 over 18th meeting of the select board. First motion is approved to the agenda on this area of changes. I would like, I think that banner policy line, I'm assuming this is going to be a continuous discussion of the banner conversations last week as well. I think there's participants here. You can move it up if you want. If we do move it up, I want to put it behind the interview, so just because last week it moved on. If we'll move D to D, okay. The motion to approve the agenda as amended. Second. All right, any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Consent agenda items, minutes for October 4th meeting. I move to approve the consent agenda items. Your second, moved and seconded. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. All right. Next, we move on to the public portion. I really don't like how this sort of is, sorry, we're faking away from you. This is an opportunity for the public to speak as many of you might be here to discuss an agenda item. We will give you the opportunity. I'm going to try to limit the discussion in two minutes a person, give everyone a chance to talk. But this is a select board meeting. We're here to do the business of the select board. So we hope to give everyone a chance that is participating tonight to speak, but just know that we do have other agenda items we need to get through. If you have anything to discuss, that's not on the agenda, this is your opportunity for public comment. And please understand that we'll also try to give you an opportunity to speak on the specific agenda items. Anyone here to speak on non-agenda items? We'll move on to update from CV Fiber representatives. Is this where I plug in? Okay, I made a couple changes, but that's fine. Yeah, I'm sorry, we're a little bit short-tempered tonight. I'm going to pass around some information about the committees and who's on our committee. And we're going to move forward. Can you just remind me of your names, please, for the minutes? Sure, I'm Jeremy Hansen, the chair of CV Fiber. I'm Linda Groville, I'm the boarder's very delegate. I know you, Linda, thank you. You have to square the upper right-hand corner. I know it's going to be able to admit people at the same time. Oh, I see, I see. So I might need to do the whole screen while we're here for a little bit. I gotcha. Wonderful, so like I said, I'm Jeremy Hansen. The chair of CV Fiber is one of the, I'm going to go through a bit of a presentation to explain where we are, what our plans are, take any questions that you might have, and just if anybody's interested in what we're doing, I also have an update as of today. Linda hasn't even heard this yet, but so towards the end, I will, can you remind me about the news, and I will share that. Okay, here we go down to the next slide. So CV Fiber is a municipality. It's something called the Communications Union District. We were formed in 2018 by a vote of about 12 member municipalities in central Vermont. Waterbury at the time elected to not put that on the town meeting ballot that year. We are now with Waterbury at 21 member communities. You can find the enabling statue 30 BSA chapter 82 in case you need help sleeping. We are for the second of the CUDs in Vermont after EC Fiber, and now there are an additional seven after us, most of which were formed last year. Next slide, please. Thank you. And so our goal is fast dependable and affordable internet, universal coverage in our member towns, but our first priority, the first thing that we're going to attend to is to get to folks who are underserved and without getting into all the details there, that's really, people who only have DSL. Thankfully, Waterbury is pretty well covered by cable, more than 90% have the availability of cable, and we have a map coming up in a little bit that kind of shows you where those folks are that don't have cable that only have DSL available. And I should say too that I am fully caffeinated. I'm gonna go to 150% speed, so if you have questions just stop me. I've given this presentation probably 10 times, so I'm just gonna blast through it and say I'm gonna stop me if you need to. So we're shooting for roughly 50% of underserved folks by 2022, that could slip a little bit, but we really, we have a priority area for next year identified. We have our priority areas for future years identified as well, next time. And there's the map of where we are currently. Each of these towns gets a delegate like the wonderful Linda here, and that makes up the governing board. And so there's the wonderful select board that has five people, eyes and chair. I get to wrangle 21 delegates and alternates and contractors and stuff, so that's fun. But we all are pushing the same direction, we're all pushing for the same thing, and that's better internet service everywhere in central Vermont, next time. So when all is said and done, we're looking at about 1,200 miles of fiber along utility poles primarily, and some underground as well where we need to go. I understand in the Waterbury Center, for example, a project recently that involved putting a lot of utilities and such under the streets. If only we had been here a couple years earlier and we could have gotten some space in that, that would have made things even easier, but even so, we will deal with that when we get there. Online? I see red down where the microphone, should I go try to push that button? Hang tight. How about now? Wonderful, so if I can start over again, if you like, or I can just keep on. Technology. Keep on going for it. All right, so when all is said and done, we have about 1,200 miles, 1,200 road miles. So if you look at the AOT maps that you re-certify every year, I was on the Berlin Select Board, so I remember that exercise. We had them all together of where we're likely to build, oh, 1,200 miles. That's gonna reach about 26,000 homes and businesses in central Vermont. And the total cost is about $46 million. So, yeah, that's like. So, before 2018, we already had feasibility business studies kind of on their way being worked on before COVID hit. So we were already pretty well positioned and ready to go before the pandemic really illustrated why everybody actually needed real internet service and not what a lot of people have, which is none or required them to have more than one person used at a time for people to take turns, rationing and such. So there's a lot of details. I'm happy to go into some of the things that we're doing this year. One of the main things that we're doing right now is we have contractors out in our first, the first area that we're looking at building in and they're doing pole inventory. So taking pictures of each pole, measuring the stuff that's attached to it, specific GPS coordinates, so that we can go to our next step, which is looking at exactly what we are going to, the equipment we're gonna purchase, the fiber we're gonna purchase and to make sure that the poles that we're looking at can actually support what's there. All right, so support what we're going to put onto them, I should say. We also have a high level design underway, which essentially gets us a better idea of how the network might look at the end. Got a quick question? Sure. So if the poles aren't sized right, whose coin is that? $5,000 apiece, that is on us. We have a partnership with Weck, Washington Electric Co-op. So they kind of know that that stuff's coming. So they have a whole bunch of poles sitting there ready to go. If they are old poles that are essentially just decrepit and they need to be replaced anyways, Weck will be replacing those. If it's a matter of the pole's not tall enough because there's just so much other stuff on there that we need to replace it to get our stuff on there, that's on us then. But we're budgeting $5,000 a pole and expecting to replace about a pole a lot. So if you could just follow up on that, you're a municipality and you've got 21 number of communities, including the water rate. What's your funding source right now? Where do you get your money? Well, you can make me cut to the end to the special news, but so a couple of slides later, we actually have a breakdown. Well, if you're gonna get there, you can wait. So realistically, right now, grant funding, but because we're a municipality, the original aim was to look at revenue bonds. So towns don't usually have revenues. If you're gonna bond for a new fire station or something like that, it's gonna be a bond based on good faith and credit and taxing capability of the town. We don't have that. We're firewalled off from taking any tax money from towns at all. So even if you wanted to write us a big check, which would be nice, it would not be legal. So it was really gonna be revenue bonds, but because we're a municipality, we can do that fairly cheaply. But there is a lot. There is a lot of grant money coming down the pipe right now. And so we, again, even before COVID, we've worked with the legislature about how can we make this work better? So federal, state, grant money. And the punchline is $2.8 million, they said. Yes, this line. So very excited to get that going. That's our pre-construction for our areas. I won't get into details, but essentially gets us through some of the pre-construction stuff for the next 18 months. Thank you. Yes, indeed. That was great. So this is our basic process. So we're doing the pull inventory right now. So that's getting a sense of what's out there. And these are Washington Electric co-op poles. There's three amount of power poles. Consolidated has some poles. You know, up in the Northern parts of the territory, there's some Hardwick, Morrisville. So we are looking at using all of them. So we're looking at putting fiber on the existing utility poles that are there. We're not looking really at, you know, securing other rights of way or anything else fancy like that. Once we have the full inventory done, we can go and do our network design, which gives us a sense of where are the fibers actually running? How are we sort of doing our, if you think about it as like a highway system, where are we putting the bigger paved highways? Where are we putting the smaller dirt roads, class one, class two, class three roads? We have a very analogous setup with network design. Once we do that, we will actually do a more detailed design, which will get us down to the bill of goods. Like the specific, we're buying this many miles of fiber. We need this many devices. We need this many, you know, power plugs to connect all these things together. So it's two phases of network design. The make ready is then the process of going to each and every pole and moving everybody that's on that pole below the power, moving them down a little bit. Everybody gets to get moved down. So it's always that phone line, the copper wire that's down at the bottom, because they're the oldest ones. And so then we just go in and put our fiber in with the top and the next stop in construction. Once that's there, then we essentially can pull individual strands of fiber to individual houses or businesses or town offices for that matter. And that's the service part. Next slide. So overall cost of the network looks to be about 46 million. Waterbury, if we just look, so this is sort of a back of the nappy thing. This is based on 72 road miles, whether we would actually build that much or whether it would actually cost this. I can't say that definitively, but this is us doing kind of the best back of the nappy calculation that we can right now. So the overall cost of building all the waterbury would be about $3 million as of the costs right now. Okay, next slide. So like I said, our first priority is the underserved folks and we're gonna look at doing about 300 miles of fiber next year. We can get everything lined up. All of our funding falls into place, which Vermont created a new entity called the Vermont Community Broadband Board. And it was them that met this morning and authorized those federal funds to be allocated to us to do our pre-construction. So we're hoping to build 300 miles for the next two years to get the underserved folks. And then after that, that gets to about 90, 95% think of underserved folks in all of our 21 communities. And then we will essentially start building into the denser places after that. But we still have to be able to pay our bills. So folks are usually paying what every monthly cost happens to be. We haven't sorted that out yet. But at that point, we should be stable enough revenue-wise that we can pay our bills and we can still have some software and we can continue to build towards the eventual goal of commercial service. Next slide, please. Yeah, this is not going to be fine. I can tell you I'm just gonna do this from memory. I don't think there were any, there may be a couple of premises that have fiber service and that would be down in Waterbury Center. That would be businesses who paid explicitly for that. Otherwise, I think it's something like 90 to 95% have at least cable and then there's five percent to have less than that. That would be our target for step-brothers. So a minute ago, you showed Waterbury with 72 miles of road. So that must include private roads because we only have about 48 miles of pound highway. So 72 miles of road is about twice as much as we have. So it could very well be, it was probably our math that I just went and told whatever the GIS math total was, the class one through class four. So yeah, it's likely to be a lot smaller than. Well, like I said, it's measuring roads that are not owned by the public. There's power poles that go up private roads but it's not a town highway is what I'm saying. Okay, so he made that in the actual distance along the poles along the rights of the way they don't fall over. Okay, good, thank you. That's actually a good point. So next slide then. And there's a map coming up and that might illustrate this is a better. So area A, five communities. That lets us, well past 1600 underserved addresses. This gives us roughly 150 miles. This is the first area that we're focusing on. This is the only area that we've actually announced where it is and it's a more town, middle sex, Worcester, Calis, and what am I gonna say, or Eastmont period I think. And then so area B, area C, these will be the other areas that have large numbers of underserved folks. If you can imagine us sort of drawing a circle around Montpelier, Berrytown, Berlin. Those are the places that have the highest percentage of folks that need the service the most. That's, we will eventually get to Waterbury, to Berrytown, to Berlin, to Montpelier but because those places are pretty well served, they don't come in until this phase two until we get done with the underserved. So unfortunately, my town of Berlin is towards the end of the list. So here's our rough, if you like, your project managers around. It's project managers excited. This is our rough expectation of how we're going to work on the different phases that I talked about before. So pull inventory, we should have the vast majority of not all of the pull inventory done for the whole district, done this year. And the high level design also. It was not, it's not a really big deal to do the high level design. We added Waterbury sort of at the end after we had already budgeted for it. We had figured out a way to make it work out. So I think that's doable. Pull inventory is a little bit more expensive so we'll need to think about how we're going to do that. Detailed engineering, once you have the high level design that's the specific network design at that point. Then you got to make ready construction service. So you can roughly see year to year where we likely have service. Next slide, thanks. So based on our funding sources, we have to make decisions about what the monthly rates are. File accounts, we're getting a lot of funding, a lot of federal funding, and that will necessarily drive the cost down to quite a bit below where we thought we would be before COVID hit. So it's still a $46 million project when you look at it, soup to nuts. So it's still, it's not going to all get covered by grants. So more grant money than we have along the subscription rate. So actually if you go to the next slide, I think there's an interesting calculation. So EC fiber, which is the communications union district to the south of us, they charge $72 a month for their sort of basic rate. Basically half of that is just their debt service on the revenue bonds, which is wild. So we can cut that price and we're working from rather similar numbers. I mean, it's a little bit later. They bought the fiber and they did this when it was a bit cheaper before there was a bit of a rush on some of these resources. But we're looking at similar numbers. So let's say $60 a month, $50 a month is not out of the question. So the next slide. Every town has an allocation of ARPA funds to build broadband or wastewater or water or COVID recovery. So we would very much welcome the opportunity to use some of the ARPA funds to fund some of the construction, some of the project here in Waterbury. If that's something that you're still thinking about doing, there are folks from the Vermont community broadband board that are working with the Leap cities and towns now to essentially come up with some templates of how this might work. So with all of the towns that are in communication with Indian districts, how that agreement might look. Like what are you getting from the money and how there's some specific language and some specific agreements for how that will work. So next slide. Is the 25, 25, is that down enough? Is that what that? Down enough, right. And that's, I mean, so that's what EC-Vibra offers as their base rate. We're really looking at probably more like 100, 100 and being capable of gigabit or 10 gigabit for those folks that don't want that. So unfortunately, they highlighted the wrong one. This is Phil's old one. Ray's old one anyway. So Waterbury is a bit farther down. The last time I gave this presentation, it was my favorite, which, yeah, slightly smaller allocation as you might imagine than Waterbury. Those numbers are also, even when I presented those to Marshfield, these were not the right numbers, but they were the right order of magnitude in their base. That's close to our, I think our total is going to be about 1.5 something in that vicinity. I think this was from some preliminary numbers that we had gotten from essential permount regional planning. And we've received half already. We will get the second half. So we've got 700 and something thousand in the bank right now. You get the other half next year, I think, right? And we'll be talking about our pro and what things that we might be able to use for it all the different formula, not tonight, but we'll get there. But this is a definite high priority of the state and federal government, I think broadband is something that specifically was named out that you could use for this water sewer broadband surface transportation. You can't use our money for that. So roads, bridges, that kind of traditional stuff. They're hoping for a different infrastructure bill to come down the line to help with that. But this 1.5 that we'll get between now and the next year, you can't lose it for paving or any other surface transportation. You mentioned base subscription rate. What are you looking at, like for a residential customer as a base subscription rate? That's something we're still trying to figure out. Still trying. I figured that was gonna be the answer. Yeah, so, I mean. No, no ballparkage numbers. So, I'd say $50, $60 is probably not another question. I mean, it depends entirely on how much grab money we get, how much town, ARPA money, towns are willing to share their ARPA money with us, and how much the actual capital stuff costs. It's a movie target. Yeah, so it is a movie target and we don't wanna set it too low because we don't wanna be three years down the road and find out that we don't have any sort of capital reserves to go and finish the network. And then we're stuck twiddling our thumbs or jacking up everybody's rates in order to achieve that. So, yeah, all of our, because of our municipality, all of our meetings are open meetings and we have public records. So, you'll be actually seeing a budget from us quite soon in an annual report in the next couple weeks. We'll go to all the number of towns for comments so you can see specifically a breakdown of, well, you're doing your budget right now, I would imagine, or should be getting started soon. For the end of the year. Okay, so in Berlin, we always started at the end of August, the beginning of September, for some reason, but it's the same sort of thing, but we have a massive amount of capital expenditures to spend here, and that lights back on, by the way. So, Justin, that's maybe a minute again. Are there connection fees and equipment costs up front as well? There probably will be, this is something else that sort of figures into how we set the monthly rate because there's necessarily equipment and the line that runs to every house has a cost and it's not trivial, so it could be $1,500. So, we don't charge $1,500, and so folks pre-subscribed, we're gonna charge less for that, but that's actually one of the avenues for the ARPA funds that could potentially be, potentially help us and help folks in Waterbury say, we're just gonna cover folks, the cost of folks drops, and then we can say, okay, well, we don't have to sort of amortize that out and charge for that anymore, thank you. You can keep going, I think we've already had that. And so, unfortunately, this is not the newest, one that actually had the other. All right, jump to the map, hold on, so. Oh, yep. Wait, we have that one? And the other? Yeah, and the other final. Oh, there it is, wonderful. So, you can see the, thanks a lot. So, you can see the folks in blue are those that, according to the Department of Public Service, the folks in blue have at least 25.3, which would be cable, typically. And then the folks in red, and so in the outlying areas, only have DSL, so that's, you know, the internet over there, copper-fuel line. Is that the campground? And they're like, yeah, that's the campground, right, a lot of them. Well, yeah, so these are all E-911 addresses. So, if each pad has an E-911 address, then that comes into the Department of Public Services formula. So, yeah, have they taken any other questions? I have a question, right up front, you have a finance and audit committee. Who are your financial auditors, especially in light of the Burlington telecom thing? I'm quite familiar with a lot of the auditors around the state, so I'm just curious who you use. I'm on the finance committee. So, yeah, so, but we can't, so because we are in the process of hiring, if we're hiring an auditor, we have not, I don't think we've actually pulled the trigger on either of those folks yet. We haven't been interviewing, so we are getting close. And, yeah, so we, and the folks that we've talked to are folks that I've been familiar with in my previous life. They're good and bad auditors. Sure, that's why Burlington telecom got the drug. So, I should mention about Burlington telecom, one of the reasons the statute has written the way that it is to create that tax firewall between us and all of our member towns. There's not a way that we could, you know, force you to incur indebtedness on our behalf. It's just not, it's not possible by the statute. So, there can't be any trickery or sort of creative bookkeeping, shall we say, like there was with the Burlington telecom. Yeah, so, thanks. So, this process kind of lends itself in order to work properly based on a, kind of a chain of command and starting with the, the major utilities, doing their work. I know that on one particular project that I've got, Washington Electric's been better than five years trying to replace two poles. In fact, they just barely got the two poles stood and that's all they've done. And it's been weeks since that. You know, all across the nation, there's shortages in manpower. And we're, you know, we're throwing money out there expecting that all this infrastructure work and everything's gonna get done. But we haven't even got a handle on the manpower yet. Is there a expiration date on these grants? The, the pens on the work being done at us within a certain amount of time? Yeah, so your open funds have to be committed by, and please correct me if I'm wrong, have to be, have to be committed by 2023. By the end of 2023, they have to be expended by 2025 or six or something like that. But yeah, they're a little bit of a time. End of the 26, I think. So, yeah, I mean, I mean, if you don't spend it, you obviously have to get it back. But I mean, you do have quite a bit of time to choose what to do. But, but going to the conversation of resources and manpower, we've not run into the situation yet where we've not had enough interest in getting, we've not had the manpower to get the things done, that we need to get done like the poll inventory. The way that we did it is we said, we know that there's likely to be a lot of demand for these folks. So we had a whole bunch of folks respond to the RFP, and we chose three of them. It's another doing, they're doing a parallel. And so when they're done with their own individual projects, we'll be able to engage them and have them do the next part. You know, and those folks, all three of them are interested in doing, bidding on the instruction. So, as from my perspective, from our perspective, to CB fiber, I don't see that in the short term. I mean, maybe down the road, if they overcommit themselves, that could be the case. But we've also been around a little bit longer than some of the other CUDs, and I've made some of these relationships already. And as for the actual fiber and the equipment, the fiber we have, the state is looking at getting, essentially doing a bulk purchasing, like you might with the salt, right? They do have a big state contract for salt, and the towns can get in on it. So the state's essentially doing that for fiber and getting, setting aside X number of miles of fiber for next year, and then the year after. That's the CUDs can get in and buy through that contract. Well, in this specific utility that I was working with, not only did they tell me that there was staff issues, but they also had trouble even getting the polls. So it's, you know, it's... So from what Wex told me, they actually have, at this point, they have a number, they have a stock of polls at this point. We have a memorandum of understanding with them, contractual relationship with them, because they are a partner in this, because they will be leasing out some of the fiber to do smart grid with every Wex subscriber. And in fact, they will be going out to the rural utility service to get their own loans to build some of the infrastructure and lease it back to us, or we may do a trade. So we're sort of gonna be working from the same notes, from the same engineering, and they will likely be building part of it. We'll likely be building part of another one too, so. So Wex may be old and maybe slightly slow, but they've been picking up the speed a lot. We have meetings with them every week, literally every Thursday. And they've hired a dedicated, or they've contracted with a dedicated fiber engineer specifically for this product. So I got a quick question for you, Bill. Does the town recognize class four as part of their account for, yeah, okay. So it doesn't matter if we do, if people live there, if there's E911 address. Right. It's on our map. Very much any other questions from the board, or no? I'd just like to mention that Chris, Christopher in here is our alternate. We have both been coming up to speed for the last month. We've both gone on two committees. It looks like I have committee meetings once a week on different committees, and then the general once a month for the whole, all delegates, the governing board. We thank you for the opportunity to serve public for Waterbury in this, and it's very exciting. I'm enjoying the work a lot. I'd like to request that we put on the policy committee. There's not too many on it at the moment. And I think I can help with that. To get on a committee, you need to be a group or at the general meeting. And that would put me on three committees. That's okay. You can also point out that anybody who's listening right now, you don't have to be a board member to serve these committees. Any sort of volunteers or folks that feel motivated like they wanna help can certainly send us a message. Info at cbfiber.net, just saying. This is really important. I think the board would agree with me and say that we certainly appreciate your devotion and your effort in this project. Yeah, very impressed with the public that this is coming here. This is a really important issue, other than with the legislature for three years to try to get more broadband to rural communities. So I am thrilled that we're moving ahead with this. Thank you for all the work you are all doing. This is amazing. Anything we can do for you as a town? Yeah, talk about the grant money. The ARPA funds, that's really the punchline. When the ARPA funds, the use of those ARPA funds would be used for connection. Something else in the project or? Could be used in a lot of different ways. That would be a town attorney question and in League of Cities and Towns questions. So League of Cities and Towns, they have been briefed and they should have a, I think they're putting together like guidance for towns about this. It's pretty broad. The town has the ability to sub-grant, if you will, to other municipalities, to private, not-for-profits, not in this case. And once that grant is sub-grant is made by the municipality, as long as it's an entity that has an appropriate use for the money, it's really, I don't think it's gonna have to be, we need to know that you're using it for these five blocks and these four drops and it goes into your project. So I think we'll be talking about this probably sometime in December and then during a budget process in the spring as was indicated, we don't have to make all of our decisions until 2024. So there's a lot of time and I'm sure there'll be communication back and forth between this group and us. So we'll figure that out. And what was the grant that you said you found out was awarded that blended in on the awful sale? So that is, that came, also came out of the ARPA funds but came through, it was allocated by the legislature for pre-instruction just for communications union districts. So there was a total of $150 million and they took $30 million just for the pre-instruction part, sort of divvied that up across all the nine CUDs. And then we applied for a portion of those for what we're doing in our towns. And that was the, so we submitted that a month ago now and have been in constant contact with the broadband board. And yeah, they just had their meeting in Montpelier this afternoon. So it was just a couple of hours ago that I heard about this. Great. Anything else from the public? Wish that any questions or comments? Thanks. Thank you. Thank you for everything you're doing. Thank you very much. Have a good night. On the agenda is your select board business and view candidate for cemetery commission appointments. That's the select board note who the candidate is. Candidate here. Yes. Yeah, I'm sorry. Carmel Lawrence, the town clerk, got sick and had to leave and go home. So you can come up here. If you would introduce yourself first and then I've got a little segue and then we'll get back to you. So my name's Amy Kinsell. I live in Waterbury. I grew up here. I moved here when I was six. I grew up on Spruce Haven and currently I live on Crossroad. How do you spell your last name? K-I-N-S-E-L-L. S-E-L-L? Yep. OK. So for the select board's edification, you all remember Jack Carter passed away several months ago. Jack was on the cemetery commission. He has two years left on his term after we get to March 1st. So the cemetery commissioner has spoke with Amy at their last meeting. Mrs. Walton is here. She's a cemetery commissioner and she can speak to that. The cemetery commission has recommended to the select board that you appoint Amy. And the way it works, I think you probably know this Amy, is that your appointment to the commission is through the end of this current election cycle that we're in. So if you make an appointment, the appointment will be until next town meeting and then on the ballot for 2022. There would be the normal five-year term for one of the cemetery commissioners whose normal term is up. And then there'd be an opening to fill the unexplored term. And Amy and anyone else would be eligible to run for that. So the appointment is just until town meeting. That you can ask for. What was the length of Jack's term? He's got two more years after we get to March. Any questions? He's continuing and running for that open positions in the 9th half in mind after this. Absolutely. Yes. So a little background. So I'm in the Navy Reserves and one of my primary duties, that's a volunteer duty, but I do a lot of funeral honor details for Navy veterans. So I travel all around the state in New Hampshire and do funerals. And in that time, I've really grown to love cemeteries and I've developed a lot of good relationships with funeral homes and different things like that. So it's something that I've, as weird as it is, I really enjoy cemeteries. And once I saw this on front porch form, I thought it would be a great way for me to learn that piece of cemetery. Thank you for your service. Thank you. You kind of answered my question. I was wondering, what kind of background do you have that would, and that answer it. Thank you for your service. Thank you. You sound great. Thank you for your volunteer. Yeah, I appreciate that. Answering the call. I'm assuming we need to make a motion. Yeah. I make a motion to approve, is it Amy? Yeah. It's L. Cancel. Cancel. For the unexpired term. To appoint until March 1st. To appoint until March 1st on the cemetery commission. Second. All right, it's been moved in second. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say hi. Hi. Hi. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your service. Thank you. Good luck. Thank you. All right, next up is, we moved, for those of you who joined us late, we're moving up the banner policy and banner discussion in continuation of last week to now. We are gonna limit discussion to individuals in two minutes just because we have quite a few people attending tonight. I think we're gonna just have to start with talking about what exactly we're discussing, but also I do wanna make note that similar to town meeting, I want to refrain from anyone cheering or clapping or booing. I think both are appropriate ways to handle a meeting. So I would ask that anyone refrain from doing that and we will try to give everyone an opportunity, but also know that we do have an agenda we need to get through. So I wanna give everyone an opportunity, hopefully, to speak. Yeah, so last week as I was unfortunately out of town, we know that we had a request from the local anti-racism coalition to fly a Black Lives Matter banner in front of the, on the banner poll, which we had done in the past. There was discussion surrounding the banner poll usage and requests from individual organizations. And if I'm correct and if I'm wrong, but I did watch the meeting twice to try to fully wrap my head around the discussion. You know, discussions surrounding whether we should, if we were to do a, hang it on behalf of the town or first on behalf of an organization and certain actions through motions could open us up to maybe other organizations requesting similar action from the town. There was discussion about what the messaging was if it was political. And there were discussions on both sides of those arguments. And then also there was towards the end of that discussion a request of a different banner that brought in the declaration of inclusion, which the board adopted, I believe, last year. I know there was some participation that evening and then I believe all board members have got additional commentary from the public. So I think tonight we'll continue the discussion, but I think we also have to be conscious of time. So with that, I don't know if we want to start with, I believe there was a request of a new banner and I don't know if anyone's representing or tonight to discuss, if they have discussed wanting to do a new banner or maybe we just opened a public discussion on feedback from the last meeting. How would the board like to proceed? Well, I'm not sure if we do it now, but I support and want to move forward with the idea of hanging a banner with a piece of the statement of inclusion. I don't have that sentence drafted. I don't know if someone did. Oh, I did. I have a different draft that I was working on too. Yeah. Is it in our email that I could pull it up or no? I'm not sure. I don't know where it is. I mean, I have the definition of inclusion. Unfortunately, I didn't create, I didn't know if we wanted to do that together to pick the words, but I support moving forward with that and I would love to be actively decide on that tonight in this meeting if that's something that we're all amenable to. So Mark, I don't think last week, I think that we kind of closed this discussion out with the thought in mind that the next future meeting we would discuss the possibilities of trying to frame some form of banner to everybody's liking if that's possible using the declaration of inclusion, some maybe edited version of it or something like that. And I don't, you know, it wasn't tasked to any of us to try to come up with some wording prior to this meeting. So that's kind of where we landed last week. I agree with what Danny said. I'm very much in favor of flying a declaration of inclusion banner because I think that is what the town stands for, inclusion, diversity, et cetera. Again, I don't think we may have the words as of now, but I at least think that if we craft some sort of wording that it's my impression that we have universal agreement to fly that banner. The question is, and maybe I do want to hear from the public as to other banners. Before, Tom, I think I would like to hear from the public. Sure, Bill? Yeah, just two quick things. At the last meeting, you did ask me to get an opinion about the banner poll and your policy. I circulated that in an email a few days after the meeting. There is some concern if you were to allow a group to put up a sign that was speech that you would have difficulty not allowing other groups to put up other speech. You don't get to edit their speech. You don't get to look at what they want to say if you're allowing organizations to put it up and you kind of open the door to almost any organization with some very fine exceptions. The town can't use the banner policy that it has in place and just say it's to advertise events. And if you did that, it is any organization can advertise any legal event. So if somebody wanted to put a banner up that says there's a Black Lives Matter rally on January 1st, that can go up. And if somebody else wanted to put up something else that was, I'm not even gonna try to figure out what it might say or what the rally would be for, but it was something that you didn't approve of, you still have to hang that banner because it's an event. And the banner policy that we have now would that would be the case for any organization right now. The other thing that I didn't talk about at the last meeting, this is more kind of technical made over recreation director contacted me the day afterwards and he said, I know the request was to hang the banner up for the full month of October, but we have a process in place where organizations make reservations. And he said, you just can't give people carte blanche to put it up without checking first to make sure there's gonna be room. So that's kind of a technical issue. So with those things carry on the discussion. All right, how do we wanna organize this? So in the past we used to have a microphone to go to the lineup, we don't have a microphone. So. Come up there and sit at the chair. Yeah, so I think we'll just. Maybe just sit in a line along the. Yeah, if you don't mind if you just wanna line up on the seat so we can take the hot seat, if you will. And that, yeah, for. This helps, we actually have wind up speakers so people know when. Sure, but there are also other ones in the public out there. I think we're just gonna have to do it as I asked someone who wants to speak first and we're gonna welcome and take a seat. We do have some folks that are on Zoom as well. For this I can just see who raises the hand icon and then write it down in the order I see it and then go to those. Yeah, that'd be great. We'll try to do this as well. And then please limit the discussion to two minutes of peace because there are more people on the committee. Can I ask a question? Yes. Are we discussing up here the use of the banner or the length of time of the banner? What is it? We're discussing, I've read all the notes in there. I think some of it is gonna be feedback from last week's discussion which was originally a request that was made in what stands in Black Lives Matter banner. There was no action taken last week and there was discussion of modifying that request because ultimately, as far as I understood from the discussion that I watched on the recording was that any motion would be on behalf of the town. If we did it on behalf of an organization like work then we potentially open ourselves up to a precedent that we would hang any banner off a request from the group. So I think that's kind of where the discussion led. But through feedback that I saw online, through my email phone calls, I'm sure the other board members know that there are folks that wish to speak and did not attend last week. So I think it would be appropriate to at least continue some of that discussion and allow those who want to give feedback on what they saw or heard. I think it's appropriate to give them an opportunity to speak to the request. Can you just clarify that it is okay to want to select more to vote on the fact that some community members would like to have, for example, water-based units with Black Lives Matter in their home and if the town votes on it, then it would be acceptable to have that sponsored by town. So to clarify what I said a minute ago, if last meeting the request was made by work for the town to allow work to hang the Black Lives Matter water-based supports of Black Lives Matter. The legal opinion that I got suggests that if the town allows water-based area, anti-racism coalition to put up a banner, then it would have to allow any other organization to put up a banner. Regardless of what the speech is, because you're allowing organizations to do it, if the town select board votes in the name of the town, not giving more permission to do it, but in the name of the town to hang up something that says Black Lives Matter or the statement of inclusion, the town select board has the right in the name of the town to speak for the town. And then they could say, if some other group came and said, we'd like you to put this up, the town could say, that's not how we feel, that's not language that we support, not a sentiment we support. So the final line is between allowing a group to do something and allowing the town to make a statement. So the select board can make the statement and then that could be the only statement that they ever want to put up there. But if you allow a group to put up a statement, then any group can put up a statement. Now, if they would have to put would that group to put up a statement? No. You're not doing it out here. The motion is not, we are putting this up on behalf of the group, we are putting, if we were to do any kind of, whatever the motion is, whether it's we paint a street or a banner or wherever, we're saying we would do those emotions on behalf of the town, not a specific group. I believe the crowd would do it. So that's the difference. Right, so I guess my question is, if we as a board, as a setting board, to vote to put up whatever stands with Black Lives Matter, on behalf of the town. On behalf of the town. We can't do it in, if they do it in, if they allow work to hang that, then they would have to allow the proud boys to hang whatever they want. I get that one. So, and I'm not saying you should not. And I think the select board has a responsibility here to actually take that vote. And if the proud boys come to you, asking for you vote, I would love for you to vote to take that vote. And that is your responsibility. That's not what he's saying. So basically, it would mean that it would not vote. Basically, it would set legal precedent that we will hang banners on behalf of groups. And there wouldn't be no vote. There wouldn't be. It would basically not allow us to. Right. Totally. I think I'm speaking to Mr. Breckley is that, if we do it on behalf of the ward, that then another group comes and we basically, they're like, well, you did it for war. Why won't you do it for us? We don't have. We would basically not have to do it. You would have to do it. We would have to do it. The other version is that we, as a select ward war, it ends up on town meeting day as a line item that the town can vote on, but the town makes a decision to make action on whatever it is, whether it's a mural or a banner or whatever. And you're still keeping that voting here without allowing groups to just come in and put whatever rhetoric they want on. Yeah, right. So I believe that's the difference. Okay. I want to respect all the people who can speak. Yeah, we, just. Yeah, do we want to start? Whoever's speaking, can you just come sit in this chair because there's a microphone there. There's people on Zoom. You have to speak loudly to let the owl make you up. So whoever wants to start, can you just speak? Are we starting how long? Yeah, you can just come right up. Whoever wants to speak next. Do you want to do it one more time? No. Whoever wants to speak next, if someone wants to speak next, just please go over to the chair. I think we should do Erin next because she's had her hand raised after. Okay, sure. And then if you could just state your name and assure us you've been. I'm just going to pull up notes really quickly, sorry. I guess I don't need notes for my name. I'm Ashley LaPorte. I just moved to Ducks very recently, actually. And I wanted to call, I just wanted to come and state my opinion that it's really important for us to put up specifically a banner that talks about Black Lives Matter. And I think quite often, that phrase is billed as being political and divisive. And I think there's now federal legal precedent that says that that's not the case. Unlike Confederate flags, for example, or white supremacy flags. And I think already the conversation today has tried to equate those things. And I want to talk about why it's important for us to not do that. And the federal precedent is just around the Hatch Act, which the US Office of Special Counsel looked at the Black Lives Matter flag specifically and deemed that people who work for the federal government in their free time and actually during work are able to display the BLM flag because it's not political. It's not meant to be divisive. It's actually meant to be a statement of inclusion. And I wanted to share a little bit of my personal experience growing up. I grew up in Memorial County. My sister and I are members of the Fort family, which my mom has nine siblings. Our whole family that we grew up with is white. My sister and I are the only two Black people in our family. And we both grew up in the Stowe school system. And our whole lives, we were told that everyone in our family and everyone in our town doesn't see color. And that we were welcome and we were a part of the community and we were valuable as a part of our community. But we were told that in a way that said, we don't see color, you're the same as everyone else. And we're not the same as everybody else. Like quite literally everyone can tell that by our skin tone. And this is one small anecdote that may not seem big, but like series of these microaggressions really had a negative impact on my childhood. And when I think about having children and then sending them to Harvard Union and to our schools here, I would really hope that they could have a different experience where as a community, we actually recognize difference and don't think that being inclusive is about sort of thinking that everyone's the same. And the one small anecdote was that we were a part of a dance group in Stowe. And there was a rule that went out saying like everyone who's a part of this dance group needs to wear a nude leotard. And that's part of what is the costume. And we wrote in and said like we can't wear nude leotards. I don't even know what nude means because nude for us actually means a black color. Nudes for all of the rest of our friends means a pale pinkish color. And because the mentality of that town was like we're inclusive because we don't see color, we were told you still have to do that. And it wasn't until we were like physically in a different color leotard than the color of our skin that it hit everybody. But at that moment it was too late, like we were embarrassed and like on stage in front of our whole town wearing something that just continually pointed out that we were different than everyone else. And I know that that seems small and I could give many more examples that are like much more deep cutting than that. But this is really about like us carrying through the murder of George Floyd to a vision of our community where we acknowledge and we accept and we see that people are different and we don't use that as a way to make it feel divisive or like that's going to make people hate each other or pause friction but we see that as something to celebrate. And so I appreciate and think that the statement of inclusion is incredibly powerful. I think quite specifically the statement of Black Lives Matter is a thing that I would ask us to consider including in whatever banner we put up because it's really important to recognize that black folks in particular in our community are having a different experience and that we want to celebrate that. Thank you very much. I'm going to cut you off. Thank you. So you want to? Yeah, I think we have to pull a little more tight. Thank you. So Mark, no disrespect for the young lady but in this particular instance should we be allowing testimony from people from other towns? I think that's good important to decide. I mean I do believe that we should make sure that residents have an opportunity to speak and then we can decide if we're going to open it up to non-residents because I do believe that we're here to do the business of the town. And again, no disrespect for not from Waterbury or lives in Waterbury but we are here to represent the town and make the decisions on behalf of the town. So I do believe that as of right now I think the residents and then non-residents want to speak, we can decide if we have no time for that. But doesn't the sign say Waterbury stands for? I just want to clarify. The sign says nothing. There's been no motion. The request last week was a sign that said Waterbury stands with. Correct. There has been no motion. There has been no action. So we don't know what the sign is that we're dropping it now? Correct. It's more following up the discussion of last week specifically the BLM flag and feedback over the discussion. So now we're talking about a BLM flag. What we're talking about right now I think is I believe the select board have indicated that allowing groups to fly a statement is not a good thing. I understand that. And now they're talking about what the laggings we're hoping to because if we're talking about a sign that says Waterbury stands with or Waterbury stands by Black Lives Matter or if it's just Black Lives Matter I think they're different things. They have no, there's nothing on the table they're just asking sort of about this. So what are we discussing then? We're discussing last week's request for a banner that did say Waterbury stands with Black Lives Matter or not. Just how we feel in general about that. Yeah. Okay. And the feedback from the community that obviously is here tonight to discuss that conversation. I think that's why a lot of people have attended here. As well as the response and reaction to the informal proposals for a new banner with the statement of inclusion. So are we jumping to Aaron now? Yeah, we can go to Aaron and then Dana. Hi. Can you hear me? My name is Aaron Hurley and I am from Waterbury. And I do support the select board as an entity, as the leaders of our town, flying a banner that says Waterbury stands with Black Lives Matter. You have voted before to fly that banner and you've flown it for many months and I think it's really important to our town. I've heard firsthand from children in our town that they like to see the banner. Children of color are happy when it's up and feel more included. I have heard from adults that they appreciate the banner and people of color who are in our town and our community. I think it's very important as a white person that we have banners and make statements in our town that show that we are working to be an anti-racist town, that we are working to be inclusive and equitable and that we care. They are more than symbolic gestures. They show, this would show that the leaders of our town understand the real importance of creating a home for our children that is inclusive and equitable. And after viewing the last meeting, which was pretty hard to watch and I just wanted to clarify a couple of things. LARC is an organization of many people in our community. I heard select board member, Chris Vien, singling out Baroni Ninter for actions that were done by LARC, which was not appropriate or accurate. Moroni has been a leader, but it's not alone in the work to make Waterbury a more anti-racist town. The Waterbury Area Anti-Racism Coalition formed 17 months ago in response to a brave then middle schooler from Waterbury who talked about the racism he experienced in our schools at a Black Lives Matter event in Montpelier. And since then, numerous members of LARC have engaged with the select board on various issues with opportunities for learning too. And we're a very large group varying in age, race, background, experience. We currently have 95 LARC members with many more supporters on our mailing list. And we have well-attended monthly committee meetings and membership meetings. They're the fourth Tuesday of the month at seven on Zoom. You know, Waterbury Anti-Racism at gmail.com if you wanna join. And I'm just gonna say again, as a resident of Waterbury, I hope the select board will make a motion to fly the banner that we have, that can be your banner, that Waterbury stands at Black Lives Matter. I also support creating another banner that has language from the Statement of Inclusion. Thank you. Thanks. Dana Allen, Waterbury, the guy who complains about speeding on StoStreet all the time. And kids on my lawn. So, I would support the town considering putting up a banner with a redacted version or an edited version of the approved declaration of inclusion. I think that that captures a lot of different groups and a lot of different intersections and I think that's important. I am fully supportive of Black Lives Matter. But I think that the established policy of using that those polls to fly event banners, it's a good policy. I don't think that we should engage in ad hoc policy creation for different organizations. It's a slippery slope and I think that having something that the town has already improved of put into a publicly visible form would be a positive step. And the only other thing I'd like to say is that I'm somewhat disappointed to hear members of the community creating false economies equating BLM with white supremacy groups. That was something that came out of last meeting. BLM does not engage in hate speech. It has no history of systematized violent crime aimed at people based on their race. So, I would hope that no one would confuse apples with oranges in that case. Thank you. Thank you. My name's Chiomima Kibben. I live in Waterbury. For those of you who are curious, it's spelled C-H-I-Y-O-M-I, I guess that constantly. I am half Japanese and half Caucasian. I moved to Vermont in 2016 from California, which is a predominantly multicultural area filled with a lot of other mixed race people like myself. I didn't realize when I moved to Vermont that the mental health toll that would take place on me as being one of the only five-half people in most of the rooms that I was in. There was a lot of stereotype assumptions, things that were said that were very arrogant, ignorant, and there's always this thing that I was an outsider. A couple of years later, I was targeted of an anti-Asian harassment. And this, sorry, I'm a little bit nervous. I was the target of anti-Asian harassment. This, luckily I was around friends who were able to step in and speak on my behalf and tell the person who was harassing me that was not okay. This played a profound impact on my life and it carried with me the weight of always wondering when I go outside, am I gonna be the target of anti-Asian racism again? And these feelings only amplified during the pandemic as the rise of anti-Asian hate and random violent attacks happened across the country. I joined the Waterbury Area Anti-Racism Coalition because I knew that I needed to find other BIPOC folks to have a community with and I was tired of being one of the only BIPOC people in the room. And I also really wanted to make my town better for other people like myself. And so they wouldn't have to deal with racism like I did. In March, 2021, when the Atlantis boss shootings happened, I was terrified, I felt alone. And I realized that nobody was checking in on me. Nobody was asking if I'm doing okay, how this is impacting me and people were carrying on as life as usual, which was even harder to carry this weight and nobody was acknowledging it. I knew that I had to do something and I couldn't just stay silent. I didn't want to play the model minority. Sure, we just had two minutes. Two minutes, okay. I knew I had to have a protest and that there's only one protest happening in Burlington and so I decided last minute to have one in Montpelier and I contacted the Waterbury Anti-Racism Coalition mailing list and told them I was gonna be out there at the Capitol and they joined me and they contacted their list as well. Being part of this group has helped me feel included. It helped me feel not alone. Anything having and standing up in solidarity with other people who are targets of hate and racism is really important. Having the Black Lives Matter sign in Waterbury has a big source of pride for me and I don't feel as alone, even though I'm not part of the Black community because I know that they're part of my community as a BIPOC person and I think it's very important that we have it standing. Thank you. Thank you. That's not for my emblem. Hi, my name is Mel Colbertson. I live in Waterbury and I support the town bringing back the Waterbury stands with Black Lives Matter banner in addition to a potential other banner using our statement of inclusion. But as the board deliberates on this topic, I wanted to address a pattern of false comparisons. Black Lives Matter or anti-racism work more broadly has been compared to white supremacist organizations. Experiencing racism has been compared to being called racist and the phrase Black Lives Matter has been compared with the phrase All Lives Matter. As the board considers the banners we raise as a community and our policies around it, I think it's necessary to provide some clarity around the false comparisons that have been flying around. The global movement for Black Lives that rallies under the phrase Black Lives Matter is specifically a response to disproportionate violence that black people face at the hands of police in the criminal justice system. The phrase Black Lives Matter is not a statement of black supremacy, it's a call to recognize black humanity. As we've said before, the belief that Black Lives Matter is bigger than any political organization. The white supremacy groups that Black Lives Matter has been compared to during the last board meeting exists for the express purpose of dehumanizing and eradicating people who do not meet their criteria for whiteness. These are organizations who have a long history of murdering and terrorizing communities of color all across this country, including in Vermont. To compare a nonviolent movement asking us to recognize that black lives have value to groups that seek to murder and remove black and brown people from the United States not only misses the point of Black Lives Matter entirely but it gives credence to white supremacy groups. I'll also quickly say that being called a racist or fear that somebody will call you a racist is not the same as experiencing racism. Any discomfort or fear that myself or fellow white neighbors feel around the topic of race is temporary and not at all equal to or comparable to the violence, pain and dehumanization that people of color experience when experiencing racism. Additionally, the phrase All Lives Matter is not a comparable substitute for Black Lives Matter. Sure, it's a response that was designed to pull focus away from the anti-blackness that pervades this country. And it creates a false notion that we all experience the United States the same way with the same hurdles. I had a little bit more but I'll leave it there for time but I hope by addressing some of these false comparisons we can't all agree that Black Lives Matter. Thank you very much for your time. Hi everyone, my name is Tessa. I am a Waterbury resident and I support the town raising the Waterbury Stands of Black Lives Matter banner. I wanted to speak to the claims that the Black Lives Matter banner and work as a group are actively exclusionary and don't represent everybody. As a community organization fighting racism, work represents in the stands of many identities including indigenous peoples, black people, Asian Americans and many others. For me as a Chinese American I'm always bordered by and included in this group. Earlier this year I asked to lead a moment of silence for the thousands of recent victims of anti-Asian racism which has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Work members stood in solidarity with me and held space for me to honor Asian Americans in our community and across the country. When a community is hurting and needs allies you don't say what about us or what about me. Instead we worked up with that community and worked towards healing and change. The Black Lives Matter banner might be specific but it's not exclusionary. Asian Americans experience racism and discrimination but a banner that prioritizes black lives doesn't invalidate our identities and experiences. Recognizing racism the black Americans face doesn't take anything away from the lives of other oppressed groups. The banner is important because it represents empathy and solidarity with the black community members and visitors to our town. Thank you. I'm Travis Bito, I'm a resident of Waterbury, small business owner as well if that matters to anybody. I basically want to echo something that Erin said. The specific Chris calling out Moroni on certain things, on forcing a banner to be hung up, for example, things like that. It came from last meeting. As I think you're noticing, work is big as what Erin said, not you members. We are not in the lockstep with whatever Moroni says. I barely even know Moroni. I've talked to him like five or six times outside of work and it's been in the parking lot saying waiting high. So we are a diverse group. It takes away from the work that we do and I kind of take that a little bit to a fence. What else did I want to say? That was the main, main thing. Also, this is a political body. Every decision you guys make is political. Whether to hang a banner, whether it's for the little league or whether it's for revitalizing Waterbury or whether it's for work or whether it's whatever it is, it's a political statement. So I feel that saying political statements is a reason not to hang the banner is a cop up. That's all I have to say. We have another hand raised. Are we going back and forth or? Yeah, I'm being online a little bit. Alyssa. My name's Alicia Bachman. I use she her pronouns and I'm a resident of Waterbury. I'm here today asking the select board to fly the Waterbury stands with Black Lives Matter banner as an action to show both our community and visitors to our community, especially black people and people of the global majority that Waterbury is a welcoming and inclusive community. The select board has adopted a statement of inclusion as well as engaged in racial equity training. To me, both of these actions show that the select board is committed to equity and hopefully working to center it in all the work that you do. However, the ruling at the previous meeting that you as the select board of our town cannot fly the Black Lives Matter banner to me is not in alignment with the agreements of both the statement of inclusion and the racial equity training that you've engaged in. The flying of the Black Lives Matter banner is an action that puts the statement of inclusion in a public space in our community, which as I mentioned above and others have also mentioned, demonstrates that Waterbury is a welcoming and inclusive community. I ask that you take action and as a board agree to fly the Waterbury stands with Black Lives Matter banner and I also support another banner with the statement of inclusion. Thank you. Thank you. Hi, I'm Jocelyn DePaulis and I'm the resident of Waterbury and I'm also a BIPOC and I do not want to see the Waterbury stands with Black Lives Matter banner flying in our town. I believe it to be a political statement, I would rather see something taken from our inclusivity statement being flown. And as the select board members received, but I'll tell the people that are here and to the internet at large. From the Black Lives Matter website, they say Black Lives Matter is an ideological and political intervention. They also say that the three radical Black organizers, Alicia Patrice and Opal created a Black centered political will movement building project called Black Lives Matter. There, I also sent you guys an article from Politico that where they're quoted on the heels of nearly six months of nationwide demonstrations that sparked an international movement against systemic racism and police violence. Black Lives Matter is expanding its influence into politics by forming a political action committee. The Black Lives Matter pack will formally roll out its programs as early as Monday according to Patrice, co-founder of Black Lives Matter. The committee plans to endorse the slate of candidates ahead of the general election, paying special attention to mayoral county sheriff and district attorney reasons. And you can go read the whole article online, but my point is, they're saying that it's political and that's not what we should be doing. Let's just say that we include everyone. What happened to Welcome to Waternary? We're glad to see you. I mean, we're here, we need our businesses to survive. That's what helps our community. So just something that includes everyone would be great. And then just on a completely different note, with the reviewing of the last meeting, I was curious as to the chats not being available that those don't seem to be saved. What are the chats? In the, oh. Oh, the Zoom. Yeah, I don't know that. I don't know. Cause they are saveable. So. Yeah, there's some discussion that having the chats is a little bit not fair because folks out there are chatting, people in here can't respond to the chats, can't even see the chats. So there was a lot of discussion that the chat should just be not used at all. But it was being used. So that's the whole thing. I understand, I understand. It should be available to everyone if we're going to use it. Well, if we're going to use it, but I think that there's some consideration that it shouldn't be used. But I just wanted to say that just because it was being used and it wasn't fair to everyone that we didn't get to say it. But thank you for your time. Thank you. Thank you. Before we move on, is that something that we should add to a future discussion of like disabling the chat or not? Yeah, I mean, the Carla probably would have mentioned it if she had been here. Right. But we talked about it and it made me a lot of day. I'm confused why people couldn't use it. Is that something you always say? What does it mean you use me to add it to the minutes? Or what's? Right. So either we, like, do we disable it or do we save it so that people can look and as part of the, like, save? I think the children in the chat. What? I think disabling the chat. I think so. I know people have something to say. They can just raise their hands. Right, right. Could I get a clarification on one thing? Yeah. Bill, you mentioned events for banners. And there's been no talk about content versus events. Could I get a clarification on that? So if you're addressing me, the banner, the policy that we have that was adopted in 2014 when we built the banner pole when the Rotary Club donated it to us, it was to hang banners to advertise events. So there's no event being discussed here tonight. But the town owns the banner pole. And at last meeting, there was some question brought up. I spoke to an attorney between last meeting and now and he said, if you live with your banner pole policy and advertise events, you have to allow every event that an organization wants to have to be advertised there. So Rotary Club, Pie for Breakfast, March 15th, you gotta put that on. And if some other organization wanted to say, rally at Rusty Park or Park, whether the select board liked that organization or not, that's an event that needs to be put up. The town, because it owns the banner pole, had a request from an organization last week to put up, and now we're debating whether Black Lives Matter is a political statement or not, but an organization asked to put up a statement. It wasn't advertising an event. So the select board said, well, not sure that we should do that. It doesn't follow the policy. The attorney said, if you allow work to put up a statement, then you would have to allow any other organization to put up a statement. And he said, the town can avoid that scenario by deciding the banner pole can be used for banners to advertise events, plus it can be used for the town to make statements in its own name. So to me, this discussion going on right now is, shall the select board in the name of the town decide to put up some banner that has a statement on it? So. All right, thank you. Can I clarify your tone? Right, that would be a separate vote, almost. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. Amy Hoskins, I'm a Monterey resident. I've been in Monterey for 18 years. I'm also a member of work. I joined work after the Black Lives Matter rally over a year ago, but I'm also here just as a member of the community. And I am, I'm a member of work because I believe in their mission, which is to support all marginalized groups and to stand against racial injustices against people in these groups. And work, as mentioned previously, has many members, some are BIPOC, but most of them are white people. Then that's just a reflection of the percentage of populations in our town. I support the town hanging the waterway stands with Black Lives Matter banner again, as it did before, to show the town's awareness of the particular injustices that continue against black people. And the idea would be it could be hung for 30 days and taken down and then hung at some other time, and then banners for other groups that the select board would approve, that it would seem like it makes sense that in the name of our town, the town would support those banners and those messages. I think it's also fine to hang a banner with the town's statement of inclusion or some statement of inclusion that everyone agrees upon, showing that the town stands against racial injustices toward all marginalized groups and the town's inclusive of all people, but I think that just having that banner would ignore the specific message about Black Lives Matter and what that means. I don't feel that the statement Black Lives Matter was intended initially to be a political statement. I think it was meant to get people's awareness about social values and human values. The injustices that continue against black people that are well-documented by statistics and that we hear from black people in this community, these continued injustices are the reason for the banner. Black Lives Matter doesn't mean that white people don't matter or that white people are bad or that black people should get special treatment that's better than how other people are treated. Okay, so just to close, I think that the message is that mistakes keep being made because we haven't solved this problem yet and that it's important to have the banner as a reminder that there still weren't to be done and it's just a reminder to be aware and to be engaged and to listen to stories, black people's stories and to hear each other and to not be offended but just to use the opportunity to engage and try and solve these problems so we can all get along. Thank you. You want to jump to? Yeah, I'll jump to Nella. Nella? Hi there, thanks for having me hold this meeting. I don't have that much to say on it but I do just want to point out that our neighboring towns, Montpelier and Burlington have taken really big actions with paying back like matters on their main thoroughfares for everyone to see in a very permanent nature and it seems like asking to buy a banner is a pretty easy, simple and low bar to actually show some inclusiveness in our town so I just think that's a point that I wanted to raise and I hope that we consider raising the banner. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Laura Hardy, I live in Waterbury. I've been here for about 10 years. I'm also a 7th generation Vermonter. I support and a member of our, I support the Black Lives Matter banner as well as any other declaration of inclusion banner that you won't apply because I know that as a white person that lives in Vermont and whose family has lived here for a very long time that I have privileges that people of color haven't experienced. For one, my extended family's been privileged to own a lot of farmland in northern Vermont and be dairy farmers for decades. I work in the food system and I know that in Vermont just 17 out of our 7,000 farms that we have here are owned by Black people and that's not okay and that's according to the last U.S. census and that's because of things like racist government policies and discriminatory lending. So it's time to prioritize people of color because of the harm that's been done and that's sort of Black Lives Matter banner and there's other examples like how people beyond, how people have been denied land access but how Black people have been disadvantaged in healthcare, harmed in our education system and lots of other social policies. So again, I just echo what Noah just said, like Burlington has this painted down the street. I would be really sad if Waterbury and Clinton just hang a banner. So yeah, and especially was discouraged by the all lives matter discussion at the last meeting because yes, everyone's life is important but what we're talking about now are people who have long been discriminated against because of the color of their skin. The Black Lives Matter banner is a way to hold them up and show that Waterbury is a leader in this movement to make things right. So I appreciate you listening and I hope you will decide why the Black Lives Matter banner. Thank you. My name is Maggie Karen and I also live in town. So I moved to Waterbury in 2007 and I just scripted some rough notes. Some of them will have questions so if anybody can jot those questions down and maybe answer them at some point, that would be great. So I'm asking would you please enter in two minutes, those people who are Waterbury residents and perhaps where the other people were from. I think it's so funny to read through the fog. I'm concerned a little bit about the taxpayer resources being used here. We have time and staff. We have a town manager salary, a town clerk salary, select board stipends and staff time just to prepare for the meeting. I would say that this is a very divisive issue. What has been proposed last week may serve a small portion of the town but not the whole, possibly even not the majority. One question, how long has the banner already been hung in town? How many town hours would you estimate have been used on this matter? What other groups have been recognized in the same way? How can we best serve the town as a whole? Can we put our time and energy into that instead of continually such a divisive matter? I encourage an inclusive banner, like the one you talked about last week, for all as mentioned at the meeting. I was curious also about the chat and the attendance in the Zoom, if that's recorded in your meeting records. Does a town have a policy in which participants at your meetings are expected to address each other and the board? I was concerned about the voice level and the tone in that select board members at your last meeting. I end with asking the board who represent all Waterbury residents to please honor those Waterbury residents, all of them, by hanging only positive fully inclusive banners, not banners that serve only a few. And yes, you are here for the benefit of the town. So thank you. Thank you. Thanks for being here. I want to jump to online Damien. Sure. Everybody hear me? Everybody hear me? Okay. I'm Damien Manigarcia. I'm 15 years old. I used to live in Waterbury Center, but I've been living in Waterbury for like two years now, three years almost. I just want to talk about the importance of the banner to me and the message it sends. I just think it's a message of inclusivity. It's not saying other lads don't matter, saying black lads do matter. I think it's a misconception where people compare it to more extremist ideals putting one race or ideology above someone else. And it's the message of good faith and love and appreciation and understanding. And it really does hurt to see people compare it to extremist ideals, which are messages of like hate and unaccepting. And I think I do support the idea of a more inclusive banner, but I do want to see the black lads matter banner still staying up. It would be nice to have a banner that includes like Pacific Islanders, Latinx, just Native American stuff like that. But I think right now it's like a tender time for a sensitive time for BIPOC people in America, and it's important to keep our focus on it. And I don't want the town of Waterbury to seem like we were just following the trend and then forgetting about it when it's not in the limelight, I guess. I know when I like, when I bike past that or I walk past that, it just makes me feel accepted and seen by the people of Waterbury. And it's important to me that we have that flag or banner, sorry. Yeah, I support the black lads matter banner. And I think we could work together as well to create an inclusive banner, but still recognizing the importance of the black lads matter banner as well. Thank you. Thank you. I don't think I have much to say because anybody would say a lot, but I'm just here to say that just like everybody, I'm hoping that you all consider taking a vote to fly the Waterbury Stains with Black Lads Matter. It's something that you had done before and it was up there. In addition to that, we are willing to work with you all to create a more inclusive banner based on the state-of-the-art inclusion that you had adopted. And I know last meeting, Katie even mentioned that maybe work can help with drafting that language. And so we're happy to work with you to create that banner. Actually, we actually took a crack at what that could look like. We're happy to present what we have created to you. That's not to say that that's the one you should adopt. It's because you had mentioned that we could help with that. So we took a crack at something that we could present. But at the end of the day, this is for you, whatever you decide to create based on the state-of-the-art inclusion. We are supportive of that. We think that we can do both fly that banner and also fly the, we stand with Black Lives Matter, which is something we have done in the past. Didn't you say you did work on it? Yes, we've, yes, we've taken a crack at creating something that we can present to you here today. You're not going to make a decision on it. Yeah, I think it's better if you have it, I think you'll be happy to. Okay, I can. If you want to email it to me right now, I can put it up to share. Great. Awesome. Oh, take me a minute. Yeah, you're good. If anybody else needs to speak, I'll just get up and I'll be right back. Thank you. Any other speakers? Hi, my name is Elizabeth Walton and I live here in Waterbury as well. It seems that there was a memo that must have gone out that told people what we're gonna be chatting about tonight. My understanding was we were simply discussing what the banner policy was about. I think that anybody that's here cares about people. Otherwise, they wouldn't be here. I'm assuming that's the case. But having said that, I'm really not understanding why the select board is feeling the need to prove that Waterbury is an inclusive community. I think that Waterbury has proven to be an inclusive community simply by the way that they behave and they interact. I know there's a lot of people that seem to feel obligated to go along with the idea that somehow we're inherently racist. I don't agree with that. I think there's a lot of people in Waterbury that wouldn't agree with that. And I just, although I certainly can understand having banners that say this event's happening or that event's happening, I really don't understand why we're waiting into a political arena here to suggest that Black Lives Matter is not a political statement, is naive at best. It may have started out that way, simply a nice thing to say, a true thing to say. It is a true thing to say. Black Lives absolutely do matter as do white lives and every other color that's out there. But I don't think that it is seen as being anything but political now. And I think that if we want to make a statement simply saying, Waterbury, welcome to everyone, is a great thing to say. Or be nice to your neighbor, or stay away from this political things for everybody, for participating in the event as well. Thank you. I didn't have anything to say. I'm so glad you get to do all of those things. But anyways, in a historical precedent, the Waterbury State Hospital opened in 1890. And Waterbury's been home to some of the most challenged and tortured individuals for years. Before many things ever happened in this town. And it has nurtured people and has continued to do so. It nurtured my three kids growing up here. I've seen a lot of success stories. I know personally the governor's interested in the growth of this town. And I support diversity, I support inclusion. And I just, I hate to see the town being as divisive as it's been, and as the meeting was two weeks ago, which is why I came tonight. And it's nice to see civil discourse. And I hope you folks are able to process this and move it because having it be stuck is not doing really anyone any good. That's right. That's what I hope you have in mind. Next time. Thank you. Anyone else? What's up to the board? Well, I was just gonna start to ask you about concern for the time and the agenda itself. Is there anything in your message that's way outside of what already has been said? My perspective is a parent and I'm the only owner of the town and so it's slightly different. That's how there are things that we've heard tonight. I don't have a problem with it, but I'll be there. Sure. I was going to attend or be able to, so I wrote a letter, so I'll just read that here. Dear Waterbury's Left Warden, I am a resident of Moortown who lives on Clapple Road and considers Waterbury Village my home. I'm writing in regards to raising the Waterbury Stamps with Black Lives Matter banner in the Statenland Occlusion and the urging of the Left Warden to vote in favor of raising these important theaters. First, as a parent of a three-year-old and soon to be second child, I feel that it's essential that the children in our community are reminded of the values of Waterbury on a regular basis. As they apply to our ideas and beliefs about the world, it's essential that as a community, we stand up collectively to let our children know that in our community we value equity and inclusion. The Waterbury Stamps with Black Lives Matter banner is an inclusive symbol of our community's commitment to making sure all marginalized people and communities know that they're welcomed in Waterbury. And its presence is an important message for all their children as they grow up here. It's a message they need to be reminded of and see often as they are discovering their own place and role in the world. Raising these banners today will have a positive ripple effect for years to come as children of this area grow up learn and live these values. Secondly, it's very important to me that all visitors to this area feel unaccrued and deeply welcomed to the Waterbury area. I believe this has a citizen and as an airman be older. Unfortunately, my experience speaking with people of color outside of the mall has been that people have fears and concerns about visiting the area due to its lack of diversity and reputation nationally. Waterbury and Exit 10 are basically the front door to the mall for many tourists and I believe as such it's essential that we ensure as a community that all visitors to the mall feel welcome. While these banners may seem like a local decision, such decisions have a great effect influencing the reputation of the mall on the national scale. We live in a world of Instagram posts and Facebook groups where pictures and mentions of these banners share elsewhere can have a positive far reaching effect when a lot of people think of what they think of the mall and actually visiting it. And so in inclusion for these two reasons amongst the many other critical perspectives shared by others tonight I urge the board to vote in favor of raising both the waterbury stamp of Black Lives Matter banner and the statement of the approach. Anyone else wish to speak? Move into the board. First before we discuss, I just wanted to thank you and know that it can be scary to come up and be vulnerable on feet. So I appreciate everyone for the bravery that takes the vulnerability and for their respect and other discourse on that and I think we should. Thank you Danny for saying that and I echo your comments. What's that? Yeah, sure. We have also co-won with our deceleration of inclusion just to compare. Where's the dark blue? It's the white. So there's Black and African-Americans, indigenous peoples, Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders, LGBTQ plus. There is a virgin, immigrant, people living in poverty, the elderly, people who have been living with social illness. So you want all that on a banner? It's in the background of it. That's nice and on that, that's nice and on that. So it's a layer underneath that writing that it's there but it's not in your face but there's community that works with people there. I think our thought was to take your suggestion of creating a more and more inclusive of all the marginalized community and so that's why we put all the marginalized community and the video kind of in the background. Again, is this our proposal? No, I understand, I just wanted to ask. Can I say something? Yeah. Well obviously both of us haven't seen the top banner. But I'm quite sure you guys as a town provost have to consider a little amount of time on your inclusion statement. And I'm disturbed initially at first of all the yellow bulls but especially the negativity of the first line and that continues almost accusation to people. But I think I just would really like to have some consideration of what the town had already created. I believe it was read. Maybe somebody could read it in the end. It's right there. It's right there. Yeah, I can't even hear it. As a town of the Waterbury Declaration of Inclusion, Waterbury condemns racism and welcomes all people regardless of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, gender identity, or expression, aid, or disability, and will protect these classes to the fullest extent of the law. As a town, we formally condemn discrimination in all of its forms and commit to fair and equal treatment of everyone in our community. Waterbury has and will continue to be a place where any of the bulls can live freely and express their opinion. And if I'm correct, Maggie, I believe that that was brought to us by the same organization, Mark. Well, you know, as Elizabeth mentioned, you know, thinking of the Waterbury, you know, Waterbury, I've lived in Waterbury for a long time, it's always been, the things I love about Waterbury and the things, the reasons I say, are your park events, your farmer's market, your community dances. I was here during the hurricane, and I really didn't watch how amazing. Waterbury has so much positivity, and so perhaps, welcome people with positivity, you know, words of, I forget some of which can be said, but positive words are welcome. And a nice, friendly, gentle voice. I agree. Welcome people to Waterbury, but we're not negative to them. Welcome, Simon, beginning with both heads of the panel. Did you notice, or are we missing? I think at this point, I would like to see the select board make a vote on a banner without the specifics here for a period of time that takes us to town meeting that stays up. And I think we need to, I don't know, I know Robert's Rules of Order allow a committee to just finalize what that is. I think this is too quick to make a decision on a banner we're just seeing, but I would like to make someone to make a motion that gets that banner, a banner that represents the statement of inclusion. I actually think you gotta be careful being too many words on a banner. I think it needs to be distinct and clear, but my quick reaction to that is it might be too much on a banner in terms of just the words and hoping that people as they're driving by read it and understand its message, so I would hope that we could at least, someone need to make a motion and we get to the point where we can actually have a vote on it. And then I think we also need to discuss the Black Lives Matter banner. There's enough people that have come tonight to ask about it, that I think that if we owe that respect to discuss it and vote on it, I don't think. And then, and I'm happy to have that discussion, but I just don't think that we should, but that would be for a period of 30 days. That's my opinion on where we take this. I think that as a town we owe it to show the support for the BIPOC community. I think it's important that we're showing the support for the African-American community members that are asking that we represent them through this banner, just specifically, I think it's a mistake to not consider it or even put it to vote. So could we, could a motion include, how do we do that if we don't have a specific wording and a time frame, so like that, could we make it a time frame of saying we can put it on this number to mark that gives us time to create the building and create the physical thing or would we leave it open? And then how do we create a motion and vote? Well, I think we can do a motion to, I agree with Mark, I think the two things are segmented. You know, the, I'm gonna call it the declaration of inclusion banner and the Black Lives Matter support banner. There are two separate things. I think at least first we could come to some decision on yes, do we wanna fly a declaration of inclusion banner for X period of time and we'll craft a subcommittee to do some word smithing. Because I don't know, my first impression of what was presented to us, one I thought it was a little wordy. I wasn't that comfortable with so much of the words. I think what Mark said, I think you wanna have something that's very succinct and brief because people driving down are not gonna read a whole bunch of words. Something like this. Waterbury recognizes all people as one. Well, let's work on what, no, I'm just saying something of that. Yeah, let's work on something without crafting something right now. I wasn't trying to craft anything, I'm just throwing out a distinction. Okay. But through the creation of a banner that succinctly represents our statement of inclusion to be flown through town meeting day, but I don't know how. So you don't have the language now? No, you're without the language. How can I make that motion and then? I think you can with words. Well, you can make what you said. I didn't write anything that's done yet, but what you said, you know, fly a banner from a particular, you know, December 1st, January, whatever, through town meeting day, and then you can say at the next meeting the words, but if you wanna make a motion to hang a, for lack of a better term, declaration of inclusion banner, you can just say what you said. I'm gonna write it down this time. So I'll take a crack at it. I moved to approve the creation of a banner with a declaration of inclusion wording to be crafted at our next select board meeting that would hang December 3rd of town meeting on the bottom of time for us to create. I think that's reasonable. If we can't meet the deadline, if we can meet the deadline to be crafted. Motion to be made, is that a second? I second. There's a second. Any further discussion? You said to town meeting? To town meeting day. Well, words could change. I think that's what we do at the town meeting day. It's been moved and seconded. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. So what did you all say aye to? We agree to hang a banner through December to town meeting day that is a banner that represents our declaration of inclusion. Since we don't have the verbiage tonight, we will present that verbiage. I just want to ensure because it's hard to hear. Yeah, no problem. I know I'm over 50, but you know, it's quite difficult hearing all of you tonight, especially when you have your mask on. But I just wanted to make sure I understood what you were voting on. Thank you for clarifying. It's just one banner, so not right now, it's more of a generic statement about inclusion. Is that right? I personally think we need to have a discussion about the Black Lives Matter banner as well. So yes, that was what that vote was on. And then we're gonna have a separate conversation about the Black Lives Matter banner in particular. So separate impression. Does that mean the event banner is not available in the time that it's doing this other task? The banner poll? Right. The banner poll can hold four banners. I think rarely we have four banners, right? How many do we have out there right now? I couldn't tell you that. I drive by it every day and they never look at it. It's just in the background. So then the next question is, does the board call the question, do we hang a banner saying either Black Lives Matter or Water Barriers stands with Black Lives Matter? And does anyone wanna call that question? I think it's worth discussing and voting on it. I just think that there's enough people that support that message that I don't think we should discuss it as a board and vote on it. I thought Katie did. I'm sorry, you think there's enough people to support? I think there's enough people that support it in the community and don't understand its message. And after I personally watched last week's meeting, I don't think that I supported and I would vote yes for it. And I don't see why we as a board can't do what we've done before. We've hung this banner before. I understand that and I think now you're getting some feedback having hung that up. But we're also getting positive feedback over that. Well, you are because apparently some of us organized this to get those voices, but I think if we're trying to skip it, there will be plenty of voices that we can get together that will encode them. There's a protocol. We'll select board and run in this meeting. If you wanna speak, I'm sorry, Mark. I mean, it needs to be recognized. You can't have this. I think we as a select board need to discuss it. What do you wanna accomplish because I would think the idea is to unify. This is a select board meeting, right? So we are the select board. We've been voted in the opposition. Right, so I'm going to say that you've had the opportunity to speak. We weren't talking specifically about a Black Lives Matter banner. Mark, does anyone want to make a motion to include that? No one wants to make a motion. There's nothing to discuss. So does anyone from the board wanna make the motion? And I don't typically make motions as the chair, but am I allowed to make a motion? You can. I'll make a motion to hang a Black Lives Matter banner for a period of 30 days on the banner pole on behalf of the town. So we have to have a second and then we can discuss it. I'll do that. So it's been moved and seconded. Discussed. Who seconded it? Mike. I wish to discuss. I am fully supportive of the work work does. I am fully supportive of the Black Lives Matter movement. One of my heroes today passed away, Colin Powell. Hold him near and dear. I thought he was one of the greatest Americans that have ever lived. But conversely, I do believe, I understand that the Black Lives Matter movement is not a political movement. We've gotten enough emails about that. But I do believe none of us run as Democrats, Republicans, progressives or independents. We all run as people supporting this community. I think the prime, as much as, again, as I said, I do support the movement. I do think that what the select board does is we govern the municipality. I'm very concerned as much as I say, I support these movements. Where does it stop? Are we gonna see, you know, anti-vaxxing? Are we gonna see anti-war, you know, everything? I know, and people have raised this, Burlington has had different motions to support Black Lives Matter movement. If you notice, every one of their city counselors are elected in a partisan election. We're not. I do think it's a very slippery slope as I think Bill Shepplett kind of represented. I'm just so concerned because we're here to run to make sure that the roads are paved, that the municipality is safe, that we're taking care of town's business. As much as I'm so supportive of the Black Lives Movement, I don't think we can represent every group. I think the young gentleman, I can't think, I think his name's Damien, he kind of represented. It would be great to say everything. My wife's Jewish, she's experienced antisemitism. I don't think we could as a municipality. That's why I'm so in favor of our declaration of inclusion and I'm proud of our declaration of inclusion because I am against racism. I am so much for inclusion and I want to see our town being a welcoming community. So that's why some people, procedurally, you say, well, you seconded the motion. Second doesn't mean that I'm for something. I second it because I want to see the motion put on the table. I am hesitant to approve a Black Lives Matter and I would say, advertising newspapers, a lot of groups do it, a lot of different ways to recognize what their groups do. That's the way to do things. And I'm not saying, I don't think by flying a banner on our post, which was paid for by the Rotary, to advertise events, I guess I just don't see ways. You could find business owners who are very supportive of the Black Lives Movement. Maybe they'll put a banner on their business and that will accomplish the exact same thing. I just worry about the long-term complications of approving this and we're just gonna get in a very slippery slope. People don't like abortions. Are we gonna fly an anti-abortion banner? And I know people are saying, why are you saying this? I just think it's we're here to conduct the business of the municipality and we shouldn't separate that personal opinion. Well done. So just to clarify, since you used my name in the slippery slope, what I suggested was allowing organizations to use the municipal banner poll to state their opinion, put you on the slope of having to allow other organizations. I understand and agree with you that you're not partisan board, but that doesn't mean that this board doesn't have a right to say anything about it. You can vote whichever way that you wanna vote. But don't get on the slippery slope of thinking that the select board has to wait till there's unanimity in the community to take an action, because there will never be unanimity on anything. There's a school bond vote that's happening. I'm not sure if the school board all voted in favor of it or not, but you can't just say, well, we can't take action because some people think this way and some people think that way. That's what you're here for. You ran to represent the town and this is an issue that I think the discussion is should the town support this? So you gotta make the tough choice. You can't just say, well, this is kind of I gotta wait because some people might not like it. If that's how you wanna vote, that's fine, but don't put yourself in the position of saying we shouldn't act on this kind of thing. Sure. That what you've mentioned about like signs and for businesses and stuff, and that's happening, you know, around the country, I've seen, but it's not accomplishing the same thing. I think the request is clear or to me, that it's the town making a statement, not individual business owners or residents, so it doesn't accomplish their thing. Totally understand, and that's where I think the declaration of inclusion. Sure. I'm a very inclusive person and I think the declaration of inclusion, if we could say something that's very firm, very proactive, that could do what I think the Black Lives Matter statement does. And my question mark is that the motion didn't specify, you said a Black Lives Matter banner, not specifically the water race stands with, because I personally was reporting a Black Lives Matter banner being common, which I think is a different statement than saying water race stands with, because I've heard a lot of folks take issue with the organization, and it's, we can, you know, I think talk about that. I specifically made my motion about that. Okay, so... So your motion includes the stand-up? No, I removed the water race stands with me, because I think that's been a point of contention. That's what I thought. But the important message to me is that Black Lives Matter is the message that we're putting out as a town. So that's why I gave the motion. Can I just... Is the board going to hear any additional public comment? Sure. I just, I mean, we, I would have no problem with this, because I think Black Lives Matter is one of these things, so we have no problem with... I don't think it's a problem, as much as in my opinion, it just created an additional discussion that I was hoping that we could state the message without that component. Yeah, okay. So I would like to thank everybody who spoke tonight, online and in person. It was great to hear feedback from everybody. I think everybody who spoke tonight about them being in favor of hanging the banner up, that says Waterbury stands with Black Lives Matter, was also in favor of putting a banner up with the Declaration of Inclusion in some form. So that was encouraging, and especially that Wark wants to work with us and possibly put together a version, and I'm still in favor of that. And if we were voting on it, I personally would not vote to have the Waterbury stands with Black Lives Matter. I would like to work together with a group and community at large to form a banner that includes our Declaration of Inclusion in a way that's safe for people to read while they're driving. Well, you've already approved that. You've already approved that. The motion is hanging in Black Lives Matter on behalf of the town. And then you also specifically said that Waterbury stands with, would your opinion change if that was omitted and it was just a Black Lives Matter? Or I guess you don't have to say that now, we could vote, but just to clarify that, that's it. I wouldn't, now I would want to hear more community feedback on that first before finalizing my answer on that. My stance doesn't change. I believe that this town and the select board itself duty is to take care of the town business for the fairness and quality of everybody that lives here. I think my biggest problem of what I heard last week and I was glad it came out tonight is that Black Lives Matter is an inclusive statement. It's not a de-inclusive statement, so I think that's what frustrated me the most about that discussion was that the, and I do believe that even though this is found its way into the political spectrum, it should be a bipartisan conversation and that's why I believe you're seeing it in towns across the country. There are plenty of universities that do both statements of inclusion and Black Lives Matter messaging. I think that just because, I don't know, I just think that we as leaders of the community have to stand up for the small percentage of minorities and I believe that this is a great way that we can do that and I hope we continue as a town. We've hung a banner similar to this that said, Waterbury stands in Black Lives Matter that I believe the majority of this board voted towards or maybe all of this board voted a camera. This board voted against the board. So to say that we haven't done this before or that anything's changed, I do fear that by not considering it or voting on it acts like this is a short-term reaction to a long-term, this is a long-term problem that I believe that the continued statement of Black Lives Matter is important in time and until we as a society can prove otherwise, I believe that it should be considered a continual message out to the community. I would love to see it take less of a political stage and it be bipartisan. I understand that not everyone in the community would agree to it. I totally respect that feedback but I sit on this board representing people who voted me into this position and I believe that the people that voted me in would support the town raising a Black Lives Matter banner for a period of time. I don't think, I think it does more good than harm and it's unfortunate that the education of some in this town don't understand its messaging and I think it's some sign of that saying that other lives don't, that's not the message and I think that it's a very important part of the conversation so that's why I would support it and I would support it tonight and I would support it down the road. Just to partly answer the question that the one in the corner asked, we have begun diversity, equity, inclusion training here, the select board has had two sessions of that. I'm going to talk about scheduling the third one tonight. I have taken a number of training courses both through sitting with the select board but also the Vermont League of Cities and Towns. This is a very, very cogent issue that's being discussed all across the state with the Montana City Management Association at a conference last week. We have a whole session on this. I'm going to send to the select board later tonight with tomorrow a link that was given to me. It's a 21 day challenge to spend some time every day either there's a reading list, there's small podcasts that you can listen to, small videos, many of which take two or three minutes to listen to and I've learned quite a bit just in the few that I've watched to understand why the perspective that most of us have as white people that we don't really understand how it is to walk in the shoes of those who aren't. So if it's okay with the select board I'll also be willing to put that up on the link up on our website and people in the community can look at it and take what you want from it. But I think it is very educational and it's helpful to understand how broad and deep this issue is for many people in this country. I'm all in favor of anything that we could do to promote educating people about inclusion and diversity. I think it's a wonderful thing. Motion's been made in seconded which means that we vote on it and we've discussed it and the motion is that the town of Waterbury on behalf of the town raises a Black Lives Matter banner for a period of 30 days. All those in favor, they say aye. Aye. Aye. All those opposed, say nay. Nay. The nays have it. We will not be in a banner for a period of 30 days. We will work on the inclusion banner and that will hang from December to October. I understand times of the essence in slipping away but I also wonder about whether now or later it may be a time to discuss putting this matter on a ballot for town meeting day so that the community can vote on it. Absolutely. We discussed it. We can put it in the parking lot I think. Any long term signage or anything should definitely go out to the voters. So, happy to discuss that now. Perfect. Thank you. Thank you everyone for attending this evening. We're going to continue on to our agenda items and we appreciate everyone's time. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you all. Do you need all these names on here too though? She has a sign. No for online. Katie. Oh God. Katie. Hi Karen. Hi Katie. I have the names. Oh, you're the best. Thank you. Is that one of our jackets or one of theirs? No one wants to hear it before it's selected. I can send this to everybody but just since we're here, I did this on my lunch break today. I just sent it to Maroni. There is definitely not like a final but if we had to present something tonight that's what I had in my, anyway. Yeah, I'm trying to read Robert's rules of order. Don't understand. Because you can't call the committee right. So like we could, in a discussion we could, someone could say, I don't know what the terminology is for someone to say. You can refer to a committee but then it comes down to the crazy open meeting law that we can't discuss there. Unless it's just a few of us. Sure. That's the problem. But you're right. Robert's rules can, you can refer to a committee. Okay. Moving on. Discuss the appointment of the board and see management committee. Just skip the rental spirit. Oh, now we move. We're on B because we moved D. And you told us before you moved, you moved in B and D. Oh, I'm sorry, I meant D above B. But that's fine. We can go Randall Street Closure for all of them. Yeah, I just recommend that you make a motion to authorize that on the counter couple of requests from people. It's gonna be their first trick or treating and it's two thousand times. So I'm glad to see the kids can trick or treat again. It's been made in second in the first discussion. Can't wait. All those in favor say aye. Aye. I wish you were all like these. Randall and part of that. Right. Discuss the appointment to the regional emergency management. You and Karla have been talking about this. Karla, I'm more than glad to be, you know, I didn't know, I know I haven't participated in a lot of emergency management training. You know, as I think I've discussed to you, I defer to Gary Dillon because, you know, elders' health and stuff like that, I just felt it wasn't in the town's best interest for me to have being the emergency management director. But I'd be, you know, I participate with all the meetings even. I guess I'm considered the emergency management board. Gary's on this committee. Right, he's already a voting member. They're looking at a second member. I'd be glad to be the second member or I know sometimes they have the town manager, public works. Is there any interest in? No. You. What? You. Yes. Okay, I'm fine, you know, I'll be glad to do it. Motion. Does that need to be a motion? Yeah. I move to appoint my part as the regional emergency management. To the regional emergency management committee. Second. Yeah, as a voting member. All right, it's been moved and seconded. Any further discussion? Is there a term? I don't know. That's a good question. To your debtor. I don't know. It's for the rest of your life. Where is it? It's just so. No term in the motion needed? No. Okay. It's been moved and seconded. Thank you. Gosh. I'll second it. It's been moved and seconded. Any further discussion? All those in favor can say aye. Aye. Entertainment ordinance. Sorry, I missed the last couple of meetings. So this got moved up from the parking lot. We've had it on here. It's 9.30 on an open. So it's your meeting. Hey, we haven't had a long meeting. Let's go. Your meeting, yeah. It's up to you. I mean, the discussion whether or not the indoor needs to be like annual or is it more about, this isn't the noise ordinance. No, it's not. It's more kind of how John Martin's asked the very intro they have to get an order. The annual. Annual. Who gets, who has one right now or is it supposed to be getting one in town? Is it mostly just the restaurants? Yeah. And you know, as I said before, this started in the village, the village health police department that had to deal with this. It hasn't really been an issue for a long time, except at the Zenfone. I don't know how many of the establishments in the village are having music at the moment. There's no outstanding permits. There's nobody that has requested a permit. And I haven't been around enough for going into these establishments and ever seeing anything or seeing advertisements. So I'm not, you know, calling up people or like I used to walk up the street in Palomaric, they needed permits for this. And it would fill out at least $25. So I guess I already have to recuse myself in the conversation, but I'm happy to be here as a, as a town member and discuss it. Yeah, I mean, I always question whether, you know, I think that there needs to be within zoning for a restaurant if they want to do entertainment. This is specific to indoor. That, you know, just like in auto repair shop, we get a permit for use or some industrial use that there's some rule book on decibel level or something that holds them accountable for whatever their purposes want, gives the neighbors an opportunity to state their concerns. And then there's something that says, this is the rule book you live in and you don't have to worry every year that that, for some reason, your entertainment ordinance would go away. The auto repair place doesn't have to worry that we're gonna take away their ability to repair cars, right? But if they have a really loud piece of machinery, at some point the neighbors might say something and the town can get involved and go back to the zoning and say, well, what did they get approved for? And then I don't, I think that that's more realistic. I don't think, I don't even know how we approach. You know, auto repair place in terms of sound, maybe it just says reasonable, level sound levels, I don't know, but I do think that it's, it's, you know, with any business, I don't see how that really makes sense for indoor specifically. Sure. No, it's annoying from being on the DRV, you refuse yourself so, anyway. Oh. I thought you might have a question about. No, what I, my point, I just wanna make a point. So the problem I have is, the indoor entertainment ordinance manages to become outdoor, the word. So you're like doors opening? Yeah. Yeah. Right, so that would be, I would make requirements of airlock doors and doors are closed, depending on, I guess it's hours of operation, the decibel level, right? I would think it is how you would do it. Being a former DRV member, it's usually in their initial permit that they have, like for instance, Zenbar, and it was specifically authorized for them to have indoor entertainment doors closed. And it changed, you know, COVID changed a lot of things. And I don't even know, I mean, Chris may be the best one to answer. You know, the impression I got is that Zenbar is now pretty much back to indoor entertainment, aren't they? That's what I just said. Yeah. Or with the exception of sometimes it's allowed to be outdoor. In other words, they don't always follow the rules the way they're supposed to, and my wife has to text them and say, can you please quiet things down? And I'll be honest with you, that's upsetting to us because it makes us look like the SOVs and we're really not, we're just. So how can we better follow up, right? So if there's like, in their zoning permitting and there are things that they're supposed to live up to and if they're not, how do we better follow up and force it so that you're not having to be in that position, right? Where's the key business issue in order to be able to... Right, I mean, let's take it in. So I'm the one representing a bar that has music. I have maybe had one time, you know, we try to be respectful of our neighboring community. We have seniors living right across the street. So we're very conscious of doors. We're very conscious of sound level. If I got feedback from a neighbor showing concern, I would do a lot to try to make peace with them and try to make them modifications. And some of that's not cheap, right? Like creating airlocks is very expensive, but some of it's gonna be a cost of doing business and you gotta figure it out, right? It doesn't have to look great, but there are ways to do it. And then whether or not in scenarios like Zen Barn where it would be screening of, there's ways to do it with probably trees and stuff. But it's more, I think, a question came up when I think the outdoor permit for Zen Barn was being discussed that Noah asked about the indoor. And I think that this got put in the park in line surrounding that conversation, right? So I do think it's fair to give businesses an opportunity to fix it. Of course, everything that we do, if we create a rule, it has to have some kind of teeth or a governing body that follows up on whatever, you know, I think there's a lot that we as a small town don't really have the ability, a rule book that's almost impossible to police at times. So I don't know what the answer to some of that is. I think I know with signage, I've had, when I bought Wargrey Wings, all of a sudden there was a letter in my mail that there was a sign that was out of compliance. And I was like, I don't know. I just bought this business, I didn't know that this was out of compliance. So I think that some of it is educational and then some of it probably falls onto zoning admins for whatever was written into rule books surrounding the business use and the zoning application permit. So I just, I think that I have a feeling some of this probably stemmed from the parties of the village in the 80s or whatever those parts were. And but it's not to say that we, you know, that that 20 years from now, who knows what this town looks like in terms of that. So if it's a protection that, I mean, I've never screamed about it over the years other than I'm like, oh, I forgot that I had applied for that. I mean, I don't think Noah's or those guys at Zemparn are losing sleep over the idea that this continues to be an application. But I do think that maybe the board or should have considered removing this and putting it into zoning, but then it would require, I think, all the current users of entertainment ordinances apply for a zoning permit that I don't know. They were not, as far as I know, we don't, you know, the Zemparn, I don't believe they, I don't believe they were paid for, we've sent them applications. It's in their zoning permit already, or we don't. It doesn't matter whether it's in a zoning sense, you can do it, but there's an ordinance and all these issues are supposed to have a permit. Right, so I asked the question because Mark made the comment about if we did away with the ordinance that folks would have to then apply for a zoning permit. So I asked the question to find out whether it was to know whether Zemparn would have to apply for something different through zoning or if they already have that. They would have to apply for an amendment because they probably have some sort of a zoning permit now. And it may not be what they need, you know, based upon past history, it could have been, wait, it's like where Zemparn was, you know, like what happened last year was not within their zoning permit. Yeah, right. But last year was in extraordinary doubt. Oh yeah. Well, I guess the other question is, you know, does the Legion have an indoor? They haven't passed. But are these a current, you know, I think some of this is the question of. From, I think it's bad practice to have rules that you don't enforce. And right now we have very little means to enforce it. I would be the enforcement mechanism, you know. And in the village, Mark is correct. Things have changed a lot and there's not sisters, sisters too, or the pub. Watering rings or the pub. There's a funeral. First funeral, right, exactly. And it's exactly that, what happened was people were calling the trustees and they were calling the police and the police came to the trustees and said, we're getting a lot of complaints about this. We don't have anything that we can do anything with. So that's where the ordinances came into effect. And it was more, you know, so you're going there and say, you gotta close the door. You know, there's an ordinance. No, but I don't think anybody ever got fined for it. There's a list of fines for your doors and second events in the light, but I think what happened was the cops used to just go and say, it's too loud. You gotta shut your windows and shut your doors. Here's the permit. And they said, oh yeah, and they did it. And really accept, and I'm not saying that we shouldn't have it, but we don't, there's not complaints coming to here anymore, well, what's happening in the village. Well, and this was a village policy that then turned into town policy. Yeah, the village had it. And then I forgot what plan. I think it was the, I think it was originally called the roadhouse down on route two. They opened up and they had to have, you know, that wasn't covered by the village. So the select board started getting some complaints. So we basically copied the village ordinance and the town ordinance says that if it's in the village, we don't even get to issue you a permit and if the trustees, you know, are still around. They're not meant to, so it was following the road. It was, they were the only ones, they were disturbing was the dump chicken that might be sleeping on the trees at night there. Would this be a good conversation to have with Steve? I think it would. The problem has always been, we don't enforce what's on our books now. It used to drive me nuts being on the DRB. You know, all these things were, you know, we had as things and they just, and I understand why they couldn't be enforced. It was a very difficult, slippery slope. We didn't have the people that we probably didn't want to go to court on a lot of these things and it never did happen. But also it all depends upon how much of a public it's really being disturbed by some of these actions. And I don't know, I think entertainment ordinances is not that bad. You know, again, probably people should be, you know, it's a couple of bucks extra to the community, you know. And at least we know what's going on. That's why I don't think it's just to do away with it maybe it's not a smart thing. Are you saying if it ain't broke, don't fix it? Yeah. You know, I would like to see, well, it is broke because no one's probably applying for it because no one, you know, there's no. We haven't done music in two years. Well, yeah. It is a weird time to talk about it. We're gonna get that sign fixed. I think most people have it, you know. Now, to your point, I was gonna say the same thing. I think that there's come in a more of a realization that the town doesn't have the stomach to litigate. Yeah. So, but to just do away with it, I don't know if that's a great thing either. I wonder though, as someone who might use this going forward when we're back doing it, like, how does it affect you? I guess I wonder, is there a fear that it's gonna be denied to continue? For my business, it's not my core business. And I've been in my business long enough to know that I think we can figure it out. I'm downtown. Like, there's a lot of residential, you know, take an example like Zendbart that we heard discuss around the outdoor. I think it gets a little bit more complicated. I think in a weird way, sound travels a little bit better in that scenario. And I do think it's important to make sure that, like, you know, there's some zoning uses. Say you end up with someone who wants to do an event venue at a former barn or build a barn and something where you can get through the DRV process and all of a sudden have an event venue. I mean, snow deals with this all the time, but they have a hard cut off at 10 that like, you know, you can't make noise at 10. You know, and there's certain places that know that rule and live and die by that rule of 10 p.m. They have a police force that can rest all the outdoor concerts. They like, they shut them down. The issue with the Zendbart, and this was complicated by COVID, but correct me if I'm wrong, Mike, their zoning permit said they couldn't have outdoor entertainment. Right, it was indoor entertainment with doors, because the doors are when those closed. And they were specifically prohibited from having outdoor entertainment. And because of COVID, this board agreed to allow them to do something. And in retrospect, this board allowed them to do something that another municipal entity had the right and authority to say they couldn't do. And that's where we really kind of, we hit a file of all then on Apple. So, you know, the, not every business, like I think it's unrealistic to expect every business to come in and amend their zoning permit because once or twice a year, they might want to have a ban come in. I think having an entertainment ordinance allows them, hey, we want to do this, and you come in and you deal with it. The frustration that I have is that we just don't have a very good mechanism to enforce it. A, how do we know when these are, you know, if I see something advertised, I mean, I called up Murphy, you know, because I saw advertised up front porch floor, they were going to be doing a thing up there at his event bar, and I said, geez, I need an entertainment permit. I saw it, so I reached out and I made him get it. He paid the fee, and that was that. And it wasn't an issue. So, if I know about it, I try to be even handed about it and make sure that everybody's doing it. But right now, there's not a lot of people doing it. And then, if there's a problem, there's nobody around that, you know, this says you've got to stop entertainment a half an hour before closing time for the disturbing outcome. So you've got to stop entertainment at 1.30, it's not 10 o'clock, it's 1.30. I don't, as Mark kind of said, I don't think it's anymore the downtown that's the issue. I think people know that they probably have to stop around 10 o'clock. I think it's more like places like the Zen Barn, where they get some of these acts, and people, you know, I know driving home, they have parked, you know, that's where I was concerned about is the parking more than anything else. They get these events that they can't really handle. And it's an issue, you know. Regardless, I know Chris is concerned about the noise. I'm concerned about some person getting killed on that corner stretch when they have a big event. That's where I think it's gonna become more of an issue, especially, you know, if in the future we allow them, you know, if they have an entertainment, you know, permit, it maybe covers them a little bit more. Well, it doesn't sound like we have a solution for this tonight, is it? So should we, instead of the laboring it, should we try to move it so at another time when we can, I mean, so damn late, we can. I don't know what the, I don't think it's like pushing it down the road. If the sounders yell, louder fowl, right? I don't think we're gonna do anything by moving it down the road, I'd say, let's either say ye or nay, leave it as it is, yeah. I'm just, I'm rather public right now. Yeah, make them open then, we leave it as it is, for the time being. Second. One second, it's not a motion. Do we have to do, do we have to do anything? Do we have to vote? Can we just leave it? Yeah. Okay. Well, if you had a motion and a second, unless they wanted to withdraw, if you don't take any action, it stays in the vote. Right. Right, okay. Do you want me to draw? Sure. Okay. Okay. We should just quit while we were ahead. I know, we're just trying to move it along. We did that in an easy way. It's okay, it's one thing off the list for next time. They won't take out complete wages too, because we've talked about that. Okay, sorry, go on. All right, moving on to the manager's item, staffing update A. So staffing update, we're in the market for Zoning Administrator. Zoning Administrator worked, I think, in great total of five days and quit. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Five days, he, well, Mike was concerned that he didn't have the experience to do the job and he clearly was able to do the job and he was doing work, but I don't know what day it was, Tuesday, last week, yeah, because Monday was the holiday. He came to talk to me and he said, I really apologize, but I've got another job offer that's in my field. And he said that he's gonna go to work for, what is it, Northern Reliant Hours, something like that, here at the battery people. Yeah, so he told me, he said, I, they posted this job, I applied for it, they interviewed me, they got back to me and said that they were not gonna fill the position. And he said, so I continued to look. And he said I took this job and then Saturday, so this was several weeks ago, it wasn't just like a while ago, it was before he interviewed with the planning commission or anything else. So probably a couple of months went by and then they called and said, we decided that we need to fill the position, are you interested? And since that's what you went to school for and that's what his passion is, he said, sorry, I don't know. Did not much invested in him other than some time, Steve probably put training. Much invested in him, we paid him for five days and he was on the payroll for one holiday that I couldn't figure out a way to, so we paid him his holiday. Okay, so he was paid, but we didn't invest, like he wasn't in a training or a training. We didn't pay for any training. Okay. Was he the kind of, I don't think, I think I was one of the media and I missed what the first we did on this was the one that you guys hired him in. We approached that, I know there was some discussion at one point to kind of hire in Steve's potential replacement because Steve has already announced to us that he's gonna leave a year from March, is that it? I mean, I just feel like we should review the budget for that position and try to actually hire Steve's replacement and maybe get ahead of it a little bit and give the opportunity of a long handoff to a pretty highly complicated position. Well, maybe something that you wanna talk with, you know, in playing Steve and maybe Alyssa Johnson, the chairperson of the Planning Commission to come in and talk. That's a reasonable consideration, but the other thing is that it's a tough, it's tough to hire people right now, but you know, it's a buyer's market or an employee's market, so to speak, and just trying to get people who are even interested. We advertised, we ended up, I think, with four of the good candidates and in the end, only this guy came to the interview, so. I'm surprised Alyssa hasn't gone for it. And between now and the end of the year this is not a great time to be looking. Well, anyway, if Steve is doing both jobs right now when he has been 16-11 and getting somebody in there would be helpful in him, of course. Should we advertise two different positions and see if either of them have candidates? You're saying like a planning director and then a zoning administrator? Well, I'm not sure what the other one would be. You know, there's one version that you're trying to hire as Steve and there's another one that you're hiring that will be hired to see who's available and comes about and make a decision as a board if we should consider if the right candidate's there to, you know, you might spend a little bit more fiscal year next year, but you might be in better position because what happens if we can't find anyone when Steve goes? Well, I can talk to Steve about that. Doesn't necessarily cost us anything to just see how that strategy plays out and make a decision if we have a candidate that we feel like maybe we should consider. Is that the only staffing update? Yeah. How's the new library director working out? She seems to be doing pretty well from what I can see. But the staff seems to like her well, which is big for us. Good. Discussed, but indeed the library. Yeah, so I told the board a couple of weeks ago and I asked the board a couple of weeks ago if you said you'd like to have one more training and I was working with Mary to try to set something up. And I finally got back in touch with her after last select awarding and the only thing that was on the agenda for tonight that I knew of until like Thursday last week was just a CV fiber representatives and a cemetery commission. So I had made arrangements for her to come here tonight to do the training. And then when I talked to Carla I told her to put it on the agenda. She said, wow, we've got all this stuff and the banner thing is coming back. So anyway, I called Mary and thank God for tonight and said we'll have to do it another time. So Chris, you're gonna be away in November, right? So December, I asked her about November you'd be away. I'll be hoping to leave this weekend but it's looking like it might get delayed a couple of days. Yeah, but it's November break. Okay. From October to could be as long as the first week of December. So anyway, she said that she's not afraid of winter driving stuff. She'd be willing to come in December. That gets to be a busier time of year for a lot of reasons. There's holidays, there's starting budgetary work is there any any ability to do it on a different day than a select board meeting? We might need both select board meetings for real meeting stuff is a late afternoon something that people can do by December it's gonna be get dark at four o'clock. Yeah. Yeah. I'm flexible for days. Flexibility then? Yeah. Yeah. Just let it snow a day. Good. Thanks. All right. Anything else before we adjourn? Is there any reason to have a representative or two of the representatives from the school board here that goes about what's going on and give us some kind of an idea? That's just a generic question there but I haven't gotten some concern about obviously about the bottom row. Well, your next meeting is gonna be the day before the election. They had some Q and A's and things like hosting for communities for comments and questions. I don't know if there's another one if I find another one I'll send it to you. I think there's one more. Yeah. I'll check it out and I can send it to everybody. I mean I have to apologize for my disconnect from what's been going on there but I hear I understand it's a $60 million vote but I haven't been to a school board meeting for a while. I was shocked at the formality that they have at this. I was too. It's ultra formal. It's organized. It's the way that they reported each one vote separately. Well, they have. Because it's weighted voting system. They only started doing that like a year. I know. It was just a little surprising. Lisa Scolari said there's one more Q and A session next Wednesday. Has it come out? Do we have an understanding of 27? For community members, you know a lot of times they say on a house worth 300,000 what the additional costs for tax change like they said when I hear that it doesn't mean much to me. I'm wondering okay on a $300,000 house what's that cost for how long? I'm just like I don't have a full understanding of that. Well, I heard it was 30 at the bond for 30 years. I heard. And what bothers me is not only will we be facing the tax increase from that, but then there will be yearly tax increases on the budget itself. I would predict. I was thinking about it the other day. Yes. And I was thinking about it the other day since I've been on the board. I think when I got here was 30, our municipal and I'm not complaining about our municipal tax. I'm just trying to look at it in perspective, but I think it was 37 cents when I got here. And we're at what 56 now or is it 56 or is it 51? 52. 53 I think. Yeah, I can try to get some of that information. You know, I know I'm not denying $60 million. It's a big number, but it's six times. It's been a long time. You know, I mean, the school that's there now was built in the 60s and it's mean to be operated and changed so it's hard. How does the weighted system work? Because I'm assuming that's not 60 divided by six. It's weighted. No, no, no, it's going to be, you know, it's going to be for pupils, you know, it's a lot of it is going to be the number of pupils that come, but it's much more complicated than it used to be. I'm not sure how much state funding that there is. The other thing I was interested in knowing is we got a new cameraman if you could introduce yourself to us. Sure. My name is Jerome, we thought of you. I've worked at Orca for about eight years. Uh-huh. Now, I had filmed here before and it moved back there. Yeah, yeah. Welcome aboard, I guess. Thank you. Is this specifically for the edition tonight or are you planning to be here for all the meetings? I don't make plans for myself. We run date, you know, the distances that we travel, et cetera, not a lot. A lot has changed because of COVID for us as well. And I edit at Orca, I've been beginning to edit the hybrid meetings, like this one that we've had to know. Thanks for all of that. Hang it in there. Hang it in there. The leader of the narhoel. Lisa, since you know you said the meetings on the 27th, what time have you put that in the jazz? Hi, folks. I'm trying to get my thing here. It's the school board meeting on the 27th and they begin at six o'clock. It's on that Google doc link that I just included in there. Thank you for sharing with us. Yep. And so that list, the Q&As that have already happened, they've all been recorded and they're on the school boards, the school district's YouTube channel that you can watch. They start off with a presentation and Tari Smith has like a little PowerPoint that she goes through that explains the general pieces of the bond and then there's questions and answers. They really have not had many people on the Q&As so far. So the first two were just the board members doing their own Zoom. And tonight we had one that was hosted by Mad River TV and the Valley Reporter. And I was on that, that's where I was earlier. And there were a number of people. They probably, I think they had about a dozen people show up for that one. Your meeting had a bigger crowd though. And they had a few questions from the public and questions from the reporters. And it lasts about 90 minutes, but they've covered a lot of grounding and covered a lot of the same territory on each of these sessions explaining the ins and outs of all the things that the bond will pay for. Thanks Lisa. Thank you. Thank you. Is there a second? Second. Amen. All the way to the chamber. Hi. Hi. Thank you all. Thanks everybody. Thanks Bill. Just a heads up.