 So I'll call the meeting to order at 7 o'clock. The first item of business as usual are the minutes of the last meeting, meeting of November 2nd, 2021. Is there a motion? I'll move to adopt the minutes of November 2nd, 2021 with amendments and corrections as noted. Zero second. Second. Page 1. Under attendees, it should read Melinda. Oh, yes. And page 2. Hearing no other changes, then all those in favor of approving the minutes of November 2, 2021, say aye. Aye. And there are no nay votes and Ted is not here to abstain, so we'll go on then to public comment. Is there anyone in the audience? First of all, who was making the public comment on any issue tonight? See no one. How about the people on zoom? I believe I've got 2 folks that would like to speak. Terry, I'll go. Dennis 1st Dennis not connected yesterday. Hi Dennis. I'm going to connect you in just a moment here. Hi Dennis just in a mute. Can I see now? Oh, yep, you're on Dennis. Good evening. Good evening. I'm not sure what's going on. I cannot see anybody, but I will keep speaking. Can you hear me? Yes. Okay. I just want to introduce myself. I'm Dennis Francis. I am originally from the West Indies, from the Caribbean island of Canada, which was a former British colony. I have been living in the U.S. for over 30 years now, but I came to Vermont in the year 2006. I have been living over the time for the last seven years, but I have been living in Vermont for about ten years. I was employed with Cabot as a customer accountant for 13 years, and I am retired now. And since I have been retired, I have been able to put more interest into some of the affairs of Williston. So I have joined the Williston Racial Equity Partnership. And as you know, the partnership has sent a letter to the select board concerning affordable housing. And I just wanted to make a few comments concerning affordable housing. I realized from my research that in October 2012, that the select board then created the Williston Affordable Housing Task Force. And the task force determined that it was important. Affordable housing was an important element of both the town planning program and the residential growth management program. Now we know today that there is a lot of growth going on in Williston. The Williston, the task force, believed that it was very important that the town become more proactive in promoting affordable housing in the Williston. And in their recommendation, the report which they submitted in December 2013, they recommended that 600 units of affordable homes should be built within the next 10 years. So that was 10 years from 2013. We are into an eight-year period right now. And the income group, which they mentioned, there should have been about 375 units in one income group, 75 units in the other income group. So there were four income groups which they needed to bear affordable housing for. I know today there are about 71 units in the pipeline. There was some, the town place hotel has been converted into a transitional housing, an affordable housing. And I think 35 or 36 units will be affordable housing. One of the things I wanted to know is that whether if the current select, who can inform perhaps the partnership concerning what happened within that eight years? How many units were built? Apart from those which we know that are in the pipeline, the 71 units in the pipeline. The select board then or the task force then had recommended 60 units per year. You know, I'm just trying out those numbers here. Hopefully that, you know, my question concerning how many units have been built within the eight-year period could be answered. Now, the task force concluded that in building some of these affordable homes and well-deserved. They were going to attract a different background of people. Housing and well-deserved today is very expensive. I am a homeowner. I came here as a homeowner. I own a condominium. But if I sell it today, I would not be able to buy another home and understand. I know it's very expensive. The task force even acknowledged that there was a matrix of difficulty and formidable problem facing building affordable housing in the town of Worcester. So I wanted to know if this select board is looking at that program that was recommended, that 10-year program, or if any select board before had implemented any of the recommendations. So, you know, in concluding my remarks, I will just like to mention it says the task force believes this range of housing will create, will standard reflect and attract community members from many different backgrounds and walks of life. So that was one of the goals. They wanted to attract people from many different backgrounds and walks of life. So, and in the letter to the Partnership 10, they also mentioned that. So I want to thank you for giving me the time. And I think that's what I want to say right now. Thank you very much. Oh, yeah, Brent, I think I see you raising your hand off and I'm going to connect you just a moment. Good evening. Can everyone hear me? Can everybody hear me now? Okay, well, I am also part of the partnership as, you know, as Dennis is. And we, this is also in response to the affordable housing letter. I have been in business in Vermont for over 40 years and looking at it from an economic point of view, you know, anytime there's commercial expansion, as we all know, we need infrastructure. We need water, you know, we need sewer and so on. And one of the also infrastructure requirements for economic growth and sustainability, commercial retail and so on is affordable housing. Without that, it's not sustainable. You know, as we all know, Vermont is facing a labor shortage crisis. And, you know, as Dennis pointed out, there's a severe housing shortage. So it'd be irresponsible to approve commercial expansion without affordable housing to match it. And Williston is willfully like the percentage of affordable housing to commercial right now is willfully, you know, shortchanged. And so, you know, the officials need to be proactive. And I would like to invite the select board to respond. You know, I'm not have what Dennis and I just go into the stratosphere, you know, democracy is about that. So I appreciate any response, whether, you know, you're concerned about this or you're not or whether you're uncertain. And I thank you for your time. So thank you, Brett. It's an issue that will be debated for sure. So anyone else on the line? Nope, Terry. No one else. So move on to the opioid distributor lawsuit settlement. And Eric, just a couple of minutes on that and we can have a motion. Sure. The board discusses a couple of office during a lawsuit against opioid distributors Cardinal, McKesson and Amerisor's Virgin and Johnson and Johnson, which manufactured and market opioids. There's a nationwide settlement agreement recently announced last month. Deputy Attorney General, Joshua Diamond joined the select board meeting to provide overview of the settlement that Wilson has been asked to consider joining. The board can consider action and join the settlement agreement with a suggested motion. So our last meeting we asked to have this put on the agenda. Move to join the national settlement agreement against opioid distributors and authorize the town manager to sign any documentation necessary. Zero second. Second discussion of motion. It's a rather straightforward thing. I do I do note that if anybody's been paying attention in the national news. We were invited a year and a half ago by by some I think a law firm, basically to sue the opioid manufacturers ourselves or at least join their lawsuit. A lot of those municipal lawsuits are getting dismissed because the legal theory is suspect and well, basically bad. So anyway, I'm glad we didn't do that and glad we're looks like we're going to be doing this. Thank you for the discussion of the motion. If not, I'll lose a few of the motion and say hi. Hi, hi. And there's no attention. So we have carried out that we're moving on then to the public hearing. I'm not developing a bylaw amendments and the subject on that. Yes, I'll actually have Matt take the lead on this. This is used to the board last month. And I'm hearing one tonight to receive comment on proposed amendments to the town's development by law. Thank you, director map a lot here to provide an overview and any comments from the public. So welcome that for my brief overview and then we can hopefully move on. Thank you. I'll be as brief as I can. We have a fairly lengthy list of proposed bylaw amendments to consider at the hearing tonight. In general, we have. Corrections, non substantive changes and edits for appropriate cross reference throughout the document. All chapters one through 46 are affected by those edits. We are adding a statement to the permits and exemptions chapter about when somebody is impacting polluted groundwater. In particular, this relates to additional safety measures that must be taken and state permits that must be obtained. When someone's interacting with groundwater in the area of the commerce street plume. Recommended changes to parking. This leaves parking maximums in place as they are in the current bylaw, but allows some flexibility underneath that maximum level, as well as provides a more nuanced approach to shared parking, bicycle parking generation, and a few other things related to our parking chapter of the bylaw. We have some updated language in the watershed health chapter to deal with non conforming sites that were created before the watershed health setbacks in Williston were adopted. In particular, this would allow somebody whose backyard is affected by the 150 foot buffer Williston imposes on name streams to build additions or add backyard sheds in exchange for providing some stream restoration or other watershed protection enhancement while intruding into that 150 foot buffer by up to 75 feet. We have a number of amendments in a couple different chapters related to the retail sale of recreational cannabis. In general, this would allow the retail sale of cannabis in two zoning districts in Williston, the Gateway zoning district north, and the mixed use commercial zoning district. It would also allow the sale of medical purpose cannabis in those two districts and would repeal the allowance for medical retail sale of cannabis in the industrial district. There are also some provisions in there related to the establishment of a retail sale operation. It does require approval by the Development Review Board. There are some buffering from residential properties required, or rather is some buffering from residential properties required, as well as buffering between retail outlets, so a minimum spacing of 1,000 feet between parcels containing a retail outlet essentially to ensure you don't end up with a strip of the same type of use. Also, there's an edit that specifically disallows retail cannabis as a use in the Taft Corner zoning district, as this is the only district under which it would currently be allowed with the way the bylaw handles allowed uses. And then we have a definition of cannabis in Chapter 46 simply following the state definition from state law. Finally, we had an amendment requested for consideration by the Select Board in return to the Planning Commission for an updated bylaw report, which is part of your package tonight. And that amendment would quote state law language and reference that in terms of allowing the Select Board on a per case basis to consider waiving transportation recreation and or school impact fees for certain types of affordable housing projects. So, and it's most basic that language quote state law, which says that that is one of the things that legislative bodies may waive fees for under the theory that affordable housing is seen as a desirable goal in the state. But it also adds some boundaries to it that this would be affordable housing at the 80% average meat or area median income or below that it would be affordable for folks making those levels or below, that it would be operated by a housing trust and that the income level of those accessing that housing would be assessed as part of the process. So, this is affordable housing that comes with a few more caveats than the type of affordable housing we normally incentivize under our bylaws. That's as brief as I can do it. Happy to answer other questions. Good job. So, this is a public hearing to be looking for comments from people here in the room or on the Zoom connection. Is there anyone in the audience here who wishes to make a public comment on the amendments that are suggested? Seeing nobody in the room, how about on line? Just give a moment here, Terri. Put a message in the chat. We'll see. Not seeing anyone. We'd like to comment or anything. If we have no members of the public at this moment, are there any questions or comments from members of the board? If not, then a motion to close the hearing would be in order. A move to close the public hearing on proposed amendments to Williston's unified development bylaw. Is there a second? Second. Very discussion on the motion. Hearing none, all those in favor of the motion say aye. Aye. They opposed? Say nay. So, we're then on to whether or not we will consider approving the amendments to the bylaws that we just heard. Any comments from the board as to whether we should approve or not? No. If not, I'm looking for a motion then. I'd move to approve amendments to the town of Williston's unified development bylaw as proposed. Is there a second? A second. Very discussion on the motion. Hearing none, all those in favor of the motion say aye. Aye. They opposed? Say nay. We have done it. Thank you, Matt. Thank you. Thank you. You know, I told the planning commission I'd be at least 40 minutes. I'll walk slow. Thank you very much. Thank you. We're moving then to interview an appointment concerning the energy committee. For the board's information, one of our candidates has withdrawn. So we'll only have four candidates tonight. Well, Susan Hayes has withdrawn her application. Is Kevin going to be joining us online? Yep. We have two Kevin's, one in person and another Kevin on line. And he's online. Kevin Batson is on. Kevin, you connected to share your video. And we also have Reed and Samantha. So we'll have a, we've got three in person and one on. Kevin already there. Just about quite. Yeah. It's way for a moment for him. Okay. There it is. Good. Welcome. So we'll ask each of you to give us a brief introduction to yourself. If you're interested in the job and some of your experience relating to it. We do have your applications before us. So if you could give us a brief run down and I will. Preface this by saying that interesting enough in. Our charter. It says to the highest degree possible. The board will strive for a balance of opinion on all appointed positions boards and commissions. And I'm not sure that we had ever heard that before, but we have the opportunities to look at now. For individuals tonight and possibly three more at some time down the road. So. With that in mind. I will call on for the brief introductions. Kevin Batson. All right. Kevin Batson. I know many of you. For my time on the planning commission and also Wilson green initiatives, which was a forerunner to these. I'm not sure what we have this. Was it stability? What Kathy, the name of it. Sustainable Williston is it's changed its name, but back. Also I'm an engineer at global foundries retiring in December. So I'll have more time. So I had to leave the planning commission because of work, but now I'm retiring. So I hope to have the time. And I'm happy to be back in the meeting. I'm really happy with that. With Wilson green initiative. I. Worked with building energy. Scott. From there, we did all the buildings town, municipal buildings, we did energy. Audits on them. And that. Helped save the town. We could have saved more money with the library and avoided the flooding, but what we discovered the problems with the insulation and air flow were not dealt with in time before pipe burst and we wasted costly renovation. So I feel it's an important back then and I also helped with the town and Rick working with all earth renewables to get the solar trackers that we have. We did some of the research into that for them for the town and I think it's important to work locally. So after Wilson Green Initiative I worked on the national level to have our Congress have a bipartisan market driven solution to help reduce our use of fossil fuels and carbon and get on a green path, a greener path, while but having a market base so that the economy and it's fair to all citizens aren't having huge energy bills that they can't deal with. So I did that but as right now I feel that where progress is really being made is at the local level in the towns and cities that are moving ahead to take steps to save energy and save costs and become green. So that's why I'm motivated to join the commission, our committee. Good, thank you. For the other three you probably want to come to the microphone and sort of get ready to do that. I'll call on Kevin Thorley next. My name is Kevin Thorley. I've been a resident of Wilson for seven years now. I live in the Southridge neighborhood. I think everyone on the board has seen me here before pushing for the energy plan and the energy committee. So you know that I have a lot of interest and a passion around clean energy solutions both from a climate perspective, but also from a quality of life and economic benefits that they can bring to the people of this town and to the town itself. I've spent the last 12 years working downtown Burlington at dealer.com and now the parent company Cox Automotive. I recently switched to move away from the dealership specific aspects of that work in a part of the company that's focused on electric vehicles, battery technologies, fleet services. I've worked within the town on the mobility projects group, both on the transportation programming side and the town map work. And so I get a little bit of experience working with the planning commission during that work. And I think that also helped me kind of get excited about working more in the town and seeing some of the things we can do. And I think the energy committee is kind of well positioned to address some similar topics and then a lot of other topics as well that related to clean energy related to transportation and land use policy. They'll have a positive impact both on globally from a climate perspective, but also again for the people of Wilson and for the town itself. Thank you. Reed Parker. Good evening. I'm Reed Parker. I met all of you just a couple of three months ago when I was doing the Cat Mountain Community Forest Committee, which I'm enjoying thoroughly. I was on the task force that wrote the energy plan for the town project that took us well over a year. And in reviewing it, I hadn't really looked at it in quite some time, but reviewing it, I realized just how much work, how much really good work went into that plan. And I'm pleased that we are on the cusp of having an energy committee and now staffing it. It's good to see that it's going to report up through the planning commission. It's, we had a good relationship with them when we developed the plan. I think that there's a lot of steps in all of those tasks that we outlined and target goals that we outlined in the plan that we can begin to do real work on. Some are actually just driven by the economy. Our leapfrogging us, for instance, in I think the explosion in the electrical car industry is going to take off even faster than what we outlined in our plan. The two speakers who spoke about affordable housing, I think that's an important topic for the town from a housing perspective, but it's also one that when you build it, you need to consider the energy considerations because the people who are looking for affordable housing can't afford to be wasting money on energy. So there's a lot of really good things in the plan. I hope that we can get all seven people eventually on it because there's enough things to spread that wealth of work around and that I'm very pleased to be here and looking forward to it. I'm retired, decided to stay in Vermont this year after splitting my time between two states, but my wife and I are going to be staying here in Williston and Stahl. I kind of represent the opposite end of the spectrum from those you've heard from thus far. I'm pretty new here. I just moved here this summer. I did grow up in Shelburne, but I've been away from Vermont for over a decade. In that time, I've been working on my PhD on climate change in the past. I've both been geocam, but also environmental archaeology. I work a lot on the intersection of land use, people, what people care about, how people care about it and why, and also environment and climate change. I guess I'm just super excited. I'm fundamentally driven by communities, so I really want to serve the one that I live in now. I am trying to stay here permanently in Williston, so I'm really excited to get involved in a more formal way. I want to continue to learn from everybody here, from their local expertise, and also from the peers who worked so hard on getting this plan up and running. It was great to see. When I realized I was going to move back to Vermont and decided to move back to Vermont in last January, I got involved with Decan, so the Vermont Energy and Climate Action Network, and so through that experience, I've been able to work with a lot of kind of energy committees across the state, which has been really wonderful. I was on their communications collaborative with several other members from other town energy committees, putting together the communications toolkit, which is supposed to help municipalities achieve their goals, institutionalize and aggregate knowledge, so I've learned a lot about what exists in the state and what different municipalities are doing to approach their various energy and resiliency goals. I've also worked for the past six or seven months for the Nature Conservancy of Rhode Island as their municipal resilience coordinator, so professionally I'm transitioning from academia towards working on energy and climate full-time. I had an absolutely wonderful experience there working on capital project identification for dedicated climate action grants, federal disaster resilience project identification, strategic planning, mostly on weatherization and transportation, but also on renewable energy siting policies, although I see you guys have a great siting policy going already in the plan, which is good to see. At the same time, I think I've also served a role to center frontline communities and frontline community voices, and those who are often marginalized in the process, and again I want to echo the importance of affordable housing and climate and energy plan. I also, I guess that I'm just excited and I'm here and I'm ready to get going and I want to make sure that as we're looking at our energy goals, we're also considering the other components of resiliency and sustainability, which for us here in Vermont especially are going to be water, soil health, temperature, and also equity. So thank you for having me and I'm happy to answer any further questions. Thank you. So I'll turn it over to the board now to ask questions and perhaps we can go back and reverse order for the next question from anyone who asks it. I know you're waiting, Jeff. I'll go first. Thank you everyone. My question is a bit of an open question. Take it where you want. It involves what are your thoughts about the town, the town energy plan? You know, what does it do right? Maybe what doesn't it do? What might have it amiss? That type of thing. And if Vermont, if you were to consider Williston to be successful in implementing that plan, what does that mean? What would I see? What would I feel in Williston? So I guess my first question is, does that question make sense? And are you all willing to take a stab? Good. So why don't we bring Smith back first? Paul, I'll order for the least experienced person, but I'll go for it. I guess I would say that one of the first tasks I would want to take up is to assess where we are regarding the plan itself. And so obviously, I'm aware that the first steps in enacting the plan are establishing this committee. And I saw all the priorities and pathways to it. And a lot of those pathways were sort of up to the committee, among others in the town and town administration. And so I think one of the first things to do is to assess those and to write a priority list to see what's changed from now to make sure that all the data was accurate and is up to date that went into forming the plan. And so that's not really, I guess the answer is the first part of your question in terms of like, what does it get right? I think a lot, just making sure right now that it's also up to date, I think is my, would be my biggest sort of concern, but there's a lot more, there are a lot more programs that are being offered also at a federal level that we should look at matching and kind of like the funding portion of it. I'm not sure that the plan and it's sort of in my, from my perspective, has a has a rigorous sort of funding mechanism built in or plan built in. And I think that's one of the things that I'd love to consider everything from grant writing to program matching and also looking at budget and obviously what the select board's priorities are. So those are some of the gaps that I see also being a bit more explicit in the education and outreach portion, everything from the municipal workshops that bring community members together, but also in terms of schools and education, I think would be important to have a little bit more clarity in what exactly those goals are, and how are we going to measure them, if at all. In terms of being successful, I think there are quite a few large goals already that are set by the state. So I mean, the one that everyone throws around is 90% by 2050. Obviously, the Vermont council is publishing our report next month. So we're going to have some new goals and we need to reassess there. I think in terms of what town of Wilson looking like to be successful is to reach those and basically to make some some good staffing decisions in the near future so that we are able to reach those in the longer term. I think I see a risk of talking too long. I don't want to but I do see over and over again in different municipalities the desire to do these things and to implement actions but not the staffing capacity to do so. And so to me, it would be successful right off the bat if Wilson were to invest in full-time staffing positions to meet these goals in the long term. That's not necessarily the most popular answer but that's my professional line. So I'll leave you there. Reed. Well, it's one of the co-authors for the plan. I won't say that we got it all right. We tried to throw a lot into it on purpose. Starting right out and as Samantha just said to look for a staffing position, I think that was the number one request. And I understand the select board's position of not doing that right out of the gate. Eric and I have talked a little bit about that. I think we got a lot of the high-level goals correct. Education in the community, both working with individuals, with groups, with the schools, is going to be key to this program to try and open people's minds to how much work it is to put into an energy plan or to move towards energy goals. That's going to take a lot of work to start things moving forward. Working with the Planning Commission is incredibly important because as we have a pretty aggressive amount of development going on in this town with the proposals for housing that's going on, and yet unless I must admit I haven't read all of those plans in detail, but I'm disappointed in a lot of the development does not make use of newer technologies in terms of reducing the carbon footprint for housing. And myself, I live in Finney Crossing and it's about as traditional as you can get even though it's new over the last few years. What would Williston look like? I think if we got a third of this plan implemented over the next several years, we would stand out as a community that could be an example to our region, our state, the whole country as a community that is looking to change the way in which it addresses energy problems, the climate crisis, whether that would be through better construction, rehabilitating older homes, moving towards more electric vehicles, more use of bike paths and walking and community bus lines and things like that. I think there's a lot that would make us stand out. But we are one community and we discussed this when we were developing the plan. You can't do it all on your own. We look at just our neighbor South Burlington as a very aggressive energy committee. So we should try and now that we are going to develop and communicate with them and some of the other more aggressive ones in the state. And the BCAN organization, which represents hundreds of towns and energy committees within the state. And make sure that we do understand what the state itself wants to do. It has its 2016 plan. But where is the state as a whole going forward with that plan? Are we actually accomplishing anything? And can we influence what the state is doing to help our town as a whole in the state? Good for you. Kevin Thorley. So I think the plan is a great starting point. I've read it a number of times. I'm certainly not an expert, maybe like Sam, in terms of, you know, educated in the space. But I think it's a good starting point. I think it's directionally correct. I think the thing we've seen more than anything is just the amount of change in this space over the past few years. And it's hard to say anything written a year or two years ago is going to be the right thing today. But I think it's on the right track and the importance of getting an energy committee going now and staffed up and starting to work is to be, you know, able and available to take advantage of things as they come up. Whether it be federal, whether it be state, grants from other places as well. So I think getting started on this, looking at the things that we have in the plan and finding ways to align those through a kind of analysis of what benefit do we get out, get of those items, those pathways as a town versus, you know, where can we look for funding from the state, from federal, to support those? And I think, you know, trying to align those two to get that biggest bang for the buck out of the gate. From a success perspective, I expect to see a lot of change over the next few years. And I think success for this committee is in positioning Wilson to take advantage of the change that's coming, take advantage of, you know, funding opportunities from the state to kind of get ahead. I think one of the things we've seen in the clean energy space and the general climate solution space is there is a real opportunity for some of the earlier adopters to take advantage of some great incentives to do so. And I think as a town, you're right now in, you know, 2021, this is a great time to be kind of right there at the door to get started to take advantage of those things. I think those are the two questions, Chef. There's no correct answer. I didn't tell them that. Yes, well, as far as the plan, I think everyone's addressed, I share their views on the plan. As far as success, we're very fortunate that our electric grid is 98% carbon-free in the town. So I think success would be a weathering, a strong weatherization program to homes and municipal buildings and businesses to get our thermal energy consumption down. And then electrification, because if you electrify a heat pump, many splits are, you know, excellent way of having clean energy. I've just switched over. I think it's excellent from a pellet stove. And it's, you know, it's a really a model for the rest of the country, where you have, if you have a good resilient green grid and then you electrify your heating and your transportation, those are two big steps I would like to see us take. And would be a big forward step to success. Thank you. Other questions that the board may have? It's a brief question for you all. But and I, having seen many of you here in front of us before, I'm sure I know the answer. But a big part of the energy plan is advocacy and education, you know, public facing kind of initiatives and efforts. So just want to make sure that that is something that you all feel confident in and a role that you feel, you know, comfortable with being kind of the public face of Williston's energy plan and committee. So we can perhaps start with Kevin Thorley. Yes. Definitely comfortable with that. I think that in addition to all the technical things and the financial aspects, I think getting in front of the town, in front of the townspeople with, you know, on these topics is important. A lot of the change we're talking about isn't something the town can legislate away, right? It's, or mandate doesn't matter. It's, you know, individual change that we're trying to provide more awareness of, right, and help people become aware of the ways they can adopt that change, the some of the financial incentives for doing so, the financial benefits for doing so. Personally speaking, my wife and I have posted two electric vehicle forums in town over the past three years. We skipped last year for obvious reasons. So I'm definitely comfortable doing that and have been working a lot in the electric vehicle space, attending similar events in other towns and, you know, working and kind of communicating on that with folks and, you know, talking about the benefits. So, yeah, you're getting in front of the town and kind of helping to provide that awareness of education and finding ways to make it real for all the citizens of Williston is an important part for me. So investment? Yes. I really enjoyed that aspect of when I was part of Wilson Green initiatives. We had hosted a lot of button up sessions where we educate people about opportunities for home weatherization and other, I mean, that's, you know, part of the celebration part of it. I enjoyed the education part. Thank you. Thanks. I think there's a ton of opportunity here and I'm really passionate about it. I guess starting off sort of with public education and outreach. I've done Skype with scientists for years where I just zoom before Skype into local classrooms across the country to talk mostly about climate change and environmental change, but also archaeology and geology. I also teach at the high school level, place-based education, environmental education and also the college level. So I'm pretty comfortable in a classroom setting and also I'm passionate about curriculum development and getting kids involved. So understanding why culverts are super cool and we should care about them. Also, I think that's really important teaching kids because it's a really good way to open conversations in the home with parents as well. We know that students are critical to climate literacy of a community as a whole. I also really have enjoyed the municipal resilient community building workshops that I've ran and organized across Rhode Island and I would love to do that kind of work here also. So that's getting a lot of municipal staff and community advocates and critically emergency staff, which I see some of you sitting here today, all in the same room to talk about some of these issues together and to understand that we have so many common interests across the board and how we could be working together sort of more efficiently and effectively. I also have some quite a lot of stakeholder experience on these issues too. I love meetings and I love people so I feel pretty comfortable and confident and also I really believe it's a sort of a critical part of success. So thank you. And Reed Parker. When we developed the plan, we aimed at the town and citizens and then we kind of tiptoed around saying, oh, we also need to get involved with the school district but knowing that it's politically a different organization. But the reality is if you're going to get anything done and Samantha said it very well, you have to get the schools involved. You have to get young people involved who can absorb a lot of the things. It gets their parents involved to these. The things that excite people are when we had this lineup of electric vehicles a month or so ago out here. And I came just as an absorber because I don't own an electric vehicle. And I was just astounded at how many different varieties there were. And people were looking at them and looking and going inside of them and they go, oh, that's really cool. And then talking to the school bus driver who is here and I assume he's the head of that. And then he had the electric bus and that electric bus goes by my house every day. And that's exciting that you can see that we are making those steps in the town already. The community outreach involves getting all the people who are doing Green Mountain Power goes out and has community plans all the time where they bring people together, especially in the better weather and lining up with them because of all the work they do for energy conservation in the state. And I think that's just incredibly important for us. Thank you. Any further questions from the board? Yes, real quickly. Two quick comments and one question. Start with a question. Sam or Samantha, what is environmental archaeology? You don't have to get up. Environmental archaeology is basically, well, it can be many different things, but it's studying a lot of different eco-facts in addition to artifacts for reconstructing the environment and environmental change in the past. So basically, I'm an archaeologist. And as sort of my sub-specialty, I focus specifically on the environment. So for me, personally, that meant method development, so organic geochem, I don't need to go into too much detail here, but I'd love to talk to you anytime. Basically, I use little signatures that are left over an animal bone that are buried in sites to reconstruct environmental change at a site-specific level instead of a lake that's 2000 kilometers away or something like that. And that helps us sort of understand how people, I study mostly rural peoples, mostly in the Mediterranean, but also in Alaska and a little bit here in the US, how they adapted primarily in land use to those environmental changes. Okay, great. Thank you. To Kevin, I wanted to say congratulations on retirement. And the thing I wanted to comment on was Susan Haynes was withdrawn, and she, at the bottom of her application, she made a comment basically saying, so understand if I'm not a good fit for this committee as a result because she didn't feel she had specific experience or knowledge. And I just wanted to point out that I'm not sure I would, that would have affected my decision at all. Yeah, me too. Thank you. But that was her decision. Any further questions from the board? Comments. Samantha, did I misunderstand you when you said you love people and meetings, or you love meeting people? You love meetings. I was so favorably disposed of your candidacy. Observing dynamics at meetings, it's not what you're teaching. It's not, I mean, it's interpersonal. I love it if you love people, but you learn a lot based on who's speaking and who speaks after who's speaking. You learn a lot about how you work and who's in charge. Yeah, you only learn it once. Well, now comes the time decision. The, Eric has put together motions to appoint five people. Obviously that will need to be changed. If you wish to make the same motions, that's fine. If you wish to change the name of the person for the term, that's up to you. But I'd be looking for probably just one motion to include all of it. They're different than in different years though, right? They're different staggered terms. Yeah. Should we know the logic in deciding the terms? Strictly by alphabet. I did alphabetically. Right. Just for clarification for everybody's purposes here, so you all know. Well, what I want to know is, is it, do people prefer to have the shorter term or the longer term? Probably doesn't make a difference because we'll be back reappointing it next year. Yeah. Okay. And they don't need to re-interview upon reappointment. So I would make one motion, Mr. Chairman. I'd move to appoint Kevin Batson to the Town Energy Committee for an unexpired three-year term through June 30, 2022 and further move to appoint Samantha Lash and Reed Parker to the Town Energy Committee for an unexpired three-year terms through June 30, 2023 and further move to appoint Kevin Thorley to the Town Energy Committee for an unexpired three-year term through June 30, 2024. And is there a second? A second. There's a discussion on the motion. Just one quick question. The shorter calls for five to seven, there's four, which is an odd number, even more. Is there any repercussions of that? Gotta start somewhere. It'll be at least one more person who will apply or has applied, but kind of, and we'll interview that person sometime in the near future. I've received an application today. Great. Maybe recruitment can be one of your first. Any further discussion on the motion? If not, those in favor of the motion say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? So congratulations to the four of you. Welcome to the Energy Committee and we'll hopefully get another person to complete the five at least, and hopefully we'll have seven. So thank you very much for your interest. Thank you all. Next on the agenda then is the fire department staffing discussion. And Eric, you want to lead off and then Chief Collette will give us his discussion. Sure. I'll connect to Chief once I see what I'm doing here. So this is a recap and there's a lot here, so I'll try to try to read the time for the Chief's presentation of the board discussion. Last month, the board received no review of the recently completed fire services analysis report by the firm AB Triton and there's many components to look at in terms of the level of service and the resources used to provide it by the fire department for the board to consider. As a possible next step, staff is prepared, a draft framework to consider that would use the tiered approach of implementing some of these recommendations, looked at a short, medium and long term windows to increase resources and adjust service delivery systems and in turn obtain feedback on the effectiveness of those actions as it progresses. So this evening, staff seeking some initial feedback on this type of framework as an approach. Is this something the board may be interested in looking at? Within this outline, we drafted there's several decision points up for discussion moving forward. This first window looks at short-term actions to consider in this current fiscal year FY22 and or FY23. Chief's here has prepared a presentation on bearing degrees of career staffing additions and potential effect on fire e-investors. So as the board discusses this further tonight, if there's any feedback, that can be used in preparation of draft FY23 budget. Staff, it's certainly listen to the listen to that feedback from the board to help in that initial preparation, understand there's a lot to discuss. I think with that, I'll turn it over to Chief Collette and Shirley's here as well for the discussion. So Chief, I'll get you connected here and you should be able to share your screen. All right. Well, thank you all for having me back for those that are joining us virtually tonight. My name is Aaron Collette. I serve as the Chief Department of the Wilson Fire Department. Before I start tonight, I just want to take a moment of personal privilege. If I could just recognize the staff that sits here behind me, you have three of your paramedics, firefighter paramedics, two of which just completed their training Jeremy and Jim, who is just passed his exam and we're winning here the final results but are promising and that's a big accomplishment. And I just want to recognize their hard work for the town. And of course, Lieutenant Soper and Deputy Chief Gary sitting in the back here as well and Eric Martin. So thank you all for joining me tonight and congratulations on your paramedic. Also, I want to thank the chair for showing up and joining us on the apparatus dedication ceremony where we dedicated the two new apparatus a couple of weekends ago. Engine three was dedicated to the citizens of the town and a lot of four was dedicated to the past, present future members of the organization. So I just want to recognize that publicly. So I joined you tonight to follow up on the discussion and the results of the AP Triton staffing, which you saw on the night of October 12th as a reminder for those didn't see that this is the current career staffing. So you're seeing tonight the full staffing of the 24 hour shift with four members here behind me, which means that this is it. The call staff applying over the last number of years has continued to dwindle and we'll show you that here in a minute. But at any given time, that's what you're going to get the maximum for the career staff is four people, two is what usually work on the engine and two work on the ambulance. Before you, is it okay to ask questions or would you prefer I save to the end? Jeff, it's easy for me to answer it right now. If you'd like to. So as I look at this, this slide and engine two, engine three, engine four, there are zeros down there for staff. Correct. So if a fire were to occur, engine two, engine three and latter four could not leave the station. There wouldn't be until we had call staff arrive. And so right now we have two members that are trained in the call staff to operate engine three and engine two as driver operators. And we have no one in the call staff that's yet certified in latter four. In latter four is your most expensive piece of equipment, I believe. It is. And it will just have to sit. Well, tonight I'm sure that the deputy behind me would probably go and drive. Okay. There's a chance it might have to. There is a chance. During the daytime, the deputy and myself have been driving to bring the ladder to the scene. Okay. So it may be able to leave, but that's not guaranteed. Correct. Okay. So I went back and just thinking about some of the questions that you may ask us and they said, all right, so what was the average career staffing? You're seeing the maximum career staffing here behind me tonight. So what did it look like? So the last since January of 2021, I went back and looked at that in the average daily staffing for the 24 hour shift is 3.3 firefighters per shift. So that means that someone's going to be off. At least one person will be off on those shifts. The call staff, this is the same graphic that you saw again the night of the AP Trident presentation. And what I've demonstrated here tonight in this graph is not the call staff roster, rather the call staff payroll. And I think what that does is gives you a better idea of activity level. So we pay the call staff when they come in and do work. And you can see where that trend line has decreased over the past number of years, where we used to have a very, very robust call staff. And you see that that call staff participation has dwindled now to the point where we're taking a sharp turn in the wrong direction. So this is a true testament. I do I'm glad to report to you that today we released an update. We unfortunately had lost one more call staff member who has elected to move on, but we took on officially three new candidates in that call staff that are sitting in the firefighter one, two program at our firehouse this evening. But to that end, Jeff, that means that they're completing their initial training. They're not going to be driving the latter four anytime soon. Yeah. How busy is busy? How busy is your fire department? This is a snapshot in the last 12 months. This was I pulled this on November 8th, I believe. So you're just shy of 2000 incidents here over 1900 incidents with almost 1260 of those being EMS and the others of all of the other 600 or all other incident types, including fires, technical rescue motor vehicle crashes without injury, the variety of the gamut that you're going to see out and about really we answer the public's call when they call 911 and we are compelled to respond. I wanted to look for trends to see if we can't pinpoint you know where the demand for services and while you can see here this is by time of day using a military clock. And so, you know, things starting start really to pick up when the late citizenry starts to wake up in the morning at 0600 and it peaks either 10, 10 in the morning or at one in the afternoon seemed to be our busiest time of day for us. And then it starts to again decrease as the majority of the population, what we assume to go back to either not traveling through the community or sleeping. I wanted to point out though that while the call numbers seem to decline in the wee hours of the night, these are also some of the most high risk times, right? So that's when people are in their homes and their guard may be down. We're relying on smoke alarm activation, smoke detectors to alert those people to any emergencies. And there would be a significant delay in response for anyone even to respond from home, even our call staff, right? Because of the delay and being notified, awakened and responding to the scene, responding to the station and then response to the scene. So while we do decrease in the evening, in the overnight hours, this still does not mean that there is not a demand. And I broke it down even further. I was trying to look at day of the week to say, alright, is there a trend here? I was looking to see if did it get slower on the Saturday? Does it get slower on the Sunday? It does, but not by much really. And if you looked at this, I'll remind you that the busiest day of the week that this in the last 12 months has been Friday that continues when I look backward. And unfortunately, we, how bad is the problem, right? And I'll share an incident with you last Friday. We had a medical call when the patient was acutely ill and we needed, there was only three members on last Friday evening and two members of the ambulance needed the officer off the engine to drive the ambulance to the hospital because the patient was that sick and needed that type of care in the back of the ambulance. And so the lieutenant asked for a recall personnel. We hit what we call working incident tones. It's a special tone and says, hey, please come in. We need somebody to cover the station. We abandoned the engine on the scene and all three persons transported the patient to the hospital. That call for assistance from the call staff went unanswered. There was no one here in town. We left the engine and the engine stayed there in the community in that neighborhood until the ambulance returned back to the town of Williston about 45 minutes to an hour later. So in that timeframe, you had no one to respond. It would hopefully the dispatch center would have dispatched a mutual aid ambulance or engine from a neighboring community. That has happened. When I look at it quickly, it looks like it happened four times in October as well, where we've had to do something like that. So it's a difficult situation. We're in a difficult situation. You saw the data from AP Triton about concurrent calls. And I wanted to see what it looked like this year because anecdotally, we were talking amongst ourselves at the firehouse and folks said, yeah, it seems like we're doing a lot of concurrent calls. And so the records management software that we have, the RMS, generates this report. So this was taken, you can see here at November 9th. This report was populated and it said here with a start date of January 1st of 21, and to the November 9th at 8.25 p.m., we had run 558 incidents which were overlapping. That means that 34% of the time we were already on another call when a second call came in. So it was an anecdote. The data shows, the data shows. So 34% of the time we were already tied up and committed to an emergency call. What happens in there, I'll tell you what happens, is most of the time the people behind me, one person will break off on the engine and start to initiate that response. And they may be there by themselves and leave the ambulance unseen with the people that need to treat that patient. More often than not, that's where we're going to be is on another ambulance call. So when the ambulance is at the hospital, what does that mean? That means that we have 1.3 full-time firefighters protecting the town. That's 1.3 people to come answer the call. So I want to focus on the topic of critical tasking and this really stems from the conversation actually Jeff that you spoke of during the last meeting was okay but who's going to get the ladder truck there and it's not about the ladder truck, it's really about critical tasking and those are the tasks that the firefighters have to do to make sure that they mitigate the scene that we get the incident under control and how we render aid to the public and so all of these tasks, all of these check boxes have to be completed and that's an important part of our job. So just to remind you that apparatus themselves don't solve those problems, it's the people, they are our most valuable resource. Fire Department is responsible for assuring that the companies that do respond are capable of performing those tasks and that's what critical tasking is. And so when I was talking to Manager Wells about this, I wanted to show you a little bit about what it means operationally for us every day. So what I've done here is shown in red silhouette the absence of providers really the people that we don't have out in the field and in the black silhouette, the firefighter icon that you see there, the people that will start initiating this care. So critical tasking for a cardiac arrest involves the lead EMS provider, one of the folks behind me, the paramedic will take that role, you'll have an airway and ventilation person that's going to manage that, chest compressions, right? So that's really the fundamentals of airway breathing circulation that you all probably are aware of at some level of community-based CPR. Ideally we have a person that serves in the role of incident commander and that's the person that's going to provide psychological first aid to the family member that's going to be talking to the family member of the loved one who's struck ill and we're going to talk them through what the efforts are that we're doing to try to resuscitate their family member and they're also going to be providing for seem safety and getting ready to move that patient to the ambulance. And then of course the ambulance driver, somebody to bring the ambulance to the hospital. You say well if our staffing level is at three, how do we, and we've read out the role of the ambulance driver what's happening and what's happened recently is we've either had our police officers who have helped us by driving the ambulance or our police officers have been in the back and helping with the role of chest compressions but when we're short staff we need to get all these tasks done and at the time we try to adapt and overcome and think on our feet and that's how we try to accomplish it today. Ideally we don't have some of these other roles and so again this icon shows what we really a new approach to CPR we call it like pit crew CPR or high-performance CPR and that means that everyone has a defined role and when they do that task when they have their assigned task you see us as a well-oiled machine and that gives our patients the highest likelihood of success of survival in that cardiac arrest and when you don't have all the people in those roles you can see that they have a big blue X across them and that forces us to provide us a standard of care a level of care that we personally our own philosophy is not meeting our own goal of excellence every day. To change up the incident type motor vehicle crash this is one of our high-frequency events for us as you may imagine with the number of vehicle movements that you have across the community we have three people here again 3.3 career firefighters average on staff so that's going to be the person it's going to be a lead EMS provider at the ambulance driver who's bringing the ambulance to the scene and then the engine driver is often going to have to have wear many hats and that role is often the company officer the scene commander at all of those roles but ideally you'd have one person that serves in that incident command role and is responsible for scene safety if we're all committed we're all focusing on the motor vehicle crash and unfortunately when we're focusing on that we're not paying attention to other things like the cars that are moving around us and how dangerous that incident scene is the other two roles that you see that are in the red silhouettes or the extrication specialist that's the persons that are responsible for trying to pull somebody out of the car they're going to cut the vehicle away get them out and disentangle them from the motor vehicle crash and the final patient care provider here is more often than not we don't see a single vehicle crash we see a multi vehicle crash and that's going to be another provider that's going to provide EMS to the other the driver of the other vehicle and that's the minimal and so there's a lot of red here when we are operating on a motor vehicle crash and I have seen this personally in my tenure in the in the department where the ambulance has been at the hospital and we've had a single engine person and myself responding in the command car because I was out and about and it's difficult because all of these roles right now are juggled and what you have to do is triage your patients and triage the scene to see what roles you're going to fill and we're not able to fill all these roles and it's very risky for our members to be operating in a roadway without a set of eyes and ears behind them much less being focused on a patient who's acutely ill because of a trauma this is an actual photo of our members conducting a demonstration for the Vermont Technical College their summer program and this shows how absent this is so these are the two extrication specialists doing the demonstration and that's the engine officer working in the incident command role and you say okay well who's treating the patient so ideally there's a patient that's hiding behind that engine officer in that rear seat that that's what we're trying to cut out and you can see that there is no there's a bunch of blue there with red silhouettes for people that we are not able to do that so it provides a challenge for us every day on trying to deliver a top quality high level of service our biggest risk or one of our largest risks is a building fire and you can see here it's quite obvious that there's a lot of red X's or a lot of blue X's and red silhouettes in this and so we have an engine officer and what I've pulled the staff at the fire department is this is that I will not risk your life for property I'll let you risk your life to save a life but if it comes out in its property only I want you to recognize that we only have the what we have and I can't expect you to outperform or put yourself in an in harm's way with this limited staff so I want you to be heads up about your approach to fire suppression and that surrounds us is the incident commander will take charge of that scene and request other resources the ambulance driver and the ambulance crew chief often will take an attack line and attack a fire from a defensive position a safe area outside but what all the other jobs here really is you know we're sworn to to protect the public and life safety is one of our priorities so I can't I don't have a team to send in for a search and rescue how do we do it we do the best that we can with what we've got and so maybe they do take that risk where they try to move the hose line and and probably try to do a search off of the hose line is it ideal absolutely not but they've adopted it's it's time for us to to not put them in that situation anymore we need to have by by law we need to have a rapid intervention crew which is this people that are trained and equipped on the outside of an immediately dangerous to life and health environment when we have people operating on the inside of that so we don't have the ability to do that search and rescue the rapid intervention crew the backup line provision for EMS if we were to find a patient we don't have a ventilation crew to allow the smoke heat and toxic gases out of the building we don't have an incident safety officer and the pump operator is often our incident commander who's again multitasking and trying to do a lot of things and you I think if you look at any fire ground injury or death reports that when you had take that person away out of that incident command role they don't have the ability to focus on really the severity of the incident or the the potential that they're that situational awareness of what their members are actually getting into this task again so this just puts a graphic into what I tried to show you before where where do those people go that RIT team is that rapid prevention team the incident commander outside can controlling the incident you have a pump operator with a backup crew an attack crew a ventilation crew and a search and rescue team oh yeah again fire apparatus aren't what put out fires it's people that help make our attack successful so options for staffing so we operate three 24-hour shifts each of those shifts are staffed at either with a minimum staffing of three persons or the maximum staffing of four persons any hiring that occurs so if we were to hire staff they have to hire numbers in permits of three otherwise we don't actually add staff down each shift we'd add singles and it doesn't really mean anything to us we hired three firefighters with it provides no staffing advantage because the minimum staffing would remain at three because we would do is because of their accrued leave times and their vacation time or what have you we wouldn't be able to move that minimum staffing up because somebody's always going to be out on vacation time if we did move that minimum staffing up then our demand for overtime would increase and shoot up and then we just don't have enough resources to mandatory people back in to work those over that overtime if we were to increase the minimum staffing so hiring six would provide minimum staffing advantage move to four per shift so that would increase to a minimum staffing of four at all times it does not address the concurrent call issue and I'll take you through that in a minute hiring nine firefighters as recommended by AP Trite provides some staffing improvements the minimum staffing would then move to five per shift you say well we have a call staff where's the call staff and where do they come into play well right now there are low numbers on the roster as you saw the overall decline in participation seems to be a national trend it's not local to us we called around other organizations and we see the same same trends limited shift coverage participation so we welcome our call staff to come in and and ride with the career staff and and serve in 12 or 24 hour shifts and we see limited participation in that it's it's voluntary we don't mandate that necessarily we have unpredictable availability for the emergency response so last Friday night when they summoned to help to come in you would think oh well out of the eight or nine people that are sitting on the call staff that are active right now somebody must have been able to free to come in well on a Friday night at seven o'clock that didn't no one showed up so it was unpredictable delayed response time from home so that means that if you're trying to navigate the community in your personal vehicle to think about how you're going to get to the firehouse because we asked that all of our responders go to the firehouse it provides a level of safety that's how the fire trucks will get there at a level of accountability that adds to the response time to get help to the incident scene there's no assurance of response on the recall so meaning when we do hit the working incident tone and say hey can can you folks come in to help there is no guaranteed that you're going to get four more people every time that's not going to happen and unfortunately our current call staff roster has limited EMS certification so if you have an untrained responder come in yet the majority of your incident responses are EMS that person well compelled to respond has no EMS training and so I don't it's almost like a false advertisement to say that they respond to that incident they could respond to help a mutual aid ambulance with the lifting of the patient or moving in the patient but they certainly wouldn't be able to render care so staffing options for cardiac arrest and what I've done here you'll see this slide several times for each of the incident types is I've showed you what the green is showing the current staffing or the number of full-time shift staff that would be on duty if you hired either current staffing hire three new people hire six new people or hire nine new people and the yellow fills out the the total number that would be assigned to a shift if the shift was fully staffed and the red shows that we would not be able to answer that with with their career staff so as you see right now today the current staff would be three persons for this cardiac arrest filling in the role of the primary patient caregiver the secondary care attendant and the tertiary care attendant and you maybe have the ambulance driver so again if we didn't have a driver so we right now we kind of adapt and overcome either use law enforcement or law enforcement will help in the back of the ambulance if we need being and so that's that that maybe role certainly don't have those other roles that are all the red and the red the part of the red that bothers me the most is the concurrent call issue where that over 30 percent of the time right now we have another call and so who's going to answer that call and so that's why I think though the most viable option that you see here is we either need to move to six or a nine person hiring because that's only then do we start to give any hope of actually having an available second unit to answer that other call those concurrent calls this this shows the the spectrum for the motor vehicle crash again so we have the engine driver who's dual heading in the role of the incident commander of the ambulance driver the primary patient care attendant but if you hire three again it was just too many maybes here it doesn't really increase our efficiency so again either six or nine start to get us a little bit more protection unfortunately even with that nine it doesn't provide us another apparatus because those people are all going to be on the engine so that's really staffing that that engine company they won't staff a second unit in that role and in the building fire matrix that you see in front of you this is where the the red is a big challenge right it's it's our biggest liability and nine doesn't solve our problem six doesn't solve our problem and again I think that's the testament to what what AP Triton said is that the minimum staffing for recommendation is the immediate hiring of nine personnel knowing that in the future we needed to help hire more folks to help fill in the role the red zones that you see here these red boxes that are unchecked that's really I think what their vision is in the recommendation so reasons to strive for nine is really to assemble a high performance CPR team to increase our safety on a motor vehicle crash is allow for the assembly of the two wing of that person wrap intervention through as required no OSHA 29 CFR 1910 134 which is the respiratory protection stand what does that do for us this allows us to have this high efficiency high performance CPR team with all of the roles filled in because that would increase our minimum staffing to five persons and allow us to fill every one of these roles in cardiac arrest management it gives us a better chance at motor vehicle crashes it certainly doesn't fulfill all of the needs on a motor vehicle crash it doesn't have that second patient extrication specialist or that second care attendant but it allows us a little bit more that certainly allows us to have that incident commander and that scene safety officer to help oversee the scene to have their head on a swivel and be aware of what's going on here they can certainly request more resources but they won't be so caught up and focused in on the actual patient care or the extrication of the patient and then nine for the building fire response it allows us to have the incident engine officer the attack line and operation and assemble that rep intervention crew with the potential at full staffing to actually get a search and rescue going which is would be ideal still a lot of unfulfilled roles in there but it's a movement in the correct direction movement in the forward direction providing a safer and a better chance for our members to save lives so what does it cost this is going to be a little bit stronger than the AP Triton recommendation and the reason why this is is that the union negotiated a new contract between the time that AP Triton did their analysis and the time that this is published and we've also elected to use the advanced EMT certification seeing that most of our staff strive for the advanced EMT or the paramedic level so this is my view of being more realistic and upfront about what that's actually going to cost us so the one FTE is $73,530 there are one time costs per firefighter and that's includes their physical their background checks some initial training that would certification information transfer of information their turnout gear and the cost of a portable radio so that's $11,500 per person for those one time costs so what does it look like and this slide brings the package in front of you to show you some of the options one firefighter per shift or the hiring of three is $255,000 hiring six with increasing the number of firefighters by two per shift is $510,000 nine firefighters are increasing the number of firefighters per shift by two three firefighters for a total of seven assigned to the shift is $765,000 or 12 brings us over a million thinking about this there's a training component that comes along with it because I as you've heard here earlier tonight I'm not sure what the availability of trained personnel is or interest in new hires if we were to move forward with this and regardless if we had incumbents that were already trained or not we would still run them through a training academy so that they understand we were comfortable with their level of performance that they have a foundation and understand what our expectation is so this is a eight week training academy other organizations run a 12 week training academy I think that we could run ours at eight and what we would do is hire two personnel back to to orchestrate that academy for eight weeks that academy in personnel costs alone would run us into the neighborhood of $24,000 for eight weeks and then we would have a culminating event down at the state fire academy where we would lease the academy and hire back personnel to conduct that training exercise which would run us about $3,500 $3,600 the total the total projected cost for that eight week academy is just shy of $28,000 if we were to hire options for hiring if you were to recommend only hiring three personnel at this this time we would still run an eight week academy and then we would have to if we hired three this year three next year and three the following year something like that every time we do that hiring it's going to cost us around that $28,000 to run that academy so my recommendation is that if you we would move forward with hiring nine it would save us that extra that cost so we only run one academy at $28,000 as opposed to the the added cost of the $56,000 for the other two classes that we would have to run if we were to hire a separate years around the academies this is just a snapshot the insight of what it means operationally to the organization I think probably the key here is that when ap Triton did their cons came back with their recommendations their recommendations were to hire nine immediately you saw I think Ted you understood that there was a lot more liability in that that recommendation in that three to five year plan and the vision I think the manager has a pretty good idea about this tiered approach forward to evaluate where we're at but right now I feel like we need to move something forward and take some action so we don't have a situation like we had last Friday when we had no one protected the community anyone has questions for the chief I guess I I what is the possibility of hiring nine people between now and a year from now we would start by advertising it and see what level of interest that we did see and what quality of applicant we received I've been out of it a little bit separated from the other organization which I work so I don't know what the current saturation is or what the current availability is for for folks that are out there and interested in in fire service professions I certainly see the challenges we see or hear about anecdotally through the law enforcement and I hope that we're not in crisis yet in the fire services but without having to advertise that I wouldn't know where we're at yet I'd be interested to see that though other questions um sorry I wasn't sure what my question was when you're on this slide I'm I'm looking at the building fire staffing level and I'm trying to figure out how to interpret that and I'm I'm going to say how I'm interpreting and see if I'm anywhere near correct and I think the way to interpret it is and when you use the word an ideal situation that's really not the right word you would you would probably the better way to put it is the fire the fire department would be justified having 15 people available per shift because that's what it takes to appropriately deal with a large building fire is that correct so uh when we look at this we look at the national standard so it's not based upon supposition and so we use NFPA 1720 which is the standard for uh combination and volunteer fire departments and that standard uh actually provides guidance that says depending on your saturation within your community whether you are in an urban area or a suburban area here's what you should ideally have on available for staff their recommendation in an urban setting is that you would have 15 persons available within nine minutes our and I would I believe AP Triton also suggested is that we fit in the suburban setting where you would have 10 persons available within 10 minutes we recognize that some of those numbers have to come from outside agencies the challenge here in is how quickly can those other people get there so if we're to go to a minimum staffing of five per shift where do we get the other five and can they get there within 10 minutes and so I think the the track that we would look at is to look at how we could work on mutual aid automatic mutual aid partnerships the the relationship between the regional dispatch center if we can move that project forward so we don't have uh delay and call times or call transfer times or even making a call or dispatching multiple agencies from different uh agencies so so sort of the ad or the follow-up question to that might be how dependable is mutual aid I just don't have a sense for that if you were to send out a call from mutual aid using some of the kind of charts you used here how often can mutual aid actually supply what you can you get sorry to use that language I don't know what else to use but supply what it is you need for firefighters yeah so I think if you look to the south city of south Burlington they have their on-duty staff that are readily available unless they're already committed and I don't have their commitment times in front of me so they would be able to send over their on-duty staff a limited amount of that on-duty staff probably three persons and then we would go to sx junction fire department we've saw through the ap triton analysis the sx junction can't meet the response times because of the delay so it's not just responding from the fire station to the incident scene it's the turnout time from notification to to for their volunteers to respond from home to their fire station and then from their fire station mount the apparatus and then come back to our incident scene so they can't there was not a single time in that analysis that they can meet that time frame but people will come I don't know what that number looks like I would say okay fair enough I do have some numbers for you though and I thought you might like this is that in the last year we have requested mutual aid 150 times so 150 times we reached out to other organizations the majority of those have been medical 130 of those have been medical and 20 times we reached out for requests for help for fire we've given in turn mutual aid over 125 times so it's kind of a similar balance again the majority of that is EMS I don't have the breakdown on the fire request I think it's a little bit higher on us giving mutual aid and fire than it is us asking for it okay all right but chief this is probably uh more of a curiosity question but when I was first on the select board um St. Michael's college rescue covered the town um are they still available as part of the mutual aid or do we have to wait for Richmond to show up or something so we utilize our primary ambulance just by sheer numbers the highest mutual aid ambulance that comes into our community is Essex rescue and then behind them is Richmond rescue the Vermont EMS district three provides a matrix and it shows the the what ambulance comes into a geographic community next and so uh St. Michael's rescue actually falls way down on that number because they're so far away okay so we we use Essex Richmond and South Burlington are our primary ambulances and then and then St. Michael's something right um the in terms of the structure fire and the number of uh firefighters that would be required um it I mean do do the on-call firefighters show up when something like that is going on they didn't respond to the tones to cover the station do they show up to go to a major fire so I'll reflect back on the exposure that I had and actually Lieutenant Sopra was your fire um that you had at Boyer Circle and uh Jeremy you were on that fire as well and to my knowledge we had no personnel come in so um okay uh along the same lines and again this is I apologize this is probably an ignorant question um but um is there any way to incentivize these people to come in or incentivize people to join up and be part of the team money I think we're looking at all options right now for sure I think certainly the manager and myself have talked about that we need to restructure the way that we we do that to try to incentivize it I agree uh I don't know that what that carrot is because it's hard to put a price tag on someone's time if they already work another career so I don't know if it's monetary or what that means but I think the we're certainly open to exploring it thanks so one and this is it's a separate issue but it definitely feels related you know from what I'm hearing from mutual aid and things like that there is a still a call very much for regional call center I mean this this is separate but also feels like a potentially necessary component for for quick delivery of service I would absolutely agree okay um the my other question is you mentioned a few times that that you're utilizing police um so um do you I mean I'm not going to hold you to any numbers but you have kind of a sense of how often that's that's happening I could get you that number um so we record the number of times that wilson police respond with us on the scene but I couldn't tell you in what capacity they helped us okay so they may be there for the scene safety protection uh because it was a hostile event they may be there because they were helping us render aid or move a patient so I could tell you the numbers of time that wilson PD shows on location with us I can certainly get that to you I just can't tell you what role they fulfilled okay okay I think it I think it's you know would be beneficial to to have that that kind of information because obviously the police is also understaffed right now um and so um you know if we're we're utilizing them and I'm glad you all are and we have that as a as a backup right now but um that then again that is still leaving our community vulnerable in a different way um because now we've taken a police officer at a commission to send them to the hospital or something so um I think that's important to note that you know we are we are borrowing from one to and then paying for the price in different way so yeah I'm gonna I'm sorry that could be an ignorant question as well um but I understand they're the hiring and groupings of threes uh especially when like time offs requested for vacation or whatnot what what are we doing now or people are they not taking vacations or when people are sick how is that being mandated we hire back over time so and if it's not taken with voluntary overtime then we mandate through mandatory overtime that someone meets that minimum staffing to make sure we have three on thanks you're well other questions so we're down to um no question Terry if you don't mind I'm on the um the memo Eric that you put together and it's talking about the phased approach and I'm trying to understand the short term considerations I understand what's here the piece that's missing if you don't mind me putting it that way is if particularly if it were to happen this fiscal year fiscal year 2022 where would the money come from yeah um and I the chart and I'll have the chief speak to this a bit too just a little bit what that process looks like but okay most like we'd have to look at at the fund balance to pick up whatever portion of this current fiscal year um we'll talk a little bit tonight about ARPA funding as well um it's available buckets of money out there okay there but most likely it would put to the fund balance and I didn't mention this earlier but chief you might want to touch on just what that lead time is I have this in the memo yeah I think your goes back to the chair's point about what does it look like for us to even be able to hire that and it's something that I posed to the manager earlier is that I'd like to potentially you know with the support of the select board if we if you make a decision soon open that up as a potential opening so I could just at least see what I could get for applications because I think that when we look at all of that if we were to open up an application period it's going to take us a number of time you know you have to have it posted you have to get out there to the audience you can get to see what you can get there I know the neighboring fire departments that did have vacancies really struggled to get applicants to fill out the number and so the sooner we open that up the better but even then we need to go through the the hiring process where you'd interview people and then once you select your candidates you'd have to throw them send that each candidate to a background check to make sure that they're the really the people that you want representing your community so that time frame if we were to move that forward really doesn't put anyone in in the fire station to start that eight-week academy much before April 1 so it's not like we can just simply flip a switch and so the liability for this fiscal year would be obviously less because of that delay so get that eight-week program going and get them through the training and get them up to up to speed to start staff so if we were to agree on just hypothetically at this point saying we were to agree on nine new firefighters the brunt of that financial cost would not happen probably until fiscal year 2023 correct yeah okay so it's easy to push it off to another fiscal year that's a joke i don't sleep well at night now jeff what's that i said i don't sleep well at night well now the other piece of that is the one-time cost for equipment the radios if you're the background check and you know that would hit in the you know the current fiscal year the time before with filling some positions and you look at some of the ways to address those things correct that was my my question actually was going to be about that you know and you mentioned the arpa too i mean that the one-time costs feels like potentially a good place for utilizing something like arpa funds if that's permissible within that um you know i would be hesitant to to potentially use those funds for the actual you know salary and other things for a firefighter because it would we don't have those funds available in perpetuity but like for one-time costs that you know if that's allowable that feels like a good a good place yeah well uh i'll surely speak to that too but under the lost revenue component of arpa as we read eligible costs for that to be thinking about and surely we'll we figured out our lost revenue calculation and i'll um you know it's a lot more than we expected so i'm gonna surely speak about that tonight as well other questions from the board so you did give us a decision points that uh in your memo um at the end of it that just like to have us do and um so i know that the the decision point on the number of firefighters the um empties is the most critical point at this point in time and uh do we decide that in the budget to discussions that are coming up well i think there's a few different ways the board can can look at it um you know obviously this this is a significant cost at the f y 23 budget um if tonight the board were to say there's a there's a preferred direction that you want uh staff to prepare we can take that information and build it into the draft budget we're gonna get in a couple weeks here um and the other piece uh the chief's point thinking about f y 22 and and starting a process for that recruitment is trying to um decide what that may look like as well but um you know if the board wants to look at the full f y 23 impact and um as i previewed for you a couple weeks ago there's there's a lot of things coming up in this budget um to be to be looking at um if there's direction for staff this evening on on that staff number we can uh we can incorporate that uh that you should get that right well i think one thing i'll go ahead and point out is is i i'm interested in getting this started now which i think realizing nothing's going to happen quickly and all that or as quickly as anybody would like but if we put this off to the next budget which doesn't start till was it july 1st of 2022 i mean that's six months seven months down the road that's that's time lost and i i just don't understand you know if we have the capability to do this now whatever degree we have we should be doing that i agree jeff i think that um i think that where we're at the point where um you know across the board in all areas employment is is it's incredibly hard to find people to do any positions and and um there's all file indications that this would also fit for for you all you'll they all have a hard time finding staff and so i feel i feel that the sooner we get on board um with hiring the better you know it's going to be for our town so i would support i would support trying to to fill all nine positions and f y 22 pardon yeah um we're we're at the breaking point now we're beyond it actually um and i mean i'm i'm a teacher i'm all about safety and it sounds like we're we're not really executing that for all of the staff and people are taking risks i know you're trying to minimize those risks but get on the staff you do the job it's it's dangerous so i'd be definitely for it me too and just if i could clarify you know i i i don't see how i don't even see how it's really much of a question for nine are people in agreement over the number nine uh firefighters makes no sense to hire any less than nine okay yeah okay so i think we've given you some yeah good oh so it'll be uh our job and i'm going to surely a lot on on this next next step and the chief's done a lot of a great work just commend all the chief's work on on this on the last year yeah lost thanks it's bad here yeah thank you for some very helpful visuals yeah and and chief the i think the entire board would want you to tell everybody in the department how grateful we are for their work under these intensely difficult circumstances it's um it's uh awe-inspiring and uh there to be commended well you told me i said you you you tell me sincerely from the bottom of my heart i appreciate the support i mean uh for somebody that's been in the fire service as long as i have and uh i pride myself in uh delivering a top quality service and uh what i have self-coined is fire ground and emergency medical services competence uh your support uh is is fantastic i really appreciate it very much we appreciate you being here in your path as well thank you yeah thank you yeah what we'll do is we'll give the board some options about how to reproach it physically with these different funding options and you know as we get as the board the budget tax rate is going to be something to look at with some options to consider with i don't know maybe soon impacts a little bit we'll get our we've got our thinking caps on for a little bit already and now we can thank you very much thank you chief so moving on to the um i'm gonna ask you to plan that the ARCA update was erect and i'm not that's presumably i mean back to you well she didn't run away she'll she can't work but uh so i thought it was a big opportunity to update the board on on ARPA as you know as we've been working to really fine tune our budget draft here we'll get this finalized the next couple of weeks um prior updates you're talking about ARPA looking at a potential process once we finish this budget but it became more apparent to me as we've been putting it together that there there's some considerations to look at ARPA funding potentially in the shorter term um for some for some capital needs and potentially a little bit of operating needs um those budgets moving ahead so i wanted to um show that with the board my my plan is to kind of flag these items in the draft budget i say possible ARPA funding consideration and as the board goes through the budget um the board wants to authorize the ARPA funding for those or or can also wait as well but i think it might it might be a good time to look at that seeing that we have that that might be available to us here in the short term um so you might recall one of the buckets of ARPAs is lost revenue piece and that gives the town the most flexibility to spend those funds and so i'll turn the Shirley to present this because she's she's done a lot of work on this uh talking a lot of our colleagues who are on the same boat at figuring out how to calculate it and how to use it and uh yes it was a very fun calculation and i did it twice to make sure i had the right answer um actually two different calculation templates were laid out so but the answer came out to within uh $30 i think um so going through that um lost revenue calculation you're looking at growth over at your actual growth over a four-year period and then you're looking at a base year so our actual growth rate over an average three-year period was four point six percent so we take that four point six percent and calculate it by this base year revenue and then the end result was our lost revenue calculation came out to nine hundred and forty nine nine hundred and forty nine thousand eight hundred and fifty dollars so as Eric said that lost revenue you have the most flexibility so we can really use it for anything um uh i think you've heard Eric say previously um and i think you've said this too Greta i think we wouldn't want to use it for reoccurring you know ongoing um expenses for the town but all of these one-off things and like Eric said we'll have a list but our total um ARPA funds that are coming to remind you are three million three hundred and fourteen thousand approximately so our lost revenue calculation is about one-third of the total that we will receive um i also just want to say that um even though the lost revenue you can use whatever for whatever you want you don't actually have to look at that whole number and say oh we're going to use that all this lost revenue depending on the other projects that also can be funded with ARPA so i'm not telling you you what to do i'm just giving the information for that i think uh what piece i just thought of surely too is we we don't have that three million in bank right now right we have half of it and in a year well not quite a year we'll have the other half next august any questions the only the only question i have is um the process in which we're going to obtain input on on ARPA and it's just my feeling is that we we should make that as much of a public process as possible and i just didn't see that identified in this memo so i thought i would bring it out of not yet but eric and i were just talking about that yesterday or today is you know how do we make that you know a public conversation knowing that some of it is probably going to be earmarked for specific things and then where do we go from there yeah but i would yes you agree yep we just don't want to mislead the public guess to um what this money can be used for right yeah right it does come with its limitations very few but it does come with its limitations that's right for instance if i remember correctly i don't know about the lost revenue bucket but can the other portion of ARPA be used for salaries or nothing i'm advocating for yeah the only thing the i think the only piece would be a hazard pay provision um for salary piece um the big one's the infrastructure component with the water sewer and yeah certainly have a capital program that um we could through sorry tommy spent it 10 times and yeah that'll be part for the board to think about what can work for for infrastructure that's that's ongoing needs too other questions no if not thank you uh don't move on to the personal policy update regarding OSHA and vaccinations and we can at least have a beginning of discussion perhaps tonight sure and of course after i i got this agenda out friday a lot of things changed the news over the weekend i sent the board an update the other day um but this is an OSHA rule regarding vaccinations we learned about it on november the fifth when it was released and then it's been a been appealed to a number of federal courts and last friday one of the district courts ruled that it exceeded OSHA's um reach so it's also being heard by another number of other courts and this one news article i read it could end up being a supreme court decision on on this rule so i can give the board a briefing on this this evening still at the board like a general update or we can wait um i would like to proceed here since we have no idea when this is going to take effect um is it acceptable to put this off for another date yeah i think i'm good with that the one thing i would like to hear is if i remember and maybe i heard it wrong but the governor is pulling back legislature to discuss i think it has to do with the mask mandate yes yeah can somebody explain to me what's wrong through that out at a press conference that um you would be willing to do that uh to allow local communities to pass the masking ordinances okay um so yeah the protem responded and said that they would be willing to come back fake it's not their preferred method but that they would be willing to come back and and make that decision and what i read today as well as one of the provisions being discussed with it that was passed by the legislature signed by the governor would unlock that authority to the select board to make a decision on local mask mandate but it it may only be through april next year and it would have to be re-established 30 days at a time um but didn't didn't some local municipalities do a mask mandate at the height of code yeah under the health uh their health i think it was a rattle borough they went through their health commission and then the governor's office um so they didn't have the authority to do it so it was clawed back okay okay i just get this image of this patchwork of mandates no mandates and it's like yep um which could have its liabilities for sure there can we just mention that one of the unknowns we have the ETF being noted is going to report when people are fighting the first deadline in the center fifth to gather vaccination information so we might be in the place like okay what do we have to do because that's unless OSHA pulls this back in person there's not even say that we don't want to make this first step and mandate that people get up for vaccination information that would mean one thing that we might have to do until further information and we have made that request and a limo period for for sure here and you know outside of the OSHA rule the the board has the authority for a work and we've seen this in a lot of places around the country as it can a workplace condition for your vaccination but that's a whole a whole separate issue as well but that's a roadway to the work they consider at some point but you know there's a lot of pieces to pass but just throwing out there so that's a other organizations have looked at so it's possible we may need to take this up at our next board meeting and the first I think we're out coming back on December 2nd yeah the 7th of December yeah the 7th yeah so then would it be beneficial at least for you for you all to go back even though it still would be voluntary at this point and reiterate the imperative nature you know not imperative but the the importance of potentially getting the vaccination records to you all at least as a preliminary step noting that it may be become mandatory like yeah we'll we've had some discussions with council as this is kind of a it's murky yeah best well um yeah that that was our thoughts and we'll see if we'll have anything more required to do and yeah but even maybe another voluntary push to get more of the records in at least so that it's not quite such a daunting task if it's like okay no it has to happen tomorrow yeah yeah we'll keep following yes let's see what the courts will do moving on to mud pond conservation area management plan and very just briefly tell us well we know why it's back on the the agenda tonight but just a little briefing on it yep um melinda presented this draft plan for the conservation area at mud pond at the last meeting the conservation commission had approved this this draft um board consider acting on that meaning allow any additional public comment to come in i i checked with melinda last week and no additional comment had had been received at that point in time so there's a motion to consider should the board wish to um consider action on this plan so we had a good discussion on this a couple weeks ago if anybody wishes to make a motion we have one ready for you i'll move to approve the management plan for the mud pond conservation area as presented zero second second sorry discussion on the motion just a quick comment i i support support this but i also want to point out or remind you that there's a fairly healthy price tag that comes with some of the facilities that are in mud pond the number used in the report is half a million dollars with a lifespan of somewhere between 40 and 50 years so my thought is if we approve this which i hope we do we need to account for that somehow in our budget process i would presume this going to would go into the capital budget yeah it would in all the check we had the consultant to the capital plan for all of our country parks a couple years ago we started a capital the capital savings fund the small amount last year towards us but uh it will i'll check melinda on that great perfect thank you i was thinking about our potential uses things like country power capital this is another yeah one of many okay is there any further discussion on the motion if not i can favor the motion say hi hi any opposed so we've taken care of that next item is the regional emergency management committee appointment and eric we've had a request to appoint this this person from the cc rpc yep this was a new committee um enabled by statute last session the rpcs are are leading these regional emergency management committees so each town has two representatives one is a chief colleague as our emergency management director and then the board's asked to appoint another member of our of our staff to serve on that committee um i spoke with chief foley and lieutenant more has volunteered to fill this role for the town that would even give us a police represent representative as well so if the board would like to consider appointing lieutenant more there's a motion to consider so there is a motion suggested i'll move to appoint police lieutenant just for more to serve on the regional emergency management committee zero second second sorry discussion on the motion all those in favor of the motion say hi hi any opposed we're up to the manager's reports i'll turn it to surely first for the you know bring through the finance report so these these numbers are september year to date and i've continued with what we were doing last year and just highlighting the differences from the last report i gave you um so when you look at the financials that are with it it looks like our our penalty interest and other income is behind uh revenue but it's just the pilot payments and most of that comes from the state of vermont from the state of vermont property um in williston and that just hasn't come in yet we've only got the first um local options tax payment um actually we don't have the first one yet um and i was surprised we didn't get it today i didn't see anything did you eric mean either so i was hoping to have that information to update you with but we don't but we're hoping it'll be above our budget um highway revenue appears low and it's just because the highway folks haven't been able to get the reports for me yet for the work that they do for the stormwater project so we charge the stormwater fund and we credit that back to the highway and we just don't have those numbers yet so that will be coming i just don't have it yet highway expenditures are lagging to budget we've been short staff we are have hired one as a couple weeks ago but we're still need one more person in the highway department um let's see um and the sewer allocation fees continue to be um ahead of schedule and well we've worked with that with bruce a little bit but essentially you can um in the budget the only thing bruce budgets is the actual allocations that people are holding so out of our sewer allocation they hold it and they pay either semi-annually or quarterly for that allocation they're holding until they build something and that's the budget is based on that but then there's the actual sewer allocation we sell out of the total sewer allotment that goes in there as well so we look at those numbers a little bit in the budget and have increased them for fy 23 as we're looking um at the numbers so unless you have other questions great thank you eric i thought i'd just stay up here and talk about the resolution and then i could be deaf terry would you like to surely present that next other time okay um so uh when i first came to the town we had two credit cards um the fire department had a credit card and um the finance director has a town credit card that was used by multiple people we now have five credit cards out to public works fire police the library and then the town card because like everything we order every there's so much that's done online that they need a credit card to pay and people don't want to send invoices so we need to pay by credit card um last week um the town card has the highest limit it was 5000 we just upped it to 6000 we had in our last resolution an overall credit card limit of 15 000 we've now used 14 500 of that so i asked um maria or treasurer to reach out to the bank to get us a resolution to increase that for 20 we won't be assigning that just if we need to increase somebody's credit card limits then we have that additional capacity there to do it instead of coming back here every time we need to increase um for example on the last couple weeks too we just in increase the police department um limit from 2000 to 2500 because when they're going doing training the rooms are held on these credit cards and paid for on the credit cards and they tend to do training a lot at the same time and so she hurt her credit card limit as well so it just gives us some flexibility either to permanently increase someone's or temporarily increase someone's credit card limit for whatever is happening at the time so um again we're not we're asking for the increase so we have the capacity there but it won't be assigned to anyone right away questions for us early on unless the motion will be to adopt the resolution if you wish to make that motion don't move I'll second discussion on the motion if not all those in favor of the motion say hi hi are you opposed a quick things and I want to please announce we've made a new hire Aaron Dickinson will be joining us as our HR coordinator and assistant to the manager we're very excited to have her on board she comes to us from UVM um which he's um served as special assistant to the chief of staff and assistant trustee coordinator and she was watching tonight so um right well recognize her I've seen it to everyone here um she'll be starting in new december we'll have plenty of work for her to get it's excited for joining our staff and um planning commission planning office has looked at the position of planning commission alternate um state statute and our bylaws allow for this position um I consulted with our town attorney to make sure we'd um charter will allow for this and there was no issue in our in our charter um since allowed in the statute um unless there's any objection from the board um I would move forward to advertise for this position of planning commission alternate and schedule interviews and um the basis of this request was to have a backup for the commission do the to do its workload and occasional challenges they're they're having and reaching a a core meeting unless there's objection I would move forward so now then to wrap up lamplight project and muddy brook culver projects moving right along all the final connections were made for lamplight I'm hearing in muddy brook the plan is to have a way to travel the week of december 6 so apply to finish on paving in the spring but two major projects public works has supervised this summer and we're just about there so a lot of work in town going on in terms of public work staffing uh Bruce and I met with someone from a radio group and we're going to trust radio advertising uh for a public works position so if you're driving your car and you hear an ad for rules and public work we put it things that's all I haven't seen thank you other businesses or other business to discuss tonight I have just one thing I read in the newspaper that the proposed park and ride uh others how the interstate has received its act 250 permit from the state so that's a good a good sign it I think the park and ride in williston is the concept of a new one is older longer than I've been on the select board yes me too yes any other business to conduct the night here we are adjourned happy