 That's correct. Yes, as a guest on the zoom and I'm on the zoom also and the town of middle sex is on the zoom, but nobody's there town of middle town of middle sex is Sarah. Right. I'm running the other and we have with Phil speed and Sandy Levine here and or okay. Okay. Okay. First item of so are there any amendments to the agenda Sarah. No. Okay. So the first item on the agenda is the treasurer's report lots in the treasurer's report. Yeah, you are on. Okay, the first order of business is to ratify the ARPA funds. And we have to appoint a representative and a contact person. So I'm going to start ahead of the horse and I had already filled out all the information. So the initial paperwork got filled out with me being the representative and Peter hood being this secondary. This meeting is being recorded. So we just need to there's three motions that have to be made that Sarah had sent through just assigning these people as the representatives. Yeah, because I don't know how to go about changing. Yeah, you are the one you'll be drawing down. I'll make that motion that you have to go. Yeah. Okay. So I'm going to start with the Council of Middlesex except the CLF RF from the Treasury, along with the award terms and conditions and assurances of compliance with the civil rights requirements. Oh, second. Is that how you wanted it? Okay. Is there a second to that motion. Okay, thank you, Steve. It's been moved and seconded. I'm not going to read that all over again. You've all got it in front of you. All those in favor of the motion please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed. Okay, motion number two. I'll make a motion that we designate Treasurer Dorinda Crowell as the authorized representative to sign in award terms and conditions. All those in favor of the motion please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed. Third motion. Thank you. I move that we designate Peter hood as seconded. Okay. And that was Phil. Yeah. Okay, thank you. So it's been moved and seconded to designate Treasurer Dorinda Crowell as the authorized representative to sign award terms and conditions. All those in favor of the motion please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed. Seconded as secondary contact for the town's award of the coronavirus local fiscal recovery fundering aka CLS. RF. I'll second that. Okay. All those in favor of designating Peter hood as the secondary contact for the town awards of CLF RF funds, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed. Okay. I do have I do have one. One question. Yes. We talked about setting up a separate account for this money. Right. So there's two ways you can do it. You can either we could move it into one of the accounts like we have the special funds in. Or it says the league came through and said all we really had to do was set up a special account number. But I'd rather see it into an account all by itself until we determine how it's going to be handled. I'm old school. I like the separate account. Yeah. I agree with that. I think that's the way to go. Yep. Everybody agrees. Okay. Okay. And then the second question is this money might be coming in fairly soon. Right. They originally said we would see they thought we would see the first. Well, again, it's two different pieces. There's a local piece and a federal piece. Right. The local piece. They said we thought we would see the first part in June, but we have not received it as of yet. If we can. It would be great to get the account set up so when that money comes in, we can put it right in that account. We don't have to put it. It won't be. It'll happen quickly. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Next item of business under the treasurer is approving the $280,500 long from the community national bank to last no more than 15 years. And the $280,000 long from the community national bank to last no more than 15 years. The prism is to pay for the new town greater as approved by the town voters March 2nd 2021. Action likely. I read through the first couple of pages of that. I did not read through the whole thing that it looked to me like pretty standard boilerplate. Nothing to be concerned about. I always worry I always worry that they have slight some kind of fishy language there but I guess on some level we've got to trust them right? I mean we don't want to have our attorney review this is what I'm asking. Well we don't have time. There's always time but I you know I mean I say I didn't read through the rest of it. I skim through the rest of it. It all sounded like the typical stuff to me. I didn't say it. We've never had anybody review it before. So we need a motion on this? Yes we do. So I move that we approve the 280,500 dollar loan from Community National Bank to last no more than 15 years to pay for the new town grader is approved by voters at March 2nd 2021 town meeting. So I'm sorry is there a second? I just seconded it. Liz did. Okay so I'm sorry I didn't mention this before I meant to and I didn't. So we are certain that that is the amount we want to borrow. We don't want to put any fund balance money any other funds into this and have less debt. No we want to borrow the full amount and then if we want to pay off early that's the way we do it. This is a risk about being home. Okay that's fine that's fine. So all those in favor of approving the 280,500 dollar loan from Community National for a term not more than 15 years to buy the new town grader please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Unanimous again thank you. Any news Victor on the arrival of the grader? What? Victor is muted but I can tell you it is in the barn it's in the garage in our garage. Yeah I've been there a couple weeks. Okay hot damn what a nice event yeah I heard. What are we doing? We're gonna have a touch the grader event right Vic? Can you I don't know what you mean they haven't taught you to do all right. Like it was part of our as part of our field trips for our capital spending plan we are going to invite people to come to see the new grader. Remember Susan Clark talked to you about that Vic? I do I do yeah yeah. I heard you were excited. What's that? I heard you were excited about that. I'll contribute a bottle of champagne to pour over its bow how about that? Oh what do you like to do that Peter and select board? I don't know really it's in Liz's uh I mean you want us to leave you want us to leave the grader outside the gate and let them look out of the original idea with Susan was on some night that they had the bandstand but I think didn't they have one last week? Okay yeah the bandstand could be a good idea um or having it be its own um like we did the fire station how we did a visit to the fire station and people were invited to come and see this talk with the fire department and stuff like that. You mean the fire station in the village or the fire station up but down the garage? We did it at the at the um the village the main fire station we already had an event. Yes wouldn't we I mean so here's the here's the question for me everyone you know and I'm sorry I couldn't be there but um I thought the idea of having people be able to walk through the fire station look around see what was going on was a good thing the problem with having the kiss the greater event and coincident with the concert is there's probably not going to be time to have people walk through the garage and appear at all the other stuff. What we could possibly do is do it before the concert starts something like um come to the concert start six like do it at five or something like that that way you get people um coming and I mean I think that would probably be the best thing to get the most people. Okay I'll talk about it at our meeting we have a meeting on Monday for the capital spending plan um and that's gonna mean that's gonna mean more than uh just having the greater park out front we're gonna have the town garage open and available. We'll probably have the whole town garage open and and you know Vic and and and maybe Shane there to answer questions that people may have similar to what we did um Paul's a brisky was supposed to be organizing that and then the then the new grader sort of became its own like oh let's have a greater day but it could be the same thing it should be the same thing greater and town um garage visit at the same time. I agree. You know maybe let the kids sit in the greater that kind of thing. The touch of truck that's what they used to do in Montpelier kids could go and sit in the truck and touch it. Yeah but see I mean I'm actually gonna have my grandchildren there that's great my my grandsons would love to sit in the greater but um that doesn't sound like a 20 minute thing to me that sounds like I just wonder for an hour or so no I don't know. Yeah maybe it's not a question. Depends on who shows up and especially if it's before the bandstand it might be you know you might get a lot of people. So I don't know but we'll talk about that that's I just was thinking about it uh so uh next on Dorinda's hit parade is reviewing and approving the annual financial management questionnaire action likely um I did review it I only had one comment Dorinda but I didn't expect you to change it. Oh yeah and this goes this is just a formality that form goes nowhere right it's in our file and if they want to see it it's a self audit thing right and it's only if it's asked for so nobody even nobody's asked for it I guess in the past. Only the auditor asks for stuff like that right now that's the next that's the next one so we we actually need to approve that Dorinda he's already signed it Peter it was and sent it back I gave it to you um it needs to be approved okay okay move approval of the annual financial management questionnaire and is there a second second okay all in favor of approving the annual financial management questionnaire please say hi all right any opposed we've approved it reviewing and approving the memo of understanding from bachelor associates as to the audit of the FY 2010 financial records action likely anybody have any questions about that or concerns uh bill moved it all second I do think so we passed that I do think next year is probably the time to consider putting it out at least consider it right and that was going to be that was the thought process for this year but based on everything that was going on I decided to stay where we were at I agree but we did that do we usually do for a three-year contract no it's no it's just a year to year you can send it out as often as you want really okay um okay the next item is reviewing new contract with national insurance company as underwriter providing life and disability coverage action likely um I have a question about that who who actually handles who's the broker who handles that for us well we were paying like before yeah but but there must be a broker involved somebody somebody's getting paid for this yeah um all I see is a bill that we pay every month for Lincoln life and then this new one can oh well I think it's through the league because they sent me the original paperwork okay it is through the league yeah um you know what just it just seems a little weird to me that this if it's the league I understand if it was something else where they just presumed that we're going to approve this from change from one company to another with no information no I thought it was a little weird but if it's through the league then it makes sense they've changed carriers right yes it came through the league and um and it's not a matter of changing carriers Lincoln life sold to this company so it's just new owners of the company yeah no I I understand but it amounts to a change of uh anyway right I think it's fine I just I was a little confused that's all and there is they um provided as you look in the paperwork a pretty comprehensive um listing of how they arrive at the amounts compared to what we were getting from Lincoln life so that's something when we come to budget time you may we had discussed this previously that we may want to readdress how much um the town pays and and how much the employee contributes yep yep yep yep no I saw that yeah I'm not aware that we've ever had that before either so no I'm not maybe it's a good thing so um we need to actually approve this or is it just it's a done deal isn't uh basically it's a done deal I mean I guess you can just approve but you're aware of the new contract or something to that effect so it's just in the minutes that you're aware that yeah that's what just I would just put it in the minutes that we reviewed the contract uh from the league for the town's employee life and disability coverage yeah I don't think we need to if there's nothing to approve we can't change anything yeah uh I believe I've signed that I believe didn't I do that oh I don't know oh yeah I mean we can get a second signature it doesn't matter we can have someone in we want to designate um somebody here to sign on behalf of the board yes and who will that be I would say Liz Sharp okay is that okay with you Liz what am I signing our our employee life and yeah that okay that one thank you I have a couple more things under the treasurer yeah okay Doreen um I just wanted to be aware that we did receive payment from Matt Oates for Welch Park so but with the same day that was received another bill came in for a permit but it's all good so I uh just just to give everybody a quick update I had a conversation with John Riley and I also had a conversation with uh Rob Halpert our town attorney John Riley represents Welch Park um Rob Halpert as you know represents us and I said to both of them it was the desire of the town to consider withdrawing from Welch Park and the two of them are supposed to get together and come back with a recommendation of how we could do that if we wanted to do it I did say to Rob you know there could be various fallback positions if somebody really wanted to take over the financial management um I would consider or we might consider that as a fallback position but our preference would be to get out so um they're chewing on that I will uh I will follow up with them Rob did not seem to think it was as impossible as as John Riley thinks it is but uh he hadn't talked to John yet he was going to talk to John and get back to me so we'll see what happens but I fulfilled my promise I made my phone calls there you go and I will say Matt was very right on top of it after I called him he kind of you know he kept following up with me to make sure we received the check and everything so perfect I will say that was a good thing yes um so one other thing is in the orders tonight there is a bill from Lafayette signs or Lafayette some engineering I don't know what they're called Lafayette something and it was to install the speed signs in the bill and so it turns out that it was a 48 almost a 49 hundred dollar bill which was unpudgeted because all that ever got approved by the voters was were the signs isn't it I isn't it ironic that the cost of installing the signs is almost the same as the cost of the signs right Peter yes I would like to add you will have some more money because they're on the south end is out of uh is not in compliance we we got an email from the state of Vermont and we did not follow our permit according to them oh my god right now you're like move it what's that we have to take it out and move it yeah that's only 1500-2000 dollars so I don't know the one on the south end I mean I didn't go check it's supposed to be shut off they told us to they wanted to shut off immediately because the why they put little flashing white lights on them but don't want us to use them because somebody might have an ellipt what do you call it seizure I'm looking at it so we had to shut it off because we they said that we were in violation not quite clear why a white light would give you a seizure but a yellow one won't down in my third the little yellow ones are flashing all the time at the crosswalk so we bought the wrong sign somehow they sold us the wrong signs no no we didn't we didn't no but there's a permit process to go through and we gave a product they gave us a permit and they told us how they wanted there's a 29 page permit and they told us what how they wanted it done and they didn't do it that way they want uh one thing they want is a speed uh a 35 mile an hour speed sign attached to the uh flashing post I mean that's part of that's part of the standard for doing that and then the one on the south end is in the 50 mile an hour zone and it's easier to move it than to uh change the speed limit and isn't that isn't that lack of responsibility or did we put the stake in the ground and tell them where to put it uh this is debatable that's debatable I'm not sure uh um the young man told Shane that uh the other thing we were supposed to have a meeting a pre-construction meeting prior to any work being done and um we didn't do that but I believe Lafayette's guy told Shane that he called the district 8 which is where you call you know all the guy's names ed pierce and uh somebody else said yeah that's okay we we don't need to have that uh that meeting just go ahead and put but who that person is we who's responsible for vika I've been that person believe me I presume it's us but who's responsible for conforming with the permit doesn't our contract with Lafayette say install as per permit or something like that I don't know do we have a contract with them we signed something way back when I believe no they get a copy of our permit they got a copy of our permit that we got from the state I guess I'd say it's on I'd say it's on them I'd say we should uh but we held the payment we held the payment well we owe the 4800 but what about the other 2000 uh that's gonna have to be negotiated I guess so let me so let me um get this clear so I it's in the pay runs for the warrant for tonight but I had not I was holding off on sending the check are you in agreement with that as a board to hold off until this is resolved I would say I would say we owe the 4800 but we should put them on notice that we're not happy for the fact that they installed it contrary to the permit and I don't know what what do you think what you do until they resolve the problem so so the consensus from bill and steve is we owe them the money but we shouldn't pay it until there's been some kind of resolution yeah if we pay it we give up our leverage they'll tell us to move the damn thing ourselves or who knows what they'll do so the shame is shame is on medication this week so the guy could the guy didn't shut it off until last wednesday I believe and they were looking into it and when Shane comes back monday we will do a follow-up on it I mean I don't I don't uh we're gonna have to get we've we uh I've called uh I've called uh Kristen Driscoll which she's in charge of it as far as uh uh you know issuing the permit uh via Ed Pierce the guy works for him and I've talked to Jim Coda who is in charge of uh enforcement and uh nobody had uh we haven't had a meeting yet or we should have it we I think we I told Shane we should have a meeting well kind of figure it out but uh Lafayette's uh man Jamie who I've never talked to uh who told uh Shane that he had everything in in in order uh was trying to find out who he talked to in district eight well these guys that's why they should know how to do this uh why and share their work it's for the state of Vermont oh like I said after being around the state uh enforcing contracts for uh close to 50 years uh one thing you never do is trust the contractors that's most of them are pretty good but hey there's mistakes can be made anywhere I mean everybody makes mistakes I don't know I understand but why does it always seem to come back on the town's shoulders if we made the mistake if we made the mistake and it's our fault it's our deal I understand but if it's somebody else's fault they should be responsible that's all I'm saying that's what we're trying to get to the bottom too but if they had if Lafayette was given a copy of the permit for me unless I hear differently from somebody it's their responsibility to follow the terms of the contract they certainly had a copy of it they certainly had a copy of it and it's written black and white on what we have to do and we didn't do it all right it wasn't done let's put it that way wasn't done so just to be clear it's not just a matter of putting a speed sign on there it's in the wrong place we have to move it that's correct yeah that's uh that's what the state of Vermont's asking us to do at this time so and then my second half of the question is because this was not part of the original um motion or special article or something where does all this extra money get posted to because it's unbudgeted so does it affect highways does it affect whatever I mean I don't know a quick answer without without thinking about it too much and without looking at the numbers and just the thought is is split it between the select board contingency fund which we never seem to spend and uh and I hate to spend it the first first or second warrant of the year but and half of it from highways but or should we show that this road sign thing went over budget I mean there's going to be another bill coming too so that's well let's take the other bill one step at a time I you know I don't know we did I never occurred to me uh at the time that the cost of installation was going to be almost as much of the cost of the sign that I understood what a big deal it was um I might have I might have asked the question I mean we should have put in hindsight we should have put something in there for installation or I thought that we is the town we're going to install it originally that was the thought in the town do that on a state road well yeah the permits and everything but the thought process was lap yet held and I mean they they worked for the state all the time gave them the permit and they did the installation it's not in the motion it wasn't the recession I'm going to do the paycheck the uh the uh a thousand dollars of that that labor is uh traffic control which we couldn't I mean we could hire somebody but we couldn't we can't really go out and do traffic control because we're not certified traffic control people yeah on state highways we can do it on down well I I unless anybody disagrees um I think we should hold out that payment out of the out of the order for the time being Duranda and uh they they kept us waiting long enough they can wait a little bit longer and okay Sarah has a question that was yeah now we got to it okay guys okay you have anything else Duranda uh not at this time okay you got the planning commission on for five three oh I know or we're running a little late we don't want to keep Sandy waiting hi sandy so I guess I guess I guess we're ready to go with a joint meeting with the planning commission uh with updates on the walkable village scoping study drafting new zoning regulations and other activities and we also as part of this uh should should accept or read into the record the uh the letters that we or emails we received I'm not sure whether they were letters or emails but uh regarding that scoping study regarding the walkable Middlesex thank you I will at 535 call the planning commission meeting to order because there's a quorum of the planning commission here myself and Mitch and Elias are here and Phil Coleman is on zoom and thank you for the opportunity I'll be quick because I know you all have a really packed agenda tonight I did share um in advance of this a a spreadsheet of just projects that the planning commission is working on um that has you know some information some information about where we are and what we've been doing and um happy to answer any any questions about that I'll just go through them quickly the first is the energy plan and Theo's been taking the lead on that and the current schedule for that would be to have a vote at town meeting in 2022 um on the enhanced energy plan that would be combined with the town plan and and there's still some edits and some input to get from the energy committee before that's finalized at the planning commission level it will then be forwarded to the select board the next is the zoning update and I know there are some questions about this last time I'd say we're about halfway through and we I I believe will be on track to finish our work in December I shared with the select board sort of two possible timelines for adoption while it would be possible physically possible to get this onto the ballot for town meeting I think that would be really tough it would mean the select board doesn't really get a chance to review it or make any edits and I expect you're going to want to be able to do that you you'd have time for all the process in place but you wouldn't really have time to read to review that and honestly some of this has been held up by the pandemic it's been difficult to do outreach and I really want to make sure that folks in town know what's happening with zoning changes and be able to do more outreach before it's put before voters on a vote so realistically I think it will be sometime after June either by special election or it could be put off until November when there will be a regular election anyway if something else comes up that really needs attention and really needs to be changed sooner than that there there is a process to have interim zoning and that the select board would have to approve that and those changes can be made within I think a couple of months so I'm sort of disappointed that we're not able to do this faster I think it's also important to make sure it gets done and we do the outreach and folks know what they'll be voting on when the vote comes next is the planning grant and I know you know there was talk when when the budget for consultant work with the regional planning commission was added to the budget for this current fiscal year there was a conversation about could we apply for a for grant funds to pay for that there is a municipal planning grant that could be available for that unfortunately you apply for that in August or September you get notified about the award in December which is about the time that we would have completed our work on this so I'm not sure that the timing for that works I keep my ears out for other grant opportunities but they the one that would normally be available to pay for planning commissions to do zoning work would be that municipal planning grant that's the one that's doing the the the town the budget work yeah capital budget work they got a grant for that for last year and the next is the the scoping study and I know the the select board has received some correspondence on this as has the planning commission and it's it's good I'm glad that we've received correspondence on this the scoping study is moving forward to just identify what's possible what would the cost be what are the right of ways what are the studies that would need to happen for both sidewalks and you know a very preliminary evaluation of the possibility of a river trail the first order of business really that we're doing is having landowner meetings and we've scheduled two landowner you know two broader landowner meetings one for the landowners where a river trail might go and that one is tomorrow and the second group of landowner meetings is next week for where the sidewalk would go and we wanted to to do that just to make sure we get um we talk to those folks first and you know hear what concerns they have because we have heard some concerns from folks about that and we'll you know take take input and see what's what's feasible and what's not so we're looking forward to having those conversations with with landowners and from there we'll move forward with with the scoping study and the grant the town received to build some overlooks and perhaps a path on camp need property that's moving forward perhaps a little slower than than we had hoped we have to work out the language for an easement which is difficult when we don't know exactly where the path is going to go but i've been working with the camp need folks as well as with the town attorney on that and part of the grant was for the town attorney's time to work on that and then once that gets um you know more solidified we can um or it would be the camp meet folks would need to file an application with the town because i think it's within um a right of way or a setback and to make sure that whatever they would build would would be all right um and they would also need permission from um velco which has the power line that runs across there so there's some you know hurdles that would be maybe too strong but you know you need to make sure that that all of those things are in place before you start any building um and then finally um we did put out a notice for an assistant zoning administrator i know we've received interest from one person and perhaps for a second person as well um so we should be able to fill um fill that um you can take it up at the next planning commission meeting and pass along a nomination to the select board after that that's i don't know if alias or mitch have other things to add or fill no and it's it's peter i would just uh say i i really appreciate that spreadsheet that's summarized everything and that having that kind of information is very helpful to us so um i encourage you to keep that up and share it with us that's great um my other comment is the same comment i made before which is i just think we need to think very carefully if it makes sense to have a special meeting to approve the zoning or if we should should defer it uh or if we should defer it until election day in november uh to get more participation uh that's nothing we have to decide anytime soon right mera has a comment hey peter yes sandy you know we do have we will have an august primary statewide primary so that might work well that might work yeah so i agree i agree i just i just do not want to uh i think it's a bad idea to short circuit the process i want the select board to have time to make changes if there are any and etc etc etc so i'm trying to do for town meeting looks like it's impossible so let's see what let's see what happens when we've got we've got time but we need to keep it on our radar screen well thank you sandy anything else for the planning commission or from planning commission i don't hear any um i have a motion to adjourn the planning commission portion of this meeting motion motion motion from mitch in the second from alias uh any discussion all those in favor hi bill raises hand as well unanimous thank you thank you thank you everybody thank you for joining us keep up the good work back on schedule sandy you put us back on schedule good job uh uh does that sound tax rate madam treasurer fun stuff okay i sent you three proposals yep um so as we know the school came in less than a penny below what it is um so proposal number one was no it just exactly as what we anticipate um funds to come in at and what our approved budget is so can you just just so i can line these line these things up because my printer spewed them out all over the floor and i'm not sure i'm in the right water you should say at the bottom what each one is number one number two and number three i don't have it it's not it's not print that my printer did not print that no so many okay no if you could be giving the tax rate on each one of them that would be okay so the first one like i said it would um it's just covers exactly as the budget was passed in all with our grand list the good news is the grand list increased so that makes the tax rate go down um so we turned up i'm sorry to interrupt you but i'm trying to line these things up so the first number one residential rate and tell me which is which non-residential rate is two point one eight two one okay i got that one that's number one that's number one number two is two point two zero eight zero got it and number three is two point one nine seven three you have different things no that no that she sent these out before oh so can you explain to us the difference between the price i'm trying to i'm waiting sir is making copies okay all right thank you but then i'm like should we get one two pieces and then i'm like oh there's no storm oh yeah i heard about that i don't think i can use it okay almost there's making copies for people and another one and randy's online randy comes to this with that every select board meeting did you screw up something i don't have copies either but i'm sitting in my car hard time getting it to you mary i know and i didn't quite get back and i'm saying maybe i should just drive to middle sex i'm not that far anybody here would cause the power on it it was quite a big power on it peter i haven't heard the word i mean i i had to call because i was down in Dartmouth for a doctor's appointment i had to call because it went out around 11 and didn't come back until about three yeah i was 1500 1500 users were out yeah and it was yes the more red squirrel a red square caused it red squirrel caused it well he knows more than i have because i haven't been able to be in so here's my comment on that while we're getting our things lined up power companies always say it's a red squirrel just like fire departments always say it's electrical when it down played the more red squirrel gave up his life okay so everybody's got everything in quick summary the difference in these three proposals is a penny in each one roughly so we're on budget number one which ends okay budget as past that's taking all of our expected revenues and all of our budgeted expenditures but we do know that we run over budget but anyways that is just what it would be first the municipal rate would be 0.4993 and then your local agreement rate it's we've got one less this year so that comes down to less than a penny if you go to the number two that is level funding the same municipal rate and the same local agreement rate that we currently have in place for this year this covers the 4.45 percent budget increase that we had so this is no additional even though the budget went up 4.45 it's no additional money it's being asked of the town's people for the municipal portion and it actually goes down a fraction from last year on the residential rate because the education rate dropped that fraction well not quite a penny yeah um on the because that one should be the same so then on number three that one was the happy medium in between which is you know it's like okay do you want to come somewhere between what we really need and what we were last year my recommendation is to stay at what we were last year I think it more than you know with the budget we even ended up taking things out of the budget we're five days into the new budget year and we're already dipping into the well and I do know there's some other unexpected costs that are going to be coming through so so that is that is proposal number two right that is proposal number two staying what we were last year and sarah suggested they take it one step further and possibly use the exact same thing on the second news last year which would affect um we would have to raise the municipal rate by just a little bit but make it come into balance so the rate to become the same as last year as for 2020 as they are for 2021 I'm having a hard time hearing it or ended we got some kind of interference going on um so I don't know it was a mix much of a big big difference between any of them but um there's a little difference in the only reason on number two would be just the adjustment that the school tax the education are you speaking into the laptop or the microphone or what are you speaking speaking into the laptop I can hear sarah I'm having trouble hearing you too yeah me too no I'll just bring it over here it's a laptop I can just move it okay okay back between the two computers I think yeah I guess so okay so other than I'm sorry everybody we're gonna we got some work to do on our technology so other than other than just setting the tax rate at a slightly different amount um we usually talk about the anticipated receipts and why we estimate them to be what they we estimate them to be and you haven't those are the same across all three proposals yes because that's not going to change from what I anticipate but do you have any are those substantially the same as what they were last year well your bank interest isn't I mean they're basically I'd have to go back and look but we went by what our last budget thing was and we increased the licenses and clerk fees um I think we increased zoning from last year railroad tax we kept the same the pilot two pilots we got our confirmed numbers that we received um delinquent tax and interest and penalty that's always a shot in the dark yeah all of these show a zero fund balance contribution well we that's just another line if you're going to contribute out of the fund balance no I understand so could you and I I meant to do this before the meeting but I didn't do it can you tell me what our current total residential rate and non-residential rates are right on that piece of paper oh it's over to the right mm-hmm so the total residential rate is going to go down a penny and the non-residential yeah I got it okay not quite a penny yeah right at least it's headed in the right direction well go ahead to run I'm sorry no that's fine I mean the other thing you could do is if you wanted to bump up the municipal rate to equal so your bottom line comes out the same as last year it it doesn't matter I mean it's a small difference what do you mean by that you wouldn't if we would keep the same rates as last year so your residential rate would be 2.3220 and your non-residential would be 2.1725 so and the the only difference in these numbers is because of what the state education rate came through at so we can leave them as the actual state education rates and call it a day and leave our municipal and local agreement rates the same as last year I like the idea that the bottom line comes out that the that the non-residential people get a get a three cent hit yeah I do too that's been a b in my body for a long time yeah I agree so I guess I guess I'm saying with all of that I'm I am in favor I agree with the render I'm in favor of option number two I don't know how others feel or if anybody else has any comments or questions that sounds good to me too Peter you probably closed it up in my computer she wasted no time okay well I will hand this back to Sarah so she can take notes when the note well but just before you you hand it back to Sarah um is somebody prepared to make a motion right well we have more discussion questions concerns what should we ask the question yeah I think the motion but I don't have the words because I don't have the I don't have the paper in front of me so I don't even know what the tax rate is in the second option and I don't think you guys heard this but uh feel wondered to know if the what the since the budget committee is here if they would like to chime in yes there you go but I think it makes sense I for the same reason I like giving the non-residential rate a little higher if we could shift a little more that'd be nice but I'm sorry I I don't see in either one of these options the difference between the non-residential rates right it's at the bottom two the last two lines bottom two lines oh they're still paying less and all of this they're still paying the same non-residential we can't treat them different yeah it's the state education rate that's made yeah yeah that direction but this just makes them yeah I say sure Dorinda do we still have a number of people in town using the non-residential rate um I believe there is some it's about the same as it's been I wouldn't have that answer yet the the new state payments are just beginning to come in so until we start receiving those and we get them every Monday we don't know whose file was presidential and who hasn't that's yeah I guess the other thing that I would say about this just to get back to the issue with fund balance is considering we're actually having a small decrease on the residential rate and a small increase on the non-residential rate I would recommend we not use our fund fund balance at this time would be my thought will the actual tax bill be virtually the same as last year if we have the same rate no it's going to be a little less it's going to be right last year was 2.3220 this year is going to be 2.3159 a residential non-residential last year was 2.1725 going to be 2.2080 well what I mean is we at the grant list hasn't changed correct so if we have a lower rate people would get a tax bill that is substantially similar but slightly less than last year's tax bill is that correct no the non-residential people will have a 3 cent increase the residential people will have a little less than a penny decrease okay I'm just saying to me the time to use our fund balance is when we have a startling increase for some reason and we're trying to we're trying to no we don't have the tax rate and this is not one of those years right thankfully I agree with that the grand list what did go up right wasn't some of the appraisal though it was from individual falsities but that did go up which is what made us be able to keep another funded budget I can't hear you I'm sorry they they're talking about reappraisals and also you know the way it works is like the education rate it does last year's is that last year's grand list I think it does go up because they can't possibly compute it whereas the town tax rate is this year but then next year we might have some wonky stuff because of the common level of appraisal might be all over the book so save your mind why why is the cla gonna be weird this is the worst the question yeah yeah the houses have been selling like far over yeah so they're right so the state's gonna say you're really under appraised which means that we're gonna jack up your rate to and also you need to go through a townwide reappraisal well once they go through a reappraisal when the house sells the town go in and reappraise it not always no oh i thought i did when it sold the state the state gets the property transfer tax return to the state sees what that sold for so the so a town has a property appraised at $280,000 when the state gets the property transfer tax return that shows that it was sold at $420,000 yeah that screws up all of us i know but then i thought our people went in and did a reappraisal when a house sold so that we could get it up to the price of you know to a more realistic assessment yeah but it's not realistic that's the problem right but it might be more realistic than what it was if it wasn't the last now because you just had a reappraisal please when you all talk at the same time it makes it very difficult to understand what people are saying i'm not asking you to all shut up i'm just asking you maybe this should be like second grade you should raise your hands we can have to render be the cop summary are we are we good on this do we need do we have anything more we need to talk about no we have to separate i'll make the motion that we we do option number two second any further discussion all those in favor of the motion which would make the wait a minute would make the municipal tax rate 52.45 local agreement 0.0024 and town tax rate total town tax rate 0.5269 and the bottom line would be the total residential rate would be 2.3159 and the non-residential rate would be 2.2080 all in favor of the motion please say aye aye any opposed thank you we've done it to ourselves again today well it's a good year thanks to our increase in our uh grand list thank you for your work on this darinda i know darinda i just want to add my voice to this you make it so much easier for us to set the tax rate which work you do in advance it used to take us forever and we were doing calculations for 15 20 minutes just to come up with the figures you had available right away so thank you i'll go check out your purple thank you big night for the big night for the treasure have a tnc yes um before the grader is in it was supposed to come in i think the uh from the last meeting we had before uh the last select board meeting it's going to come in that week and uh it did and i think they did a little grading down center center road from like not or from zadan road down to uh like steves and uh they did a little bit over on ball dark hill road and they haven't done they they're getting used to it it's uh it is a different machine it's a run a different way with joysticks instead of handles and so they're getting used to it yeah hopefully they like it yeah um as far as uh showing it off uh i have no problem with i just have uh i guess list can have uh susan clark get a hold of me and uh whatever they want we'll do whatever it takes thank you big i'm glad to do it um quite a lot of our stuff is broke as you know we're uh we're running uh we rented that uh mowing machine you've probably seen it run around town a little bit it was broke down today i had some issues i'm not quite sure they're asking uh for another day because it's been broke down i don't know what uh the select board is they must have seen it around town um there's some some concerns about it not mowing clean part of it is uh maybe because maybe because the grass is wet and it's very wet out and the other thing is it's very hard to control it is not rotary cutter it is more of a uh chain cutter um so it's harder to control according to the people controlling it but uh hopefully uh hopefully it gets up running and uh we can do that uh some more tomorrow i was there twice today and i couldn't get a good good idea of how much more they had to do but hopefully they'll get it done they have it for a week yeah they have it they have it until thursday and they come and get it friday at noon that's it well anyways got any questions i don't know what to say other than that it's well my only my only question is if we need to put in a little overtime to get the mowing done let's make sure we get it done that's all i don't notice that's possible i think they come and get it no matter what no but i'm just saying if somebody has to work three hours later oh thank you thank you yes we talked about Peter Peter Hood said overtime is unlimited and they can go as many times yeah i mean yeah no they've been going Peter they've been going okay good i just i just they will finish the job victor that's all i'm saying well no i don't i don't mean any disrespect but they have and uh and that's exactly what they're trying to do i mean good hey bick is the town responsibility or the state um because at the bottom of culver hill road again with that blind corner the chicory is um up really high and you can't see the cars is that us cutting or the states has to cut that it's a state whoever gets there first i would say yeah i mean i'm ready to go down there with my weed whacker yeah i think over on baldoch where baldoch road comes on elm street it's the same deal okay well i would say when we're right there with our rented machine we should just do it and let the state complain if they want to exactly you notice the state filled the potholes down by the interstate right yeah yeah um the other thing is uh the uh the excavator broke last week and it's uh it won't turn and we've been checking into that and i guess the question is how much money do you want to put in a 40 000 35 40 000 excavator what's that they have no idea what the problem is is that the well they had they had paul acky come over from uh from anderson uh used to work for anderson or does or whatever uh it recommended and um they crawled he crawled under it and he said it's uh it's in the gear in the gearbox that goes to the uh turntable he's got he's gonna get some estimate he's got he's gonna get some uh idea of what it would take to fix that um uh jay and uh uh i cleaned it all up today they uh they greased it and got all the stuff out and they took the panels off so that he can get easy access to it how old is the excavator vick i'm not quite sure but i would say that that machine it's got to be about at least 11 or 12 years old let me go look is there a is there a replacement schedule for that kind of thing yes there is a replacement it's on our i don't have that tournament but it's on our replacement on our schedule for all of our equipment replacement for that and it tells what year it is but it's longer than a truck i mean it's like 15 or 20 years right yeah but it's a lot of line is subject to subject to whatever they figure out is the thing is virtually worthless the way it is so we kind of have to fix it unfortunately right um we we did you know put your mind at ease uh before shane left on vacation we talked about it and he instructed nobody to give anybody give uh uh fall the uh the mechanic any authorization until we had talked it over and probably talked it over with you peter i have to get this done this uh this uh this bill for the repair on the loader i'm still not happy about how that went down but yeah it wasn't just $1,100 it's kind of like the signs it's the installation too oh no i know but i'm but i'm just i'm just saying i'm somebody could tell me why it was necessary to replace that so far nobody has done that everybody's avoiding me replacing what peter i would have i would have cleaned it up and greased it and put it back in there if it were made the the the brake pedal assembly for the loader i specifically went down there and told them not to replace it unless they spoke to me and they went ahead and replaced it nobody ever spoke to me so who was they was it just just the mechanic went ahead and did it no no no i think our uh our uh representative from the road corps must have i mean i don't know i don't know either really i i i sent shane an email and i said who authorized this no response i i'm just upset about the way the whole thing went down because i know we spent money we didn't need to spend i can be wrong i mean if they if they truly took it apart and saw that it was damaged and really needed to be replaced you guys can talk it's all fine i just wish they told me that but they just went ahead and did it because they thought that's what they should do we went over that whole thing last but anyway fully it's working how much was that um i heard darinda i mean i kind of heard what you said but not exactly oh we didn't that wasn't the cost of the repair the wrong one so they got more than one thing on this file so i guess i believe and i don't have the warrants up in front of me but i believe believe it was 48 hundred dollars two thousand and fourteen and it was 94 thousand no 118 thousand wait that's still the loader right that's what we're talking about excavated the repair about the repair invoice for that i was gonna say because i think that's that's a lot older than that it's a lot older than that yes okay do you have our schedule i don't it's probably in the count book seas yes wasn't are we talking about the loader or the excavator the excavator wasn't that bought right about the time paul was made foreman yeah i think it was right about that time but it's right on our equipment replacement schedule and i don't know what that's gonna mean yeah and i think that i think that was like uh 97 98 somewhere in there but i could be wrong well we've just got a we can say wasn't it was 2008 it's a 2008 excavator and it's uh we've got replacement year of of 24 25 oh so you have a long way to go we have another we have another two and a half years does anybody have any idea how many hours are on that machine do you know vick i don't i don't does it say okay yeah it'll come got an hour meter but i i didn't i didn't look at that today uh i just i didn't well we need to take you know we need to take this one step at one step at a time but absolutely i i i fear that we are in for uh in for a significant repair and i don't think we'll probably have any choice i mean if it turns out that for some reason they think the thing is done and that's that's a whole different animal but i have to believe i have to believe that the hours on it are not that many i'm wondering too has our replacement schedule sort of always been the same for years and years and years when we all know the equipment is not made the way it used to be and this is our first excavator so this is our first uh okay i didn't know about oh we really should you know consider replacing 10 years it isn't like it isn't like an excavator in in an excavating company that that puts on you know 1500 hours a year you know we're probably lucky if we use it three four hundred hours a year so our life span for us is a lot longer yeah you know i'll ask you as a guy that's looking at that is very reputable and you'll let us know but i i i have a feeling that that it's not going to be an insurmountable figure for that i might be wrong but well i also think that when we're doing our budget we might want to think of budgeting more for repairs because this is a this is just a common theme that things are breaking down and costing more money yeah and we want to be honest about it not you know even if it means our budget goes up at least we can explain that does remind me to bring the issue up did we buy the warranty on the greater about the seven year the seven year greater the only one and it came with it so there's no extended warranty beyond that not beyond seven years as i understood it from the from shane uh via the salesman we asked two or three times i'm pretty sure it's correct check on that back to make sure what's that just to make sure that that's what that warranty is just seven years that's what he said well we should have we should have documentation right the other i think it's right on the the bill of sale that we gave darinda i think has it on as it is in the bill of sale 84 months i believe it said probably the that's probably the manufacturer's warranty i wonder if there are other extended warrant warranties available i just you know it's it's the last it's the last three or four years where we're gonna where we're gonna take it in the shorts literally or figuratively i just uh if there's an option to do it i would like to do it but if there's no option there's no option but there are all kinds of aftermarket warranties on all kinds of stuff so i mean yeah i mean i i uh don't know about aftermarket but salesman at uh john dear and he said no there wasn't anything else maybe through the manufacturer there's nothing else i don't know what's worth it's it's worth another another run at those guys and maybe the salesman isn't the right guy to guy to talk to i just if it's outrageously expensive or it's totally unavailable and we shouldn't do it but if it's available i'd like to think about it yeah now's the time to do it when the thing is brand all the way down to uh sim Lawson's house do we know how much we have we seen the bill yet do we know how much of our money i have not seen it um no bail i don't know steve may be able to tell you because he has a little better uh i for that but uh when when we got that quote from uh from do is jeff newton uh we had to hit we had to hit 25 000 dollars we would have to pay for the moving and i don't know i don't know if we had it or if they're still going to charge us for that are you familiar with that at all steve yes i am and i'll talk with jeff about that because we used it right up to uh you know the last day of the year yeah that would be good if you could do that get that cleared up for uh so we know i will the render needs the render needs to know because uh let's not pay for the moving if the deal was we weren't going to pay for it but the other the other question i have which is just a little bit of a concern and uh as a resident resident of east hill i was driving multiple times a day through their through their work zone there and they did have signs up but boy other than that you pull right up to that excavator and you had to wait for the guy to turn around to see you and sometimes he'd give you a hand signal and sometimes he wouldn't i mean they didn't have anybody really doing traffic control and i don't know if that is the way it should be or not but you know they would have two of those big duct trucks parked in the road and then the excavator working away in the road and uh i saw a lot of people driving in the ditch to try and get around the excavator uh if you uh yeah it was decided uh we decided that you know on the on the town road uh it's about a thousand dollars a day for flaggers if you want to use them i guess we could get one of those things they used on center road last no not last year but the year before with the sign stop and go signed would you go through that i don't know how much that rents for i have no idea i've got rates but i know i'm pretty sure it was like i want to say it was someone around 900 but i don't know if that was one day or if it was several days or something yeah yeah i could go back and look but i know the bill was okay one one issue it was really unsafe but one time i waited for about 10 minutes because there was a woman ahead of me and she wasn't going to move an inch till finally the the excavator operator got out of the excavator and stood there and gave her the come-to-head signal it was just i don't know i wouldn't say it was awful but i wouldn't say it was perfect either as they say right yeah well they did a great job i think they did a great job we've got what some more hydro seating to do up there looks like that we did oh but we have our we have our whole crew slopping off and on on the uh the mowing the road sides for the rest yeah but the other thing is uh it was felt by all it's not my opinion especially but maybe next time we do something like that and is maybe a little bit smaller excavator so it doesn't have to set out in the road quite as far was a thought by by the road crew and you know who might have said i i tend to agree with them well they did it they did a nice job and as far as i know i haven't heard any reports of any accidents but it's i have to imagine it's pretty hard when you're sitting in that cabin the excavator especially when you're facing away from the traffic i mean they had mirrors and they had flashing lights and everything else but it was pretty hard to tell when you were supposed to move and not move i don't i went through every time i went through uh one of the truck drivers were guiding us through but other than that Peter yes sir we have i just don't want you to forget the approving the uh 175 thousand dollar paving grant for the state of vermont so that needs to we're not forgetting that okay yes randy sorry i've been trying to use the the raise the hand here thing here i don't know if you don't see that or not but uh i apologize i'm this we but we had something that we took us a while to get used to zoom meetings now we're getting used to hybrid meetings so i apologize randy no problem so i i just i just want to drag it back to the conversation that you had about the loader and the repair bills there it sounds like that was a pretty significant bill and i'm hearing that there's talk about a possibly a fairly significant bill for this excavator and i'm wondering if it warrants you know uh discussion about the purchasing policy and how approvals for money is are given out because if you've asked for it not to happen and somebody else my understanding is that it's 15 thousand dollars it's a lot of money um and one person anybody within the town as a staff member can just say yep go ahead is that a concern for you guys yes sir is the answer is yes yes and no in the in the past our practice has always been that the road commissioner and the road foreman made those decisions this was an unusual situation because it happened on a friday when the road crew wasn't working was the only time the guy could show up i called shane shane had been there early to meet him and then he had to leave the guy showed up later and i talked to i talked to shane i said well i'll buzz over the hill and talk to him and see what's going on they couldn't of course there's no cell service there so you can't communication was a challenge so anyway i went over there and so it was kind of a screwed up deal from the start and you know i don't consider myself an expert heavy equipment repair man and i'm there talking to these guys and trying to figure out what's going on and all i'm saying is the way i left it with them is see if there's a way to clean it up in greek it's it's because dirt and sand on the floor of the of the loader get in where this rod stand slides in and out of the hydraulic controller that controls the brakes and it binds up it isn't that the brakes don't work it just binds up so you have to pull a pedal back with your foot well i understand that is in a great situation but maybe just cleaning that thing every once in a while would make sure that that wouldn't happen and charles was there and he said oh no no no no no i think we should replace it so i was very clear to charles and very clear to the repair guy i said well pull it apart and see what you can do if you can clean it and make it work fine if you find that there's damage and it needs to be replaced go ahead and replace it but call me first so next thing i know the thing's been replaced charles never called me the repair guy never called me um it's just it's just frustrating because i spent the time and effort to go over there and uh they didn't communicate with me and it may well be as i said that they took a big part and it was damaged and it had to be replaced and if that's the case it's fine but i don't know that no i get it i i get it it's just you know it seems all i'm saying all i'm saying randy is that was a very unusual circumstance and the guy was there with the part and we needed the greater fixed i mean the loader fixed so yes i get it i 15 000 is just a lot of money and to have anybody on town staff to be able to say yeah go ahead without any consultation seems like a very high number to me so i just i was just hearing the the excavator conversation and and uh i just wanted to make it make it known it's kind of concerning purchasing bidding something that's totally different there's a purchasing policy that relates to purchases like a bid process not it doesn't say anything in that it's related to repairs so so do we have a policy for repairs like that evidently not that's the only thing i can find in the binder we never we never have had randy because usually as i said it's been it's been up to the up to the road foreman and the road commissioner make those decisions now in the past the practice has been when there's a major problem like is it worth fixing or not worth fixing like when we had to put the engine in that truck a year ago um steve and i were very involved in that and that was a lot more a lot more money but again you know not a lot of and there's not a lot of options for the meeting now too so i mean it's that's great that they're bringing it up ahead of time i just i just wanted to voice it that's all okay no problem thank you editor yes was that bill for that 15 000 no i don't think it's 15 000 i don't have the orders in front of me but i think it was 4800 yeah i mean that's that's really that's more realistic than 15 000 no no randy i think was just saying that the that the purchasing policy said 15 000 yeah it's actually though i just looked at the version here it's 10 so that's purchasing okay are we gonna talk about the 175 thousand dollar grant from the state of vermont for repaving center road director yes tell us about the grant don't tell us just sign it the 175 thousand dollar grant to uh to do the road uh or as part of the road um i believe the one the uh today i got a estimate from pike industries it was 337 thousand dollars to do that paving and to do the the uh the section of center the uh worked on the road on the base of the road um prior to paving it was uh three i got a reclaim and fine grade as uh that was uh 34 000 and it's 300 000 dollars worth of payment and i believe i believe which i've never seen the other estimate from uh jay hudson jay hudson's i think that isn't that one like 303 000 but that include uh the little section on brook road or mccullough hill road and so they were going to give us another price so the expectation here is that is that we are going to use money from our from our uh paving account of that difference right and also and also we have the chance to uh do some of the preparation work we can take we can take the berms and stuff off and like that but my question is uh so the select board is uh you know do you want us to replace those culverts shane and i went down and examined all the culverts and most of them are pretty bad shape but they're also pretty deep there's probably another 50 000 dollars in culverts there yeah that that deep culvert that you're talking about the way that culvert was put in that looks like for that thing to be that deep on the on the other side of the road it was slow and not a slope pipe doesn't have an elbow in it let's see oh yes but that's what i'm saying there's no reason for that that culvert can be put in at a depth that we can do and it can have it could have a stone uh on the on the outfall it doesn't need to go down like that yeah but it's still going to cost us some money because when we get out there we got to start having a lot more money to hire somebody oh why not saying that wouldn't but uh i'm not saying that uh that it wouldn't cost more money to uh to hire somebody but but uh you know uh you're still going to incur some some money for uh for replacing those which has got a lot of days Mike i don't believe i said this when we talked about this the last time let's not make the classic mistake where we paved the road and i have the culverts fail and we have to dig up our brand new pavement let's make sure let's make sure we we deal with those culverts whatever we have to do how many culverts need to be replaced i think there's seven or so i can't really remember i'll stop my head i think there's five victor is there i believe so well we don't need to i mean we don't need to get into the nitty gritty of this tonight i mean we're not gonna not accept this payment grant right we've been waiting for this for years right so you know my recommendation is we approve the grant we we start you know we start working on these bids and thinking about how much of the work it makes sense for us to do what we need to hire out and make the best deal we can make all around none none of this work is going to happen until next spring correct well they say they'll have one of them said they'd have it done by june something 15th of june next year though yes yeah right so we have time to we have time to work on this wouldn't you have to have mostly your culvert work down this year you're not gonna you're not gonna get out there in april and do that i don't maybe well what do you think steve what do you want me to read these numbers from hutchins yeah go ahead okay reclaiming is total 27 777 and 12 cents paving center road one is 24 feet one 26 okay 21 is 24 feet i don't know it is 274,022 and the other one is 251,304 dollars so do you add is it one or the other we miss her this one or the other so it's one or the other so i assume that the one that's more expensive would be the wider base and just for clarification i asked shane to when he got that quote to ask to find out what it would be for that extra two feet so that we can possibly put in a bike lane or walking lane down on center road we've got a pretty good opportunity to do it and i think we need to figure out how to do it but that's that's why the two different prices do it great thought steve there are a lot of bikers on that road these days and a lot of walkers too a lot of walkers yep and we have our zero on that road do you know how much money is on our paving fund right now i don't i should have looked it up but i didn't know that was gonna come up i don't know how much is in there we don't i guess what i'm saying guys is we need to approve this grant right yeah yeah we've got to figure out we've got some work to do to figure out the figure out the rest of it but i i just feel very strongly i would hate for us not to do the culverts and i don't know where we where we take it from in the budget or what we give up or what we have to do to do that but when we're finally going to fix center road let's fix it so it's right and it's going to be right for a while and if that means that means so much season mitigation or something else has to be postponed maybe it has to be postponed but of the paving grant it's $175,000 all second okay discussion it's been moved in seconded to approve the grant but phil moved in who seconded i did can see you second okay all in favor hi hi oh is this the early room for one signature i think so can you do can you guys designate somebody to sign i think this is our designated okay and liz will be designated to sign perfect you only need one signature yep match is supposed to i'm just i'm by look this over the other day i'm looking it over again our match is supposed to be 20 so we're gonna be in it we're gonna be in it for more than uh more than 20 i would say just for my information how does the state come up with that money is it just so much per mile or is it how do they how do they come up with that number it's based on it on uh they uh you quoted them for uh for uh for the work to be done and i believe it's you know for the paving and for the uh reclamation yeah but it's it's an estimate that we got or did they come up with that number think they the state has their own formula right yeah that's what i thought so they pay they pay so much for paving and whatever it is beyond that is on us right yeah okay that's my number thank you what uh on that the quote that steve gave us that doesn't include mccullough hill doesn't see it didn't sound like it doesn't include mccullough hill does it no it's strictly center road strictly center road right okay need to do at least to the bridge everything across the bridge was that steve i said i think we need to do that section on mccullough hill road uh at least to the bridge put it back to gravel right it's really bad and it's rough you can't do much with it right no i agree with you steve okay okay we've got we've got more work to more work to do on that it's exciting that it's getting done but as we know it's going to be expensive really expensive anything else victor i don't think so okay thank you thank you victor victor what about the culverts on uh mccullough hill where you're doing the renovations they're done is that what you mean well i didn't know i mean you you just said you were thinking of putting them in so they're already done they're already done yeah yes well except for one drive culvert which we have to try to turn but we but but the excavator broke before we could do it great so that that's that that that that sharp curve with a deep drop to the culvert right that section right there sit again please it's that sharp curve when you're coming off east hill and you go around the curve when there's a real deep drop off to the culvert yeah uh i mean uh yeah so that's where you're putting up the the railing or you did no no no railing are you confused did uh did the the only thing i got from that was uh linda i wanted uh to put uh guard rail around that corner yeah so did you do that are you thinking in doing that no and no why um i've been driving that that's a pretty sharp curve it was a why it's a wider intersection than it ever was we built that that extended the culvert it will change a little bit mary when we uh when we do our grappling there we will build that side up a little bit bama you can put the gravel on the road yeah one or better mary just just uh just a thought for what it's worth the problem with the problem with guard rails they're expensive to install and they're expensive to maintain so the minute we start putting in guard rails we're going to get requests from all over the place to put in guard rails we need to we just need to be careful and only do it where it's really necessary okay just asking i hear you thank you okay we're ready are we ready to move on yeah let's move on yeah let's move on review and approve minutes of the June 15th 21 select board meeting is there a motion steve moves okay it's been moved in second to approve the minutes all in favor aye aye any opposed i think i wasn't there for you i think you weren't the one before that right i don't know no you were there this one it was the one before you weren't yes okay i know you abstained in the last vote when you voted in the 15th for the meeting before okay i just have no recollection well all right so i approve them okay well we have enough people to approve them so we're good correspondence sarah well actually all the correspondence has been taken up was taken up at the planning commission meeting but we also have uh our collector of delinquent taxes uh dave smith is here he's got his he's got his own correspondence dave hi everyone hi dave hi first let me let me apologize i the date on this letter is incorrect it should read today's date July 7th or 6th rather and i just wanted to give you all a quick update that i sent some names off to our lawyers to begin the process of tax sale i did this kind of as soon as we had a good reliable list on uh June 10th and we sent six names since then three um three taxpayers fortunately have settled their accounts they paid all the money they owed and um just for a little idea of what i did um i've been kind of paying attention over the last year we didn't do any tax sales in fiscal 2020 um partly because i was just very new and kind of figuring out how it's done mainly because it was 2020 and it just didn't seem like the time to do it but um there are some people that have been carrying their debt over the course of a year and just observing them and seeing that they haven't really been making any progress and maybe it's the best thing to do is is to start this process so um we now have three names um they've been sent to care and they have until the day after tomorrow um otherwise then the tax sale gets gets posted in the newspaper and the process begins you gotta read them out loud okay their names are Tammy Tammy and Richard Horman of 51 but okay of 51 Daniels farm road um i have to sit through this because i have all the names here portal llc of 17 portal road and donald pierce of 53 lower sunny brook he's the one that passed away yes is he he's male sex electric or no different different one yeah okay so that's really i just wanted to let you all know that process is going on what's the total amount dave of delinquent taxes right now roughly uh i don't have that information in front of me right now just roughly you mean the whole the whole yeah bigger picture um you know i can run off and get that for you in a minute that'd be all right that's all right it would be good to know what's on point in time of june 8th which was a couple days before this report the total was 148,786 we can take off 12,000 that right yeah i think there's been a few that's come off of this but rough numbers here you know somewhere between probably 125 to 100 is that normal every year it's usually high right at the end of the year and people seem to work it down by by december you've got people have started to in the past i mean that was the way i found it but last year it really added a whole and i can't remember because of covid did you take away the eight percent help you and during 2020 you did yes for 2020 tax for 2020 delinquents yeah yeah okay that's it other any other correspondence nope thank you dave thanks dave thanks everyone during hiring a handy person to make repairs at the town hall election possible sarah i just want permission to be able to hire to go look for somebody to do handy to do repairs at town hall well for example that hinge right there that fire door was removed by a certain select board member and never replaced and it's closed somebody a lawyer in town not my husband has threatened a lawsuit okay so um i need uh we've got the elevator upstairs has a faulty latch we have things like broken broken windows that need to be repaired just little things all around the place i just need to be able to call somebody when we have like broken stair rails okay all right yeah so we don't need to make a motion do we no no no but i wanted to get your approval i didn't i didn't know if you were gonna say you know it's your it's your you the select board's over getting a new town hall you haven't heard the select board is in is in charge of overseeing town hall of the town building so i wanted to get your permission before i just jumped ahead and yeah when you decide to head on the third floor be sure and let us know okay or air or air conditioning on the second floor on the first floor exactly that's what darinda said to me yes make sure they're insured okay we have the news on the cv fiber thing do you are you guys uh mary's just look hi mary i'm i'm listening go ahead this must be slow all right so we have two people interested in the cv fiber board do you want to do this phil phil does not want to do this we have uh dave lauren so i think you guys have spoken about in the past he is um he has been deeply involved with the internet since before there was a commercial internet he's a software engineering architect at sales force he's been a regular participant internet governance issues over three decades including such bodies as i can things nanog ripe and ietf blah blah um he's served on the board of dns hyphen oarc a non-profit organization for the domain name system operations community he is a remote worker for 25 years and has a significant interest in rural broadband in our area yeah he's a guy and then also do we need a backup do you need a uh well yeah we did then we also have wendy freudblake she wrote and said uh she's interested in the cv fiber board she has been suffering with poor internet for years is incredibly frustrated her skill set is communications public speaking and event organizing she'd be happy to be helping anyway i can so considering that lauri doesn't want to uh take over the the backup position um it looks like we may have a candidate and a backup yeah i would definitely say david's the candidate yeah and wendy y'all want to go to the meetings yeah okay so great perfect so do you guys want to make a motion on that yeah so so phil moves that david and and and and live seconded that david larnes and the middle sex representative yeah i understand that lauri said it was really complicated when you jump into the middle of it it's not intuitive and and uh wendy freudblake is the alternate i assume there's some paperwork we've got to sign right i think you just probably let's uh someone thank you yeah phil moved unless seconded that the name uh pointing david larnes as the middle sex representative to the cv fiber board and wendy freudblake as the alternate okay all in favor hi hi okay motion passes great the opposed motion passes thank you um we need to sign so this is this is weird uh i got a call from the state of ramon um they just need i said that the board had already approved the the that jason merrill had had uh was the was the fire warden and he said well we just need sex select board signatures so it's kind of you guys have already nominated him i did call jason and double check with him and he said yes he wants to be that so um he just said it's just a matter of signing the form and i can print it out i thought i had it with me for some reason i think it's gotten paper clipped into something else um that the guys here can just sign it that would be great yep boarders uh they're actually signed in person peter hey i did give you my approval you first came through by email but we've got three signatures out on the paper okay so um just so there's no misunderstanding our intent is to meet in person now whenever possible i thought we decided we were gonna wait until labor day but i guess we it wasn't it changed when they sent out that notice yeah it's not we don't have that we don't have that ability unless you're separately charter town and you want to just fucking stop stop stop stop stop i thought we agreed we were gonna have in person meetings for guests we would have somebody in the town hall i did not think we agreed that we were all gonna show up at the town hall that's my confusion so is it everybody's intent that we are now having in person meetings yeah yeah and if for some reason it's really hard to get in for that in person meeting we can stay home and do it right but in general we should try to be here so like if we're back together we can cancel it what we can say let's be a zoom yeah but our intention our intention is to keep the zoom link as an option right yes it is and i will be unfortunately fortunately or unfortunately i'm going to miss at least one meeting in uh in august i'll be here for the meetings in july yeah and then i mean i i probably can zoom in from wherever i am but i just wanted to make sure i knew what the ground rules were so that's fine and we're gonna have a meeting next we have a meeting meeting next week correct is there another meeting in july yes there's a meeting next week is the meeting with the fire department at the fire station and that's definitely in person and that's on the 13th at six correct and then we're gonna we have a meeting on the 20th as well at five at the town office yeah yes okay another thing to bring up real quick um back to the opera money is there going to be any kind of discussion public discussion or anything like that and to the the intentions to or is there more research to be done or what's the scoop on that didn't we agree that we were going to have an information meeting at our july 20th meeting i believe it is okay all right hopefully we'll know we'll go more by then i mean the other this one item i had for tonight is is there any update phil on what's uh what's going on right okay i missed some of that i i'm just i'm just wondering so have we have we given that memorandum of understanding to rob halpert have we approved it or we what what where are we what are we doing it's with rob and um i think he was away for a few days so he just got back to me and he said he's digging into it it's rather complex um and he'll be back in time he certainly will be back in touch before the meeting on the 20th which is i think when we thought we would have a open kind of forum discussion about this right so when i read it and i and i didn't read it today i read it i read it a a week ago i believe it says in there that we are required to turn over the money within 15 days of when we receive it which could be any day so but we haven't executed anything so right yeah yeah 15 or 30 that was 30 yeah um it's 30 i'm just going i'm just going from memory all all i'm saying is we're we're on track to have our ducks in a row right yeah yeah so um before you go uh peter and mary yeah the the state requires um that uh we i need peter i need your signature so could you just i'm just going to leave this form for you out here so you can sign jason merrill's reappointment for the state of vermont okay no problem because this guy has a designated chair right there so okay well if you want to you can if you want to you can come down and uh sign it that would be good i mean i'm in town so i could sign something if peter are you in town or no no but i will be tomorrow okay yeah i'm not going to come down tonight yeah peter you heard i'm in my car but i'm going home after this so just just quickly and i apologize for this but has anybody heard anything any conversations any any rumblings from the folks at the fire department i've heard nothing i'm surprised oh can i ask these guys something uh you guys wait a minute did anybody hear anything from them no no okay all right um did this meeting this meeting on the 13th do you uh the listeners would like to uh have a have a moment to meet with the board on the 13th do you want me to just push them off until the 20th i don't know if it's something i don't know if it's an emergency or not but i didn't know if you wanted these fire department meetings to be just fire department stuff yes yes we did yeah we're going to meet at the fire department so it would be okay yeah awkward to have the listeners down there i think all right i'm just uh if it's something that is urgent urgent we could all stop by quickly for 15 minutes at the town hall before we went down to the fire station but i would prefer that we put it off if we can is this meeting at 5 p.m or 6 p.m it's at 6 it's at 6 yeah yeah i thought so yeah okay 6 p.m but all i'm but all i'm saying is we could you know we could meet with the listeners at 5 30 quarter set i don't know i don't know what the issue is so i don't know i'm i'm asking i'm i don't know what the issue is either they're not telling me darinda seems to have some idea is it darinda do you think it's something that can wait um what was darinda's response probably you're thinking of something important to ask about these meetings this this month and it keeps going in my head and out like really quickly we've got the bca meeting that may or may not the bca may or may not happen that's august 3rd right and we haven't heard back yet we have not heard back okay was that supposed to be today no i no i screwed up i just needed to warn it by today no i needed to warn it by actually last week so i i got i warned it by last week i hope it doesn't happen i know yeah all righty that will be that will be all right that bca meeting would you say that will be zoomable yes all meetings that think are going to be zoomable the question is we we just need to um i mean i was caught by surprise like everybody else that suddenly the order was lifted and suddenly we had to comply and uh i was going to have family members put something up and upstairs but a the internet is not that great upstairs we need to extend her and there are major family issues going on so i could not get them to install the plastic green tv and um uh you know it's also hot and gross up there um we bring a computer though next week to do zoom for the fire department yeah oh i'm gonna bring yeah i think if everybody everybody has one there they do it might be easier if everybody just brings their own left i'm sorry for until we get this we have one problem no just have one with a good sound you know i don't know i don't know how to work that but you just kind of we just got a mute you know so you don't get crushed out of between the computers which everybody right it's just awkward it's much easier to meet in person but if we were to make this a um regular thing it might be worth investing in a camera of some sort that you just have here like the owl the owl the owl's both the camera and the microphone right right and water bear water water berry is gonna loan us ones uh we have plenty of people are willing to lias has one but that's a very nice offer thank you very much thank you i've not watched all right anything else this is why this is why i suggested that we not make the change until after september first leader it's not our choice yes i sarah i totally get it i can't believe that they did it that way but they did so in person if we get a bad variant and people are getting sick but then what yeah liz is saying if we get it if the delta thing takes off then we're back to remote nope no but you know we've got all these people coming into our state it's massachusetts it's it's crazy it's a license plate where every other late plate is loud anyway so yes sir what so that we so we can have zoom meetings you can have zoom meetings the the governor said that from now on meetings must be held in person and at the very least you know you could if there's the old rule was that if you had to for some reason have a remote meeting you had to have at least one member of the legislative body there and the other ones would call in and then there were all sorts of protocols around it for example that was when people had to vote by certain you know order saying i or nay but um the the way that the vlct the now i got from vlct was look at it's lifted you go you go back to work you go back to what you're doing and i also think that we have to sign orders in person now because the order has been lifted so then they're taking oh so then we all do have to be here yeah you really do yeah okay yeah they're no longer going to be accepted and the other thing is along the same lines is that we were getting by with having grants signed virtually or attaching minutes and people aren't there that's not flying anymore so that's just the way it's got to go yeah like the bank wouldn't accept this loan by signatures by can you hear that oh yeah okay that's the way it is and one other question yes victor uh steve did you see earlier you're going to call me absolutely okay i just want to make sure so that i heard it correctly let me finish that sentence i want to make sure i heard that that's what you're gonna do so i'll be waiting to hear from you okay let's remember we're all on the same team here you know it's supposed to be oh i think you've got to do something about your lighting though all right well why don't you why don't you give me that extra laptop down there and then i could use it anywhere just for not very good we couldn't use it tonight we tried to use it tonight it didn't work it's a chrome book and it was just no you said that was yeah well no it's okay for what for email or something yeah you can't do it yeah so just just to wrap up i really think it's important that we continue to have the hybrid available availability at our board meetings yeah just don't we just don't flip back and say okay we're back in the old world and that is what it is and people who can't attend have to call in and all that stuff i i think we need to figure out how to get organized and initially i think we should especially in the summertime uh do it downstairs because it'll be baking hot upstairs so whatever we have to do i think we need to do it and i think we should not expect that sarah's family is going to do it i don't know how we hired it set it up but i think we need to spend the money to do it and do it correctly and have it so that we want to move it all upstairs we can do it but for the time being just do it downstairs oh it's my internet that's constable all right we have unstable internet right now so let's we should probably adjourn adjourn let's go well does everybody agree with that or no or is that the plan or no people are just just letting me talk and then just say oh okay we're done goodbye our internet here our internet here crap it was hard to hear you we didn't really hear anything you said so don't you'll maybe just as well i want to make sure we have hybrid capability and i think we need to hire somebody to organize that and set it up is what i said oh i bet um dave smith we could pay him a few extra hours to do that he could probably handle that you think well you know he's a filmmaker he's a videographer he figured out okay we just need to buy the right before that's the part that's i would i would have bought it myself and alias was saying to me that we could take our speakerphone uh and actually there's some way to set it up with the owl so you get really good idea cool it's awesome and we'll just need external speakers on the um surround side of course let's let's move forward on this please okay we're working on it peter well if you if you need me i'm happy to try and help but i'm not the guy to plug the wires in i can tell you that yeah no you just keep working on your tractor tractor and bulldoze the town hall that'll solve a lot of problems bye bye what what time do you