 631. As you know, we've been in executive session discussing with a finalist for the position of town administrator. I will tell you that we're very close to having a deal, but we are not going to be able to finalize it tonight. But we're hopeful in the next few days we'll be able to have a final deal. Yeah, we need a good deal. We need a good deal. Yeah. Is there anything else to say about that, you guys? I have a motion to make. Please. To that end, I would make a motion to authorize Ann Winchester to enter into a contract with the finalist candidate for town administrator to include the parameters which we've all agreed to and to sign a contract with that individual. Can I just a friendly amendment? Instead of parameters, I'd say provisions, because they're very specific provisions we agreed to. Will you email me that time? I will do that. I'm doing it this way tonight. I'll email you that along with the earlier details. Oh, yeah, yeah. All right, we get a motion and a second. All in favor? Aye. Thank you. So I'm sorry, I wish we had a little more to report right now, but we'll have lots more to talk about at the next meeting. Has everybody had a chance to review the minutes? Everybody happy with them? Has he spelled Daniel Keeney's last name? K-E-E-N-E-Y. It is K-E-E-N-E-Y. OK, all right, then I do not have any corrections. Then would you like to move the minutes? I move we approve the minutes of October 9th, 2023. Second? Second. All in favor? Aye. OK, board orders are coming around. Jamie, I think, has them. So the Curtis Pond handrail has been installed. I've seen pictures of it. It looks beautiful. I announced in here thanks to Linda Schultz's sheets. And then I learned from his wife, that our very own quiet man over in the corner there, also had a lot to do with it. And I didn't realize it. John spent a lot of time helping to design it and design the two little frogs that are sitting on the rail. I didn't design them. Donated them. Is this something you had lying around? John, is this just something you had lying around? No, no, I don't want you back. Thank you, John. So, yeah. Thank you. Has anybody seen it other than John? No. Oh, Jamie. Actually, I've never seen it. The pictures were nice. Yeah, the pictures were great. So you all know about the municipal energy resilience grant. Barbara, do we have a copy of that to sign? It's right here. That's it, right here. This is a memorandum of agreement with BGS. Oh, this is it. OK. This is a grant to do an energy audit of the town and possibly then after that will be eligible for an implementation grant. That's right. This is step one, the $4,000. This is step two. This is when they first advertised it, they said it would be a first grant for $1,000 and then a second one for $4,000 and then a next one for the upper limit of $500,000. Turns out that there's really no money changing hands for the second part. They just can ascend a technician, an individual, who will do the assessments. When did that expect it? Do you expect that to be done? They are moving so slow on this, it's almost impossible. It should be coming up and John and I are in touch with them. They will both be here when they come. But it could be, I don't know if they have a plan. They're going by, they're kind of cluster towns together so they'll send somebody from Efficiencyville in a car for the Northeast Kingdom and do four times. But they don't have to. But it's coming and we got it and they're eligible. I asked for an assessment of the people in the garage but I didn't have enough information about it to get them to approve us to that. So if you want to do that, you have to do it on your own. OK. Or maybe it'll come around again. So do I thank John for this also? Or did you say you had a lot to do with John? I'm for this. Well, I know. OK. So yeah, thanks guys. So I would entertain a motion to authorize. It looks like they want me or one of us to sign it on behalf of the municipality. I'll make a motion that we authorize you to sign it on behalf of the county. We have a second? Second. All in favor? Right. OK. I'll finish that later. Thank you. Now, public comment. Anybody have anything that's not on the agenda that they would like to bring up right now? OK. That'll keep us on schedule. Yeah. Apparently, I got some things wrong in reporting this Maple Corner community store. Board President John Rosenblum is here. Oh, sorry. So let's see. We bought a generator for the town hall, as you all know. And it turned out that the switch was needed to be swapped out. So we now, the town, have a switch. And it happens that the Maple Corner, well, why don't you tell us what you would like to use it for, John? Well, we're contemplating, because we've had two power failures in less than a year, where actually Nancy and Artie said that they think that Jamie told me that Nancy and Artie had had no more than two hours during the power failure. During the time they were owning the store, we've had two power failures have weighed more than two hours in less than a year. And we're contemplating, rather than relying on Bill Powell to bring his generator down and plug in Jamie to string sentient cords all around the building, we're actually thinking about that we could use a generator switch and have that plugged in directly to a generator and we'll buy our own generator. The agenda stated that we were ready to use it right away. Actually, it's probably not till January or February, but we'll actually be ready to use it. And the agenda said it was worth $350. It's actually advertised on eBay right now for 249 views. What I would propose is that if you want to give it to the Maple Corner Community Store, we would take it. And if the East Calis store decided that they were ready to use it before we were, we'd give it to them. And that way, just to make it so that it's the first store that needs it. And that's, I guess, what I'll propose. I'm not really authorized at the moment to purchase it. And I once again wouldn't be 100% sure that it's all electrician comes and looks at our system, that it's exactly the right thing for what we want to do. But it looks like it could be useful. And so if you want to donate it to one of the community stores, you can either hold it on to it until one of them is ready to put it, install it, or you could give it to us. And we'll hold onto it. And if the East Calis store needs it first, then we'll give it to them. Anybody other than Jamie have a comment? OK. Let me ask the board first, Jan and then I'll ask. Anybody? Question, comment? OK, Jan has something to say. Well, as the treasurer of East Calis Community Trust and the store, we aren't going to have a backup generator for quite a while. So I would take us totally out of this within the, you know, we just started looking at the possibility. And it's a little more difficult in an all energy efficient building. And we have placed the generator number one. We have to figure that out and a few other things. So it's going to be a longer process to finding a generator if we have one. So I will simply ship it off to make a quarter. Do you have energy storage? No, we do not. We did an evaluation from Green Mountain Power as to how many times they were out of two hours or more. And the documentation and the data behind it showed that it really, a generator of the amount of money that would be required to that building is probably not, I don't know, it would be difficult. So we made an initial early decision to not look for a generator. Now the store operator, of course, is a little concerned. But all of our new equipment are good for 48 hours worth of refrigeration and freezer stuff. It would be a major storm that would be down for 48 hours, we think. And we have to consider the three apartments above it. So the range of the price that we've been given from two companies is pretty astronomical. And we don't have the funds anyway right now. And we wouldn't know where to put it. Apparently, GMP is giving away storage, energy storage. Or they're starting to do that. So maybe the store could be a candidate for that. We're looking into the batteries. But again, where can we place them? They're pretty compact. Was that finalized? I read that they were soliciting funding. I didn't know whether or not they had finally got that through. I don't think it's finalized. But it just strikes me that in that zero building, rather than put a fossil fuel generator on it, it might not be a replacement. But storage, energy storage, especially given the coolers, can be good for two days. And you have three apartments. But anyway, it's just something to keep an eye on with GMP. We are, they can go to the garage. Aware of that. Don't know about that yet. They could, but there's other purposes going in the garage. And so yeah, it's kind of an interesting phenomenon. And interestingly enough, Jess's concern is not with the refrigeration in the freezer. Her interest is keeping the deli operating, the convection ovens, and the stove top, whatever you call those things now. She's more concerned about keeping the deli open, in the case of, so she can keep producing the food more than the refrigeration idea. And that is something that just came out in the last week or so. So it's one of those ongoing things. So the question is, would we like to give this switch to the Maple Corner Community Store? That's what it's selling in. Well, apparently we could sell it on eBay for $250, maybe. We're doing an idea. There's two of them on there now. I think those are our choices. I mean, if you really want to sell it, I can figure out what we'd pay for it, but not $350. What paid for it in the first place? I don't know. Was it in the generator that they bought, or was it in a former generator? John, do you know? It came with the building. It was part of the electrical contract when this building was done. We hadn't been a decision on the generator, but we knew that one was coming. So we had an automatic transfer switch installed. And then Brookfield Service didn't like it. They wanted a colder brand transfer switch, and not the one we had. So it was taken out. And the town paid for a new cooler switch. And the one they took out, I guess, is in Nick Emlin's garage right now. So I mean, similarly, we're not 100% sure that electrician won't tell us that, too. Although Bill Pell says that it looks like a switch that would work for us. It would. I mean, it's a generic switch. It's a generic switch. I mean, Bill Pell thinks it'll work for us, so that's clear. We're still not sure whether we'd want to put in a generator like from one of the townhats so that we could run the whole building. It's similar to these calisthenics. So we could run the whole building. Or whether we're going to buy a $6,000 generator that can just keep essential things, like the refrigeration going and the heat going. So we haven't figured that out yet. So it's a little bit early for us to start putting money down. If you want to just wait, if you really want to get money for it, you can hold onto it. And we could set the price at $250,000, is it? Well, I'm not opposed to I just, if we do that and it works for you, it'd be fantastic. I just want to be mindful that we have that we share our resources with our resource. So I know y'all don't need it, but for future, thank you. I mean, also, if the Morial Hall wanted to get the generator and got to it sooner than us, I mean, we can just include all the public organizations, their buildings in this. We don't want to make this seem like we're asking for this special thing from the town. It could be saved for whoever the first public building that wants it would be. OK, Jordan, did you want to say something? I was just curious, is it like a transfer switch that transfers the entire circuit board over, or is it like a key circuit switch that only has a whole building? Yeah, it's 200 amps, so I guess that's right. I guess it could do the whole build, the whole service. And the question is whether we want to buy a generator that can do 200 amps, or whether we're going to buy just a little generator that can do essential services. So we could hook it up either way according to the bill. Yeah, you can. There's a couple of ways to go out. We just put one in our house, and it's a key circuit, so it's a second, like, circuit breaker. But we don't need to get into the semantics. I'd say if we need to, we could make a motion to just kind of list the specifications of it, and whoever the first organization or building within the community that has a need for it that fits within their specs, then we should put it to use somewhere in the community if it wasn't going to satisfy here. And we'll do that for the price of $3.99, I guess. Is that for shipping and handling? Yeah. Yeah. OK. Barbara? I have a question. It seems, I recall just a couple of meetings ago that Ann said that they were wanting a new generator at the town garage. Is it possible that this transfer switch would be a broke grip, or what might can be coming down the pipe for the garage? Well, I think they have some sort of switch for the portable generator they currently have. And we haven't received that information back from Brokefield, but we're actually looking to apply for a grant under FEMA to support municipal buildings staying open and working during natural disasters. So hopefully we can get it funded. But thank you for thinking of the garage. So I think we're overthinking this a bit. I like Jordan's suggestion about it will be available to you if you need it. Does that work? And meanwhile, we'll keep it in Nick's garage. That seems fine. I think that's great. And if somebody else asks for it first, some public building, they get first dibs. Yeah. Does that work? That totally makes sense to me. What do you guys think? I don't think we need to vote. Do we need to vote on that? No, I need to vote. OK. Great. Thank you. All right. Oh, and now the fun part. We get to talk to you guys about your budgets and your plans and hopes for the future. Jane, you want to come talk to us about the planning commission? Can you come up or can I talk? Whatever makes you comfortable. I feel comfortable here. Go ahead. I can hear me. I'll just stay here. Thank you. There's not many changes to the planning budget. My mom and everything else kind of documents it. Great question is we haven't really ever had an assistant. We thought we were going to, and we didn't. And planning really is not in charge of maps. So we're asking we have both of those items just removed from the planning budget because we don't need them. Keeping education and training the same, very few of us have gone to any session that's been out there. And we may, some people might in the future. So we just kept it there. Expenses, I moved up to $750. I think I did that, I'm trying to remember, in part because we may have some mailing and a few things relative to the town plan, advertising, and possible printing of the helpfully approved regulations. I don't know. Jeremy printed out the town plan. And I don't know whether that comes out of a town budget or whether that came out of a planning commissioned budget. But certainly people like the DRB and everything are going to want hard copy of the new regulations. So whether that comes out of our budget or some other town budget, I don't know. That's why I made it $750. And then the ongoing contribution to our reserve fund. I wouldn't like that to be $5,000, but I know that's a ridiculous request this year. This year it's going to be a hard sell. So let me just ask you, Tegan. I seem to remember that when I wanted a copy, when I was on the DRB, Jeremy just got me one. And he must have taken it out of his budget. Do you know anything about that? Where it should come from? No, this hasn't come up yet. But I would talk to Sandra because she could find all the line items. Although Barbara might know that she's waving them. We printed out 10 copies of that spiral bound and just have them on hand. But I don't know which budget it came out of. OK. That's a Sandra question. If you really want to know where it's coming from. Thank you. Any questions on Sandra's, Barbara? Janssen. It's for both of us. Oh, wait. If there's no other questions, John and I have a proposal. OK. Why don't you do that? Pardon? Go ahead. OK. Relative to the maps, John and Vicky and I met with Franco from CAI Technologies, who gave us a demonstration of a wonderful interactive map that would replace the current interactive map that we have online. Our recommendation is we'd like to have that gentleman come in and do a demo for you of what that map can do. He also mentioned that the town administrator, he's had towns that have town administrators. That town administrator does that map up every day, all day long, because of all the data, the way it's arranged can be done. Somebody comes in and says they want to know who the letters are on their property. They just hit a couple of clicks, and man, everything comes up. Here's the abutters, names, addresses, everything. And it's kind of, it was most amazing to see the value of that kind of map. So we don't necessarily want it in next year's budget. We would like to use it in this year's budget. And we talked to Sandra, who happened to see us. And Tegan was there, and Barbara was there on the day that he was there. And she thinks that because the zoning administrator would use it, planning would use it, the listers would use it, that hopefully the future town administrator would use it, the town clerk would probably use it. He said the road crew, too, with the culverts. Eventually, there's a way for the culverts to be on the map for that, if the road commission would use the computers to do that. There's one town that actually put the dog license information on the map, so they knew which property had which dog. We joked and said, maybe the horses should be on there. That was just an internal dog. Anyway, so what I mean is it's an expanse that it's like it's not just used for one department. It's used town-wide. And so Sandra felt that it could come under miscellaneous or possibly even use the reserve fund. Some of the money, the amount is not that much. $6,000 year one, $6,500 year one. If we sign a three-year contract, there's other things. You can amortize things out. But Sandra's thought was that amount of money could come out of the reappraisal fund. So Sandra had ideas of how to put this into the fiscal 24 budget, not necessarily from the fiscal 25. And we're making that pitch. I know you're in the budget for next year, but maybe in January, you'd like to see this or something. I don't know. John Popp? Yeah. The map right now is currently hosted by and meant to be maintained by some of our regional planning commission. I don't believe they've done anything in a couple of years. You click on a parcel, you get out-of-date owner information. One of the nice things about what we're looking at now is that the listors can be responsible for making sure that the map is constantly updated with new information for which we respect the owners. Even subdivisions, the property is subdivided. And that information can now be viewed on the map before a year passes. This kind of thing where the town would maintain that data, something on regional planning said it was unlikely that they could do that. What's more is when I ask them, what can you give us that compares to what CAI offered. He had an opportunity to call back and respond, and I haven't heard anything. I think the answer is they can't compete with this. I don't know why they didn't, because they have some contractual obligation with ESRI who provides the template for the map we're using now. This data is the basic GIS data that's available on the geodata portal. But then the town of Grand List goes into it. Deeds can go into it. Waterbury uses the same folks, tax bills to click on a parcel. You want to see what the tax bill was for that parcel. I'm not suggesting that for Calis, but what it can do is it's pretty amazing. It occurred to me that it could probably be used to auto-populate an online zoning permit application. I mean, it's just great. What does that mean, auto-populate a permit application? Yeah, you click on your parcel, and you want to apply for a building permit for it. The name of the parcel, let's just put in a body of property owners could just be put in without thinking about it. It has download capability, so we could have certain things from the deeds, or certain property transfers coming in, which would be very helpful between the April and July radio until before we issue our bills. There's a lot of other information, and I think the other positive thing is we already hire somebody for our parcel maps. We keep her, and she already works with CAI at interchanging that data, so there's already an exchange of data going on with our existing parcel map. I'm sorry, CAI, what's that? CAI Technologies is the name of the company. Oh, that would sell us this map. There's a new map we're looking at. Cardiographic Associates used to be their name, but then they rebranded themselves with CAI Axios. And we're already working with, or who's already working with? We work with Christine Chamberlain for the parcel maps. And she's already got unbelievable. She's continued to provide the maps. Parcel maps. Parcel maps. And I already reached out to her. We have some surrounding communities. We have Waterbury, it's not really close by, but Hardwick and Eastmont-Pillier, both of you, CAI, you go into Eastmont-Pillier and zoom in on a parcel that will actually give you parcel line lengths, not deeded lengths, but it'll give you a measurement of what the drawn line on the map is. It's pretty nice, just kind of a ballpark idea of where things are. And then as far as the data, it's whatever we want. We get all the wetlands, we get dairy, whatever. Any of the information that's available on the... These maps. Yeah, on these maps could be on this map. Are they a transferable? So the time that we've put into these maps, would you be able to transfer those over? Well, this is just state data. I put these together, yeah. And CAI could use the same data. And we don't need everything, but if we wanted amphibian crossings, we could get it. But we can get that now on the biogeophysical map. Yeah, we could. You could, but most residents don't go there. Right. I don't even know if... And actually, I've never seen one site that has everything because we've got a lot of grand list data that we want to incorporate in this. The geographic data all comes from the state, with two exceptions. Maybe we've got three things in this town where we generated our own data. We've got our own wetlands, natural resource inventory, created our own wetland map. We've got the watershed protection for the East Montpelier fire district. There's something else, I forget what it is. Oh, protected rich wines. That also, that's not a state data piece. That's something we generated ourselves with the last select word, did it? Can the access to the information be layered so that the public has, or whatever's published on the website has certain access to something? I mean, it's all public information, but I think there could be a feeling that having all of that information on there publicly accessible through one portal could be a bit squeamish. Like tax bills, for the reason you put a tax bill. Sure, an interactive map. So we can separate, let me still use it as an interactive map for the website and as a resource for the community to help. I mean, I think a lot of that sounds really helpful for the community, but it does sound like we would want to probably create a line somewhere between things that are being used in-house for managing tax bills and that sort of thing. That's great. They can give us one foot lighter contours, so at that point you can start seeing just from a map where maybe a proposal is exceeding the 16% slope, allowable slope, that's great. I'm having a little trouble though, it seems to me I can get almost all that information you've talked about, admittedly not in one place, but between the Callis Town interactive map and the Biogeophysical map and the Planning Commission maps, I can get all that information. And that's what I do right now. And I don't know what the general public does. They might go to the interactive map and think that's all there is. I could say from my personal experience, I've had to pull together resources from a lot of different map resources you're then having to do take your hand at overlaying things if you wanted to show overlays. So the overlay resources as a town, it's pretty nice that you have the stuff from the state, but if you wanted to overlay that with other either tax map information or joining neighbor information or anything like that, you have to stitch them together or pay somebody to stitch them together. So as a resource for the community to make sure that they're engaging in, I mean it's easy to call out in development activity, but I think one of the things that would be really nice to kind of hold the community accountable for is making sure that they're presenting accurate information when certain permits are coming up. And if we have a resource that makes it easier for them to provide that information for review during that process, I think that's a noble cause. And then make sure it's all in one spot. Because it is, it's really tricky to make sure you have this bit of information from here, this bit of information from here, and it might be easier for John to stitch those things together, but if you're trying to do that as an untrained lay person, it gets really challenging to do it without hiring professional help. I think also the fact that it can be updated regularly in-house is really big. I mean, I look at the interactive map and there's things on there that are, you know, often a year or two out of date which can be really challenging if you're trying to use that for a project. And I think John's point about bringing in other resources into that. If we have something to your point Jamie that is more nimble and can be edited and maintained in-house, you know, adding Colvert location signs that are in the sign inventory. It seems like we do a lot of work habitually and rework and it's because we're in all of these different systems. And, you know, I know there's a state system for managing and tracking Colvert inventory, but that's in a different system. And you then have to, if you want that in one location, you have to pull it in from another location. So having a resource that pulls in information that can be used in multiple departments throughout the town is hugely efficient, I think. I'm gonna chime in that I also, I have the calisthenics all the time, but I'm also pulling a school map. I'm pulling a pool list of group members versus group names and pulling up other maps and other lists and trying to overlay them. And I have my consensus that it would definitely make my job easier also. I missed, I think you said through about 6,500 numbers that for first year is, how does the- That's your one. And then thereafter it's a $3,000 career maintenance. Roughly speaking, we do have a proposal, but we just wanted to bring this to you. As basic information, we can forward to you the proposal so that you can read it and ask Franco to come and at your convenience when you want a demo. And is it, is the current cost of the maps hosting with CVRPC, is that free? I don't know. We don't know. I think it's just our membership fee. I have never seen a line item for the mapping in here. It's just- The only mapping that we have is our parcel mapping, which is, I don't know what it is now, 3,500 a year, I think, but I don't know what it is. But you're right, they don't keep it up to date. But yeah, but- It's often out of date. Yeah, the issue, John says it- I think we pay CVRPC, something we want to read with any commission a certain amount of the area that joins the club. We do. And that money includes something like 10 hours of support for maps or something like that, but they haven't done it in years. And it used to be when Pam, what's your last name? Pam DeAndrea was at the Planning Commission. I would ask her about when she was going to update. She said, I have to do it in July after the new budget because we've already used this year's budget. So then she couldn't update it until whenever, and sometimes she didn't have time. So, and since she's left, there's been a big hole. It's been very difficult to get it updated. Well, it sounds like we should invite them in for a demo. I'm not sure when. We may have to wait till January. And we've got the budget done. You all might enjoy going to the Eastmont player site. They have both maps. They've got the one that we use based on the ESRI template. And then they've got the CAI one. And you can say you can compare the two side by side. Or John can do that. No, we can't. But it's great. I mean, they must be, like the Google photo that the Google Earth photo they used was from August of this year. And it's up to date. The downside of waiting till January, which I agree we might have to, is if the 6,500 is fine in this budget, we'll want the 3,000 work somewhere into next year's budget. Well, let me see if I can get it in to... How long would they take? Would they spend half an hour with us? They could probably do it half an hour. They could probably do it. You told them half an hour they'd find a way to do it. I think Frank would have to come in to sit. Well, unless he could. Can I just do it right on the TV here? Well, not next time, but... What does that mean? It's a cool, fun thing. CDPRC was budgeted for $22.09. Okay. I called them, it's going to be the same this year. Yeah, it's something like a dollar per person and that's not right, but anyway. Does that sound right to you? Do you want to see a demo first or do the rest of you feel you don't need to? I've played with the earlier one. I would like to see a demo and maybe just ask some other questions about layering of data and data handling and that sort of thing, but so I think it'd be, if it's not a full-blown demo, it'd be nice to get half an hour of time to look at things and ask questions. Yeah, in the next month. Can you guys send me the contact information? Yeah, but you could try. Let's see how the budget goes. Maybe you could do a 530 demo before six o'clock starts. Oh yeah, we're starting to get used to that. Yeah. The six o'clock starts are already supposed to be irregular and now we're pushing for 530. You're already booked at 530 on the 13th, remember that. Why are you booked at 530? Is that the BCA anything? Yeah. And you guys probably got a little late tonight, but I could bring it up on that TV right now if I wanted to see it. Well, I don't want to hold other people up. Maybe we could do it a little later. Let's see how fast we get through the other things. I'd like to hear where you are on the planning process. Are you ready to transfer the plan to us now? I'm sorry. What was the question? I'm back on planning commission. Are you ready to ask us, are you ready to transmit the plan to us for our hearing and warning a vote? Isn't that where we were now? You had a hearing last week. I thought the next step was you gave it to us. Is that right? Yeah, we're probably giving it to you the first week in November. Okay. So we'll get it the next meeting. And then you can hold your hearing whenever you've got a date. Yeah. And as long as the time is between such that we can warn the hearing, have a hearing, and then you can put it as a warning on the March vote. Or we apparently we can now just adopt it. Yeah. That's apparently true. The law has changed. We can do that. But yeah. As I understood it, it would be up to the select board. If they feel they want the town to vote on it, fine. You can still go ahead and do it, but you have to vote that you want to do it that way. And then we have an actual motion to that effect. But tomorrow I'll be sending out all the final technical changes that our editor found and we corrected. And yeah. So I'm gonna be sending it out to the planning commission for a final review. Okay. And what's next? What are you guys planning for the next year? We're taking time off. I don't believe you. Well, we're working on the town plan. We're trying to figure out what kind of questions we want to ask. Gabriella's husband has been very good at starting to write the education section of the town plan. So, you know, we've assigned the various tricks. That's where we are. Do you have anything in particular that you're gonna focus on? Things that you feel need some time and changing? I don't know. You don't know yet till you get into it? Yeah. Housing and natural resources, those are always big deals. Well, that is one thing I've been thinking a lot about lately, the balance between housing and natural resources. There's a lot in the town plan about how there's supposed to be a balance. But having said on the DRB, when you actually get down to it, and you don't really have the tools, I don't actually know how you're supposed to do it. And with the new housing legislation, and what we can do with accessory dwelling units, our town doesn't have a lot of places to put in affordable housing. And we don't have the infrastructure. The commercial area, quote unquote, commercial area we would have are pretty much in real order. We're not gonna be building there. So, when you look at what's available for any kind of development, whether it's, it's very sparse. And so, my concern, I am not a commercial planner, I'm just like, my concern for the town is, I don't know where you're gonna get future income. If you cannot build more houses, which is our taxable rate, and where you get the money from, I just don't know where it's gonna come. And how we would do it if we promote accessory dwelling units that people could put ACUs. A lot of people I know are concerned about short-term rentals, but that is an open mess in terms of the legality. You've got people suing in Burlington, their new ordinance. It took Duxbury two years to make their short-term rental laws. So, I mean, that's a very iffy thing. And I went out on Airbnb, and there are a lot of people that have Airbnb's here in Calis. We have a person that's got a five-bedroom house that they rent out for 700 bucks a night. So, and there's other people that do 300 bucks a night. And so, you know, there's a lot of that. Could that become a source of income? I mean, what does it take to do a local option tax off of Airbnb's because that becomes income to you, to the town, I mean, you know, what's the sense? So, have we ever thought about anything like, who was that woman we talked to, Michelle? Peter Welsh's. Yeah, Michelle Monroe. Monroe talked, she was at the CV Fiber thing. And she, we had a little chat with her about that. And she talked about, it was the Center for Rural Development, I think, right? Am I remembering this correctly? I'll need to go back and look. But how they can bring communities together to talk about those kinds of things. And she gave an example of- A VCRD, Vermont Council on Rural Development, the community visits. Yeah, she talked about how in, they did a project up in Montgomery where they determined that what they needed was a community septic, because they couldn't afford a sewer. And how they did it, the community came together and they built a community septic and were able to get a bunch of affordable housings around that. So maybe we should be thinking about reaching out to some of those organizations. Yeah, if we can find them. There's another person that came across my email that Melanie really would appreciate, a very professional planner at Landscape Architect. There's a lot of other people out there that can facilitate community-wide meetings. So we're struggling of who to find, what their cost is. And that's really gotta be the next step before you rewrite any, really write a town plan, or rewrite a town plan. How are you gonna do it? I really encourage that. Yeah, if you could, if you have the energy, go ahead. Yeah, and I guess short of soliciting that input, I guess that going through the town plan, I think most people in the community would agree that the aspirations within there are articulating things that we all largely as a community still support. But as Anne was saying, the path forward or even the impact of the ordinances to date are hard to suss out in there. And then that becomes what gets debated in the short of any particular guidance on specifically how to do something one way or the other. And one thing that strikes me is how old the data is that is in the town plan that are supporting that rationale. And you really can't, you don't get the sense that you're making decisions on real data that is from the last five years, 10 years, or at this point, even 15 years. And so I'm curious whether or not there, I think it's a resource like that, like the mapping system or more resources that make the data more readily available so that something like the town plan can be a more of a living document that is what have we built in the last year? And maybe not look at it as like just purely subdivisions or single unit houses, but the ADU units. I mean, I think there's a really good conversation to be had around the ADU units that it's easy to fixate on them for short-term rental, but that's also passive income and a real way for somebody to afford living in a community that's already really expensive to live in, particularly as you enter into retirement and want to protect that income when you're facing fixed income. So, but that information is missing from my perspective in the town plan. I agree. I don't know how you write a town plan unless it is a living document and the way these standards for the legalities of what we have to follow are X, Y, Z to come in and say, I'm gonna have a living document and they wanna see what you're writing on from now from this point on, but I agree. I have my personal viewpoint and I don't wish to make that public. All right, I would love to keep going on this, but I wanna give the other people time. And I appreciate, I mean, I am John and I both appreciate that. I mean, being on the planning machine is pretty challenging when you're writing a town plan and that's why I plug with somebody. You know, we need young people. What is it? I don't wanna be telling somebody what this town's gonna do 10 years from now because I'm old and it's gotta be somebody 40 or 50 that knows that there's gonna be a future here and what do they want? Do they want co-generational housing units, which I think are wonderful, but I already put it. Maybe if we had a good septic and water system, what's the grant, how many millions of dollars does that take? I mean, so it's all kind of like I said, I'm not a planner. I need to hire a professional planner, I need to have. I appreciate it and I appreciate your time. Sorry, our intent wasn't to make you feel more tired than you are. It's just good to have these discussions together once in a while. Anybody else, anything else on time? Well, I would make a motion, or I guess not a motion, but I would strongly support the adding with that $5,000 in the reserve funds for that type of plan. I think we're gonna face that when we get to the budget. Are you asking to take it out of this year's budget? Not out of this year's, I think what Jen was asking was to have it $5,000 to be contributed in this next fiscal year, as opposed to stepping it down to $2,500. What we'll do is we'll ask Sandra to put all those things into the budget and then we're gonna have a marathon night when we're just gonna go for the whole thing with very sharp pencils, I imagine. I'm just making a public statement in support of the $5,000 for next year's. Okay, thank you. Okay. Shall we turn to a conservation team now? Larry. I love you guys, I can't talk for the fact. Yeah. Thanks guys. In part, we're gonna go from relatively high tech stuff to relatively low tech stuff and just discuss how much more comfortable that I confess. I'm starting out by doing something that every, everybody talks about effective public speaking and says never do, which is hand out documents to people and then try to start talking about it. So you gave us a whole bunch of the, did you want to? Yeah, those are just samples. Just samples. I'll put it, whatever, and you can put them all back and I'll take them all or keep it. Does anybody else want to? You've all seen these, right? Yeah, okay. Okay, I'm glad you proposed it, which I've gathered you would have all seen. I'll run through the recurring things first and then one of them has asterisks that get us to those pamphlets and then go to the things that are sort of new on here. The, for a number of years now, we've had money in the budget for recording secretary wages. There was a brief and happy time when Cady Lane-Karnas was taking the iron mitts and it's, I would say it's all been downhill from there except that we're on a rise right now because one of our new members, Paul Olanders, agreed to take the minutes and he's doing a superb job far beyond the basics. But if we could find competent, reliable, stenographic help in the community, it would probably be good to use it instead of, some people are good at participating actively in a meeting and taking good notes at the same time. Some people and I in that group are hapless at it, so it's difficult, as you know, to be an active participant in a meeting and taking comprehensive minutes. So, but Paul is doing that at the moment. Larry, where does the 600 number come from? What is that for? It's been in the budget longer than I paid attention to what was in the budget. But if you work it out on some kind of hourly basis, we have, in theory, 12 months of meetings a year plus additional meeting. And so I guess I would work out to about $50 a session to prepare for it, take the minutes, then get the minutes in decent shape through the two rounds of drafts and finals and doing the, now doing the communication with the town's technical expert and handles the website stuff. But as I said, it's not been used for a number of years. There was some, I don't think you can go down that road because it wasn't a decision that the conservation commission made. So that's the first item, the second item the education and training that's also been in the budget I think probably for quite a long time. It's rarely been used occasionally. There are recurring annual events that are put home by the state or the association Vermont Conservation Commissions that have a fees connected with attending, you know. And so that kind of education and training is possible, but it's been relatively rare. We probably should be more active, frankly, at that level than we have been though. The green up, Jamie can probably talk to this more knowledge with an ITAN it just sort of showed up in our budget. I'm assuming that it was just sort of like what we may be talking about with to lay some streams newsletter just looking for a place to house the budget. I don't know, but we don't actively as a commission participate in green up. We don't handle these funds. I said, if whoever is doing it needs them, somebody, the treasurer or somebody could come and take them out of that mine. But I have no recollection of why they're placed here. We get a small green up grant from green up every year, which if we have expenses, I don't think we've actually used the green up budget from the town. That's interesting. At least in the five or six years I've been coordinating it. We left it in because we assumed it was important to some. Yeah. You may have just found us 200 bucks. That line of the year, I'll pay for our hundreds and hundreds of tires. That's true. Yeah, that's right. Exactly amount of something. That came out of the highway budget. The next item which hasn't been funded for the last couple of years, but was prior we put it back in this year is conservation commission expenses, which would be up for things other than the education and training. Part of the rationale I think is that we hope to be a bit more active in outreach to the community, to landowners. There's a whole raft of new legislation, we've got new statutes that have been passed in the last three or four years that affect landowners and their possibilities and that also put an obligation on the town to try to perhaps ratchet up the level of protection that's provided for interior forest blocks and connectivity blocks and those sorts of things. And so I can foresee the need for a more extensive public outreach than perhaps the conservation commission has done in recent years. And potentially there could be expenses involved with preparing materials for that sort of thing. Could that be also for, although you're asking for quite a lot more for this. Well, the proposal that we had here was to put additional money if beyond what shows up on this formal document into the line of education and training, but obviously I think it's probably going to be replaced if it were approved. The next item, a really important one. Can I ask you another one about that last one? Would that include any legal expenses if you were to consult an attorney and do you have much occasion to do that? We don't. In the past, I've not personally dealt with situations in which the conservation commission had to be working with an attorney. My perhaps naive assumption has always been that if we needed an attorney, we would go through the select board and make our case for more. The conservation fund, this fairly limited document in terms of the timespan it covers sort of makes it look like the FY24 budget jumped the amount put into the conservation fund from 5,000 to 8,000, but if you go back and look, I can't remember now how many, for a number of years it was at 800 and the previous select board simply decided that they weren't going to do it at that level. We're asking, I'm hoping that it can be restored. Probably many of you know, perhaps about some of these things more than I do, but the conservation fund over the years since it's existed has played a vital role across a range of activities that result in conserving land. Most recently, in most years, recently we've been a small player who is working with a dig player from our land trust and or the housing and conservation board because they need to be working in tandem to obtain conservation easements of various kinds that will sort of maintain the status of valuable farmland as well as forest land. In fact, it's used for farmland in recent times has probably been more important. The Armstrong farm was one of our most recent uses of the conservation fund as if we were a small player with the Vermont land trust. How much did the town put into the Armstrong farm conservation fund? That's a good question. With a little trouble, I can maybe pull it up, but I don't recall it was probably in the vicinity of $20,000, just to guess. The most recent use of the fund and the one that really took it down was the support that the conservation fund provided to the Memorial Hall. And again, relative to all the vast amounts of money that they were, well, I think that they were able to obtain or more properly put the vast amounts of money they were required to spend to get it to the point it is today. I think China wants to provide an answer. Did you know? I have a question or a recommendation, I guess, on the conservation fund. Oh, should we let Larry finish first? Well, I think what I'm hearing and your question and in his response is, what would help the residents of the town would be if you could provide a list of what all the conservation fund has spent in the last 10 years. What, however long does it take? From its origin, that's not hard, I got it. Yeah, and I think that needs to be published as a reminder of what it is that conservation fund is for. We hear it in rumor. Okay, yeah, it went to Hulu Farm and it did something with something else in Memorial Hall. But I think it's nice to have it in light of light. Did they get a report? And does the Conservation Commission have a town report? An annual report that goes into the town report. Because it'll probably fit in the table pretty neatly. Yeah, well, I'm not sure. It's, the table that we have would probably take up a lot of space. I'm not sure. No, I'm talking about just a simple list of what year and how much and what project. Okay, well, that's all our list is, but it's still, you know. It's that long, really. There are probably between 10 and 15 projects on there at least. That's still a small table, actually. Yeah. Well, I can certainly do that. And it's a good idea. Do you know roughly what's in the fund now? A little over $47,000. We contributed, the fund contributed $50,000 to Memorial Hall, which went to them, I think, in two increments. I was a little participating person. I was a little uneasy about that request until it became clear to me that there is a significant issue and factor there about the shoreline on the pond that's on their fairly extensive amount of shoreline on the property. And so this was seen by the Conservation Commission as a support for a conservation issue and that is maintenance and protection of the shoreline. They also have a small amount of woods, but I don't think anybody, you don't plan to do anything with it. Eric Sorenson did a survey of it as a part of the process that they went through. But I don't think anybody has any, at least that's what Rowan told me, that they don't have any plans to just leave it like it is. Okay, then the next thing will get us into the first of two, sort of, well, one of them is an order. Actually, before we move on, is there a housing fund? Does Calis have a housing fund? Anybody know? A housing fund? Yeah. Well, like a conservation fund. You mean to help purchase housing? To, if VHCB was doing something in Calis. Oh, I see. And that there was a conservation fund that would be used towards, a small gesture on the part of the town. I'm just wondering if we have a accordant housing fund. Not that I'm aware of. Okay. Not that I'm aware of. Not that I'm aware of. Not that I'm aware of. No. Not that I'm aware of. Not that I'm aware of. Not that I'm aware of. Not that I'm aware of. Not that I'm aware of. I know a much larger conversation question, but I have often thought to myself in my head, theoretically, what if every town's conservation commission was a housing and conservation commission so that there was a built-in balance with that? Just a thought. We don't have to go into it right now. That might require some staff. That sounds complicated. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. The conservation commissions are creatures of the statute. I don't know that that means they would be precluded from doing anything else. I just know that it would be terrifying to me to get perfectly honest. I don't know. I don't know. Well, we have two sides of what I think this town and similar towns are facing. We've already been talking about one of them. I don't take a lot of time talking about the others, but it's the need to have some kind of viable growth which I think admirably the state seems to have promoted the idea as the town of having growth as much as possible in village districts. I don't know how you make that work so that land is developed in those districts, but it's probably more that could be done to pay attention to that. Until we get sewer systems, I don't know how you do that. Well, you can't do that because most of those villages are already in river corridors. Yeah. They're gonna be flatly denied to continue development. You can't, the economy is... But that is a longer discussion. It is not a discussion, but I do... I don't think about that as we're discussing it. And I'm talking about things that are way outside of my pay grade, but it's struggling to listen to it that, yeah, that's probably true, but there's a limit to the boundaries of those river corridors and there are hills around all of these villages. So maybe the village districts are gonna have to be expanded somehow. Speaking personally, but I think that following a little bit of the state's policy views on this be a lot better to do that and have developments like the one that took place in Maple Corner and to have regular eating away at roadside or... Can I plant a thought seed with you, Larry? So when I see the words education and training, I immediately think of budget and funding that gets spent on bringing in expertise to train the Conservation Commission and or the public, as opposed to that being a budget that is then used for publicizing the work of the Conservation Commission. So I wonder if, I can't remember how long it was, like maybe a year and a half ago, I think the Conservation Commission initiated a meeting or a presentation from Eric to the select board at the time to go over some of the relatively, not new data, but information or data that was informing some of the habitat blocks and that sort of thing that we're getting new attention or relatively new attention. And I think that that was a great presentation by Eric. And it didn't cost anything, but I think that there may be times when one of those types of presentations could cost something and I would think that it would, I think it would be beneficial for the Conservation Commission to be looking out for opportunities for presentations like that to be given and the event that it needs to be paid for that it's coming out of a budget and you're actively engaging a dialogue around celebrating both the things that the funds are being applied to and impacts that are being made. You mentioned bringing the attention of new ordinances or statutes to the attention of the community. For me, that falls in the realm of the Planning Commission. They're the ones who are living and breathing those statutes and ordinances. But I think that it would be beneficial for celebrating some of the contributions of the funds to specific projects and more than just a table, I think, in the town report because I think the context, as you'd mentioned about Memorial Hall is important. It's important context to get out in front of the public as opposed to just a spreadsheet that said $50,000 got contributed to this project and then leaving people to their own devices to sort out whether or not that was a worthwhile endeavor. But I agree with Gabrielle that the balance or striking the balance of having a more kind of collaborative message from the Conservation Commission that helps weigh those challenges as I think something in the long term that would benefit the community and looking at it as opportunities to spend community funds and educating or bringing expertise into the community. We're obviously not the Planning Commission. We hope, however, that with regard to the natural resources section of it that we can be a helpful partner with them and Eric Sorenson has already agreed to help in that process. But we're going to have, at our next meeting, which is November the 1st, perhaps the entire meeting will be devoted to a discussion about the coming town planning and what from a conservation perspective is important about the natural resources section in particular and looking forward to working with Melanie King who's been designated as the Planning Commission's point person for that. As I alluded to earlier, I don't know what form the natural resources section will ultimately have in a new town plan, but just today I sent to Commission members an email that had links to, first of all, the current plan and then our two natural resources inventories that have been done since that plan was created. And then, importantly to what's called Vermont Conservation Design, which some of you may be familiar with, it's increasingly, and I think now definitively established as providing the guidelines for important things like habitat blocks and so forth, but other things as well, that need protecting in the state going forward. So I provided that and then there's about three or maybe more, I forget, statutes that directly impinge on land use and land protection. Act 171 changed the planning rules to require town plans to include information about what interior forest blocks, what connectivity blocks and so forth a town has and also to the town can indicate how it would like to increase the protection for those and the statute expressly encourages towns to do that. There's been a change in the laws concerning current use so that it will now be possible for certain specified parcels of land that have a high percentage of ecologically sensitive areas to continue to qualify for current use but devote their land to passive management, old growth regeneration, it's called various things now but that's really what it is. Is that in effect now? It is, it was passed last year and the effected in your studies as there always are, they were supposed to take place which were done. I think July 1st of this year was when landowners could apply for that and that's a major sea change even though they estimate that only about 15% of the properties that are in current use would even be eligible to think about this and of course it's not that a few landowners would probably even want to do it but if you want to you can't. And is that something you could help landowners with? Is that what you're thinking? It's possible, that's one of the areas of I think outreach to landowners in particular that the conservation commission needs to be more serious about than we have in the past because this raft of new legislation is potentially not having an impact on, the last one around this, I may have skipped one of these digressions but something known as the 30 by 30 statute or Act 59 in which the legislature just this year set out a framework mostly to do studies but basically to set out policy goals, very definite policy goals about increasing the amount of land in the state that is subject to conservation easements that's permanently protected to get that, the bill of course is to get that to 30% of the total land, not just the total forested land as I understand it, total land in the state to get 30% of it in seven years in a protected conserved status, not just forest but forest that has a conservation easement on it. This is a climate resilience strategy. I assume this is a sort of a climate resilience strategy. Oh yes, I mean the whole ugly melange of things, a climate change, species eradication, invasive species, all the things that are facing our environment. And as I said, it doesn't actually have much with the teeth in it in the first instance, it's a study that interestingly they've given the Vermont Housing Conservation Board that kind of lead on working with A&R to first of all, first of all to see if they can categorically can list all the properties in the state that currently meet that conserved status in one way or another. It's a potentially big problem though because my understanding is the Vermont Land Trust is at present not willing to provide their services, I mean if you pay them a lot I don't know but provide their services for tracks below 200 acres, which is a lot of tracks. Wow, you've got an exciting year ahead. There's a lot of stuff to think about. There are the occasional land transactions in sensitive areas and as it happens there's one, there is a, not a transaction, but there's a huge property on the market on the west side of town that's right in the middle of the interior forest block designation that the state has. I've informally contacted a couple of folks who are in the business of conservation easements like the Vermont Land Trust to see if there's any interest, but we're talking about a track that the Essing Price is one in 695,000 dollars a month. So, okay, I'm sorry. Yeah, I guess we better move back to the budget. Yeah, so there's that. Please keep the conservation fund at the current $8,000 level. I mean, I know it's difficult in a year that was better, we would honestly have been coming in asking, can you please up it a little bit because I think it's funds will be used if we can find an effective, a feasible way to make that happen. Obviously we're not gonna be buying any million and a half dollar properties anytime soon. Now, finally, I'd like to say a word about, well, two things. The weed whacker, first of all, we know about that as we've talked about before. The kind of joint effort that we had this year formally under the Conservation Commission and many of our members participated, but also with the lakes and streams folks and several of them there as well. To go after frag mobbies, we clearly, we realized pretty quickly that we weren't gonna get rid of frag mobbies in Calis, but there might be ways that we could keep it in place but it's very time and energy intensive because it requires going out often in water almost to your waist and cutting the plants and you'd have to do it every year. So I don't think any of us are proposing that the Conservation Commission long terms becomes by itself the invasive species eradicator. Just one plant took a heck of a lot of time this summer but we were encouraged about how efficiently and quickly it's possible to attack a large pack of patched frag mobbies if you have a good piece of equipment to do it instead of just... So is that for one weed whacker? Well, as I, I'm not sure if I said it on here, I may have said it any more than I said that I think Marvin just said with you. We're not really in a place where we would go out tomorrow knowing we're gonna buy a specific piece of equipment. There's just, it just really complicated when you get to have the weeds on these things and a couple of other people on our commission, people on the commission have been looking at it more than I have, I think, but I just have just a sample of these things. That's right, you think so. They just showed some, but what I had suggested was that the $6,000 figure is probably enough to buy a couple of inexpensive ones which often tend to go for the, in the range of $200 to $300. Are they underwater weed whackers? I don't understand. No, no, it's all about water. Okay. There are underwater weed whackers, but not that anybody around here has ever seen and we're certainly not asking for it. So don't you have to cut the fragmites at the base? That you're supposed to cut it within four inches of the ground, that's true. So what's the significance of the weed whacker? Well, the, I'm sorry, the weed. Because then the fragmites is in the water, right? Right, right, but no, not all of it. Not a lot of it is not actually. Okay. A lot of it is in wetland, adjacent to the water. Or like on the banks. Yeah, yeah. There's a big patch over by the adenette co-op that we attacked pretty well this year. And do you do like community cleanup days, community fragmite these days? Well, we've tried that. We got a little leery about getting the public too actively involved. We would, we could have probably done that with waivers, but all of a sudden, the horny thing about lawsuits and so forth pops up. And we had one landowner who refused to give us permission to come on and cut it, unless we signed waivers. And like a fool, instead of saying fine here, we signed the waivers, I tried to teach him why he didn't need to be worried about that. And that didn't go very far, apparently. So we'll, if we go back at this, I'll probably take a different approach with that particular landowner, because it's the one of the ones over on North Calis Road that I think Jamie is familiar with. It's pretty big. So that's, we were encouraged enough by our experience this year to think that it's not something we should just let go. I'm not sure how we can expand it. At most geographically with Fragmites, but also with other plants, there's some real motor bears coming down in five. But we've asked for this basically to be able to go forward in what we did this year. And using the town's weed whacker with a metal blade on it was extremely successful. So this would give you two weed whackers then if we were to buy another one. It depends on whether or not, my guess personally is that if we look at it, that those weed whackers are gonna be inadequate for the level of use. That is probably gonna end up being one weed whacker that's closer to industrials scale, if you will, because little ones, you need a big blade and you need a durable machine. But that's our request for that. And now finally, something that I wish I hadn't said anything about any of the things that kept all and keep all my time to talk about this, because it's something that I personally think has been a huge boon to the town over the years. I should say, talking about these newsletters is that I've been a member of the Lakes and Streams Committee longer than I've been a member of either the Conservation Commission or the Historic Preservation Commission, it's the first public thing that I did here, so I just want that to be on the table as I talk about this. But the entire Conservation Commission agreed with the Lakes and Streams people who hoped to be able to revive these newsletters, at least to the extent that one a year could be published, that this has been, notwithstanding what at least one member of the former select board thought it was a waste of time and money, that they have in fact been useful. They're in some ways, they're probably the best example of outreach to landowners about environmental matters that I'm aware of that have never happened in Calis. They're the, in the early years, long before, I didn't even do it, there had been some grant money that a parent has used in parts of that, but that apparently went away. Yeah, that's a good start. And the select board, as you would have seen from this list, which I think is reasonably accurate, the select board has in the past funded it and for a number of, it's the most recent years in which it did before the funds were cut off, it was funding enough to, at that time, pay for two issues a year, which is what had been in practice. We're asking, or we're encouraging you, if you can, to find the funds for $15,000, which would cover a part of the least expensive single issue that could be printed at least based on the estimate we received here locally. Meaning it would not be full color like this? Well, what it means is, and Noreen Bryan, who is the chair of it and has been for many years and has been a prime actor in all of this, which is why it is of such high quality, in my opinion. She couldn't be tonight, she's sick, and I said, yeah, please don't come in this fall. But, I'm sorry, I lost my train of thought right here. It has to, if it would be less fancy than this. Well, some corners would have to be cut, but she's committed to trying to raise any balance with funds from the donors in the community. Is she the one who would write it and put it together? She would be one of the main actors, as she was in the past. Several of the other folks who were active for a number of years are no longer here, one of them now lives in Southern England. But we've got the wherewithal to to get the operation going again, and next year could be a very important year to provide helpful information to owners of properties, especially with Lake or Pond frontage, if the planning commissions propose zoning regulations which we hardly endorse are approved. It's going to be a need to educate the landowners about what the new standards are, and that's one of the things that these newsletters have historically been used for. I see it to good advantage. If you read them, they seem really useful and helpful in any event. So that's one of that invasive species on the ponds, at least the ones that are pond-adjacent, which is also an area where good landowners' understandings could be incredibly helpful in retargeting the growth of these. Where's 15,000? I don't see 15,000. 1500. Huh? It's not on this, there are a series of estrus up here because our proposal was to take the money from education training, at least on a one-time basis, and then add to that to reach a total of 1,500, which is a couple of hundred dollars cheaper than a single four-page newsletter would be. But frankly, we would try, even though it's, we'd cost maybe $500 more than that. These things are much more effective when they're six pages rather than four. And you don't want to completely cut out the pictures and things because that's what gets people's attention. It's been asked by folks, so there have been a number of questions I won't, maybe I shouldn't assume, if you have any questions. I was prepared to launch them to something else, but I may just be wasting your time. Yeah, I think we do have to wrap it up, but questions, anybody? I mean, the obvious to me is why not just do it online and have links at a variety of locations and maybe print up a few. It doesn't need to be on glossy paper. People are really used to the fact that desktop publishing has changed, mail has changed. I basically throw out all of my mail nowadays. Every bill I pay is online, and I just think there are better ways to communicate information. That's exactly what I was gonna say something about, so thank you for raising it. We may be wrong, I may be wrong, but there's really only one feasible way in this town to try to get that sort of thing available to people over the internet, of course, and that's the front porch forum. Well, we can post it on the town website with a link on the front porch forum. Yeah, all of those things would be possible, and I recognize that to a certain extent that I'm obviously presenting an old guy's perspective on this. But if the criticism is not enough people read it when it appears in your mailbox, I think I would argue that I don't have any facts to support is just my intuition about these things, that if you're talking about somebody seeing a thing in front porch forum, first of all, they've got to be on front porch forum. Second of all, they've got to see that day's issue. Third of all, they've got to click that link, and we'll say, may or may not do it, it may or may not stay with him, and I'm just, and I think probably Norian and the rest of the folks are just kind of old fashioned. I think if you've got it in your hand, you're likely to take it home, and if you take it home, you're likely to read it. And if these things are being thrown away by people who don't hear in the post office, we're thinking maybe we can find a way to collect those having available for the public in a stand at those sites because there's- You can't dig through the recycling at the post office. You can't dig through the recycling at the post office. No, I'm not talking about recycling. I'm talking about taking the exact opposite, taking them out of the trash cans. Putting- No, but I was saying you can't rifle through stuff that people have discarded that is mailed to them. Sure, take the post office. They have post office. I mean, they have post office. Could we post a sign that says, instead of- I don't know if you want to be dumb as you're diving outside of the post office. Yeah, I think we should. Okay, guys. I think Tegan's got children, and so this is a great conversation. Okay. I don't want to be diving in this. It's already after eight o'clock. And I'd like to turn, we still have to talk to Tegan. Barbara, did you have something quick you want to say? I want to just offer another resource if you wanted to do a digital newsletter, which is back in March of 2020 when COVID hit. I met with the select board and the emergency management team and made the suggestion that it was kind of the first real community emergency we were dealing with. And I started collecting every, the email address of everybody who posed to Callis-Front porch forum. So that was three and a half years ago. So I have over 1,100 email addresses of Callis-Front. Wow, Barbara. Wow. So cheeky. I know. And we talked about, I said, is that a breach of confidentiality? And the select board said no. If somebody has posted to Front porch forum, they've put their email address out there. So I would highly recommend that we take that and we have a separate conversation about that because I think we can turn that into an opt-in newsletter very quickly and people can then choose to opt-in to receiving regular emails from our commissions directly from the town. That would have huge value to circulating this information so that it's not getting varied through front porch forum. It's not getting necessarily, I mean, I still think that putting this information more cohesively like on the website and not as an afterthought, but like more deliberately would be huge. But like having and maintaining a town-wide distribution list of emails that have opt-in like that, that could open a lot of really interesting words. So over the years, I've thought of it as use for emergency management. But like when John needs to reach somebody when we need to reach a taxpayer whose check was returned to insufficient funds, we use that list all the time just to contact a person. But with select board approval, we can use it very easily just on a one-time basis like send out a notice saying if you would like to sign up to receive information from us for these reasons. And if they've clicked, yeah, we'd love to. You're gonna get a certain percentage of drop-off, but you could, you could. I love it, I love it. Yeah, so we should explore ways of doing things like that. Not even have to do that, but just send something out with an unsubscribe button. Right. Well, I can talk to you about the legality of that kind of stuff, but for sure, we can develop that very easily. That's really worth exploring. Yeah. Jan, what is your question? This would only reach people who actually post on it, right? Not just people who read it every day. Post, if they post. Okay. My calling comment, and this is more for Larry, when they, in the times past, when the Lakes and Streams sent out a newsletter or whatever, they sent it out, I think, to everybody in town. They did. Okay, I will tell you what some of us on the west side that are not lake owners did. We dumped it into file 13. So you might want to try to do a subset, if you're gonna mail, to all of those people that are on property on the lake, rather than the whole town. And then you've cut your costs of mail. I mean, that's just a suggestion, but I mean, truly. And then it could be made available in public places, around town, with people to pick up. I would pick it up, but I would also read it if it came in my mailbox, because I'm one of those people, just to counterbalance, throw away people, I don't think. I recycle it. It's certainly feasible to go through the records and to be paying the butt, but to actually figure out who all the landowners are. Wouldn't it with a new map and system? Map and system. Map and system. In Barbara's cross-referencing list. We used to take $300 with our $6,000 map. It was not. On a serious note, and I think back to Gabrielle's point, I think that the asking to fund an expensive print once a year, multiple times a year from the commission is worth having a conversation about, but I don't think that you can have that conversation without taking a look at what the budget is for each of the other commissions. And thinking about making equitable contributions to their budgets for communicating their work. We have really important commissions in this community. And I'd say even the $8,000 investment towards the conservation funds, it goes towards important projects, but back to the conversation about investing in a reserve fund for the planning commission, and that is an important fund as well. And while it may not go towards preserving lands, it's an important part of a budget for making a plan and growing sustainably as a town. And so I guess my point in summary would be to if we're going to fund something like that, we need to be having that conversation relative to the funds that we apply to the other commissions. And the communication efforts at least in support to the other commissions. And with that, unless somebody has a burning question, I'd like to give Tegan a little time now. That's pretty easy. All right, thank you, Larry. That was interesting. Thanks for that suggestion, by the way, about the annual report of the Commission. Yeah, I just meant a table in your narrative, not instead of an area. I'm not going to be able to address everybody's suspicions. No, no, no, no, no, I know. Okay, can I have some samples of yourself? I know it, I know it. I'm going to be here. Yeah, yeah. What are you suspicions for? I already, I would go with the trash. I'm going to hold on to one more time. Thank you. Yeah, definitely. Thank you. Yeah. This is yours, okay. All right, Tegan's budget. All right, thank you. I have just wanted elections and general office tonight. Elections only has two lines. It's got postage and other expenses. I did ask her a lot for a postage because we have three elections last year, most year in the budget for one. And postage has gone up significantly. I'm not sure what it's going to be. I'm not sure if the post office is going to go up again. I don't know. It will. So that number went up. Election expenses, Barbara and I talked about. I didn't change that budget. But a postage, are you expecting three elect, do we have three last year? No. We have three. We have three. All right, three of this coming. We're going up. I also notice you have another postage line further down. That's just for our general office, of course. Okay, I see. As opposed, okay. Thank you. Any questions about the elections? And then general office, I see that we used to have contracts and support just all lumped into two giant categories and they have been parsed out into the individual things, which is probably a really good idea. I left those as is. Since Sandra parsed those out, she probably took directly from what we've done in the past. So I didn't mess with those too much. Just a quick note on that is it'd be good to just have it in notes that where it went. Just for us. As far as. In the notes column, the contracts and support, like you said, it got doled out. It did just instead of contracts. Now it says number contract and cost contract and IT contract and instead of support. Oh, okay. And IT consulting. IT consulting did go up a little bit. We called them a lot. We have a lot of questions. There are always a lot of questions. And the more people were going to have in the office as we have a new treasurer and probably a new town administrator and maybe, you know, as new folks are coming on board, we're going to have questions that we can't answer. Education and training have bumped up a little again because we're going to have, I'm still going to be relatively new. The treasurer, I don't know what kind of experience they're going to have, but they're going to be new to our office. The town administrator, I'm assuming, is going to have some training as well that they will require. We're all going to be in that same boat of needing to learn a lot more. Maintenance for the town office. Like it's a great building. I don't see us needing more money on that. Generator maintenance. We took from the Brookfield contract. Facilities, maintenance wages. Currently, the Gospel Hall Award makes 208.35 a month and most years get to bonus. So I applaud you did for that. Phone and internet did bump up. I'm not sure how it's all going to shake out as CD-Fiber goes forward. So that's sort of a solid estimate. And then advertising, I kept to the same. It was really high last year, but we've been advertising for a lot of jobs and I'm hoping by the time we get to this fiscal year, we'll not be needing to advertise quite so much. So you think we could reduce that one then? We could probably reduce it some. I kind of just left it as it was the year before, but if you want to make a note, I'm comfortable putting it down. I'm hoping we won't have to advertise nearly so much. This is from Forge Forum. Is there like a monthly subscription or you don't get a free municipal subscription? No, we don't have to. They let us post as much as we need to do this municipality. Well, I get caught off sometimes. I beg on them, they work out. They help give me three more for the month. Then ask me to do the posting because I don't post nearly as many times. But Tegan, did you say phone and internet will go up so we need to budget more than 5,000? No, the 5,000 that was estimated before, I think is as good. It's gone up from the 4,000. Original, okay, I see. Okay. Postage, I'm not sure why that got boosted to 3,000 this year. That was, we only spent 500 last year. So I brought it, I'm happy to bring it back down to six or 700. I don't know why it wasn't high if anyone had a reason. Mailing. Do you have the elections this year when you're gonna be mailing out ballots and all that? But that's, I have a difference in election with postage for elections. What about mailing the town report? Where does that come from? That goes with elections. Elections? No. So you do have to mail that out. You didn't know that? Tax bills. That's, I'm assuming we have the 507 from fiscal year 23. Yeah. I don't see it changing dramatically from that. Okay. But I also wasn't sure why it's gone up so much. The supplies seems good. Oh, there might have, wasn't there some special ballot you had to, that the town had to pay for? That would be under elections. But yeah, that would have been under elections. But it was additional and probably unplanned for. Which are you talking about the land? The zoning one? That didn't land anything? That got canceled? That's gonna be looked into. No, it was, it'll come to me. Hold on. They're supposed to take care of part of that. Sorry. No, don't wait for this to come out, remember? Office equipment, I kept the same budget amount. Heat and electric. I put it down because it was only 3,200 last year. I don't see that changing with an asterisk on that, which I will come back to. Town office security, we don't have any. And I keep getting asked why not? Since that's where actually most of our most valuable things are and I don't have an answer for people. We don't have an alarm, I thought. And by that, I mean it's super secure and it's most secure to leave the whole town. So we have one here and we have one at the garage, but not there. Oh, interesting. I assume we did. Yeah, we should fix that. Yeah. Sorry, just getting back to, because I remembered, it was that the towns had to incur the cost of mailing every general election ballot. Yeah, that's why I put the, while I put postage. Yeah, that's why I had the increased postage of general elections. Are you thinking of a different cost? No, that's what I was trying to remember though. It's good to remember though. Always feel free to jump in. I feel much better, even though. When it comes to software, I kept it the same. Jordan and I have a meeting with RV Tech next week to discuss kind of where we are, what we need to be replacing, because we're supposed to be replacing things as they age out every couple of years and then our server needs to be replaced every five, seven years, that's a big chunk of change. That's why we contribute to the Tech Reserve Fund. The other option when it comes time for server replacement is going to the cloud. It's also a chunk of change. Last time I talked to the folks at RV Tech, they said it nets out to similar, the annual cost of being in the cloud versus the every five, seven years cost of doing the server. But now that we are here in the land of CD5'er and our internet is fantastic, now that it's a reality, it's a question we need to talk about as in what are the pros and cons? What do they recommend moving to the cloud? What do they not? So that's something I'm not prepared to talk to you about yet, but we are scheduling with them next week. You're talking about the Reserve Fund right now? Yeah, the software and the Reserve Fund. The software and Reserve World. So how many computers will we be maintaining? Is this just for computers and printers? And the server. And the server. That's a big black box. Okay, and how often do we replace the computers? I think every five years is the recommended amount. I don't know the last time we replaced any. We haven't since I've been here yet, I've got the new one for John in the spring. Do you remember the last time anyone got a new one? Yeah, I don't remember, but our architect has all of that. They track it. So we have some kind of a capital budget into a rotating schedule. Yeah, good. So that's why I don't know why that number went down to $2,500 last year, but I brought it back up because if we're gonna be paying for a tens of thousands of dollar server and continuing to update our computers, then we're gonna need to bring it back up. So, but if you pay for, like, say we choose to be in the cloud. Yes. And then it's just steady every year. The budgeting is just a little. We may not need to do a reserve fund. If we do it that way, if we are in the cloud and everything is pretty consistent year after year, I don't know, that's the thing to talk about if we decided to make that step into being a cloud. Okay. Wow, thank you. Oh, and then the last, the average is air conditioning. Barbara and I are tough. We are fine, but archivists say you should keep records below 78 degrees. Our server was over 80 degrees this summer and it's not supposed to be. We had a little fan on it and we were doing our best. Our records probably got into the 80s. It's not great for them. So I called up the efficiency Vermont. He hasn't seen the building, but given the parameters I gave him, he said a dual inverter AC unit, four or 500 bucks. They make them now so that the part that drips in is loud is outside and it's just the cool air inside. And he's got one in his house and he loved pieces. He said if we were going to be renovating the town office and we wanted to look at what are the wall mounted heat pumps for dehumidifying and air purifying offsetting heating bill and air conditioning, all those, that's great, those are awesome, but that's 10 times the cost of an air conditioner. So that was kind of his advice. If you don't need it and it's, you don't, all those bells and whistles aren't going to do anything for us, just stick with the. It wasn't even overall that hot of a summer. So imagine like if it had been like 90s, 100s. And that building is in a cool spot. It's got the same orientation as my house. So it's in the shade, it doesn't get a lot of sun. It does get the sun to later in the day. I better talk to John and Donna and they were like, when we built that building, it wasn't getting this hot in Vermont by a long shot. And so they didn't even think about putting air conditioning in. We would need it. It's on a concrete slab in a shady spot. But now. We've got an energy assessment coming up. That's not a possibility. Oh, they're doing that building too. That's right. Oh. They're doing the town office too? Yeah. But isn't that a very recent build? The town office. Yeah. Didn't it get energy? It just paid off the 20-year loan. The last time I was in there, I thought, as somebody had said, it had been recently done. But I'm glad to hear that it hasn't. Because if it's getting 80 degrees on the server, then there is a need to re-evaluate that. Very young. What is the source of heat now? OK? Yeah. Yeah, it's in the floor, right? Yeah. Delightful in the vault when it's cold outside. So it's a radiant slab? Yes. So the other thing to look at right now is, I'm surprised that it's very frustrating that efficiency Vermont's not talking about them. But there's the air-to-air heat pumps that they are now not really incentivizing that much, but there are air-to-water heat pumps, which are direct replacements for any hydronic system. And they were really super pen. They're also one of the highest incentives that they're still offering. It's like $8,500 for the installation of a unit, which pretty much pays for the compressor. And it does domestic hot water. It does radiant floors. It does blower units as well for air conditioning. So find somebody who's willing to have an air-to-water heat pump conversation. Yeah, I'm emailing myself to do that right now. And much more efficient. And they're way more efficient. And there's a Canadian company that just, that makes them, and they're rated down to negative 30 degrees and are still operating efficiently for generating heat, just like mind-boggling. Two-maker knows a lot about that. Tegan, thank you. Any questions, any further questions for Tegan? Thanks for thinking about that. How are you doing? I mean, are you feeling settled in, and like you're getting the job? Most of the time, yeah. Today I got to educate someone in a bank. So I felt like I needed something. Good. OK, we'll just move on to reports. And Ann, what about roads? You got anything to tell us? By the time we get to this, it's always like some stupid people. But what I've already shared with you, guardrails are ordered pre-weathered, the way we like them. The company has to install guardrails for the state contracts first, and then they work on the town. So hopefully that'll be soon. We might have to have a conversation about Moscow Woods Road. If we get snow, we don't have guardrails because we may not want people on local traffic going up and down it. We are probably going to keep the dump for now until the single-stage geologist can come and look at our actual dump, and it's possible. You mean you're going to keep the transfer station at the rec station down at the rec field? Thank you for clarifying. And we are going to put some gravel in the driveway to kind of limit how many it gets on the weekends. And the company, Perian sends us, does the trash pickup actually likes that location. And they say it's working out well for them. So they're happy to stay there. But do you have some people that really want to give back on to Moscow? So how close is Singleton? Singleton, we had a bit of a couple with brackets that went around that 12 foot pipe. The people that made it had made the brackets. They were set too far forward, so they didn't tighten. So they did a rush order and set new ones that were the exact same and wrong. I said, I'm going to carry them. So Jay Hutchins got a welder, and they welded them. So they've been tacked on in the first place. And they're sitting at the top of the culvert, so it's going to be, yeah, so they got it done. So they're still moving along. So hopefully, because they would like to be done as much as we would like them to be done. Yes, we would. Yeah, just dragged it out a little bit longer. And I think those are it for now. Gabrielle, I asked you in email that we ever talked. So wait, was that the road report? I'm sorry, I just went to the restroom. So did you get the FEMA report yet? No, do you have a FEMA report? Yeah, and Scott is here to deliver it in person. So let's let Scott do that. And it's brief. Yeah. Thank you. Today was the deadline for listing the roads. The dam is considered a road that we're going to ask for a remersed report. And so we were towing in Charlotte, and I met with Michelle this morning. We've been meeting with her weekly. And I pretty agree that we've got a complete list of about 60 items on it. How many roads? Well, I have a very, it's kind of a messy draft of a list of the roads. They're about 60. That's 60. And the amount that we've paid out is about 1.5 million. We've actually spent about a million so far. So that is, oh, it is 1.5 million. We're going to ask for a reimbursement for 1.5 million. We'll get 75% of that. It's a long, complicated, drawn out, obnoxious process. Obviously, the question is, why are we going to see the money? And nobody will commit to that. I talked to Kim at the state today. She is normally crystal clear and transparent in everything. And she could really come up with a way of letting us know. So it'll be months. We're going to have to hit that. We're going to have to borrow that. Yeah. But we made that headline. We had all the documentation for all of us, for all of us. And it's just a question of clerical work, getting all these six-year-old roads into little separate corners in the exact way that Kim wants to see them. Tony and Charlotte and I are going to work tomorrow, probably a long day, copying and putting these in folders and trying to make progress. Some of our bigger ones, Moscow Woods is over 100,000. This is over 70,000. So we'll focus on the big ones first, trying to get the reimbursement going for that. But we're trucking along and getting there. But there's no greed at the end of the tunnel yet. Yeah, wow. Amazing work. Thank you so much. Tony has just been awesome. He's one of the people who has a great mind for collecting, knowing what we need and getting hold of it and putting it in the same place. I thought Moscow Woods was about 500,000. Did you say 100,000? Yeah, there's a couple of different ways. It's hot chains. I haven't been seeing the bellies for that one. That's what I was thinking of. There's a good thing. You don't forget the $400,000. Well, we knew it was going to be. And that was just for Moscow Woods. There's four, we're asking for reimbursement for four incidents on Moscow Woods. Oh, OK. Bank above Fletcher's, the hugely washout, and then the slides and washouts between the dump and town. So it's a long move with a lot of. And you said so far we think it's going to be one and a half million, not the 1.7 that was originally estimated? Well, we're committed to the names of the roads, not to the amount of money yet. But the way Tony's been estimated, it's 1.5. OK. That's what we're at. And we're going to continue to meet with Gabrielle and try to complete the bellies as soon as we can. Then, I mean, this is just Gabrielle helping us put together what she expects female to want. She says to tell a story. And then that has to go to some bureaucrats in Washington and they'll pick a way at it and send it back to us and ask for more. I think you mean Michelle, right? You're talking about Michelle helping you? Yeah. Yeah, because I'm not that helpful, so I cannot take credit for that. It is getting late for all of us. So we're very impressive. Thank you. And we don't need Jeff Gander yet. Right. Right, we haven't had to call on Jeff. Yeah. OK. Thank you, Scott. Were you able to put together an ARPA report? Yeah, I can do that very briefly. So what this is referring to, gang, is that the town of Arpa received an ARPA grant for $479,590. And basically, there are some time periods where it's easy to do things with that ARPA money, which is basically can be used for any general government function, the municipal ARPA dollars. And so the town of Calis has attributed most of it, allocated most of it. There is a remaining balance that is yet to be allocated. And this all arose because Sandra just realized the town did not have an ARPA file, really, of any kind. So she asked me to tell her everything I knew about ARPA. So that's what I did today. And I sent her the two key files. And I'll walk down with some papers and see if she wants any of the rest of it, which is not much. I didn't inherit anything from Denise or the prior select board. So I just had this very useful but rudimentary spreadsheet that Sharon Fannin made. And it says what the amount is, what the project is, and when the select board approved it, and some notes on it, and a contact person. And yeah, so she did that after they accidentally overspent it. And yeah, it's pretty handy. Glad I have it. But back to the time frame issue, which is that the Curtis Pond Association had asked if some of its expenditures could come out of its ARPA fund instead of the CPA other fund. And the answer in this particular case is no, because it has to be done within the fiscal year. So for example, in March when we had Wendy Wilton here, and we did the thing where we took the $50,000 for the removable highway radar signs. And that got essentially on the ARPA spend and then made to come out of the highway fund. And that's why we now have still a remainder of ARPA funds of like $33,000 yet to be committed. And furthermore, there is, Sandra has been working with Katie Buckley from Vermont League of Cities and Towns. And Katie said we should, by the end of the year, even though you don't have to commit ARPA until December 31, 2024, Katie Buckley is giving the town the advice that it should figure out what it wants to do with the 33,000 sooner than later. And furthermore that there is a very specific wording of a resolution that the select board, when it's ready, will do for all of these items just to be really sure that it's being done the way the feds want it to be done. She wants us to go back and do it for each one, even the one you've already spent. Yeah, there's only the only one that's already been spent is CB fiber. And that was $200,000. Actually, most of it. Well, the agency management has been spent. They're the generators. Yeah, there's a small amount that has been spent, other than the $200,000. The costs hasn't been spent historically. Yeah. So there was $217,000 for the FY23 reporting that they did, so not that much more than the $200,000, compared to what's left. Well, I should sit down then, or maybe we can make a list of those for the next meeting, and we can do all those. Yeah, yeah, and it might, let's circle back with Sandra about this issue of the 33,000, which because there is a cash crunch, there may be a really good reason to just. Maybe you have something that we talked about. Well, actually, or the spending of every penny we have on flood recovery, and not FEMA money, too, in the pot. So there are. But anyway, so that is the archer report. Can you give me the number at the very beginning of your report, what you said, what was the total of ARCA funds that? Yeah, sure, $479,590. Yep, $890. Thank you, Gabrielle. I'm going to skip my homework. Jamie has some great news. Petulay. Curtis Pond. So after many, many meetings and conversations with the engineers and historic preservation folks, and dam safety, and all kinds of other players in the permitting process of the Curtis Pond dam, we've come up with a potential redesign, sort of a whole different conceptual plan, which would involve instead of a giant concrete wall on the pond side, it would remove but then rebuild something similar to the existing riprap wedge on the downstream side of the dam. So it would maintain just the top two or three feet of stone facade, and the rest would look much like it looks now. And it would include a underground pipe that went under the bottom of the dam. Elbowed up, had a low water emergency thing so you could lower the pond as needed, and then a pipe up to surface level that would act sort of as a second spillway. So this plan is still being engineered. We're still in conversations with dam safety, with historic preservation, with Army Corps of Engineer, all the people. We don't know yet if it's a definite possible, but it's a very likely possible. And the current estimates are that it would save us about $400,000, which would bring the project back into a stone's throw of the budget we were expecting and have raised funds for. The engineers at DNK are very optimistic that we would be able to get all the pieces in place and still begin construction June 1st, 2024. So that's awesome. And it is news to me. And as one of the, I can't get what's in each other in the last 48 hours, which is what it sounds like in place. So kudos. That's freaking awesome that there's an option. And then an alternate that is, yeah, that's great. So to that point, Sandra was kind of asking me the status today, and I gave her the wrong status, because I didn't have a status, because it's OK. But the point is she has to know if we're going for the bond. She's got no tomorrow. So she can start working on it, because it takes. But we can't. It's going to be another week or two. She's, I mean, isn't it so likely that she's going to, that we're going to put in the bond? Well, she could start the application, I suppose. And then if we can't do it, we can stop. I mean, we, what's the deadline to withdraw? Yeah, until up until it's issued, I believe. Let's see. I think, so she, what did she tell me this morning? That was more understanding. I don't know if she's talking about deadline to withdraw. No, my memory is that, yeah, I think it'd be fine to tell her to go ahead. I think it's looking pretty optimistic that we'll be able to get it done this year. Are there additional design expenses for changing the design of the, or are they? They would be minor. They would be minor. It's not a whole re-do of the work that's done. And are we waiting to hear back from whether or not it needs to be re-bid, I guess? Yeah, I'm still waiting. I should know in the next day or two if we can. We either would have to re-bid it or present an opportunity to both people who bid to update their price based on the design change. And that's the direction D&K thinks is most practical and most commonly done. But we're waiting on a town attorney opinion. What about historic preservation? Wouldn't they not love the riprap? So they don't love the riprap. We had a long meeting with them. They also really don't love that the original design went from a five-foot spillway to a 10-foot spillway. And so this new design would maintain the five-foot spillway. And it would eliminate the need for the large concrete wall sticking up above the entire width. And so they didn't offer any formal opinions. But my impression from the meeting was that they're open to either option. They don't love either option, but they're not going to stop the project over either one. Well, the ambulance there now will still be there after the riprap is added. Yeah, so then that would be a good selling point for historic preservation because they would love that. But we're leaving the riprap. You'd only be able to see the top few feet of it. But it'll be there. Yes. Worse comes worse, you can remove the riprap and take a look at the original. Exactly. So to that point, if they're going to hold feet to the fire for several hundred thousand dollars worth of interpreted historic preservation would not contribute any money towards achieving that goal, their choices, make the project so untenably expensive that we can't do it and we lose the dam, or find a path forward where it's a cheaper dam that we get to maintain in the original structure. I read something to say. I'm really glad you and Sandra had a chance to talk about the bond work that she needs to do because that's a big, big, big project for her. I'm wondering, given her hourly rate and her current workload, if it would be prudent for her to talk directly with Jamie and get a more thorough update about what the status is before we tell her to start working on it? I don't know. I think if we agree that it's OK, go forward. And she gets that message. I mean, it's not like the amount's going to change. The bond is what it is. But I think a 10-minute catch up with Sandra is very well done. That's a good idea. I also need to make a motion to prove the acquisition of a new computer workstation for the town administrator. So I have a list of computers that I will provide to Tegan. So I'm seeking approval for the acquisition of a laptop for not to exceed, I guess, what's called, $1,500. I just want to chime in. No one has played that laptop been sitting there. No one uses it. So we can repurpose it at will. It might not be what we want for this particular project, but I'm just letting you know. Would it be good to have a backup computer in the office? We have the one that the researchers use. And it literally only gets used by law researchers. That's the only thing it's used for. So that's kind of the backup. I think that is the backup computer if we ever needed one for anything we would pass it. OK, well, short of the specifications of that being inadequate, then, I guess. You want to amend your motion? Yeah. Why don't you start from the beginning? And? And? I don't want to erase that. I do just take care of doing it at the beginning, I guess. I just didn't think short of the way you said it did my work. We could just add if needed. Yeah. There you go. If needed. Not to exceed $1,500. Not to exceed $1,500. Let's see if we can do it again. Sorry. Second. Jamie seconded. All in favor? Aye. Done. Thank you, Jordan. Do you have any other IT stuff to mention? No. Collective bargaining team. I think we can take that one off permanently. Shed. Yeah, let's let that go. OK. Anything further? Thank you. OK. Meeting adjourned.