 to read the preamble that as chair of the Rochester select board I find that due to the state of emergency declared by Governor Scott as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and pursuant to addendum 6 to executive order 01-20 and act 92 this public body is authorized to meet electronically in accordance with act 92 there is no physical location to observe and listen contemporaneously to this meeting however in accordance with the temporary amendments to the open meeting law I confirm that we are providing public access to the meeting by telephone video or other electronic means which in this case is the zoom platform and all members of the board have the ability to communicate and contemporaneously during the meeting through this platform and the public has access to contemporaneously listen and if desired participate but um either contact to request the invitation to the meeting just make a noise there find the links on the um on the uh posted agendas and um we gave previous notice to that and I am trusting that this time we got it right because we had to cancel the last meeting because the credentials were not correct um is anyone in the meeting here someone that has logged in from the the credentials posted on the agenda versus an email link just out of curiosity I came from the agenda not an email link all right good so now we know it's working and here is someone else in the waiting room that I know is testing that so maybe that will work all right so um here we are it's um 602 and I hear my voice echoing because Kim Lee is walking in the stairs with his phone he's in so it worked um does anyone have any additions to the tonight's agenda and hearing none I guess we'll move forward and we have the minutes from the last meeting and I found one small correction in the very last sentence and it says that it would make sense for the town to work Marty and Kristen and then communicate to the wades I think we want to have the word work with Marty and Christian and then communicate to the wades so I I found that one edition I don't know if you guys found anything else in there that you would like to modify no and if uh so I'd move that we accept those minutes with that modification on favor okay good we got those minutes doing well sun just went down again um sue you're a guest tonight and you're on the top row and my screen though all right happening yeah um thank you for having me um the white river valley players have a small request um you may have seen the parade people that were on the park the stick figure people with costumes on for fourth of July and um it it was a real hit people really seem to enjoy it so we thought we would repurpose them for the weekend of the harvest fair where we're sad we won't be having a harvest fair so we thought we would put them in more of a group um somewhere on a hundred on the park and put a sign with them that says um um uh see you see you here next year you know from the white river valley players um and just wanted to get permission to do that uh during during that week so that there's some time that that they're up there making people smile I like that idea to do a formal park use permit for that or is that yeah yeah I can do that yeah I mean that sounds good to me what do you guys think I'm doing I'm on the park committee and that's why I asked her to mention it to you because I thought she did have to fill out a form yeah yeah might as well I did that before I forgot about that so thanks for reminding me yeah we have a little time yet yeah yeah okay well we'll jazz them up a little maybe change their costumes or something but we'll yeah yeah and you're talking about um having them up there for like a week or something yeah from uh Monday the 7th so Monday the 14th okay yeah that'd be good to then just have it um there and then picked up yeah okay great okay thank you well there's a time limit for it that's fine yeah oh yeah yeah all right thank you so no over loitering on the park oh well right no lounge chairs we don't even know where that came from well I stayed there for a while yeah that's that was the issue that was funny yeah do you ever find out who it came from I did no I have some idea that's not at liberty to somebody so um Joan we're lucky we have you here tonight because um I was going to have to read your updates last week but now you're here to join us in person so you're up I'm sure you're happy so okay I'll run through it quick first um on the Mendel property the emergency watershed program with nrcs um I wrote up an application on their behalf and so you're breaking out maybe even four I've lost track are you guys having trouble hearing her too yeah she's froze up on me I couldn't hear her like we can't hear anything from you Joan yeah anyway do well you want um I guess um I could read what you're um what I have printed from last week's meetings and then if you have additions to that you could um maybe slide those in would that help sure am I still frozen no now you're not um I'll tell me if I freeze again and I'll stop okay okay I'll start waving okay so anyway a fund representative was going to be meeting with them sometime soon she offered to just go down and visit with them and in financial and then find out the next couple of steps to figure out if they were uh going to be able to give them a grant and we should know pretty soon I have not heard from Dean yet about whether they've met yet that's at least shows some some sign of hope that they may get some help um and just still continuing to work with our FEMA field wrap to get uh reimbursements for completed roads and for uh to finish up the information that they need for the brook street brook uh retaining wall project which won't actually be done until next year um and there is some reimbursement for the work that's been pleaded completed on the incomplete roads that's still in process but it ought to be coming soon but I'm not even going to try and guess at a date at this point it it'll come when it comes um same with the Bethel Mountain Road reimbursement process um three weeks ago or so I was talking to the person of v-trans who had to submit a grant amendment application to the federal highway administration because originally when they submitted uh the estimate of the cost of the project it was very early on and they didn't know the scope of it so needs to be increased they didn't see that there was would be any problem with that but I have been hearing from other sources like through U.S. Forest Service that um federal highway administration is just moving really slow these days um so that'll come when it comes uh also still no word from v-trans on whether they're going to be funding any of their grant programs this year uh if you remember we had a couple projects we were expecting to do and we pretty well in absence of any further communication from them which was last time was in May um figuring that there's probably not going to be a grant round this year um I get any confirmation of that I'll let you know but it's getting pretty late to you know put out the expect projects to be done in time um discussions are continuing with uh some landowners uh associated with the Mount Cushman over replacement um Frank and I are going to meet with one of them sometime soon haven't set that up yet um so that continues um is me did you see about push notes were submitted for the town garage stormwater project and uh I talked to WRP today and we're in agreement that it's just too late to try and rebit it this year uh for one thing probably a lot of the contractors who would bid on this project ordinarily are all super busy with home improvement projects um in addition there are a few other details that uh need to be looked into that we didn't know about at the time of the bidding and fortunately the grant that WRP has for the work um is good through 2021 so we're going to regroup in the fall with Cooter find out what remaining issues there might be and be prepared to go out to bid uh in January or February at the latest of next year um working still on the Henry property tree planting um that is probably going to be taking place next spring as well as this fall because I did a lot of calling around to various nurseries retail and wholesale and um it's really late to be buying six foot trees of any type they just don't have them in stock anymore uh I do have a contractor lined up uh I think I have to talk to him again but John Gorton said he was interested um so you know he's a known quantity for us of course since he does our mowing I'm meeting with him possibly this coming week um just to take a look at the site and be ready for next year unless he has a source this year for hemlocks which I'll find out about um the West Hill bridge meeting uh Pat was there so Pat jump in if you want to add anything basically um there were two design alternatives that were uh submitted in addition to do nothing or repair the existing bridge none of those those two weren't really alternatives so alternative three they called it consists of a precast pre-stressed concrete slab bridge and their estimated cost there was uh almost 1.2 million dollars um alternative for slightly different well more than slightly different it's a steel beam structure instead of concrete and with a concrete deck and that cost a little bit less than their estimate uh just over a million dollars in any case those two numbers are considerably more than what we are expecting to get from US Forest Service responds by the way also come from federal highway administration um but Brian Austin from the Forest Service pointed out on our meeting that um they had included a lot of pre-construction costs in the the whole construction budget so BHCB has to go back and recalculate the actual construction cost which will be somewhat less but still considerably more than the 650,000 dollars that we believe are committed to us that we don't have a grant agreement yet um so I talked to Brian about that and he feels pretty certain that Forest Service will be able to come come up with some other funding sources to supplement if the federal highway grant program does not agree to increase the amount so I'll have more to report back to you on that hopefully in the next week or two and then last but not least is Cricket and I made a site visit with uh Sean Kelly the geotech engineer from the Bethel Mountain Road project to that spot on the Henry property that uh causes is caught some concern for potential slope failure maybe not soon but possibly sometime in the future and it was discovered pretty late in the process of the Bethel Mountain Road repair project which is why it wasn't caught and something done things look pretty stable there now um but Sean feels a certain amount of uncertainty about what might happen in the future with you know big storms or series of big storms like the only one we had last year so what I asked him to do is to put together a memo that describes a little bit of the history of how this thing was first uh noted uh what he feels the issues are going forward if what the risk is um and what he feels ought to be done in the near term and down the road if if it does appear that the slope is unstable um and with that in our back pocket if something catastrophic or unfortunate does happen in the future we've got all the information we need to go back to VTrand and say okay guys sorry but you need to step up and help us out with this hope failure because it would be because they would fund it because it's you know would be affecting the stability of Bethel Mountain Road so once I get that memo I'll forward that to you probably what's going to happen is they're going to look for just monitoring which means putting a series of stakes across the slope with a string and then once in a while cricket will go out there it might be just you know a matter of a couple times a year to see whether things have moved and keep your fingers crossed that nothing moves for uh a generation or two um so that's all I have oh okay thank you um in terms of the highway we've been they've been working away on the mowing roadside mowing and I know there's a few spots where it looks a little scarified by that um I don't know if that's up to the property owners to go and touch that up or if that's something that um we would go back and clean up some of those ugly stumps but um I guess Cooter's been on vacation so I'll chat with him about that in the future we should probably go back and especially in front of people's houses I had a call on Friday um and went to visit the land owner and he wasn't overly happy but he wasn't really mad either but um when they chopped those trees down and leave a five-foot stump right in front of the man's house they blow some chips on the lawn that makes a little bit of a bad press for us uh I would think they need to go back and think about cleaning out some of the ditches too because that could lead to some issues if a high water event happened so I'd like to see some action on that I know they're busy on Jerusalem right now but they need to really probably take care of some of that because that could bite us down the road if they don't do something but especially in front of people's houses when they chop off three four inch trees and leave a six foot stump right in front of their place uh they probably should go back it's not a lot but it is some and they could probably just drive around and pretty much do it as they go but yeah I would think they'd want to make sure those ditches were cleaned out yeah leave a lot of trees and then Frank what type of mower are they using uh it's just a flail mower you know a regular roadside mower but you know it's like four feet I think I'd say at least four foot so they they're doing I talked with John about it he said there's been a big learning curve and so I wasn't going to harass him too much about it I know he's busy up there on Jerusalem right now but they're going to want to take a trip around when they can and just clean out those ditches some places they you know they've hacked off pretty good but I know they have to do it every once in a while so you know it's it's just too bad in some places where they leave a mess that they they should go back and just neaten it up a little bit especially in front of somebody's house yeah I would expect that part of the pre-winter checking the ditches and culverts and such that that would be or before that but right now their goal is to use that mower as much as they can for the the period that we have it and then they can go back and right once they once they get over the ground you know I mean it's a like I said it's a learning curve but yeah for them and and they're doing the best they can with it so and I I think they don't have it right now anyway I think he said that was gone for a week maybe or something and then they were going to get it back so they're doing some of the work on Jerusalem I know but all right in terms of utilities we had an issue with the Gordy Merrill had a pretty significant leak in one of his apartments and he's asked us if we could have a little leniency leniency on on his bill for that then Frank had you looked at that and checked into what he had what was going on there yeah I I did a little like talk to Terry about it he he kind of feels like we give uh we need to be a little more aggressive getting word out to like people that have apartment houses and and have rentals that are on town water systems so they can do their own meter check to make sure they're not using any more water than they normally do they can they're all digital so they can read themselves but he's he's under the idea that anybody that has a failure Gordy took care of his failure right off the bat he feels that a one-time waiver is is a good way to handle things and then they're you know on a warning system so that if you have a failure like that in an apartment or whatever you know they can they can get a one-time you know uh freebie so we've done that in the past I think most recently to the Mendel property that we do that so what did we end up doing splitting the difference with them I think you I don't remember exactly what Terry said they did but they came up with an agreement it seemed like it was fair yeah and he seemed good good about it and he was okay with it yeah no I think that's reasonable yeah I do too like but if it happens again you know then it's their own fault you know once they're notified and that should be a warning that we put out to these people a little bit that that do have apartment houses and if they're not all you know filled up and working then you know they they should be checking on them now and then make sure at least it's a quarterly bill not an annual bill so it does get a little little wake-up call but still in a couple months you can run a lot of water down the drain yes you can all right so we'll um figure out what Terry what's an appropriate adjustment for that I think splitting the difference is pretty pretty fair it's pretty fair yeah I do too that's what we have done in the past yeah yeah that's our precedent it sounds like a good way to go excuse me dune yeah because so could I say that the board agreed you didn't vote on it yet or anything but could I say the board agreed to a one-time reduction in his bill basically yeah yeah okay thank you I guess we didn't really it's not so much a voting matter it's just an agreement to yeah okay thank you I wanted to make sure I worded it correct yeah yep all right we got that on there um what else have we got we had um boy it's pretty um pretty clear we had had received a letter requesting us to read a letter from Paul Hammond regarding the um his opinion on surveying Pine Gap Road but that is that seems to be um kind of a moot point as the work has been done on that and in a response was at that basically that um there was not select board was not required to resurvey or to survey a road that's it's it's an option the select board has and seen as there was the the whole survey of the the neighboring tract of the Forest Service um was pretty much definitive about where what we were talking about was so we didn't um didn't really feel the need to be pressured to resurvey that road so that's um that was a response to that letter and that's all I've got to talk about tonight I have a couple other things on the agenda this is an updated agenda oh I'm looking at you're right that's the old agenda that I grabbed for those notes here we go yep one or two but oh yeah yeah we need to um have a suggestion for an assistant town clerk and treasurer um who was that Kristen lapel Kristen lapel and um we worked with her on the um election night the other night counting votes and she seems on top of things and it works well with you guys this is something we'd need to um is this an appointment or is this a hiring we need to hear to fill out um the job application I believe she has and she has okay so um there was a doom yeah there was some talk about uh some increased hours for her maybe Julie you want to explain that a little bit um well Becky currently is only she's only able to give me 17 hours and based on the work that goes on through the office um I'm asking for 25 if that's okay I think that um I'm sure as you could probably use even more than that but that's um I think that it's there's definitely work to be done and um not interested in in um burning you out on the job so I'm in I'm in favor of that what do you guys say yeah I think it'll probably work good do we have a little bit of space in the budget for that Nancy I think we will have when Becky really cuts back her hours okay so if we have if we have a space a little elbow room there um I also wanted to point out that Kristen has taken and uh I believe an accounting class um to to better prepare her for the role so I think that she has a good candidate and we proceed with the appointment or hiring whatever it is thank you yeah um we also have a request to authorize Jeff Gephardt to access the Green Mountain Power Towns digital files so he can um better analyze um where we stand and how we can improve things and I'm totally behind that I'd I'd move to authorize Jeff to have that information I would second that yeah yeah I would be in favor of that too all in favor of Jeff you have something to say about that yeah I get it right the the paperwork that was sent is actually to give me access to they are gmp's files but it's the well some of it is gmp's files the usage is gmp but the rest of it is deals with Efficiency Vermont services that have been provided to the town yeah I think we're going to need that second um you know if you want to vote on the gmp town digital files I have tried to reach Freeman Corey um he I could not find him on their impossible phone list um and I sent an email to gmp and I just noticed uh a minute ago that I've got some kind of reply so I should have information from them very shortly as to who the right contact is and what the form is but I would really like to get both of them so that I can absolutely yeah readily uh see where the town's opportunities are excuse me Jeff I didn't hear what the other one was not not all of it in time to write it down I apologize besides gmp it's a to deal with customer privacy issues the customer in this instance is the town of Rochester Efficiency Vermont needs a consent form signed and so that that if the town approves that I could probably get on the horn with Julie and have her put in the appropriate address information contact information from me and you guys she would know what to put in for you guys and we'll go from there and then I would expect to receive instruction as to how we do the same with gmp's records yeah absolutely I so I'd modify my um proposal to authorize Jeffford those records or access through gmp and Efficiency Vermont that'd be great yeah I also did follow your lead doing and took a look at the town plan and chapter x for for energy I was pretty familiar reading to me it's essentially parallels the state of Vermont's comprehensive energy plan from 2016 it's nice that it lays out specific goals for Rochester and I'm getting a baseline through Efficiency Vermont on how many residential homes have been assisted and how many commercial properties have been assisted now this is different than than say the municipal level look at energy but the town had there are and that's not a town formation but there was a energy committee formed early this year and so I volunteered to get in the middle of that and would hope that with that I can get those folks working and trained and knowledgeable to help their neighbors make improvements as we go forward well we're really thankful for your energies on this Jeff yeah we'll see how long it takes me to burn out okay some water yeah yeah a noble effort thank you I'll do what I can okay thank you thanks Jeff I'm willing to give you a hand in anything I can help you with so sure and let me know you mentioned uh walk through the school yeah bring back those old poor those old hard memories and yeah I'd like to do a do a little walk through on the basement of the town office too I I think we've got some issues there that maybe we could save a little bit on the heating bill there those basements are great opportunities oh yeah that one especially well I look look at the ceiling really look at the ceiling playing first then the basement and then work towards the middle yeah there you go all right so maybe we can get together some time on that before winter and see what we can do okay all right does anyone else have anything I'd like to talk about tonight Robert this is quick I went down and looked at the speed sign on the south end of town and I try to find the model number on the thing so I could contact or look on the website of the people in may could see if we could service them and I couldn't find a model number although it's been disconnected from its uh from its power source from its solar power source probably because it was unreadable anyway if somebody can give me the model numbers I'll be happy to go through the with the company and try to figure out how to service those things get them working again because they work when they work they really slow they work they work so I talked to Julie about this and she suggested I talked to Frank so I guess this is officially me talking to Frank I don't mind at all uh trying to run that stuff down as if we don't forget what the model numbers going on the on the service there's a bunch of different models impossible to tell which is what I believe have an inventory list uh from a couple years ago um from the con when the constable's office had all that inventory so we may be able to pull I see Nancy reaching for something right away we may be able to pull that out of the inventory list because it was really quite detailed okay well if you can just give me that information model number any information on the thing yeah I'll see if I can dog it down and if it's a big deal I'll let you know and if it's easy then it's easy and that's the end of my presentation for today and I think that Tom's novel had expressed um some interest in in being able to provide some support on those because he's he's good with that kind of electronic stuff so um he might be an ally in that okay hey also out of curiosity who mows down by the river the path down by the river behind the school does the school do that or does the town do that um the school was doing it for for bill for their use of it I believe they always took the trip around there but I don't think they're mowing they're down to two people on the maintenance crew I believe so and I don't think they're mowing I think uh uh John Gorton is mowing the school I believe yeah someone walked through there with the clippers and cut back some of the encroaching branches but it's it's um hasn't been mowed in a while has it yeah so is that a town project or is that a school project that's not really a sun private property on the um um bill thrill kills property I don't think he would um mind if someone went and did that but it's not so much a town project that um that's um okay you put that out there it's um it could probably use a walk through couldn't it a lot of people use that yeah well luckily enough people use it that it's kind of beaten down in the middle so it's kind of self mowing but it could use a little bit more yeah no it's getting like the park yeah all right um if that's all I'm I'm hungry ready to go thank you all I um I'm glad that we nailed down the proper credentials for people to join it's um I hope we didn't just um scourge anyone or inconvenience anyone last week but I think we made the right decision to cancel it and and we um keep taking care of business and thank you all for coming tonight okay we'll see you all next week yeah have a good evening