do lots to authorize you to submit a letter of intent but not necessarily authorize you to apply for the grant. Just give it options. Maybe I'm just complicating. Are there two different phases of the application process? Right, but are there any issues that we should be considering that would stop us from saying we'll just authorize you to go ahead and apply for the grant? What's the math requirement? Who's making the match? If it's the regional folks. I think there's some things they got to iron out in the application. The letter of intent gets you down the next phase so then we can get some more information to move the process forward. Who are the partners? Yeah, because we don't know who the partners are. The partners, there was a broad range. You could incorporate Raintree, Brookfield, Randolph, Bethel, Royalton, there's, it could be a regional thing. Chelsea? A lot of people from Chelsea come over this way. But how much money is it? How much can you get in a planning grant? Yeah, well, I think it was 10 grand. Was it 10 grand? Yeah, they're, I think it's more than that but it's split up by the number of groups that actually have communities involved. So it would be considerable but the total amount, they don't know yet. The RFP was just released so we're still trying to make sure that, one, we can meet the requirements for having the population for the application. Two, that we make it as attractive enough to obtain as much funding as possible. And have it be a successful project. Exactly. You said it would be stronger if the board voted to authorize the letter of intent. It would be because then we could submit it with minutes from the meeting to say that the board voted to authorize us to X. Sure, I'll move that we authorize Adolfo to sign a letter of intent for this planning grant. Seconded. All those in favor? Aye. Thank you. Both business. Wind River Sludge Disposal Payment Dispute. If there's more information, I spent some of the time with Cliff this week looking at some of these numbers and trying to get our heads around how to do it. And there's a spreadsheet. We got some more of the information that we asked for which is starting to make the picture clearer. And I think the original invoice that went to Wind River for the $24,000 and change, then once the numbers got crunched a little better, that number has been backed down to the $17,900. And that's not for many to work with, but we did this week. That was just part of the process. So we're talking about 19, the, so they were invoiced to $24,000. They paid it. That number then was sharpened some and the value is the $17,900. And the variables that we're dealing with here are a little bit hard, right? Because we don't have a way of saying the volume that came into the process that was generated by the town use is X. And the additional that came in by Wind River is Y. Because we don't know what those two values, we know how much they brought, but we don't know how much it resulted in the costs and whatnot. The other problem we have is some of these costs are what you call soft costs or employee costs, and which we would have had anyway. So what we did was we looked at the 2018 values as compared to the 2019 values, knowing that we don't really know that there's, what we do, we know that it's probably not true that 100 dead number is exactly the same. We know there's some variable there, we just don't know what it is. Because we've had some new people book on, we've had houses change, vacant, there's a whole variety of things. What we know is that in the end of all this, the big driver of this number is, you'll see it on your spreadsheet, it's the sludge tons. And that is a good number because we have to pay Cassella to remove it after it's done. And if I look at those numbers, we have 118 ton increase in the sludge solids that had to be removed between that time period and the 18 in that time period in 19, which is a 122% increase over what we did the prior year. And that netted about 12,000, the 12,231 number, which is highlighted on the spreadsheet. The other costs that make up that 17,000 again are soft costs, the polymer, the odor control, are processing costs that we can allocate per ton but we don't really know where the line is in the ton allocation, does that make sense? How many of the towns, how many of theirs? We know roughly but we don't know exactly where that is. So then also you have the letter that came in from the river when this took place. And we have their estimate of the volumes that were coming in, what they propose to pay for a rate. And we have their assumption is that we would likely, this rate will cover any additional sludge disposal costs that are there before we know that that didn't happen with two but I don't think it's because anybody did anything to be deceptive here. I just think that's the reality of it. But at the bottom there's some calculations that were done by Wind River. And remember this was when the discussions were about Wind River having a disposal, there was a fee attached to it but in exchange they could do a certain element of work that they do for the town anyway and net that out towards this fee. So this has some netting in there. But at the very bottom we see that there's some conversation about them paying a monthly amount and then truing up at some point. And that monthly amount only comes to 32,000 when they were assuming the amount was 64,000. So the numbers are all over the place in this but there's truly an intent there at some point to true this up. And but I'm not, what's unclear is whether the truing up is to the 64,000 that's mentioned in the letter since the amount they wanna pay monthly is only half of what the amount is they suggest whether it's a truing up the actual cost. And there's a sample of the minutes and the minutes are, yes we talked about this. So we aren't getting any help whatsoever out of the committee minutes. But you also have a email chain where the proposal came in in August from the river. And you see in November, Suzanne is poking Chris to say, you know we got stuck in the details do we separate the two? So we'll bill you for the services we provide you bill us for the services we provide. But you know what needs to happen so we can move forward with this eight and a half cent agreement and Chris's response you know is I kind of lost track of this. Basically we talked and then I forget where we left it but if you guys are ready to start a trial on I feel as though we are too. Thank you anytime after the first of the year works for us. So it's really clear to me that this is trial. This is we're attempting to get the best price we can figure it out. And we actually looked at the numbers that Chris used to kind of check this. And Chris's numbers were dead on if you used the amount of solids with the volume, the percentage of solid whatever it is, however the measurement is because he used the measurement that's our product. So our product say is value one and I think it's like 1.6 or 1. something and theirs coming in was closer to nine. And so if you took the value that Chris calculated he was spot on for what it cost us to produce or to process a gallon of our product at the concentration level it was there. Where he what he missed was multiplying it by the difference of the concentration. And had he done that he would have been pretty close. He would have been a little higher actually than what the actual cost was. So you take a guy who the background is in finance and I think that somehow we got into this situation where we were in we don't track our numbers this way. We don't come up with this value because we're not in the market doing this. And I think he did the best he can but I think also our number is a little bit hard if we said well we just want to break even on this. I'm not sure the 17 is the right number either but I don't know how we get to what that number is. I do believe that we can say it's very easily at least 12,000 the difference because we know that we have this much higher concentration coming in and we have to dispose of it in the end after it goes through the process and that has a fee to it and we can see that we went up 122% in our solids that we had to dispose of. So I go back to the Water Waste Water Committee's recommendation of the 2575 but I think the fair way to do it is to flip it. I think that it's after you get the numbers and after you look at the documentation and whatnot that it's pretty easy to see that the cost that drove the higher amount are in a direct correlation to the product that was coming in and not the product that we were producing there and I don't know how we can get to the exact down to the penny what that cost is and I don't think we can at this point and I think we have some of this. Some of this is ours. We didn't give Chris the support he needed to be able to calculate this rate and unfortunately the staff that he had to work at at the time they didn't have a good relationship and it is what it is and where we are today but I think the fair, when I went through all this and I kept looking at it I think that maybe it's fair split but I think a split has to go the opposite. Water Waste Water Committee's recommendation was. That's kind of where I come down on and I worked with Cliff to get some of this paperwork together so that you could see the this is about what we have for information to go on. Yeah, I could support that. It's a tough. It's a lot better than what we had last week or last month. Yeah, I think we got a lot more information. In the end, if you look at the numbers the amount that was originally invoiced to them was before the numbers got sharpened and what we're looking at now if we go with a 12,000 and change they're getting about half of it back. But some of it would, we've already advised them some of it was coming back to them where the number was incorrect the first time. That's the 64 under that's in here. That's right, yeah. I don't know what we want that value to be the number that's highlighted on the spreadsheet is just showing that that's the difference in the disposal of the end product with that in 122% increase in that volume over the course of the same time period. So that number isn't the actual cost that's above what we expected it to be for this disposal. No, because we never calculated what that would be. Oh, because Chris never figured out what the difference would actually be for this. Right. And I don't know that he ever had values, right? So he didn't have, he knew what they were proposing to come in, but I don't know that he ever knew given the density of what was coming in what that volume would be on the other end to have calculated that. Can I interject at all? Is that time passed? No, no. But when I had that conversation with him and Cliff it appeared that a lot of this was trial and it's in the documentation kind of supports that. We're really, we have this new technology. We believe we can benefit. There actually is statements in here where they thought bringing this in was going to reduce the cost to producing all, to processing all the rest of it. So there would be a cost savings on the stuff that was coming through by bringing this in. And we actually ended up with the reverse which is why you do a trial to some extent. We just have learned a valuable lesson. We wanted to find it up a lot better before we try a trial again. Did you wanna share some more? No, yeah, my only, my only objection being when the email chain where we were discussing the trial I was part of that discussion as well. It was more of a trial to see if the equipment could actually handle the material. You know what I mean? It was based on seeing if it could actually process the material, how it was actually gonna work for them and also the thickness, the material that was coming to Chris, he already knew what the projected thickness of the material would be. We had provided him with that information as well. Did you provide him with what the volume was going to be after it ran through the equipment? What his solids would be after it went to the centrifuge? That conversation I was not part of. That's where the driving cost is. Correct. It's clear that that's where the biggest, the disposal is the biggest cost that basically moves us and we're out of the water. Yeah, I just wanted to make sure everybody's. Yeah, I mean there's talk about screwing up. The only problem is we could build a case that it was truing up to the cost. You could build a case that it was truing up to the volume or the thing. The problem is nowhere did we ever take all this and capture it into one document and say, okay this is how it's gonna work and here's where we're gonna check in and whatnot at all. So it all falls down to a series of documents that. Probably court would have a field name. Right. So how do you then try to look at their way to resolve it and go forward? I would think it would. At the heart of it all, even as everybody spoke about earlier, I mean it's a business decision that was made on both sides to try and benefit both sides equally. I mean I think at worst it would be a 50-50 take on the responsibility. So you paid us 24,000 and we give you back both from the taxing of the numbers and the adjustment, 12 of that. You can pay $5,000 as a fair number. You know I would prefer it to be 75, 25 in our favor but I honestly think 50 is fair. Just to be realistic. I think it's fair to be the free version of zero. We're right now. We're right. We're right. We're right. We're right. We're right. We're right. We're right. We're right. But in all fairness, I mean it's something on both sides. Both of us ventured into, you know, with good intentions trying to benefit both the talent. Yeah, nobody was, there's no ill intention here. So. You didn't think the 50-50 split was fair? You have the Seward or Seward committee meeting. Well, I definitely would prefer it to be 75, 25. Well, I know, though that's clear, but my recollection is that you also thought that that was fair and that 50-50 split was not fair. Was not. Was not fair. Correct, yeah. But now this change is mine. I'm, people are allowed to change their mind. I'm just pointing out that that seems to be what's happening here. Yeah, well, it's okay. Can you change yours, too? I'm sorry? You changed yours, too? I could be OK with the 50-50 split. OK, so are we doing 50-50 of the original number or 50-50 of the 17-9? Because my numbers in looking at this, what they should have ended up paying is about 12,000. And I believe we already did get an adjustment from what the original number was. Yeah, we refunded 6,400. So right now we're saying that the total additional cost to the town was at least $12,000. With $17,930. We're still saying that that's $17,000. So we refunded the 6 to get down to the 12. So we're talking about, right now, either 50-50 split, which is about $9,000, or going with this about $12,000. And I believe the change in the $6,000 refund was based on the fact that the original numbers were accrued from a 9% of solids and that the solids were actually only in the realm of 6. I think we are all pretty clear that that was an error and that $6,000 was given as a refund that was based upon, yeah, we're fixing that mistake that everybody agrees was made. Just so you knew, we sat down, we took the numbers from there and we analyzed them three different ways and we came out, right, about at the same number each time we did it to make sure that we were capturing everything and we were looking at it fairly. The challenge we had is we don't want the normal flow into the system, produced, and then rate. So we can't run them both independently to see what that cost would have been, which is part of where the, we tried to figure out if we could come up with even assumptions that we didn't have enough data to do that. What do you want to do? So you're asking 50% of the 17 or 15% of the 12 is that what you're asking? The 17-9. Yeah, so the amount is $17,900. So the question on the table is how we split that? I'm in favor of the half town, half on them, out of the 17-9. So before I make the motion, I'll second it. All right. So 50% of the overage would be the town's responsibility. 50% would be Wind River's responsibility of the 17-9 total cost for the additional product that we've been moving through. That's the motion. If it is exact number of this. So we would be providing them an additional refund of $8,969.67. Then you have no second. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Post. Stained. Motion carried. Do we have a number? Yeah, thank you very much. I see you're writing. And going forward, we have a new formula, correct? And going forward, we have to take on the finance that person that Chris might do. Are we doing a contract? I don't know how they did it. We have not. We don't have a signed contract at this point, but we have agreed to a set price with a sliding scale based on the percent solids. So are we good? In a single document? Yeah. It'll read what we've got. All I want to hear is the financial guy's working on it and everybody seems to be chatting about it. Sounds like we're in good shape. Yeah, and the spreadsheet has a lot of pages to it. Oh, sure. Through the numbers to. I'm glad it's quite complex. There's lots of pieces in that deal. Well, you're on the water spirit. That's just a number of games. OK. All right. Appointments. We have two committees with appointments to talk about tonight. Let's start with the arts and culture committee. So if I could also mention to the board, you would also like the board to consider making appointments, although it's not on your back, but thinking appointments to the position of zoning administrator and deputy zoning administrator per decision made by the planning commission earlier this week. The arts and culture council was on the number. You were going to go back and have some conversation about if it stick with a lower number. The takeaway from the last meeting was that the sense of swipe forward, as was expressed, going a way back to the July meeting was that nine seemed like a name and an appropriate number. And over the course of the last couple of months, Sonny Holt and Suzanna Grovel and I had actually found 14 people, the three of us included who were interested in potentially being on the committee. At the direction of the select board last month's meeting, we then went back to those 14, explained the process that you had laid out to get a name for the committee. And several people pulled their names through consideration, citing time constraints, primarily in terms of serving. And at the request of the select board, we solicited biographies and statements of interest from the remaining people who remain interested in being appointed to the committee. And those names were submitted. And bios were submitted to Adolfo and Schnaven by the October 4 deadline of last Friday following people. Philosophers Karen Dillon, Dave Hurwitz, Vincent Freeman, Andrew Wheeler, Chris Wilson, and Marjorie Ryerson all submitted statements of interest in bios. That's seven people for the six remaining slots, as best I understand. We're going to make our job difficult, right? So now we've got to eliminate one. We'll make a move forward. Adolfo had a UNITE chat with us during that meeting. You've got a recommended list? There is no recommended list submitted by the committee. But if the board would like, it could make its decision based on when the statements of interest were received by Tom or submitted to the town. Yes, I have two sculptors. You don't buy there by profession? I might. There is a variety of artists. We have poets. We have sculptors. We have music producers and performance actors. We have fine woodworkers. We have an instrument maker who is also visiting. Who's the second? He's on the back here. David, what is she doing? Chris. We have Chris Wilson. David is listed as a sculptor as well. Although he's primarily known as a fine woodworker. Right. What does Phyllis do? Phyllis is more a patron of the arts than an artist herself. And she will readily. I believe that. She also was, as Adolfo had suggested, if you were to work based on the order of the submissions of the statements that came in. Phyllis was the last statement to come forward. We had discussed the possibility of having alternates to this committee. So people could feel like they belonged. And they were officially a part of the committee. And even though they wouldn't get to vote, if everyone was there, we could fight for this. Are you OK? You got your hand back. That's my horizontal. Is that horizontal? And in that way of one of the original nine were to step down or else she would just step in. She would just step in. And I think she would be absolutely fine with that. When I last conversed with her on the day she submitted her statement of interest last Friday, she expressed some mild concern that she was the only non-artist of the group. And also indicated that she and her husband were going to be out of town for the first meeting or two. Alternate works. There you go. I think she would be more than happy to function in that alternate role. And if one of the original nine does step down or it works for the next year, she could just step into that if that's the setting and selecting. Perfect. So I'll make a motion that we take the slate of folks that have expressed interest and nominate them to the Arts Council and make Phyllis for the alternate. Second. Hi. Just one other piece of information we have tentatively agreed that we will be meeting on the first Tuesday of each month at a time to be determined. And presumably pending confirmation with Karen Dillon will be meeting each month at channel. There are some really good ideas already coming out of this committee. They're also going to be participating in the chairs group. So hopefully as chairs all start communicating with one another, there could be some cross-pollination between the committees. I think there's tremendous possibilities for cross-pollination with this group and recreation, for example. Sorry, a little of that going on. It's really crosses a lot of lines. Some of that happening already. Did we get additional people through our advertising? None through our advertising. We put it in the Herald and then also posted notices in general stores. But they've caught up, everybody. I think they got them all, Pat. They got them all. We quartered all the interest. Anybody who wants to devote time, still looking for a listener, all right? They're really jumping into that one, huh? Nobody wants to jump into that one. I can't understand why. Thanks, Tom. I'm not sure if it'll help the board. I know I'm not sure if Sonny's going to leave, but Sonny's the chair of the Planning Commission. And I wasn't sure if the board would like to consider the zoning or the deputy zoning position in case Sonny's to leave at this point, so. We've got two more to do. But we can go to the zoning with the departure of Marty. It left the opening. We've advertised and not got any rock stars. So the proposal that was submitted to the Planning Commission that they voted to support was to make Josh the zoning administrator and Adolfo the deputy. He's the deputy. That gives us a few things, right? So it gives us a full-time position that's here when people come in. So there's obviously somebody that folks can talk to. And the backup being full-time also. They ought to be able to find at least one of you. And then that leaves us finding Josh some administrative help. And he has a larger project that comes through the door. We also agreed to hire a five-time ZA administrative assistant to fill not Marty's position, because that has already been filled by Josh, but to help out with the specifics, issuing the permits and so forth, all of the details that she would take into account. Finally, administrative stuff. We talked about all that. This position would be primarily for zoning. So all permits would have a person continuously producing the permits as needed. We would have, like Trini mentioned, someone here full-time to be able to answer all zoning questions or, at the very least, provide some support to the community as they come in. And there may be potential need in the future for a finance department for some additional support. The zoning administrator, when they are available, could also support the finance department. You mean the zoning administrative assistant? Sorry, yes, the zoning administrative assistant. So do you have a sense of how many hours per week Josh would be devoting to this role? The biggest chunk of time is actually producing the work. And it goes with the paperwork. The actual learning of the zoning administrative duties or the actual permits would take some time. But once, I've been doing it now since Marty departed, and I'm already, for the most part, up to speed on everything. You're just on an ongoing basis once you've ramped up your knowledge of the position. Yeah, I'm not on a basis to say it shouldn't take any more than, you know, I'd be surprised if it took 30 minutes or an hour every day. Now it could take a little bit more than that if we have a continuous stream of people coming in to ask questions about zoning permits, locations, looking up maps. If that would ever happen, you know, Josh and I are here. We can both split the steady flow of people coming in. And there is some seasonality to it. A lot of it is simple, single-family homes, an additional home, they can issue the permit. It's when you get a big one like the Gifford development or an expansion that Gifford, those take a little more time. Things that have to go in front of the DRV require a little bit more paperwork. And then does that include the time for the administrative assistant, or is that person, is that a separate amount of time that you would expect that person to spend? We would expect that person, we would hire them 20 to 25 hours a week, depending on, you know, whether they come in and say they'd like 20 or 25, and if it's the right person to do the job. That person, because it may not take 20 hours a week to do all the permits that are available, we could find that other departments could use some help. So it freezes up to be able to provide more support with less. And we also, the biggest issue is making sure that we have answers for constituents or for residents as they come in. Because if we were to hire somebody just part-time, even though our documents say call ahead or schedule an appointment, you know, I've had to deal with people coming in at all hours of the day, they trickle in and so. The hours do fluctuate, so even for the administrative assistant, it really would be feast or famine with the permits as they come in. But it does give us a leeway of being with the provide support. The clerk's office, the finance department. Some of Josh's other activities that he could use. Exactly. Help to free this time up. But we also have, it is about half of a position, makes Marty work three quarters of a position. She also did the engineer study, the signs. Yeah. So you had Marty's position part-time. You have one day who's now left, so finance hasn't replaced her, right? So the conversation was, you know, if you utilize this person in both areas to do the administrative stuff. It could take a full time. It seems like, yeah, it could develop into, you know, a pretty strong part-time. So that was the conversation of planning commission. It would be solving problems that currently exist, providing support to other departments while also reducing costs. Yeah. So you're proposing this as a permanent solution? Yes. One added benefit is that both Josh and I should be as well-versed in the land use regulations and the policies of the town as possible. And I've gone up to speed on the regulations. Josh, because of his duty, should also be aware of, as he's working with businesses, to say, OK, you're best suited for this location and you're waiting for over here. And if there are issues that exist with our existing land use regulations, which the planning commission has already identified and is working to resolve, it would benefit that both the town manager and the economic development director are understanding of what those issues are, are working with the committee that's working to make those changes, and then providing recommendations on ways to improve the process. This is one of the charges that I believe this board and the economic development committee had for the economic development director, which is review the land use regulations, make changes if possible. And this way it will allow us to do all of that. And one of the frustrating things for me as an applicant and came out in the R3 processes is that if you come in here and you didn't find Marty and you had a window of opportunity to get something done and you needed to get approval from police fire or whatever, you could end up missing a meeting and then you get delayed another month. And that was a real frustrating thing for myself and other people that I don't have been in this situation. Because you don't have anybody here that's from here from 8 to noon or whatever. So you come walking in looking to get information and to get on that agenda. And you miss it by a couple of days because nobody's here that can help you. Pretty frustrating process. And I watched it happen numerous times. Yeah. Does Josh know anything about zoning at this point? I mean, is he knowledgeable about zoning itself? He is. He's had experience with his previous positions. He doesn't come to us with years of zoning experience, but he does have experience in his previous jobs with recruiting businesses, ensuring that they are compliant with regulations. He worked to manage the downtown designation program for Barry. So that requires a considerable knowledge of zoning and where businesses can and cannot come. So he does have experience in the interim while he becomes more familiar with Randolph's land use regulations. I've been working on it. And we'll both train him and also educate him on what changes have happened, what the land use regulations are that exist, and I'll remain hands on until he's up to speed on everything. And we do have members of the DRB you can tap whenever you need to because they're all familiar with this stuff in planning commission. I've already written it all the time anyway, so. Not quite, but there's more things to tweak. Anybody ready for a decision on that one? I'm going to make a motion that we would appoint Josh as a zoning administrator, and Adelpho as deputy as zoning administrator, and give Adelpho the authority to look for a administrative assistance to support that position and whatever else they need for support, financial or otherwise. Second. All those in favor? Aye. Discussion? No. No. No. Discussion. Good discussion before we vote. That's why I tried to say something. Don't we usually have discussion? No. I thought we had discussion. We just did. Not when there was a motion on the floor. OK, go ahead. The motion has been decided, but go ahead. OK. That's really what I wanted to do anyway. I think that was a temporary solution, but I don't think it's a good full time permanent solution. What do you see the challenges as? Well, we needed a full time economic development director, and now we don't, apparently, because he's going to be doing other things prior to the time. I think you need somebody that's quite knowledgeable at zoning long term. Nobody's applied that. No, it doesn't mean they won in a week or a month or whatever. Like I said, I see it as a temporary. So would you like to continue advertising and see what happens and call this a temporary solution? That would be what I would see it would work well as. Do you see maybe the opportunity for this assistant that they're talking about taking on some of the duties of the economic development that Josh wouldn't have to then do, which would free him up that time to take on additional responsibilities? Awesome. I don't know how that would work. Yeah. That's what I wanted to say. So I'm alone. Continue that. Motion carries. The next assignments are on the fire review committee. Would you like to say, Pat, anything you want to do about that? No. Fire review committee we set up last time. We have an action sheet. We have gotten the names from each of the fire departments and the town of Green Tree. And we have identified one community member so far. The community member that has been identified is Pehan O'Donoghue, who is a longtime firefighter with New York City. But he was involved in helping the town write part of our emergency response plan and he has experience. I had quite a lengthy discussion with him. He has experience looking at efficiencies and the right term. But how you do mutual aid and backup for even single departments that have multiple locations. And he admits that the response in New York City is a different model than in the rural area. But some of the work he's done since he retired and moved to Vermont is more in the rural fire stuff. So definitely got the impression he was going to bring energy to it. It's a passion of his, but also that he was coming at it with the realistic view that we didn't need New York City firefighting in France. Because I don't want to run skyscrapers table. No. I'm good for four floors. Don't need extra training. But we're still looking for two more community members that have some background in this. But tonight we're looking to get this list appointed, and that will give us enough members to get started on this funding. Yeah, just I think I mentioned you from the fire advisory meeting at 10 the other night. They're just looking for when do we think as the select board that this will, you know, is it November, December, January? What's our goal for getting this started? I think once we get this approved and we get people appointed, then it's up to you and I to figure out when we punt this and we kick this off. And how we do it, right? So any questions on the cast? No, I think you need to get that moving right along. Thanks. Send it better. Thanks. That's what I said. You need to get that moving right along. Did you say who Dave Burson is? He is an alternate that's been selected by the town of Raintree. We're not questioning their appointment. We didn't question it. I just wondered if anybody knew who he was. I don't know who he is. I don't know him, but he came from them, so. He's not their member of the fire advisory, then? He's not a member of the fire department, either. Maybe he's got worldly fire experience. He's an alternate. I don't recognize the name. Yeah, I would. Nobody I know. That one's for you fire guys. He had emotions, too. I'll make the motion to approve the selected members. Are you proposed members for the fire review committee? One second, yeah. Are those in favor? Aye. Opposed? We should hear discussion on town clerk, town treasurer, and district positions. So we've been working with the Vermont League of Cities and Towns, who's helped us to obtain a considerable amount of information on the transfer from an appointed listed clerk treasurer to, I'm sorry, an elected listed clerk treasurer positions to appointed. BLCT was also kind enough to send out the list to their entire listserv and receive responses from towns, each sharing their experiences, varying from, we tried this, they went up for a vote, and the voters voted to keep them elected, to we put this up for a vote at town meeting, and the voters appreciated it, because now we can hire professionals at each one of these positions, as opposed to relying on qualified people to run for office. So I think at this point, just given the timeline that we have for creating the warrant, which should be done by early to mid-January of next year, I would like to share with the board that we had it. We have currently a loose plan to start an education campaign to have public meetings and by residents to come to Town Hall for a publicly-worn meeting or discussion to share with them the proposal why we would like to potentially have these currently-elected positions become appointed, have members of the Royal League of Cities and Towns present so they could answer questions of the benefits that come with either one style, but also some of the successes that have come from other towns that have really nightmare stories from towns that have had elected people that didn't perform the job and the changes that have happened when these positions were changed to appointed by the board and hired, and now they're professionals filling these roles. So we have Joyce in until 2021. So that one isn't as urgent as the challenges in the Lister's Office. That is, yes, but Joyce has also expressed an interest to potentially retire sooner, which would put her retirement potentially before the end of her term in 2021, which could leave us in a position where we don't have someone in that position. The board could potentially appoint someone to fill that elected position, but the issue of, so the information we got from the league was that she shared with us was that if we voted at town meeting day this March, then what was it? 45 days later, the position's gone, whereas if she was going to stay to the end of her term, we would want to take that into consideration as far and potentially not vote on it till the following year. We could do that. She's now talking about retiring before her term's over. It's just a timing question of, you know. When does it go on about? When is the, when are we faced with the issue? I did share with her, we talked to Timeline. She did not confirm that, yes, she's retiring sooner. No, she's not going to finish her term, but she politely nudged me in the direction of, you know, I'd like to retire. I may retire sooner rather than later. Maybe the board could do it this time around and then it could point her until she finishes her role and then hire someone new or, you know, we could do it next town meeting in 2021. I think it failsafe is, you do it now. You included the discussion, right? You included the discussion. And it's a no-action. Yeah, you maybe take no action, but if you do it now, then the pressure's off to her to make a decision based on where we're at. So I think she's a very dedicated town clerk and so I don't think that, you know, if you gave her the easy out, maybe she would go early. So, but I would hate to think that she was... Maybe you don't do it and then we guarantee we have her till the end of the term. Yeah, well, that's the other side of this. It's like, okay, we get to keep her, but, you know, she could... Who would do it, sorry, for Joyce, if the message is in the town? I don't know. There's a conflict here. There's a conflict, yeah, but... You're actually here for this time. You know, there's needs here that have to be met. And so, you know, if she's indicating to you that she's leaning in that direction, you know, Ed was said he was gonna be here for another year and he disappeared. So, you know, I'm just looking at what the reality is. So, you know, I would rather be more proactive than reactive. When we had the choice here to discuss some of this with us, she seemed to indicate, and I don't really remember what her reasonings were, so maybe somebody could remind me, but she seemed to indicate that the town treasurer position would be a good one to have be part of the finance office and not have it be an electric position. She seemed to think that keeping the town clerk as an electric position was a good idea. I'm wondering if we should have a discussion around that and see if, you know, what we feel about it, you know, taking into account what Joyce's thoughts are and what our response is before we decide to put that up for the town life. I think we definitely need to have the conversations. Absolutely. I think some of her conversation with that was what the, a level of the responsibility and the skills needed to do it, that the finance side of it required a higher level of skill that may be harder to find somebody willing to run for and keep them into the, that she was saying that a lot of the duties in the clerk's office weren't, didn't fall into that. But I'm not sure why the appointed person is elected. Yeah, I mean, it's worth asking. I do remember her seeming to think that having the town clerk's office being independent was a good thing, but there was, you know, that there was something, you know, positive about that for the town. But I couldn't tell you what specifically why, because she was thinking that that was true. So if the board would like, we could add an initial, initial plan of potentially starting public conversations, I wouldn't want to call the public meetings with the public conversations, maybe late this month, November, December, and if a fourth conversation was necessary one in January. But if the board would like to hear from Joyce, if I could invite her to come to the next select board meeting, we could still have two or three public conversations between now and mid January, and this way the board can then hear from Joyce directly on her reasoning for an appointed treasurer and an elected clerk or vice versa. So there are some time constraints, but they're not very crucial at this point. There's still time to advertise public meetings. We could advertise a meeting to discuss this without committing ourselves to any particular course of action at this point. But I think that's what we gotta do, right? Because we gotta convince the taxpayer, we gotta educate the taxpayers so they can make their decisions in your vote. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but like, but when it comes to opposing the question on the ballot, we're gonna be saying, or basically I'm gonna say, do you vote to approve moving this to an appointed versus elected position Right, but I guess what I'm saying, just in the interest of moving forward, we could say, yeah, let's go ahead with the public meetings. And in the course of them, we might, the five of us might come to a consensus. We're like, we really think that keeping the town clerk as a elected position is a good idea. And so we don't even put it on the ballot, even though we have had it up for discussion in the public forum. Right, I agree. I think it's a little fact-finding thing going on here. All these positions have evolved and become more complex and complicated than when they were 20 years ago. There's a lot more regulation, there's a lot more oversight. So I think, you know, town clerk and strapper just probably cut a different role than the town clerk and Randolph. And the one Randolph's got a different role than the one in Rottenwood after. So I think it's, as a community, I think we're, you know, moving beyond some of these things, so. And I can't imagine that the regulation coming down from the state's gonna get less. Leave it for one second. On the Lister's office, if you could find somebody that would be interested in what Ed was doing with that, are you having any interest in looking for that? Recruiting to Phil, it has been very trying to find someone to a point. I know that we had, we spent some time trying to convince our, who was our second Lister, Dennis, to be appointed and, you know, Dennis agreed to help us out and that was, I think, mostly driven by the town's need to have two Lister's in order to submit the paperwork to the state so that they could accept it. If we were not able to find Dennis and we tried to find somebody to fill that position for months, we would not have been able to submit the proper paperwork to the state so that they could confirm our real estate numbers. I'm just saying, say there was somebody that was interested, are you still open to that possibility or do you just want to know? Oh, I think it's up to the board. You know, I think the position is open. I know Ed, I mean, I'm sorry, I know Dennis, Dennis is working as hard as he can to use the help, but it really would be up to the board. Are you saying with the discussion of what to do with a Lister's office be done if we found a replacement for Ed? I guess, what's the, yeah, would that satisfy the need or is it still, you want to have that discussion? I still think we need a discussion because we, we only have one, and we're not finding anybody. I mean, I twisted Dennis's arm pretty hard to get him to help. He's retired basically. Yeah, he is, and that was Ed. And he said, yeah, I can help out the community, but I just, you know, it's like, I'm not going to do this forever. Right. You're not going to be a younger person. Yeah, and when you look around and say, okay, who's the pool of people that could have qualifications to do this? It's becoming a struggle. And it's not just us. I mean, this is happening statewide. And we heard that from the tax department that, you know, we're the only state in the union that has Lister's. And so, you know, it's another one of those, okay, should be, should be gravitating to a different system. But that's going to be a hard sell because, you know, rural Vermont thinks we've got to have elected Lister's. I think having a replacement for Ed, maybe the question is, is that really a long-term solution? That's what I asked. And I don't know, and I think that's the discussion that has to take place in the education process and let the voters decide which way they come down on the topic. I have received confirmation from our current and only Lister that he would probably resign the position by mid next year. So even if we were to solve the issue now of appointing somebody to fell, the vacancy that Ed left, we probably would be in the same situation as soon as Dennis chose to resign his position mid next year. Yeah, so, I mean, if we have to be... And that's not a position that's getting any easier either. No, it's not. I'm passing up X-60 and all of that. Right, so it's really ramped it up. Got to be kind of proactive and get a lot more information to figure out what's the direction to take here. I don't see it like solving itself and three people walk through the door and say, oh yeah, I want to be Lister. It's not gonna happen. So. We're going forward, but schedule the meeting. I think we should schedule meetings and start having a conversation. You think so, Matt? Yes, sir. I'll send a few dates around. I don't think it would require, well, three members on the board to attend and then we would have to warn it. So, all sends up dates around. I'll volunteer after you. Yeah, I'll hang out. I'll alternate, you know, I mean, I'm more happy to go to some. I just, you know, but we just need to have informal conversations. I mean, I can come to one or two, but I don't have to go to all of them. I'll send some proposed dates around and then if there are any issues with those dates, then if there are more than three members of the board that do choose to attend to any one of the conversations that I'll warn them as a public meeting. They're gonna be warned anyway, so. Yeah, they're gonna be warned, but. Okay. All right, other business? Come on, please. I have a short report. Feeling okay? In a row. I will keep it brief. I know I said that last time and it took a little longer than expected. I do wanna remind the board. The board was discussing this as the meeting was started. The Randolph Center Area Fire Association has its meeting scheduled for Monday evening, which one they will discuss how they would like to proceed with the relationship with the town. We have had ongoing meetings with the Planning Commission. The Planning Commission is looking to make recommendations for changes to the continuing changes to land use regulation and then also the sign ordinance. I believe a priority has been set for preference with the land use regulations coming first and the sign ordinance being potentially revised immediately after. I have since been in contact with the, from all the cities and towns, and they have mentioned that there have been some federal changes that are affecting signs throughout the country. And they would like, rather than share, changes that other towns have made to their sign ordinances, they wanna refer our questions to municipal assistance center attorneys so that they can walk us through the process. So that any changes that we make to the town's sign ordinance are in compliance with federal law. I think it's just something that happened recently and they wanna make sure that we're in compliance. Just as I'm sure we all wanna make sure we're all in compliance. That's crazy. No, no. That is just absolutely nuts. Yeah. The Planning Commission recently also heard from a representative from a state agency, the name of the agency that leads me at the moment. I believe it's the Department of Housing and Community Development. It's under, yeah, it's under ACD. Under ACD. And the briefing was to discuss the C program that's similar to the Downtown Designation Program, but it's titled the Neighborhood Development Area Designation Program. And what this does is it works with communities that are looking to expand housing, in this case workforce housing. So it increases the size of the current area of the Downtown Designation Program to have approximately about a quarter mile outside. And then this would help towns to identify areas that could be developed for workforce housing or housing to help businesses in town. Planning Commission is considering potentially making a recommendation of this elect port to apply for this program. We feel it would be beneficial because it, it would encourage developers who want to help the town to bring in workforce housing. It reduces our ACD-50 costs, permit requirements, time during the ACD-50 process. It still would require these projects to go through ACD-50, but it would reduce the costs for developers considerably. And it fast tracks some of the, some of the process it fast tracks and eliminates some things that are required. Basically the concept was, as the devil said, it was to focus on more core, building more density within the village districts. And it was recommendations about zoning things. We already meet some of these things in the last round of zoning. We already addressed some of these things. So we already actually had a little bit of a head start on this. Absolutely. And so we've had some interest from, from our economic development partners. It's in certain areas in the town that would benefit from this, from making cheaper from them to perform their work and easier for us to create density in the Downtown, which would help our businesses and our employers. Is this, I'm not sure, is this a state program that goes along with village and downtown designation? Yes. It's part of that. It's part of that program. Is it expand upon the Downtown program? Yes, it expands upon the Downtown program. So you're basically being Downtown, but expanding the area. Exactly. Yep. We had, during the presentation, we had Julia Flint, who's the director of RACDC in attendance. She was familiar with the old version of this particular program. She learned that the program has changed during the presentation and felt that the program is something that could benefit the towns. You know, again, there's no decision made by the planning commission. It's just something to consider as we move forward. And that is, that is it? Poor manager. I don't know. That's record time. Record time. Thanks, Julia.