 First thing we're going to do is approve the minutes of April 10th. Have y'all had a chance to review them? Yeah, I had a change. Okay, tell us what it is. It is that it should say that I met with Katie Buckley of Vermont League of Cities and Towns. Can you tell me where? She met with Katie Buckley of VLCT and Denise Miller. Oh, here it is. So that's on the last page. Oh, you've got it. You're taking the minutes. Oh, yeah. So it's the second to last item in the minutes. Or third to last, I guess. Okay, any other changes? With those changes, can we move the minutes? So moved. Second. All in favor? Okay. Board orders. Oh, sorry. No, I did. I said all in favor. Oh, I'm hardly here. Thank you. Sorry. Three of us have signed the board orders. If you guys want to look at them, we can pass them over to you, but we've got enough signatures. The first few were payroll and there's the collection of various checks. Since it doesn't have any signatures on it. They get signed after we sign the orders. Isn't that right, Barbara? I can't hear. The checks in the board orders have no signatures on it. No, no, no. The actual order itself. Oh. So all of the ones that were stapled and those were mostly like payroll. The last one was for all of the checks and that one was going through it. I'm glad you thought that. I'll circulate that. I'll circulate just that one around the red unless anybody wants to see the payroll ones. Is there something I need to bring to Sandra's attention? Oh, no. It's just that you put the signature page on the second page and we didn't notice and didn't sign it. The signature page was out of order. Yeah. That's all. Doesn't matter. Okay. The next item is the NEMRA contract for doing the payroll and that came in just a couple of hours ago and it's somewhat complicated. There's three parts to it. One is offering bulk time agreement, which gives us services for certain things at a lower rate than their normal rate. Another is a suggestion that we, and Jordan, you'll understand this better than I actually you all probably will, that we have a cloud agreement instead of them plugging into our server all the time. They have to call Barbara. Barbara has to hook them in and then they can access our documents. They think that at some point we should, am I saying this right, be part of the cloud and then we can all have our passwords and upload and download. But that's for the future. It's just a sample. And finally, for the payroll, they will charge at their regular rate. But I would suggest that because this is somewhat complicated and there's three different contracts to potentially sign, we'll probably only sign two of them, not the cloud one at this point, that we put this off till next week. Is that okay with everybody? Yeah. Yeah. Because they look like they're once when they were two. Did you say it just came in hours before the meeting? Yes. Barbara, would you be able to contact RB to see if that is something that they're comfortable facilitating? I would think that they're probably the only ones that would take, have a strong opinion on the matter. They would facilitate us moving to the cloud when it's available? No. My guess is they just want, rather than having to have, I don't quite understand it, but it sounds like because you have to give them access to remote into the server, they're looking for something that just gives them credentials that'll just give them the ability to do that without necessarily coordinating. Do you think there's a way for them to do that now without us being in the cloud? I don't know. Yeah. I will ask, because that's the way Sanders always done it, and that's the way Newark done it, has done it, and I think we all just thought that was the only way for them to get in. It may be at this point, I'm not sure what the technical... Yeah, absolutely, I'll check in. So that'll be put off to the next agenda. I rose, we started a little early, but Gabrielle's taking minutes till you're ready. Okay, the next one is the Sullivan and Powers contract. You all saw that on your document, Google Docs. The thing that we noticed is that it's for 1,000, was it 1,000? Was it for 1,700? I'm sorry, it was for 1,800, but they had only budgeted 1,700 in the fiscal year 24 agenda. 1,000. 1,000, that's what... Yes, so it's $1,000 less, thank you. And they agreed to charge us the 17,000 this year. So they sent us a new copy, and they're gonna only charge that amount. And other than that, they haven't changed the thing. So would you guys feel ready to vote to... Let me see, who has to sign this? Well, there's three signature lines, so I guess they need a quorum of us to sign this. Would you guys be ready to vote on whether or not to sign this? Having reviewed the document. Okay. Will you please move that? Just... Second. Any further discussion? All in favor? Thank you. How about I pass it? Oh, you're busy. I'll pass it. I'll pass it this way. You need a couple more signatures, and then just give it to Barbara. And I think there's two copies. So we'll keep a copy, and I'll mail the other copy back to them. Okay. Good. So that's our auditor for the year. The dog owners who have not renewed their licenses need to get... I said warrant, I think, but it's not a warrant. They just need a letter to remind them to pay up, or there will be a warrant, and their dog can be impounded. Since we don't have an animal control officer, would somebody like to move to authorize Barbara to send out the letters? So moved. Second. Tag it. No. I'm not going to impound anybody. I'm just going to send a reminder. Please, you're late. Please register your dogs, and add a $4 per dog, late fee. So it's just a nudge. I can drop some dog food off. I'm sorry, go ahead. I can drop some dog food off. Okay. Any discussion on that? We had a motion and a second. Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Okay. If you promise to feed my dog, you're welcome. I will tell you. Do you want to know how many we're talking about? So there are 73 dogs who were registered last year who are not yet registered this year. There are more dogs in town that are not registered, but we just don't know who they are. But those 73 dogs are owned by 36 people. So I only have to follow up with 36 people. It's just among them they own 73 dogs. If you want, I can take a look at that list. Just knowledge. Some of those animals might have passed or something. Okay, sure. Okay. Would all you have to do to have an animal control officer? Barbara and I started working on that today. We are going to put out an ad on front porch forum. We actually have a couple who've shown interest, but then they don't follow up. So one of them may yet. If you know anybody who wants to be animal control officer and constable, that would be wonderful. Okay. We're at the public comment section. Would anybody like to say anything about anything not on the agenda? It's a head of schedule. And Lewis, you're here. Lewis Porter would like a right-of-way permit. Lewis, maybe you should describe what you're going to do. And I have your application here if you want to show us what you're doing here. And this is John of the road crew. Hi, come on. I don't know if you want this stuff. I don't need it. Thank you. I live in Lewis Porter. I live in 1118 Martin Road outside Adamant. And my septic line actually runs under the town. Replace it. They built it many, many years ago. They built it with Orangeburg. It's called it. It's like an early version of plastic. It's cardboard. It's cardboard. But amazingly, it held up for 40-some odd years. So my request, my proposal is to get permission to intrude on the right-of-way first on the one side of the road and then the other enabling me to replace it. Including the road. Which is part of the right-of-way. Yeah, exactly right. I propose doing it half the time so there'd be a later travel open. Yeah, so and as for when to do it. I plan on coordinating with the town crew. My suggestion would be early morning on a Sunday morning. First light when there's relatively little traffic on Martin Road. And so that's my request to my people. Will you be done and work yourself for your time? I will. I will be doing it. Yep. And are you, this is going into the existing system? It's going into an existing system. It's all approved and all that. Yep, yep. You're just replacing the orange road pipe with schedule 35. Schedule 35, I think a 4-inch pipe inside a 6-inch pipe. So then if I have to replace it again, I can just leave a new pipe. Not that I'll have to in my lifetime, but. So what we're concerned about is restoration of the roadway. Yep. And if there's any ditches where we're going through, I haven't been up to the house. But if you want to go through a ditch, the ditch has to be restored too. Absolutely. There actually isn't a ditch on that side. So that shouldn't be a problem. But certainly we can restore the ditch as well. Are you using a back-up? Yep. And you're calling Dixie? Yep. And we propose that you just do it in one shot. We'll close the road. Got it. The day you're going to do it. Perfect. And it should be a lot easier for you and those have to wait. Sounds perfect. But our position to this, we're not that worried about the restoration of the road because if you do a bad job, it's your pipe. Yeah. It's my pipe. And also, three-quarters of my entire family lives on the roadside. I hear from them before I get on you. You'll be putting in stone on the top. Yeah. I'll be putting gravel at the bottom around the pipe and then stone on the top. Okay. I don't see a problem with that. So Peter mentioned tamping down as a ditch. Yeah, compaction. But that's what I'm saying. It's going to be his pipe. Yeah. So he's got to compact it. If he doesn't compact it, right? Oh, okay. Yeah. We'll compact it. Okay. Whether you're using a plate camper or a little red tag. Yeah, a plate camper. Yeah. And you have an explanation of the time table, right? My time table is good. It's still working so far. So I'm at your preference in terms of the time table. I'd suggest July or August when it's a little conditions are dry. Okay. Would you be okay if we dropped off both signs and you could secure the road? Absolutely. And we're not going to have an inspector there for the back though. Sounds good. Because like I said, it's your back. It's your plate. Yup. Sounds good to me. Problem with that. Okay. Is there a particular type of Sonia suggests for the top layer? We've been using three quarter. We like that. Okay. Now we've got another problem with the road standards. They're talking for a fine gravel on top of that. But we haven't been doing that so far. How deep are you going to be digging? It's about four feet. Sorry. This is a state standard, John? No. The town has that. I don't know if it's been adopted or not. But we've been using a three quarter stone for a finish. Oh, it's the back road standards. Yeah. I see. Then there's something about a fine gravel. But we've never, we haven't been doing that. It's just too hard. So three quarters will be fine. Okay. Three quarter granite or a three quarter stone. We've been getting it. It's like a, it's like a grand stone. Yeah. Great. I'm going to assume it's plant mix. Yeah. That's what we're using. It's a general question for the room. How common is it for someone to do their own work that involves digging up a road? Like we do it. What's that? I had to do it if I had the option. Yeah. And the reason I'm not concerned is that if he does a bad job, it's not going to come back on us. And we'll just fill it back in and he'll be out of the sewer pipe. So it might come back on somebody's car though. If it was, you know, not done properly. He's got more in this than anybody else with a compaction force pipe. So in the permit then we should, oh, did you finish your, did you get your question answered? Mostly. Yeah. I'd recommend if you can, if there's a probably go with a jumping jack. Okay. Instead of a plate compactor, plate compactors will only compact like a foot of material at most. And the jumping jacks can generally go much deeper than that. So you'll get much better compaction and you'll be able to take. Do you want lifts in there? Do you want a scheduled lift like every six inches or something like that? I mean that generally I think would hold me to it, but generally it's, it's no more than every, it's like every 24 inches. It might be every 12 inches you have to go through and compact. And take a compact. Be careful with this initial because that's where the pipe comes in. Yeah. So I, especially with a jumping jack, I guess I would, I would probably be mindful of that first lift and probably do 24 inches. And then after that, try to do about every 18 inches. And I know the jumping jacks are good down to about 24 inches. There was one more thing that appeared to suggest, would you be able to post on form that they're going to do that? Absolutely. Other questions? So if I'm understanding correctly then, as conditions in here, we should say any fill other than what's already in the road should be three-quarter inch gravel. Yeah. That it's good. Plant mix or coal. Pardon me? Yes. Three-quarter inch plant mix. Plant mix. Plant mix? Yeah, they put some, they put fines in there. Right. It used to be called two-way modified. Right. You get that from a call us for your roads? Yeah. That it'll happen in June or July, but certainly after mud season. I think he said July or August. Oh, did you say July or August? Yeah, July or August, but I'm flexible on that. As long as it's not muddy, I'm sure it's fine. We could just say after mud season, perhaps. And that should cover it. And that prior to doing it, you will put a notice in front porch forum of when the roads will be closed and that you will work with the road crew to make sure that it's signed as appropriate during the project. Yeah. Perfect. Did I get them all? Yeah. Okay. So we're going to need to just write that in. Sure. You know what we're going to do now. That's great. So we'll send that to you. Okay. I very much appreciate it. Thank you all. Okay. Thanks, Lewis. So was there a motion to approve it? We're about to do that. So I need a motion to approve it with those conditions. Okay. Second. Second. Any further discussion? Okay. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. I'm sorry. Is it going to get inspected after it's completed? No. John did not. No. Do you want somebody there for the lifts? That would be about the only thing it is. I'm less concerned about the lifts. I just think it would be prudent to have somebody run by after the. Can you check it after that? Yeah. Somebody from the road crew could check it out after. Do you want to check that day if he does it on a Sunday? Or can they do it Monday morning? We can check. Would it be okay? A month later it starts shutting down. Whatever you think. Yeah. Okay. Good. The big concern is it's going to be on him. No, I know. But just for the sake of making sure that it gets put back in a reasonable fashion afterwards, you know, whatever the next working day is for the road crew. Somebody can go by just to make sure that site conditions are good. And then obviously we're going to hear about it. If it's not a month down the road, somebody will say something itself. But I agree. I think it'd be probably excessive to make somebody check the lifts. That's not somehow. About recording this pipe. The location of the pipe for future. If we go to, you know, we need some type of record where it's at. Sure. In case we go to dig sometime and. Well, that will be in the town records because we've got them up here. Okay. I don't know how it gets filed. Does anybody. They have something. There's something. They have a GPS monitor thing of all of underground facilities, the storm sewers and stuff here. I think Toby knows about it. I have a copy. You have a copy of what? Nick. Colors. Colors. Inventory. Colors. The last time they were. So who keeps that updated. I don't think so. Yeah, that's a, that's the central Vermont regional planning commission does those. I think. But we need a record somewhere. I guess. Get reported to dig safe. I mean, they call them before, but you tell them when new things get put in. No. No. I don't care about that. Well, let's question for Tegan, maybe. So one of the conditions is. Could be that you require him to have it recorded in the land records. I mean, is that what you're looking for? We're looking just so. 20 years from now. So he's out there and we don't want to accidentally hit his plate. So we want. So we're recording on the land. That's all right. Right. Well, where do you look now, John? When you do something like that and you're worried about it. We as head. I have a feeling we didn't keep track of it then. Maybe that's something for the future. Maybe we ought to have a file as we put these things. Permit get closed. Trying to read through the permanent language. Does it get closed? What do you mean, Jordan? Does it have like a beginning and an end? Like complete. A time period. Well, a completion. Like a notice of completion of sorts. No, not with these. These usually they're just authorized to put a fence or something in the right of way. So we don't have a process for that. I bet this, this is a question I bet Toby could answer. Okay. Let's make a note to do that. So I'm going to put this aside and we'll fill this in. And I guess we, we'd better do the vote on it. Would you like me to reach out to Toby? I think probably we should. Do you want me, I can email him tonight when I get it over and copy you. Yeah, that would help. Okay. Thank you, Barbara. So we all need to sign this, but I haven't put the language in yet. So we'll, I think we'll just put this one on to the off to the next meeting. I'll write the language in and bring it to you. And we can sign it at the next meeting. And that should be plenty of time for you, Lewis. Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So under public comment, I was asked to come speak about the fire department. Is that appropriate now? Oh, sorry, I didn't know you were. Although I should have guessed. We were going to talk about the fire department toward the end, but if you want to make a public comment, I don't want to wait. That's what I was going to say. So why don't you go ahead? I'm John Winston. I've lived on Lightview Ridge for 53 years. And I know, but I have no idea who the rest of you are. Although I probably voted for all of you, but I don't have names and faces. Oh, why don't we say our names? Jamie Martin. He spoke on the phone. Gabriel Molina. And Tulip. He spoke on the phone. Yes, we did. Jordan McKeeves. Great. Good to meet you. Why are we being filmed? All the select board meetings are filmed and put on public access viewing. Okay. That's it? I'll be careful what I say. Well, I'm here to talk about the fire department. Some of you know I have a long history with the fire department. About a 45 year member in the fire department and one of its past chiefs. Callis was very well represented between Lester Toby, Mike Garen, and myself for almost 20 years of chief of Callis residents. And we've had a roster made up of Callis and East Montpelier people forever, even from 1964 on when the department was first started. I think what precipitated the conversation for me is this crap in the Times Artists. And Anne and I spoke on the phone. And unfortunately set of circumstances that the dates were mixed up and all that. But I don't think that's what the issue is with this article. I think this article speaks more towards the issue of some people on the other select board, trying to bully, if you will, trying to take charge of the fire department and as they put it, no longer be in bed with the Callis select board. And that's very unfortunate that that was there and was put out that way in the Times Artists. There's a bunch of things that was said in there that are not true. There was not a coup to take over the chieftain. It was a duly warned election. Where we appointed a new chief that was voted on by the membership. Not appointed as this article says by a select few people that might have been on the board. And it's always been done that way. There's a sign-up sheet. It's up right now because we have elections coming up in May. You want to run for chief or you want to run for this or that. Your name up. And the whole department would attend that meeting both. And that's the way it's always been. It wasn't a coup that took over when I stepped down for being chief. I was done being chief and someone else became chief. And it's always been that way. It's been relatively amicable. I think unfortunately there are some bad feelings with the previous chief and the current interim chief or who had been elected as chief. That was Larry Brown who, as the article says, or Bruckney resigned, which was unfortunate, but that was out of the fire department's control. So at that point Albert Petrelov was a deputy, stepped up and said, fine, I'll do it, you know, and no commitment that he's even willing to continue with or not. It's unfortunate. I think that there's a lot of ill feelings in the town for people who have read this. I don't know if you've heard it from constituents or not, but this I think is very inappropriate and a very inappropriate way for another select board to air their feelings and express their thoughts about how we do business. East Montpelier is no different than any other ambulance service in the state or in the nation. We just can't get people anymore. So when the article talks about inability to staff to shifts, we have been able to staff. Sometimes we might miss one, but that's not unique. I mean, that's the situation all around. And interestingly enough, when I was at the station, the woman who was the head of the EMS service said when the article came out, she got a call from the new head of Barrie Town EMS saying, what's this all about? Because the article says, you know, go back to Barrie. Well, what it's all about, quite frankly, is Barrie Town EMS, according to their new interim director, has no interest or no ability to take over East Montpelier for ambulance service. So this was a decision that was made a long time ago to get into the ambulance business. It was supported financially and with bodies by both town and we're in a position now where we're at a crossroads because I think the fire department is feeling kind of a myth at the response they got from the East Montpelier Select Board and that some conversations were had that were not above board or not public conversations in public meetings that the press got ahold of. And that's unfortunate, especially for a fire department to be treated that way or been that information to get out of the public that way. I mean, you've all read the article. I mean, I assume you've all read the article and I brought it if you haven't. I want an extra copy of it. Oh, thanks, Ross. And if my printer had run out of ink, I would have printed more. I think we've already. Yeah, I think you've already. So, most of what I want to express is don't give up on dealing with the East Montpelier Select Board. Don't be bullied by another Select Board. Don't try to be bought out by another Select Board because Calus is in it as much as East Montpelier is. You know, we shared the cost, a prorated portion of the cost of that new building. We've shared all of our operating expenses. We've shared all of our capital expenses. And you don't just walk away. It's unfortunate. Thank you. Yeah. If you have any questions or thoughts, it's a volunteer fire company. We'll say it again. It's a volunteer fire company. It's strictly volunteer. It has been in the day absolutely volunteer and now it's quasi-paid volunteer because we're having to pay the people who are running the ambulance for the shifts that they put in. We no longer are able to have people like myself in the day 30, 40 years ago were used to just volunteer our time. Those people don't exist anymore. Our time has changed. Our families have changed. We started off as a fast squad which meant that we would respond from here in our own vehicles and meet Montpelier ambulance. And that's how it all evolved. And then it went from that to some people saying, gee, we should get our own ambulance. And that's how it was started. But it was started with both select boards and both towns approval. I wouldn't want to ask you to conjecture what the meaning of it was, but I am curious what would be accomplished by kicking Callis out from East Montpelier's perspective? I just didn't understand what he was trying to say. This guy here? Well, okay, so... It's a public meeting, John. My sense is, which is what the article says, is that if Callis were out, East Montpelier would have ultimate control over who might be chief, how the department would be run, where the equity sits in the building and all the equipment. And I think it's about control. But do they think it would cost them less? Like, what about the partnership? Is it because they need more ambulance hours because it's two towns? Or are there more hours total? No way. I don't think anybody is talking about not covering both towns because East Montpelier's ambulance also covers other surrounding towns with contracts. I don't think that's the issue. I think it's more an issue of what's viewed by some people as a control issue, wanting more of an equity position, and not wanting to work with another select board. John, remind me, what percentage of the building do we own right now? Callis. Is it that? It's one-third. It's always been about one-third, two-thirds away. We've always been buying everything. And is the same with the equipment? Is that right? We have one-third interest in all the equipment. The trucks we bought and the ambulances and the loans we take and all that. And it's governed by an interlocal agreement among the three parties. The East Montpelier Fire Department and the West Montpelier Fire Department. How often do we sign that and interlocal agreement? I think it's every two years. I think it's up this fall for a signature. I haven't seen, and I requested a copy of the most recent one. Oh, I'll send it to you. When we initially started it, it automatically renewed, I think, every five years. No, it's more often now. Yeah, and then in the last couple of years. But if you want to get out of it, I noticed, yeah. Yeah, to the other side. I'll send copies to all of you and to you, Rose. Thanks. And anybody else who's interested? Okay. Of the current agreement, which I believe is up for renewal this fall. It will be. The other thing, if I could just make a quick comment. You know, I know that Anne Thulin agreed to be like the select board liaison. And I just wanted to say, and maybe because you're a new board, you didn't really realize it, but those joint select board meetings are supposed to be the select board with the East Montpelier select board and the East Montpelier fire department board of directors. It's everybody is at the table. And not just one person. And so, and what Calis has always done is the chair calls the meeting to order and you've run it just like a select board meeting and then you're done and you could make motions or whatever and be approved. East Montpelier has always not their full, most of the time their full board didn't come, but Bruce Johnson who was the town manager for many many years he would always come. And then, so in this instance the board they met unfortunately Calis didn't have representation that was on a Thursday and then when East Montpelier met that article they came from their regular select board meeting on Monday night and they talked about what had transpired on Thursday. But with Calis our board was always there and even the recording secretary we treated it just like a joint select board meeting. So that was the whole intention because you talk about financials or saving for a new engine that's going to cost $400,000 or staffing and extra costs like that. That's my fault then. I misunderstood. I thought it was fine to send a representative. And those are the ones that are three times a year? Three times a year. Okay. Well that's unfortunate. One thing is when we get our outlook we can have a calendar and I know there's one on the website but I'd rather have one I can look at on my computer and we can put all those future dates on there and then not take vacations. Do anything ever Toby has all those dates and probably you do John. Do you know, can you tell us when they are? No. It's a Thursday in August and I think the first Thursday in December. And I can't remember which Thursday in August. But it's a ways off and you know, this is all pretty recent news and I'm not so sure that we should just sit sit on this and not do something as a response. Well, I will tell you that I picked up the phone and called Seth Gardner and he has not returned my call and said I think we have some things to talk about. So I don't know what else. I also called Albert Petrella and he did not return my call. I spoke to Albert today though. Yeah and he's he's okay. I mean he just wants that department to be He just wants it to be whole again. He wants it to be whole and he wants them to be valued and respected and part of the process. That's all he wants for his team. So what else would you suggest John? Well, I'm not so sure. I mean, I know a lot of people read front porch form. Maybe they should be posted by the select board in front porch form saying that we're in it and we're not about to walk away from East Montclair Fire Park as a Calis Select Board or as a community. That might help. I don't know if you folks have been contacted by anybody but a number of people called me up and said what the hell is with this? I don't know that we know enough yet to put something like that together. Well in my time, especially if people aren't calling me up. Well, are you concerned that folks like yourself super invested, you've spent years of your life volunteering for this organization and are you mostly concerned that folks such as yourselves know that the select board is still invested? Would that be the main reason to do that? I think people who are in the know know. People who are not in the know just don't understand what's going on. That would be my concern. And people in the department have said on the side well if this is the way it's going to be I'm going to quit. And these are long time valuable members. When is the next meeting of the fire department? Next Tuesday is the business meeting. Would it help if one of us went? It's the election night. I'll be glad to speak at that meeting and say that we spoke. I'm not so sure that it would do much at this point. But I'll definitely speak towards it at that meeting. And I had a great conversation on the phone and I thought that was very helpful. I'm glad it felt supported that way. Thank you. But we can't afford to lose members. Understood. There are not many members anymore. And we can't afford to lose fire protection and emergency services. Absolutely. I mean I presume the vision is not that we'd lose it but that we would contract for it instead of being a part of the management of it. Exactly. Well that's my sense of what the article speaks towards. That you would have no say in the way it's done or controlled and it would just be like a plain field or a marsh field or someone that contracts for the service. Which is our relationship with Woodbury at the moment. Okay. It seems to me it's a little disappointing to see a response like that. I mean it really was no mal intent. It was a scheduling thing that we just kind of dropped the ball on and also just kind of a misinterpretation but certainly from my perspective And a brand new board. And that's kind of my point. You know it was the first I had heard that we had these regular meetings aside from reading over the last year that there was an effort to kind of coordinate an attendance by the previous board was our last meeting actually when members of the department were like this is what these are for and this is what we would encourage participation and we'd on the fly very much tried to be responsive to that scheduling need and dropped a scheduling ball which from my perspective doesn't warrant a reaction like that and short of it could have just been rescheduled and it could have been recognized gee this is a new board the dates got messed up why don't we just reschedule. Yeah. So I wonder if an offer to make a statement of commitment either through a letter to the editor or my concern with the front porch forum post is that that's largely just going to speak to the members of our community and it seems like this was circulated broader than that. So it needs to be somewhat proportionate and I think an opportunity for the East Montpellier select board to make that a joint statement so disappointing that there aren't any returned focals so maybe something to that extent would be. Would somebody like to actually John you could write a much better letter than any of us could at this point. I didn't run for the select board. You know I thought about it but there are many meetings. Not asking you to join the select board just asking you to help us draft a letter. I will think about that. You'll think about it. All right. Will you and Anne coordinate that? Because I had originally written a Miacopa and I had probably rightly advised me to stop robbing so much. I don't think there was any need for you to do that. But I think certainly putting it out there the importance of this group to us and to our community and it includes our neighbors work and volunteer there so how is that going to impact them if they're kind of unceremoniously. So I think that we can do something that is positive and supportive of them and clear that we want to be in it. Thank you for bringing for coming. I do. Or I can y'all get your email and then I can call you and we'll be right back. Rose has it all. Rose has your back, John. Rose has your back. Rose always has. In your heart. Thank you. Thank you. Good news is we'll be here in six hours anyway. That's very true. And you can't read how long you're going to be. And yet we all saw it. I keep clearing your cash and you can keep reading articles. But you have to clear out your cash or take that job. Yeah. Nick, you're up next. Thank you. I think y'all know that there's annually the Vermont emergency management and FEMA require each municipality to file a local emergency management plan. Require the extent that if the town doesn't, then they lose out on match funding for reimbursement in the event of disaster. So it's a big money loss to not file one. So we being a small group of team of emergency management books work on an update for 2023 and I sent it to Anna. Yes, it was in everybody's Google Docs. I did make it looks like this. I had a chance to review it yet. Does everyone want one of these? If you have an extra, I'd like I'll just put it right there. Are you going to send it to the office? I'll send it to you. Where do you send that So I'm just here to walk through it to the extent you want me to but the snapshot is the first page says who is on the who wrote the plan who would be involved in the emergency operations center if it's ever activated during an emergency event. Based on our conversation last time I was here Anne Toulon said she kind of raised her hand so that she would be a potential participant on the emergency operations center team. So I added to your name. And we can talk about what that may or a little over a lot depending on your preference there. This functions as a position to the EOC that's just the way those six boxes are a way of thinking about getting organized around who is assigned to which part of the task during an emergency event when the EOC is open. On page two there is this is just I would say is the information on the location and the alternate location for the EOC and number three resources lists and thanks to Senator Ferver for getting most of this information to me if we were needing to pull in resources from through the municipal contracts which we already have it lists contact information for them. On page three public information and boarding that's all pretty self-explanatory. On page four is information about the shelters we have a regional wait sorry so is it the director of who would do this action alert stuff? On which on page three yeah on page three if you look back on page one one of the functions is public information officer so that person would be contacting and being in touch with those media sites the public-facing person in the midst of the crisis is that your question? yeah but none of it has been assigned yet is that it again? none of it has been assigned yet if you look at the bottom of page one and this is just a rough sketch there's nothing here set in stone but we have PIO is the acronym for public information officer and we have Denise and Betty listed here for that but it could be that could shift around this just gives us a starting place for how to think about the different functions could I answer that? okay I'm going fast because I'm assuming you've already read it but stop me at any point the information on the shelters is on page four regional being a primary location shelter being the summer school and this building being an alternate local shelter the next page is there's a generator in the school is that right but not here? there's not here though but we've been approved for a grant that's what that grant is for and we're all as well to be installed is that one of the ARPA? yeah the next page is an inventory of equipment that the town has wrote the garage which might be enlisted during an emergency or disaster event and this format is used by FEMA and they want us to use this everyone in the entire country uses the same form as advanced by FEMA so I spoke with John hello John and I also spoke with Toby and you think this is now up to date and then the rest of the document in the landscape is a list of kind of random, I'll call it resources, local resources that might be called upon during an event starting with the emergency management team and the rest of it is pretty self-explanatory I think there may be still we need to double check a couple of phone numbers and a couple of old email addresses but I think we're mostly up to date if you see anything on this list it looks like I have absolutely no information that we know I don't recognize the phone number you've assigned to me or me either it's always the same phone number there what are you using the town office that won't get you too far probably I didn't want to assume that it was okay to put your home or cell phone in there and by the way this document is not publicly distributed because it has way too much contact information so it's not going on the town website but it will be available certainly I can send it I will send it to each of the members to the send it to our to to town officials and I will send you my phone number so some of the I'm seeing one name that's not a the a health officer or alternate that is not a callus resident but I guess when I say that out loud why should that matter so is that Jay Cawthon uh Lydia Faizie but I'm not sure how to probably should give them a different title she's registered nurse and she's worked with students Cal's elementary and other schools and so if there were an event where there were kids in the shelter she would be a great resource so I think of a different way of listing her so because to my knowledge the town does not have an health officer or alternate we've never appointed one we've never had that position actually it happened to me once and it turned out I was the alternate health officer and I literally had to close a building as the health officer because the actual health officer had disappeared so in all the years I've worked here we've never had one yeah well that's what happens in the absence of a health officer it's the select board chair it basically gave me the authority to condemn a building the same grant that got the generator from here is putting a generator at the community center and I know that that isn't one of the improved shelters but I wonder if it has a place in this section it's just because you could put it in as a third-hand backup desk if you could put that in there when Red Cross came to survey this building and the school and Maple Corner Community Center they said first two they could be there and officially run a shelter but they would not offer to do that Maple Corner Community Center just because it's so small and they said great that you have this resource here but you would be running it independently so it's but we can add it it was just curious I was going to ask like on our side of town the east side of town over the Christmas when all the power had gone out we have several community members that living with dementia that it would have been impossible for their family to they could get them to walk like a short distance but I thought to the rec room which obviously very small too but we do have a kitchen as an independent I guess it wouldn't fall under like a Red Cross but also as a potential place for people to come and be collectively great we should have more conversation sorry where was that so in East Calais we have to where our post office is we have a it's under the rec association but we have a community so it's kind of like the Maple Corner Community Center but there's a kitchen and it's not the bathroom isn't accessible truly wheelchair because it's not accessible for people but it's a space because there's just sometimes for folks it's hard to they don't have transportation or trying to get over to the elementary school so I can definitely I will add that to the list of stuff to talk to you good and that all of course depends on having people know about it who are willing to volunteer in such a situation and then there's the other part of this signature page which is the first page which I don't even know your checking box is saying that yes we provided all of the required information and the second page is the signature page so I'll hand it to you you've got one? does it have my signature on it? so other questions for Nick? going back to the beginning what is the who does this get turned into and who's the authorizing or who's the authority over this? I send it into the Regional Planning Commission and I think that Keith gives it once over just to make so design and declaring ambitions to run emergency management and I think that is I don't remember saying someone over there Rob Evans gives us the okay needs it more closely and gives it the okay or comes back and says you're missing something or I need more clarification on this part and is every town required to have one? yes and sometimes don't and then they're missing out on the funding back up for reimbursement and emergencies but yeah I think every town is required to have one and then it goes on to to FEMA to send on to FEMA for now and you said something about Red Cross checking on one of the facilities what role do they play generally in this? they don't have any connections to this document at all but we invited them in October we're thinking about potential resources for setting up a shelter they come routinely a couple of volunteers come and go through pretty formal checklists and put a ladder in itself spreadsheet what the capacity is in terms of how many people and what kind of facility they provide and they were excited about the elementary school they said this is one of the best places we've seen in the northeast and they said this would be great as soon as you get your upstairs insulated because right now it wouldn't be usable in the winter but this room would be and they quantify how many people could be served for evacuation how many for a warming shelter how many for overnight all of that is in the spreadsheet they gave us and some of that's in here they don't have any formal relationship to the LEMP so wait the upstairs isn't insulated they're the project ran out of money is what I heard talk about the upstairs installation they have completed phases one and two of the channel renovation phase three was to insulate the upstairs and heat upstairs it's very cold up there so it can be used during the winter and that's phase three which has not been addressed in a few years since we're talking about it I happen to have a conversation today with Cliff Emmons about it and he is going to reach out to you shortly to schedule a time on a future agenda that we can meet with the friends of the town hall that's where it's going and one of the things they want to talk about is they have a shorter term smaller grant and then a longer term bigger grant application that they're working on that would is Cliff back in town? I don't believe so still no good insight I'll talk to him today too further questions for Nick great job thank you so much I would take a motion to authorize looks like me to sign this on behalf of the select board the local emergency plan required elements so moved okay any further discussion all in favor okay doesn't look like I need a date Nick do you want this oh yes okay thanks can you scan it and send it to the town office if you want to scan it and send it to you I'll scan it thank you are you here for a particular I'm here for the Letting Beach Road slash being I suspected that next up on the agenda is the Sheriff's Sheriff's contract but if it's all right with you guys we'll go to that one then next that's the all right I'm not sure actually Jordan you're the one who talked about taking this contract and reorganizing it do you have some thoughts no I didn't necessarily want to reorganize I just wanted some time to read to understand it I don't have any further I have copies for each of you if you would like to look at it it's the Sheriff's contract yes so this is the contract as he last gave it to us but it should have been on Google Docs so I didn't bring them for everybody does anybody out there want to happen to want to see one so this has not changed we need to fill in number 10 and and discuss if anybody wants to make any changes to it do you need some time I just need to find it and the contract originally was 4,000 and their hourly wage has gone up because they no longer have no the contract was originally 30 something dollars per hour they've increased that to 60 and they've increased their mileage we budgeted 4,000 and they thought we budgeted last year too that I couldn't tell you off the top of my head but we can look we budgeted 4,000 for the next fiscal year so that's what we have to spend so what we were thinking was instead of saying we were in number 10 regular numbers of hours per week but just saying we'll contract in the amount of up to 4,000 and then we'll just have to call them as we need them in that case does anybody want to talk further about that do you want to I think they provided great information but the need for us to have all the things in place on our back roads and be able to articulate that we know for a fact that there's multiple vehicles speeding excessively on the X road for them to be able to do effective leasing otherwise it is a waste of their resources if they're just sitting around and not getting them or historically going through 14 or on the county road so are you saying in favor of just saying 4,000 not a specific amount per week any other discussion on that just trying to think of bad things that could happen by having them for basically half the time that they were here previously it is public safety even if it's mostly speeding tickets and patrolling and they are first responders so that's probably not encapsulated in the contract so it's really just about that would be part of the 4,000 yeah but it wouldn't affect like limiting it to 4,000 at twice the rate and therefore getting about half the time it wouldn't affect first responder stuff presumably that's right it would be flexible and we could ask them as Anne said based on what complaints we're getting on certain roads could you spend a couple of hours there over the next two weeks and then we would have maybe nothing for a while yeah mixed information about the speed the speed sign issue like some people say they're bad and some people say it's not worth spending money on and then you hear it's a necessary part of a traffic study and it's necessary for the sheriffs to know when to show up so I'm really confused about that actually and rather than just randomly lowering speed limits I'd like to still have good information if we have speeding problems in places so I don't know to the contract I mean I guess yeah that's what's in the budget so I guess we stick with it and adjust to this budget don't remember reading it do we know if there's a ability to increase it if we got 6 months in and we had a lot of emergency calls and used up all the budget on emergency calls I wonder if there's ability to revisit that and add to it if you need to I don't see why not I don't think it's specifically in here but we could add that if you like because it does with a higher amount 66 hours and that's just $50 an hour that's not my budget so it really pretty slammed for a 52 we do say the town will contact the sheriff and or his designee if they wish to change wish a change or special emphasis made to satisfy law enforcement needs so that seems to give us the wiggle room to expand it if we need to I think so I'm sure they would accept it if they offered them more other thoughts it's like 67 hours a year it's not very much so that is one point something a week that just doesn't make any sense to me because did they get paid for their travel time I forget what he said about that mileage and they get overtime as well overtime based on what if they're here two max hours right well if they came and then there was like an emergency like they had said if they're here and then say two miles down the road there's a gun incident or something and they go over there to provide support or they're the first on the scene for an accident while waiting for the state troopers or and then that time because I mean it probably goes on a whole week they're going everywhere during the week and I don't know how they would I think it's something different I think it's that they come in from 8 to 5 or whatever it is and if we want them at 6 we have to pay at the overtime rate when they go over 40 hours a week no because it says overtime and holiday rate will be invoiced at 90 dollars per hour so it would make sense to me that that's outside their regular work times I start at half an hour a week well what we could do we don't have to sign this until the end of the fiscal year we could think on it a little more we can look at the budget we can discuss it with Sandra or we could sign it and then ask for an amendment later whatever you would like reach out to them too and just make sure like double check if we were to add to it that would be they're all law enforcement are having such staffing issues so I don't know if that would end up being a squeeze if you know 6 months down the road we're like we've flown for 65 hours in advance like if we halfway through the year need more assistance do they have confidence they would be able to do that we could do it that way we just to make sure before week because if they're like maybe we need to have just like the way it is 67 hours a year it doesn't even make sense to have them once a week no so we need it really for them it would be we have please over here a lot between state chambers and for various things public safety wise but yeah for them for now we're figuring out traffic in signs in the right signs all those things we should be using them very strategically just so they were getting the most bang for a buck and that would probably be a long route 14 or county road where the signs are proper and suspect so I don't know that the speed signs on county road to code they're pretty small right yeah that was a specific example that he gave I think was a citation okay it sounds to me like we should put this off a little bit maybe think a little bit more about budgets talk to sander about it yeah so I'm just kind of making a note that maybe it's worth circulating a document where folks can ask for clarification on specific clauses to clarify on the overtime and just kind of get points of clarification on each of those okay clarify overtime did you want I can help coordinate that how about if we send our questions to you then sure yeah that would be good my thinking was we should have a conversation with sander about this too I think that makes sense so we'll put that on her list and meanwhile everybody is going to send their questions as they continue to think about this to Jordan and do you know how to contact Meyer Brett Meyer he's he's our guy oh I have his they're very responsive when you call them yeah I actually have his contact info we got it so you've got that rose Jordan's going to collect questions and reach out to the sheriff and why are you talking to sander about it I'm going to talk to sander about this vis-a-vis the budget whether she sees that there would be a way to get more money from the physical year 24 budget so that we could expand more than 4000 on the sheriff alright are we done with that one now we'll get to traffic ordinance should I get you a hot seat sure I mean if you whatever makes you comfortable you're Michael Lonyo I am do you know all of us do you know who all we are I know Jamie I talked to her she's on the phone I haven't heard yet other Ann Jordan Keyes yeah good to meet you I know we're going to do well I'm Lightning Ray Jordan you call Lightning Ray sweet so I just wrote a little description of the changes I would suggest that not the changes but what the issue is and do you have there's copies over here and I emailed into my class last week if anybody else would like to see it it's over there so where we are is there have been several changes proposed specifically in the east Montpelier to Maple Corner so from the border to Maple Corner lowering speed limit from 50 to 40 in the village of Maple Corner reducing it from 40 to 25 on Old West Church Road 35 to 25 and then there's a bunch more that are all 35 to 30 so the village of Maple Corner isn't it already 25 it goes from 50 to 40 right at the bottom of the hill and then 40 to 25 no it goes from 50 to 40 coming from Montpelier towards Maple Corner it goes from 50 to 40 quite a ways back and then it goes maybe a half mile later it goes down to 25 yeah like at the top of the hill or at the top of the hill by the Patterson's okay I misunderstood that it was hard to read because they were using feet right exactly so I think it's the whole 50 section goes down to 40 and the current 40 section would be an extension of the 25 okay I think yeah that's so can I ask a question where in the village of Maple Corner is the speed limit 40 it's not the same I misread that I don't see where it says it's 25 but that's alright you guys know what it is so we can deal with that later but it's just slow it down in the village anyway and then there's a whole bunch more where there's just a five mile per hour speed limit now under the statue we have to do a study and they do recommend highly against slowing the traffic down beyond what most people feel comfortable driving because then they begin to engage in dangerous kind of driving like trying to pass where they might not otherwise have tried to pass so what the rule is that you have to take account of what speed people are driving and then you throw out the 15% fastest drivers and the speed at which 85% of the drivers are driving that's the speed limit that you must set unless you can document a reason to make it slower the average of the slowest 85% the top and you round it whatever the nearest 26.5 yes or I just might add if you look at the statue too it also says if a town sets a speed limit you can't go under 25 but anything above that on 25 there's a five year statute of limitations and if you say that the county road is going to be 25 miles an hour and after five years it's on it's on the testicle yes I know that and that's not a bad thing actually because I was talking to somebody who retired from a municipal position he said a very city essentially doesn't think you need to track the study when they push the 25 out to the edge of the city so I can guess with it and it's 25 miles it's been there over five years yeah that's right but for up to five years you have to produce this study and you have to document it why you're going lower than that 85% you know it's a school zone or it's a village or there's a lot of pedestrians so those studies we check with Rick Keheen and they were not done right Rick did not believe that they were done so we have reached out to the central Vermont regional planning commission they've got us on their list to do some studies they just need us to tell them where and they will do them this summer now they probably can't do all of these but they can do some of them are there costs associated with that? no they will do it for the cost of our membership and then would they come back next year and then meet on the other half of the road so we can pick like the most immediate I know Lightning Ridge is one of them because of this straight away and there's probably a few other that just by the design of the road they're more inclined to speed so but is the problem on Lightning Ridge that the speed limit isn't appropriate or that people just drive too fast so there tends to be periods like particularly folks getting to school that are just cruising and sometimes and I don't know because we haven't had a traffic study because our roads are smaller and especially if someone is accelerating they could be going pretty slow I mean I was going down through North Colise and I was maybe 27 miles an hour and I had someone like I was going 50 miles an hour and I wasn't going that fast so sometimes it's perception too but you're saying someone freaked out at you or haughty or screaming and yelling at me to slow down like I was like going 27 I'll also note that the recommendation is if there's a specific spot in the road where you want people to slow down you don't change the speed limit you put warning signs like school zone curve ahead yeah okay does that meet what you understand I understand it but I also know that if you can make an argument on certain roads like there's there's going to be a gate here on Lightning Ridge Road yeah there are a lot of pedestrians there are a lot of pedestrians it's a bicycle to use that a lot you can make the argument if you wanted to to make that speed limit anything you wanted to I'm not even like 25 I'm coming to get it but I think that it's a road that's very wide because of many other roads in town and that makes people drive faster there's no to use Rick's term or Keene's, no traffic calming there at all there's that speed limit what do you call the warning sign stuck in the ground the base for and that's not clear yet I wonder if that's going to show up soon yeah that was another because originally those signs which we had received I think the hope was that they were portable that they could be have bases but they could be moved around and they're not so they had some challenges with their height versus the top part which is very top heavy and they would have to basically compromise their structure to make them not fall over and I don't know that they're going to work we're still looking into that did you want to offer some testimony or just be part of the discussion I would like to see the speed limit lowered I'd like to see some traffic calming there I'd like to see the road not widening more because that obviously incurses people particularly when they go down the hill I know talking to Tom Carville up in that road he said one time somebody was flying down through the air off the road in the front yard they just drive too fast and they see 35 and 35 made it too fast they say 35 or they go 50 the interstate we're going to find out by some idiot driving 75 80 I'd like to see the lightning we would get the first traffic study but I'd also like to select what we should have a speed limit of 25 25 on all of Lightning Ridge Road yeah it's a road it's really people slow down I think you can make it out with the statue there's just readings there's bicyclists who's going to challenge it 10 points on their ticket hoping to get it higher we're going to try to challenge it not likely most people aren't aware of that anyway so it's kind of like making people acting good favor a little bit of fear of getting caught I saw so just to clarify my understanding is the current speed limit is 25 from Route 14 to Grave Road and then 35 to Atamea Road correct the proposal from the last select board was to maintain that 25 and lower 30 to Atamea Road and right and we had discussed and I think I I think I had this discussion with one other person who was suggesting that the 25 go past Grave Road a road or two but not necessarily all the way to Singleton Road that would be tougher than Atamea Road alright other questions, discussion I think we could probably ask, we could ask for all of them but I think we need to know what our priorities are I think if I could register some I guess personal commentary I think relative to community resources and road use it seems to me that Lightning Ridge from 14 to Tucker Road is with the school the potential for a day care I believe it's going to be falling right around that I know we're looking at it seems like a good area to target one of the initial traffic studies to facilitate action actually I think you mean from the Gray Road to Tucker Road because it's already 25 down by the school from 14 to Gray Road from 14 to Gray Road that would be from Gray Road then back to either Tucker or George Road you know the lead up to the school corridor and the flats right as you kind of approach Route 14 there that seems to be we're targeting and then and then there'd be the stretch of road from Maple Corner up the hill to wherever it changes to 40 mile an hour zone so sort of the village or from the 40 mile an hour zone back to you know East Brackley where it changes to 40 mile an hour so the entire county road you have to break them into one of those chunks I would imagine the 25 would stay 25 so it would be the 40 and the 50 sections one other note extending it up Lightning Ridge Road is right at George Road is the Tickering Bog Trail which is a public callous trail that gets a fair amount of use and the parking for that is down George Road just 100 feet or so and so there is a fair amount of pedestrian traffic up George Road and crossing Lightning Ridge that intersection well I don't think we need to make those arguments yet right now what we need to do is identify where we want to target our studies and then we'll talk about those resources and I'm wondering whether we should just ask them to do the entire Lightning Road at this point Lightning Ridge Lightning Ridge but okay well we can certainly ask them at least to do that part other other what about Old West Church Road it's not even on the Old West Church Road I think it's on the list of Old West Church yeah it's a pretty smooth road by recollection it's fairly it's not very narrow I think I mean certainly tested but I think that might be one of the ones that fall under if you make it too low it's going to create problems but certainly I think testing it possibly 30 so Joey how about we rank them 1, 2 and 3 it sounds like Singleton Road got some scary parts, Jack Hill Road got some scary parts so right now we've got Lightning Ridge this is where we seem to be going Lightning Ridge, the village and County Road are numbers one so Old West Church you would call a sort of second sounds good dumb question what is the problem we're trying to solve here I know people go too fast on Lightning Ridge the speed limit right now on County Road for not that large of a paved portion where people commute to work every day is 50 miles an hour and then it goes down to 40 in East Montpelier what is the problem with it being 50 wasn't part of it I've been at a couple former select board meetings where it was discussed and they said that they had received many comments, citizen comments over the course of many years from people who live on the 50 mile an hour section of County Road requesting it be really reduced to 40 I have not had those conversations a number of years ago Maureen Cassidy had a petition signed about getting the speed limit dropped there unfortunately no one can find that petition any longer I think the argument with the previous select board was that if it's posted 50 people interpret that as 60 or 65 and they're hoping if it gets dropped to 50 then people think I can drive 50 I mean if it gets dropped to 40 people think they can drive 50 but at 50 they think they can drive 60 I don't know I'm really kind of concerned about the anecdotal perception of people's behavior none of us are traffic analysts so I think it's really important for us to make sure that we're solving the right problem and from my admittedly own anecdotal perspective this seems like more of a limited resources and enforcement issue and if we try to take action just for the sake of saying that we're taking action and it doesn't change the behavior then we really haven't we haven't done anything to solve the problem or help the community so I think the best thing that we can do is target to you know with County Road and Lightning Ridge there are roads that get I imagine heavy traffic commuter traffic out of town there are what would otherwise be considered connector roads and and Warren study and consult people who study these roads to say this is what could be effective and I think we've had meaningful conversations about the use of resources or the investment in resources like the speed signs that can track and target traffic patterns so that we can take more actionable measures to engage the Sheriff's Department to step up enforcement in a targeted way but but again this would then be my opinion but like on the matter but I think the people who are speeding at 65 miles an hour on the County Road are doing that 65 miles an hour in East Montpelier and they're doing that 65 miles an hour in the Calis section of the road and so really it's going to be about how do we coordinate the enforcement that we want to slow people down to a speed limit that we agree to save so step one I think has to be that study I would just add the most majority of people see something and they generally try to skip within the bounds if you got under 14 you go through the town of would be at least 35 at least I slow down I know people live there you get on the open road sometimes you get a little loose but when people live you want to go at a speed limit that's my philosophy that's my philosophy okay I think we've identified three for priority what we could do is just give them those three and say do as many of the others as you can unless somebody wants to identify others as being second tier I'm probably saying that wrong all the time North Calis those are both roads that are bigger thoroughfares I would argue yeah that's true I mean I think the ones that are most trafficked would probably be you know Jack Hale's got some natural narrowing and parts that preclude you from really taking off singleton I think is the same but I think if we hit the highest volume guys first alright so we'll call Peacon Brook and North Calis second tier and then the rest of them when they can get to it does that make sense to everybody alright let's and we need clarification on the village of Maple Corner because I'm still not seeing anywhere in Maple Corner where it's 40 miles an hour it's 25 miles an hour from the top of the hill on County Road down into the store and then where does it turn 40 again it's a very short section I can't remember I think it's right at the saddle on the way yeah it goes from 25 to 40 just south of Patterson's the Emerson's driveway and then it goes from 40 to 50 down at the bottom of that next hollow the village is not 40 right so but that is not the way the ordinance reads I don't know who did that I just don't think there's anything in the village that's actually anything more than 25 as it stands now yeah so I don't know where there's actually nothing in the ordinance that says 25 miles well no way to mean here it is from a point 1.2 miles north that's peak and broke road sorry there's nothing in the ordinance but it doesn't matter we can ask them to do the studies and then we can respond accordingly have we had any input on where that leaves the status of the ordinance as it I don't think we have an ordinance it was also not posted as it's supposed to be before it was adopted I mean after it was adopted actually they're supposed to post it in certain ways that wasn't done either so yeah we need to plan with the speed signs too I feel like that should be that's later on the agenda we could bump it up but let's finish this one for the moment would somebody like to take responsibility for calling Keith Kubin at the Central Vermont Regional Planning Commission and reporting this to him and if no one else will I will I did want to give the road commissioners a chance did you already I mean are you in communication I have his email because oh yeah I talked to him to understand all this yeah okay I'll do it so let me make a note alright I think that one's done just to note I appreciate this these memos oh good yeah because it's just a really good way to prep for the meeting for me it's probably harder for you no actually I always say my pencil thinks better than my brain it just helps me to write things I appreciate it I'm just going to comment so these traffic studies won't happen until after mud season right I would think that's right I don't think he did this summer but that's what he said it would be are you concerned about that because people slow down during mud season well no offense but here's my road beef I think some of the roads are horrible it's not really mud it's just potholes and rain potholes and rain well one thing you guys should know I asked Tyler how much road one grader can do in a day and he said three miles one you can speak to that and we have two graders so we can only grade six miles a day now you do the math we were in question about Friday we had an opportunity we could have gone out and graded Friday and people wanted to know why we weren't but then here at home for then for rain on Sunday starting Saturday night anything we would have graded then did that for mud and we've got what 81 miles a week road in Calis so isn't it the highest per capita roads of any town in Vermont wouldn't be surprised do you guys ever heard that our highest percentage of the roads that are dirt no but the most amount of miles I think per person 79 the last two weeks we've been concentrating on mud holes that people can't get through we don't want to find the address of the issues the Kent Hill heave there is way better that was pretty good that was a burning truck do we have what time is it we've got a little time I'm wondering if we can quickly get this livestock ordinance done my concern is that we may need this soon what timeline are we on Jordan and Ann with when we have to have something happen when something will happen in theory at the moment the date for completion is June 1 that's what I thought there was motion to the court to change the conditions and our side responded and there hasn't been any action from the court since then there is requests from the owner to kind of change everything around but we have asked to maintain our current status but they have not filed a counter motion to this date to change further any questions for Ann about where we are with that so I thought we ought to get going on this it takes 60 days for it to become legal did you all get a chance to look at it is this something we could do pretty quickly I think Barbara did you put some copies of it over there if anybody would like to see it this is a draft of a few changes to the livestock running at large in callous ordinance I have a question based on the memo so you said the town found the animals had not received proper veterinary care and provided this care during their impoundment the judge ruled that the town did not have the right to recoup these costs does that include recouping the costs of impoundment or is that just for veterinary care just veterinary care sorry that wasn't clear yeah and I'm guessing that the reason is the ordinance reads that the purpose of this is to protect the health and welfare of the citizens of callous so that's why I added language in there that we're also concerned about the animals themselves so our municipal charter does it have kind of boilerplate language about protecting the health and welfare of the citizens of callous because I mean I know it's not much of a charter but if it does I wonder if the judge could look at the charter and the considerations you mean change the judge's opinion that we we could appeal that I guess not but I just yeah it seems weird that the town upon impounding the animals would not then have the authority to pay for their to get them veterinary care yeah and the judge does not explain why he found that he just says they don't have the authority we don't have the authority under our ordinance to do it under our ordinance that's what he said so an ordinance trumps a charter I'm sorry I'm not familiar enough with the charter I think the reason that we got a town charter was so that we could hire a treasurer that was not a resident of town it's a very small lure that's why we got a town charter so we could hire Sandra and that's what we got a town charter but it doesn't like you said I was on the slip when we did look at that real quick we're just doing a search I don't know that's the only thing in the town charter that's the only thing? yeah I think it's under ordinance it also changes our authority I think to do other things like by having one my default we get to do other things I believe sorry I didn't hear your question does every town have a charter? no I was asking Rose for clarification that being able to appoint a treasurer who's not a resident is that the only thing in our town charter? the charter is four pages long seems like it's got a bunch of other stuff in there the authority to adopt ordinance is under I believe under nuisance law and so we have to follow that law in terms of what what we're able to do so you've all had a chance to look at it do you want me to walk you through it or would you like to just comment on it? I would like you to walk us through it I do appreciate you adding yes many of the things that could so under purpose and authority of added language that says that we're also concerned about the health and welfare of the livestock because when they're not properly cared for they're more likely to go on and cause problems therefore we want to ensure that the livestock oh and I added also that when they are repeatedly found to be running at large that we need to be able to provide for the welfare of livestock during impoundment when we impound them I said that badly but I think you've got what I'm talking about therefore under impoundment expenses we I added that we have the right to reimburse for veterinary expenses deemed necessary to the health of the livestock by a veterinarian licensed to practice in Vermont hoping that the judge would accept that as valid and it looks like in our current corridor they are expected to cover for the impoundment yes but not for the veterinary no veterinary too oh you mean in the one you asked for well it looks like in the one that we have now that the judge did rule that while there in our custody no I think the judge well that was not my reading of it I'd have to go back and look what do you mean the one we have now what are you looking at so back in the 19th of December the town may require the defendant for boarding, feed and veterinary costs that the town has incurred and will continue to incur until the defendant completes the required medial action as a condition of getting our horses back they may not however require the defendant will also pay for the town's horse related constable services under the ordinance is the town is entitled to reimbursement of its impoundment expenses only yeah so part of holding the horses would also include because they didn't have shots or anything needed but I do think it needs to be clarified in our ordinance ordinance here we go the town may not require the defendant to take any particular action with respect to veterinary care for her horses before allowing her to get her horses back veterinary care though very important is beyond the scope of the ordinance with that saying that we can't require her to get them veterinary care doesn't say we can't be reimbursed for veterinary care but then is that referencing like when we would have them and then we gave them back I believe that one of the conditions one of the initial conditions for this value was to consider castration yeah and that was a bit of a gray area because there was kind of a well being consideration but then there was also a behavioral consideration in that recommendation and so my read of that particular judgment was that we can't we can't require a particular action being taken or decision to be made like that as a condition of the remedial actions but the general veterinary care associated with caring for their well being or bringing them into a stable state of health during our care would be an expense that could be recouped and the judge did authorize that maybe I missed it this is the last paragraph in December yeah but I think Jordan is correct in that asking specific things like we need you to castrate your horse so he's not aggressive you can't to get it back because then you're perfectly altering her animal as a condition of alright let's sit here under repeated violation of the ordinance I add language that says we have the authority to temporarily or permanently remove the owner's right to maintain livestock in the town the judge had said we did not have the authority to do that under the current ordinance and we can also impose a requirement that the owner put or instead impose a requirement that puts funds in an amount that we would determine in escrow against further costs that could be incurred from a repeated violation before before we get the animals back yeah yes following impoundment of livestock it doesn't say that that would be a good thing to add and prior to release to the owner I'm sorry I did add it livestock due to repeated violations and prior to release to the owner we can ask for those things and also added that we can recoup constable services that's up in D for D prior to the return of the animals which the judge said that we could not ask for under our ordinance so would you guys like more time with this or is this something we could move forward with today and I'm assuming that if the horses are say in another town to Woodbury and they wander back into Calis at that point we would not have any I'm assuming jurisdiction if you will to have any our ordinance wouldn't necessarily would have fall back on Woodbury as an ordinance they need to deal with even if they wander into Calis well that's what I'm asking oh I would assume that once they enter our town we can do we can deal with them you know okay yeah I don't know the answer to that question but I mean as far as having a town ordinance I mean I'm just like does anything you guys being the designees that are you know interacting with this situation do you do you need more time with this ordinance it's very dense and very complicated I think that and you have added the major things that were problematic with the original ordinance and how it impacted the court case and how that kind of got prolonged because then we had to go back and do a middle action just so I can have enough time to feel like a lot of our stuff kind of all comes together right close to when we get together you're not scheduled to meet next week oh my god a vacation I was school meeting we can put it off to May 8th so does that mean we're returning to every other week we are okay because the issue is we need 60 days for it to come into be after we adopt that it has to be posted and give people a chance to okay you know have we run it by our people like we go by so I mean I think there's a question on whether or not the vast majority of the remedial actions were upheld by the court presuming there's no further commentary from I thought you said that hadn't been done yet so the we had responded back and the judge has not ruled so her side had requested that we modify or change and that we had said we did this for these very detailed reasons for now the you're still required by that date from council is that in the last decision it predominantly upheld the remedial actions that the town had proposed with the exception of the ones that we've been talking about and are considering amending the ordinance for but there are substantial remedial actions that still need to be satisfied by June 1st so you know I think there's there's time to revise this because I don't think there's going to be likely an immediate need to to take the additional action relative to this particular issue but I would just want to make sure that we really consider all of that like you got all of the important stuff and it's always a thing that I just want to make sure everybody every conceivable possibility because it would be well it's not in the ordinance that's a great point and I think when I read through this even before this draft one of the things that I noted was how we just define livestock it's just very specific to a list of animals there are animals outside of that that would likely be considered livestock or fall into the same category so I think it'd be worth just taking the opportunity if we're going to make some modifications relative to that feedback maybe do some future thinking about what other limitations to Anne's point might be can we put it on the agenda then for the case so y'all got homework I'm related to this ordinance worst case scenario the horses are returned they go to Woodbury or some place and they do wander back into Gallus do we have somebody identified to round them up and collect them nope you should be thinking about that oh no that's on a list horse wrangling and I know someone who had before and they were literally because they themselves own horses and the horses are communicable but now that the horses are all caught up and vaccinated you know not going to transmit a bunch of stuff to other people's horses but that is I mean all of the I mean that's why I want to make sure that we have time to kind of because all of the possible scenarios that might come to be need to be thoroughly planned for because several things could happen well do we have a constable for example nope this is a major problem we don't have a constable or an animal control who's the last constable we had Wilson Hughes how long ago was that the last constable we had was Travis Shores oh that's right I forgot we had an interim guy well he was the constable he was an interim he just did last long he just yeah when did he leave couple years ago oh no last year he was on leave like three or four months what do we pay the constable I believe it's a thousand dollar stipend but I would have to double check that oh wait a minute I think I have a right here I was wondering if we could do something like get some help from Woodbury did they have an animal control officer I suspect they do we might be able to hire that person to do some not a case by case basis until we can get our own this year it's in the budget for two thousand and for physically it's 24 it's 24 hundred what's the job description of a constable where will I find that so I I can send that to you so where I can read it to you I can give you this copy so the animal control officer is actually a volunteer position the constable is a thousand dollar a year stipend yes and the animal control is something you might want to consider because it is a very time intensive job well well I think Wilson is busy all the time there's a lot of dogs and pigs and horses of course and other you know and I don't even think you even charge for mileage I think he was all out of pocket when he did it yeah yeah Barbara's getting ready to put something in front porch for him to hopefully find someone but meanwhile I wonder if we could explore just asking maybe Eastmont Pylir and other people around like Woodbury if their constable would be willing if we paid them I don't know an hourly rate or something to work for us okay I'll reach out to Eastmont Pylir and Woodbury and I'm going to check Marshfield playing field I suppose just to see what we can find okay I have to I just gave it to Gabrielle for animal control officer constable does it say tail residency is required no for animal control officer first or second and no for constable first or second okay and 8 o'clock let's get to reports shall we start with the Curtis pondan again we've got some more documents particularly did you guys all was the engagement letter google docs have you guys seen that no okay engagement letter Tom Maloney sent an engagement letter did we make copies of this one Barbara I think it was I think it was on there I think it was on there you know what it is and I sent it to you all via email anyway so he had sent an engagement letter he and I had a conversation I asked him some questions that led him to make a few changes and you've all seen it if we wish to engage him he'd like us to sign this so what is your pleasure oh except that I would suggest that on page 3 yeah yeah on page 3 the third paragraph down where it says payment of all fees etc that we say the firm reserves the right aid to charge I'm sorry accordingly with this in mind interest at the rate of 1% per month will be charged on any statement and then I would add the words do but not paid I'll show you this after 30 days of issuance and the reason is I think this is just boilerplate what they do with most contracts where they bill people every month for whatever hours they've spent but he's actually proposing a different system in which he will bill us that way for certain things like if we use him for the RFP but in terms of if he bills us for the he intends that we will pay him for the bond related fees at the end he'll send us one big bill but he will send us statements to show us where he is and I just wanted to make it clear that we're not going to be charged 1% interest on those only on the ones that are do but not paid after 30 days other than that I thought it was fine any discussion at all? I mean I saw some of the lists that you know kind of the bullet points of that were part of the back and forth so I guess I'm not clear on what parts Sondra can do and will do versus what our bond attorney will do my understanding is that Sondra will do fill out all the application forms which is pretty much everything the only thing that we need from him really is this opinion letter that everything has been done correctly and what he's offering is that he will review what Sondra does she will do it but he'll just check it out and see if it's been checked and so the bulk of what he will be doing are these transactional documents with involved landowners property owners washing electric for the substation and then like the other kinds of ownership and liability documents and and he actually did tell us that that's not really going to be him that's going to be people from his firm so but we do need a bond attorney can't get this bond without a bond attorney right? It has to be one of the six or seven that are certified with the bond bank and they have to do the opinion letter okay have you had a chance to review it? I thought it all looked good we wouldn't be meeting again for two weeks if we don't unless we have a special meeting to approve this so we wouldn't be able there were a lot of things we wouldn't be able to start if we didn't approve it he's expecting me to call him tomorrow morning or you guys can do it if you want and tell him that it's signed and then he will immediately get to work on the RFP or get that going in his firm would you like to concern is that this so in this engagement it's laying out kind of the deliverables that need to be defined or at least the commitment to defining the deliverables and it is comprehensive to the extent that so far this is the list of all of the known things that we need to get through for the Curtis bond Curtis pond bonding and construction but there doesn't seem to be anything about representation should the town fall into related legal issues and need representation through that so I guess my concern is the town's legal representative what the status of the town's legal representation will be like with the tort or something yeah or something goes south with the down and we end up in a lawsuit from a property owner who is then suing the town relative to you know catastrophic failure et cetera you know and now we are working with a firm that is going to take us through the process as we kind of see fit but if we get into a lawsuit like that are they also going to be willing to represent us through one of those situations because I guess as any other firms of the town has currently engaged for other topics may not want to represent us on that particular matter right why not because we fired them but we are not going to fire them we are just saying we want to go with a different bond attorney and it wouldn't be that bond attorney that would defend us defend us in the case of them in neither case would it be the bond attorney if we went back with the other firm it would probably be Joe he seems to do the litigation I don't know who does it and Thomas is a firm I assume Joe and his firm would continue to represent us and those types of legal matters if they came up is that answer not satisfactory to you I think that's assuming a lot but so you would feel better if there was a clause in here saying that they would commit to representing us if there was were other legal issues surrounding the dam I'm not exactly sure how you would lay that out it's their law it's similar to our other attorneys where they have some people who do bonds and some who do litigation it's like the comprehensive municipal that's right or at least run it by the other team to make sure that they would be I'm assuming that if it happened either one of them would do it they've both said that's fine if you don't want us to be Bob Fletcher said if you don't want me to be your bond attorney that's fine they've been pretty clear that they'll represent us on other things there is a statement after completion of the matter changes may occur and permanent laws and regulations that will have an impact on the future write some liabilities unless the town engages the firm after completion of the matter to provide advice on issues arising from the matter we will have no obligation to provide any advice to the town with respect to future legal developments that's their boilerplate would you like to go ahead and sign this yeah I mean we could ask you to just I guess confirm with the other with our callous law firm that they would work with the town from matters resulting from the matter to put in lawyer tax but yeah it's not part of this agreement to have a bond attorney and if he says no if what's his name Joe if Joe says no then we should probably figure out who it would be I find it hard to believe that any large firm wouldn't just say sure including both of these and probably plenty of others yep so are we ready like I would make a motion why don't you make a motion and we'll see if there's any discussion I move that we sign this contract for authorize me to sign it I move that we authorize Ann Winchester to sign this contract with Tom Maloney letter of engagement letter of engagement for bond council for the Curtis pond damn matter do we have a second Jamie's refusing herself abstain me a second okay we have a motion and a second to authorize me to sign it and I would add and with the change do but in that paragraph do but I am about I'm going to give to Rose is there any further discussion here he was very clear that he represented the callous pond association and so from your talking and your negotiating with him he's fully on board with being your legal council for this bond council and is he still part no they are at least go ahead the CPA has released him and there was an email from Mark to him explaining that and authorizing it and a request that the rest of the executive board approve that decision and that happened they've consciously uncoupled yes the executive board of the Curtis of the Curtis pond association okay so you've relinquished him you freed him so now he was free for five minutes and then it says in the engagement letter I know but it does say that the CPA has agreed to a way that's conflict and we will resign from representing the CPA by execution of this letter okay very nice okay all right is there any further discussion on this contract on this motion if not all in favor please say I and did you say I I did say I okay so it's for nothing with Jamie recusing abstaining pardon me Rose I'm going to need this back but I'm going to hand you page three for now okay so that you can see this okay we should probably have that email string go into the permanent Curtis pond file is it do we have such a thing at the office we don't because the previous left board never shared anything with us so we have hardly anything other than what you guys have given us but we're starting new files we started the new force file because now we have documents and also created a dedicated drive folder I think it would be good for the town office to be the keeper of the key would you be willing to help reconstruct key documents and pass them the Barbara copies of the rewritten MOU you've also all seen those does anybody want hard copy to work with as we do this part anybody out there want to see this an MOU between the Curtis pond association and us in terms of how we will work together do you want me to include this in the minutes or just put the one I should put the one line yeah but we just add and do what to that sentence does that make sense reference the reference the document and then just do like the paragraph yeah page 3 paragraph 3 alright so this is the MOU that was drawn up by not sure whether it was Bob or Joe which I have rewritten have you had a chance to look at that this we do not need to sign tonight and I'm kind of thinking given the hour you might like to have some more time with it but essentially I remove well I think I wrote a little memo about telling you it's a part of the Curtis pond okay discussion okay there were some references to they would help us create a special assessment district and I think that one was discussed years ago and never we never decided to do that so I took that out and then there was reference to how they were going to go around signatures from people that would hold us harmless if the dam broke and I took that out I think what I want to be sure of is that there's some kind of really good communication mechanism and I'd love to not put it on the slack board to for example have regular updates in front porch form or something like that of work progress and I don't know if it's appropriate to assign that to the Curtis pond association or not but you know especially around approaching construction but you know maybe as they're getting the documents from the homeowners to have an update then and then closer to construction some public facing documents that maybe they could help draft just so we're not also writing those kind of regular updates and then yeah I don't know I'm just trying to think ahead to what kind of communication will be helpful for managing expectations and and not surprising people as we come upon this work I I think that we have a I'm working on scheduling a meeting but I think the plan is to launch sometime this spring a summer fundraising campaign focused around reduce the bond type language and I think as part of that we'll see another big push of communication throughout the summer fall then we'll know the timeline by then kind of sort of right and as part of that campaign what we've done in the past is sort of putting out updates sort of in the language of fundraising like we hit this exciting milestone here's where we are fundraising here's where we are with the project yeah is that what you're suggesting you know every couple of weeks something about well here's where we are they've built the coffer dam you know yeah I think so yeah I would expect to see quite what you know we've been in this sort of limbo stage for a while I would expect as soon as the permits are issued and we have a better idea of time frames there to be a large amount of communication from this when do you anticipate permits coming back is that a total unknown last December last December of 2022 the permits the main DEC permit application was submitted I believe in August and it was expected to take four to five months okay and the other permits there were five other permits that went in later because the DEC permit determined which other permits we needed so they got back to you at some point right we've been working closely with them the engineers are working closely with them who's the person at DEC that you work the most with we can come back to that if I heard his name I'd know it yeah they keep saying they're coming they're almost there but we have no way of knowing if almost there means has anybody just pushed them towards the May 15th bond deadline I had a conversation about that with Colleen three or four days ago I think on Friday she Ben Green and she was going to call him that afternoon and try to get an update and push a little bit we've sort of been working most closely with the engineers from D&K and they always say we're in close contact with Ben Green we're on it we have back and forth conversations every week we're confident it's going through they're just finalizing this and that we're thinking at some point we need to push them more because it has to be part of the bond application for sure you need permits to be issued before the bond application not necessarily but I would not want to go forward with the construction until we had the permits for sure I think we could go ahead and do the bond application and we don't have to Tom told me there was I can't remember the amount of time but we have something like a month after that to say yes we want the money we want you to issue the bonds or no don't do it we withdraw and we'll go into the next round okay okay so Gabrielle you would like something added to this that says that the CPA will do regular updates in French for them as work progresses do other people think that's appropriate for them to take that on rather than the select board I think it's a good idea I think they probably will anyway but they shouldn't have a problem so yeah sure what about the rest of you anything? yeah I think that's why no I don't have it sounds good to me y'all think it's good it's like him in technology I'm like I see Jordan Spring cranking there it's good for me there's smoke coming out of your hair yeah I wonder if there should again the town is very much taking ownership of this project at this point and I think it would probably be worth not just having something in front porch for them but probably assuming a dedicated page within the town website to the project that would not be terribly costly it would charge the CPA with content generation on that page and then that would drive largely what gets posted to front porch forum but I think it would I think it's meaningful for that to be coming from the town to front porch forum and we can lean on the CPA to be generating what those updates are and then making sure that's on the website and then just popping from porch forum but it also kind of documents that I think in a really important way on the town website just for just kind of a record of the project kind of a timeline of the project as well it would be easy to set up a page and have sort of a general description and then use the documents feature similar to the public notices page on the site so it's like the date in the update in chronological order I think having an introduction to the project on that page having whatever we know has dates for the project and defining those as they become defined so if there's a timeline there and it could link to the Curtis Pond Association website which has an enormous more information than anyone will ever read on it that's an excellent suggestion because during the town years of the town hall renovation there was a town hall renovation page so we would also want to include the primary contacts for each group and who people can be directed to for more questions or information so I will add both in our duties that we will maintain a website which will include a page I'm sorry a page on the web I did say that right a web page, okay thank you and that the CPA will do regular updates in front porch forum and add them onto our web page and collaborate with the web master to keep all information on said project page updated with regular communication and important dates anything else you're thinking I want the communication I just don't want to have to do a whole bunch more work to make it happen it will be summertime you won't have anything else to talk about that's the CPA part for sure I want the the town to take ownership of both the repository and the outward push I agree I have one question I assume Mark looked at this oh yes the the section 4B dam failure dam failure the town shall have no obligation whatsoever to return and fund the pay to the CPA or any of its members any expended or encumbered that was supposed to say unexpended okay sorry or expended it should be expended it should be expended or encumbered we would only return unexpended funds to you is that clear though it goes on to say delivered to the town by the CPA in connection with the work or provided in connection with this agreement so I read that as potentially including unexpended funds that were transferred to the town for the project but not spent on the project is that how would you change I'm not sure why you're telling me tell me how you would change it so that I understand that somehow saying that unexpended funds or excess funds shall be returned expended or encumbered unencumbered I just am thinking if the CPA transferred $250,000 and for some reason the project went belly up and never happened and we didn't the town didn't spend any of the money one would assume that the money would return to the donors well I'm not sure I'd agree with that because at that point that also assumes that we're locked into a bond that we also can't pay off early so I would say that the town so the town very thoughtfully a long time ago created a dedicated account for the Curtis Pond project that's an account that we can had a lot of transparency over the expenditures that are going to be coming out of that fund which these funds will be transferred to I would say that in the rare situation that there are unused funds that those funds could be left in that account and used for the service of the bond well that's where it says encumbered I would consider those funds encumbered so under what circumstance would those funds be encumbered funds they give us all the money and then we no bond and the bond assuming the bonds yeah I see what you're saying we're never doing it as far as a bond but we have their money in an account and we just it's not going to happen that wouldn't give us the permit or something so nobody's been spent nobody's been taken on behalf of the town or if there is a dam failure and then there's no way to reconstruct the dam and there's unencumbered funds because none of the money has been spent which is also an extremely unlikely scenario let me think about that I mean is that assuming that that that happens after the bond has already been repaid yeah which doesn't make any sense so we've got we've floated the bond and then for some reason we have to stop we still have to pay off the bond but then the bond money would go into the general fund I guess it's in our general fund we've got the money could the bond money go into the Curtis Pond fund to repay the Curtis Pond fund yeah I think we would have to we should probably talk to Tom about what those bond funds can be put towards I don't think I'm pretty sure I remember him saying that once you have bond funds you can't put those towards other projects even though because of our accounting practices it will go into the general fund they can't be they can't be applied to other and I think you went as far as to say it certainly has happened where a bond has been issued and whatever the project didn't move forward and there's another but the town is still on the hook for the bond because the bond has been closed and then what do they do with the funds with this big giant loan they got that's what I'm you said we can't use them for anything else let me ask Sandra that Sandra has done bonding she's likely to know the answer to that also are funds used for future maintenance of the dam and the funds that the Curtis Pond Association has raised presuming then it's on us after that yeah but if there is if there's leftover money it would stay in the Curtis Pond do we need to specify that I'm not sure what to say it again if there were leftover money at the end we haven't expended all the bond money or whatever and they were raising more money over the summer to lower the bond can that money stay in the Curtis Pond fund and be used for dam maintenance and do we know what maintenance looks like how much it costs on an annual basis to maintain a dam responsible for it now that early in the project we looked at two different entirely different dam models one of which would be significantly cheaper but need a lot of annual maintenance and be a lot of good that was the Adobe model yes but that sounds very scary sorry that's late sarcasm but and the the plan that we went with was the plan that wasn't expected to have maintenance like significant annual maintenance probably be good to get that sketched out at some point like what future maintenance costs are okay so I've got some work to do why don't you guys keep thinking about this and send your thoughts and I will collect them into a document alright and we'll put this off to the next or even maybe the one after that meeting I don't think there's a hurry well are we okay to move forward without memo you with the CPA well no I would put it off we're rewriting it we don't have to do that immediately okay we're operating the old memo so we're still on it so I'm going to rewrite this based on the discussion we just had but I think we should stop for tonight and if things come up into your mind during the week as you're thinking about it or during the next two weeks send them to me and I'll include them okay oh my gosh guys where's my agenda I wonder if there any I got it thanks we kind of done East Montpelier Fire Department oh Curtis Pawn do you have anything else you want to report out at this point or is that don't we're up to speed now okay Jordan anything quick on documents it's moving forward so I communicated a final list I went over a final list of email accounts and their licensing levels with Barbara and Teagan on Friday and RB has that and is procuring the licenses so they also have the access to the domain that we need because they already have the credentials so they can set this stuff up I think hopefully they haven't given a time frame yet I'll follow up with that probably tomorrow do they need our computers like do we need to go in and spend time with them so the rollout is still a bit of a question mark and Teagan and I were talking about that a little bit I think the way that we should probably do it is to have them train some trainers so they'll probably be myself and Teagan to get an initial lay of the land as soon as we have some account setup that'll likely be we'll start with the office staff and some of the machines that will need to have licenses activated on those machines and then we'll kind of kick the tires a little bit see what part of the problem is I haven't used like the teams and the spaces the document sharing platform that Microsoft uses it's something spaces shared space so I'm going to have to get introduced to that and familiar with that before I can advise how to move stuff over from the Google share drive that we've been using and setting that up so there's going to be that kind of transition period first and the big question is like how it's going to interact with machines like ours which are not in our full personal control so I've offered myself up as a guinea pig to see how that looks and then once I have a better idea of what that looks like then we can kind of roll it out with the default of just using everything that's browser based which so far everybody has said that is great you know it's a great resource it's a fully featured browser based platform for all of the apps like the word apps and it still has access to the document sharing in the same way it's just browser based so I've been kind of pushing for like the select board accounts the other accounts are going to be like heavy usage to have the option for downloading the apps locally onto machines because we're a rural community and not everybody's going to be performing that work while they're connected to the internet presumably or at least it'd be nice to have that flexibility so that's kind of why we have to fill that out a little bit so if we do run into roadblocks or some functionality that's problematic I'm trying to activate the licenses locally or at least just managing local multiple local licenses on the computers we'll always have the browser based application that we can fall back on and it'll be a little bit of a waste of a license because we're not actually using the access to it but we can roll that back in the next year we can also upgrade anybody throughout like early if we decide that we want more people to have more functionality for one reason or another we can always increase the plans you just can't cancel them you commit to them for a year so that's kind of the state right now we're focusing heavily on trying to get the office implemented and some core machines implemented with licenses and then we'll have a training session that we'll have to schedule either individually probably with me Teagan will be up to speed enough that she'll be able to kind of offer some initial support and troubleshooting but RB is also available we're just trying to sort out what's going to be the most efficient collective bargaining team you've got anything to report now we're meeting this week Wednesday yeah Wednesday it's our first closed negotiating meeting with representative so that will be closed to the public and with the bargaining team and we'll go over the first draft of the agreement and our lawyer yep yep she'll definitely be there that's this Wednesday it is this Wednesday it doesn't need to be so there's an important differentiation between the meetings that are dedicated to like that are negotiating meetings negotiating meetings are closed to public and they don't have to be warned okay that's cool so if we have in between there's likely going to be several of the negotiating meetings any meetings of the bargaining committee in between those scheduleings will have to be warned so we'll just keep you apprised of those but at the moment the next the only thing that's scheduled at the moment is this next one which is closed to the public and it would be thank you all right well the roads is next but I'm wondering we kind of talked a bunch about roads could we just sort of put that one aside until the next meeting you're waiting this whole time oh my gosh I know do you mean I would like to take these 45 minutes or what water so with the water and I think that's probably something we're going to have to talk more about but they tested for bacteria nothing else so you don't have bacteria it's potable really should it have what should we have requested a more in depth I don't you know there's like we don't know if it's hard or what makes it so funky and I don't know if that's still and certainly you don't have to you know but I have gotten a sense from some of the crew that even because it is funky even with like a filter you know may not have a comfort level drinking it we did get a whoa did you get that I will I don't know if Jamie I'll make sure that Toby I just said it to me like with a filtering system I kind of pricey so back up to you say it's potable because it doesn't have bacteria in it well that's what Toby said Toby had commissioned it and said it doesn't have bacteria so if the water is fine so that's not a bacteria doesn't mean it's potable because I've had we had a water system failure at our house where it was coming out brown and it was not a bacteria issue it was a heavy metal issue and it was manganese actually that was turning it brown and yeah it was definitely far from from potable so yeah I think I didn't find the water test to be super expensive it's my recollection yeah it seemed to me that it wasn't in depth enough water yeah but I mean to go and actually go and test for all those things that might contribute to the funkiness I don't think would be prohibitive the filtering thing is obviously very costly so I really wouldn't know how much I'd want to say three thousand how much? I want to say I would have to go back and double check it's yeah we're three hours now so my brain it was in the thousand I want to say three but don't quote me or cause I quote okay I can send it to you but um yeah if that's something that would be okay for us to do I would like to check more boxes on that oh who coordinated the testing? Toby did and he used clear water filtration which made sense at the time but I wondered if we need to go to endine and have an endine do a test because I think they do a more significant across the board what's really wrong here to kind of just oh isn't it the same pump? the invoice says clear water filtration is the address but has the endine at the top of the page they seem to be connected I think it's what you request because they had just the bacteria check okay cause it just I was surprised it was only $100 and it just seemed like maybe it was because it wasn't in depth enough test but I don't know okay all right so you would like authorization to do the more expensive test but just at least test for you know as you're saying you know metals and other things that may not so question does that come out of the highway budget yeah the highway budget is good coming in a general fund I might feel differently but the highway budget does have money the according to the invoice form where we requested the test there's a lot of different tests they can do and it lists a list of 25 plus different metals they can test for that cost between $50 per metal so that's weird because I don't know if it's because it's not a residence but it didn't cost me when we had to deal with our water situation it didn't cost hundreds and hundreds of dollars to get our water tested it cost quite a bit of money to repair the pump and the well but the testing I don't know somebody needs to call these folks and ask them what they recommend as a next step what about the health department the health department would say well I would think these people but I'm just thinking that these people who are experts it'd be good to find out what they say it may be easier for us to distribute our water forever that's what we've been doing we're fine with that we're not going to use it we're not going to drink it good why don't you guys why don't you guys continue this conversation have a bath that's good and we've already talked about the signs a bit and I think can I do like a one minute update on the signs we had asked Toby to look into the return and I'll see on the road signs he sort of put the ball back in our court and I have called the company twice and they haven't caught you back and both times I got a person on the phone they were very friendly I asked the questions explaining the situation they said they had no idea they'd have somebody else call me back and they never do it's very sad so that was my experience with them email and phone how about if Barbara took them on so I would just want another meeting with you to get up to speed but also maybe what I'll do is go to Mormon Control's website first and see what their return policy is that's a good idea and we should chat more because it may be that at some point I reread the original proposal by the original select board which was specifically for two portable signs and they're seven I think that are considered not portable so if the issue is we don't like them because they're not portable the ones that weren't intended to be portable maybe we're okay with them not being portable the issue is I thought we thought we were going to be able to move them around but it turned out we can't and they had represented that they could and we bought the extra bases based on their representation that's what the understanding of this animal is we never got that out of the park the collars they flop over, they'd be top heavy more work to be done okay oh my goodness I guess we won't do rules and procedures so we made it through April congratulations I meant to make copies for each of you I sat down this morning just for fun and wrote down all the stuff we accomplished in the last month and a half I'll just pass it around I may have missed some things too but it's really quite astonishing I'll send it out to all of you I do have a quick question before we go seeing as I'm going to miss scheduled meeting but on May 2nd is the planning commission big meeting before we meet with them the following weekend so on the 8th they're coming to talk to us about the changes but are we expecting to be at the May 2nd I have it in my book they we're the ones who are ultimately going to have to sign off on this thing so yes if you want to get comfortable with it I mean you can just go ahead and read it but if you want to ask them any questions hear their presentation is it at 7? it's at 7 isn't it Barbara yep 7 is what I have 7 o'clock here I just feel like it was something that they wanted to go oh they really do because otherwise they're going to come here and present it to us and we're going to start bombarding them with questions I don't like that yeah I mean it's like a core kind of efficiency of the process because what they're going to be presenting to us on the 8th ideally would be something that we would be comfortable doing action on in the morning so if we if any of us have feedback that we'd like to see represented in the May 8th meeting then it'd be most appropriate to give it in their meeting in their beer you said May 8th not May 3rd because I thought I heard May 3rd which is the day after May 2nd is their regular meeting May 8th is our select board meeting where we will be going over it with them one question I have if we're all attending as members of the public and not discussing business it doesn't have to be worn separately as a select board that's correct because it's informational right but if we're sort of all sitting together and collectively asking them questions that don't sit in the gray area we're members of the community so if we individually go and have things that we would like to see addressed as long as we're not having cross dialogue about what as a group we would like to see or taking straw or taking any action we're providing feedback within their hearing so we can ask each other clarifying questions each other I guess but why would why would you do that we'll say I don't hear something or I don't know we're just gathering information we're not doing anything discussing changes to it at this point it's there here so we would be directing any questions or clarifications to them so do you have a time in the location it's here at 7 p.m. here I've lost track of the things that you guys were signing I have a few orders and the rest I gave to you here they are can I just glance through those really quickly sure yes I have them Barbara let's do this after we adjourn anything else before we adjourn okay I declare this meeting over