 with us, Christian Meyer from the center of Vermont Regional Planning Commission. We have the select board. That's good. Okay. We have Theo Kennedy. Yes, I did that. Sandy Levine. I think that's, now we've got two of those sharps. Really? Can you hear me now? Yes. I'm home. I'm home, everybody. Good. We're glad. Very glad. The Chinese was very difficult to interpret. So do we have any amendments to the agenda? No. Okay. So with that, I'm going to call a public hearing to order to solicit input on compiling an application for a $60,000 grant from the Vermont Community Development Program would be used to assess the needs of the town hall, including ADA compliance, various structural, electrical and mechanical improvements action possible. And Liz, I'm hoping you're going to lead the way on this. Yeah. Can everybody hear me okay? Yes. Okay. And I can't see who is here. Christian, are you here? Yes. Okay. So this is an application for a grant that the town of Middlesex is applying for that would help us determine sort of the fate and future of the town hall in particular. And we had been talking with Christian who had been helping us, as you all recall, with our CIP process, the capital improvement planning process. And one of the takeaways from that process was that we realized that our next step would be to actually do a in-depth study of the town hall. And in order to do that, in order to present to the voters, can you hear me? Yeah. In order for us to consider options for the town hall, we really needed a professional assessment. And options would include things like reviewing, doing an entire engineering study of the building, everything from sort of soup to nuts or nuts to bolts, however, as you say it, looking at things like the structure, the weatherization, the plumbing and heating systems, and anything related to the existing building and bringing it not just to the 21st century, but to like 2022 standards in terms of efficiency and safety. And that would also include an assessment of the existing elevator and a compliance and all of that. This study would also include seeing the building that we can present to the voters. So is it moving the building or building an entire new building and finding a new space for it? Is it finding an existing space and turning that into a town hall? So there's various things that will happen in this study. But we can't do this study without grant is for. It's probably not gonna be 60,000 that we apply for. It's looking like it's possibly closer to 45,000. It is a 10% match of which in kind can be applied to that match. And I think we have a pretty good, I haven't communicated this with Christian yet, but we have a pretty good offer of in kind work for a weatherization fee on the building. Recording in progress. Sorry. Okay, yep. And so this, we're currently in the process Central Vermont Regional Planning Commission, AKA Christian Meyer, who's here today, has been largely in charge and writing this grant for us. So he's been working with Peter, Sandy, Levine and me to help us pull together this application that we believe is in the best interests of the townspeople to apply for this money, which like I said, we think it's gonna be closer to 45,000 that will do all of the engineering study and the alternative locations for the town hall so that we can present to voters some options that they can look at if we are even gonna do that, if we're even gonna decide to do something imminently with the town hall. So we're really asking the public for approval in this grant application. And Christian, is there anything that you feel you need to add that I kind of left out or? No, I think you did a very good job summarizing. I just wanna throw in one note, that was a driver of the alluded out, which was the idea that needing to get that public input during the planning process as well, during the study as well, guided by a public vision to help develop the purpose of this facility in the community. Okay. So, I mean, I guess are there, I'm not sure exactly what to do next in this process of this public hearing, but are there people here who came to actually ask questions about this? Barbara, are you here to weigh in on this? No, that's not the topic I'm here to weigh in on, but thanks for asking. You're the only person I didn't recognize, I'm sorry. Okay, well thanks for having me. Okay, so what we need to do tonight is the town needs to, and we have Sarah sent us out the form that we need to sign supporting this grant application. I have the darn thing right here, now I can't find it, here it is. Is that the resolution or? Yes, the resolution. Okay. Yeah, so once we get that signed. Everyone have a chance to quickly look at that, did anybody have any questions about it? Peter, there was one paper, I don't know if it was on the resolution or if there was something on another one, but it listed you as the grant administrator. I just want you to know, you are the one that's gonna be going into the portal and handling all this and signing off on all the bills. Oh, that is not the case, that's gonna be Liz, so why don't you send that to Sarah? Then that should change, if that's- Well, hold on, Dorenda, there we have to- That's the only thing I picked up on. Yeah, Christian is still, so the grant hasn't been completed yet and we just met with Christian on Monday to assign roles. And so what you're seeing, I believe, is that we had to add Peter as the CEO, which is stands for Chief Elected Official, not Chief Operating Officer, or whatever. I was ready to ask for a pay raise. And so his name was added specifically for that role, but no, he's not gonna be, I think, so one of the things that's gonna be slightly different about this grant, Dorenda, is that we're writing in Central Regional Planning Commission as the grant administrator, they can get paid out of this grant to administer it. So there's certain things that they're gonna be doing, like kind of overseeing the, making sure that the engineering company is hired. I think that's the kind of thing that they'll do. But I will do similar to what I did with the CIP grant in terms of approving the invoices, writing the program reports that are due so that we can get paid if it's the same system. I'm not sure exactly how this grant works, but so that's, and that will be spelled out in the grant. Now, I will also explain that this is a very competitive grant. There's a good chance that we won't get it, but it's not because of how it's written or what we're asking for. This money is prioritized for low income communities, of which we are not. However, we have, in the grant, we are exploring an option of having there be some sort of, if there's a different town clerk's office or a different structure to our town clerk's office to having a place where we might be able to do a small food shelf like we did in the church, but since the church is no longer there, a community building that benefits low income communities gets some more points. It does not hold us to putting in a food shelf, but it just, we speak to the fact that our food shelf was shut down during COVID and then subsequently burned so that this could be a potential space. And no, Sarah, you're not gonna start handing out food, so don't worry about that. So I guess the other piece of this to think about is, and I always like to be optimistic and think we're gonna get things we apply for, but if in fact we are not successful with this grant application, we're gonna need to figure out what next steps are because we are gonna need, I mean, do we need necessarily $40,000 worth of help? I don't know, but we're gonna need some professional help to evaluate our options and decisions going forward with the town hall situation, but we gotta take it one step at a time. So this is just the first step. And so do we have to, in this public hearing, do some sort of motion or just sign that resolution? Do we have to move anything? I think if I conclude, my read on this, and maybe I'm wrong, but my read on this is that we have the public hearing, we solicit input, and there's basically no one from the public here, so there's that. Then we adjourn the public hearing or conclude the public hearing, and then the select board votes to approve signing the resolution. I would thank. Does that sound right to you, Sarah? That sounds right to me. Yeah, okay. So I guess the situation is now, does anyone else, board members, anyone else participating in this meeting, have anything else to say or ask or question about this? Yes, Sarah. So it sounds like $45,000, is that gonna be enough to do all this, like an engineering study, and it just seems like a pretty low number. So we are just so you know, having someone else look at the budget to see if it makes sense, because Christian said he'd gotten these numbers from Du Bois and King. Is that correct? Christian, you had asked them what an engineering study would cost for that. Yeah, it's a mix of stuff. So when we first started talking about this as part of the capital improvement program, I did reach out to Du Bois and King and they gave an estimate for just the mechanical electrical plumbing of somewhere between five and 8,000. There's other things involved in this, like the energy audit or the efficiency audit, the public outreach, some architectural services. So we think we're close, but it'll be helpful to get other professionals who've maybe worked on more architectural projects in the past. I am a transportation planner by Trait. And so when we say the term, just so you guys know at this very moment in time, the grant isn't due until what June? Is that right, Christian? So we'll submit next week and the... Oh, okay, then the meeting, the final, that's our target date. And then if there's little bits and pieces, I'm sure adjustments can be made. It's not a hard deadline. It's a June meeting of their board of directors that then votes on and prioritizes projects. Okay, and so yeah, so we still have time just so you guys know the maximum that we can apply for is 60,000. And with these kinds of grants, you don't wanna just apply for 60 just because you can. You have to show what you're gonna, why you're gonna apply for that. So we're gonna, I'll talk with Christian again, just to make sure that we've covered our bases in terms of like for example, do we have in the grant funding for someone to give us a quote on what a new building would be. And I don't think there's really any buildings in town that we can identify. So I think it's probably more like a new building someplace else or fixing up our existing building. Eric, don't forget to state police. Well, I thought we just heard something about the police barracks. Did you, Sarah? Yeah. The governor's office call back asked for more information and I had to dig out the deed and they're taking it to the governor supposedly this week. Oh, okay. So who knows? I mean, all I'm saying is that would be the one, that would be the one potential building we've identified. Right. So, we'll review the budget again and make sure that we are being true to our costs. Cause you're right, Sarah, we don't wanna go over on this and have to pay for something that we could have gotten in a grant though. All right, I'll think. I mean, this might not give us the final answer, but if it narrows down the options, it'll be well worth it. Like if we know that, okay, the best thing for us to do is renovate the existing town hall, then we may need to do additional work. Who knows what we'll need to do, but if we get over that first step about what the best path is, that'll be big. And it's been really great that we had this CIP done because that puts us in a better, that gives us more leverage. It takes us seriously, right? That we really are doing our due diligence for the voters. So, I think we have a lot, we have a lot more strengths in this grant when you say Christian than we do sort of weaknesses in terms of, and it also depends on who else is applying in this round too. Doesn't it Christian? Like what else applications are seen? Yeah, that's absolutely right. They allocate, I think 30% for these planning studies, 30% of their block grant funds go to these planning studies. So, if there are some really strong programs, studies out there that are really targeted on let's say low income housing, that's by the nature of the program going to score higher than a public facility, which serves everybody, but may not target a certain group. Any questions, anyone? Have you all had a chance? I mean, this resolution is pretty much I read it through. There's nothing scary in there. It's just laying out the facts, basically. Has everybody had a chance to look at that? Or have most of you had a chance to look at it? Okay. Is someone willing to make a motion that we approve that resolution? Wait, do we have to close the public hearing first? Did you say? Yes, we should probably close the public hearing. I'm sorry. I'll declare the public hearing closed. Thank you, Christian, for coming. Yes, thank you, Christian. Great, thanks. Motion, please. So moved that we approve the resolution to apply for the VCDP grant for planning study on the town hall. Okay, is there a second? Second. Okay, thank you, Steve. All in favor of the motion to approve a resolution to apply for a VCDP grant application? All those in favor, say aye. Raise your hand. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay, so we all need to sign this, right, Liz? Yeah, I think so. If we can, I mean, I would say at least a quorum. Okay, I was down there today and it wasn't in the yellow envelope, but I can stop behind the next day or so. Well, you hadn't approved it yet. Yes, we did. No, but before the, forget it. But when you were there today. Correct, you hadn't approved it. What I'm saying is that we had, don't you have to approve it before we all sign it? I got it, yep, I know. I know, keep me straight. I love visiting the town hall. I'll be there tomorrow to sign it because we do. So we really, so you guys, it's serious. Like you have to go to the town hall this week to sign it, because it's gotta get uploaded into the grant application, okay? Okay, thank you all. Okay, considering appointments to fill three vacant list or positions, action likely, and we have three resumes. Yes, we do. So I've talked to all these people at length. I've talked to other people at length as well, but they did not submit resumes. But these are people who, Gary Waring, who is a retired doctor of medicine, this is interesting. And he just, he's interested in keeping active. And he seems, of course, intelligent. And Annette Halas, who also seems, of course, intelligent, she's a nurse. If anybody has a heart attack here, we're gonna be in great shape. And Shelly Desjardins, who is a very computer savvy and as she said in her note to the select board would really like to be part of, she's looking, she's involved in the community. Her, both her children have basically recently moved up here as adults, and she's would like to give back and become more involved. And so those are the three candidates we have there. It's interesting. And I think that if they are brought in tonight or whoever you want, I think Eric can, maybe he can be an adjunct Lister or he can just help them out and do a little bit of help because we do have to get some Lister certificates done tomorrow. So. I did notice somewhere that there's an upcoming Lister training. Okay. I can't remember. I think it was the League of Cities and Towns. Yeah, I think it's, I thought that was last week, but this is, this is the hot season, as you know. I have three people who have non-residential properties in town who need to have them, they do need to have Lister certificates so they can fill out their HS-122. So my advice, I'm asking the board to not delay. We get the message. I personally am very glad that we have three applicants. So what I would hope would happen is, are we allowed to have more than three Listers or no? No, we have a board of three. And what you could do is, I think what you could, I don't know what you can do. I mean, it's, I don't want to, I need Eric to sign off on things tomorrow as fast as possible, like Lister certificates. And then once he's done with that, he can step, I don't know what to do. Well, I think what we need to do is enter into some kind of an agreement with him to provide some training for these people and get them up and going. Okay. So, you know, my recommendation would be, I guess that we appoint these three Listers and then we enter into whatever we call it a consulting agreement with Eric where he is no longer a Lister, but he's a listing consultant or whatever we're gonna call him for some period of time and pay him at the hourly rig that we agreed for the work that he was doing and et cetera, et cetera. Yeah, Randy. So Eric gave us a date that he was willing to stay to. Is that, have we had any further conversations with him since he's been doing this, you know, has that date changed as, you know, where do we stand with Eric and have we even had other conversations with Eric? I've had lots of conversations with Eric. So I think the issue is that, A, you can't, Eric has, you guys appointed Eric as a Lister and you just can't kick him off that procedurally that's not gonna work. What you're gonna be able to do is you're gonna be able to point two people as Listers tonight and Eric as the existing Lister and then Eric is gonna have to resign and somebody else is gonna have to step in. That's the only logical solution. Also, if Eric is gonna be signing Lister certificates tomorrow or this week, he needs to still be a Lister. And I don't know what everybody's schedule is, but I know that everybody's trying to get their income taxes done and their HS122 is done. So we're really in a type on. And I don't, and I, you know, Eric has definitely made it has been very clear that he does not wanna stay on. So if you guys could just select two people. He has just interrupted for a second. I mean, he has agreed to stay on and do training. Yes, he has. We didn't know how many candidates we were gonna get. Right. So, you know, I think that's the right approach. And we obviously have to be delicate picking out which two we appoint, which one we defer, but the understanding would be within probably a couple of months he would resign and they would be appointed Lister assuming they're still willing. That's correct. I will say that Shelly has been very eager. She's come to the office. She's asked a lot of questions. She's been very eager. I know that I'm just translating, but I mean, obviously all three people are smart, intelligent people. I wouldn't worry about any of them. I just know that Shelly is very, very interested. Sarah, have you been able to have, one of the candidates you said something about being tech savvy or computer savvy? That's the conversation I had with Shelly. I mean, when Shelly, I said, this is something we need to, we can't start someone who's just not good at computers. And then I've had this conversation with all the candidates that this is really, it's not really super technical stuff, but you do need to feel very comfortable in front of a computer. And Shelly has done, if you look at her resume, you can see that she's done a lot of, she's been an assistant manufacturing process specialist. She's obviously dealt with computers and dealing with software applications and government properties. So I mean, she's got that kind of, she's got that, she won't be uncomfortable in front of a computer. What about just hearing that these guys are coming from like medical fields and whatnot except for Shelly? I'm just curious to understand like just any, I didn't see any notations of like building experience or experience within buildings in any way, shape, or form amongst any of the three. Did you have any communications differing from that? No, and I've explained to them and they, you know, they're just, I think that they're, the impression I got was that they're smart people who are recently retired and would like to get more active in the community. And, you know, I talked to Eric about this and I said, what did you, I mean, did you have any experience when you did this? He said, I didn't have any experience. I just answered an ad in the paper. So I think that that's just kind of what happens. You know, they're all property owners. So they know, they've read tax bills. They know, they know about parcels, but we're starting, we're starting with, we're starting with a pretty clean slate here. The good news is that we have Marla from NEMRIC who is involved and Eric has agreed to stay on. That's why I think that, you know, considering we need official documentation signed this week by Eric that we shouldn't, we should just say, you should just take two people and then we can contact the other person and say, when Eric resigns, we would, we would, we would, you know, consider, consider you. I don't know. Well, I think, Randy, I think, I think maybe the other piece of this puzzle, because I haven't been thinking about this in so I thought, saw these three resumes is right now we've entered into a contract for this year to do the inspections. And we will presumably have an opportunity to renew that contract if we need to. So depending on, depending on where we are and how it's going, I think that's gonna be the next step in this process is do we need to enter into that contract for another year? And if we do enter into that contract, then it's true they're gonna be less for the listers to do, but they'll have plenty of time to get trained up. And if their real role is entering, entering information in the computer system and also participating in tax appeals, that'll be good training for them. But you're right, there's, there isn't a lot of that kind of experience here, back zero. Yes, Sarah. I think that one of the things we have to consider is, NEMRIC is being very flexible. So Marla is gonna be in the office this week. She's our appraiser. She's gonna be office where I'm gonna try to get her. I feel like I'm the secretary for everything now that we're gonna try to get these candidates, these new people together with her and with Eric. And Eric can come in with at any time, but she's gonna be here on the seventh. And I think you should consider putting some money for NEMRIC doing this clerical stuff such as typing out the LISTER certification, taking a non-residential property, turning into a residential property for purposes of tax to have these HS-122s. So if you guys, I don't know how much money is left in the LISTER budget for the remaining fiscal year. Do you know Darinda? No, but I think we're gonna have to do that. There's just no way. I mean, Eric doesn't wanna do that stuff. Well, it's gonna be a little bit of a excuse my analogy, but it's gonna be a little bit of a Chinese dinner approach until we get people up and trained, but we just can't throw them in the seat and say, do this, do that, that is a no. Yeah, we have no experienced LISTER who has applied for this job. Right. I would say we're lucky to have three people who are interested in doing it. So am I, I agree. So, Sarah, I'm gonna put you on the spot and say of these three, which two would you recommend we appoint tonight? I heard you say, I heard you say, well, I think you should definitely, I think you should definitely do use Shelly because she's got a lot of on-hands computer experience and I'm gonna let you two pick the other two. They're both qualified. I mean, they're both equally interesting people. I guess my thought would be, I don't know, I knew Annette's husband, but I don't really know her. And other than that, I don't know either of these other people. So I don't know how we decide. Did you have any conversations? I guess my only thought would be appoint the two ladies and Gary's been in some pretty high-powered positions. Maybe he'd enjoy a few months of peace and quiet before he jumps into the fray, but I don't know whether that's true or not. I don't want the person who doesn't get selected to now to feel like they were the third choice, you know? It would be nice if they're gonna come in if they could all come in just to be trained because there's no point in not having them in, you know, I wonder if there's something like you could say, appoint two of them and then say to the other one, we will appoint you when Eric leaves, but for statutory purposes, we just need, we can only have three listers and we can't dump Eric now because he's got to sign official paperwork. But, you know, it could be as soon as April 19th, but we don't want you to miss out on the training. Right, yeah. So is there any way that we can phrase something like an anticipation of Eric's resignation that he is, that we would have, that you appoint two, all three, two would be active now and then one would be active upon his resignation. How's that? I think that's perfect, yeah. And if somebody's got a problem with that, then they can run for you. Yeah. I think that's the best we can do and have them all come in and just explain the situation to them. Yeah, nobody wants to lose any training time. And we will pay them obviously for the training time. Yeah, correct. They just won't be able to sign anything. Right, that's all right. There are blisters of apprentice, journeymen listers. And we had an hourly rate for journeymen listers. We discussed. I don't know. That's not my... Well, you had taken, and when you did the raises, you didn't really, we had one listed at, two of them listed at 24 and one listed at 28. But they are all coming in as new. So, I would assume that probably they'd all come in at 24. Yeah, I would think so. That makes sense to everybody. Yeah. Okay, so who's ready to make that complicated motion, Phil? So I think the only, the hesitation that I have is forecasting that you're going to appoint somebody upon Eric's resignation. And I feel like that should be done separately. If, let's just say, we're blessed and some experienced, you know, Lister comes in and says, you know what, I missed the boat on the last one, but I'm here now and I'm interested. I would hate to tie our hands in a future designation at this point in time. So that's the hesitation that I have with making a complex motion like that is it ties your hands now. And I think we can have the conversation with the person that's not necessarily appointed at this point. And I think they'll get it. If they're here to be more active in the town and to help out because they see the need, I don't see putting off an appointment for a month and a half or whatever, two months, but however long Eric's here is going to make that a situation where they're like, ah, I'm over it. So I have no problem doing it as two separate things, but I think we do need to agree to hire, I mean, this is the tricky part, Randy. We're going to pay this person. So they're going to participate in the training, we're going to pay him. So if we're going to do that, we kind of need to hire him as a, whatever we call him, provisional Lister or Lister in training or I don't know what we call it. So we're kind of going down the slippery slope no matter how we do it. No, I hear that. I hear that, but I think that, and maybe I'm oversimplifying this, but couldn't it just be to appoint these two but to pay for the training for the third with no formal commitment to appoint at a later point in time? Come in, we'll pay for your training. And yes, we think that this is where we're going to go. That could be the conversation, but I just, I have a real hesitance about saying, yes, we are appointing this person upon resignation. Yes, Steve. I do understand what Randy's saying. However, our timeframe for our Lister to be done for Eric out of there is not a long time. I mean, I think we were pretty lucky to have three people come forward. How long do you keep this open? And so the way Randy's talking, we're keeping that position open out there and advertising for Lister. So here's the thought and I'm just thinking on the fly, what if we appoint the three of them effective April 15th? I mean, there's nothing for them to have them come in and meet with the Nimrick lady, but they become Lister's April 15th. And at that point, Eric becomes a consultant. Now, we can't, I mean, the tricky part in this is Eric's our elected Lister, he has to resign. So he says, well, I don't want to resign on April 15th. I don't know where that leaves us. We can only drive certain parts of this ship. It's like we're down in the engine room with our hand on the throttle, but we're not up on the bridge steering. Yes. The other issue is Eric's only in the office four hours a week. So unless he's willing to come in more in the next few weeks, that is not a lot of training time to work with these people. I don't know if he has given us a firm deadline or if it's still up in the air, but I mean, I don't know how in four hours a week that you're gonna get this training in. Yes, Sarah. Well, I've talked to Marla about Nimrick about this. And again, everything was so up in the air. We didn't know, but she said she's going to be in this week. And if we can organize a meeting between these people and her, she will help with the training as well. And Eric too. I mean, there's so many unknowns here. It's very difficult for me to figure out how to get everything going when I don't know who's a Lister, where Eric's gonna be, when Marla's gonna be here. It's really frustrating. Here's my suggestion. I say we appoint all three of them effective April 15th. That's a random date. I don't even know what day of the week it is. Then you have this meeting with Eric, Marla, and the three of them. And you work that out and hopefully the training can begin before April 15th. We'll have a chance to figure out what kind of commitment Eric's willing to give us in terms of doing training, what his real final date is, and all that kind of stuff. And say, so Eric, what this means is, if you agree to this, that you need to resign April 15th because there are gonna be three new Listers. Or maybe we just say to the Listers, we've got some details to work out. We can't actually appoint you right now, but we're committing to paying for training and anticipation of appointing you or something like that. I don't know. Yes. Well, we have a statutory issue here. The statutory issue is you need at least two Listers. It's a Board of Listers. So what I would do if I were you guys is I would point, let's say Gary and Shelley, okay? Gary put Gary and Shelley tonight and then say Annette, you will be effective April 19th when we will revisit the appointment on the meeting of the 19th. But that way we fulfill Randy's situation, which is Annette comes in, if the Lister God drops between here and April 19th and says, I definitely want to be on the Board of Listers, we can do that, Eric can resign. But this way you have two people who you now have a, as of tonight, you'll have a full Board of Listers. And we've created, we've met our statutory duty. And then, you know, just say Annette, you're effective. What about training in the mid-time? Do we ask, hold on a second, Randy, do we ask Annette to participate in the training and anticipation of being appointed? Yeah. I think you say Annette, this is the way, this is our, I would just spell it out to everybody and say in order to fill this, we're not being sneaky about it, we just got a problem. And obviously Eric's going to quit, but we can't have him quit right now. So, you know, if Annette says, well, screw that, I don't want to do it, I'm not going to come in for training with him, I'm not sure. Okay, well then we're done. She's, that's it, you know? All right, I agree with that. That's fine with me, Randy. So I've heard this 19th date a couple of different times. Do we have like, is that a date that Eric's given us? Cause I was under the impression that, you know, my reservations and my hesitations were that we didn't really have a set date that he was, he was out of here, that was two weeks away. Well, Eric. I'm sorry, what? It's a next elect board meeting. Okay. So has he offered a letter of resignation with that date on it yet? No, what Eric didn't, what he said was, I'm not going to run. And we begged him to just stay so that we could get some. So when he signs these documents, we have somebody because I've had to tell people today, I'm sorry, we don't have any, I don't have any active listers right now. And it's, it's creating incredible stress in this office. People can't do their taxes. Let me, let me try and, let me try and say this one more, one more time. So what we're going to do is we're going to appoint two of the three, whatever the two of the three are tonight, everybody's going to get together and have a little tea party at the 10 clerk's office in the next few days with Marla and Eric and Sarah. And Sarah's going to lead us up for him. And we're going to hopefully start the training ASAP, but the new listers are not actually going to be appointed until the 19th. Is that what you're suggesting, Sarah? We're suggesting we appoint them now. I'm suggesting you appoint two now so that two can come in and sign those tomorrow when you have a full board of listers and we're done. And then what I'm going to do tonight is I'm going to email all of them and say, here's what happened, here's the situation. Marla, Eric, meet with these listers because these new listers, because we got to get this ball going and get it off my shoulders because I've spent more time trying to find listers than I've done anything else in the past two weeks. All right. And I think we have to get a date certain from Eric for his resignation. Yep, right. Okay. Okay, now if somebody else is starting to try and stake this motion. Okay, I'm going to get us going here by making the motion that we appoint Sarah, fill in the names. No, no, no, no, no. Nice try. No, no, no, I don't know the names. Oh, I'm sorry. We've got Shelly Desjardins, Gary Waring and Annette Halas. And you've suggested Shelly and Gary. Gary. Okay. As a point, appoint as Lister, Shelly and Gary affected immediately. I'm going to read it right there. And let the rest of it just happen. Yeah. Okay. Is there a second? A second. Thank you. Any further discussion? All in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay, Sarah, you're off to the races. Thank you. Oh, thank you. Good work. Well, you don't know. Don't thank me when the grand list puts together. Then we'll see. Hey, at least now we have a chance. Yeah. Okay. Moving along and now we're, we were ahead of schedule, now we're behind schedule. So Treasurer's Report addressing ARPA grant requirements, setting a meeting devoted solely to creating a list of ARPA priorities, considering a one-time standard deduction action possible. Darinda. Yeah. So I had, I attended a seminar on this last week. And I sent you guys the link with the idea that hopefully somebody else could listen to it. They are suggesting that anybody who's under $10 million take the standard deduction. We have to file our first report this month before the end of April. And we have to declare in that first report, whether we anticipate to take the standard deduction or whether we intend to go the other route. So I just need somebody to say that and we're gonna be at a zero thing happening anyways because we've taken no money out of this at all. So it's basically just declaring the standard deduction if you so agree. And I don't see any reason not to do that. I didn't listen to the whole thing, but I listened to enough of it and I read the stuff you sent along. And I don't see why in the world we wouldn't do the standard deduction. That gives us maximum flexibility and minimum responsibility in terms of dealing with this money. So the rent is recommending that we do the standard deduction. Do we need a motion on that to render? Can you just do it? I'd like one. Yeah. Somebody willing to make that motion? Sure. Yeah, I'll move that we elect to take the standard deduction for the ARPA funds. And ask the treasurer to file, declare that and file the first report before the end of the month. Yep, perfect. Is there a second? I will. Thank you. All in favor of the motion to direct lender, to render, excuse me, to file our report indicating that we wish to take the standard deduction. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Good. And what about a date? I think we did decide, and I think it is a good way to start to have one meeting dedicated solely to this. I mean, that doesn't mean we can't have, we can't do orders, we can't do whatever. If we need to appoint another lister on the 19th, we could do that. But is there any reason we wouldn't do this on the 19th and allow an hour or an hour and a half to discuss this? You already have the fire department, I think, scheduled for that meeting. Okay, but we could deal with the fuck. Yeah, let's not forget the fire department again. But I think if we say, 20 minutes for the fire department, another 15 minutes for whatever else we have to do, then we've got an hour and a half to talk about this. That would be plenty, I would think to start the ball rolling. Anyone disagrees? No, I think that's good idea. We'll suck up the time some way, somehow. That's for sure. Okay, sorry, you've got that message, right? Protect that agenda on the 19th, like crazy. So forget the fire department. That's the first thing I should do, right? And then, Don't forget the fire department, whatever you do. I was joking. That was, yeah. That was Town Clerk humor. Town Clerk humor. Okay, yes, we'll do a fire department, other business for about 20 minutes, and then we'll spend an hour and a half on ARPA. While we're talking about these funds, I would like to suggest that we spend a little bit of this money in getting the product that we need to set up the owl down at the town hall, which is the system that all these towns are using to do remote meetings, because I think it's important that, that we have that ready to go. I have a solution. Sarah has a solution, okay? Okay, there's a solution. Interesting question. I've been talking to organizations who have been using the owl, Vita being the one I talk to the most, and they find it very difficult to use. It's like all of a sudden there are two meetings going on. There's the meeting going on on Zoom, and then there's the meeting going on in person. I now have reservations about the idea of that whole hybrid thing. The one thought that I have heard bantered around is to make it so that people can dial in and listen to the meeting, but they can't participate in the meeting, or maybe they can listen to the meeting and they can submit questions on the chat or something like that. I'll get you Sarah just a minute. But I am not convinced. I've talked to three or four organizations using the owl and trying to do these hybrid meetings. And you got people who have difficulty connecting. You have all kinds of stuff going on, and it's very disorganized and confusing. Now, whether over time people get used to it and it works, I don't know. But I am having originally been the one who said I think we should consider having hybrid meetings now. All I'm saying is I'm having second thoughts. And I don't know what anybody else has to say about that. Yes, Sarah. I had a long conversation with Orca today. Orca will conduct a hybrid meeting for us for free. They will bring in a camera when they do the meeting. They will use, they'll do the audio and they'll bring in the computer. All we have to do is put up the monitor and I have a TV in my basement that will work. And they sent me a link tonight to show how they do this for other meetings like Bethel and I think they do it for some school districts. And it's gonna cost the town Zippo. And their reaction, their idea is that you conduct the meeting, people can watch the meeting and you can either have an agenda, you can have a time at the end of the meeting for a public comment or people can chat and say, put in questions during the meeting and you can choose whether or not to. You're gonna need a facilitator at some point to take over from Orca for the town to say, okay, open it up, Phil, Bob Smith would like to cut to talk. Susan, whatever. But it will cost the town nothing and you don't have to worry about the org. You don't have to worry about the owl and connecting. And it'll be much more professional. I like that. Well, we could try that. I mean, I'd like to sound to that a lot better than us trying to do it. I can tell you that. Right, they take care of everything. But hold on, just a quick question. You said, the public comment. I'm sorry, go ahead, let's go ahead, let's go ahead. Do you hear me? Yes. Okay. That you're saying that for every meeting someone would need to monitor the chat? No, I mean, it depends on how you guys try to, how you organize it. You might say to the people tuning in, look at if you've got questions, we're going to, we'll take it, we'll have a public, like a lot of school boards do, we'll have a public participation part. And you can use that. And that minimizes whoever has to monitor the chat because it is kind of difficult if I'm going to do this and take minutes at the same time, but I think it can be done. But otherwise they will, if Peter's talking, they'll take the camera and they'll look at a Peter. And if Steve talks, they'll look at that. If Derinda talks, they go there. So in other words, it's like having an owl, and you know, all we have to do is get a TV with an HDMI cord. And I've got that. The only question I have, and I mean, we, I think we should consider this, but the problem with the public comment is if we've already taken action on what they want to comment on, that kind of, kind of takes the zeal out of it. But I think we should consider this. And I don't think we should talk about it too much tonight because we don't have any time, but, and we're not going to talk about it on the 19th. I was thinking, I was thinking, or maybe we do talk about it for five minutes on the 19th. I don't know. But I, that's good news, but does that to me, it solves my biggest reservation? Yes, Derinda. I think it's more than just select board meetings, but if you had something in place that allow other committees to use this, whether it's the planning commission or the budget committee or whoever, I mean, this is not just select board minutes. This would give all our boards an opportunity to conduct their meetings remotely and have people participate. Are they willing, are they willing to do this for other than select board meetings? Sorry, are they willing to do this for all our meetings or just select board meetings? I didn't ask them. I mean, we were just talking about the select board issue. I know that the ZBA is, is not interested, is not interested in Zoom meetings anymore. They've caused a lot of problems for them. They're just going to go back to in-person meetings probably. I don't know about the planning commission. Could we, could we table this table? Sandy, do you have something else to say? Yes. It was similar to what Derinda raised. I think there are, the planning commission may want to have an opportunity to have hybrid meetings as well. We've discussed possibly using an owl. We used it for one meeting because somebody had brought one in and it actually worked fairly well for a hybrid meeting. So I would just, you know, if the town is exploring other options, consider that there are other groups that other, that conduct business for the town. Well, here's what I'd like to do is table this discussion for tonight. Sarah, you can, you can do a little more legwork on this. You know, it would be, it would be a start to do it for the select board meetings and it would be a good start to do it. I think it would be a good start to do it. I think it would be a good start to do it. I don't want to interrupt others if it was available. I like the idea of the, of the public participation. I just don't want our meetings to be a nightmare. Just one, just one last thing. I do think on or about May 1st. It's time to go back to in person meetings. Also. Go ahead, Sarah. I guess my question is my understanding from using owls is we're going to have to get a separate computer. I'm not going to use, I've used my laptop to run zoom meetings. I mean, that's going to be have some do that. Sandy, did you, what did you guys do when you had your owl for the planning commission? Somebody brought in their own computer. Yeah. I mean, did you, you didn't have a monitor, right? I came to one meeting and I brought a monitor with me that I agree. That's cumbersome. You know, if there's a better way to have it displayed would be particularly if there's people in the room, but the owl was helpful for if there were people, people in the room. So if the town could buy a computer and, and I know you're tabling this, but I just want you guys to think about what we're going to have to do. It's going to be not just an outlay for an, an owl, but you're going to have to buy another computer as well. And I don't know if we can get around RB tech with that. Just something you're going to have to consider. Well, there's where, there's where maybe the ARPA funds come in. I just think we need to do, do some more work on this, but that's good news that they're willing to do that. And even if there was some, some fairly low charge for them to do it for other organizations in town, it'd be worth doing it. I just think trying to do it ourselves. And it all depends on how big the meeting is. I mean, if it's a relatively, relatively small meeting for five people and a few people coming in remotely, I think it'd work, work fine. But if all of a sudden you have, I would say, I was in a zoom meeting the other day with 40 people. It was like a complete circus. It was crazy. So anyway. Anything else? I do, but I can table it till the end of the meeting if you want to move on. I can do it under other business. Yeah. That would probably be good just because we're, we're warned for the future. We're warned for the future. I mean, I don't know. Yeah. That would probably be good just because we're, we're warned for the joint meeting with the planning commission at six. And it is just about six. So. Remind me if I forget that we, we need to come back to you. Other matter. Thank you. Okay. Joint meeting with the middle sex planning commission. Discussing whether to create a development review board to replace a planning commission. And then we'll have a meeting with the middle sex. Planning commission slash ZBA action possible. Say any, can you give it? I mean, I read the, the material you sent along. Thank you very much. But if you could give us this sort of higher. View, look at why we would want to consider doing that. Certainly I will. I will also say that I. I won't. I noticed this as a planning commission meeting as well. So I would invite all the other planning commission members and commission members to come and talk about the. You know, I'm Kennedy and Mikhail Chesky are here as well. And they're also planning commission members. So I'll move this all. Open. This is a planning commission meeting. Thank you. This, this came up as part of our review of the zoning update. And do you know what are there. Administrative changes we can make to make, you know, permitting either, you know, smoother, easier. And so we have a few. A few permits are both came up that were both reviewed. By the zoning board of adjustment and then a complete separate review, often with the same criteria by the planning commission. And so you had 10 people reviewing. The same thing for the town. And. It hasn't happened yet, but it certainly could happen that you get, you know, disparate or different decisions because you have 10. You know, two different boards making these decisions. Other towns have, and then the legislature has allowed the creation of a development review board that would do all of the permitting, all of the zoning permitting for the town and just be one board. It replaces the zoning board of adjustment and it replaces the planning commission permitting functions. Planning commission would still do zoning updates. We'd still work on the town plan. You know, all the other duties that are in the statute for the planning commission, but the planning commission would no longer have the permitting. Responsibilities. And I would, and I, and it also came up noticing that there's been some difficulty filling positions on many town boards, including the zoning board of adjustment. It certainly led to at least a couple of members of the planning commission saying this is just too much to do all the planning that we're doing. Plus, you know, you know, often come for permitting hearings as well in the weeks in between because it's too much to do the permitting hearings as well as the, the planning work that we've been doing. So we thought that this, you know, we discussed it among the planning commission and, you know, what are the pros and cons? I found that article, I think was published by the delegate, where I wrote the article, I'm just, you know, I don't know, I got, I you got the urging right. And so that was the time and people had the likely freedom to familiar with the pool for permitting. So the that was the reasons, that I found, because I hear that that's around the time, is it a long motherfucker has to have a lot of legal securities and towns than the, you know, group that they're having to go before. You don't have to schedule multiple hearings. And the cons of it, I suppose are it's relieving the planning commission of some the planning commission in middle sex is an elected body. The development review board would board would would always be appointed by the select board. So I I suppose it might be so there may be some concerns about that. There may be some concerns that folks want to have, you know, more than one board reviewing their permit, you know, just to not give one board too much power. So I think those are are sort of the pros and the cons. The other thing that came up as the planning commission was talking about it is that we have found that it is helpful to have, you know, the input from the planning commission on some permitting, it's certainly been helpful to the planning commission to know what are issues that come up during permitting. So we would, you know, like the if the select board goes this route, the select board to consider, including one, maybe two members of the planning commission as part of the development review board. And perhaps also a select board member as part of the development review board. That's, you know, an overall summary, I don't know if Theo or Mitch, if you have other thoughts, I know Mitch works in Northfield where they have a development review board, and Theo has some familiarity with this as well. Mitch, are you going to say anything? Well, I was giving you a chance, but I will go ahead. I think Sandy covered the pros and cons pretty well. As Sandy mentioned, most of you know, I am the Attorney Minister in Northfield, they they use a DRB down there. It seems to work pretty smoothly. In general, people like it. I think one of the issues that has been observed here in middle sex is that our ZBA often doesn't meet very regularly, because there's so few things that come to them. And it kind of creates a little bit of lack of, I don't know if I want to say lack of professionalism, but the board, the means don't run as smoothly just because they don't happen as frequently. But if you send all the zoning review elements to the DRB, they're likely going to meet more often. And the means will tend to go smoothly because they've got a good sense of what they're trying to do. And I will kick it over to Theo. I think you both covered it well. For me, the idea of having some sort of, perhaps a select or liaison or rotating one and having perhaps in the appointed group, one or two planning commissioners, I just want to reemphasize that, you know, and kind of the executive branch function, as it were, at the municipal level, we have some insight into the intent behind what we promulgate in our zoning bylaws and how they work. And so I think there's some advantage to have that expertise, even if that function is taken away, as it were from the Planning Commission. So I just wanted to reemphasize that. I also do think, and I think this is really redundant, Sandy, you did a great job. There's an administrative streamlining that comes from this, where it's, many of you are going before the ZBA, you're going for conditional review. And if you're going to the Planning Commission, you're going for permitted review. But many of the criteria are truly the same. So we had a meeting where we essentially resided the same questions, not for protocol solely, but because it was our role to do it that way. And it just became somewhat absurd, really. So we think it could save time, money, perhaps focus expertise over time, and kind of be a win-win. I don't not appreciate, I'm going to say the word appreciate, but I mean, to say, I don't fully understand the cons, the pros seem strong enough for us to come here today before you. And we thank you for these opportunities to come and join you. So we'd love you to take this up. And we could even do it with our current could be not as a matter of process, Madam Chair or not. And no, there is, I will just add, there is a specific process you need to go to do this. You have to have a hearing, you have to notice it, you have to invite the zoning board adjustment because you are effectively disbanding the zoning board of adjustment and you're creating a new development review board. And it's an action that only the select board can do. It's not something that the planning commission or any other board or even the legislature can do. Legislature authorizes the select board to do it, but the select board would need to go through the process to. Right. I guess what I'm saying is if we punted on the timeline that we're currently talking about for adoption and sending it to the voters, we could incorporate this kind of fundamental change in the next draft. Right. Yeah. It would be helpful to know if this is something the select board would like to do because we could then incorporate it into the draft that we're working on in the zoning, which we hope to get completed in the next month or two. Can I just ask a question, Sadie, about the process? You said that you would eliminate an elected body, but which is if you're eliminating the ZBA, the ZBA is as an appointed body, right? You still have the elected planning commission members, right? Right. It eliminates an elected body from having any permitting responsibility. I see. Okay. Thank you. So for me, the biggest piece of this, and I read the I read the material you sent along, Sandy. I had a hard time figuring out what the what the negatives were other than the fact that, you know, someone might make a case that having more eyes on it in certain cases could be a could be a better thing. I like the idea. I very much like the idea of having people having one place to go to get their permit. I mean, sending them to two. I mean, it just sounds like, you know, bureaucratic palm foolery. But I also think I also think having some whatever we call it cross membership, having having members of the planning commission, maybe even do it on a rotating basis and the same with the and the same with the select board, but have them participate so we don't so we don't lose that lose that knowledge. And I guess the other piece of it is I presume, unless I'm unless I'm wrong, that someone could from the planning commission could, could attend one of these meetings and participate in the meeting if they chose to. They wouldn't get to vote, I guess, but they could participate in the meeting, give advice, et cetera, et cetera. I don't know because they, if a hearing is held as a hearing, I guess they could provide public comments. You know, there's hearing procedures, but yeah, they could certainly provide. You know, could you invite them to come in to consult? I don't know. I don't know what the right, the right words are, but I'm just, I'm just saying to, you know, if there's some hot issue where, where Theo is the expert, invite him to come and he can't vote, but he can talk about and explain what the issue is. Just saying. So Peter, I think you hit on something with the rotating. I don't know if we discussed that, but that idea that might be less burdensome to both the select board and the planning commission and still have that insight and expertise that I hadn't thought about that. That sounds inviting. Well, speaking for myself, I don't need, I don't think any of us need any more meetings to go to, but I do think, I do think having other people involved is good. So what I would, what I would suggest for tonight is that unless anybody disagrees, I think it's interesting to pursue this. And I guess I would, I would challenge, challenge the planning commission to do a little more work about exactly how we would organize this and how it would work and what would need to be incorporated in the zoning regulations and then come back to us and by that time we can say, yeah, that sounds like a good idea or we have reservations unless anybody has huge reservations tonight, in which case, maybe we should wait, but I'm supportive of the idea. Okay, I'm seeing nods from Phil and Liz and Steve. Yeah, good. Sure. Well, planning commission will look into this further and I'll also talk with Sarah about what the process is. I will let folks know I did send an email out to the current members of the zoning board of adjustment just so they would, you know, heads up that we would be talking about this with, with the select board. There will need to be some, you know, formal hearing process if the select board chooses to go this route. Yep. I'm sorry, Randy, did you, I just didn't see you say one way or the other because we're all here together. Yeah, no, I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm interested in, in, you know, learning more about the process and whatnot. And I've got to, you know, I've got to step back and think about it again. I'm new to the, to this whole world. So understanding how everything is connected is probably takes me a bit more time than, than some of these other folks. Thanks. I didn't mean to put you on a spot. That's really helpful. No, no, Randy. So Madam Chair, we'll come back with something. I have, I have heard out there in the world that this does seem to work well in the communities that use it. So it sounds like we have a, sounds like we have a plan. Everyone all set on that. Thank you, Sandy and Planning Commission members for attending. Thanks. The other matter is, is just we have a quarterly update. I don't need to take a lot of time. I did share ahead of time, you know, a summary of our, of our projects. I guess the two main matters that we're working on is the zoning update. We're pretty close to a final draft probably in the next month or two. We will be sending out a survey to towns, towns folks by email and putting a note on front porch forum. We're going to mail it to everybody, but so share it with people just to get some feedback on a few issues, including, you know, do towns folks think we should have a development review board? And if you, if you're dying to know what we're looking at for zoning changes, there's a red line draft that's on the what's next middle sex site. It can be a little dense to go through. Happy to talk with anybody about it at any time, but it's there and I'll have a summary in the next month or two. And then the other piece is the walkable middle sex scoping study that's winding down. We've gotten a lot of good feedback and we expect to have that report out in the next month or two as well. It'll have a preferred design, which will include some streetscape improvements in and around red hen, some sidewalks as part of the design, and then some partially barricaded bicycle lanes. And are the ideas that this is, you know, the overall preferred route, they all came in about the same cost to, you know, the alternatives that we looked at, they would all improve safety. This one seemed to address both comfort and safety for pedestrians and bicyclists better than some than, you know, other combinations. And, you know, this would be a project that we're envisioning would happen, if at all, when that section of route two is upgraded. And it could be part of a bigger VTrans project, not something that the town would take on on its own, but we would have the work done in advance of VTrans upgrading that road, which they're likely to do sometime in the next five years or so. And I think those are those are the bigger highlights. And oh, we have two new planning commission members. I do know one of them. Let me know she wasn't she's out of town and was not able to join, but we're very excited to bring them on board and have them join the planning commission. Who are they saying? One is called Dagestino who lives on Shady Rill near Theo. And the other is John Lebowitt who lives sort of at the bottom of East Hill near the P cards. Great. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Reviewing and possibly approving a revised agreement outlining the town's access to the Remning Memorial School action likely. And we have Chris McVay here with us tonight. Welcome, Chris. Hey, Peter. How are you and everybody else? Hey, Chris. It was a nice spring day today, so we're all in good spirits. It's great. Yeah. So I've got your document here. Why don't you give us an overview of the changes and let's see where it goes from there. Okay. So based on when I was last here, I did make some changes to the document to address your concerns. I will say that I don't specifically remember what they were, but I also reached out to Elliott Berg and had him go through it because he's connected with Bandstand. And he had two good suggestions. One was to put in a timeline for if there was a dispute between, if there was a school district raised concern about access based on health reasons, just put in a timeline when that dispute needed to be told to the applicant and resolved. So what I ended up doing was incorporating the timeline of that the applicant needed to be notified within a day, whether or not health concerns had been raised, and that the health folks had to get together and come to a decision within a week after the school district first raised any concern. Just to give it a framework so it didn't go on and on. And I thought that was very helpful on his part. So I guess the question is, I hope everybody had a chance to read this over. The way, the way that just, just, just help me out. The way this works is we agree to this and then the school district agrees to it, correct? Yes, we both have to agree to the procedure. I mean, Peter, the fallback is, you know, the easement stands on its own. Yeah, they don't agree, right? So. But the other thing is, this can be, I mean, if we start using this and there are problems with it, we can, we can, by mutual agreement, we can always amend it. Absolutely, yes. Yeah. And ultimately, the easement would control. So. Yes, I would, we've, we've batted this around for, for quite a while. I guess my recommendation would be, we approve this, we give it to the, the school, hopefully they approve it and we're off to the races and let's hope it works well. And if it doesn't, we'll, we'll have to change it or fall back on the easement or whatever we have to do. Yep. But I see no reason not to go ahead and, and adopt this tonight unless someone has an objection or concern. Wow, they're letting off easy tonight, Chris. It must be the weather. Well, I think it is, I think it is the weather, but I also think that we've, we've pretty much beaten this thing to death and I appreciate your, your patience and work on this. I know it hasn't been easy. Well, you know, I'm glad, I'm glad you brought it up. And just because the deal was with the easement, that there's access. And if they were saying no access, that's a problem. Right. Yeah. So, so is, is there a motion that the middle sex select board will approve these procedures as, as drafted by Chris McBag? Can I make a recommendation? And with the amendments that I articulated tonight about the timeline for the health officers? Yes. Okay. I'll make that. I'll move it. Okay. Let's thank you. Is there a second? Phil, thank you. Any further discussion? Okay. All those in favor of approving the procedure for the 10 of middle sex and as residents to have access to the Romney Memorial School, please say aye. Raise your hand. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay. We're good. So thanks. You will let us know, Chris. I will let you know. If the school approves this. Yes, I will let you know. Okay. Thank you, Chris. Thank you very much. Thank you. Have a good night. Yep. Good night. Okay. Victor. Town highway report. Yeah. We work, we've been pretty much over all the roads. We did the end over towards the town garage today and Shane reported to me, I think around 430 that they'd hit all those in the roads on that side of town and they were headed for to fix up or bring back center road. Tomorrow and then Brook Road to address it so that, you know, get the get the furrows back out. We are going to pick some of those up like you suggested and some of the excess material, but probably have to wait for it to be a little drier to do that. Right. Mike, my comment to Victor this week was it always breaks my heart every year when we grade the slushy slate off to the side and then we let it dry out and then we grade it right back into the road again and then we have the same issue. It's over and over again. So I said, please, please, please go around with a bucket loader and scoop that stuff up and if we can reuse it to fill holes on the last four roads or however we can use it, that's great. But let's not put it back on our main arteries. We push that stuff around enough and I swear to God, every time we push it around, it gets more ground up and more slushy and more nasty. And as I said, they're looking for material up on North Bear Swamp, the trail. They want to fix it up so they can walk North Bear Swamp. So that would be a good place. We'll pile it at the town garage first. Let it dry out when we get time. We can do it. And the other thing we spoke of, this will make you happy, is the graders broke down. Get out of town. And it was at four o'clock I was talking with Shane and we were trying to determine whether to bring it back to the shop. The service guy was coming from Burlington, but we wanted to make sure it was okay to move it. The drive shaft seal out of the transmission was leaking. So anyway. The plan goes on and on. Hopefully that's a warranty repair. I would hope, is it? Yeah. So hopefully it won't require some parts that but they don't have or we can't get. In other instances on our trucks and stuff where we were held up because we couldn't get parts, couldn't get it fixed. As you know, we've been hiring, I guess we were on a bad connection, but we had people hiring trucks. They say Newton on the sideline, but I think they're Barrett, the Barrett's behind it. But Jeff Newton is still down there running the dispatch and we've been hiring them to haul for us. And I believe you had in the bills there, the orders, you had some of the trucks for last week, but we haven't gotten the bills for the material. Most of it came out of northeast, a little bit out of, I don't think, I don't think Newton went to, up to Marshfield to get stuff. I think it all came out of northeast and very. Do you have any, any rough idea? Rough, rough, rough. How much do we spend? I saw the, the, the trucking bill on last week's order was what, 18,000 or something like that? 16, I think, or something. Yeah. 16, 950, I think. Yeah. 16, yeah. 16, 950, exactly. Yeah. So we're probably, we're probably in this now for, what do you think, 50 or 60,000? I guess would be 50 anyways. Yeah. I mean, that doesn't include the towns, the town forces, but that's just, you know. Yeah, but the town, we got the town forces anyway, but. Correct, correct. We can anticipate, I think we all, we all knew this was coming, but we can anticipate that we're overspending our, our highway budget once again. And when we get to this meeting to talk about use of the ARPA money, there's, there's a reason for, for taking this approach, I think potentially we can use some of this ARPA money to make up some of that, but we'll have to see when. The other good, the other good news is that I talked to district six, which is up at, in Berlin there, and actually one of the technician reached out to us a couple of weeks ago. There's a, there's a hope that will get some stimulus money through the agency of transportation or part of that was at $1.8 billion that came to transportation. That they're, that they'll reimburse us for some of the materials and time rented equipment and things like that. We're keeping track of it because the tech, the tech out of the agency transportation told us that we should do that. And there's no guarantee we're going to get some, but hopefully we will. Yeah. I have one, I have one last question and other people may have questions. How are we doing on recruiting a new member for the road crew? Well, we haven't, we haven't interviewed anybody. We've been a little busy in the last couple of weeks. I don't say that saracastically. We just haven't, it just hasn't, we haven't had time. Yeah, we got, we got Matt Godling and I forget the other gentleman's name that had put in Sarah can probably tell you what his name is. And we had another guy, Fuller, Mr. Fuller. I don't know if these people are employed, but it's probably not a great idea to use their names at a public meeting that's being reported until I don't want them to lose their jobs. All right. We've got two or three candidates. That's the bottom line. Right. That's the bottom line. We got a couple. Yeah, two really. We got a couple of people that are looking at it, but they don't, they really not putting out. They're, they haven't put in a resume yet. I don't believe. Derinda told me she was anxious to go to greater school. I think it's a good idea. It's broken. Can I ask a question? Yes. How, how's the morale of the of the road crew? Are they doing time? And are you getting like complaints from people like, you know, how's that going in terms of the whole mud season? Like, you do that over again. You're kind of broke up. I'm just wondering how the morale of the road crew is during mud season. You know, are they getting complaints from people? You know, are they feeling unappreciated? How's that going? No, I don't think they're feeling unappreciated. I think they get tired. I think by the end of the week, I think when it comes into working Saturdays, they're not too crazy about that and Sundays, but most of the time we did stockpile the material so we could do that. That we would have it on the weekends, but that guy is getting used up or is used up. We do replenish it during the week. But this last week, we were pretty much anything that we were bringing in, we were putting on the road. But now, oh yeah, you got some people that, but they're fired a few, but most people are pretty happy if you, you know, they're excited at first that, you know, they can't get through or their cars are bottoming out or, or, or, you know, you know, the routine and, but if most people, if you talk to them and tell them, you know, geez, you know, it's six o'clock at night and they've been working 12 hours and they're gone home. They probably can't do anything for you. They kind of understand. Yeah. We, we, I haven't, it's only about, there's only a couple of people that really, really, really, you know, kind of got off, but it, I think most people are pretty happy. They got a lot of cookies and stuff over there, so somebody must be happy. That's a good sign. I, I got quite a bit of positive feedback on the, on the notices that you and Sarah have been putting out, talking about what's going on with the roads. People really like that. Right. Forge form. Right. Yeah. I mean, to answer your question, I think, I think the morale is good. Do you think we're going to have the capacity to, you know, be doing that really high tech mud mitigation that we did, you know, unlike Mali Supal and some of the places that, you know, we have planned out that we put off for the last couple of years because of other, you know, catastrophes. I just feel like, you know, this year of all years is, you know, the, the time for us to, to say like, what is it that we're going to do about our roads? Are we going to, you know, really look at resurfacing them in a planned and coordinated way so that they're, you know, that they're in better shape, like some of these other towns that, you know, didn't, or don't have the slate. I mean, it is like night and day. Now it's fine, you know, now the roads are totally passable. But, you know, I just, I feel like this is going to keep happening. This, this is probably not an anomaly. And I mean, it could be, but, you know, how, what are we thinking about in terms of, you know, really making significant changes to the roads? Bob, I just didn't interrupt you for a minute, Victor. I think that's something we, we as the select board in consultation with, with Vic and Shane need to be thinking about. I mean, if we're going to be, if we're going to be 50,000 in the whole on this year's budget because of this disaster, it's pretty hard to make the decision to go out and spend a, spend a bunch of extra money. But my understanding is, and help me out here, Dorinda, if I'm wrong, but by doing, by taking the approach we're taking with this ARPA money, we have the potential to use some of that money to work on some of this stuff. I don't know if it's, if the road, that type of thing would fall under it or not. I mean, I get, we still have to adhere to certain standards. We have more flexibility, but as long as it's a revenue loss thing, there's still different categories, you know, that you have to fall within. Yeah, no, I understand. But I was trying to read it and read it in an optimistic way and it sounded to me like we potentially could use some of the money, but maybe I'm wrong. But I think it's worth exploring the, you know, Biden's infrastructure, you know, his bridges and roads infrastructure money. I believe that money, Linda, Lindsay Curley may have mentioned it somewhere that that money can be used toward our dirt roads and that we need to prioritize which dirt roads. And I, I just feel like that needs to be a priority goal of the select board that we do this year because those funds, you know, may have time constraints on them. I'm not sure. But I mean, I would worry less about the town having to foot that bill and more about how do we access the money to get that work done? I couldn't agree with you more, Liz. And certainly to say that the interest by our community to get some of this work done as high, they're, they're going to be motivated to support doing this. In perspective, Liz, it's a big undertaking. It's Peter, since 50,000, a foot of material, which we don't put a foot of material on our jobs. We don't, we don't, even when we resurface some of the ones we've done in the last, last four or five years, we don't put that amount. But a foot of the material that if you want to use granite for a mile is about $70,000. Oh, I know. I mean, that doesn't include getting it to getting it here or removing the other stuff, whatever you want to do. The problem, in my opinion, is that we're trying to build roads from the top down and that doesn't work well. Right. Well, that's the thing that's the most discouraging to me about all this money we just sent. If my past memory is correct, all that granite or a hell of a lot of it that we put down is just going to disappear into the quagmire over the next year. It seems to do that. But I mean, that's an awful big undertaking. I know. And let's face it, your road crew is where we intended to do that section of center road and repaving. I mean, that's, you know, we thought that we would get that all around so that at one point, we were going to start it in May. But I mean, obviously, we can't because, you know, we're doing other stuff. We have mentioned that we've got until 23 to do it. So we can put it off. We're not in dire straits here, but it's just a lot of work and for for us all to keep up with. And I think that 20 grand that we had for, you know, services from other people, I think we pretty much used that up already. Yeah, we definitely have. That's the good news. We had it there. But the good news, as Peter says, is that we've been we're talking about it. And we're thinking about it and and trying to trying to get a plan together to, you know, I don't think you're ever going to say, I think this year was a unique year. And I think that, you know, people think that middle sex is in bad shape, but it's all over the state of Vermont that I mean, I don't know if we had any roads closed. I mean, it might have been closed because people just didn't want to get through or thought they couldn't or whatever. But a lot of towns still got roads closed. Yeah, I mean, we're not the only town obviously. And and I think, you know, that that there is hopefully the league or something will have or, you know, someone can guide us on this because it's not something we can do alone. And we're not the only town who's going to be wanting funding to help repair these things because it was, you know, it was a bad and it was, you know, dangerous. And, you know, it's not I'm not putting blame on anyone. I think it's just more about making sure that we are identifying any kind of funding sources because we know this is not something we are we as a town can pay for. And it's probably something that's going to have to be contracted out and good luck finding people, right? I mean, it's not going to happen next year or this year. So it's just I just don't want us to be like, oh, well, this is part of nature, you know, if there are resources out there. I don't think there's any doubt in the future that this is going to happen again and continue to happen because we have we have winners that don't have much snow and we have like this one, it was very, very cold. I mean, we got snow, but it all, you know, then then then then the sun would come out and melt it all down and like spring is here. And then all of a sudden we'd get, you know, 10 inches of foot or so. And all that did was, you know, drive the frost down. Well, I think we've got a lot, lot to think about, but I agree with you, Liz. I mean, if there's if there's money out there, we need to aggressively go after it and not wait for somebody to call us up and give it to us. So let's keep our ears to the ground. I know, I know you will, Victor and Shane will and we will as we will as well as we hear about these as we hear about these opportunities. I mean, you know, we've talked it over and the rush. Wow. I don't want to scare you, but we would have to put a lot more money into gravel. I mean, some of these towns that, you know, they that they that they that they maybe didn't see it as bad as we did or, you know, didn't have as much problem with gravel, but they're spending a lot more money per year than we are. Right. So it's as many parts to it. It's, you know, it's getting getting a crew or getting the people to do it. Also, we've, you know, these these these places that we're getting material from, you know, of course, we're not the only town there. And some of the material is, you know, we've used up a lot of stuff that they've had stockpiled. So in the future, we might be in a situation where we coordinate with people to, you know, to have material on hand that that we can get and get, you know, to talk to the suppliers and and, you know, kind of coordinate what what our needs are. The other thing I think that that that would make sense and we've done it in the past, and maybe we need to get back to it is it just I followed one of those big one of those big 10 wheel trucks loaded up with stone down through the mud. I mean, that may be the solution but in the short run running those trucks up and down the roads makes it a lot worse. So we could haul stone in in the in the in the summertime and have it stock piled around town. So we didn't have to run around all over town with big 10 wheel trucks. That might be a good thing as well. That's an excellent idea that we could, you know, and I've offered to if it would help to put material over here. I mean, I don't care over here on my property and they did. But Shane has been doing an excellent job ever. We get a free minute and actually have three trucks running all at one time. We we do go get material we did we had we have quite we had quite a bunch of it stockpiled. Yeah. Yeah. And I think you got to give Shane credit for for looking ahead and doing that. But I'm just, you know, I mean, we don't have places but there definitely places places around town owned by the town places owned by by citizens who would allow us to stockpile some stuff just so we're not running up and down the roads with those heavy trucks quite as much as would worth this year. Right. Right. Okay. Good idea. Anything else for Victor? Yeah, I just I had a couple things that I was thinking about is just you know, there's been discussion about possible reimbursement for some of this mud mitigation work that's going on and whatnot. And we probably have some system in place to track this when we have it. And I mean, how are we? How are we tracking? Are we tracking, you know, by by, you know, flagging stuff? Is it done at the town town hall just curious as to, you know, if if something comes back to us and says, Yep, we've got X amount of dollars. Now you just have to show us what all those cars are how costs are. How are we tracking that like labor materials all all that kind of stuff? Well, well, Shane is keeping track of that. As far as, you know, you're you're hired hired trucks, you're hired, we hired somebody to actually do some leveling over on East Hill for us. We keep track of that man hours and that cost and the cost of the material. And basically, what what the state told us to keep track of Shane is Shane's got a log of that. Okay. And then the other thing that popped into my head was just as we were listening about the greater, you know, we we definitely see a bunch of a bunch of repair fees and parts and all that kind of stuff and whatnot. And keeping a log of like, you know, what's happening with each of these trucks and stuff like that. I know sometimes we've had conversations about, Oh, it might have been this truck or it might have been that truck that broke down or whatever. And seeing how here's the greater the first first time it's it's broken down. I don't think it'd be a bad idea to just start right from scratch and keeping a log of of it. So you could look back at what the greater reliability has been when we when we ever get to that point, or, you know, if the same parts keep breaking or whatnot. So I don't know if that's something that I'm not 100% sure about this, but I will I will check with Shane. But I know in the past, and I hope it's still going on, our practice was when they sent invoices down to the office to be paid that they kept a copy of those invoices in files for each one of those trucks. So as much as we might get confused about which truck it is, I think we've got good records, or I believe we do. And if we don't, we will start doing it again, of just keeping track of what goes into each vehicle and what all the invoices are. Each, you know, do you know, Vic, if they're still doing that down at the down at the garage? Yeah, they have a they have a tab on or a file on each vehicle. But also, I believe part of that, as far as the greater goes, the dealer, the dealer keeps has a has a service record of everything that's done to that. And they have as a service, there's a service plan that comes with that greater. I forget how many years it I'm not sure off the top of man, I have to ask Shane. I think it was seven years, if I remember right, when we were going through. That's what I remember. Yeah, seven years taken to be able to to be able to look and say, because, you know, we're always saying, well, you know, should we run these trucks for five years? Should we run them for seven years? And I know, in the past, we would pull out all those invoices and say, well, here at year five is where we really, I mean, I think of our old one tons. After four or five years, we'd be pouring into money. We practically rebuilt them from one end to the other. So, you know, keeping track of that and trying to figure out what we can do better. And if there's a problem with a particular operator, or you know, who knows what the what the issue is, but you're right. I mean, I every time I look at those orders, I think, oh, my God, more and more repairs, it never ends. And yeah, yeah. And again, some of these questions that I ask, maybe just happening, and I don't know, I'm new. So just trying to continue to learn the process and make suggestions where I see, you know, or at least a perceived understanding that something's not going on. So. Oh, that's great. We're calling you the new eyes, Randy, new eyes. Yes, Torenda, I just want to back up on something in regards to keeping track of this mud mitigation that if there's a grant or something that comes out like it has, you know, in the past, we could they awarded this money for like storms and all that it also comes down to keeping track of the number of hours worked on a particular piece of equipment and how many hours were put in towards that. So I don't know if that part's being captured or not. But I'm sure Steve can weigh in on, you know, we did a storm from 2019. And it took quite a bit of work to go back through the invoices after the fact and try to create what payroll at related to what piece of equipment which related to all of that. So I mean, the other way of doing it is if anything's relating to a storm as we could create a separate chart of account number, that is called just mud mitigation 2022. And all the expenses relating to that could go into that if need be. But I just wanted to throw it out there that, you know, it goes beyond just whether or not, you know, the physical bills we're incurring, it also relates to hours on equipment and all of that. Yeah. Well, we'll have to go over that with Shane and make sure we're on the rate page and that we are. Yeah, because we don't typically track what the guys are doing every day. Like, you know, there've been times in the past when we had storms where two of the guys would be working on storm repairs and two would be working on regular grading or maintenance or ditching or whatever. So maybe we need to invent some way so we could code it separately so we can keep track of it. So it isn't such an nightmare after the fact. Yeah. It shouldn't be hard for us to catch up in the last two or three weeks because I think they all been working on one thing. They do put on their timesheet whether it was mud mitigation or whatever. So that's how you do it. But when you're trying to, you know, it's just easier to do it as we go along than trying to go back and pull out invoices and payroll sheets from months past is all I'm saying. Yeah, fun. Was it? Was it? No, it wasn't. And then, you know, no, Steve can tell you it was not fun. It took a lot of man hours to put it all back together. And, you know, then it came down to each piece of equipment had a rating for hours that it was used. And, you know, there was a lot to it. Well, what I would suggest is now that we have an up to speed professional bookkeeper, you know, if you have some thoughts about how we could code things better, whether we accept establish a separate chart of accounts or whatever we do and get ready. So when we start start our fiscal year in July, we can have a clean date and say, okay, as of this date, we're we're doing it this way. I mean, I agree. I think to go back and recapture what we did for the last few weeks would be relatively easy because it basically be 100% of everything. But a lot of the times it isn't so. Yeah. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Victor. Anything I mean, the good news is just in the last few days, the roads are a lot better. Boy, they they were bad last weekend. I can tell you he still was as bad as it's ever been last weekend. But anyway, we've got a lot of a lot of stone out there now. Discussing a proposed cell tower on Worcester side of Norton Road action possible. So what happened was and I'm sorry, I don't have the maybe I do the gentleman's the gentleman's name. I printed out the letter. I thought I did. Now, I can't find it now. I printed out the letter that he sent you all you all received a copy of it. And basically he called me up and he said, he said two things. Hey, we're having a hell of a time with this cell tower issue in Worcester. And we can use any any kind of support you know, even just even just a letter just just to help us out would be very much appreciated. But the other thing he said, which was very concerning to me and I haven't had a chance. I haven't had a chance to get back to him, but we certainly need to do it. He said, you know, we thought we had zoning in place. We taken all the steps that the League of Cities and Towns recommended. So we would have whatever possible influence we could have on the sighting of these cell towers and it all turned out to be worthless. This company came in and just said, we bought this land and we're putting up the cell tower and there's not a damn thing you can do about it and your zoning regulations don't apply. So that that scared me a little bit because I mean, I thought we have you know, we have language in our zoning regulations. We've we've done to the best of my knowledge all the stuff that we're supposed to do to have as much control over this potential issue as possible. And if it's really true that that's all for not then, you know, whether the League of Cities and Towns needs to get after the legislature or we need to figure something out. But certainly in the short run, to send out a letter of support to support our neighboring town, I don't think it's a bad idea. He he sent us an example of a draft letter we could have have Sarah do her usual, usual good work and create that letter and send it out if you all agree. Yes, Barbara. Yeah, so I'm not quite sure I understand. I thought that we were going to erect a new cell tower in Middlesex. Is that correct or not? Oh, this is this is the cell tower that's proposed in Worcester. Okay, okay. It is out on the end of Norton Road. So it's, you know, it's fairly close. It's fairly close to Middlesex, but it's, it's definitely in Worcester. And it's very close to a couple of houses. And he said the other thing he said is we tried to work with them. We came up with four or five sites, which we thought were much better sites. And in fact, they were on their list as potential sites. And they wouldn't even look at them. They said, this is this is the best site for us. This is where we get the best coverage. And we don't care if we're right next to somebody's house. Okay, okay. That's what the process is. And this, you know, I'm paraphrasing what he told me in a convert in a telephone conversation. And he did, he did send over that, that, that letter, but I'll tell you, it scared me because I thought we had at least some control over that issue in Middlesex. And if he's correct, we don't. Well, as far as I understand it, and I don't know a lot about this situation, but that the 1996 telecommunications act put every put the onus on municipalities so that there should be something we can do. I mean, I, and again, I don't have any law background either. But, you know, there are cities and towns, states around the world that have initiated moratoriums on the advancement of the cell tower technology, because there are, there are zero safety studies that show they are safe for, for human biology and animal insects. And there are hundreds, if not thousands of peer reviewed scientific studies that do show harm to humans, animals, bees, navigation ability, you know, to find their way back to the hive even. And all of those, most of those studies are, are based on, you know, 3G and 4G technologies. So I think it's definitely something that if we can get out ahead of it, if it's not too late, that we should. And I don't really have an answer. For instance, we're, we're right in the throes of, of rewriting our zoning regulations, revising our zoning regulations right now. So if there's some new language or some new material that we have to have in there to protect ourselves, we should, we should get it in there. But I need Barbara, I need Barbara's last name. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm Barbara Thomas. And I live on East Hill Road. And I would love to thank Vic and his crew, because they've made a huge difference on our road. And, and I'm Peter, I'm happy to look into, you know, some, you know, how to go about that. Well, that would be great. And Sandy, it's got her hand up to Sandy. Yeah, since I saw that Barbara lives on East Hill Road, there is a proposal pending to expand the cell tower that's up on top of East Hill. That's there now. And they came in, I think they have a proceeding that's before the public utilities commission. They met with the planning commission to talk about what they were going to do there. And we have the drawings and increase it. We put out a notice about it. We didn't, and they sent a notice to all the neighbors in the area. We didn't hear, I mean, the planning commission didn't hear concerns about that. So if folks are concerned, it's kind of out of our hands at this point, the planning commission would have had the opportunity or the town would have had the opportunity to participate in the public utility commission proceeding. But that's so that just so there is a proposal, as I understand it, that's going through the process for expanding the tower in Middlesex. Kevin may know more. Thank you. Yep, Kevin. Yeah, I have heard from several different parties involved with that. And it's an extension, from my understanding, it's an extension of 12 feet of that current tower. I have not seen a permit application for it. I know that they have done some stuff with the state, but according to our according to our zoning, zoning regs is that they are supposed to have a conditional use permit for that extension. I also want to point out one of the differences between us and Worcester is that we actually have zoning. Worcester does not, but Worcester does have an ordinance about cell towers and and heights and all of that. So I think we're probably in a much stronger position because we do have zoning. My suggestion is, I mean, what this was was just a red flag for me. And I was aware, I don't know where I heard it, but I was aware and I've been back in the old days when that was the WNCS FM tower. I used to hike up there on snowshoes with Jeff Spaulding to replace parts on his transmitter. So I'm very familiar with that site. If there's ever a good place to have a cell tower, that's probably a good place and it isn't it isn't that tall and it's most people don't even know it's there. So the good news is, I don't think 12 feet is going to make a big a big difference there. But I mean, you know, if all of a sudden someone put up with a cell a cell tower across the street for me and my neighbor had sold on the land and they were doing it and I had no control over in the town, I had no control over it. I'd be upset. So anyway, all I'm suggesting is I don't think it hurts to support Worcester and send out a revised version of that letter. I'm happy to stop by and sign it. But at the same time, I do think we need to, Sandy, if you can take a look at this and see if there's anything more should we be doing, Barbara, you can do it. We can also reach out to the League of Cities and Towns. I mean, they're obviously dealing with this. One of the problems is that there's a big push on from the Scott administration to put up a whole, I forget what the number is, but a large number, a large number of towers. And we've certainly got parts of Middlesex that have no cell service at all. One of the issues with this tower in Worcester that does have the potential to light up a lot of the other side of Middlesex. So, you know, the positive side of it is we might get cell service over on the other side of Molly Superhill, but that doesn't mean they should put it up within 300 feet of somebody's house. Yeah, or a school. Yeah. And I think Governor Scott's looking to put up 100 towers throughout Vermont. Right. So that's a lot of towers. There's going to be a lot of action if that really is going to happen. And of course, the other thing is that, yes, it's good to have cell service when you're driving around in your car. But if what people really want is to have cell service at their houses, if we're going to have fiber optic cable running all over Vermont, we're going to be doing Wi-Fi calling anyway. So what do you need a cell tower for? But that's a whole other, that's a whole other issue. Well, the other thing is we can choose to shut off our phone or Wi-Fi router at night, but we cannot choose to, we can't opt out of having the radio frequency pollution that's coming off those towers coming right into our bodies. I don't know. And it's on, and they're on, they're on. I mean, that's the only other thing that I like about, like about that East Hill Tower is it's pretty remote. There aren't really any houses that are that close to it. So that, that makes that a fairly desirable sight for me. But one of the things we've done is I think, Sandy, isn't it, isn't it above 2000? What's the height limit where we can't have cell towers? Yeah, I don't remember exactly off the top of my head, but it's along the Worcester range above, I think 1400 feet or 1500 feet and then the top of Dumpling Hill, maybe above 1400 feet. And those are specifically identified as telecommunication tower exclusion areas. So they can't go there. I think there is some process by which tower developers can try and trump that and the Public Utility Commission, that's complicated. I do know the town doesn't have any say over health and safety. You can do as much as you want to say you don't want it because it's unhealthy and too bad. That's not a land use issue. Sorry. You know, that falls on some, you know, somebody else is doing that. So Well, the irony of all this is, and I understand people don't want to be looking at cell towers or windmills, but I'd rather look at a cell tower than a windmill. And the perfect place to put a cell tower as any radio person would tell you is up in a fairly high site because you're going to get the best signal and be able to see it. So, you know, you can't have your cake and eat it too. If you don't want to look on the mountainside, you're going to have people trying to put them up down in villages. And there aren't enough silos and church steeples to put them up on. Anyway, is there a general agreement that we can we can send out that letter to Whistler? Does anybody have any reservations about that? I just have a question that Sandy might be able to answer. I don't know if you saw the letter that was sent Sandy, but he specifically cites this 240A process. The zoning ordinances are preempted by this 240A. Is that what you were just talking about is being kind of a shot in the dark to bypass the zoning ordinances that we have in the public utility commission can just overrule that? Yes. Broadly speaking, these are considered sort of statewide issues and no one town should be able to say, no, you can't put them here. So the state has the ability to say, we don't really have to pay attention to what the town says, but they can't just do that without reason. What they're looking to as the town enforce this, does the town otherwise restrict development in those areas? Or is the town just saying, no, we don't want to look at a tower here? And that's my very kind of off the cuff from some experience in dealing with these issues. Way more to it than that. But yes, the state and Phil's not even said he probably dealt with this as well. But the state can trump what the town wants, but that doesn't mean the town doesn't have any say the town can still say, we have zoning in place, we have this, we otherwise restrict development here, please follow what our town has said. Can I ask a question? This is sort of what Randy was just asking and what Kevin just said that Worcester, so when you say zoning ordinance, zoning regulations, is that the same thing, first of all? Yeah, zoning ordinance and the zoning regulation are the same. So, and this fellow in this email, you're saying Kevin, they didn't even have, they don't even have zoning regulations in Worcester. What did they have? Nothing? I think they have a town plan, and they have some other policy related to cell towers. And the Public Utilities Commission needs to look to the town plan and needs to interpret the town plan when they go through their process, but it's, you know, the state body that's interpreting it, it's not the town that's interpreting it. Okay, thanks. I just want to encourage you to do the letter as someone who's probably going to be looking at this tower from my place. The thing as proposed is going to be almost 200 feet above the tree line, and it's not very far over the town line from the middle sex line. So, us and Putnamville are going to be seeing this tower, and I think it's just so far beyond the scale of what's needed. So, thanks for doing that. Yeah, I mean it, you know, I talked to him on the phone for about an hour, and like I said, what he was saying scared me, and some of it went over my head, but they've been working hard on this, and they're scared to death that this thing is going to go forward. So, again, our select board members, are we okay to send out that letter? Have Sarah draft it and send it out? I don't think we need more. Okay. So, Sarah, any motion for that? If you'd like, we can do one. Well, can I just get your outline on why you, what your objections are to put in the letter? If Sandy says maybe Sandy, since you know about this, what would be the most things that would work with the state if like health and stuff doesn't work? Which of the board, you guys need to agree why you're, why you're opposed to this? I thought, I thought you had a draft letter that they were looking for. Yeah, so they have one on the bottom of his email here, and it basically, it basically just outlines the fact that they want select boards and planning commissions to be involved in siting process before locations are determined. Town ordinances and zoning and town plans must be followed in the process of siting and structure design for telecommunication towers. And number three, public good, not developer's profit must remain paramount and town governance must guide this process. And you want to keep it that you guys don't want to add anything to the letter. I thought it was, I thought it was pretty good. Okay. I mean, I would, if you're working, you see something that you want to help your, your special, I didn't know if there was anything, I mean, when Kevin said, you know, it's, it's overkill, I thought that was interesting. But if you just want to, I'm just, this is your chance to customize. Unfortunately, I feel like I don't know enough about this to customize it, but I want to support them unless anybody has anything else that we should add. Okay. I'm sorry. Did you say that we all should sign it, not just Peter? Is this going to be you along with the orders and stuff? Or no, I can't turn that around that fast. I don't know. Maybe I can. Okay. It's fine. Okay. On behalf of the board list. Okay. Okay. Minutes of the March 15, 2022 select board meeting. Motion. Move approval. Okay. Thanks, Phil. Second? Second. Steve, Randy, you pick, sir. How about it, Steve? Okay. All in favor of approving the minutes of the March 15 select board meeting, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? We have Wait, hold on. Steve didn't second that, right? You didn't second that, right, Steve? Yes. He did. He did second it. He did. Steve and Randy, they both raised their hands simultaneously. Oh, but Steve wasn't there. But Steve wasn't there. Right. Right. Oh, yeah, there's a problem. He was busy vacationing. That's right. Randy, it's in your court. I believe it was cocktails on the beach. Wasn't it, Steve? I think you're right. An important priority. Okay. Well, we've we've we've proved our minutes orders. They were down there to sign. Steve signed them. I signed them. So we need we need more order signers. I'm here tonight. I can sign. Okay, that'd be great. But don't forget the resolution. You can't just not come back to do it already in the yellow folder. I'll be back. Don't worry. I'll stop in tomorrow. Thank you, Steve. And you can sign it tonight. It's just like Ghostbusters. I'll be back. Considering a curve cut for Steve and Marissa. Millimet. Millimet. At the property on a north pier swamp road action likely. Do we have a diagram? Do we know where this is? It is exactly 1.1 miles from Nellie Chase Road. And Shane has already approved it. They bought they brought property from Sue Batman. So do we normally vote on these curb cuts or do we just You just you just bring it to the select board meeting and the select board signature. The habit has been for the chair to sign or the board to allow the chair to sign because it says on the form select board signature, but there's only one space. Okay. But we do want a motion, right? Yeah. So let's have a motion to approve the curve cut unless there's some objection. I'll make that motion. Okay, all in favor of approving the curve cut for Steve and Marissa Millimet. North Bear Swamp. Please say aye. Any opposed? Uh, correspondence, Sarah? No. I always send you everything I get. Okay, perfect. Dorenda. What about, oh yeah, okay. Dorenda's on. Okay. I'm about to build out for Welch Park to Benderson and Carl Baylin. And I was wondering if I could add a service charge for the accounting department's time. I wonder what your thoughts were. That might get some attention. Yes, do it. I don't know. It's fine. I just wanted your blessing before I did it, but and I say it's within the scope of your authority. Okay. Well, not really, but you know, I just think we're the bank for most of this and you know, why not bill them for it? So I don't know, what do you think, 20 bucks each or something like that? Sure. Stick it in there. Can't hurt. Okay. So I'm glad you brought that up because believe it or not, we have some action on Welch Park, which I need to report on. I did contact Rob Halpert and I stirred him up after our last meeting and he has been diligently pouring over all the documents and trying to understand the history and everything else and also consulting with John Riley and he's in the midst of it. He's not to the finish line yet, but I told him we were having a meeting tonight and I wanted to be able to report because I was afraid Dorinda was going to slap me on the wrist again if I didn't have something to report. So here's the report. He has two ideas of how potentially we can handle this other than continue the way we are and try and have somebody else handle it, like handle it all over to Benderson and let them handle it, which I don't think we want to do for all kinds of reasons. He said number one, he thinks it's relatively simple for the town of Middlesex because we do not use any of the shared utilities other than the road. It's a petition to withdraw from Welch Park and he said the way to do that would be to formally notify the other parties that the town of Middlesex wishes to withdraw effective July 1st 2022 or whatever it is and then then let the games, let the games begin. He said you know the the carrot you have to offer which we've talked about in the past is that in exchange for that we would take over responsibility for the road but I said to him I said I'm reluctant to throw that in the beginning. I'd rather save that for the carrot at the end to make the deal and he agreed with that concept but we could do whatever the sense of the board is. The more complicated thing to do which I think is what Bernie Balin now wants to do and which isn't that bad an idea is to do away with the whole thing and he said the problem with that is we're going to have actually 50 permits and some of those other permits that we've been dealing with there that we have to deal with because somebody's going to have to take responsibility for them and I don't know how and he didn't know how without doing some more work that you know if there's no more park why is there even an Act 250 permit but to some level there has to be an ongoing Act 250 permit I guess but anyway you know to me to me I don't really care I know I know Bernie needs to have access to the septic and he's going to want to have access to the septic but Rob said he could he could get an easement for access to that septic and we all have the right to use the fire pond they can't they can't not allow us to use the fire pond we've been told that over and over again now we can't use the fire pump but that isn't connected to any of our stuff anyway it's only connected to the to the uh Benderson uh Benderson building so he's got a he's got a little more work to do before he comes to us with a formal recommendation and I guess what I would like to suggest is that we somewhere along here like not not the 19th because we've already reserved that but maybe the next meeting we have him come to the meeting and lay this is out for us better than I'm laying it out now I will I will forward to all of you the the emails that he sent me in the last two days so you can read them over because a lot of this is in in those emails but he was not saying in any way manner shape that it was impossible to do this and you know maybe not even that unwieldy especially if it's just us withdrawing we lose any benefit withdrawing or having this thing dissolve I mean what do we what does the town actually get out of this arrangement so we have we have the right to uh what are rights to a well there but we don't use that well we have our own well and probably if we needed another well it would be cheaper for us to drill another well on our on lot four down there where the fire department is then to uh then to uh participate in this joint well and we've had to pay for some maintenance on that well over over time randy the other thing we have is the right to uh there are there are backup areas that are that are designated for backup septic but they're way up the hillside from where the fire department is so why in the world I mean there's almost no septic load at the fire department anyway but if that septic system ever failed we have plenty of land down there and it would be way more cost effective to do whatever we had to do down there rather than pump sewage all the way up the hill to some auxiliary shared bleach field so the really the only thing we use is the is the road and we need the road I mean we put the fire department there that was one of the issues we knew we were going to have when we put the fire department there is we need the road this quick question was there is there ever real estate there for I don't know rent or something for the town clerk did we ever look into the town clerk's office being in Welch Park not that I know of no I mean there's certain there's land down there I mean it could be down there I mean I'm just thinking like you know what if what if we needed a space for the town clerk's office and we're not giving up we're not giving up any of the land we own no I know and you know you couldn't they wouldn't let you build a town clerk's office where the auxiliary septic field is yeah you know so I so my quick answer is I think whatever benefit there would be potentially there we're going to retain that benefit because we're still going to own the land I mean could you I don't know yeah I mean it doesn't sound like we really lose much by either by any of this you know so it seems like a no brainer get it get the hassle off from our plate and and just be done with it and I I think I agree with you Peter you know holding on to you know whatever we have for a carrot until the end of the deal the sweet and the pod if we ever needed to I definitely don't think we should be throwing that right up out in the front well well although you know the reality is we're gonna have to maintain that road anyway because we're the last ones in the line so but but anyway the other the other thing that I would I would try and negotiate if it comes down to it is the upper part of that and I went down and looked at it again so I was sure my memory was right but the upper part across from across from I still call it the telephone building the benderson's building is all paved so you know ideally I would like the town not to be responsible for paving that that we would maintain it as a as a as a gravel road not as a paved road but that's that's down the road but anyway more more news to come but at least that's some real that's some real progress and I will send out to everybody of all four of those emails around tomorrow okay anything I have one more okay this is not something I'm fond on bringing up again but I feel I'm obligated to bring it up did you guys get my email from this afternoon I did you did okay so I don't understand exactly exact I mean are you saying that those boots that he purchased don't meet that standard well first of all two pairs were purchased instead of one all right there was two two pairs of boots on the same purchase order secondly it does not meet according to our policy our boots are supposed to have eight inch ankle support neither one of these boots are eight inches and lastly the ASTM number is different than what it says it's supposed to be I don't know anything I know that's a rating for I think a steel toad and these are composite toad I don't know if that's the difference in the rating but it's not the same rating I just you know I I think we beat this boot thing to death and I'm surprised it came up we don't have we don't ever seem to get to the end of it I I agree I mean well can I just say one of the problems I had with the purchase was that he approved it like I don't think that should ever happen that he approves his own purchases like Vic should approve them I mean that's just sort of common spending sense in any business that you don't like so no one could even no one was able to even like look at that to say oh you know Shane it's you're you're choosing the wrong boot I don't know anything about boots but like to me that there needs to be something around spending for yourself and approving it but I agree I think what we said to him is that it was his without thinking about it very well I think what we said to him was it was his job to to uh administer this boot thing that we didn't want to get involved in and here we are right out of the back we're in it again and the other side of it is is I I mean the deed is done and that's what seems to be the issue um you know maybe we're going about this the wrong way maybe we reimburse them if they turn in a slip rather than because you know it's like what do you do we have to pay this bill it's addressed to us but do we charge him back for the boots or what do you do I mean this is I'd like I said it's out of my court I feel that I just need to bring it to your attention and that's up to you guys what you do well I'm afraid what we need to do is look at the damn thing again I mean here we are again you're right we're in a position we have to pay the bill what are we going to do he is paying he is paying the hundred dollars out of his own pocket for the for the amount that it's over the 200 right yeah but but what you're saying is what you I guess every time I read that damn thing I read it I read it differently but I thought it was a $200 boot allowance I didn't realize it was $200 for one pair of boots is that what it says it says they're allowed to buy one pair of boots each year each physical year up to $200 okay well what what I would what I would suggest so the total bill I looked at this afternoon but remind me what it is the total bill was 300 and he paid 100 $300 he paid 100 the first pair of boots was $155 I think it was and the second pair was was the difference be $145 as far as the AS to meet TME certification that is so that certification meets the standard it's just an updated standard I did look into that thank you but it does it does not meet the height requirement that the town has in its policy for an eight inch an eight inch like one of the pair of boots is just a pair of hikers so it it may or may not even come up over the ankle depending on the design of it but as far as the like the the the the tow reinforcement and that kind of stuff which is what that that certification covers it does meet that so a couple things at play is I agree with with Liz's comment that one again it comes down to you know purchasing your own your own stuff and approving it that's the biggest issue that I have and the policy does say that it needs to be pre approved so anyway I think in the in the future he definitely anything that he he gets for himself victor should approve yeah but in terms of in terms of this I mean I don't know what I don't know what we do about the eight inch thing I don't even know if that's the right thing that's what we've always had but I don't know if it means anything or it's a good let me just finish Sarah my my suggestion would be I think he owes us the other $45 and then $145 you mean $145 that the town is $155 pair of boots and he paid $45 and he's already paid $100 for the other pair of boots I I think I think that that's reasonable you're paying you're following the policy except for the height requirement on the ankle it is a six inch boot instead of the eight inch boot um and and we I feel like we just push that conversation around the pre approval and and um I mean it it it seems like that's a fair compromise um to me is there a possibility probably a distinct possibility that maybe they didn't have eight inch boots that fit him or that were available Sarah you want to say something well you guys haven't identified who this person is at all during this meeting yeah yeah we did Dorinda pointed out it was Shane oh okay sorry I was like I was thinking well who is this that we're talking about oh okay um I would say Liz that that style of boot um most likely had height availability but that being said everything's in scarce uh supply these days and and we weren't there so we can't right can't really say I say I I say we collect the $45 from we inform him that you know he needs to have Vic sign off on it whether it's uniforms or boots or whatever anything anything that he's getting for his own use that uh that Victor signs off on it and uh and just I think that's it Dorinda I couldn't believe it when that boot then came up again I know me neither I was like oh my goodness oh yeah and I honestly don't think there's anything malicious there's nobody saying anybody's doing anything malicious but I feel as though that you know we beat the horse to death once and then this happened so yeah it's Victor Victor isn't on here anymore I'll I'll have a conversation with Victor and either he or I will uh we'll deliver that message to him Dorinda if everybody agrees and hopefully we're done with boots for a while unless they got caught in the mud and then they have to get a new pair before the year is over so so I know it's late and everybody wants to go but I was I was thinking when I was thinking about these boots so 30 years ago as I'm crawling out the window of my three-quarter ton pickup truck up the head of my driveway because I can't open the door because I'm down so deep in the mud and getting ready to do the breaststroke or the backstroke across the mud to get to high ground I tried to stand up well guess what a pair of my boots are down in the road up here at the end of my driveway maybe it's sometime they'll resurface but as far as I know they're still in there you right there you go okay okay so um I would encourage everybody to look over that ARPA stuff that Dorinda's Dorinda sent out watch the watch the movie if you can I'll try and watch the whole thing Dorinda I didn't watch at all um and really really think about uh you know the the the other thing we've got we've got sitting out in the middle distance is we want to be sure and I know we've got time but if we're going to give any portion of that money to cb5 or we want to do it when when they can get the matching funds uh but you know can we can we hold some of the money money back in case we don't get this planning grant I think probably we can or at least for some period of time we can I don't know whether we can squeeze squeeze that study in I mean we just have to yeah I want to be as creative as we can and get the most benefit that we can out of this money because never say it's a one-time thing there may be there may be other money but this is a big deal for us and it's a lot of money and I want to be sure we spend it well yeah and I think as far as the timing goes Peter just as a reminder I'm pretty sure that the timing on this was it needs to be allocated by the end of 24 and spent by the end of 26 for this for money yeah but I think the cb5 or thing was like we had to do it by September or yes and with the math on the cb5 or is that if every one of their their towns their 21 towns were to allocate money to um to this to to them as from their arpa money that it would equate to if everyone did it um like 75 thousand dollars we could they they have enough for a 75 thousand dollar match for everyone who gives 75 thousand now if somebody jumps in and says well we're going to give 300 and they say well first okay you get the first 300 then that totally changes things so you know there may be towns they give and don't get any match because the match was already used up or you know we could say you know a sort of a good faith of like well if everybody did it we gave 75 we could be guaranteed 75 not guaranteed but right right right right right yeah but I'm just saying it would be it would be fool if we're if we're thinking we're going to give some of the money we might as well give it and try and get them back home that's all I'm saying the other thing the other thing I would just say is like all of us I've been watching these fiber ads on uh on the boob tube and I couldn't figure out what they were or who they are they're consolidated communications as they are yeah and they're trying to light up Barry and Montpelier and grab up all the easy pickings they can uh they can grab so anyway I was kind of surprised and some of middle sex they they've already got um middle some of middle sex yeah up east hill and thanks yeah up east hill is them well it's it's going to be it's going to be quite a quite a turf war but I don't think I don't think I mean phidium is definitely not going after the the rural areas they want to they want to grab the easy stuff so consolidated is up to their old uh their old tricks again but they're they're out there doing it big time so anyway but I just again I just want to make sure we get the best benefit for our community that we can get out of this money and if we can save some tax dollars great if we can do things that otherwise we would never be able to do that's pretty good too uh but we need to do it and I want to be sure and I know we've all agreed to this that we need to be having creating which is the other thing we should talk about at that meeting is creating a public process on this like whether we come up with a laundry list and then we have then we have a couple of public hearings or however we do it typically as we know and tonight was a tonight was another good example we don't get much attendance of public hearings but the fact of the matter we need to do it and also uh and also get the word out there do a good job of getting the word out for whatever our draft proposal is on how to spend the money I think we should do a survey too you know maybe give some ideas but also have fill in the blank of what you think you or just say fill in the blank like where would you like to see this money spent yep the yes I you're going to get a lot more from that than you are in public I don't want people spending a lot of time putting out a lot of crazy ideas for things that we can't use the money for so you know as much as we know there's more flexibility than maybe we thought there was initially Dorinda's right there are limitations so whatever we say is we say you know these are the these are the criteria that we have to meet for the eligible use of these funds or whatever so we don't get uh I mean I don't know what ideas people are going to come up with but I can promise you they'll come up with some lulus anyway I think that's enough for all of us for tonight isn't it it's enough for me did Sue Batman want to say something she arrived very late in the meeting and I'm not sure if she came for a reason I was interested in yeah I was interested in what a curb cut was that the melameds wanted oh it's just a driveway so they can put in a driveway there's no there's no curb yeah a curb out here no it's but but what there might be and I and I don't know where it is and Shane's the one who goes goes up and approves it but if there's a need for a culvert they have to put in a culvert of a certain size and this and that there's some criteria and make it design it so that the water doesn't flow down the driveway into the town road but there's definitely called a curb cut but there's no curb okay all right good thank you okay system thank you I'm sorry I didn't recognize you no that's it I just have a good have a good evening all right thanks very much okay sorry do you have anything else no I just think that the board should know that our our furnace is on the is on the fritz we've had borne's out yesterday and it's cold today and I think I've got air conditioning coming from here and the the consensus is that I mean the diagnosis was that there's water in the bottom of the furnace it's rested he did what he could I don't know what that means but he said I don't even think we can get parts for this thing anymore time to move to fossil fuels perfect time of year move to fossil fuels away away from fossil fuels I would like to I would like to go a pellet pellet furnace or brandy you're going to help us with this you're going to tell us heat pumps and take a lot of work to heat this place with heat pumps you have heat pumps you'd have heat pumps lined up like corkwood no but I'm serious this is the time that you do not go and replace it with an oil furnace no not oil it's it's gas I mean you could you can get I mean look here's the thing guys you know once again we're in problem here you know here we are trying to figure out where we're going to have our town hall now we're now we're already making expensive repairs to the dissing town hall I mean I would suggest we at least band-aid the thing along through this heating season there are not really I know you can help us with this but they're they're pretty efficient gas boilers and hot air gas things that you can get that are a lot better than that old thing we have but we got to have heat we have to look at our town plan which is moving towards getting rid of fossil fuel technologies so well all I know is that Cheryl and I were so cold that we could that I could barely work I'm a space heater I'm an electric space heater I'll bring it to you I have it I have a turn up the electric key oh I did so she wasn't cold no I turned I went upstairs you can borrow yeah I just need I just need maybe some of those Shane's boots because uh look it's the concrete down here that's what really gets gets you in your bones and your elderly bones we're listening we have to have we have to have eaten the building but I'm not in favor of spending $50,000 on a fancy super efficient and and and also I don't think it would be good to have our town employees lugging 40 pound bags of pellets and trying they don't they get blown in well you but then you got to have a silo wait wait till our neighbor finds out we're going to put up a big silo on the side of our building anyway don't even need that today yeah you don't I mean you don't need that Susan and Mark they have a little like thing that it gets blown into their house so are you guys ready to adjourn yeah we are absolutely but but just to be I mean what is the re the the controls and the fan and everything else in the burner are up off the ground so why is if it's rusty on the bottom is it no good it's inside it's rusty it's probably inside the heat exchanger peter there's probably probably what happened is there ended up uh producing some condensation somewhere um and and after time the heat exchangers just wear out yeah yeah yeah oh no if there's if there's a if there are holes in the heat exchanger that thing should be red line yeah I mean by the sounds of it if foreign spent out here you know hopefully they've been monitoring um you know what that thing's put out but um and and I would guess that the town has active uh carbon monoxide detectors and monitors with the in place um so keep looking I'm looking upstairs and I don't see any so keep working um but no I absolutely and and on a serious note if they if we don't have any here we should go purchase a couple battery operated ones and get them put in place because if the heat exchanger is is bad we want to make sure it's a safe place to work well it's not we I mean yesterday's chair this place just smelled of fumes and everything it smelled bad yeah and I think it's back to being bad so I got radon I got I got carbon monoxide it's basically got any green radon fixed are you guys done I would like to get out of the radon listen and also in all seriousness a get the carbon monoxide and b and b yeah call me if you pass out no you can't die okay so please get the rate again get want me to order some on amazon no don't worry but it's okay we've got our own amazon account here thank you okay but the other thing is if if that thing is really that bad and if it is they would have they would have redlined it right randy I mean they wouldn't allow it to even be on if it was dangerous or if if when they were doing their repairs if they thought that there was a crack heat exchanger there or something to that effect they would have they would have shut it down on you yeah but that said we certainly need to do something by next winter who knows we might be in the state police barracks by next winter that it's mostly warm down there who knows but we yes we need to fix it okay I'm declaring the meeting adjourned I'm randy is a committee of one to make sure that we have heat at the town hall hi randy turn off the heat upstairs we'll do say thanks bye