 call to order this joint meeting of the library select board and the Edward for our utility district. The first order of the agenda is I guess to have the joint meeting. Yes. I wondered if we might start with a moment of silence it is with heavy hearts that the e-fight commissioners are here tonight. This is our first meeting after the passing of Lawrence Lefty-Sea and things and I put together a resolution of empathy that I'd like to propose that the two boards would sign and I would present to the family at the services for Lefty so that's acceptable. Could we have a moment of silence in memory of Lawrence Lefty-Sea. Thank you and I have put together with a lot of edits things with people I'll pass you around and I was going to read it. We've done this for different people who passed away in service a long time service. Resolution of sympathy whereas the community of Waterbury was deeply saddened by the death of Lawrence Lefty-Sea on Monday October 30th 2023 and whereas Lefty the honorary mayor of Randall Street has lived with his family at 18 Randall Street since 1972 whereas Lefty has served 27 years faithfully and dutifully as an elected public official in service to his fellow Waterbury citizens for the betterment of community life and whereas Lefty's example of public service including kindness politeness respect and honesty creating an oxymoron exemplifying an honest politician and whereas Lefty was presented with the 2017 Wallace Community Service Award by the citizens of Waterbury in recognition and appreciation for his service for the benefit betterment of his community and whereas Lefty passed away preparing for his favorite holiday Halloween to show his love of community and its children out of love and respect a neighbor carved a memorial Lefty pumpkin for display on Randall Street during Halloween 2023 and whereas his passing is sorely felt leaving a big hole in the hearts of his family his friends his neighbors and the entire community now therefore be resolved by the town of Waterbury select board and the Edward Ferrari utility district commissioners that we hereby expressed our sincere sympathy to his family his son Jeff daughter Julie son-in-law Frank grandchildren Elizabeth and Sam son-in-law Tom and grandson Jacob be a further resolve that this resolution be spread upon the permanent records of the town of Waterbury and the Edward Ferrari utility district and a copy of this resolution be presented to his family as a token of our sympathy on his passing and share our respect and appreciation for Lefty's service among us they did this 6th day of November 2023 at Waterbury Vermont I proposed it be signed by Roger Platt chairman of the select board and P. Howard Skip Flanders chairman of the Edward Ferrari utility district I don't know if everybody seen the picture of the pumpkin I think it was Scott Mackie as well as another memorial statement where we take this as a motion to make a motion to approve the resolution resolution of sympathy for Lefty saying your motion from that can you hear us Bob yeah I'll make a motion to approve the resolution of sympathy most of men made and seconded to approve the resolution of sympathy or Lawrence lefty say on behalf of the Edward Ferrari utility district all those in favor though thumbs up motion passes so I've got official copies that Karen has stamped in the center town clerk chartered 1763 Waterbury Vermont to make it thank you also wanted to recognize that our Harwick Union Highlander boys soccer won the division to championship so congratulations to them girls won their championship melted one melon one but there was a sharp on both of them yeah and then on a more summer note I received a number of comments about the extreme bad luck our colleagues over in Montreal Montpelier have been having past couple of weeks in fact past six months MK and others asked if we could do something and so I did contact our fire chief and he acknowledged that our fire team was very much involved in containing the conflagration at RK miles so that we Waterbury did already play a significant role here but I also offered to get a card of sympathy which says one foot in front of the other that's all we can do so this is to encourage them and so I can pass this around and I'll send this to our colleagues on the city council and welcome anyone else in the audience that wants to sign it as well on to matters of the joint meeting we're really here for two reasons one is to for the first annual review of public yes thank you how about a public portion which is open to any one from the public would like to address something that's not on the warrant agenda yes come on up dawn thanks so I'm gonna hand out here's four to pass that way here's couple to you if you can pass this down yeah so I'm a board member and manager of the Waterbury area makers pier and in June we signed a lease to rent the former's raised all about a shop next to text car care and we created in the last four months we've been creating a wood shop maker space creative studio etc so we are gonna have we are hosting the RW mixer on November 15th which is Wednesday open to public open RW members it's kind of a business member networking but Karen says anybody can attend and we're also by law have to have an annual event so we're gonna do our open house annual event the next night so we can leave all the stuff set up in two days because first of the RW is really their event so I'm there's a personal invite for all of you and I appreciate the support Tom you gave us for maker sphere you know to help and the effort this very forward and providing your support for us it's been great doing a woodworking shop is expensive as you can imagine but it's been a lot of fun a lot of work we've done a variety of classes already staying less for middle schools and adults right now as a woodworking tool safety class for middle schools going on with that mosaic we've done the float now the NQID float that makes her pier was built by middle schools it was so nice to back a trailer into a big space and if the worry about how hot it was if it was going to rain or anything it was great the float that's on the back of the mural that's in the back of I so street cafe that was painted in the spray room if you can imagine all these lights we built an A frame put four four by eight panels up and artists didn't paint it within the shop so it's already in four months and a few things we've done it's been amazing space so please if you can tell one night or the other if you choose to love to have love to have you guys there especially you all of you because you're the leaders of this community so somebody walks up to you and say what is this thing what's going on it'd be great to have you guys have a working knowledge of it somewhat so that would be Thursday we'll explain a lot about what you know what our mission is what we've been doing over the last four or five years so thank you do you have a long-term lease all right other comments from the public well thanks Don so now we are to meet on the municipal manager's review and the 2024 health insurance did we want to take up the health insurance first okay i think might be good do you want to explain sure i tried to give a pretty detailed memo the bottom line is that the two major providers who lost their plan offerings increase each year at slightly different rates depending on the plan but the average is about 12 percent we didn't see it this year reflected in the rates but it was really noteworthy i think that this year for the first time in the decade i've been following it and i get the sense quite a bit longer but the green mountain care board really flatly rejected the budget for for a major hospital here that's never been done a long time and so they they gave them a rate increase but it was you know something like three percent way below the double digit rate increase they asked for and that was heartening to me i was glad to see that board took a took a different stance than they have in recent years i'm hoping that in 2025 we're not looking at 12 percent because uvm uvm can't raise won't raise its rates that much it won't be allowed to when the other hospitals won't and the insurers then should also be held to a similar standard that being said this year we're in a you know we're in a pretty big bind we still remain in a really tight labor market in that way for a few years probably not going away anytime soon one example i'll give is we um this was some time ago but it was you know eight or nine months ago we we had someone from a neighboring town come in for an interview and then they were making um 28 29 bucks an hour with free health insurance where they were completely free so we had to beat that offer and we couldn't i couldn't modify health insurance for one person so i offered that person 32 an hour um which was a real hardship offer because other people in that department made less and they've been here a while but we felt under the gun to make an offer that employee got a counter um at 40 at which point i said good luck we'll see you but the person got them tells an eight dollar an hour raised by looking around the corner just exemplifies the market we're in so despite the the 12 the 12 percent great increases by the insurers i feel like we've got to come pretty close to matching that to just remain uh competitive it's been a hallmark of local government for years that the benefits are good maybe there's some sacrifice and pay but the benefits are good and that's what we're competing against so i'm proposing rate increases of about 10 to try to keep pace um the odd thing um and sometimes it's just dependent on on who you hire but it looks like our 2024 budget on a net basis we won't see much of any increasing health insurance because we're a bit under budget this year um and just that the mix of people we've hired we've gotten lucky so from that perspective we're okay but of course that's just luck that's not something i can take any credit for whatsoever uh the other piece um i want to talk about briefly on page three is the buyouts um for people not taking our plan in prior years the buyouts were based on a percent so if you if you were eligible for a family it didn't take it you generally got about 10 of that cost um i just looked around at neighboring towns and looked at all our competitors and in general the number for for a multi-person plan is three thousand dollars a year 250 bucks a month for the buyout and so i think rather than basing it on a percentage just match the hatch to what the other towns are doing and that will keep us competitive the other piece two other pieces i want to talk about uh so vision and dental which we haven't had before but we talked about as part of the employee handbook um vision and dental rates don't increase anywhere near what health insurance rates have increased they've generally been flat for a long long time um you know so in total those those adding those plans is is pretty pretty inexpensive for the town but it's an e-fund but it's a piece that again i think makes us competitive um you know the benefits aren't incredible for any vision and dental um but i think they're still meaningful um you know it's pretty standard a couple checkups a year and some money towards things like contacts and glasses but it's meaningful and i think it's a it's a broad-based benefit that everyone's going to enroll in and what i'm proposing is uh the town simply pays the monthly premium for the employee um and if the employee wants to add spouse dependence they would pay the difference um so for vision is really cheap vision is about seven dollars a month per employee and if you have a family plan there's no there's no two person it's just family it's about double that so pretty cheap from the town's perspective or from the employee's perspective um dental is more dental is about 35 dollars a month for the employee if you go to the family it's about a hundred a month so the employee would pay that difference um a little more coverage there service is used a bit more often because some coverage for dental uh for dental surgery um but i think it's a meaningful gain to employees and it's really nice when you're recruiting when you sit down with people to talk about what the benefits are i think people are generally surprised when vision and dental aren't part of the package um and then the final piece and this one i think could have serious legs in future years for this year i i expect participation will be pretty minimal um but i wrote about a new option a new way to think about insurance and the way we do it now is generally works um the town contributes a certain amount per month and and i'll use myself as a rough as a rough example this year i want a family plan the town pays about 2,200 a month towards my coverage my plan costs 1,600 a month so that differential 600 a month goes into my health savings so i get 7,200 bucks a year in my health savings my deductible is about 11,5 and then of course there's the out of pocket maximum which is more like 15 so i've got i've got risk um sometimes you spend nothing and you just walk away with 7,200 dollars at the end of the year and you keep that rolls over each year so you can have good experience for a number of years and and be swimming in cash and not a cap and you can have bad experience and have a really high at a pocket cost um i've talked to um a couple of consultants in this world and i'm probably gonna um take this idea further and and for 2025 but the model that i think makes sense is to turn it on its head and to change the model where the employee is the first payer but your cap is lower so the employee and the employee and what i propose as an option for this year to people to take the employee is the first payer so for a family plan it's 3,000 dollars so the employee pays 3,000 dollars of their deductible but they're the first payer so the town in that case would pay the monthly premium but that 600 a month wouldn't go to the employee would stay with the town so on a net basis when i look at it talk to the consultants there's really no added cost to the town there could be in some years and there could be a savings and others um the employee pays first so presumably if i'm using my money first and not the town i'm going to be a little more frugal with it um so if an employee chooses this option they are guaranteed 100 guaranteed if they spend a nickel on health insurance to have higher guaranteed costs than they would under the under the past option but they also have a higher guaranteed sorry they also have a lower maximum expenditure so i think it's a good recruiting tool because if employees ask me how much the town covers on health insurance it's kind of a long conversation and i've got to walk them through the membo but if i can simply say three grand that's your max it could be zero if you don't use it but that's your max that's an easy number for people to keep them their head that's an easy thing to budget for um you know if you if you you know you create a health savings account 52 pay cycles are going to put 60 bucks every week into my health insurance and i know that's all over need for the year and that's a pretty good deal um so i want to push that as an option this year not push i want to propose that as an option employees are free to select what they want but it may be something that we want to consider townwide as not an option but our planned choice for future years and then more every year we're looking at the rate increases that we would pay and from the employee's perspective we're simply saying how much do we think is reasonable for employees to pay how much should that should that cap go up there's a lot of ways to slice and dice it but i think that way um pretty easy to understand for employees and i'm hoping people will will see that value um and it all just depends on i think who you are and what your station is in life and um how much you how much you value the guaranteed expense versus maybe taking risk um but how how would you manage the paying of deductibles beyond the the maximum for the employee has there's a few there's a few ways to do it and depends on how many people take the option and maybe maybe no one does um so the first is you can actually get a credit card that that you give to the employee to they just pay it directly there's also consultants that do this and it's it's it's a pretty cheap expense and they charge per head they have feeds with mvp bcbs so all they see because of hit those your bills but they track it and once you've hit the amount the town has set they pay everything beyond that and then back build the town so there's a few different ways to do it um you can also just pay the input directly you know if i pay money money that goes into my account now goes into my health savings you can also pay the bills directly and it would show on your pay stub as a health reimbursement account it's not your money it's not taxable but there's a few different ways to track it it just depends on how many people want one role and then we'll find the easiest choice so a couple of questions um the northeast dump debt delta dental plan that's the same plan that the state of romano uses i believe yeah there's five or six options to choose from okay um what i what i sound very similar to what they're using what i didn't propose is um orthodontic coverage because if you choose an ortho rider it's not an option for individuals it's for the entire the entire town is in the plan or not and update it didn't seem quite there to to charge people more when they're when they have no option of using the benefit per site right so it wasn't quite broad based enough i didn't think and the second question is more of a comment i know you talked about the m mvp mvp plan i would not recommend that as nothing against them but i know in terms of a lot of providers may not take mvp so if you have an existing provider you know you might have to move to a different provider so if the costs are fairly similar blue cross and blue shield is so and i think that's just a standard that people know and i think i think it's all about attracting and retaining employment i think that's a really key thing because people people now are buying benefits in their work life as much as they're buying what their salary is yeah yeah it's funny i talked to one town uh i forget which town but somewhere far from here but they um they called their employees and a couple years ago um their employees decided to go for go two years of cost of living increases in exchange for free health care and then dollar for dollar they were comparable but from the employee's perspective they just thought well we don't have to deal with the hassle and we don't have to worry about it takes that stress away but mostly i'm hoping the green mountain care board will control costs for all of us maybe better than they have in the past i don't have a question i just want to say thank you because i think making some of these changes is making waterbury a more attractive place for future employees um so for the town benefit it's it's important and then also just the human aspect because insurance is tough and it's expensive and for some reason it doesn't include your teeth and your eyes like they don't count and so adding these in it's just i think that it is not dramatically life-changing for some folks who might work here so thanks for thinking of these things second just to clarify um the option your new proposal is just this year one of the menu of options included this first and to be assessed further next year thank you any post any abstentions all right thank you thank you let me move focus upon this motion sure move that we accept the health insurance proposals prepared by the manager um and that it is that we allowed to manage it going forward here is that a second bob motion's been made and seconded to accept the uh proposal for health insurance for 2024 as presented by the manager and to allow him to manage it any further question if not all those in favor go thumbs up again okay motion passes okay now on the matter uh uh tom has been working with us uh for a year now i started out as the deputy municipal manager for two months and then came the manager in january this is uh would be his first anniversary um and then in discussions with skip um skip suggested that to get him in line with the other municipal officials we can revisit this in six months uh but that we should go through and have a review um if uh we think it's necessary i'm certainly open to going into executive session to have an open discussion about uh tom's performance um and that would be if we feel it's necessary i'm not sure it is but uh it's your question i don't recall being a part of any reviews for bill and i don't know if it's because we didn't do them um so i don't know if there's more background on that uh and then also i'm curious if there is a structure or less used for other town employees and if we might want to implement the same structure or procedure for the manager as well um i'll let mike talk to your first question first question in terms of i think it was very informal our discussions with with bill okay um i guess after 34 years you know you know i wasn't there 34 years ago and maybe his first five or 10 years maybe skip might know you know back in that history but you know bill was always i think we would always say if bill was not doing a good job and so i don't think we've had very formalized reviews i think as a result of the manager search committee we kind of you know looked at yes we would maybe more formalized especially if we're going to have a a newer town town manager i think dom's done phenomenally well you know and i'm i'm reluctant to have to go into executive session you know on let's all the people feel that that that's that's necessary you know maybe in another six months or something like that where we could revisit it at a you know a select board meeting to add to your thing having been here a few years we have had some pretty formal reviews of bill the 360 degree evaluation where we had staff that reported to end his people that supervise them that his peers even outside of waterbury and things with the legal cities and towns so we had done some pretty um formal reviews and things and uh the point Danny made about being in sync and fitting into is what i was referring to with roger is you know when we pass our budgets for 224 there's an amount for paid raises and things and it fits into how much we're going to spend and bill would uh you know kind of portion it out who got you know raises and who didn't and not you know and that my concern was that the manager gets eventually fitted into that same time frame and within the same i think you know we agree we revisited at the time the budget is passed and tom is having to review the employees for their pay raises and things at that point we can um revisit what raise whatever we've given tom now versus what um the other staff that things are getting so that then going forward we're all at the same time frame everything so and then part of your question um i went through employee files and they're pretty thin about employees getting reviews so i wanted to get through mine and then i was going to start that i'm very much in favor of having been a past federal manager i think it's really important for both the manager and the staff person that they can you know an honest review i think it's it's you know just to let them know where they stand some people think they they walk on water and maybe they don't walk on water but sometimes a manager may not really recognize what an employee is doing so there are the 360 reviews and i think that happened you know years ago for for bill but i don't think even even bill for staff was doing a lot of comprehensive reviews and i think in some way shape or form you know at least yearly this should be kind of a look in you know not maybe a full 360 review but at least the manager and staff person sit down and talk talk about another just quick piece um that on the agenda is an event for the vlct welcome and engaging community program um that's a process they might not accept us into the program they're only accepting a handful of municipalities but if we're accepted part of that work i believe involves the vlct's consultant doing a survey of 10 employees and it's just about you know are we welcoming it's not just from a racial equity or gender equity perspective it's more general also are we a good place to work and they get some good feedback there so that could be informative for all of us once we employ personnel policy kind of saved with regards annual on their anniversary day or doesn't say that so i'm just going to start them none of that i've got a year so the interim uh i did uh go and talk with the department heads uh i'm very positive and complimentary uh in particular they remarked that the tom's ability to listen and really engender a team atmosphere among the municipal employees they feel he's very open to taking ideas and he's also been very innovative and coming up with new ideas so he's uh very much appreciated as uh as town manager and i would certainly second that as board chair uh because i meet with um weekly uh and uh find that uh is generally thought about air and almost anything that i've thought about uh in the week previous and come up with uh what i think has been some reasonable um and innovative solutions for the town um and uh i don't know if he walks on water but he said he was watching in number of weeks here um yeah he's uh it isn't in water it's in a lot of mud so muddy one so um the town employees received five percent raise uh when they were reviewed last i was going to suggest that we go ahead and accord that five percent raise uh for tom in this starting uh november 1st and also tom did not benefit from the uh bonuses uh offered to all the other town employees uh around the flood to work extra work they did the flood he was here for many days on end so i was going to suggest that we offer him uh $2,000 bonus uh on top of that raise five percent raise as in accordance with other town employees effective 11-1 and in addition to the $2,500 bonus for additional work during flood recovery for tom let's second that move to seconded do you want to go to the discussion i was just going to say i think the big thing is just making sure that we do get to the review and i agree with aligning it with other municipal employees but i just think one of our really important roles as a select board and as an effect commission is hiring a municipal manager and um i know for me coming on to the board and that search process was really important so just want to make sure we're holding up our end of the board and as boards and making sure we're getting tom that feedback and um i think roger already spoke to we appreciate everything you're doing so thank you and um just making sure we get that annual calendar for you and employees so thank you for taking that on for others uh moving forward for the discussion hearing none all of them say aye aye any opposed and the abstentions all right so for those approved well i will make a similar motion on behalf of the and i'll second it motion has been made and seconded to provide the manager with a five percent pay raise effective November 1st and in addition to $2,500 i think we call it a flood relief appreciation or something but we were doing it before for all this work during the flood and things there any further question just just as a clarified note um i know it's implied but maybe it should be something that's not five percent and five five percent as much as we've loved um you know the town budget you know 10 plus 2,500 and 2,500 you know just to make maybe make that clear it's hopefully in that state you know sure it's essentially one one motion that gets divided right we can share the five percent um and things as in the uh budget that's fast so um that's really clear any further any further question if not all those in favor thumbs up again yes all those opposed the motion passes and um i think it's in keeping with uh our employees our biggest uh factor in keeping waterbury safe and everything and how difficult it is to replace staff as we found with the water and sewer department but not so appreciate it thank you tom thank you no just a quick update i'll be on wd eb tomorrow at 10 a.m oh can i see clarity it's not five percent from e-fed and five percent from select board it's one five percent raise and you're both sharing in the costs yeah right all right all right all right all right uh i believe uh the conclude the business of the joint meeting uh i have a motion to uh adjourn the meeting or we can host the jury just adjourn yourselves and we'll continue a motion to uh adjourn the meeting of the edward for our utility district with this select board so moved second all those in favor say let's go let's go thank you so much we appreciate your support see you Wednesday yeah yeah so our select board meeting will continue and the next agenda is the consent agenda move to approve the consent agenda second move to second it any discussion hearing none all those a i am i any opposed one abstention that is passed next item is the river lights parade road closures mk monline please come forward okay how are you good how are you doing okay thank you for completing uh rest hopefully yes appropriately guarded by her all right uh so mk is put together an entertainment uh application uh for these river of light uh lantern parade uh which does include road closures um do you want to give us just a general orientation of uh how this may be the same or different from previous summer of light parade all right that was just wow the parade route won't be different it'll although it has been different through the years but um yeah it'll start at school and come up stowe street to main street to dak grow i have depended on the town and the rec department crew to handle all of that i'm at school building hundreds and hundreds of lanterns and on the weekends doing that and organizing all of that so not having that on my plate is huge and as i think we all know last year's road closure was kind of uh you know we got there safely but it was we had a little snacks um my norwich cadets couldn't get in and so then i've reached out to them again and haven't heard back from them after several attempts so i'm not sure we'll have the norwich cadets this year so um i guess i'm looking what do i do how do we do this so we can continue this wonderful tradition that people look forward to and brings in thousands of people into town and we get everyone safely from point A to point B i guess i'm looking for help um and in the past the winterfest uh leadership team has helped with the road closure as well and uh at our last meeting we did discuss this and i know i've got at least three individuals that can help and uh what we have done is identify the roads that need to be closed and station somebody there and tell them what their alternatives are um so like for example i stood at the end of uh wanouski street and just told people that they could either sit and watch and enjoy the parade or they could turn around and go all the way out via uh where snow fires um and the parade itself lasts maybe 30 minutes 30 minutes from you know by the time we leave the school parking lot until the last parade or gets into dak row right but i know that uh chief delin was particularly unhappy about was that uh the uh new wreck director from last year not the one sitting with us but uh previous um left a part a vehicle parked underneath the trestle without the keys in it which then provided a emergency safety right concern uh well there was the vehicle parked on the stowe street drug bridge so people couldn't get into town that like my musicians couldn't get to the school the cadets couldn't get to the school and just to be clear the fire chief did not express a safety concern because what he said is he's just gonna pull that he's just gonna blow right through that vehicle whatever happens the town's gonna pay the bill there's a fire uh expressed a financial concern i think uh yeah another thing that the norwich connect cadets have done in the past which is a huge concern is when we're organizing the event parents are coming we try to tell them park downtown or wherever they can it's been very clear that we send about three or four of them up on um what's the backstreet armory avenue armory avenue because then people park on both sides and then you can't get a fire truck up in there because down the road is closed you know the bottom of the hill for the winter time so gary you know it's been very adamant about making sure they park only in the parking lot or on one side so we've always sent three cadets up there to kind of manage that so that's another area that's a safety concern because otherwise you can't get a truck to that street the fire truck yeah um what mk a really good suggestion i know rotary's kind of spearheads the whole nq id right contact dem giving up a rotary right that's a great suggestion and we've had a whole safety plan and stuff like that and you could probably dovetail 98 percent of that in your plan and that will answer probably many many many of your questions we try to have a good safe because that's even a bigger event than right in that river the rights so dan dan if i know when there was a separate kind of safety i i can't remember who was the chair of that the band we've done that okay thank you good suggestion you're going to the road today um scott culver also presented uh comprehensive i think we probably have a copy of uh the plan that he presented uh for the little league parade that he staged earlier this spring so would that it was very similar yeah would give us strategies for yeah okay i can i can take through and find it or we probably have it it's got all the nice stick figures and the hand drawn barriers on it yes yeah yes so then who's who becomes the point person slash people to make sure that gets carried out yeah well you would probably have on your committee someone who's in charge of the safety plan and that's what it sounds like is missing yeah right so i think you can use these templates either from the little league or nqid to make a plan but it sounds like what we're hearing is that it's bought like humans who are missing like a core someone has to and so for this year i wonder if since you're going to rotary they might be a good partner or help with recruitment because you like you said like you're full in where you're at so it sounds to me like you need a committee a chair um someone who's point person for safety and that type of thing okay and i would just like to point out that prior to last year's rec director the other rec directors were able to handle that and it wasn't on my plate to coordinate or be responsible for and so what i'm feeling is an immense additional responsibility when what i am hoping is that the town can say hey mk yep you know go to rotary go to here but there is going to be a point person from the town who shoulders that responsibility or co-shoulders that responsibility is that something you guys have talked about this year i just i don't know any of that background so catherina and mk we haven't talked specifically about a safety plan like that um i do have all the materials that mk has given me and i am taken care of what's happening in that background because it doesn't it shouldn't be the point person shouldn't be someone from the town it shouldn't be someone okay from your organization who maybe reports to the town okay yeah i just this is my 14th year and i've never had to do this before so i'm like doing my best to make it a enjoyable place that we all volunteer organizations you know works in progress yeah i know i'm i'm convinced that we'll have a great parade and that we'll have a safety plan in place uh it's just the point being that there was no clear central planning yep yeah and i left this in a bit of chaos uh over which our emergency manager manager was not entirely thrilled um so um yeah how much is the school involved outside of like the making of the lanterns on the space is there room for additional partnership as it like you know it's presented make a sphere in operation given the capacity of employee issues and being a substitute at the school and knowing what their capacity is for personnel not a lot but i mean they are supportive financially they're supportive space wise but um to ask them to be a partner in the safety plan i mean i think it's a great suggestion to go to the rotary if someone could get me a copy of scott calver's plan if catarina and i can um work to re-upon you know what makes sense for the safety plan you know already in my head i'm thinking okay so do i need to contact the state police is that catarina's job we had town truck that followed at the end of the parade is that my job is that catarina's job who's so i think you you have to have a point person in some way and in some way if you can delegate it to some other folks i don't think that's unreasonable but ultimately you should have someone in charge of safety who you know gary dillon and such could look at saying there there's an issue i want to be mindful of just supporting this incredible community but as you said i wanted to thank you and then be careful as a select board that we're not telling town employees what to do and having that go through top i mean are you willing to meet with mk who's relevant and make a plan i think like i would say as a select member i want to be supportive and use town resources in a way to support it and um just personally feel a little strange about me telling you what a town staff is or isn't going to do besides saying that tom could help coordinate help me what you tell me what to do and i will do it i just need i need help we can do that you've got the other safety plans we can work on that okay speak to them they'll get you the right color okay and then just to clarify for the school i meant for just for volunteers like if they can put out a call if anybody's i mean just as another partner so once you get the safety plan in place and you're like i don't have absolutely any five people that's all i meant it's just like helping fill the gaps of like if you're missing i don't know how many norwich students used to kind but just like having that i haven't given up on them yet but as i mentioned we'll have a minimum of three people from winterfest who can handle wanouski street the corner down here and the where the road gets blocked off underneath the okay and then we can also store the thank you thank you yeah i'm sure you can you'll get a lot of volunteers to really i just want to say that mk and i have met and we have done a lot of this planning already or some of it already um i have shared with her what we have worked on we have talked to the state police we have talked about those road closures um we do i also have the boy scouts helping us down at doc row so there are many things in motion that will make sure that we have a really successful community event in december can you email it to me well i found them in the minutes of the meeting so they're kind of buried with a lot of other stuff would you like me to separate them out tomorrow just email them separately thank you yeah and then i think the other point in front of us is that this uh entertainment application is for an event that starts at five p.m. it includes at six thirty p.m. uh do we have a motion from the board oh i'm sorry i'd like to ask the board to waive the fee for the event as well i understand from staff previous staff that that was done so if you consider that typically there's a twenty five dollar fee but i don't think you have a budget to spend on the fee anyway and all right so may i ask that on your behalf and i think i think before i don't know i don't have a motion yet so never is quite a place in the yeah before this i don't think we should have a motion until a safety plan has come forward okay uh but just in terms of planning uh we could uh approve it pending with an acceptable safety plan so what you could do is you could approve it pending an acceptable safety plan but not have them have to come back if if yeah for emergency management director is happy with the safety plan then i think we're okay elissa so i'll move to approve the river of light lantern parade entertainment permit um as presented pending review of the final safety plan by the town's emergency management and staff acknowledging that you're working behind the scenes with all the people so approval and to waive the fee for that second it moved and seconded further discussion hearing none all in favor say aye aye any opposed any abstentions congratulations you're all set thank you thank you do we need an approval of road it just it's titled as road closure i just wanted to make sure we didn't need a separate because it's not a oh i thought uh it wasn't i just want to make sure that covers everything thank you yeah i think uh so it's an application for an entertainment there's no perfect application for parades as well we're getting very very close we are good thank you thanks i'm okay good luck uh board appointments to the national disaster committee and the conservation committee uh the nominee is sorry he's uh ryan uh ryan probably been here last week this day i am tied in ryan has applied for two different uh available seats one is on the national disaster preparedness committee and the second one is on the conservation and we also have tonight joe ward stalker am i saying a name right joe thank you so he is also asked to be considered for the natural disaster preparedness committee i have their stuff all in your packets the applications there and all the the incredibly detailed all right do you need uh no i've got uh this um ryan you were here first why don't you come forward and uh let's first talk about your interest in the uh natural preparedness committee and then we'll talk about the conservation question uh i'll probably revoke my application to conference conservation committee because pretty much just interested in the natural disaster committee okay right and can you just give us uh short uh updates to why is there 24 for that yeah um i've lived in water brand my whole life i've been here for the floods um i live on randall street now so i don't know the scene the effect that it has on our town and i think there are some good ways to prepare for um the inevitable future natural disasters and um i'd like to you help in any way i can in uh trying to uh trying to mitigate the the damage from those events right precious report like looking over your resume um good resume but i'm not seeing any technical aspects of emergency preparedness engineering etc etc could you explain i know you hey yeah i know your parents yeah so i you you actually neighbors of mine um i would were you born when uh mentioned hollow uh yeah yep so you were neighbors of mine when you were when you were probably yeah yeah interesting but i would be curious to hear you know with all the different things you know education care and stuff like that on the technical end of uh natural resort preparedness could you you know other than i know you sound like you have an interest and that's great yeah but do you have any technical experience no i don't i don't have any technical experience with it um my main interest is in how to mitigate damage from floods and it's just like an interest of mine i did my own research but um i think we can utilize the cornfield in a way better way and i think that that is our primary defense against flooding and it's not being utilized in the most efficient way and that's my primary interest the like what to do in case of the flooding like after the flooding i probably wouldn't be that helpful for yeah i'll just recognize that uh really this preparedness is about mostly about the volunteer response uh and i don't know if any of us were a lot of technical or i wasn't that much involved but it wasn't really so much about your technical expertise right so i'm really just to help out and basically do what needed to be done i'm sure uh both kane and mollusk and other daddy can address that as well uh kane you have your hand i will address that yes um it is not in my mind technical ability or if you know how to cut culverts in a row it's mostly post flood what we're doing for the community as soon as the floodwater is received and actually on your resume behavior consultant and disability support something like two things that we're absolutely going to need in the event that we're needing to go home to home and check on people and make sure people are right and have what they need those are two skills that i think are going to come very much in handy and teaching other people how to do it when we inevitably have to send teams out into town to see what people need and so that's actually super helpful it wasn't really technical ability for me i don't know technical ability just the same point i think right has a lot of relevant experience okay any other questions uh oh i have one yeah um how many do we have account on our open slots i have that somewhere for the for the terms so i actually need to talk about the terms with you but we can table that for the time being you have um three open spots okay you have john malter and mr mcdonald yes they're around i apologize i can't remember you say right but and that's only two people that have been appointed to the board do they remember i guess it doesn't really matter i i propose that everybody has a three-year term just like all the other appointed boards but we have to stagger them to start right because we can't have all five of them renewing at the same time right so for the purpose of tonight you would have to choose a two or a three-year term to to get me where i need to be sure but everyone will have a three-year term after the initial set up of the board does that make sense yes and that was going to be my question do you prefer two or three yes i guess three i mean i don't really yeah i guess three all right do we have a motion i move to a point ryan ryan going to tie in to a three-year spot on the disaster preparedness committee second moved in second further discussion hearing none all the papers say aye all right any post any abstentions congratulations thanks so much for studying quality thank you much all right all right joseph and just we also have your application and your resume here uh would you mind just giving us a short synopsis of why you're interested sure um since i was 16 years old i've always been involved in community service and basically through mood emergency services first aid squad heavy rescue and fire um and through those years i've gained a lot of experience and training and i've been involved in some natural disasters and planning and things like that and i helped out a tiny tiny bit here for both floods um so i got a grasp of what i thought you know was great and most of it was great and things that really need to be fine tuned in regards to emergency management and planning so when something happens you can almost throw a book on the table and everybody's got an assignment that goes and avoids a lot of confusion and then you have everything just kind of pre-planned because floods aren't the only disasters we're going to get we could get wind there could be a big fire downtown uh there are all sorts of things and he just plugged the little parts in and if you have good people it works right um pretty much summarized what we had in mind yeah you said everything i'm gonna take and then what other questions do we have in our door to your resume extensive if you do a lot of work i have i like love doing it it looks like it's all in an emergency and disaster response so i guess for me how would i put sort of termia can you offer oh yeah um so we have to offer two or three all of this so it sounds like if we start with a two right yeah i'm 67 years old i don't know how long i guess so do we have a motion to appoint joseph to the natural disaster preparedness committee and also thank him for his many years of service already on this ballot review board more night meetings we thank you we appreciate it second that this is for a two-year position yeah okay moving second can you further discussion hearing none all of ever say aye aye be opposed any abstentions no okay congratulations thank you very much thank you very much thank you for working with service very good you're a good time my excuse me roger roger thank you so the last time we did this exercise we appointed john wolter to a three-year term ending in 2025 which doesn't really work so that was a test yeah so i'm gonna have his term end in 2025 okay um i think it's a formality because if he wants to stand on the board he can just ask to be reappointed anyway if everybody but so many doesn't reach out okay yes um if anybody has any objections to that or if you'd like me to reach out to john i am going to compile the resumes they have with the emails and i was going to do a blast email to everyone who you've approved to start putting feelers out to one of the meetings and i can ask those type of questions okay i'll put a little thing together for you then to tell you kind of where we're at right now with it okay roger yes also informalities i just want to say kane is functionally serving as the select board liaison and member of this committee and i just didn't know if we should vote to formally appoint him or we were comfortable with him just serving in that capacity uh no i think we should make an official oh i was just hoping to let me get their wings and then fly did i always say you were not i just i don't recognize if you want to i can do yeah i mean we can you didn't want to be granted i can't find a motion anywhere i mean i can take on i'll take uh i'll take a motion that's so moved so we're just moving to appoint him as the convener of this group as well or am i just a liaison liaison right he's convened by a well there is a motion from back sometime in august that says that there will be a liaison it just doesn't say who that this isn't even a motion it's just part of discussion. So we just need one more and we have full membership and I can just act as liaison. So what's the motion to hear Mike? Make a motion to approve Cain as the liaison from the natural preparedness committee to the select board. And I second it. Moved and seconded. Any further discussion? Hearing done. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? All right. You abstain. I abstain. I have one abstention. But he's still now approved as the official liaison to the natural preparedness committee. All right. Moving forward. We have Amtrak crossing discussion. Danny. Sure. So a couple of weeks ago I met with our northeast regional representative from Amtrak and Karen from Violet Island Waterbury and Roger was there as well. And they just came to introduce themselves and talk about how things are going with Amtrak and the station and safety, etc. So Karen had a lot of that meeting with talking about the building. They are responsible for certain parts of the building like whatever that little building is like electrical shed or something. I'm not sure what it is, but there's graffiti on it. And so they said within 30 days they would have someone come to clean it up. There was a light bulb out. They're responsible for that because part of it was their property. And then they talked to us about a couple of initiatives that are going on that seemed relevant to the board. One is a safety initiative that they do for free in public schools to talk to students and then give information to the parents as well about schools that are near railroad tracks. And so they said if we were interested we either we could reach out to them or we could just give their contact information to the principals. It's a free program where they come into the school and speak to the different classes. And because so many of our families live here and then cross the railroad tracks to walk to school it felt like worth mentioning and seeing if we wanted to connect them with that program. I believe my school had something to say. There was a man that said any time can be train time. Any time can be train time. I never heard that. I never forgot. And then the second is that Amtrak has identified a number of priorities throughout the state to make crossings what do they call them? Great cross, great crossings. More safe. And we were right at Blackcaps. We showed them ours which is not very safe when you really look at it. The crosswalk is on the pedestrian crosswalk is on the railroad street side. But folks are often crossing on the park road side. They got to see it and actually people were walking their dogs, people were going to the grocery store, people were just like hopping off the black cap, you know, a little boardwalk and going and you know, I do too because I walk there every single day at my dog. And so they thought it was a really good initiative. So what they said is that they were going to investigate a little bit with the priority projects and let us know if it is or isn't. And then if it is great we'll just get more information. I forget what the time span is like the next five years. Or plus that they're working on around the state. And if not, they've identified a grant program that if we wanted to take that on there was like, I think up to $100,000. I might be really wrong on that. For, you know, pursuing it on our own. So I do need to reach back out to her if we want to pursue or just get the information about the school program so I can see if she's found out any more about that priority program. And then lastly, she did request a letter of support, I'm trying to find it here, from the town. So RW did a letter of support. It's a pretty broad letter towards, to Amtrak is requesting appropriations, $3.6 billion for fiscal year 24 from the federal government. So they're looking for CDS dollars. And it's a really generic letter they gave as a template. I just, I think, distributed since like what literally when I got here, so probably no one has been able to look at that. But it's something you can consider. And then I think the deadline is like November 17. So if we decided we wanted to go forward with that, we'd have to do that virtually over the next week or 10 days. But it's really just saying that, you know, we support Amtrak in terms of jobs, trade service, economy, et cetera, and their request. Yeah, I think we could pass a resolution to draft and sign such a letter tonight if we wanted to. And then kill it carefully. So what would the process be then just editing this letter and then having the select board sign the letter of support? Yeah, we could. I think we'd sign the next meeting on the 20th. But you could have three of us sign it and get it off by the 17th. And then we need to do a motion for that? Yeah. Okay. So I'll move that we sign a letter of support for Amtrak in their first suit of appropriations from the federal government. And send that to them by the deadline of the 17th. And not that it would have anything to do with the other, but you could also ask whether the crossing upgrade is part of the property plan. Okay, we have a motion. We have a second. Second. Moved and seconded. Any further discussion on this? Hearing none. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? All right. I'll follow up on that. On the letter, just as a common misdiscussion, rail service in this country is a piece more, you know, compared to most other countries. It's a shame. I wish Amtrak did a better, you know, I think there are necessary cog in the thing, but we really don't have a good rail system in the United States. The Department of Administration announced this morning that they are looking into upgrades for Amtrak in the Northeast corridor. I know part of the issue is that Amtrak doesn't actually own the tracks. They can't upgrade, necessarily upgrade tracks that they don't own and the owner doesn't care to upgrade her or himself. So that's, you know, part of the issue with how slow the train moves between here and New York City. But we'll solve what we can. Keep putting our duck feet in front of one another. Next item is the WLCT Welcoming and Engaging Community Program. What do we know about this? We talked about this briefly at our last meeting, so this is a cohort program that the LCT is offering for the second year now. It's in partnership with Abundant Sun, who's a consultant who does consulting work across the state. So Tom alluded to earlier, up to eight communities can be applied. So this passed out before the meeting just a form letter basically saying we're interested in applying. Tom said he is willing to participate and actually had also heard about this at a conference, so he can speak to it after. And Rachel News, who's the Library Director, was also willing to participate. I said I'm willing to participate on behalf of the Select Board. It would be a series of both virtual and in-person meetings, mostly virtual, kind of like two-hour workshops that move through a curriculum. And as Tom talked about, there's also some data pieces around gathering data from municipal employees about if Waterbury is a welcoming place to work. I thought it was great that we updated the employee handbook, you know, less than a year ago. One of the application questions is what have you been working on? So in addition to the Declaration of Inclusion, it's really nice to talk about some of the tangible work we've done with the employee handbook. So to me, this is just a way to continue to do that. VLC2 is really heavily subsidizing the cost. So again, it's $500. If me, Rachel, and Tom all attend, I think that goes down to $100. It's like another $500. So they take money off the more people you send? Yes, they wanted to up the attendance. And so there was a proposal around incentivizing that. I'd be, especially if it's going to lower our cost, I'd be very interested in attending these meetings. Great. Yeah, I'm happy to. We can see if more folks could come. That would be great. So basically the question tonight is if folks have follow-up questions or if they were comfortable. I think we all got that postcard and stuff like that. Yeah, exactly. Moving forward, the application is very straightforward. And I'm happy to work with Tom on just making sure that gets submitted by Thursday. But again, I want to defer to you as the manager who's also interested in this. Sure. I saw a presentation by Abundance on a couple of weeks ago at a managers conference. It's really impressed by it. The head of the company talked a lot about how this industry of, you know, inclusion training has become big business. But they really want to start by being data-driven and that the survey data of employees is really important. So she said part of her experience was driven by the fact that she's been doing this work for decades and decades. And you do this work and you educate the company or so you think. But then you do surveys and everyone doesn't want to come to work every day. So she talked about that and how we've just got to be more data-driven about it and she's a little smarter about it. It sounds like it's a pretty substantial effort, but that's fine. That's good. Somebody learned from it, I think. But in general, I was really impressed by it. And I talked over lunch with the manager for Jericho and they went through it. And he thought it was a really long experience. So do we want to have a vote to join this initiative? So you would apply, Tom? Okay. So I move to give Tom permission to apply for the welcome engaging community select, no communities program on behalf of Waterbury and the three listed participants. Sorry, that was a little choppy. And also probably add to that just friendly amendment and pay the $500 fee for the program. I don't think that's in our budget. Well, I don't think you pay the fee to the end really because it's based on attendance. It's not how many people, but how consistent you are in attendance. So the fee wouldn't be paid to the end. So with approval to pay up to $500 for the program. And this is just the application requirement is basically where this comes from of the format, which basically they want to know about the select program. I think we have it supported. I think hopefully all of us do. Okay. Okay. We have a motion. I didn't hear a second. That's okay. Okay. Anything seconded? Any further discussion? Are you done? All speakers say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? All right. We are moving forward with the... Did Karen have a color copy? Welcoming and engaging community program application. I'm going to pass around the... That's the goal of drafting it. The informational report from the select board. I'm sure. I'll take the lead on this since it was my request. I was musing that, you know, we continue to talk about or brainstorm ideas to be more engaged with the public. How can we do more outreach? And then I spoke the email with Tom about two ideas. One was his... A monthly report from the town manager. He sends weekly updates to us. And I find them exceptionally helpful. And I thought a monthly update on a, you know, more condensed, more public friendly basis would be really, really helpful, which he's agreed to do. And then I think similarly select board updates on front porch forum that we can also copy Lisa on. Similar to the way that Theresa and Tom do legislative updates via front porch forum. I think it's really great by way of transparency. People to know what's going on. I think it's, you know, obviously they have access to the minutes, but it's condensed, it's a little more accessible and out of glance and just shows the effort. So I don't have a proposed method. I think monthly would be great because we could sum up both meetings from that month. So whether it's the last week of the month or the first week of the next month, just a bulleted list of what was discussed, anything else that went on or things that we feel are important or even like special thanks or shout outs, I think would be a nice addition. I'm willing to kick us off and like do a draft, you know, in retrospect of October. And I can keep it up if folks are into that. But I also thought, you know, it might be nice to share it. Like if we switch every month or every three months, you know, so that different voices are getting out and about. But I'd be happy to create the template and start us off if everyone felt comfortable with that. And could also, you know, send a draft for approval if someone feels something got left out or isn't appropriate to be in there, they could say. So. I probably just add, I know you just mentioned front-point forum and what a very roundabout it shows both great, but I also think that the town, you know, you know, looks like that should be holding on there. Like just in the select, in the select board page. Yeah. Maybe they have a select board blog. They could be shared on the town of Facebook too. Come on. We're talking about the select board WordPress. Yeah. Okay. Great. Yeah. Thanks, Mike. So yeah, I just, I don't know that we need action, but wanted to make sure that everyone felt comfortable with that or if there were other ideas to include. And I'll say I mean towards the retrospective a little just in that I think like some of it is like things have happened, but folks then I guess wanted to balance with like outreach thinking about like the charter vote being a great example of something that we've talked about. And now there's an action item, but just speaking like offhand from my memory, like I think, I think as you said, the bold list format or something that can just be a nice reflection of like, you know, someone came to the chair and you have like, what does select board do? Like kind of, you know, and just being, you know, of Karen Dana Allen approached me after the last meeting to ask me about using email addresses that are collected here. And there's some reluctance among both Tom and I to do that because they were given to us for a specific purpose. We're not sure people want them used for other purposes, but I think there's could be some value in asking the community if they do want to get on a general list opposed to select board meetings and EFUD meetings. I also couldn't answer the question why none of the other board agendas are distributed using MailChimp, which is this list that we have, one of the lists we have. I can't answer that. I don't know why that's not used to distribute agendas for other meetings. I don't know. But where does that cost? Because you pay for each. Yeah, you have to pay for over a thousand. I've never paid MailChimp. Well, that's the thing is like a threshold. Yeah, you're below the threshold. It's free until you do over a thousand. Okay. I was a little bit of sleuthing. I did. I found out that our web designer set it up. So, Carla was given instructions how to do it, but I hadn't gone a step further to find out why I was limited. So, okay, that answers that question. Yeah. We send emails out to people for the agendas for the board meetings. Yeah, that's what she's speaking about. Right. Just for those two meetings, Jesse, if I didn't select board, you don't sign them for any of the boards, library, conservation. So it's just a numbers thing about why we can't do other things. I don't know. I'm learning this with you, Mike. I don't know what this is. Okay. So you pay by the number. I've been numbered for it. Yeah, how many email addresses and how many times you use it? And how many lists do you have? So, like, I had an email chip where you could act of two lists. And if it was EFAT and Slackboard, and then if I wanted to add a commission list, then I have to pay. So there's, like, a bunch of different ways where they change the membership. The fee structure. But, okay, which is fine. So there's the fee structure. Right. Maybe we still want to talk about doing it. Totally. Yeah. And making. But if we're going to pay for it, we've got to use it. Right. Do you know how many people are sent those agendas? 178. 178? Well, recent agendas have just been, like, this agenda, right? I sent to both lists. Right. I mean, there was just one email that I sent to everybody on those two lists because it gives me that option. And who? Lisa has something to add. She knows more about MailChimp. Okay. Lisa. I distribute the newsletter that I think a lot of you get from the roundabout of MailChimp. And I am sending it to just over 2,100 people at a time. Mm-hmm. And I have the ability to send a lot more emails than I do. I usually send one at the most, maybe two in this week. I send two emails. So most of it's one a week. It's based on the number of contacts, as Roger said. And I'm paying $39 a month. Yeah. I think the cutoff was somewhere around 2,000 or 1,500 contacts. That would be the free version of it. So, like, until you hit 1,500 contacts in your thing, you don't have to pay. Okay. And I think there's a pretty large number of emails that you can send before it kicks in. I know, like, Dotsbury did this, and I'm on their email list. I don't know if any of you get the Dotsbury emails, but they, right now, about a year ago, started their municipal email list sort of thing. And they've only got about 400 people signed up. So in terms of, you know, they've got the people that are engaged, engaged with the people that are interested. But, and that goes out. I'm not sure if they use a man-champ. I'd have to look and see what that is. But that's the response that they've gotten so far. Yeah. We're ways away from 400. Yeah. I like you all. I think I've heard some criticism for not doing more to be transparent. Not so much to be transparent, but just to get the word out. Yep. But we have, it's not even a motion, but a suggestion to move forward. And are you thinking maybe end of this month for your first? Yeah. Or I could do one in the coming week, which should just be like later, you know, and for an October look back and then shout out of what's coming ahead. Okay. You know, even if it went out before the 15th still. Uh-huh. Thanksgiving welcome. And then, yeah, I think it warrants, you know, maybe a future conversation for over communication, see how things are going. What, what do we do? That's just extra work, you know, like putting up or what do we do? That's really important. Like it sounds like getting those other committing meeting agenda is at least accessible to have alerts seems like a really good idea. Um, but there's more. I think there's definitely more room for conversation of like do if we want a town email list, like we can push that out. We can get people to opt in via from porch forum via, you know, the roundabout and stuff. So if we choose to go that way, um, yeah, I think it takes a little bit of thought and deliberation to do so. Yeah, I think that an opt-in procedure would be better. Like I get way too many from porch forum things that I can possibly do. Right, right. So as a consequence, I tend not to read it at all, which is not good either. And it would be helpful and a disaster, but we'd also have to know that it wouldn't cover, you know, if, if 700 people opt in, that's great, but we still have so many other folks. You know, to reach, but it would be an additional method of communication. Okay. Okay. Well, it sounds like a good, good step forward. Quick question. Yes, Mike. It's directed to Lisa at your 2,100 emails. How, what percentage of that? Oh, right. What of our residents? We sign them. We sign them. Well, it's hard to know. I don't ask them what we're living. I don't ask. Okay. But we have about a 60%... Because I know you might get more down and, you know... A little bit. It's a predominantly watery, that's very, I think. And, you know, there's also a fair number of people just within like the Harvard School District, because, you know, that a lot of people are focused on watery, but we have a pretty good open right now. Like we, about 60% of our, our newsletters are open and we can see like the people are using it. So, you know... Can you get that animal news? Yeah, I can. I'd be happy to show you that. It's, you can really find out a lot. You can find out a lot about what they're, you can find out about how many people are opening it. You can find out what they're reading. Like I could, I sent out a newsletter today. I can look and see like how many people are reading each thing. Whether they open them... I'm not signing up to do that, but thank you. Yeah. So, I mean, if you're interested to try to get to see like our people paying attention, are they using what you're bringing out there? Yeah. One other thing too, Danny, that you might want to look at, are you guys all reading the recaps that the school board sends out? No. Because the school board does exactly what you're talking about and they're on front porch forum. After every one of their, after every one of their meetings, if you're reading from porch forum, they have these posts that say school board meeting recap. And they have a process in their meetings where a board member volunteers to write it for the, from that meeting. Another board member edits it and then the person who edits it becomes a person who writes it next time. And so they... The process. So they, at the end of every one of their school board meetings on their agenda, it's who's going to volunteer to do the recap and then who's going to edit and they send those out. It gets posted on their website, so it's on their homepage, just like you've got the homepage for the town. It's on their board homepage and it's also from porch forum after every meeting. But... Carefully. Doesn't it seem redundant though if the minutes are up within, there's the minutes up within like 48 hours. I'm typing them now. I think it's that not everyone goes to where the minutes are posted. I mean even the agendas, right? You're getting an email that just says the agenda is posted at this link, but that's useful for some folks. But I appreciate that, but we could put a post in from porch forum that says minutes for the last site select were meeting are available using this link. Exactly. I mean, it doesn't have to be a whole nother dot there. That's being... Yeah, I don't think... Yeah. I think... Ours is going to be a lot more personable. Yeah. I'm going to use great adjectives. No offense to the minutes. But that is like the idea. Like distilling, you know. Yeah. You don't need to double... But you could include a final sentence that says agendas and minutes for all meetings are always... 100% and they serve people to sign up for the notifications as well. There we go. I think this is an important conversation. Yeah. That's my question. Maybe for next meeting. Yeah. If Karen can look at... Like if you can do those sub lists because my... To the question of like, I understand not wanting to use a list for not what it was intended for, but if we created in the list doing a one-time email to everyone that says like, hi, do you want to opt into all agendas or like pick one other board or committee, you know, that you know about. And like once we have that set up, do a one-time thing to let those folks if they want to then get all of them or not. But we'll take some time. Okay. I think we are now on the next meeting agenda. Okay. And Karen has put more a draft of what we've got so far, which has the appointment of the library commissioner. Potentially, yeah. That became known today to be honest. I've only had it. And you said also we need a tree commissioner. Yeah. And we need one more flood preparedness or natural disaster preparedness. And I said conservation. I said housing and conservation, I think a couple of things too. So just to say relevant. Oh, okay. Board and committees if there's... I can't find my... That's really helpful. The restorative justice. And I don't know that we need to change the bullet, but we'll have... We should have the lieutenant, wind here to join us. We'll have wind. Truck wind. Carl planned for the Montpellier Restrict Justice Center and potentially our night time trooper too. May. The day time trooper uses the program pretty extensively. Yeah. So that's going to take up a big chunk of time. Yeah. And also, Jane Willard, who's been serving on the local panel of six, we have six members of the panel that serves Waterbury and River Valley. And she's been serving on it for several years now. And I think the most experienced member there, so she'll have some good insights as to how and why it gets used. If you want, if there's time, we can add a third quarter financial update. Third quarter financial update. And then I'd like to add an agenda item. It doesn't need to take a lot of time, but I'll have a proposed budget schedule. So should we a lot more time for the RJ and lieutenant conversation? Make sure you put 45 minutes, you think? Roger and I can fair it out times before we finalize the agenda. Very good. I think we'll get to it. I just like to, you know, that's been going very well lately. I have to give some props, because the timing distribution has been going well. I feel like the past couple of months, which is often a struggle. You should get very close to that. Okay. And we've got Brian Voight, who's with CBRPC, and Doug Greason is going to join us as well. Is he? I put that there and remind myself. If you could invite him, that would be great. I just, you know, be an opportunity, because that is another committee to which we assign someone in. I personally don't hear anything about it yet, and I may be the exception to the role. Are we mediating or mitigating the floodwater? Just, you know... I don't know. You're trying to find something. Where's Ryan? He's somewhere else. All right. I assume I'm missing something. All right. Yeah, I think we can fine-tune the things. And we've got, in addition to what we see in front of us, we've got the third quarter financials. We can figure out on Friday how much time we're going to need for that, as well as the budget planning, the budget cycle. So I'm basically saying what the process is going to be to review the budget. Okay. That sounds like fun. And how about the committees? Do any other committees want to come back and report out? You mentioned that last meeting. Skip was thrilled about the invitation. He said, outside of actual business, in his entire span of serving, he's never been invited to a Slack board meeting just because. And was so grateful and enthusiastic, and yes, wants to come and doesn't know a date yet. So I just want to report that even the gesture that we've just embarked on has made, you know, any other positive impact. Can we just move from the tree committee recently? Can we ask them in? Yeah, let's talk to the tree folks. I mean, Christmas is coming. How is that the DRB, which was kind of an interesting meeting? It was kind of all perverted, so I can't. That would be one that I would love to hear, actually. Do you want to bring them in? Yeah, let's bring them in. We could. I think a lot of it, the issues will resolve close to that meeting. Okay. When is there a laundry that they might have had? I'd love to hear about their conflict resolution. Uh-huh. I think the DRB would be great. What are they thinking? I'd be a little careful about that. Yeah, I think it's still a little explosive. You know, they're not required to reveal their reasonings for their decisions. I went fairly deep in the weeds on my own with staff to try to look at the last application and understand the nuance a little better. And there was a lot of nuance in that application, for sure. So it's just a hard thing. I mean, when I first heard about the vote, I think like a lot of other people, I was not happy. I think you just got to be pretty careful. There's some, you know, strong personalities in that committee, all our committees, I think. So you might want to just... And they're a different concern. I said, a quasi-judicial. Yeah, a quasi-judicial. They have a different charge then. Even in the planning commission, they're just kind of doing their own thing. The takeaway from the 51 staff main vote is the design review criteria for current. And now that the planning commission has, I think is ahead of the schedule to consult them laid out for them in terms of the bylaws, maybe the PC can be encouraged to look at the design review district and criteria overall and make that part of their mission going forward. I think they want to do that on their own anyway now. But it will encourage them. Well, and I would say Katie Gallagher, who's vice-chair of the planning commission, had like a five-page drafted letter to that effect. So I think making improvements to the regulations, which is their purview, is on their mind. So if we weren't advocating, I mean, I'm biased, I'm always the planning person, but we can ask them also in light that maybe they care about floodwater mitigation. But we're just general updates that they've been on the list for a while. They also were having a joint meeting with the development reviewer. I just wanted to say in general, I don't know if that has already happened. That's already happened or was upcoming, but in service to the rewrite. And then one other just agenda item. The skate park would like to come to the museum in 20th. That's a lot in one meeting I think. Do they need to come on the 20th? Not necessarily. They want to be in front if you're pretty soon. They've got a proposal for rebuilding and some changes that I hope they'll be. Yeah, it's not insignificant. Yeah, I think we should have them. We'll take an enormous amount of time. I know this is nothing for next meeting, but I know it's in the parking lot about the reappraisal at some point. That's probably going to come up sooner than later. Yeah, we're probably going to have to hire a consultant nine, 12 months from now and start there. And I think we've got... Are we going to use like Nemerc? I think we've got a local team in place that can do it. Because I know I work on my camp. Nemerc was doing the town where I have a camp. And there were reappraisal. He asked me all kinds of interesting questions because they couldn't get into camp. And by having this meeting with the state police and the restorative justice people, we will be sort of indirectly addressing the loitering ordinance and cameras, which were brought up by Lieutenant Nguyen who was here to talk to us. All right, so that may fill the thing, but I do think if we could have some more sort of thinking about what committees we work with, I think the rec committee that I'm liaising with would have some recommendations for us by the beginning of November, or at least by mid-November. Did someone reach out to the conservation commission as well? Because that was sort of how it started. That was my question. I'm going to go to their meeting next week. You'll invite them? I can invite them. Yeah, I think that was the goal, is to invite them either between now and I don't know, February, January. I want to find out kind of where they are. I know me and Billy Bigdorf. Why don't a lot of discussions start thinking about doing check-ins with these committees like group orderly or something so we can figure out where they're all at as the year progresses and see the progress they've made and whatever their mission is. Maybe every six months. It doesn't matter. You think six months is the... I think that's reasonable. Anything more than that, quarterly would be a bit longer. I think that was kind of the idea, right? That was the idea. I was having a liaison so they wouldn't have to all come here and address the board. We, as our liaison, could have this discussion and say, like, I know, for example, that the REC committee is looking at a bunch of potential projects and they're prioritizing those at the next meeting and so I would think either at the end of this meeting or easily by the December meeting they'll have some clear recommendations for us for budget conclusions for 2024. Right. And we talked about, like, maybe annually but at least kicking off with inviting the committees that we liaison with to come to a slack-bore meeting. Knowing Planning Commission has been here quite a bit but, yeah, I think conservation was held. The conversation started. It was like they're needing some direction and then EFAT as well, which, again, they've never been just invited so they're really happy to. But, yeah, if you could extend that invitation and then you'll work with the REC committee as well. Yeah. So do you want to see if conservation can come? I guess 20th is looking pretty busy so what about the 5th of December? Is it the 4th? Yeah. So the 5th is the voting day on Tuesday and it's the 4th, which is left for Republic Independence Day. What? What? I was a Peace Corps volunteer and it's such a lively Republican. Oh. The 4th of December was always a big good day of celebration. Great, let's celebrate. What are traditional treats? Yeah. Okay. All right. Yeah. Shall we adjourn? Motion to adjourn. Two seconds. Everyone remember? Aye. Aye.