 Call the meeting order at 6.30. We are looking for additions to the agenda. We do have some, I see at least three on a select board memo. Do you have any additions Amy? And maybe we could, to the sake of the record, say what those additions are. Well, first I wanted to say, do you have any more? I don't. Oh, you don't? I don't have any more. Okay. The three items we have, discussion on potential change of take on drive to take on, oh, it's leaving out the hyphen? Between the two words take on to take on. Okay. Very good. This is a big, big item. And discussion on potential change of the Lincoln Task Collector and confirmation agreement for FY 2022 Sullivan Power's audit. So we have three things that we'll put under other business or somewhere in there. If there's a gap in the, if we have some time before that, we'll squeeze those things in. So anyway, reviewer minutes may second. I have one. Has everyone read these? I have read them. You have read them? Yes. And I enjoyed them thoroughly. I would, I would move to approve them as written unless anybody else thinks that something should be adjusted. I think they're great. John, John, nice to see you, John. You've got COVID we hear. Yeah, I'm not. Yeah, look at me. Yeah, not too, not, not too bad. I'm not sure I have it now or no, I don't really have any symptoms, but I haven't tested this week. Okay. Oh, good to see you. Okay, so we're looking favorably on the minutes. I think we should try to pass them. I love to pass the minutes. I think I already did that. Oh, you did? Okay. Who made the seconds? I did. Okay. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Demands for May 2nd or pass. And those are all the minutes we have to do tonight. The next thing on the agenda is public comment. Public, public. I don't see any public commenting. Yes. Oh, we do have public. He's shaking his head. No. I think he's part of the planning commission discussion. This is Scott Hess. Yes, he's shaking his head. So let's move to discussion of the Recreation Board on social media policy. Do we have somebody here from the Recreation Board? You do, yes. Bob Fitch. Oh, you're Bob Fitch. Okay. Nice to meet you. You're here. Yeah, my name's Seth. I'm John. And we have Carl here. I'm Carl. Carl it there. And we have two members that are zooming in. John Jewitt and Amy Willis. Okay. So I see we have a social media rules and guidelines. And you've got the floor. Mr. Fitch. All right. Basically we as a rec board are willing to or. Wishing to set up a Facebook page that the rec department are. The rec board would run themselves. But obviously as a branch of the town of East Montpelier, we need to run things through the select board before any process. Any decisions like that are made because we will be acting as representatives of the town. So I put together along with the help of the board, these general rules and guidelines of which to be honest, I stole a lot of information from, from the city of Lewinsky. But basically it's, it's kind of dictates how. We would use the Facebook account and how we would. Moderate posts and things in a point designated people to use the Facebook account. It's a pretty short document just over page. It's, it's obviously nothing. Not official, but the board has looked it over and improved it and would act according to these rules and guidelines that you see in front of you. It's a little complicated. Because we are an extension of the town. A lot of similar recreation programs. And so we have that oversight required because if they're not a part of the town, they're their own 501 C three, they can do what they want in terms of social media. But, you know, we're just basically making sure that the select board is okay with the record, setting up a public Facebook account in which. Any records would be foyable because it's, it's all public record. And with that in mind, you know, it'd be a very limited. Yeah. Okay. I think it's back. Yeah. We didn't catch the last bit. Mr. That's all right. Basically. No, it's, it's not super important. It's basically looking to have this luck boards approval of this, of this document. No, I like the document. Yeah. I look through it quickly. I'm not familiar with any equivalent. What city did you say you stole it? Most of it from. Okay. No, I'm not familiar with anything equivalent, but just looking at it. It seems like it makes a lot of sense. To me. Do we need a motion to approve? If you're willing to. I'll make that. So Carl's making the motion. Do we have a second on that? John, John racist. Oh. I'm the referee sort of. Okay. So we have a second. All those in favor, please say. All right. All right. I think I think the social. It's all everyone said I. It's unanimous. Your social media rules and guidelines have been passed. Thank you for thinking this room coming to us with this information. I think we're done with that item. Thanks everyone. I'm going to hop off. Appreciate your help. Yep. Okay. So. A little ahead of schedule. Yeah. In my guess. Yeah. We'd like to avoid any mishaps. You know, we don't want to beg for forgiveness. We'd like to actually seek permission first. Yeah. Well, that's a good idea. We're impressed. Oh, thank you. So. I think we're done with that item. Yeah. And my guess is Claire's might be able to tell us. But Zach is coming. Yeah. But what we could do is fit in some of these additions. So that's what we're going to do. With the board's approval. We're not going to rush through to the planning commission thing yet because Zach's not here. So the first thing is discussion on potential change of take on drive. Take on drive. Zach is not here. Oh, Zach's here. Well, let's let's do this take on drive because I this doesn't look like a long item. Is this a long item? Do we, I don't know. Do we have a request to fix it or is this? No, no. The change, the state, Denong allows hyphenating. I've read this, but I'm wondering if there's a request to fix it or. The fellow Mr. McCull was less worried about requesting a fix as much as he was confused as to why Google was reading one way. And we're saying it a different way. Okay. How many houses are there? Three? There's four. Four. Okay. So this would affect four Landon. Yeah. I think there's a fifth lot. Okay. Something like that. Would it create a problem for 911 calls and things? Only if it's a hyphen, it's hard to. Hard to say. Yeah. Why would it create, but on the other hand, if it could, we ought to line it up with what the state allows. It seems like that isn't going to hurt. Yeah. Well, I mean, I assume I was going to think, maybe we should check in with the property owners there and see what they think. But on the other hand, I expect that the postal service will continue to deliver mail to them, whatever they write. Whether the hyphens are not there. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. So if we choose to make the official name unhyphenated, it's not really going to affect their lives. So all we've got to do is rename the road without the hyphen. Correct? Yes. Okay. Is that a motion? I think you just made that motion, John. John made the motion. Okay. We have a second. Amy. I'll second it. Oh, Carl already beat you to it. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. The ayes have it. And Bruce, will you notify them that we have taken the hyphen out? Yeah. Taking the hyphen out. The most work will probably be in our own databases. Oh, yeah. Because they'll have to be updated. Uh-huh. So that'll probably cause us more dyspepsia than something to blame on. Right. Right. Yeah. As you say, there's no good reason with the alphabetization or anything that it shouldn't cause problems. But computers are stupid. And you never know. When you're done? I'm done. Yeah. Um, I'd like to keep going on with the additions to gender because they're still really early. So just in all fairness with other people that might tune into the planning commission discussion, let's just do the other two additions to the agenda. I think that's fair and equitable. I think it is. Discussion of potential change of the delinquent tax collector. So the annual letters and notices of Lincoln tax taxpayers will go out the week of May 23rd. The board should determine who will be the delinquent tax collector of record for this process in light of T.A. Johnson's retirement. So who we appointing to that position. Who do you want to appoint? You had talked about her potentially appointing Michelle. Right. And she and I have discussed this and she is comfortable with that if that is what the board wanted to do. This is not going to work. Okay. All right. I was talking about him earlier. I know you have him on your mind. I understand why. But can we move off? Okay. Okay. So I think Michelle would be perfect. Especially if Gina and Michelle have discussed it. And she does have some experience with that. Is that true? She dealt with utility billing. Yeah. She can do that. Yeah. Okay. So I would say that we should make the motion that Michelle Pappas is palace. Excuse me. The Lincoln tax collector. Okay. I'm going to vote Amy. Amy made the second. All those in favor please say aye. Aye. Aye. Very good. The next item is confirmation of agreement for FY 2022 solvent powers audit. This is a routine thing, right? Yeah. Yes. Yeah. We made a three year agreement with them. And this is the last year I think. But they like us to certify the individual year. Yes. As we go forward. For the annual engagement. Yeah. Essentially. If come to the board should either sign the agreement or authorize me to sign it. We only have two years. I move to authorize the select board chair to sign the FY 22 solvent powers audit agreement. We need a second on that. I second that. Oh. Amy second. All those in favor please say aye. Aye. Good. Okay. So we did our three additions. Do you want to talk about the road? Christine is here. Yes. Sure. The road that we just looked at. The curb cut the road. Yeah. All of that. Yeah. So. I don't see any problem with the curb cut. Yeah. Do you see any problem with the curb cut? Why don't we talk about it? So do we have the paperwork? Is that on the website? You have the paperwork. Guthrie did not want to do his normal side off. Right. Until you had had your opportunity to discuss the road top. Well, I didn't see any problem with the curb cut. So John and Amy. Seth and I were there looking at it with Guthrie and the landowners. And Bruce described it as a curb cut to a road that isn't really there. That was fairly accurate. It's technically a class four road, but would require a fair amount of improvements to take a lot of traffic, particularly to allow emergency vehicles to get in and out. Probably just to, you know, get trucks in to build something there. But the curb cut aspect of it. And the curb cut is probably the most sensible place that you could find. There's no traffic on the road. Yeah. The road. Yeah. So the curb cut, I think we could easily prove. So was there an aspect that you're hesitant about, Seth? Yeah. It's a class four road. And I want to know what the state statute is as far as staff responsibility is, as far as pouring money to the road. The road, it's, it's passable, but it's, I don't know what the state statute at one point. I did know the state statute, but I guess they've changed. That's right. I looked at statute today and this, the town's responsible for, for culverts and bridges. So essentially. Hydra, the hydraulics of the road. And they've gotten a little bit more responsible because of the change with the new road permits, even though it's a class four road. It, it can't damage streams. Yeah. The water house that be turned off the road. But the way the statute reads responsible for bridges. And culverts. Okay. So the old. Right. The old statute used to be that the town had to approve. A culvert or a bridge in a class four road. What you're saying is this changed a little bit in that we were responsible for that. Is that correct? No. We were always responsible for the culverts. So bridges. We were always, we were always responsible for the culverts. We were always. We were always. Financially, we would have to put a culvert. If the culvert was already there. What's that? If the culvert was already there and was not working. The town would have to maintain that over. Okay. But it's not necessarily required to put a culvert in. Putting culverts in is not, not really as easy as it used to be. Right. So. Okay. Okay. But this, this is not. A past full road. For a lot of different reasons, but it's a class four road. So in my take, if you buy a lot on that. Class four road. You would be responsible for upgrading that road. If you wanted to upgrade. That's always been my take on the class four road. It doesn't sound like it's any different. What are responsible for? The issue you would get on the class four road. You would have to build a road. You would have to build a road. You would have to build a road. You would have to create a policy. And if you, if you maintained one, you would essentially be maintaining all of them. And let me tell you, there's a reason why towns don't maintain certain roads. And the reason is usually is they're really, really steep. There's a significant amount of ledge. So they can't, so they'd have to really build them up. And if they're really steep, then they're building them up and, you know, it's not an, there's always a really clear cut reason why somebody didn't. Maintain a class. It's the lowest spot in the land. So the lands on this side, the lands on this side and the roads in the middle. Very common back in the day. I mean, it can be built up and dish, et cetera, et cetera, but it's a significant expense. And I, I mean, statutorily, I don't think the town's responsible for that. I think you just want to let these folks know that before they go and get into it too far. Yeah. I think they probably knew that when they bought the land. I mean, if they looked up to statute. That correct? Yeah. I think that we knew that. We would be building off of a class four road if we weren't able to access from Fitch road. I think that is correct. I think we had heard from some of the neighbors that there had been some talk around the town of upgrading the road to a class three road at some point, but hearing this conversation now, it seems like that may have been a conversation of the past. There may, there may have been some talk about it, but as John says, we have no policy about improving class four roads. We've always just gone by state statute, which is the waterway or the culvert or whatever. That's been our policy all along. So this, if we did anything to this road, we'd have to, it'd be a significant change in our town operations to date. It would involve every class four road. Exactly. Well, what Guthrie says is not very many left, but I don't know how many are left, but. So do you want history or do you want to go on from that? Go ahead. We have upgraded a number of the class four roads. Which one? We would have upgraded Johnson road, which is really the class four road of concern, comparable concern. Brazier and Saint-Auban. Those are both class four roads. Right. They've been upgraded within the last 18 years. To a class three. To class three. Yeah. So what was the impetus to do that? There are people and the roads weren't passable. Right. So we upgraded them. Generally what towns do is they, they, they say, look, we'll give you a curb cut. You can go on this class four, class four road. We won't take it over unless you guys bring it up to our standard. I know that's the thing. That's the way. Yeah, but that's not the way we did it. It sounds down to 1.57 miles of class four road. The two roads that we care about here are Johnson road and Donner road. We knew this was going to come to us sooner or later that we'd have to talk about Donner. We've talked about Johnson a number of times and there's that split between some people wanting it to stay class four and some people wanting it to be class three. Right. And we've gone with the don't change since there's not unanimity. Right. There's not agreement on class three or two, whatever. No agreement because of cutting down the trees, et cetera. Right. Right. I couldn't make the, the tour today and I apologize for that. Is there potential for more building on Donner road further on now? Okay. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. So there's two already developed on this untravelable. There's two already developed. There is Christine's plot that was owned by Glenn Bailey. He passed away. The spell into his estate, the state sold it. A second lot of his that's also on Donner road has been sold. There is also additional Fitchland that is along Donner road that in theory could be developed at some point. Right now, the two people that are two residences that are on Donner road for emergency services and such. I mean, there really is no emergency service access to either one, but they're close enough to wheel the road and callous that an ambulance can get to the lower house. It would struggle a bit more to get to the second house. What, to dog me that? Yeah. It's only because he's refined it a bit since he's been there that it's accessible. Right. It looks better than it did. Yeah. It is better than it was. So, so you're saying there's precedent for improving in class four road. That's basically what you're saying. Yes. Ha. And Mike Aaron had a plan for this as Christine was mentioning. There was a talk. Yeah. I remember the time. Yeah. It just never happened. And I was explaining to you what the statute says and. No, I appreciate that. And I just want to say some towns follow the statute pretty closely. Some towns obviously don't. It looks like that. We haven't always followed the statute, which I stand corrected on that because I thought we always had, but Bruce pointed out there's two stretches of road in town that were classical or have been upgraded to class three. So that leaves me in a little bit of a conundrum because evidently we haven't passed. We haven't followed the state statute always. So we can't just adhere to the state statute. In this case, we're going to have to take other factors into account for the roads previously upgraded groups in a similar condition to this road. Or I'd say the road. This is much worse. Yeah. This is a much worse. This isn't a bad project. This is a bad legal trail, much less a bad class four. Yeah. And as everyone knows the legal trails in town, the houses are getting built upon the residents are responsible for that. They live along the road. That's a legal trail though. This is not a class four. So it's just like, it's a different classification. Well, I think we're going to have to, I don't know what we're going to do. We're going to have to put this on agenda. They're separate issues. The curb cut and anything we do in the road. Well, we can make a motion to approve the curb cut. I don't have any trouble with that. And we can just move on and have this discussion. I know the meat, because I think it's going to be a longer discussion than we're prepared for right now. We have another topic coming up. So I would say that we do the curb cut, get that out of the way and then work on the road. Because it's touchy because we don't really have policy. We have precedent. So we don't operate with starry decisis here. What's that? We don't operate with starry decisis here. Yeah. Not even a Supreme Court operates with starry decisis. All right. So what does everyone think about the curb cut? Let's get that out of there. I mean, if you say that it's fine, and if Dr. thinks it's fine, fine. Yeah. It's a legally-developable piece of land according to land use regulations. And from everything we can tell, it's the best possible place to put a curb cut. Yeah. So I think we should move that. It just doesn't happen to be on much of a road. Yeah. Not a very good road. But the curb cut will be fine. So let's make a motion. Sure. I'll make that motion. Okay. Carl made the motion. And just for the sake of the record, the motion is to approve the curb cut application for what's the address? 22-0-21. 22-0-21. On the curb cut along the road. Mm-hmm. We can make a conditional on Guthrie signing off on it because he hasn't signed off on it. Correct. So that's the motion. That's the motion. That's the motion. Do we have a second? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. The ayes appear to have it. They do have it. Okay. So we'll bring that up at as soon as possible select board meeting as far as the improvements may or may not be made on that stretch of road. We'll definitely have a healthy discussion. And figure that out. But meanwhile, I got a curb cut. So Nate and Christine, and what's the little Wednesday? This is Marie. She'll be learning at East Montpelier, hopefully in a three years for preschool. Welcome to town. Welcome to town as landowners and welcome to his residence. We'll try to figure this out. Yeah. And if you could just, I know Gina sent along the agenda and the zoom if, if this comes up in the future, if we could be reached, that would be wonderful. Thank you so much. Yeah. We definitely want you prior to discussion. So we'll reach out to you. Yeah. Thank you. But. All right. So getting back to business here. Discussion with planning commission chair, Zach Sullivan presentations, the select board of proposed town plan amendments. Zach, you have the floor anywhere you want to be. Yeah. You have your own life. Can't ask for better. Do you want to side chat for work? Or do you want to front all that? Are you worried about how you look on the camera? I'm not sure that I'm going to make or break or his ratings. Oh, that's pretty high. So anyway, no. So I'm, so on May 5th, we held a hearing on proposed amendments to town plan, primarily around, you know, regulations for cell towers with a few corrections to the, you know, to the sections dealing with scenic views. I'll deal with the scenic views piece. Yeah. First, just as that is much more straightforward. There were a couple of errors. Drafting errors that we discovered initially or from the initial town plan. In one, there is both a map of, you know, key scenic areas and a table in one case, a road was on the map and not on the table. In other cases, on the table, not on the map. One of those areas was actually, was affected by the proposed cell tower a couple of years ago. So that was a hot topic. But that was that, there was that issue there. So we've corrected that. And now it's on both. Also made just some minor clarifications to, you know, what we mean by foreground. The, you know, the town plan references half of foreground being the closest half a mile. And there are special restrictions for the, for the foreground. The reason for that is that we, you know, is that we, there's research showing that within the first half mile, you can really see the detail. You know, if you had, if you have a cell tower described as a fake tree, you're not fooling anybody in that first half a mile. As it starts to fade out and clearly if you got something sticking up farther than anything else, it's perfectly uniform. You're going to notice that a ways out, but you start to, you start to lose that detail and you start to have more options. The scenic views don't deal solely with cell towers. It would be any sort of major infrastructure. I think the other big one that's a potential would be solar farms. But it's, but it's only the cell towers are what brought that to the fore. And then also went in the, you know, in the, you know, in the discussion of, you know, as we look at the scenic views, you know, we also had some suggested clarifications that came from the regional planning commission, you know, to clarify the definition of a large solar installation. So we made that correction as well. Then also be going into the energy plan. So it's, you know, so that now our definitions align with what the PUC uses for, you know, what is a, what is a large scale project? The, you know, the rest of the scenic view section is not appreciably changed. The big, you know, the real big changes where we added a section to an infrastructure chapter, you know, dealing with the, you know, you know, placement of, you know, these all telecommunications towers and cell towers are what tend to, you know, to make it an issue, but it could be, it could be any sort of, you know, radio tower that someone put up. It's, in many ways, it's modeled on the current energy section. There's a, you know, there's background, particularly looking at some of the state, you know, at the current, current solar reception in town, some of the, you know, trends in movement from reliance on landlines to reliance on cell phones. And how, why that is the economy issue. And then also some, something that's really meant to, you know, be more of an educational tool, talking about the regulatory environment. The big issue there is that, that towns or even the state are not allowed to regulate health impacts of cell towers. And that was something that we were asked repeatedly to speak to in this process. And so we, you know, we chose to take some time to, both to educate the public, to educate future planning commissions, for future select boards, about what the constraints were around health. Then we had a section, you know, we looked at both, you know, you know, preferred sites and, you know, areas to be avoided, if at all possible. Preferred sites, obviously anytime you can co-locate with an existing tower, at this point that is kind of moot, because there are no towers, but at the point at which one goes in to then say, you need to co-locate and not keep putting up more, if that's not viable. Attached to existing infrastructure, we had, you know, you know, a lot of the rural planning documents talked about, put a tower on a farm silo, and then Richard Holland formed this, that well, farms, you know, silos are sort of going out of use. And so we took that language out, but I think some of the, when we look at the larger buildings around town, you know, particularly once you get out of the more industrial, in the industrial zone, a lot of it is farm-related. And then finally we, you know, we looked at ways that the, the one resource we do have is a lot of trees. So we looked at the way that topography could be used to get to hide a tower, even though it has pretty significant, you know, prominence of tree line, we would put a picture in there, but you know, if you have, if you're standing at the road, you're 100 feet away, there's tree line, the trees are, say tree line is 60 feet, you know, you're looking up at an angle. So another 100 feet below that, it has to be 120 feet up for you to see the thing. Another 100 feet, it's got to be 180. And so those are the ways that we could sort of, you know, the hope was to both push applicants into doing that, and also to providing good evidence that they had done it. I think with the, you know, proposal on Jacob's road that started, really started this, we didn't, there were some areas that were really significant scenic views that were, we, they hadn't provided the evidence that that was actually the situation that was going on. And I think it would have been valuable to have that as a, you know, you know, if this is the way that you can hide a tower, even if it is quite a ways above tree line. I'm sorry, what were you saying about Jacob's rule? Did you find evidence by the balloon flight evidence? There were certain key areas where just no one had taken a photo. Okay. That's, you know, you know, I mean, that I think is more the, more of the issue there. Okay. And I think, I will also say that we aired and not going out through ourselves for the balloon test, and that might have been, you know, and in future I will not be making someone who is not the applicant. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And we'll speak to that. Just so you know, had it gone forward, Gunsbury did go out there and he charted where he was visible. Yeah. So that we had that information, but it never got anywhere. It's, it's gone. I would say something. Yeah. I just want to say this. It's, hold on. In me, please mute yourself. She's going to the other room. Yes. I actually, Amy and I actually went up and saw the balloon test. So there was a planning commission individual there. And it's, you know, it's hard to just see with a little balloon sticking above a tree. But we did go and see the test. Okay. Thanks, Scott. And so, yeah, and so areas we are really trying to avoid. You know, the village, I'm going to, you know, the village. We did, we were really clear when talking about the village that we're talking about towers rather than transmitters. Because there are ways of hiding a transmitter. Yeah. Particularly on buildings. But the tower, just getting back to the tree line and all, you're saying that you could put a 180 foot tower in as long as the trees go up and then the tower is not above the tree line. This illustrates it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So the tower would actually, so if it's really more, you put the tower back far enough in the woods. Yeah. And no one's really coming, no one has a, you know, a clear open shot across to it. Yeah. You can, you know, the tower is effective. There's one in plain field that's like that now. If you, if you stumble on the tower, you go, wow, that's a ways up. Yeah. But just where it's situated, there's no, there's no open field right next to it. Right. And so you're, you know, you really don't get a good look at it. Yeah. I mean, what the standard height is for the proposed projects around here. I wanted to say 350 feet, but that just sounds ridiculously big. It wasn't that big, was it? No. So there is, there's a cutoff at 140 feet where you go from being, I forget, I forget the designation. The, the public utilities commission has a different designation for a product for towers up to 140 feet and then above. And so there is a, there's a strong incentive to build your tower about 139 feet and nine inches tall. There you go. But then, but then above that it could go up a ways. I believe there's a tower that's being proposed in Worcester right now and I believe that is proposed for 200 feet. That's the one I got to feed you. Just got, we just got noticed for that. Didn't we? I got an email. Yes. They got pulled out. They got pulled out, yeah. Sounded like the same result as ours. Yeah. So, so yeah, they certainly can go, they certainly can go higher. But I think, I think you, I think, you know, seeing 140 foot tower proposals is probably going to be pretty common. Yeah. Okay. So the other unsuitable areas, you know, areas that are impacting significant, you know, public views, particularly in the in the foreground of those views. Yeah. You know, ridge lines and then and the zoning regs deal with this as well. The areas where it could damage a home without. Yeah. I was wondering about that language here. I wonder if there's a way on page 96 to make it clear that it's talking about possible falling towers that would lead to the damage because as you mentioned, you know, the federal government has preempted health regulations. So it's, we aren't going to say anything about the radiation damaging homes or central people in them or sensitive natural environments. By your concern was that we all say about the falling. Right. That's clearly, that's the intent as far as I hear from you and what I read between the lines here, but I think it could be expressed a little more clearly. Yeah. Let me, I can take that back and see if that is a, if that is a, you know, you know, how we could deal with that. I mean, I might just be adding a word like in areas where a falling tower could damage homes. Yeah. Or a toppling tower if you like the alliteration. Okay. I will, I will bring that feedback. I'll bring the tower. Okay. Right. Back to the planning commission. Okay. Um, and then we do have, you know, proposed goals and actions around this. Um, to, you know, it was a goal to provide adequate self-target and meet the needs of residents while protecting, you know, scenic and natural resources. Um, we do have actions both to, you know, you know, basically compelling the, the, the PC to, you know, file as an, either file as an intervener or to submit public comments if a proposed tower does not meet our standards. So basically say, basically forcing us to follow our own rules. Um, and then there is an action to, you know, consider whether we should conduct an inventory of, you know, what we consider to be good locations. Um, we haven't, we had some sort of discussion on that. We have not, you know, we haven't come to any conclusions. The, basically the purpose of that action is to ensure that when we, that we address this when the next town and plan is written. Um, and there, you know, thinking, there are definitely two sides of thinking. You know, the first is to, to be really clear, you know, here's where, you know, to be very straightforward, this is what we think is good, there was also real concern of, is this putting a target on certain properties and given, is it worth doing that, given that the landscape, it, that it's a really a regional issue. And, you know, will the landscape just keep changing? You know, and will our plan be sort of instantly out of date? You know, if we say, you know, if we look at the map and say, here's the area that needs, that has poor reception. On the other hand, there's sort of in the, you know, the area, which is the poorest middle, you know, you could put a tower in, you know, the northern corner of East Montpelier, in Middlesex, or in Worcester, and they all serve the same area. And so, we could, you know, the, you know, the plan could change suddenly, based on something that happens in another town. And so there's a question of, would that actually be a worthwhile exercise? Sounds like a lot of work too. Yeah, it sounds like a lot of work in an area where we do not have particular expertise. It's probably a lot easier just to wait for applications and make sure you follow your own policies here. Yeah. There is a strong sense of that, but not a unanimous one. I would say. I mean, you've created guidelines. You've created areas where we prefer to have cell towers and areas where we prefer not to have cell towers. You have standards. Yeah. Yeah. So, that's a good start. How does this compare with what other towns have done? We did not find a lot of other towns that had, that had guidelines that were really robust at all. Okay. A little bit about avoiding ridgelines, a little bit about co-locating. Yeah. But not, I didn't see anything. You know, that went sort of close to the scale of what we went to. So, if we pass this, we'll have the most robustest plan around. In this area? Probably, yeah. Is that good? I don't know. I think it's good in that it tells people what to expect. Yeah. I mean, we were caught flat-footed with the one on Jacob's road. And this is, I commend you for responding to that and thinking through what we could do to avoid being caught flat-footed. But it still doesn't send the message that we're against it. No. We're just delineating what we expect when you make the plan. It's like, you know, we don't want in this area or this ridgeline, blah, blah, blah. So it still allows for that development, which I think we need to do. People want to tell them. They do. Yeah. And actually, between the fact that there are goals, the goals, the goals and policies do sort of point to that balance of wanting cell service, but also not wanting to damage certain areas. But between the fact that there are preferred sites listed and there is that goal and that policy, if a developer came in proposing a tower in an area that met those criteria, it would be extremely hard for the town to fight it. Yeah. Right. Yeah, including. Yeah. So yeah. So in that way it does encourage as well. Right. But you know, what does discourage me is when you have the buyout on aspect of landowners getting together and buying that person's right out to develop it. I'm not sure that I'm in favor of that process because what it does is it pits, it's almost a class issue. People that have money can influence what happens. And I'm not in favor of that. So going down the road, we'll just have to see what happens. That was a pretty interesting process. And I was like, oh, okay, this is interesting. And were you implying, Bruce, that that was a similar process with a buyout that happened in Worcester? They didn't do a buyout, did they? Since we got that it could have been that way. Right. We didn't get any details. But I don't think it did, really. What? They didn't do a buyout from my... We didn't get any details. Yeah, true. We just got a sense that something shifted. Right. Something did shift. Yeah. And we don't know what. Right. Fair enough. Yeah. I mean, I don't know how much we... Because I'm bothered by the class issues as well. I think there is... I think when there is... I mean, obviously these are private contracts. There's only so much the town can be involved in that. I do think that maybe adding that level of certainty would help. So if you've got a clearer plan, if you've got a clearer plan of saying, is this a good location? Right. Someone might be... Someone who's in a good location might be less tempted to take a buyout, whereas if you're not... If you're dealing with community outcry and you don't really know what the town's going to do, you don't really know what the PUC is going to do, you might be tempted to take less money that's certain, rather than say, no, this is the thing I'm allowed to do with my land. But I mean, clarifying the town's position in the plan is certainly a worthy undertaking. And I commend you for doing that, and I like what you've done. I do still think that you need to be aware of the class issue that's going on, that you really need to be. And as we move forward, we'll see what happens. So... But just a quick thing on that. I mean, isn't the whole thing a class issue? I mean, just AT&T going to people and who's going to be willing to do this and knowing that their neighbors are going to be really mad. They're making them an offer. The whole thing is just rotten. It's not just the negotiation. But the thing is that if AT&T comes into a town and approaches a landowner about putting a cell tower on, if they've got firm guidelines to go by and the AT&T meets all the criteria that the town has set forth, it still does not prevent people that have money to come along and to buy that landowner out. It does not prevent that. And the thing about it is, then you've got money is overtaking every other criteria in the room. Yes, but it already was to begin with because AT&T went and prayed on somebody that needed the money and knowing that the neighbors are going to be up in arms about it anyway. I mean, that's the whole thing is rotten. AT&T is looking to further their best interests by putting in a cell tower. But I'm not sure you're going to say that's praying on somebody. That's a give and take financial agreement. I mean, I think we're getting a little bit too far into the philosophical weeds here. Maybe I just wanted to make that one point. That's all. Okay. I think that point is a good one. Yeah. No, that might have gotten lost in this discussion after he made it. And that is that if the town plan is amended in this way and AT&T comes to a landowner and says we'd like to build cell power on your land and here's why the town plan says it's a good idea, then the landowner might be more interested in saying yes to the money from AT&T because they meet the criteria rather than do a smaller amount. Right. As I've said before, what the planning commission is done with the town plan is a good thing. And that's all we're addressing right now. Yep. So, thank you. Do you have more to tell us about this? This is the last thing I forgot on the scenic view piece. One thing I did forget is we also added action. When we did the scenic views initially it was only based on areas that were accessible on roadways. Yeah. We did sort of look and go, oh, there's also the East Montpainter trails which are protected for the public because you'd be considered a part of public infrastructure. Yeah. We didn't add any of that to the scenic areas but did put an action item to make sure that is considered as potential scenic area when that is revised again. I guess the last thing I would say is that from hearing the predominant comment we got was about impact on property values. And should the plan be considering impact on property values? Should the town be considering that? We considered whether we should add something about that to basically the educational section on regulation. The Public Utility Commission does not, as practice does not consider property values when making these decisions, whether they could or not is murky. It is not banned in quite the same way that health is. I did look at some of the evidence. The evidence on this is quite frankly a mess. I would imagine. The studies are generally not well done and some of the better ones actually point to potentially an increase in property value. Exactly. Because you've got self-improvement. It's a mess of you've got it. Once you throw out anything that's industry funded or interest group funded, you're left with very little. I would say that you would be wise to stay away from that. So is this presentation submission of the proposed plan or amendment that triggers the requirement on hearings? Yes. Okay. This is your formal turnover. Yep. So we need to do something within 30 to 120 days with this. We have to have a hearing on this? We could do two hearings. So we should do that with our regular slack board meetings. You could. As soon as possible. So we don't get out the... And then you've got the zoning raves also? Yep. And you could piggyback hearings? Yes. Probably should do. Just turn these out forever? No. We don't want to string them out forever and we should piggyback the hearings. They probably should do it at the fire station if possible just because we have a lot of people. Yeah, there were a lot. We had very few people show up for this one. Yeah. And that's probably what would happen with us. The planning stuff though is a little more, grabs people's attention a little bit more and the zoning changes. Yeah. So if we're going to do them together I think we should do it over there. And what if the collective wisdom is adding coupling or fallback or making some other change to clarify that I mentioned is a good idea. Where does that come into play? Could we make that modification after the hearing so it doesn't have to go back to the planning commission? So the planning commission could do it for you. You could do it. And as long as everybody is on the same page that it doesn't hit that significant level of change that triggers planning commission taking it back. Okay. Okay. So we have a few minutes left. This was kind of a twofer, was it not? Yes. Yes, that's what I thought. Are we going to figure out what we're going to do in terms of scheduling hearings? You could. Yeah. You in particular had questions for Zach on the zoning regs. Right. Right. I'm wondering whether we wanted to finish that up. I didn't know. Whether you were going to need more times we were going to bring Zach back potentially on June 6th which might change how you stagger the hearings. Okay. So we can't make a decision on the time right now. Got it. But we can ask some questions about the zoning plan. Yeah. If you guys ask your questions and decide you're ready to go forward, we can go forward. We can get a hearing warrant for June 6th. Yeah. We got a few more minutes here. Let's see what we have for questions about the zoning plan. You had some? I did a couple of weeks ago. Okay. Yes. So did I. But we have John here who's looking like he wants to say something. John had originally mentioned the regulations about fencing and they seem kind of onerous. But then we had a lot of pushback. We discussed it because everyone said, well, we never enforce those anyway. So my view was why do we have stuff in there we don't enforce why should we have it in there? What do you think? I don't recall ever discussing the pieces on fencing. Well maybe you didn't. I think you just saw that in the regulations. It wasn't that you changed it. It was like what are you talking about? I think we're going to take down the snow fence. And this and that. Then we just talk, then we, we talked about it last meeting and what we said was that. There was nothing about fencing in any of these potential changes. So we should probably not even worry about it. Okay. Right. So what you were saying is there wasn't up for grabs at this point. Right. Yeah. Yeah. But you were pointing it out that. How, how restrictive East Montpelier is this awful place to live. I looked at that. I thought it was pretty funny. I said, I must violate the snow fence rules every single year. If I don't get them down before May 1st. Now if I'm traveling somewhere, I'm going to be in real trouble. I'm going to come home and the cops will be waiting for me. Yeah. He'll be waiting. And I said, well, the zoning administrator that we have right now is not going to enforce it, but the new one might. Yeah. So what I. Yeah. I mean, you know, you know, Florida, Scott or Bruce can jump in here if needed. We, a number of the things that we've dealt with were areas that were specifically causing problems. You know, the setbacks were just causing problems. I don't believe any of, you know, my understanding is that the, you know, maybe just because of non enforcement, the, the fencing issues didn't show up on our radar because they haven't caused problems. Cause never been enforced. Yeah. But the setbacks were great. We, we did review those pretty thoroughly and thank you for addressing that because setbacks and have been a problem. And it sounds like you reduce them a lot in every area. And that's a good thing. Yeah. So that was one concern. What's another one? I can't. But we talked, I don't remember. We talked about TUDs. Yeah. Extensively. Yes. And you've made some changes there. We're happy. We did. I'm not trying to remember all of the details about them. It's, I mean, partly there were, There's no more PRDs or only PUDs. So yeah, I think the PRD, you're getting rid of PRDs, I believe that was, you know, in response to, to legislation that PRDs just were taking out. You know, PR, so for, for people who don't know the acronyms, you know, PRD is a planned residential development. And a PUD is a planned unit development. Yeah. PRDs are a subset of, or PRDs are a subset of PUDs. And so it's still, it's still certainly possible to do a PRD. It's just under the PUD language. Yeah. I think we're pretty clear on that. Can I say something? Yes. I looked at those, at those, those rules pretty thoroughly. And I, and I, and I, obviously I don't have a, I don't have a business or anything in the village or, and I'm not being negatively impacted being, I'm just in the residential commercial zone right now. And what I looked at, I thought that they were pretty, really well done. And I don't think they're too invasive. And I do like the idea that with the smaller lots, potentially if people can find wastewater treatment and appropriate water supply, they should be able to allow development to occur in, in areas as opposed to tying up 10, 15, 20 acre lots of property to try to get, you know, try to get a house in. And I think it works out, I think it works out well having those clustered like that. I think it's going to help out the village more too. So, so one of the things that we talked about last time, I just reminded proud was the parking requirements. So if you're a little looser on parking requirements in the business district for potential businesses, because it was quite a process to go through before and you loosen that up a little bit. Yeah. So could you tell us about that reasoning? Yeah. So we, so the general, the idea is if you're trying to make something that is denser, more, you know, you know, hopefully more walkable, you don't want, you know, you don't want to be taken up by parking lots. And so we switched it from being a, you know, fairly high minimum, you know, drop the minimum amount of parking requirement required. There is now some parking, you know, there is just default maximum parking. So to encourage less, you know, area being given over to parking lot. Yeah. And, but then there is also a process if, you know, if someone wants to come, you know, you know, if someone has a specific reason that they think they're going to need to, you know, need to have more parking, they can do a, do a study and bring that to the DRB. Yeah. So there is still an avenue to have more parking, but the default is not to have as much. Yeah. And if I didn't see it, is there any provision for your new lower minimum levels of parking? Is there any provision to push them even lower? Like for example, somebody said, hey, look, I'm only going to be using this business Monday through Friday and the church next door, the church down the street has said that I can rent parking from them, they only use it on Sundays. I don't think so. I'm trying to remember if that's, if there would be a park. Did you discuss that? I don't think we did discuss it. I think it was mostly, you know, it was mostly, the discussion was mostly we are going to, you know, reduce the parking requirement, but I don't think there wasn't a discussion of anything that was sort of getting more, you know, more creative about sharing parking. Okay. As far as I remember, I will, if I go back home and look at the rest and realize I screwed that up, I will let you know. So there is something in there, but not necessarily what you just described, the leasing from the private church, but the public spaces can be counted in creative ways. We read that. Public spaces could be counted as potential parking spots for business. We read that. The challenge with the private ones has always been the same. You're counting space's voice. Yeah. And you need to be careful, and there's nothing in there about that kind of thing. And sometimes youth counter makes counting them voice appropriate. No argument. We discussed that. It is important. Yeah. I'm not sure if we want to put that in the regulation or not. I guess you could. You could think about some ways to allow creativity without specifying exactly how that, just a mechanism for appeal. We've definitely moved in the right direction when we started talking about using public spaces as part of the process, which works. Because we've definitely, you know, we're on the better side of the equation when we're a little more liberal about the apartment. Right, right. The idea here is that we want, we are phasing out, looking at phasing out the use of private automobiles and don't want to be encouraging them. What else was there that we were concerned about? Because if we're not too concerned about specific things, we can move to the next stage, which is a hearing process, which we'd like to do along with the town plan efficiently. Yeah. Yes. So, hang on for one second. Hang on. Do you want to schedule the town plan first and then do a double hearing second? Or do you want to do a double hearing first and have the second town plan hearing later? Double hearing first. All right. So you could do that on June 6th if you wanted to. Yep. Or you could do it on June 20th or whatever. Yep. Do it on June 6th. For what time of day? What about not less than 30 days? Don't we have to wait 30 days after tonight? That's a good point. That's right. About the town plan. Yeah. So we'd have to do that. But the town plan was a two for the town plan? Yes. Yeah. Does that clock start tonight or when we passed our motion to send it to the select board? That's a good question. It's even worse than that. Both of these statutes clearly state that any discrepancy in the timing doesn't affect the validity of the select board's actions. So if you wait longer, which is what usually happens, it does not affect the end result. And the presumption is if it's true, if you wait longer, it would also be true if you jumped the gun. But... Oh. Yeah. Let's not do jumping guns. Okay, so the very first one we could have is going to be the middle of June. It should be June... when's our meeting? June 20th. Yeah. So we could do it June 20th. Yep. Yep. Yep. Two hearings. Two hearings. Started at 6, 6.30, 7. Play as possible. As late as possible. So the normal meeting starts at 6.30. Yeah, 6.30. Yeah. Yeah. It's the longest day that you were practically, so no problem. Good. Okay, so that would work. And then the planning commission thing would be done. Because there's just one. The zoning. The zoning, yeah. The zoning could be done. The zoning could be ready to move forward. Yes. Because what you'll do is you'll have the hearings up front and then you'll have your regular meeting afterwards. Yes. And if you make a decision. It's right. Perfectly thought. Yep. It depends on what comes up. Yeah. Yeah. So that should work. Okay. And then we'd have the second one for the town plan. July, whatever. Yeah, you haven't chosen a July meeting date yet. Right. Because there's always conflicts with July's force. Yeah. We'll figure that out. Yeah. Sounds good. Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you for all your work. Yeah. I like the results and we'll move it along. All right. Thank you. We're not going to sit around chewing the fat over it. We're going to present it to the public and see what happens. All right. Very good. I hope we have some more people come in for it than you did. Yeah. We'll have to see. Yeah. I think that being really in person would make it easier. Oh, I know. I think having remote hearings was helpful for that. Yeah. The thing about having the two is maybe drawing more people. Yeah. All right. Thanks again. All right. So the next thing is conversation with East Montpellier Fire Department Fire Chief Larry Brown. And for those people standing out there, we have more chairs here and more space there. If you want to sit down. Okay. They're on duty. Hello. Thanks for opening up a spot for us this evening. We really appreciate it. So I understand you're the new fire chief. Each May, the fire department holds its annual meetings. Yeah. And at that meeting, the president, board of directors, fire chief are elected. And on the last, the first Tuesday of the month, I was elected as the fire chief. I've been with the department. Over 20, 25 years. I've been in the EMS fire service for over 40 years. Worked under the capable direction of Ty Rollin for 10 years. At that meeting, the membership decided to make a change. Tonight with me, I have several board of directors people here. I have several firefighters that have come in. It's, we're aiming this tonight is just to let you know if that, the cooperation between the select boards, we want to really keep an open line of communication. More so than probably in the past, utilizing our board of directors. You function as a board, elected board. We do the same thing. Our board of directors make the decisions. The chief is part of the board of directors. We have the board of directors. The chief is part of the board of directors. We have a president, vice president. Jay Copping is the vice president. Toby's the president. You have Albert Petrelis, Sandy Conti on the board. Currently on the board. Few other members that are officers on the department. So our ultimate goal is and has been to open a clearer understanding of what we do, how we do it. And one way that I think that can be accomplished is, I don't know if you've ever seen our bylaws. The bylaws give us an overview of how the department runs. And we are going to follow that as our guide as we move ahead with the select boards, that the board of directors will have a bigger part to play in the meetings that we hold quarterly with you. The chief won't always be the spokesperson. The president, vice president, board of directors will have input as they are supposed to by the bylaws have input. Any questions? Not so far. So what I'm going to just give you, I don't know how many, I've got several copies here of the bylaws that I can leave with you. I think I've read them actually. Yeah, it's good. For other members that don't have them, I see the structure of what we do. We're a 501C3 public organization, volunteer organization. So we want to make sure everything is open, right above board, questions. If you have to ask a question more than once, there's no problem with me. I have to ask a question more than twice. It seems like to make sure I understand it. So our ultimate goal is as agreements come up, as various types of situations arise, that we can have a real open communication. And I haven't met you yet. Are you? I am Gina. Gina. Okay, we talked on the phone briefly. Yes. Okay. I'm glad you're taking Bruce's place. You know, you're better looking than he is. So we'll just, we'll make sure we work on that. So the ultimate goal is at the meetings that we hold with the select boards, is to answer everything that you need answered in a clear and understandable way. We don't run a complicated organization. I think you've seen in the past, the financials are audited and kept in close contact with the people, the accounting for them we have. And at any time I'm open for a phone call, if you have a question, or the board of directors. What I'm going to submit to you, and I'll have that tomorrow to you, is the numbers for the board of directors, the president, vice president, and the board of directors. So that as questions arise and things come up, the board will be discussing these things. These will not be the decision of one or two people. They'll go back to the board of directors. And that's our ultimate goal. Right now things, the fire department, is at an abundance of calls. A lot of EMS calls if you're here during the day. You've seen the ambulance go by two or three times today. We're staffed, we're working on staffing. We've got some schooling coming up for advancing several of the EMS personnel to a higher level of training. We're recruiting several new people that have come on the fire department, which is our ultimate goal, is to strengthen it with younger people. And it seems that we're having some interest in people that want to come back into EMS work. We're going to be promoting that also through the signpost, through various other aspects, front porch form and callus, each one billion beyond. All the departments around us are searching for candidates. So we're looking at ways to enhance that, showing people that they can become advanced emergency medical technicians, that they can earn a fairly decent living at it if they can employ full-time with it. And it's a relatively short course to take to get your EMT license. And then move up to your advanced. If you want to go two years to paramedic school, you can do that. We're fortunate in East Montpellier that we have a number of highly qualified paramedics. And it was proven today, I went on to call it today, where a paramedic administered a life-saving technique to a person. So these things are right in the field. He administered a technique that usually the hospital does. But we do have highly skilled paramedics. I'm an advanced emergency medical technician. And so I'm one level below that paramedic level. So we do have qualified, trained people ready to respond. Any questions for us at this time? So the Board of Directors, how many are on that? The Board of Directors is seven people. The President doesn't vote, unless there's a tie. There's the Vice President. And there's four other boards elected for two-year, one-year type periods. The Chief is also a member of that board. Okay. We meet monthly. We meet on the last Wednesday before the first Tuesday before our regular monthly meeting. Every Tuesday we have the meetings. First meeting of the month is the general meeting of all the department where we discuss business, the business meeting. Second one is usually EMS related, where we do training. Or the third one will be a work night. Sometimes we put an officer's meeting in on that. The fourth one would be a fire department training. And if there's a fifth Tuesday, we need to split that into fire and EMS or both. So every month we're meeting four or five times at the station. So it's an ongoing training process. As the Chief, I've appointed officers to handle training, to handle all the different aspects of the organization. I don't believe in one person doing everything. One person can't do everything. I have a super group of people that have skill sets that we utilize their strong points. And it's something that I think we need to show the younger people coming in to our department that they're important. That the skill sets they present us with, whether it's electronic media that we can help the department grow, or whether it's new fresh ideas. We're looking at that. My ultimate goal for my position is to train two or three people to take that position. I believe strongly in mentoring. And our goal now is to take the young officers, which we have two or three of them here tonight, and train them up so that down the road, when I retire, you know, I'm retired right now. I only work about 70 hours a week. So that's an EMS and ambulance work. My work week is 40 to 60 to 70 hours a week on that. And with the fire side, I'm putting that into a position where I do what the bylaws indicate for the fire chief, and that's to handle the fire side of the service. Ambulance side, the board of directors will be working on and we will see how that works out as we appoint other officers, other EMS people for that. Okay, so the board of directors is seven. The chief is one. Yes. And who's the president? The president is Toby Talbert. Toby. Toby. The vice president is Jay Copping. Jay, yep. Paul Gware. Excuse me, Paul Gware. The vice president is Paul Gware. Paul Gware. Okay. And we have Albert Petrola. Yeah, Albert. Yeah. And we have Sandy Conti. Yeah. We have John McGuigan. I don't know. McGuigan, I think it's pronounced. I'm not sure if it's... John McGuigan? Yeah. And who's the fourth? Who do we have as the fourth member? That's going to be voted on. Oh, yeah. That's an open one-year position, the Phillip position. That's voted on next Tuesday night. Okay. There's two people running for that. Alex Bogazowski, who's right here. Yep. And Ty Rollin is running for that position also. Okay. And there's Judy Woodback. There is our secretary treasurer. She doesn't vote. She's just on the board. Okay. So six members vote. Yeah. Seventh is the president who votes on the tie. The president votes on the tie. Okay. On break a tie. Yeah. And what role does Ty have in the organization now? I know he was the chief. He is what we call K-4. He is an assistant chief. As the chief, I can appoint officers to carry out various aspects of the organization. And I've put him into what's called an assistant chief position. The structure, the command structure of the department is the chief. There's two deputy chiefs. And then there's two assistant chiefs if we so desire. Paul Gwear is an assistant chief. And Toby Talbert is K-3 number, which is a deputy chief. There's no K-2. That was my previous number. I have not assigned a K-2 deputy chief's position. Okay. And Ty has been assigned to the assistant chief to utilize his skill set, his valuable contributions that he's made in the past. Okay. All right. Okay. Thank you. And again, I just want to reiterate the goal with me is I'm very workable. I want to make sure you understand our operation as clear as you can possibly understand it. There's no hidden agenda, no mirrors and smoke. It's right up front. And this is what I use as my guide right here. I can't go wrong if I follow the organization's bylaws and utilize the strengths of the people that I have with me in the organization. Well, thank you for taking the opportunity to come over. We appreciate it. There was another agenda item. Is that anything that we should be concerned about tonight? Well, that's not the thing we can really talk about because it's going to be an exact reception. We'll let you know if there's anything that comes out of that. All right. We really appreciate it. Thank you very much. Of course we would thank you again. And I think I've given Bruce my cell number that I give you that. Yeah. Okay. So you need to contact me at any time. Oh, absolutely. Thank you very much. Thank you, Larry. Thank you. Thank you for coming in and putting a face on things. I'll give you those curls. Yeah. Okay. Thank you very much. Yeah. Larry, are these on your website or for our select board members who aren't here tonight? Do they need to come in at these? Yeah. I don't think they're on the website. I'll give you copies. We have our copies there. That's all I have. I don't think they're posted. Okay. I'm wondering if you could email us the copies. We can get them to the select committee right here. We can check our emails specialist and our computer specialist. Okay. Great. Thank you. Thanks again, guys. Thank you. Guys and girls. Okay. So we can, on item E, we should just put that more towards the end. Because we have personnel manager to be in that concession. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm going to move to F, which is town treasury report. What do we have for that? Don is here. If he wants to talk, Michelle. She wouldn't know. Right. Oh, Don. So we have a treasury report, I think somewhere in here. We get my sound. Okay. Yeah. It's just the regular. I don't think there's anything. Special to bring to the floor at this point. I do want to mention that after having spent. Just better than a week with Michelle. She's doing a great job. Since Tuesday, I didn't enter in any tax payments. Or do any of that. I was there as a. As a guide or not a doer. And it worked out very well. Nice. Tomorrow, tomorrow we start on new stuff. Good. So the process is coming along there. Yes, it is. And we did pretty well where we. On taxes, we've got 234,000 to. We've got. We've got a lot of things left to collect. And the ballot. I mean, the blue box is basically open till midnight. Tonight. And anything that's in there in the morning will. Me declared on time. Okay. Does anybody have any questions for dawn? No. You might, you might note in there. I think there's a. Multi-million dollar balance gets, you know, got $117. This interest. And the fees for the bank fees, which are positive pay and so forth. That costs us almost $130. So. You don't make much. First of next month. Yeah. Our capital reserve is still okay at the moment. Yeah. Can we do that? David. David. Do you want to comment on this extra highway department payment? Because I don't recall. So I'll comment on it. So we got a secondary April payment of around $38,000 in change. So instead of our normal $40,000 per month, we nearly doubled that in April. Makes the error in your favor? Not quite. The day of the month. It's not error in our favor. So if you look at the revenues, you'll see that we're $50,000 hot on that line to the good. And that's why. Are we going to not get a May payment? We're down for payments for the year unless they do another special one. Yeah. But we are, as I said, we're $50,000 up above expectations. Okay. So all good. Better than nothing. Yeah. Good job, Don. Good job. Yep. I did pull it in. Good job, Bruce. App boy. I have nothing to do with this one either. It just showed up. Okay. So it looks like we don't have anything more on the town treasury report. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Yep. Thanks. Oh, we'll enjoy it a lot. Okay. Discussion on green up day funding. Oh, this is the one. I'm glad you're here for that, Amy. Because you weren't happy about that. I'm going to need some additional explanation besides what's in the memo. I don't blame you. So the short story on this is I went to the drop off on green up day and Chris, our coordinators, Chris Reckamelli. Yes. Chris met me with Erin and I don't know her last name. I met her too. I don't remember her last name. Okay. So he introduced her as a prospective co or down the road takeover. Okay. Which Chris has been looking for for a long time. She doesn't want any stipend. Okay. She wants that money put toward encouraging better, more interesting things happening on green up day. No. Again. No. Right now, we already budget in the highway budget. We have $600 a year in green up. We haven't had to use any of it. Neither have we been using the central month solid waste management's annual grants. Because Cassell is taking all our stuff for free now. Okay. Right. Which they hadn't been until 2019 or whenever they started this. Is that a good tires too? It includes tires too. Nice. I did not ask them why because it doesn't seem like it'll be who is to change good fortune. But that $600 can, as long as it's not needed elsewhere, can be flipped right into utilization for some sort of concept that they might come up with for next year. Right. So you don't have to alter the budget so much as maybe listen to what the plan might be and give your opinions on it. Okay. Right. So this is something for us to be thinking about in December. Well, it's also something to, we don't need to worry about adding a stipend line. Right. For green up day. We've already got a line in there. Yeah. Right. Well, yeah. We have money elsewhere for a different purpose. Right. Just repurpose it. Yeah. Yeah. So we can just forget we had that discussion last time. Yeah. That's good. Because certain people want to happy about that. Okay. Sounds good. So green up day is done. Mama event use of town lands. What's mama? Area of mountain bike association. Okay. In stereo. Okay. Thank you for telling me what I should have known already. Probably on some of your land. Probably. Okay. So what do we have to say about this? It's okay. Essentially, they're seeking permission to access the trails that are on East Montpelier land. There is a map. Yeah. I think I saw a map somewhere in this set of papers. Have they done it before? I think they have. Not in this way. Hold on. This way? Not that goes across into the center of town. Certainly nothing we've approved. If they did it on a slide. I didn't think the trails group was ecstatic to have mountain bikers on some of those central area trails. Rick approached me as a landowner for one of the trails to ask permission and they gave me a rain date for it. And I was clear that I was glad that I was not excited about having 75 bikes on the trail all on the same day. But he also said, I don't remember his exact words, but basically it'll be watching conditions. They don't want bikers on money trails chewing them up either. So they will postpone it. I think even if the rain date is washed out, they wouldn't hold it. So it gave me a sense that they were approaching this responsibility from a point of view of taking care of the land that they'd be using it on. So do we have authority to approve this race on the trails? I think we do. On the trails that are on East Montpelier land is what he's specifically seeking with us. Any trails that are on any other owners, he's going to those landowners to seek their permission. So it's only East Montpelier that we own? Specifically from us. The town forest. Correct. And the bare property. And the bare property goes across there too. I don't need it. Go for it. If it works, it'll be a really great community event. Yeah. Be fun. Is that your motion, Amy? I'll do it. If you want that. Okay. Good. I did. So we have a second. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Okay. I'm done with that. And so Mamba is done. Okay. Next item discussion on town management light of COVID-19. What do we have to say about that? Boy, we got a lot of spread of COVID. Yeah. Thank you for staying home. I think in general, it's pretty consistent to what it's been. We're still high. Yeah. As it relates to the office. You know, just like I mentioned at the last meeting, people are putting on masks as needed. To interact with the public, but overall, there's no great concern with leaving things as they are right now. Okay. Last time I checked, Washington County was over nine times higher than the CDC threshold for high community transmission. Okay. It was a hundred cases per hundred thousand. They say don't use that anymore. Use our community level thing that has to do with beds in the hospital. Yeah. They're changing the reporting essentially. Right. But if you look at their, their original community transmission guidelines and high starts at a hundred cases per week. Per a hundred thousand people. And, uh, Washington County was at nine hundred something. New England, I think as a whole in the Northeast is, is getting hit pretty hard compared to the rest of the country. Right now it seems like it's, it's been going back and forth. Now when we're through with this or when it starts to settle down in the Midwest, it'll be getting hit probably. Yeah. It seems like it has to keep running through the population. Each very. Yeah. Is what I've noticed. So they're saying, you might expect to see this for, you know, for many years, like once or, you know, people catching it once or twice a year. Yeah. It's like a, it's like a cold. I mean, what I had, I mean, obviously other people have it differently, but I just had a, I had a runny nose and a little bit of a headache for a couple of days. Yeah. Oh, but it's different than the old original COVID. If you're vaccinated, it's different, I think. Yeah. You're not vaccinated. I think this would really be bad. I've seen quite a few people who have talked to me about having a, you know, some people have gotten quite ill even vaccinated, but they have so many different weapons for it now. I know it's a lot different. It's a lot more treatable. But there's still the level of people in the hospital has gone up. Yeah. Yeah. So. It doesn't look like we're going to make a change. So I say we go to the next item. Just so we don't. Bore everybody to death and spend all night here. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Just so we don't bore everybody to death and spend all night here. Okay. So going on to the appointments. CVRPC lead rep Spencer Hardy. TAC rep Frank Pratt. We're good with both those. The Spencer Hardy one is they've been, they, as the planning commission has been trying to convince him to do it. Take it on. He's agreed to it. Yeah. Yay. Yay. He's the member of the planning commission. Yeah. He's willing to spread his wings. Good. That's so excellent. Thank God. Frank is not a member of anything. When's the last time Frank had assistance with that? Had. Had someone working with him on that? Oh. This is. Yeah. Different. Oh. Yeah. Sorry. Yeah. Julie. Yeah. Julie's physician. Yeah. That's great that Spencer is taking over Julie's physician there. Yeah. Because we didn't have anybody. Right. Because Clarice was going to do it. She was the rep. She was the ultimate. But she didn't really want to do it. Yeah. It's probably busy. But anyway. But didn't we have the option of having an alternate TAC rep too? We do have the option. Yeah. Okay. But we don't have one. We're happy to have Frank. Frank. Frank. He just got back. He called me and said he's ready to keep on track. Yeah. Good. And the fiber alternate rep is Marshall Cottrell. Cottrell. I don't know who that is. Have you met him? I haven't. Okay. He may be one of the people that bought Frank Sating's house. The one up here at the top of Quaker. Okay. Oh, on the corner there? Yeah. The nice one. Yeah. On the one on the left? Yeah. Okay. I have a big wrap around porch. I have, I mean, Tom Fisher sent an email. Yeah. Saying he met with him. Yeah. He's gone to some of the meetings and everybody's excited to have him. Oh, nice. I haven't talked with him yet. So he may still say no after I offered the slot or after Gina offers a slot. But at this point. Right. Yeah. Tom submitted his name to the denominator. Okay. So Tom's in and this is his backup. Funding request study committee as the same members or what do we have? All but one. Sue Rakindelli is stepping down. So that drops you to five, which is the number you used to have all the time. But we had opted to seven. Then we lost one last year and I was locked to second one. And you can go with five or we can reach out and try to find more people. Okay. I'm fine with five. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It seems like it would be less cumbersome with five, but then I don't know how much we're, I mean, I know it's a lot of work. So maybe that's not true, but. It's probably less cumbersome to five. It always is with less people in the room. The things move along quicker. So. Whatever. I think five is enough. But if they don't feel it is, then we'd have to find somebody else, but they do feel it's okay. Can we just do these with one motion or? Sure. Yeah. That's what I was thinking. I moved this late. Yep. We need a second. Nope. Oh, Amy's going to do a second. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. The ayes appear to have it. They do have it. Um, we have wants. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I guess. Yeah, they do have it. Um. We have wants. I guess. Only two of us here. Oh, they. Yeah. Okay. So we have warrants. We need a motion to authorize me to review and sign. Everyone can review you obviously, but there's only two of us in here tonight. So. We need a motion to approve me to sign the warrants. He beat me to it. Oh, did Amy make the motion? Yeah. Okay. Amy made the motion. I'll second it. And John second, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Okay. So all that's left now is I'll do those in a second is we've already known the other business is a personnel matter. And well, actually, do we have a personnel matter? We have, we do. And we also have, I don't know, Bruce's or anything in the town administrator report. You've written in the annotated agenda that you, or Gina, maybe I'm not sure who it's in the addressing here that you want to present to Orly. We can present that's the second installment for the taxings which we've touched on with Don. We buy midnight tonight. Current status is from a delinquent perspective. We have 41857 outstanding from the first installment and $192,075 from the second. But these are preliminary numbers and good change. We did receive notice, I think this today, or perhaps over the weekend that we were awarded a grant of a VT, or VTrans Better Roads grant for the Colbert replacement on Cherry Tree Hill Road. The $60,000 state funds grant with a $15,000 town match. So Bruce will be teaching me what we need to do for that. And then the upcoming meeting schedule for June is June 6th and June 20th. The 20th will now be included to Nearingth as well. Okay. So that grant update, this is the last of the Dublin designs. Okay. And this is one that Guthrie is going to do. It won't be a contractual. Guthrie is going to install the Colbert? Yes. Absolutely. Buy it. But he believes that that's... Okay. He thinks he's got a lot of them. Yes, he thinks he has them to get the Colbert. Okay. He's trying to buy two right now because we've got one on County Road that needs to be replaced yesterday. He's gonna try to get a deal. It needs to be replaced yesterday. Yeah, we now have a Colbert with some steel plates over the top of it. With a, if you go out there, you'll see another one of SES Speed Bumps. Uh-huh, okay. I love Speed Bumps. Yeah. It's off the... It's actually pretty smooth. It's actually pretty smooth though, to be honest with you. Okay. SES Steel is expensive too. Yes, it was. $2,500. Wow. You can probably reuse it. I doubt it. I could, but some of them are just different. Now these are gonna be $15,000 Colber's. Yeah. I don't even know how expensive they are now. Yeah, it's just gone nuts. Yeah. What was the towing service? I can look it up. That was, yeah. Yeah. Uh, a $10,000 repairer to the six-wheeled. Oh, let's just put it in his towing service. That's how these... Oh, flagged it. Because there's nine million. If you look at the bill. Oh yeah. Oh, I know. I know I got done to it. It's got three million. No, I looked at the same thing. I said, $9,500 for towing. For towing? It wasn't. No, it's the whole repair bill. Okay. Ah, I might put it in differently, but whatever. Okay. So the... The Zoning Administrator Report. Oh, the Zoning Administrator Report. Yeah, 80 applications. We've been waiting for the select board subdivision but it hasn't been added in. Maybe he's not talking. The addition? What addition? John's the holdout on whether his application is going to be coming in by Wednesday or not. Oh, does he know it has to be? He's requiring a survey, so it's not affording to come in, I wouldn't think. Okay. So we probably will have, we've got two applications already that are in for the next DRB meeting. John was the one, possible third one. Yeah, okay. So he's being held off. Okay. And then I think on the personnel matters, we determined that most of them we could take in no concession. That's what I was thinking too. Right, which is why. But not all of them. Well, we could pick off the ones that we can do without the exception. So we could talk about the meeting minutes, take a position. So from the front porch form post, I do have one person that has applied. My question for the board is, how do you want to proceed with this candidate? Like, do we want to just, I can one forward you the email she sent me. She sent me, and I asked for a writing sample, which was included. I can send that to you. I don't know how involved we want the process. Do we want to just have the person come to the next meeting, and do we want to kind of try this? That's kind of a good way. Okay. No, that's just me. Because I'm not as... Particular? No, I wasn't going to say that because that's negative connotations. I'm not as... Concerned. What that's to do with you. Go at this, all right? I am grateful for anybody that could come in and do mails. Absolutely, because it is a tough position to fail. Tough. But I'm really glad that we got somebody to apply. I wasn't sure that was going to happen. So that's wonderful. And yeah, she should come to the next meeting and do a... Dry run. A dry run. That's going to say dress rehearsal, but it's... Yeah, I think that's the best way to evaluate someone. I don't do a dress rehearsal. You're not really getting a feel for... No. Truth is in the pudding, as you say. Okay, then I will reach out to her and ask her... Does she have experience or you'll have to ask her? She does have. No, she does. She sent me a sample of some minutes that she had taken for a work meeting. Oh, great. But we have some people on the board that are more particular than others, so this would be great. Yeah, well, I'll tell you what. I'll send you all the sample. Okay. And then you all can let me know if you approve. I approve. This person. Hey, you know what it's called? Warm Body Syndrome. Well, you know, honestly, I wanted to start with front porch form because as much as we could take ads out for this, I just don't know. I feel like someone in the community... Yeah, of course. Is... Right. And she is... Yeah. A member of the East Montailleur community responded to my approach of you want to get involved. And this is all about good government and transparency and government. Our minutes do a really good job right now of reflecting what we're doing, what the background is, our basis for making decisions, and it may be a challenge to find somebody who is capable of explaining things clearly and in that level of detail. But when I was taking minutes, when Bruce was producing the annotated agendas, that already went a long way towards that transparency. And much of what I was able to do was to copy and paste and make certain adjustments in those. And I'm sure you'll be doing the same thing, Gina, or have already started doing the same thing. So to have someone who's experienced in taking minutes and can do a good job on it is important to the accountability of this board, to the voters of this town. And what other item related to the meeting minutes takers? We currently do have a meeting minutes taker for our planning commission and DRV boards, who is being paid at a rate lower than what we are bringing in. So I would like the board to approve an inquiry. But she's leaving, right? She is, but at least four of our meeting meetings to match what we are bringing someone I think is fair. Probably fair enough, yeah. So... What do we have at $20 now? We have 20 and I believe she's currently at 16. So I just think it's fair to make that equitable since we've decided that $20 at the last meeting is an appropriate... And she with us for just another month. I think through the end of June, correct? End of June. Do we need a motion on that? Yes. I'll make a motion that we pay the current minute taker position at the rate of pay that we provided for the new hires. If you say the outgoing minute taker, then I'll talk about that. Is that okay? Yeah, I was saying the current one, but the current outgoing one. Okay. Wow. And this person that you've been in contact with is willing to take minutes for all three? Yes, I will confirm that with her. I have not gotten into any further details with her until I knew how we were gonna proceed, but I will confirm all of that. So the first minutes that she would take would be a select board meeting or...? Probably start with the select board. Because that's the toughest one. Yeah. The rest of the people are more like myself, but there are members on the select board. There are only a few... The rest of the people have fewer topics to shift around on. Oh. There are members of both boards who are just as concerned about the accuracy. Oh, yeah. And some members of this board. Right. Okay. Well, point well taken. Thank you. We'll see how it works out. Okay. It sounds good. Yeah, you want to finish the motion. Oh, yeah. All those in favor, please say aye. No. No. We had a second. We had a second. Yeah, we had a second. Okay. Yeah. So... So now do it. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Okay. Okay. I'm going to miss this. You can watch it on the screen. Okay. So just for your own edification, Guthrie is here. Yeah. You might want to find out why. Yeah. Hi, Guthrie. You're unmuted. Take yourself off mute. There we go. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't know if the 820 part was any interest to me. The what? Access permit. We approved it. Oh, perfect. Conditional on your approval. No, because you hadn't formally submitted the application. We just approved it pending your approval or disapproval. But the road thing is a long discussion that we're going to have to make. As Bruce pointed out, we have improved class 4 roads. That's the precedent. I thought we'd always went by state statute, but we have not. So it's a complicated issue. We're going to have to thrash it out some more. Yep. But the curb cuts approved. There's no reason not to approve that. Okay. I'll leave you to your business. Thank you very much. Okay. Thank you for coming in. Yes. Have a good evening. You too. Okay. So the next rezoning administrator. We received an applicant today for that position. So I assume we want to proceed with setting up interviews. Yeah. So we could figure out who's going to be part of that interview. So this would be your normal methodology at this point would be to say, let's wait for the planning commission to tell us how their review of the applicants went. Well, they haven't even reviewed it. No, they don't know about it. Right. Okay. Thank you for that reminder. We'll just wait. Sorry. Yeah. Well, they would do the initial interview. Would they not? They would, if that's how you want it handled. Well, I think that's what we're doing. One way or another, they have to do the recommendation. Right. So you can interview and send them to them and have them interview and send them back to you. No, I don't. I think they should do it. They should do what they think is best. Yeah. And we'll just follow. Okay. Yeah. And then I just wanted to ensure the board knew that Michelle started last week. She is doing a great job and we get along quite well. So. Good. We are both very pleased. Nice. With the, with the hires. Yeah. Good. Good. So that's really all the personnel matters, is it not? There's one more that I would want to take to executive session. All right. All right. And I think we're going to go to executive session. We are. We have a project to talk about. I will make a motion if, if we're ready for that. Yep. So. Which one are you going to do? I thought I would make a motion to do concurrent executive session for different reasons. Is that a legit way to do it? Remember the first one is requires that double. The finding one is just a simple one. So the first one, you mean the fire department one? Okay. That's a good point. So we can make the finding first. So do you have language in here for the findings? Yes. Okay. I'm looking for it. Yeah. It's in the middle of the second page of the report. Right. Thank you. So. All right. I move that the board find that the discussion of the agenda item on the notice of non-renewal for an east month, a potential issuance of a notice of non-renewal for the east month fire department service agreement premature general public knowledge of this would clearly place the public body at a substantial disadvantage. So we're going to make that finding. We're going to make that finding. Right. If we get a second and approve it. Do we have a second that we made the finding? Amy. Second. All those in favor of saying yes to the finding. Please say aye. Aye. Aye. You guys have it. So the second motion then is a double motion. It's to enter a double barreled executive session for the purpose of discussing the potential issue of notice of non-renewal for the east month failure fire department service agreement and to discuss a potential personnel matter. And that would be under a separate provision of Vermont statutes which is will be listed in the motion. So you make that motion. Do we have a second? Yeah. John. All those in favor please say aye. Aye. Aye. Okay. All right. We're coming out of executive session. No action taken. Anything else? What time do we come up? It is. Well 906. 905. 905. We came out of executive session. There's no action taken. I think we're all set. I think John has a motion. Oh John. Did you have a motion? I Amy does. Oh yeah. I move that we adjourn. A second then. Oh. That's the first time you said something Amy. All those in favor please say aye. Aye. Aye. Thank you. Bye. Bye.