 Good evening, this is Flo Smith. I'm chairing tonight's Town of Berlin Select Board meeting. It is a second public hearing that we'll be discussing tonight. And the folks that are with us, to my right is Joe Stobb. On the computer with us is C. David Sawyer and Brad Town. We don't have anyone in attendance from the community at this time, although that could change as the meeting goes on. So I'll call the meeting to order. And are there any additions or changes to the agenda? No. Any public comment? Hearing none, I'll move forward to open the meeting to the first article, which is the discussion of the local options tax. And Vince, could you read the particulars pertaining to this? I will. Just one comment before I read that. You're gonna be reading two statements. The one as it originally existed and the proposed revision change as it will appear on the ballot that has been done, completed. Excellent. Okay, so the original reads for article one. On page two, addition of paragraphs as follows. Paragraph D, upon resolution of the select board or upon receipt of a petition signed by 5% of the registered voters of the town at an annual or special meeting, warned for that purpose, the voters of the town may vote by a majority of those present in voting to assess any or all of the following. A 1% sales tax, a 1% rooms tax, and a 1% meals and alcohol beverage tax. That is the original statement. The revised statement for that particular paragraph as it will appear on the ballot is as follows, article one, shall the Berlin Town Charter be hereby amended as follows. Section three dash two, powers of the town, addition of paragraph D as follows. The town of Berlin select board may assess a 1% sales tax. The town of Berlin select board may assess a 1% rooms tax. The town of Berlin select board may assess a 1% meals and alcohol beverage tax. Any discussion? I still have two paragraphs to read that remain unchanged. Unchanged. And will be as of the original, which is paragraph D2. A tax opposed under this authority of this section shall be collected and administered by the Department of Taxes in accordance with 24 VSA section 138. And paragraph D3, revenues received through the imposition of a tax imposed under this section shall be designated for capital projects within the town. That would be it for article one. Very well, very well. Any discussion regarding article one? Hearing none, I will ask for a motion to close this article. I make a motion, Dave Sawyer, make a motion to close this article as the spread. Second. Second. So moved. I now move on to article two, elected to appointed clerk. And here we'll also have Vince read through those changes as well. Okay, again, I will do the same for this article as I did in the first one, I'll read as it will appear on the ballot as well. Excellent. So under sub-chapter four, section four dash two, elected officers, item two, town clerk, will be the removal of a town clerk for a term of three years. Under sub-chapter four, section four dash four, appointed officers, section B, addition of item five, town clerk. There's no change. And there's no change. And how that will appear in a ballot. Excellent. Thank you, Vince. Any discussion? Hearing none, I will request a motion to close this article. Dave Sawyer, make a motion to close this article as read. Thank you, David. Second. So moved. Now moving to article three, the addition of personal property, inventory taxation waiver. So under sub-chapter seven, section seven dash three, addition of penalty for delinquent installments will be adding the following and personal property inventory taxation. We'll be adding paragraph C, when the total assessed value of personal property inventory taxation is equal to or less than $1,650. The town treasurer may, after approval of the select board, waive the personal property inventory taxation. Thank you, Vince. Any discussion? Hearing none, I will request a motion to close this article. I make the motion to close article three. Thank you, Joe. I'll second that. I do, Sawyer. Thank you, Dave. So moved. And now we will move on to the round table portion of tonight's meeting. And I will start with Joe. I have nothing. Okay, David. I have nothing. Okay, thank you. And Brad, anything you'd like to discuss this evening? Just that when you go, before you close your articles, you'd have a vote. Okay, very good. No worries. We'll do that now. Now that we've gone through all three articles, can I have a vote of everyone present? All the yeas? I vote ye on all articles. And Joe does as well. I vote at the ye as well. And Brad? Good job. Very well. So moved. Hope you feel better, Brad. Did you have anything else you wanted to add, Brad? Okay. Again, I hope you feel better. And a motion to adjourn? I think so, you make a motion to adjourn. Second. I second. So moved. Thank you all for being present this evening. Oh, good evening. You're welcome to come in. You just adjourned. You had a few people. We did. The Times Argus was here and Orca recorded everything. And if you'd like a copy, we have a copy of the language and the changes. Oh, that's excellent. Most everything was similar to last week. But all of the, you have the changes in there? Yes. That would be wonderful. This can make you a copy. Okay. And that way you can have everything to review. For sure. Yes, I'm glad to see. Yeah. Sorry that the timing wasn't, oh, we know we're a little late, just not enough hours in the day. Understandable. Very much so. I think it's dark too quick already. Yes, it does. And only to get dark or similar. It's unbelievable. There also was an article, if you didn't see it yesterday. I just saw it tonight. I was so busy yesterday. But it was very informative. I was very dismayed. It was bright. Because I'll tell you what, I've been afraid that it will be misinterpreted because eliminate the long elected, thank you, thank you, thank you. Office of Town Clerk. So, when you say that. Yes. And it sounds like we have an empty office. That's right. Exactly. Let's see where you're going. Yeah, I didn't see that. So I'm glad you pointed that out. Charter changes that eliminate the long elected office of Town Clerk. You're not eliminating the office. Right, we're changing it from elected to appointed. Eliminating the election. And I think it should be pointed out to David. He'll call me tomorrow. He calls me every day after the meeting. And I can mention that. It's definitely a good point. And Vince will follow up on that. I'm happy to chat with him about it. Of course, what I think might, it can go either way. On the one hand, some people are gonna say that and say, well, forget this. I'm not gonna have anything more to do with the town. You know, they're doing their own thing anyway. Other people may say, wait a minute, I don't want to eliminate the Town Clerk. And that might spur some more interest. Which way we'll go? I don't know. So. So you didn't add the words commercial. Oh yes, that was the other thing. When it, you remember, we had that question about personal property and inventory. And I have the definition for that. It is on a form that the business has to fill out. I will actually give you a copy of that. That would be great. But you can make that change in the area. That's a full definition. Yeah. You know, if you read the warning, then it says, relates to section seven, you know, statute seven, whatever, which is more telling than yes. Look up section seven, you know that. You know, are people gonna say, oh, I don't pay personal property tax. Or are they gonna say, is that gonna have effect with my property tax? That's my personal property. Right. Now this makes it clear, it's for business. Yeah. When Vince read it tonight, it was so much more descriptive, it was helpful. So this is what applies to that change right there. And here's the different definition. Business, personal property. So. And it even tells you, it goes into detail of what that is and what's not included as well. So I haven't read this new wording yet, but I hope that when it comes to the warning on the ballot, that it says business, personal property. I will check that. I think it does on the ballot. I'll be perfectly honest with you about the town clerk's election. But I'm looking at it. It does not say that on the ballot. At this point. We are perfectly happy with this select board. Maybe in the notice. And I'll be perfectly happy with it to make decisions like that, but in the past we've got select boards. Many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many. I would have. Oh, 1000s of time. And you know, this is not just every year, it's forever for y'all. But that is what it's referring to. Yes. It's good. Thank you. And I respect that. And there's a very good, as I said there's very good definition here. And what it doesn't include as well. It came last week too. That's important too. All of that information and advice and you know, different perspective. Very beneficial. So that's helpful. I'm so sorry that people didn't show up. Oh, I'm glad you guys did it. Gave me something to do with these. I didn't do it for nothing. Absolutely. And you have good advice. And Vince will follow up with Dave Delcore tomorrow. Dave will probably call Vince first. Oh yeah, we'll call him right now. Here we do that too. Yes, yes. You'll talk to him, Joe. Anyway, David does a good job, right? He surely does. He don't mean to dispute that. I thought this article as a whole was well done in terms of being specific, but I didn't catch what you pointed out. No, I want to sort it out just so I know. I said it when I talked to him. I think it's different when we know in our head and we read it. That is the problem. We know what it means. You wrote it. If somebody doesn't. Right. They read it and they'll interpret it very differently. Eliminate the long-elected. Someone once said to me, when you write anything, you should set it aside. Correct. For a day, two days. Yeah, but you can't prove your own work. It's very difficult. So you give it to someone else to read. Or the rest of the part of it. Yeah, absolutely. And that's what you see. That's right. It's actually stuff like rags. When you know the rags, you know, the John C. Puppet does it. Right, right. He goes into it a little more detail later on, but he does it still. But it's still. If somebody stops reading here, they're gonna walk away thinking, what the heck are they doing? And people do. They read, then they get interrupted and they don't get back to it. Yeah, yeah. Or they get a snut. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah, so. By the way, Vince, it's nice to meet you. Thank you. We're, he's a very long time resident. He lived here almost all your life. Yeah. Yeah, well, I grew up here. So you probably knew my mother. She lived over on Chandler Road for a hundred years. Viola. Oh, maybe. She was on the ladies' auxiliary in the fire department. Beautiful name. I was on the fire department when it first started. Yeah, well, she was on the ladies' auxiliary almost from the beginning. She ran all the bingo when it was over in Riverton. No. She did all that. She did all that. Probably started to just take stock of her engines out of this, and put them in the fire truck. Oh. Because he has four engines in it. Oh, gosh. He was quite a character. Yeah, he was quite a character. I enjoyed him as a neighbor. What's the name? Oh, this is Frank. Right here. And I'm Louise. Me here. At my ear. At my ear. Okay. Yeah, very.