 Select board meeting for November 1st, 2021 to order. First motion is to approve the agenda unless there are any changes. I'd like to add your license for maxing. Under consent. Under consent. I would like to add two items potentially. First one under select for business item D, parking issues on Stow Street and Sweet Road. And then Linda, he's got to turn off his speaker. Yeah, you're echoing, Bill. Yeah, I'm kind of, and I just deal with this by phone, but. We can just mute him right now. I can't keep my phone through the phone. Yeah, okay. Just mute him on the phone. Close to people who are here. Yeah. Okay, we can also mute him. What do you want me to do? Just mute him on the phone. If he can listen to us, when we need to go to him, we'll go to him. Hold on, hold on. I'm listening to you and Mark at the same time. Hold on. What do you want us to do? Just mute him on the cell phone. And when we need, when we look to him to discuss something, he just needs to turn his speaker off and then we unmute him, I think. Conversely, Carl, I might I suggest he actually mute himself. That way, if he does, when we speak up and we don't, we won't know if he wants to talk otherwise. Okay, when you're not speaking, mute your phone. Shall we try it again? Linda, I see you on Zoom. Are you hoping to talk about your email today or were you in any kind of position to talk about that today? I'm worried. Okay. If you want more detail, we can line it up for the next meeting. How's that? That's fine. Do you mind if I put it towards the end of the meeting or do you want us to move it up? Whatever you want to do. All right, I'm just gonna add it as item E if that's okay with everyone. Hey, actually, Mark. Yeah. Can you hear me? Is there a chance we can move up the banner thing? So that's people that are attending can go home at a reasonable hour. Sure. All right, so we're gonna move C up to the front of select board meeting and then Is he not on mute? No, are you not muted? Then item D, parking issues, still streets we rode and E, an internet update on a new option for Waterbury. Any other changes? Just on E, was this sent to all select boards? I don't know. It might not have been, but it's... I'm not familiar with you mentioning that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, she'll be able to tell you what's going on. Okay, fine. Any other changes? Can I get a motion? I make a motion to approve the agenda as amended. Second? I'll second it. All right, any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Consent agenda item. Can you stop for one second? I'm sorry. Yeah. He was on a speaker conference call earlier with E-FUD, I can plug that back in. Okay. Phil, can you hear me? Why don't I try to plug back in the conference phone and call you? Yeah. All right, I'll try to put that in and call you in just a minute. I think we're giving him a 40, doesn't need to be up. Is this a car or a machine still on the floor? All right, we can do Consent Agenda items for him. Carla, do you care if we go through Consent Agenda items without him? No. I understand. Consent Agenda items, minutes from October 18th meeting and the liquor license are maxing. I make a motion to approve the Consent Agenda as amended. Is there a second? I'll second it. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. All right, public, this is an opportunity for anyone to speak from the public that's here tonight. Preferably not on an item that we were gonna be talking about later, but if there's anyone here that wants to discuss any other item, now is your opportunity. Is there anyone who wants to speak on anything that's not on the agenda? Zoom. That's for good. There we go. Bill, can you hear us? I'm here. Okay. Can you hear us if we're talking at this level? It's difficult, but I'll make it. We'll talk up. Yeah, that's good. All right, first item of business is discuss the inclusion banner and continue discussion from last week. There was approval for a banner, but we did not, and it was gonna include the wording from the inclusion statement. So tonight, we're hoping that we can move that banner design forward. Mike, you think? It's a copy of this. So the one that I think we are currently landing on is Water Rate Condemns Racism and Welcomes All on the banner, which basically is the first sentence in the inclusion statement. Anyone have any comments? I think each of us internally have said some things and I think this kind of crystallizes both the Black Lives Matter movement, racism in general for all parties as well as announces that Water Rate is a welcoming community, which is what the Declaration of Inclusion is about. So I have no problem with the one that we have someone sort of agreed upon. I think it fits in terms of spacing, anything too wordy, it's hard to read. It was important for me that I was not just inclusive, but actively anti-racist, which we get with this. So I am for this wording. Do you see that coming? I don't know if it's the first. Any comments? Yep, I'll get to you in a second. Can you run that by me again? It's just a little difficult hearing. Yeah, it's basically the first line of the Inclusion statement, which is Water Rate condemns racism and welcomes all. So that version came from where and? It's the beginning of the Inclusion statement. As the declaration of inclusion that we adopted? Yes, it's the first line. So what are you suggesting? That that be the banner? Yes, we need to do. What are you doing? All right, am I in now? Yeah. All right. I mean, if that's what the declaration that we adopted said, then. All right, can you bring that up? Is it possible? I guess I don't have a problem with it. I'm going to go to the public then. Do I need to bring it up? Yep. Can I just speak from here? Sure, can we, does that pick it up or does they all? I think we have to be able to say that. Yeah. Okay. So I guess my first question is none of us have seen it. So is there a way we can put it up? It's right there. It's right as well, okay. I want your name. Yeah, my name is Maddie Keown. You should pass this one out. So I live here in town. And I think one of, well I have numerous concerns about this whole process. But one of my concerns is that all of this seems to be coming from one group and we're a community. So I'm wondering why community input isn't going into a banner. I'm wondering why there's not a collaboration and a filtering of ideas. To me, this is negative. I mean the first thing I get coming into town is we're condemning something. We're not saying, you know, Waterbury is a great community and you all should want to come here. We can't wait to have you here. All of you, we're condemning. It's the very second word. Waterbury is condemning. This is the banner we're talking about, right? Yeah, and we said we're going to. I understand. But I think you also said at the last meeting that again, only one organization drafted that and you approved it. So again. It went through a select board meeting. It went through a select board. And we agreed on it and we voted it in. It was meant, that wasn't quite word for word what the group that presented it. All right. I think what I'm trying to say is how much of the rest of the community knew this was happening or had input into the wording or had any input into this banner or the previous banner. And that's my question. Why is this not a community collaboration instead of almost mandate or dictate or presented from one group of people in the community? I think Waterbury is a great community. I actually love living here. I love what I know Waterbury to be. Waterbury is not condemning. It's not a condemning community. And I don't think this is the first thing we want people to see coming in to the community. So that's my initial statement. So I'll just ask you to consider that and I might have more to say. Can I make a comment back to that? Sure. I was one of the ones that last meeting we voted to not allow an additional banner. But we, everyone in this room who attended was very firm that we do have this declaration of inclusion which has been around now for months. No one's created, I don't think anyone who is a reasonable thinking person can object to anything in that declaration of inclusion. And this just says, I understand what you say at first, but it does condemn racism. And I don't have a problem with anything that's, we say here, because I think we do condemn racism. I don't think anyone can, could anyone say they support racism? I don't think so. And again, it says we welcome all. So I think it is, it's making an affirmation that we do condemn racism, but we do welcome everyone into this community. And I don't think it's a negative against anyone. And again, people can attend select board meetings. And to be honest, if people have problems, they need to speak up. They come to the select board meeting, not at the night of the hour. We agreed to have this declaration two weeks ago. We said we would have wording. That's what we're here today. I don't have a real problem with what's there. I propose something a little bit different, but we as a select board, we can't speak as a group. We have to email each other one-on-one. Mark proposed that. I saw that. I thought it was a very good representation. Again, it comes right from our declaration of inclusion, which we were all behind in the spring. So to say that that doesn't represent the community, if people in the community had problems with that declaration of inclusion, where have they been from the spring till today? I didn't know anything about it. Yeah, and I will let other people speak, but I think that was part of the worry. Yeah, and I will second that, that I think this is a negative. You're drawing attention to something that I don't feel is necessary to draw attention to. That's assuming that people are racist. That's assuming that people are racist. I'll just disagree with you. I don't say it's we condemn racism. It's not saying we have racist people. Why are you drawing attention to it in this way then? That's, to me, that's what that's doing. I guess we're, I'm not gonna argue with your point. I'm just saying. I think a lot of people feel that way. I think a lot of people feel that way. Excuse me, Mark. Yeah, go ahead. Is there a reason we can't introduce what Mike had come up with? I think it might take the harshness out of what the last two comments were. Yeah, Chris, because I think that where the impetus for this banner came from is anti-racism. So it's not the purpose of the banner we're discussing is not just a welcome sign to the town, but a strong statement of inclusion and anti-discrimination. So simply to say we welcome all takes away that purpose of actively condemning or finding another word of being actively anti-discrimination and anti-racism. Just in full disclosure, Mike, the initial, what Chris was referring to, my initial statement for the banner was Waterbury stands for inclusion for all. And I still think what Mark came up was as good if not better because it does make an affirmation. And this is something that has been approved in our declaration of inclusion. It's just like, I hate to say if people don't know about it, they're not following town government. This has gotten a lot of press in the Waterbury Roundabout, the Waterbury Reader, probably other publications. I don't think this is something new. And I don't think it is a negative, it's just an affirmation. That's my piece. Yeah, I just kind of followed the procedure. Yeah, I know last week we were lining people up for there. I know we were lining people up, so I think I saw your hand first, so I'm happy to speak first and then. First of all, thanks. And we appreciate the fact that this is being brought to our attention as a community. A few comments that I'd like to make. You mentioned that it's an impetus, is an anti-racism or is anti-racism? Correct. I thought the impetus was about inclusion, making people feel a part of, rather than making people feel like they're not a part of. And although I understand that this came from your declaration of inclusion, I do think that it does have a negative connotation. And I do understand your point and you can see it differently. The problem is that some people will see it as being a negative rather than a positive. I wish it said, Waterbury welcomes all, because that is an inclusive statement, right? And there isn't a negative connotation to it. I understand that the group that has really been pushing for this is about anti-racism. And I would say that I would think that at least 99% of Waterburyites are about anti-racism. But to have the word racism be in that in the way that it is does, again, seem to have a negative connotation. And that's the concern that I have. The other point that I wanna make is I've spoken with a number of people, at least a half a dozen, who absolutely do not want a BLM banner up, which I know this isn't the discussion right now. But they are literally afraid to speak out about it. And I think that's really sad that that's where our community is at. And I don't believe anybody here wants it to be that way. I don't believe it's one person against each other. I think it's everybody wanting some peace in this crazy time that we're living in. And so the last thing I'd like to see Waterbury do is put something up that's gonna cause more division rather than bring us together. How does this create division in your mind? It creates division because everything that we're hearing about lately we're super focused, hyper focused on racism. To the point where it's being used so much that it's losing its meaning. It's just constant racist that racist that your racist. I mean, to be called a racist doesn't even mean what it used to mean. It used to be horrifying. Now it seems to again have become politicized, which is horrible because it is horrible to be truly racist. So again, a lot of opinions and I understand that I would just like to see us do something that is inclusive that feels inclusive and that doesn't cause further division in our town. So that's my piece. I just want to say it to you. If you really feel so offended, do you hear the word racist or racism? I'm not a, oh no, I'm sorry, you have the words in my mouth. I did not say that I'm a racist. You had better point it out, sir. Okay, hang on, hang on. All the order, all the order. I just want to speak, first of all, I want to thank you all for adapting the statement of inclusion that you have done. The last meeting, I'm kind of very surprised to hear that the same folks who are here and who are here who are advocating insane, Black Lives Matter is not inclusive, that we need to do a banner and adopt the statement of inclusion. Those same people who advocated for it not or against it tonight. It's very clear to me and I apologize if I'm gonna get emotional, but it's very clear to me that the problem here is the fact that people have issues with the words racism or saying that we are going to stand against racism or condemned racism. If that's offensive, God damn, please, imagine living. Could you watch the language, please. Imagine experiencing it, please. And I don't appreciate the language. If we stand against racism or we condemn racism is offensive or hurts people, I just want you to think about what it is to live, to experience racism or, excuse me, he's speaking. I want you to think about what it is to experience racism. Not assuming anything. Excuse me, it's his opportunity to speak. I will not have anyone speak over anyone, okay? Everyone will have their opportunity to have minutes to speak on this, but I will not have anyone speaking over each other like that, I will just not allow it. And if I have the right, I will remove people from this meeting. I just won't have it, I'm sorry. This is a select board meeting. This is a meeting of the select board, excuse me. It's going into a Zuhu session right now, a Zuhu session. Excuse me? Okay, this is supposed to be. What's the product called? I'll remove people from the meeting. Bill, you're muted. No Zuhu here, this is the meeting. Excuse me. You can remove people from the meeting. You probably have the power at least to do it, but you can remove people from the meeting. I will remove people from the meeting. Do not speak over other people. Allow everyone to speak. Moroni is speaking. Go ahead. And I just want to say, first of all, when I talk about this issue, I just want people to know, I may have moved here in Warbury, I may have been new to some of you, but my father's from here. My father's Bill Minter. My family's been here for 25 years plus. I did not just move here to create a problem, or as you all of you trying to make it seem like I'm attacking you. When I talk about racism, it's not a black or versus white issue to me. My father's white, my mother's black. I get it from all sides, from white, from black. So please, I'm begging you, I'm not trying to make this about you and me. And don't do that. Talk to me. Get to know me. People are calling Warbury Area Anti-Racism Organization as an organization. This group that I co-founded, what we stand for, we're not a Black Lives Matter group. What we stand for is clear. We're trying to make this community an inclusive community where anybody is welcome, regardless of the race, gender, economic background, religious, or who they love. If you go on our website, that's what it is. Black Lives Matter is one of those movement that we have adapted to understand and recognize the struggle that Black Lives People are going through. It's not to say that nobody else's life doesn't matter. When I say Black Lives Matter, it does not mean that my white father's life does not matter. It's to recognize the struggle that Black People have gone through and continue to go through the brutality from police and the killing of Black People. That's all. That's not to say that your life does not matter any less than mine or any Black person. So please, let's try to come up with an understanding of what that really means. Let's have a conversation. There's an education component of this that needs to be done. And I welcome that. And I just want to finish by saying I really appreciate the fact that you have understood last time a lot of members of the community, including whatever anti-racism coalition member came, as much as we advocated for the Black Lives Matter flag to be up there in addition to this inclusion statement. We have no problem with this. This is, as you, everybody advocated. We want to do something that comes from the statement of the inclusion of the town adopted. So I'm very disappointed here tonight that the people who have advocated, who asked you to do this, are against it tonight. But I'm here to say that thank you so much for doing this. We have a lot of work to do in our community. And let's come together and do the work. And I think this is a good step forward. Thank you. Thank you. I don't have a speaker. So my name's Angela Wells. I'm a president on Omi. And I've lived here and raised my kids here for 30 years and I married a hometown boy. So I get, excuse me, what people are saying on both sides. And I think that if what we're trying to do is promote, honest. To direct your comments to the board. Honest, heartfelt discussion, especially with our children, to change things. We want to have some type of banner that is opening and welcoming. I think that where we are generally over as a society is when people hear sometimes the word racism, they're like, ugh, I don't want to talk about this. It's uncomfortable. And it should feel uncomfortable because it's not something that, it's an uncomfortable thing. And in order to grow, we have to discuss uncomfortable things. And when I think of racism, I think of the color of your skin. And I think that what we need to be talking about and growing and discussing and educating and opening up about includes more than that. It includes the LGBT community. It includes different religions. It includes people who suffer horribly from mental health issues. And there are a lot of people who are new here and don't remember when we had the state hospital. And it was the norm for us, the gentleman spoke at the last meeting about how welcoming and accepting we were of our citizens who were residents of the state hospital. So I get what both people are saying and everybody's passion is noteworthy and is rooted in what's traumatic and what affects them the most. I would like to see it be more welcoming and that feel good. And then it opens the discussion of things that are uncomfortable. Does that make sense? I would love to see the inclusion statement on a beautiful sign when you come in to our town. I think that the overall inclusion statement is wonderful and something more permanent. I think that those posts are supposed to be to or were founded to advertise events. And I think if we stray for that from that, then we kind of get in sticky waters. So I can understand what the people spoke before me and I absolutely respect their heartfelt feelings. I do agree that I would like to see something more welcoming that people can take a breath. And then that starts the conversation that maybe digs into what makes us feel uncomfortable and what we need to work on from ourselves, from our community. I think, but I do agree that the in-your-face approach, well, that might work for some people. I think that if we want to open up thoughtful, heartfelt discussion on something this, that's a horrible racism is horrible. And we want to be welcoming to all. I think you get a better buy-in and you get a better response of opening versus, and people feeling, and I agree that it's an overused term that kind of waters down how much work needs to be done. So that's just kind of my feelings that maybe if we make the banner where people are coming in and people are seeing that it maybe it will spur a more thoughtful discussion in a more gentle approach that really helps people really change versus being too in-your-face where people will close off and not want to have that uncomfortable discussion. Gina Callan, I grew up here in Waterbury. First one in my family to be born and brought up here. And I have to say that my mother was best friends with the only black family in town at the time, the Boyds. I don't know if anybody remembers them. So that's where I'm coming from. Never even considered racism, never even was a word that we even knew growing up. But since you're talking about an inclusion statement and Waterbury, I mean, ideally, I would love to just see all are welcome. I'm not a technical person, so I haven't gone on the internet. I don't do Waterbury around about. So I didn't know anything about this, but somebody informed me of this meeting. That's why I'm here. But just listening to the conversation and wanting to have something maybe more inclusive, and hearing the words that I thought would be very welcoming, I just wanted to propose that you could say something more appropriate, like Waterbury affirms, because I love your word of affirmation, Waterbury affirms inclusion, all are welcome. So I really appreciate that you wanna make people feel welcome, you wanna put a kibosh on racism, and you've all learned about the inclusivity program that is going on around the state. So I just thought that would be very appropriate, Waterbury affirms inclusion, all are welcome. Thank you. Good evening. My name's Flora Scott, thank you for having me. So I'm a writer and I used to review plays, and I used to tend to try and make my point using really strong words, and just with everything everybody said, it's reminded me of my editor always telling me, if you use negative words to make a point, you're gonna get a negative reaction. People, they're hard. They're hard on your heart, they're hard on your ears. People don't like to hear negative words, they're painful to hear. And I think that everybody has the same goal here. Nobody wants racism, but there's a lot of division, and there's a lot of people being called racists that aren't racists, and it's blown up into this crazy thing. So I think just to kinda stand on the shoulders of people who came before me, I think positive words are gonna have the effect that we're all looking for. The affirm word is good, but condemns and racism I think are just really harsh and negative, and while it certainly makes the point that you're wanting to make their ugly words, and they cause ugly reactions, even if your intention is for a positive one. So I'm gonna stand with the people that came before me, that we are against racism, but let's do it in a more inviting way because we're trying to invite people into our community and so we wanna do it in a positive way. And say, you know, making the same point, though. I'm Duncan McDougal, and I wanted to say that if anyone feels that Waterbury is a completely non-racist town, it doesn't recognize the fact that there's racism throughout our country in all towns. This is an issue that has existed for hundreds of years, and it's an issue that hasn't been fully solved in part because our society hasn't really taken a hard stand on it. And for years we've been using quiet, soft language and not really addressing the fact that racism is all around us. And when I hear people say that this proposed language, Waterbury condemns racism and welcomes all is not welcoming, I think in part it assumes that the people who are reading this statement are the ones not affected by racism. So there are people who in their day-to-day lives in a variety of levels, in a variety of ways, experience this. And they would be the ones who read this and view that as a positive thing. That's saying, Waterbury is taking a stance on a very challenging issue. And I have no trouble having that wording there, Waterbury condemns racism and welcomes all. It covers both sides of that. It shows people who are experiencing this terrible situation that we're taking a hard stand on. And I think as a society, as a country, it's time for us to really take a hard stand to make it very clear. Because I think when folks say, well, I'm not racist, there are a lot of different ways that in day-to-day life we don't realize the actions we take, the words we use, whatever it might be, has an impact on folks. And I think this takes an appropriate and strong stance and it's a stance that as a society, we probably should have taken a while ago and might have gotten us a little further down the path than we are right now. Thank you. Thanks. Dave, could you put that in the racist hand? What's up? Sure. David Goodman, go ahead. Hi. This is Sue Minter, wife of David Goodman. And I am a resident of Waterbury, have lived here for 30 years, raised my children here. And I'm the very proud aunt of Moroni Minter. I also served on local boards of the Waterbury, the Planning Commission. I served in the legislature representing Waterbury for six years. I served in the executive branch and I now run an anti-poverty organization, Capstone Community Action, which among other things supports our food shelf and housing and secure families. I wanna say thank you to the select board for advancing this wording of this banner. I understand that you have had a lot of response to the initial banner. You've worked hard to create language that considered the strong wishes of the Black Lives Matter folks advancing that banner as well as folks who felt that maybe there was a lack of inclusion, inclusivity in that first banner. So to me, this is really a way to bring the folks, the concerns of those who had formerly spoken with concerns about I guess the tension behind perhaps the Black Lives Matter flag to bring it to a different level. To me, this advances the concept of inclusion as well as recognizing and condemning racism, which is extremely important and valid and as important and actually the foundation to the need for a statement of inclusion. I want everyone to know that it's not just Waterbury that communities across Vermont and even the state of Vermont is really working hard to think differently about where we go from here as one of the whitest states in the nation, a state that desperately needs new, especially young and more diverse people, a place where we are desperately trying to bring new workers to unfilled jobs, restaurants, our closing, organizations, child cares. And part of what we need to address is the fact that at this moment there are many who don't feel included. So I believe that this statement is eloquent and I strongly support this select board raising this as a way to both celebrate our community, our fantastic community, the resilience of this community. And yes, raising the fact that racism is an issue that we condemn while we include and welcome all. Thank you very much. I'll turn this to my husband, David. Thank you. I also want to appreciate the select board in speaking for so many of our community who view this as a statement that they feel proud of. They feel proud of our community for acknowledging everyone who lives here and acknowledging that racism is here as it is in every community. And we're a community that's saying to all of our residents, we see you, we hear you, we care about you. And it strikes me that a lot of the conversation is often, it's based on one's own experience. If people are fortunate enough to not experience racism because they're white and they are beneficiaries of a system that has advantaged them, well, that's a very nice place to be, but to acknowledge how racism has profoundly impacted many members of our community, including my nephew, Moroni, who I think has been very eloquent in speaking not just for himself, but for many of us in the community who want to see, when I see this sign coming into the community, I will feel welcomed and embraced. I will feel that it speaks for me. But most importantly, that it speaks for everyone, not just for representing one's own experience, but the experience of everyone and letting everybody know that they're safe here, that they're welcome here, that they can be their full selves here. They don't have to not use words like racism. When I hear that people are concerned about using a word racism, I think really we need to be concerned about experiencing racism, not naming it. And by naming it, we're acknowledging a lot of our community and we're letting them know that we want them to thrive here. We don't want them to feel that they can't be their full selves. So I think this will be a great opportunity for Waterbury to really position itself as a leader and a welcoming leader. So thank you. Thank you. Bill. Bill, go ahead. Yeah, thank you. I too have a concern about the folks who are so vehemently opposed to using the word condemns racism. If we said Waterbury condemns thievery or Waterbury condemns terrorism, would we be worried that we're offending thieves or terrorists? And racism in one degree maybe isn't criminal, but we do have laws on the books to try to promote everyone's civil rights. I think that if we can't use the word condemns, we could say Waterbury affirms that racism is abhorrent. Is that any less of a stimulus to get people thinking or talking? When we say that we wanna include everyone and we don't want to be offensive to those who are in the LBGT community, we don't wanna be offensive to other groups who feel maybe that they're not given enough protections or enough right to their own space by society. In the one hand, that's awful, but on the other hand, it's only people of color that are different just because of what they look like. You can't usually tell just by looking at someone that they are of a group that feels in need of some protection. And I think that we're worrying too much about who's gonna be offended by this. If somebody is truly racist, having a banner up that says Waterbury condemns racism probably isn't gonna make them change their mind. I think what we're looking to do is to get people like me and most of us here to say, wow, I wonder why we have to have that sign. How do I behave in my daily life that may telegraph that if not racist, that I'm insensitive to other people? So I really think that we're splitting hairs here to say that using the word condemn is too egregious. It is something that I condemn. And I would hope that the town, the vast majority of people in the town condemn racism. We're trying to move the ball forward to get people to talk about this issue. And if we sugarcoat everything and can't offend anyone, then nothing is gonna change. It takes being shaken up sometime to say, boy, I've got to change how I behave. So I think that you board members, this is a representative democracy. You've allowed a lot of people, a lot of time to talk about this. You're elected to do what is best for the community in your minds. And I think that you've got to take everything that has been said and consider it and sift it through, but you can't make, allow the community as a whole to make every single decision. You're elected, this is, you're speaking for the town of Waterbury. So this is clearly your decision to make. And I think that you should, I know that you're taking it very seriously, but I wouldn't let the word condemns racism. Think that that's gonna push too many people away. There might be people that don't like it, but I think the vast majority of people are gonna say, boy, why is it that we need that? And think about it in a productive fashion. So with that, thank you. I think we're gonna give everyone just one opportunity to speak so we can, we have other items on the slide for time. Steve, are you looking to speak? Yeah, I would like to speak. So you all know me well. You may not know, we have three children of color who are older daughters after American. They're all mixed race. So our children experience a lot of racism growing up in Waterbury, starting in kindergarten, maybe even before that. And as parents supporting them, we experienced trying to support them when they were bullied or excluded. And whether it was in the kindergarten classroom, in the hockey rink, being called the N word, retaliating because they were angry, getting punished because they were retaliated. So these are the kinds of experiences that our children grew up with, still experience at times as adults. So racism is, in our society and all of us in one form or another. So I think having a statement is great. I've got a wonderful picture that I took of the Black Lives Matter banner and the Vermont Lights the Way under it. Twilight, I'm very proud of that. I'm very proud of that picture that Waterbury had the courage to put that up as what people saw when they came into Waterbury. I think it represents our community of being bold, challenging people and I commend you. We can argue about wording, but I think it's racism, it's talking about racism that offends people or makes them uncomfortable. And it should, we need to be uncomfortable because people who experience it are made very, very uncomfortable and it can be traumatic, it can be very troubling for them. So I just want to know what my experience has been as a white person with kids of color and trying to live through that. So thank you. Yeah, go ahead. So while we were sitting here having this discussion, I don't know if you had sent your versions of, or any of you has sent your versions of what you thought might work to everybody prior, but I just was looking at what you had to put Mark. I think we're close to a consensus here. Everybody on both sides have had good comments, good concerns, but when you brought this first version to the table, Mark, you never brought the second one. And I was kind of wondering, because after reading it, I said, you know, I like the second one better than the first one. And I don't, what the hell? You've got expressions you're referring to, and all the guys are still there. Yeah, we're here. Yeah, Chris, I'm not sure what you're referring to. Maybe you're referring to like, oh my God. Can you hear me? Yep, we can hear you. No, we can hear you, Chris. We can hear you. I don't think you can hear us. Anyway, I just wondered, I can't hear you now for some reason, but I was wondering why you didn't bring the second version to the table, and compare the two, because I way prefer the second version, which is basically the same, but it leads into the whole issue, not getting people quite so hard, you know, but yet still makes the same statement. We don't know what he's talking about. Chris, do you hear me? I think he's referring to, I can't hear you. I'm not referring to you. Of course, that was the question. Sure, thank you. My name's Mallory Colbertson, I live in Waterbury. I think it might be useful just to sort of remind what the point is of a banner like this, and it's, obviously everyone who sees it, when you're coming into the town, is gonna read it and have some sort of feeling about it, but the intention behind it is to make people who don't normally feel included, make sure that they feel included and know that they're safe. We live in a time when, unfortunately, people of color often don't feel safe in a lot of towns, especially small towns, and to create a banner that specifically says, we condemn racism, we want you to be safe here, we affirm every aspect of yourself, we want you to be here, I think is a lot more powerful than something more generic, like welcome to everybody. So I think it's just important to sort of remind everyone and the board that this is a banner that is meant to make sure that people of color, especially, feel safe in Waterbury and to telegraph that safety. Yeah, again, I think watering down the message to make it more palatable to more people has the counter effect that a very bold statement against racism has. To water it down will make people feel less safe. So I hope that, I don't know, resonates. I'll also say, as a community member, and I've heard people bring up the LGBTQ community as sort of almost a counterpoint, this isn't calling to that as a local, queer community member in an interracial relationship. Seeing very clear language condemning racism makes me feel safer as a queer person because if you are a community that stands very firmly in anti-racism, in my mind, that means you're probably also standing very firmly against other kinds of oppression. And I really encourage the select board to maintain firm wording against racism. I like this language. I would have loved to see the Black Lives Matter banner back, but we can't have that. I would love, as a community member, to see this banner up. Yeah, and thank you to everyone for speaking and being vulnerable. I know it's hard, but I think it helps with this sort of public debate. Yeah, thank you. Thank you, thank you much. Forward. Anybody have any other select board? Oh, I have one. Yeah, go ahead. Thank you very much for letting us speak tonight. It's a great way to say thank you to the United States of America for allowing us all these opportunities to express ourselves. I have two comments. My name is Barbara Walton, and I live in Waterbury Center, and I've been here for probably 40 plus years. My husband, Jim, is very much involved in zoning, I call him Brother Walton, so sorry. You heard it from me. Anyways, I have two comments. One is I'm confused on the minutes. Did we keep the two week period of having an event banner? That never... No, this was a voted forward about our agenda item that was to put a banner on the banner polls from basically whenever we finalize the wording until town meeting. We weren't about to change the banner regulations. The bylaws, okay, that clears up. But the banner poll is town property, right? Right, right, okay. So the other thing that I wanted to mention is I'm pleased that sometimes I always feel that we follow bigger cities and how they do their things, and it was great too, because I know you mentioned Burlington and Montpellier, what they were doing. But I really have a sense that what we're doing here is really the town of Waterbury. This is what, as a community, we are doing, and not following some other city's path. And the other third comment I'd like to make, and I think I had a great spirited comment with Moroni's father last meeting was really quite enlightening when I told him why I did not like the signature of BLM on a banner, because when I see it, I see only destruction, I see protests, I see burning of buildings, I see people injured, and I don't want it focused on that. This is a fantastic declaration of inclusion, whether you put condemn or another word in there, I'm just glad it's going up, and that's the way we welcome people. There is one, I had several comments from people when I was talking to them about coming to the meeting, and they said, no, we're not coming to the meeting. I said, well, why not? It's a great way to get input, excuse me, input, but what they found was it was intimidating. It was intimidating that if they truly say something that is against another person's feelings that they will be intimidated in the town. It's a business, they'll be protested, there'll be negative remarks made about them, and I said, well, that may be true to them, but I said, it would be nice if you came and listened to people speak, and so that's the reason I don't like BLM, not that I don't like Black Lives Matter, and I'm sure you've gotten these comments many times about it, and when it was reinforced, when they said they felt, no, if we come and speak, we feel that we would be looked upon and we get retaliation, especially if you own a couple businesses or you own a business, that that can be hurtful, especially profits, you know what I mean, as a businessman. But anyways, that's all I have to say. Thank you very much for giving me this opportunity. I want to thank you for letting us know, and while you talk to people, you can continue to encourage them to come, even if they don't speak and listen, and the reason that we, and Mark particularly, is working so hard to make sure this is an atmosphere of respect, we are working to do it orderly, again, we're a small town, we never know how many people to expect, things run a little differently each meeting and we're working on making it more organized, but that's why it's so important you're not to talk over people, not to be loud and disrespectful, because we want you all here. We want to hear what you have to say, it matters. It may not be, you may not know that all the time, but it does matter that you're hearing, giving your opinion, and we want you to feel safe, we want you to feel respected, and that's why we ask for a respectful atmosphere. So the more we can continue to create that, the more people that, like Barbara was talking about, will come and be a part of the meeting. And we need to be mindful, though, that sometimes the language on both sides can be not encourage conversation or dialogue, or communicating well with each other, because some people do start off wrong and will initiate a negative response from other people. So it just needs to be, you know, we need to be aware of that, keep working hard. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you, Danny, for your comments. Any additional comments from the select board or I will entertain a motion? I just want to say something real briefly. I hear the passion on both sides. I'm very respectful to folks on both sides. I understand that the wording is, I wouldn't want to say harsh, it's to the point and I'm for that. The only thing that, where some people have said that doesn't create a welcoming is if we, and this is, I'm not necessarily for this, but this is just an idea that this will make things a little better is, there's a thing, it says just flip it around and says, Waterbird welcomes all and condemns racism. That way the positive is front. I really think it's important or that we make an affirmation that we do condemn racism. I think that's really essential, but I'm okay with it the way I'm just curious to hear the other select board people's comments on it. That was the language I originally proposed, but mine was a little too long, but it started with Waterbird welcomes all and condemns racism. I think I had it and discrimination, which was too long. That's why I made that comment too. I kind of, if a banner you want something there, make a statement and not, we could put the whole declaration of inclusion, but people gonna drive right past that. And maybe that's something we should have is a plaque out in the lobby here of our declaration of inclusion. I think that that could be important because that would tell people, this is what we Waterbird stands for. And we have discussed this so many times and I know there have been thoughts both ways, but I stand by the declaration of inclusion. Yeah, as do I. I understand some of maybe the comments tonight, and I do think it's important that this banner does spark conversation and I don't think we should try to lighten it or soften it. I just think that that's only just speaking to the problem and I do agree with a lot of the comments that we have to come hard and strong with a message. At one point I heard the multiple people use the term stand, so at times I consider, should we say Waterbird stands against racism and welcomes all. That being said, I really do think that a strong message from our community saying that we condemn racism is an important one. I don't want to reorder it. I support it. I'm a business owner in town. I sit here and support this. It's sad if anyone somehow sees that as a negative. I don't think that there's anything in this messaging that isn't appropriate, especially in the current climate that we see. I have multiple people approach me talking about racism they've experienced in this town. I don't believe that we're free of it and I think this is maybe a small minority that experience it and we as a community need to stand with them and stand up against it. So I'm completely fine with what the wording is. If someone wants to make a motion and move it forward, I'm completely fine with the proposed. I move to adopt the wording as is and move forward with the creation and hanging up the banner. Do I need to do the dates through? No. Is there a second? Second in motion. Any further discussion? Yes, Mark. I didn't get a chance to chime in. All I asked was that you didn't put forward the second version and Danny kind of and Mike both made reference to it. I do prefer Waterbury welcomes everyone. Everyone, we condemn racism and discrimination. I would prefer to see that just from the point that number one, it's welcoming first. And I think that the point of we condemn racism and discrimination is just as strong after that but first it's welcoming everybody into town first and then making the statement that. Yeah, I understand what you're saying. Do any select board members want to change the wording? Good, either way. I do a little bit like the idea of the welcoming because it still gets in that we condemn racism and that to me is the most important point that we make that statement that we condemn racism and I hear some of the people who want it to be a little more welcoming. I hear that and I can really go either way. Finances. On finances too. All right, it's been moved and seconded. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. All those opposed? So we're not changing in what you're saying? Correct. Are you leaving? I can't hear you Mark. Yeah, we voted it forward, yeah you're nay on your end as it is. Okay, to make the change you mean? We're not changing the wording. So the motion was water breaking down to racism and welcomes all on the banner. It was moved and seconded and then we voted on it. So it's a yay or a nay. Would you like to vote Chris? Yeah, I'm gonna vote nay only because I prefer the other version. You know, I mean it's gonna pass anyway so I just prefer the other version. Okay. I'd like that get put in the minutes too please. Okay. Okay. Thank you all for your input. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for moving on to the next question. Hey Chris. Yes. I understand you prefer the other version. I also think it is much stronger if the select board is unanimous in this. Would you consider voting yes on what your colleagues voted on and then also saying I however prefer the other version? Perfect. Yeah. Thank you Chris. Yeah. Good point though. Good point Zary. Yeah. Thank you for everyone who came in to speak on that point. Moving on. Discuss proposed legislative reappointment. Well, this isn't really my issue. I did send out an email the other day to all of you just to kind of frame the issue. As I indicated, the governor appoints an apportionment board or a reapportionment board and the board has made a recommendation. Carla has it I'm sure. I don't have it with me, but the proposal. Yeah. Go ahead Carla. This is the email about me potentially losing a representative based on population. This is the proposed redistricting. Last one is about 4,500 residents of Waterway. There's about 5,300 now after the latest census. Chittenden, Washington one proposes that this line right here is Little River Road. That these 750ish Waterway residents being a district of Bolton and Huntington. Carla can you share your screen? Oh, I thought I was, hang on. In the middle? Green button, yep. Try double clicking the green button. Huh? Just double click the green button there, Carla. This green button? Yep, just double click it. You can pick what you share. And then nick your map. Yep. There you go. Double, there you go. Okay. Here you go. So, I'll start again briefly. The new proposed, so currently Waterbury, Huntington and Bolton and Buellescore are an autistic district with two member representatives. The latest proposal is that Washington one district be about 4,700 Waterbury residents. This line here is Little River Road or Little River and that people in this 750 residents be grouped in with Bolton, Huntington and Buellescore. The interesting part is that when they made the determination, it's not just West of Little River Road, it comes up US Route 2, West. And they grab half of the village or all former residents. They come up for the river, they grab the west side of Wanooski Street, they go up Main Street and they grab the west side of Stowe Street and back around by the interstate. So you get Butler Street and Wall Street and Intervale. They include in that 750 people, West of Little River Road that we lumped in with Huntington and Bolton. And each district would be a one member representative district. So, is it? Is it? Go ahead, Phil. Well, no, go ahead and ask your question, Mark. Forrest, I'll come in after. I mean, I guess the question is, is who's the driving force and are we, is it to make a statement on behalf of the select board that we would potentially not support this? Or is it, cause this is not voted on at a local level, correct? Right, so this will ultimately be the legislature's call. The legislature gets to do the redistricting. I think on Wednesday or Thursday this week, the Board of Civil Authority is meeting to discuss this and the select board, as individuals, each select board member is a member of the Board of Civil Authority. So the question really becomes, does the select board as a whole want to make some recommendation to this Board of Civil Authority? Now, in my email, I just wanna be clear that from a purely egalitarian fairness point of view, single districts are the most fair way to apportion the legislature, that each legislator would be responsible to represent about 43 or 4,500 people. That if you divide the state of Vermont by 150, the population of the state of Vermont by 150, each representative should represent about 4,300 people. The legislature has never really liked the idea of carving up towns such as is proposed here where a very minor population number of a town be segregated off of the rest of the town and cobbled on to some other district. And the reason, of course, is that Waterbury residents have much more in common and their interests are much more similar as Waterbury residents than they are with Bolton or Huntington. So for those 750 people that get cobbled out of the state, 750 people that get cobbled out of the current configuration, they lose identity with their townsfolk, their fellow townspeople in the legislature. So the legislature has in the past decided that some districts are better served by two member districts. Now, from a fairness point of view, when I was in Island Pod, I was the manager of the town of Brighton, Brighton had one representative. And if there was an issue, I could call that one representative and people in Waterbury could call two representatives. And I felt, hey, that's not fair. Waterbury's got twice as many votes as twice as many people to call as I do. But the legislature and the Supreme Court has viewed that as a legal means of representation. So, just let me finish and then I'll answer a question. But there are some towns like, I think, Barry Town, certainly Barry City, Montpelier, they're large enough to be represented by more than one representative. But rather than have a two-member district like Waterbury has, those communities are divided up and the members of their community still have a representative that is probably from their town or close by. So the issue here is the segment of the population that gets cobbled on to the other district is a concern. So I'll stop there and then see if anybody else has questions. Do you know about how many other populations are have two representatives or are the two are joint? I don't know that, Danny. And as I said in my memo, even though I personally favor single-member districts and I think that's the fairest way to do it, if the legislature is gonna create two-member districts and Waterbury gets cobbled up this way and ends up with one representative, then we really take a hit in our influence in the state house because right now we have two reps. If we get put into a district like this configuration is, we'll only have one. So if everybody in the state had one, I would feel less concerned about this than I do now. If there are going to be two-person districts, two representative districts, I think, well, Waterbury probably deserves to be one of those. Now, there are some other issues with this that I have to be careful about because I'm not a politician and I can't take political stands. And this is really, this is politics at its best. This is kind of called gerrymandering, but right now, the way they've drawn this, they draw it right down the center of Winooski Street and the people on the west side of Winooski Street, the Dachro Field side of Winooski Street, if you will, they get lumped in with that district in Huntington. The people on the right side who are in the green on the Hope Cemetery side of the street, they stay in the Waterbury district. So it looks like they've gone out of their way to not only have one representative in Waterbury, but they've gone out of their way to put both representatives that Waterbury currently has in the same district. So one of the two representatives that we have clearly would not be able to be elected. I'm not sure I would feel much less strong about this because I think they are weakening Waterbury's position in the legislature, but if they included all of Winooski Street in the Huntington Bolton district, and those people were, it turned out to be 850 people, instead of 750 people because they took the whole side of the street. Well, at least the current representative of Waterbury would have a, if he desired to run, I don't even know if he has a desire to run or not, but that would allow the current representative, somebody who represents our town right now, could at least run. The likelihood is that if you've got Bolton and Huntington who have thousands of people and 800 people or so from Waterbury, the likelihood that somebody from Waterbury is gonna get elected in this new district is slim anyway. But it just seems like they've gone out of their way to make sure that one of the two Waterbury representatives doesn't get represented here, doesn't get re-elected. Is anything similar to this happening in other towns where they're like sort of cutting it right in downtown? I would imagine, I don't know, I have not seen the whole redistricting plan, Danny, but I'm, and this is politics and there's nothing evil about it, it's politics. That's how the constitution is written, the legislature gets to draw districts and we see what's happening in other parts of the country that districts are being drawn to try to reduce the number of people of color who get elected. And whether it's a good or a bad thing to do isn't the issue, it's a legal thing to do. And if you've got a legal challenge, if you think somebody's violating your civil rights, you can fight that in court. I don't think this would be, I mean, I'm not a lawyer, but I think that this is something that somebody, if they objected to it and took it to court, there would be a low likelihood that they would prevail on this. I think they would say the legislature has the right to draw its boundaries based on the census information it has. And if the legislature thinks that this is okay, it's okay. Now the current representatives in Waterbury are still part of the legislature now and they get to chime in on this. This doesn't go into effect until the election of 2022. So the legislature that is seated now that includes the two representatives from Waterbury will be the ones that ultimately will decide this. But the apportionment board, this is the proposal that will first be presented to the legislature. And the question is, do you think this is in Waterbury's best interests? That's really the decision you have to decide upon now. Bill, thanks first of all for your eloquent quick email describing the situation. I think that was excellent. I'm concerned I'm actually against both proposals because I do think inherently like you kind of presented, Waterbury does is created an unfair advantage. Just think if you're from Huntington or Bolton, I hate to say it, you're screwed. Someone from Waterbury is probably gonna get voted in. You're probably not gonna have the representation that you would if you would have a representative from your own area. But I don't agree with chopping up Waterbury into two sides. It just makes no sense. I know we've liked the idea that we have two representatives but it's really not fair to some of the other towns. Conversely, I don't think it's fair the way that they have apportioned it to segregate our community the way that they did. I think there's probably a better solution. And I'm not saying I'm gonna propose a better solution. I might have a better solution. You probably have to look at the maps and stuff and what. I think both solutions, pardon my French, suck. Well, I think in my memo, I said that there's a 10% leeway either side. Carlos sent me an email this afternoon and it's really 5%, I guess. So to me, it would be much less problematic even if they drew a line in a position that would make the two existing representatives run against each other. That's not my main concern. But they could probably draw a district that split Waterbury more in half and combined each half with other towns and Waterbury would still probably have the ability to maybe elect two people to the legislature. They would represent half of the town. But this just kind of cobbling off 700 or 800 people, I think that's problematic because those 700 or 800 people don't have anywhere near as much in common with Bolton and Huntington as they do with the rest of Waterbury. So it's not that they're cutting Waterbury down to size, so to speak. If they could do it in a fashion that left even 1,500 people in one of the districts and the other 3,500 in a different district, I would feel less offended by it. The fact that they're carving off 700 or 800 people, that to me is where the issue is. And then of course, the blatant like, okay, let's make sure that they, the two representatives have to be in the same district. I mean, there's no other reason to draw the line right down the center of Wienewski Street than that. Bill, what's the course of action then? Is it that we, are you thinking we write a feedback letter and pass it to the whoever they are that are drawing the maps or do we give it to our local representatives? I would make a recommendation to the BCA, which is to tell the BCA that we've looked at this, we think that it's not in Waterbury's interest and we would advocate for them to try to use it. We would hope that you would advocate against this in whatever communication they have. And Carla is much more in tune with the BCA's responsibility than I am. Back in 2010, the last time this happened, there was some proposal to do away with the two member district and the BCA took an action and actually wrote a letter. I don't have a copy of the letter, but I'm sure it's in the BCA's minutes someplace, but this has happened before. Carla, can the BCA take a position that I'm against the 750 people being carved off, but I'm also, I understand how Huntington, Bules-Gwar and Bolton too, they're discriminated too. Because we may have a little bit in common with Bolton, but we have nothing in common, I think, or very little in common with Huntington, Bules-Gwar. Yeah, well, 10 years ago, the Waterbury district was, it was a two member district and it was Waterbury and Duxbury. And I don't know if there was anything else other than Waterbury and Duxbury. And when they, when we had to reapportion in 2010, the BCA advocated strongly to keep Waterbury and Duxbury in the same district and not go with Bolton and Huntington because at least with Duxbury, we had the Harwood Union Supervisory Union in common and it's even more in common now. So, and I don't know who they put Duxbury with, but we weren't happy with the result last year because we didn't think that we had a lot to do with Huntington and Bolton. And as Mike said, there's not gonna be a perfect solution that makes everyone happy. Somebody's gonna be redistricted out of the ability to run or out of the ability to be elected because they're gonna make two incumbents run against each other. It's gonna happen somewhere. The question is, do we wanna just take no action and say, let the chips fall where they may? Or do you wanna say, this isn't in our best interest because and make a statement? That's all. I mean, there may be some people on the board who think this is a great idea and that's okay too. I just, you know, felt it's my obligation to just frame the issue for you. That's all. Chris, can you see what's being proposed on your end? Yeah, I read through Bill's memo. I'm right on board with Mike. You know, we've been, for lack of a better word, privileged too long, I think. When it comes to the three towns, we've had, you know, the two representatives from Waterbury and it's time to, I think, share. It's unfortunate though that we gotta chop off just that minute part of the population there to make it work. I wonder if there's another way of finagling that. Yeah, and that's the tough part. There's no way, you know, we might be able to have the ability to draw some lines on the map that satisfy us, but you've gotta do it for the whole state. That's what the issue really comes about. So if we draw different lines completely for us, I think it's just a statement that, while we understand the desire to go to a single district, we're concerned that the proposal as is for Washington one and Chittenden Washington one is not in the best interest of the residents of Waterbury because we don't, you know, those 750 people really are excluded from folks who they really have much more interest in. So I don't think you can propose a new line necessarily, but I think you can say that if you think that it's not good, you can say, we don't like it, and we request that you redraw these lines somewhere. And we say it because I know I see Ducks Berries in Washington 11. I don't know what the population of Ducks Berries is, but why we share a lot more in common with Ducks Berries than any of the other potential options. And I'd be someone, you know, I'm not really, I don't think, I think I could firmly stand as a select board member against that 750 person division going into the Chittenden Washington one. But I think as a solution, I don't know if, you know, I know it's probably gonna create a whole bunch of other dominoes if we kind of joined up with Ducks Berries again. And I'd be curious to see if there's some political, you know, buy-in by Ducks Berries that they would like to go into our district again, and would that make, I don't know what the numbers are. I don't know that the BCA has the expertise to try to redraw the lines. I understand. We can certainly express our concern if we have, decide we have concern as a board with apparent configuration. Yeah, I'll just throw out a couple of numbers all around them. You can see for the Chittenden Washington district, the Portion and Board says that ideally a one-member district is like 4,300 people, and a two-member district is about 8,600 people. So, Chittenden Washington one had 4,000, so you have a deviation of almost 300 people. Washington one, you have 45, almost 4,600 because of the deviation of 300 people. If we have our current two-member district, the deviation is 21 people. So, that means something to me as a math nerd, but. Yeah. So, we are not in a position to recommend any sort of solution. We are only in a position to say where for, if we want to say we're against it. I have to get that clarified in our meeting on Thursday. It's just also, like Mike said, stack the dominoes, once we start laying the lines. Right. That's why I just want to get clear what I'm going to do. Bill said it's just a letter saying we don't like what we see and we suggest that they revisit. Or you should come to the meeting on Thursday. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I don't want to just object it totally because like I said, I think we've been hogs for too long and it's time to give up a representative to the other two towns. I mean, that's just the way I feel. And I'm attempting to try to get information from the Huntington and Gold BCAs. They're meeting within the next few days, I think. So Carla, when you talked about the deviation, I'm assuming that the deviation in Washington one as a single member district that were 293 people, two, two, two? Correct. Yes. And in Washington, Chittin in Washington one, there are 300 people, too many. Yes. So at the very least, you know, if they're going to be insistent that we do this, probably it would be nice if they took 300 more people out of Waterbury so they could move the line down Main Street or they could drive through the whole village or something. But you know, I think the problem, and it's clear in my mind, they're trying to leave. They want a line that has the two Waterbury reps in the same district. So one of them doesn't get elected. And if we have to have a single member district and there's deviation of 300 people between the two, instead of having only 700 people from Waterbury be put in and put out of the district, make it 1,000 people. And at least there's 1,000 people from Waterbury that have the same representative and they can have a little bit more of a voice. I'm not suggesting that should be the solution, but I think that at the very least, if we're going to end up with our population in two single member districts, we should have each district be closer to the ideal that they're going down. I think that's the BCA's job. I think I'm going to propose as a select board that we reject the Chittenden, Washington one district as proposed, because it's not in the best interest of Waterbury. Is the motion a letter to BCA? I think, I'm not sure. I don't know why they need to make a recommendation. They are part of the BCA. Well, because I think that the board, just like we said in the last issue, represents the town of Waterbury. The board can make a determination that it's in the best interests or not of the town. They can communicate that to the BCA, but they're all members of the BCA. They're not bound by this particular vote. So if it gets approved by the select board, three to two, or two to, if it's a two to two vote, that should be communicated. If it's a three to one vote, that should be communicated. But they're all members of the BCA, and they don't have to live by what the board said when they vote as a BCA member. But I think they are the select board of the town and have the right to say that we think this is not, if Mike thinks it's not in the best interest of the town, I think he has the right to make that motion and the board can act on it. And their action gets transmitted to the BCA. And then at the BCA meeting, they're all BCA members, and they're basically free agents. Does the motion have an action? We didn't have a second, though. We didn't really have a motion. We didn't have a motion. I made a motion. Well, what happened? I don't think he made such a decision. I propose. Okay. I propose that I make a motion that the Waterbury Select Board recommend to the board of civil authority that we reject the proposed Chittenden Washington One district as passed to us by the legislature. You're rejecting Chittenden Washington One or the overall plan? I think we want to go up the plan. The proposed department plan. I'll second that motion. Further discussion? Yes. What is the protocol? How do we do it? We write a draft letter, and then Bill or Karla, you help us with it. And then what do we? For the BCA. I think if the motion passes, you can just pass Karla to read the motion at the BCA meeting. I don't think you have to write a long letter. I just think that you can have the clerk transmit the motion to the BCA. And then if you're there, a few folks go. I mean, no one can compel you to go, like you are all members of the BCA. And this is the BCA meeting, and there's something of importance to do. You can discuss it all then. But I don't think you have to write a big letter. I think you can just transmit your motion to the BCA. I can do that. Thanks. It's been moved and seconded. Any additional discussion? All those Americans, if you ask, please. Is it worth considering mending that and saying that we disapprove of the action because of the loss of 700 or so whatever the count is, voters from Waterbury? Yeah, I mean, I was wondering if we need to say something more detailed, just specifically how they divided the downtown region. But I don't know. I think that's a friendly amendment to my motion that we object to the 750-person division of our community. Yeah, the loss of 750 out of the app. So you could say something to the effect while we understand Waterbury may lose influence in the legislature if we move from a two-member district to a one-member district. We, however, object to how the lines are drawn to accomplish the two single-member districts and then hash it out from there. You need to make sure that they know that they might just draw the line so that 700 people from some other part of Waterbury get chopped down. Well, yeah, and you can say that the two districts, if there are going to be two districts where Waterbury residents are represented, the district should be as close to 43 to the ideal number as possible. Because there's no way that if we move from a two-member district to a single-member district, not all Waterbury can be in a single-member district. The legislature would allow probably 46 or 4700 in a single-member district. Waterbury has 5,300 people or 5,200 people. So all of Waterbury cannot be in one district. You're going to have to carve it up somehow. But it would be best to carve it up such that Waterbury and both districts were as big as possible. So Bill, I don't know that the board tonight has to have that level of detail in their motion. When the BCA meets on Thursday, we'll be having that discussion. And whatever we decide as a board, we'll send a detailed response. And I think I'll be present at the BCA. Danny said he's going to be at the BCA. I don't know if Mark, I don't know. Do you have to warn that if there's more in two of us? No, you're just part of the BCA. I've got to wear part of the BCA, so it's not really starting. It's not a warning, it's a BCA. OK, great. Yeah, I think there'll be enough then. I think we could more fully describe that. So I want to move the question. All right, let's move the second. All those in favor, please say, hi. Hi. Opposed? Thank you very much. Thanks. If the board is OK, can we move Linda up to now so she can jump off? Well, we have two people that are here, too, sent the folks for the Act 250 discussion. Yeah, I'm sorry. Remember the planning commission and me, if you were all waiting for that, it was actually on. Right, I'm sorry about that. Yeah, I think there are three people that's all right. OK, discuss Act 250 jurisdiction. This is a continued discussion about the idea of moving Waterbury from a one acre to a 10 acre town that basically takes some projects and pushes it towards Act 250. To remind the board, we had a group approach us with concerns on a project they're working on. But I think this is a larger concern for Waterbury. We've heard it from other projects. Peros is one that I quickly think of, but I know there's been other projects. Do we have any, did Alyssa show up to me? Alyssa could not take it. She had a court conflict. Steve Gartner is here. OK, great. So yeah, I mean, I guess if we could get the planning commission to give their comments on it. I mean, basically, we elected as a town to become. When was that that we elected? 2013. And it seemed like the reasoning behind that was concern that we could not handle projects that were larger. Well, the only option is one or 10, right? There's no in between, right? So at least maybe the concern in 2013 was the inability as a town to be able to handle projects of that size and their impacts. And so it was voted that we elected to become a one acre town. But we can remove that election as far as we're being told as a board, correct? Well, I'll go first, and you may want to get Steve to give more input. So that's correct that when we enacted subdivision bylaws as a chapter of the zoning regulations, normally we would have become a 10 acre town with a 10 acre threshold for commercial and industrial projects. But the state statute allowed us to pass an ordinance that kept us at a one acre town. The threshold for residential properties did change. So it's like we're at the time felt that there were just unanswered questions as far as our bylaws and the ability to cover those criteria and act 50, which weren't covered in our bylaws. So that was, I think, kind of the brief version of how the slide board felt at the time. Our bylaws have not changed. The site plan review criteria and the conditional use criteria are still limited. The Planning Commission had a wide range of views. I want to encourage Steve to come up and give you his input. But they're concerned. One concern is having a policy change based on a relatively small number of projects that are impacted, though they certainly understand that the impacts. And the concern regarding some of the F-250 criteria input by agency natural resources on natural resource criteria impact or input that the Division for Historic Preservation provides when historic districts are involved or historic buildings are involved. So there was a wide range of views on the Planning Commission. But I think the best thing to move a conversation would be maybe Steve, if you'd like to speak. And then we could go from there. And if you have any questions for me, I'd be glad to respond. Come on up. Thank you. First of all, I'm not speaking for the Planning Commission. It was pretty clear that the commissioners mostly felt that we really didn't have the background or the time at this point to really dive into this and understand all the implications. So I will say there was a wide variety of opinions among the folks. Some expressing, I think, a desire to be able to utilize Act 250 to enhance the ability of Waterbury to make sure that things have gone through appropriate levels of review. So some of the things that the DRB may not be able to really jump into in the same way that an Act 250 would require it. On the other hand, and personally, I feel that when we get down to a one acre, we're looking at development that's very small. We've got relatively few 10 acre plots that are really or between 1 and 10 that would be subject to this regulation. And being an outlier doesn't make a lot of sense to me that we have a DRB, we have a pretty effective DRB that can go through whatever processes, can ask for the kind of reviews that would make a project sensible for us without having to rely on the Act 250. So again, my personal view is to move back to a 10. It makes sense. That's my personal view. Again, the Planning Commission really came from all sides on this and isn't prepared to say. And we've been able to think through this in a really well studied way. In the beginning, your first comment, can you give an example of what that might be that Act 250 might do that right now isn't within our current kind of? Yeah, I think one of the examples was some of the environmental reviews that might be required that Act 250 would perhaps be more experienced in applying. I don't remember the details. There was a good example. Do you recall? Yeah, I don't really have an example, Steve, of a specific project. Not your project, but it's all about the content. Shootsville Wildlife Court or something of that nature where there are some serious wildlife questions. We have conditional use criteria with no undue adverse impact on natural resources, but it's a very broad criteria. I think the other one I mentioned was impacts to historic districts or historic buildings where you might have a proposal to demolish a historic building or you have a building that's going in an historic district adjacent to historic buildings. Other than in the downtown area where there are almost no lots that are over an acre, we really have very limited ability to review under that criteria. It's just no undue adverse impact to historic sites. So that's a pretty high bar. So those are two examples. You could have a project with traffic impacts, for instance, where we're limited in our review, but on sites of 1 to 10 acres, that's typically not a huge issue. Generally, it was an anxiety about the level of expertise that we have locally versus the level of expertise that might be brought to a review if it went through Act 250. And should one of those situations arise and the DRB needed to? Are there boards or resources that the DRB could then recruit to follow up with expertise that they don't have? Well, I think we have a lot of expertise in-house, and the DRB has a lot of expertise. There's an historic preservation consultant on the DRB and an architect and so on, but I think the issue more has to do with our criteria. So there's some risk. I think it's an issue of whether we take a bit of risk and we encourage or have less cost and less review time that these people who are developing these sites have to go through. That's definitely consideration for economic development. So I think that's really it. But it has to do more with the criteria than our level of expertise. I think as a town of 5,000, we have a lot of expertise in the world. And as Steve mentioned, the DRB is generally very good. But in some cases, their answer a bit tight, that's all. I want to echo what Steve just said. I think I know as a former DRB person, I think there's an extraordinary amount of talent on our DRB that can look at a lot of these projects fairly intelligently. And they, along with the planning department, can ask for different studies, should they wish. I know they have in the past. Ask for studies on different things. They've asked for when there's been the high, the gridlock, thank you, will we have had some visual impact studies. So they can ask for various things. So I'm just saying, I think we have the expertise. I would hate to deny a lot of, to have a lot of good projects, maybe not go forward because the expense on these active 50 reviews are huge. And I'm not saying they wouldn't be asked to be doing some things. The same thing that the active 50 folks are going to ask for, the DRB or the planning department may ask for those same things. So I'm kind of leaning in favor because of our expertise and what we can do. I think we've got to enable our folks, in my opinion. Chris, do you have? Yeah, I lost you guys there for a minute, trying to figure out without asking again what the short version of what's going on. It sounds like you're looking to put some of the control of active 50 protocol in the DRB's hands, am I correct? Right now, we elected in 2013 to be a one acre town. So projects, what are they like, specifically commercial? A commercial industrial project. Commercial industrial projects were one acre, but under 10 in other communities that haven't elected, they can take those projects to their DRB in our town right now because of the election in 2013, the select board is sending basically every project over one acre into active 50 because of that election. So what's being discussed is that we remove that election and return to a 10 acre town and what impact, basically the discussion is what impacts would that cause and should it be considered? Right, and it's just to make sure everybody, just to make sure everybody understands it's a two step process. Now, you've got to go to the DRB anyway, and then you have to go to active 50. So if you change the ordinance that was adopted in 2013, it will allow the DRB to hold a hearing and that these projects as Mike indicated using the expertise that they have and they can apply some of the active 50 criterion get to the bottom of it. So it really, it truncates the system for the developer. It's one stop as opposed to two. And the frustrating part, and I know there's people there to speak to it, is that the active 50, if you keep the current situation in place, the active 50 doesn't even have to recognize the DRB's work. They can ask for it all over again. So it would be helpful from a development point of view. And from speaking personally and talking with Steve, I think we have much more capacity now. We've had a DRB for a number of years now at the time in 2013, we had much more recently moved away from the ZBA planning commission process, which was also a two step process. The DRB has a lot more experience under its belt now dealing with these kinds of things. So that's really the issue. It sounded like I talked to the Alyssa and she mentioned, and maybe you can confirm this, that the work that's being done on the zoning rewrite could potentially, even if we were a vote in favor of removing the election, any concern over maybe, I don't know what the term would be, but for the zoning rewrite to have additional items in there to address any concerns for projects of this size, the DRB, I mean, sorry, the planning commission could work that into it knowing that the number of parcels that this really includes in the timing, I don't think there's a lot of risk there from what seemed like Alyssa said in the conversation we had Steve. So it seems like she understood the conversation and why we're addressing this. And I know that there's that, the Waterbury Area Economic Development Group has talked about this for years about concerns we heard over other projects that either got off the ground or never got farther because of, I hate to think that these projects that are of a smaller scale are deeply impacted financially that who knows how many projects just haven't been considered because. Look, just before us, the Parrills Project, they probably incurred just with the Act 250 review over $50,000 in costs. And a lot of projects gonna say, I'm gonna go someplace else or do something else. And on that scale, it's not being amortized in that over a large property. Exactly. I think that's a problem. There is one thing that you need to understand and Steve right now is in a better position to explain this than I. And it's all about process. Even if you want to do this, it will take at least, I think, 60 days plus to get this accomplished because you have an ordinance on the books. Repealing an ordinance is considered an amendment to an ordinance. And the appeal process or the amendment process is the same as if you were adopting an ordinance. So you can make a motion at some point to repeal this ordinance if you wanna do that. And then you have to publicize your decision. The public has a period of time in which they can decide to circulate a petition which would require you to hold a special town meeting to see if the public wanted to overturn the decision that you made. If that doesn't happen, the new ordinance or the new lack of an ordinance, if you will, takes effect, I believe, 60 days after your vote. And I know Steve sent me an email earlier today. I wasn't able to read it, Steve, until just before the meeting started. So I don't know if you shared that with the select board at all, but you might wanna just make sure from a process standpoint that everybody knows what to expect going forward if the board wants to, in fact, change this rule. Right, Bill, I think you said it very well. The state statute requires the same process for the repeal of an ordinance as the enactment of the ordinance. And my understanding is it can be repealed with an action of the select board at a worn meeting, and then you probably would need to warn that repeal. And then it does have to be posted in at least five conspicuous places. And then it's formally public-sized or published. And then so in the newspaper and then it does become effective 60 days after the state of repeal. And there is the option of a petition that would take it to a vote. I don't know that that would happen. I kind of doubt it, but there's that option in statute. So I think you represented it well, Bill. I'm really reiterating what you said, but that's correct. Does Dave Rue suggest that they needed to warn? You know, I've always taken the position that the select board doesn't need to hold a public hearing in order to adopt an ordinance. They can just adopt it, but it probably would be safer if you warned the fact that you were gonna repeal this at your next meeting on the 15th of November, take action that night. And then the clock starts ticking at that point. And, you know, but I just want everybody to understand you can't just repeal this. And tomorrow we have, you know, we're a 10 acre town. It takes the process. Yeah, I would advise that too, Bill. I think that would be the best approach. Then it's warned as a repeal. And yeah, that would be good. So then do we just put that on the agenda for that meeting? We don't need to make a motion other than just any discussion we have tonight. Would it be a separate warning specific to this about discussion? It would just be an agenda item, select board, consideration by the select board of repealing such and such in ordinance and just put that on the agenda. And you don't really have to make a motion. You can just kind of express that's your intent and we'll make sure it's on the next agenda. I'm also for that as well. And you think that there's risk in, I mean, this was on the warrants, like we're meeting a discussion on activity. You just think that we weren't specific enough on our agenda tonight to be able to. Well, you know, the risk is if somebody's gonna object to it. And I've stated in the past that I believe, I believe, and I'm not a lawyer, but I think if the select board took this action tonight to repeal that ordinance that the clock would start ticking. But, you know, and who's gonna object if no one objects to it in a timely basis, they, you know, everything is gonna have to be publicized. But we don't even have the, I don't know if Steve has the ordinance with him tonight or not, but we will have to reference in the language that has to be posted, the fact that the particular ordinance was appealed. I know there's people out there who are concerned about timeliness. And again, from my perspective, if we waited and said, we're gonna warn this on the 15th, they can take the risk if they wanna start their project or, you know, go to the DRB. They haven't been to the DRB yet. There's gonna be some process there. So I don't know how important these next 15 days really are. From my perspective, if a developer is banking on you have to do this tonight and they don't have to worry about it or in two weeks, if they have to worry about it, I would be careful about doing it tonight if those two weeks really made it a real big difference because you wouldn't wanna get yourself in hot water. So I guess given that Steve reached out to David Rue and he suggested it needs to be on the agenda, I would lean that direction. Yeah, let me just follow up and I know Doug, can you wanna say something? Yeah, I would strongly recommend that you put it on the agenda as a repeal. We cite the ordinance. It also gives planning commission members an opportunity to come and speak if they wanna speak. And I think it's just good process. The project is coming to the Development Review Board. It's warned for I think the 17th. 17th, yeah. So it's in process. So anyway, that would be my recommendation. Duncan McDougal and the project that we're talking about in particular is for the Children's Literacy Foundation and just his little background, it's a 1.3 acre project. It's a new old plateau property kind of across from Coelho-Sidermill. And this issue is of great import to us because as a small organization, having to go not only to the DRV, which everyone needs to do, but also to go through Act 250 are two major hurdles. And the Act 250 hurdle adds significant cost, significant time. I would guess the Act 250 right now is backed up given all of the projects that are going on and significant risk. And I know that the Select Board and the Planning Commission want to encourage organizations, small, medium-sized organizations to come to our community. And this is a significant impediment. And there are gonna be some organizations that look at two different towns and say this is 10 acre town. I just need to go to the DRV versus one acre town. I have to go through the whole Act 250 process. And they make their decisions that way. And I certainly don't disagree with the fact that Act 250 has greater expertise and experience on certain issues. But the question is, for a small project, are these things that you actually need? It's a poor analogy, but off the top of my head, I was thinking if you had a small town incident and in certain towns who had that incident, you had to go to the FBI. Most incidents in a small town don't require going to the FBI. They have greater expertise than our local police force, but most of the small town incidents don't require that. When you do need to, you have the ability to ask for their insight and all of that. And I feel like this is just using a heavy hammer on a small project. And it's gonna impact the interests of small and medium-sized organizations wanting to come to our town. Waterbury is one of three towns in the whole state that has gone down this path. It has subdivision regulations and is it a one-acre town? And I guess the question is, is our planning commission, our DRB, are they well behind all the other towns that have gone down this path? I would guess they're probably significantly ahead. So it hasn't negatively affected the other towns as far as I can think of. So I think the risk to Waterbury of taking this step is small. I totally understand the desire to wait until the 15th to make sure you have all your teas crossed and your eyes dotted. And we'd prefer that because we want this to happen. I'm not sure it's an issue, a burning issue that would cause a lot of people who want to start petitions and all of that. And we know that you're going down this path, that's fine. We're just gonna go to the DRB as we were planned and we're just gonna assume, perhaps incorrectly, but hopefully not, that this will move forward. And we very much appreciate you considering this. It's a big issue for us. I know it's not a huge issue for everyone because only a certain number of people have this interest. But because of that, I'm not sure it's a huge risk to take this step because it's not a lot of people that are gonna be in this situation. So thank you. Thanks, Scott. Yeah, and I think it's important that I don't approach as this is specific to one project. If the recommendation is that we warn and move this to the next meeting in a more appropriate manner, I think that's fine. I don't think we get to make any movement at this time. I agree. Okay. Sounds good. All right, thanks. Thank you. Good. All right. I am gonna, the next thing was gonna be parking issues. I'm gonna move internet forward. Linda, thank you for your patience. Thank you for this opportunity on such short notice. I'd like to thank the chair for putting us on the agenda tonight. Last week, Christopher Schenck and I were approached by the Memorial Fiber Net with a proposal to join their broadband efforts as well. We got together this afternoon, as a matter of fact, with the CP Fiber officers and had a discussion with them about it. And we all kind of came to the conclusion that it would be advantageous for Waterbury that Christopher and I become delegates on both the CP Fiber and the Memorial County, the Memorial Fiber Net, so that we could assess more, the proposals that Memorial County is bringing forth. Basically, it boils down to being in the CV Fiber. We are at the end of the line for getting wired broadband, whereas the Memorial County is offering us a much shorter span before we get the entire town, as a matter of fact, wired. So that we would like to explore that proposal. We think it would be better for Waterbury. So what I'm asking is that you agree to put, allow Christopher and I to be on the Memorial Fiber Net board as well as where we are on the CV Fiber board. Their board is coming up on Thursday to talk about us and we'd like to be able to say that we are in favor. Linda, is it similar to what we had to do last time where we actually elected to join the district or we had to elect to join CV Fiber. We need to elect to join Memorial Fiber, which would then allow you to take those positions, right? That's right. Cause right now we can't get enough detail on the project they're proposing for us. Bill, do you have any comments? No, not really. I think that it seems like Linda is saying that you've talked to the folks at the CV Fiber board and they don't have a problem with Waterbury being a member of both organizations. That's right. Well, I trust Linda to be telling you the truth about that if they don't have a problem with us being a member of two organizations and if LaMoyle doesn't have a problem with us being a member of two organizations, I don't see there's any reason why we shouldn't do it, especially if Linda and Christopher, both are gluttons for punishment that they want to go to two of these meetings. I have six meetings already just with CV Fiber and this is going to add another three. If I didn't think it was worthwhile, I wouldn't be sitting here. God bless you. I was going to say the burden's yours, Linda. I really want to bring the best alternative to Waterbury. So over the next month or so, once I become more familiar with what LaMoyle Fiber is offering us, I will bring it back and we can make more discussion in detail on that. Linda, the one question I have is, and does this create a conflict of interest of you being on both both? I asked that myself this afternoon and CV Fiber said, no, because we're both drawing from the same part of money, both CUBs, CUTs, whatever they call them, they're both drawing from the same part of money. And so it just depends on if the installation, he's got to go to one or the other, in other words. And they didn't see there was any conflict there between us. Linda, one other question, and then I think we can probably get this moved forward. Now, getting wires up quicker is one thing. Do we have clarity from both sides on user fees and costs? And is that taking into consideration as you might come to the board with, or I don't even know how this works necessarily fully in terms of when, you know, now that we're part of CV Fiber, if we also now join Lemoyle and work on can start putting these networks into place or these wired networks into place. Do you have clarity before that happens and exactly where costs are gonna be from a user perspective? And is there any way to have clarity on that before it just seems a little crazy that? We talked about a subscription price this afternoon and the two estimates from both of them are supposed to guess her depending on how much subscriber decides he wants, how much bandwidth he wants. But they were both offering something in the $55 a month range. Also, if you wanted more, I could get a $75 a month subscription type thing. So it's going to be pretty much in the same range as far as our subscribers are concerned. We are trying to get the best price for our subscribers. That's for sure. Yeah, I think the big thing to remember is that neither one of these organizations can raise tax money or can compel the town to pay for something through its tax base. And I think we're in a position here that if we do authorize joining the Lemoyle County Fiber Organization and appointing Linda and Christopher to their boards then I think Linda and Christopher have the unique position of being able to kind of weigh what's best for Waterbury. And I think that what I'm hearing is that while subscription costs are important, it seems like they've already kind of indicated they're kind of talking to the same installers and the same people I'm sure about how they're gonna build the infrastructure. So the costs there are gonna be relatively similar. If joining Lemoyle can push us up on the ladder in terms of when we can actually see lines going up in Waterbury, that might be best. So I think it's a unique opportunity to let Linda and Christopher really work hard to see what's the best deal for Waterbury. And I'm sure given both of their interests and desire for this CD, for this fiber optic alternative to be available, I think that they'd probably do that quite well. So I don't see a problem. Yes. Does this have to be two separate motions, one to join Lemoyle and another one to appoint them to? I don't think so. I think you can do it and I think you can do it all in one motion. So I move that Waterbury join the Lemoyle Fibernet organization group and appoint Linda and Christopher as our representatives. Is there a second? Lemoyle Fibernet? I think that's what Linda said, but she can clarify. Yes, that's right. Okay. Great. Second. You should also just put while remaining a member of CD fiber in there. So it's clear that you have to left that other organization. Right. We will be a member of both is what we're asking. Are we okay with the amendment? Yes. Any further discussion, Chris? Do you have anything? No. You know, like I said before, the major utilities are gonna be the hampering issue in this, you know, with manpower and availability and product and whatnot, but you gotta start somewhere. So at least she's looking into a good possible option that may get things done quicker. This option has two benefits that I see. One is they told us it could be as much as two years sooner. No kidding. Yeah. And it will cover the entire town of Waterbury, not just the under subscribed. That's great. Okay. It's been moved and seconded. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Great. Linda, thank you very much for everything you're doing and thank Chris as well. And we're excited. And that's, I think this is excellent news and negotiating us a great deal. It's a great deal. Internet work. One of the things I asked them this afternoon is you guys got the lawyers to deal with this, right? And they said, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. So thank you for your trust in me and Christopher. Thank you. Thank you, Linda. Thank you for your patience tonight too. Well, I was really interested in every single one of those topics you had on the agenda tonight. So thank you. I'm on the, I'm on justice as a piece. See you on Thursday. Bye-bye. All right. Next is parking issues. There's two that I'd like to discuss and we can talk in more detail at a later meeting but I also wanted to discuss it tonight. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks. One is a sweet road. I was reached out to by a community member that's I think probably had issues with parking at the Hunger Mountain Trailhead for years. And what, if anything, from a town's perspective we can do to address those issues, similar to probably what we talk about at the end of Blush Hill, yep. And then the other one was, I don't know if all the select board members got it but Gary Dillon reached out about the parking and I've seen it myself where there's cars queuing up on Stow Street. It's real bad. The area that's labeled no parking but it's, they're just camped there. So, Bill, I don't know if you wanna take it from there and let us know what as a select board we should be considering there or if you wanna try to discuss this at the next meeting with more detail, I just wanted to bring it up tonight. Well, take the second one first, the Stow Street issue. There is already prohibited parking or timed parking in those places and this has been an issue. And even when the village had a police department it was still an issue. Unless the police were up there every day to ask people to move along or go park here people would go there until the cop asked them to leave. You know, they're there to... Where there is on Stow Street? In the vicinity of the school. So we're talking about Stow Street basically between Railroad Street and High Street on both sides of the street and High Street as well. On High Street, there's parking limited to residents only on the side of the street that the houses are on. They're supposed to have permits if they're gonna park there. But people who are picking their kids up from school park on Stow Street, they park on Union Street, they park on High Street and they park on the wrong side of High Street. Where parking isn't even allowed. And, you know, as I said when the village had a police department the police would go up there from time to time and they would ask people to move and people would move away but if the cops weren't there they were just gonna say, well, I'm only gonna be here for 15 minutes and then my kid's gonna be in the car and I'm gonna be out of here. So there's no easy solution. We can talk to the state police. I have made arrangements not because of this issue it just is coincidental but Lieutenant White is gonna be at your next meeting on the 15th. So if this is an issue, I know they don't wanna write tickets but maybe they could show up every once in a while and just tell people, you know you can't park here and move them along. So we can have that conversation with Lieutenant White on that. Short of hiring a civilian parking enforcement officer which I think you have the authority to do. We have an ordinance. You could hire somebody, give them a ticket book, have them go out there and write tickets and that's a way to enforce the ordinance. You don't have to be a sworn police officer to do that but that was mentioned. I brought that up at a budget time. I think it was the first full year that Mike was on the board and the board said, now we really don't have the money. We don't wanna spend the money for enforcement. So that's something that the board can revisit in a future meeting. The Huggle Mountain situation is, we need to focus on that real quick, sorry. Sure, sure, sorry. I'm wondering if there's benefit to talking to anyone at the school to see if there's help that they can give. It's not just a town issue, but it's particular to the school and I know other schools work on their traffic flow, parking, timing, pickup and I wonder if any of us or how to start that communication and what their benefit might be versus just relying on only police. Well, it might be worthwhile to try to get the principal, engage the principal in a conversation, engage the principal and a couple of board members from the Howard Union Board and have them come to a meeting and talk to them. The last time I tried to address this issue, I went with police chief, Joe Bifisha and talked with the principal at the school, face to face. It wasn't a board meeting and they've tried to do what they can. They have a much better handle on what happens on their grounds than they did before, but we still face issues. They make announcements, for instance, at assemblies. I don't even know because of COVID if they're even doing assemblies right now, but if they had an assembly for holiday, a music recital or whatever you wanna call it, they would announce at the beginning of the meeting. If you're parked on Armory Ave behind the school, if you're in a no parking zone, please move because the police are gonna have to enforce the ordinance but what happens in the street is really, I'm sure they would be willing to send out information or email out information. I don't think they believe in sending paper anymore. When my kids were in school, they used to bring home stuff in their backpacks and hand it to us, but I think the school just communicates with parents by email now. So we can try to raise the level of this issue but I think it's gonna boil down to enforcement more than anything is if people can kind of get away with it, they're gonna get away with it. So Bill. Are they asking parents that that is the pickup location in the front? Are there any other solutions that have been considered or are people also picking up on the back? You just don't see it because I don't drive up Armory, but is it a free-for-all of like the school just opens its doors and the kids are everywhere or is it like this is where pickup happens and there's just too much activity for that front parking lot pull-in to get it built? The parking lot, the front parking lot, that's where the buses go in. So it's been a long time since I've had school kids but they try to minimize any kind of in and out picking up activity in there. The drop-off is, it's chaotic at drop-off time but not quite as much because people are dropping their kids off and leaving so they get there, the kid gets out of the car and the parent leaves. The afternoon, the parents wanna be there when the kids come out. So there's a much bigger queuing effect on the streets because the parent, it's not like you just drive up and the kid walks out the door and jumps in the car, the parent has to be there before dismissal in order to have the kid find them. So it's really the dismissal time. I can't answer the question mark right now whether there's a lot of activity. My suspicion is there's not a lot of people parked on Armory Ave in the back. I think it's more High Street and Stow Street than anything else where the problem lies but I don't know that for sure. Is there proper signage already there, Bill or is there signage at all? I believe the signs are still there but I... I like Danny's idea as a first step. Call me a hard ass. Giving a few tickets is gonna solve more problems. I know it's not a pleasant thing to do but when people get a few tickets that's gonna resonate through the community and it's gonna stop it. The tickets might. Say please. I don't think they will. You don't think, why don't you think they will? That's part of their job to enforce. I'm not saying if they have other things to do they can run to school parking and stuff like that but if they're not busy and at that point in time for them to go there, I don't think they're gonna have a problem because it's gonna be a pretty no-brainer ticket. If they're there... I think they might be willing they might be willing to talk to people but I don't believe you were on the board, Mike when we negotiated the contract but the state was pretty clear that they are not gonna issue municipal tickets on municipal ordinances. They're just not gonna do it. Lisa. Hi, folks. I don't have any kids at that Brookside right now but one of the reasons why there's so many parents that are dropping off and picking up is COVID. These are children that can't be vaccinated. The ridership on the buses right now is extremely low and that's for middle school and for primary school. So you've got a lot of families that don't want their kids riding the school bus and so there's more people that are picking up and dropping off in person. So I think that that's one of the contributing factors to the issue of there being a lot of cars in the morning and in the afternoon queuing up there. I understand what you said, Lisa but I agree with you 100% but why can't they have their kids go in the back and get picked up in the parking lot? To me that's just a sign of laziness. I don't understand what you mean, go in the back. You can't just, the children have to be supervised so that they come out the front door and the principle is if you should actually just go and watch dismissal someday. The principles come out, everybody's got walkie-talkies. We've had pictures of it on our website of how it's like they bring the kids out, the principals and the teachers are looking at who's in the drive-up loop, they see what parent it is, they're talking on their walkie-talkie saying, there's Johnny Smith, where's Johnny Smith's mother is right here, where's Johnny Smith and they're like trying to move them as fast as they can to put the right kid in the right car to get the cars moving through the loop. But there's no loop in the back of the school at the same time where there's other, if the parent, how do you know where the kid is and where the parent is for them to find each other? Everything is happening in that front loop and it's got a continuous traffic moving through and they try to move them as fast as they can and they're communicating in the moment. And that's a big change. I'm not aware of that and I appreciate Lisa's insight because back before COVID and before the current administration and back when Waubrey had a police department, cars were just parked on the streets, the kids would be dismissed and they would just walk down the street and find their parent. The parents were not all moving into the front of the parking lot and going through that loop. The kids would walk out and the mother would have said, I'm gonna be on high street or I'm gonna be on Stowe Street and they'd walk down there. So it sounds like they're taking an active role to try to move this queue a little bit quicker. And I know Gary Dillon, who is the one that reached out both to Mark and me, is concerned about how do you get an emergency vehicle through if these cars are all parked there? And I know it's not an ideal situation but my guess is that these cars are not unattended. It's not like somebody's parked and they've gone into the school and there's nobody there. So if the fire truck is trying to come up the street, I think people can drive up the street, go around the block and come back. It's not ideal, but the school is built in the most dense neighborhood that we have in the community. It was built in a time that probably 70% of the kids that went to the school walked to school from home. There was no bussing in the village at all. And if you lived on Wallis Street or Butler Street down next to Zachary's Pizza, you walk to school every day. If you lived down near the state complex, you walk to school. Now every kid gets bussed or picked up and we can't move the school and put it in a place like where Crossford Brook is where they have much more of space to maneuver around. They still have issues at Crossford Brook too, I'm sure, but it's not a easy solution. I still think it warrants a conversation. I'd be happy to reach out to the principal. I used to live on High Street and yes, the fire emergency vehicle is an issue, but it's super unsafe. You can't see around the stop signs because people are parked and I've been almost t-boned a number of, like, terrifyingly close to dying in that intersection. I don't live there anymore, so luckily I don't have that experience, but it's really unsafe when people are parked all along both sides of that street. You can't see anything to turn out of there. So I know they're doing what they can, but I still think it warrants a conversation just to see what might be done to improve, so. Yeah, I'd like to see maybe a more formal bill if you could, I don't know if we need to make a motion, but if you could just reach out to the principal and let them know that, I agree, I've been through there and I think it is a lot and I don't know if we can just ask that they try to come up with some solutions and challenge them, they know what the best, and I agree, I understand, Lisa, that there are extenuating circumstances that maybe will be fixed somewhat soon in terms of bus ridership. But even like they have a crossing guard, like a traffic director or something because just to help someone out there for safety for 30 minutes could change the whole situation, I think so. Before we started trying to just come in heavy with tickets, I think, you know, if I was in that position, I'd be like, well, what am I supposed to do? You know, where do I go? So I don't know, we can just challenge the principal to try to see if they can come up with some solutions. I understand there's not a loop in the back, but maybe that's a longer term conversation that they can start now. But I don't know if so, you wouldn't mind just reaching out and letting them know that we're concerned about the safety and traffic around the school and if they can offer any additional conversation or solutions. So are you asking them to come to a meeting or are you just asking me to reach out to them and tell them you have some concerns and ask them to... Yeah, I think they don't need to come to a meeting, but if you could reach out to them with that we discussed at our meeting and we have concerns and see where that takes us. I'd be a fellow or a couple. Yeah, I'd be happy to join that conversation. So who's the school principal now? There are actually two. There are co-principals, Sarah Schoolcraft and Chris Neville. I can send you a link. We did a story about them a couple of weeks ago. The pictures were in the paper. And they're co-principals right now. I know Sarah. Yeah, and Chris Neville, NEVILLE is the new co-principal. I mean, Mark, to your point here about not having them have to come to a meeting might not be a bad thing if they were willing to so that they could let us know and we could work as a group maybe to throw out some ideas as to how they might be able to mitigate this problem. Yeah, I mean, I think during that conversation we can't go up there and meet it though. Yeah, I think just see where that conversation goes and say, you know, if we think it warrants bringing it to a meeting, we can throw it on the agenda and have them join a larger discussion. That makes sense. Sweet Road. Oh, yeah. Yeah, Sweet Road, you're right. That is very much akin to the issue that we've had at the Reservoir on Blush Hill. This involves the Hunger Mountain Trailhead, a very popular hiking spot, especially, you know, summers and fall. Sweet Road is a relatively narrowish road, especially as you get over near the trailhead. A particular individual has put up signs in the highway right of way, saying, you know, no parking, violators will be towed. I wrote him an email and told him he needed to take those signs down. The town regulates use and parking on the highways and you don't have the right to put up a sign, especially in the highway right of way. I don't know yet if the signs have been taken down or not, but when I had the exchange with him, you know, he said, okay, I understand what you're telling me, but what's the solution? And unfortunately, part of the solution was never taken seriously by the state where the trailhead is and the parking lot for the trailhead. If you come back toward Loomis Hill Road from where the trailhead is, there was another parking lot that was there that was on private property that the people used to allow folks to park in that lot as well. And they put that lot up for sale a number of years ago. When I say a number, I mean like 25 years ago. And at that time, you know, I wrote Forest Parks and Recreation and said, you know, the state ought to buy that. The parking area is too small and you can more than double your parking and the state didn't wanna have anything to do with it. So they have the one trailhead lot there that's been in existence for a long time. And most days, especially nice fall weekends, you can't get into a lot and people wanna hike. So they just park their cars along the street or the roadway on both sides. And there's a path. I live up in that neighborhood and I travel through the waterworks very often. And in a passenger car, you know, you can get through even if there's cars parked on both sides, you have to go slow and you gotta watch out for pedestrians. But some people up in that neighborhood don't like it. They think it is dangerous. So the simplest solution would be to do what we did on Blush Hill which is to make parking on one side only, but the cars are already, you know, I don't know how far along the roadway they're already going but if you restrict it to one lane and people obey that, you know, they're gonna probably be parked along, I don't know, half a mile or more of that road. And sometimes people don't like the fact that people are parking in the road in front of their houses. It's a public highway, there's nothing wrong with it in my opinion. But that's in a nutshell, that's the issue. Does not really feel good clearance from the right, you know, for people to park on that roadway from the right of way, they're really getting way into the road. And I don't know if that's good, bad or different. It's a, it's a- What about the existing quarry there? Is there any possibility that some of that could be utilized? It takes some work from- Well, I believe it's private property, Chris, right? Oh, the old quarry is, that's not part of that. I think that's private property. Well, when I went to see Ed Stanek about opening that quarry for the town, he said, because Forest and Parks controls it, that we could open the quarry because we didn't, it's under 10 acres, so we didn't need an act 250 per minute. Well, it might be right. I'd have to look. I thought it was in private ownership. But, you know, we can find that out quickly. And if it is in public ownership, if the Department of Forest Parks and Recreation already owns that, then I think we should put pressure on them to develop additional parking because it's not right to do what's being done there. Just like Lush Hill, it's, you know, they need more parking on both those areas. And- Yeah, and I think if we reach out to the state and tell them our concerns and, you know, they're not gonna do anything until somebody probably puts pressure on them unless they feel really obligated to address it on their own. But I think it's worthwhile to- Well, Dan Sweet's our assessor and Dan Sweet lives right up the road from there. So, you know, Carla, when Dan is in on Thursday, if you can just ask him to look at, you know, you can probably do it yourself, look at the property map. But if we find out that Forest and Parks owns frontage along the road, in addition to the parking lot that is developed already, if they own more frontage, we absolutely should put pressure on them to develop more parking there. And you've put the works on that COVID money. They, good idea, Chris. They own that quarry and they own quite a bit south on that front and on Sweet Road. I'd like to, Dan. All right, well, if that's the case, then I think that should be our first obitures to them. Yeah, I'm fine with that. I do agree that I feel like that blush-shell change really did start to make that a little bit more, even though it pushed traffic up the road, it made it a lot more naffinable. I mean, safe. Works, I boat there a lot and it's a drag when you have to walk halfway up the hill to find a place to get back to your car, but most people do pay attention to the signs. Right around the Cove itself, they don't. There are people that want to be close, but that's kind of the most open part of the road. But as you come up the hill, most people are paying attention to the signs they're on blush-shell. On Sweet Road, people are about to climb a mountain. Yeah, they'll find a walk. They'll find a little bit more. Maybe that's not too bad. They're ready to walk. People are inherently ready to see. Is this a warm-up? Okay. Anything else, so you'll potentially follow up with the state, you don't need a motion or anything? No. Okay. Anything else this evening? Thank you very much for attending tonight. Two secures. I will make a motion to adjourn. The next meeting is on the 15th. Yeah. Second motion to adjourn. You thought you, oh, I will make a motion to adjourn. Is there a second? Second. I'm too tired. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Thank you. Thank you all. Thanks everyone. Have a good night.