 I'm going to call the Calis School Board meeting to order. And public comment on items not on the agenda. Additions are changes. And just so you know, the select board is usually a little more interactive with people that come to the meetings where we don't make them wait until the beginning or the end to speak. But I would ask if people have something to say that we don't have an hour. So make it brief. And to the point, it'd be really helpful. OK. You said Kat has info on the trash thing. So should we flip the order of talking about stuff? I think that makes sense. So let's talk about Act 46 first. I just don't want to lose sight of having time to talk about that issue as well. So thank you for coming. Should we go around the room and introduce ourselves to people who don't know? That makes sense. OK. May I use the wheeler? Select board. I'm Katie Linkard as the reporting secretary. Cliff Emmons, Calis Select Board. Rose Kalchuk, select board. I'm Chris Catterette on the school board. Rick? Rick Burgess. Kale Graham. Scott Vassage. Janet Ansel. David Delport from the Tech Organs. Scott Thompson from the U32 board. Rick Keaton, Calis Board. School board. Susanna Culver, Calis Board. John Brazen, Calis Select Board, and Judy. Judy Robert, Calis Board. And this is Jerome from Orca. What do you call him? Right. I wanted to make sure I wasn't sure I was going to say it. So let's start with the first name. So what's going on with Act 46? What can we do to help? Well, the late, I mean, it's just to kick it off. I mean, it seems like in August we will be really facing a decision about whether this is likely that our proposal would be accepted, the alternative proposal, put in by all five towns. Well, maybe you could back up a little bit. Does Calis School Board or the sort of union submitted an alternative governance plan? That's right. Alternative governments, the government governance option, other than what was pushed by the AOE and by the legislature, the preferred model, which does not work for us. Hold on a second. I think Gail and Janet are struggling to hear. If you guys want to pull your chairs up, you can be in. And anyone else playing favorites with the women. And Otto is my model. We can turn the fan off if people are having trouble hearing all. It's a speed up, you know? The band stays. Jerome, if you open that door with that help, do you think the bugs are going to come out? Well, I'll get you in first. So anyways, I'm sorry, go ahead. So essentially, what happened was this. We were tasked, there's been a very lopsided process to actually push through a single universal model, which kind of works for Chittenden, Takali types of urban towns. And certain towns with a lot of wealth and larger economies, but smaller towns can be really victimized by this. And what's happened is at this point, the agency of education and the state school board, that they can essentially impose this, we actually went out and did, we did a study for a few years, two and a half years, probably on whether that preferred model, which is what was being pushed down on us, would work. And all five towns unanimously basically rejected that, the boards. We never even put it out for a vote. But the boards, there was much discussion. We turned that thing inside out and it just didn't work. We created a proposal. I just want to clarify what you say. That merger study committee that went on basically as long as you were talking about, this committee did not recommend merger. It wasn't unanimously not recommending merger. It was, remember we had the, what was unanimous was every board approved the alternative governance. And that's what you submitted to the AOE? Right, and they, at this point, rejected that. Their recommendation is that after a lot of work by all of the towns and the unanimous recommendation of the five towns plus the consolidated high school, that they rejected that out of hand and said, no, we're going, basically we recommend the preferred model. So now this goes. But what was their reason for that? Well, go ahead, Scott, do you want to get the details? One, this is just a recommendation. This is not a decision. It's not, but you can see the writing on the wall. Yeah, I think so. Yeah, essentially the agency of education rejected our arguments. They, and leaned on sort of what I'm tempted to call, and I guess what I now will call the dogma of consolidation, that a consolidated system is the best means for achieving the goals of Act 46, the equity, quality, efficiency, transparency, and value. What our alternative proposal had argued was that because, especially because of the problem of our legacy debt in among the five towns, that this, the transition from our present system to a merged system, which is essentially all town lines are abolished, and we become one great big sort of super town. What would happen in this case is that there would be a shifting of costs from higher wealth to lower wealth towns. The higher wealth, especially U.S. Montpelier, but I'm not putting anything on U.S. Montpelier because they actually agreed that this was unfair, that Calis and Wister should pay for their bond. When you say a shifting of costs, it's actually from the higher wealth. It's actually from the shifting wealth goes from the lower wealth to the higher wealth. Shifting of the burden is from higher to lower wealth. Shifting of wealth is, or shifting of resources is from the lower wealth to the higher wealth town. So what, three towns have a total debt of about $15 million that that would then be spread out and shared within all of the towns, regardless of whether or not we have debt or not. I don't even understand how they take that. So we would take on their debt. I don't understand how they can do that. We have to vote to agree to it. I don't think the state's going to be able to force that on us. Well, it's, there's so many questions, yeah. There's so many questions associated with this. But the problem is that our argument was that this landed us in a kind of paradox. We could have equity, but then we wouldn't have efficiency because in order to achieve an equitable solution to the debt problem for a merged district, and oh, God, I'm the world's worst explainer, so forgive me, in order to achieve an equitable solution, East Montpelier's debt would have to be in the same proportion to the overall debt as East Montpelier's student population is to the overall student population since that's how costs are distributed. Sounds complicated. Yeah, I'm sorry. And it's kind of, you're doing a fine job. You're doing fine, it's just not the way to begin with. So because East Montpelier's debt is twice as big as its share of student population, basically what we would have to do in order to devise an equitable solution is there are a number of possible, I've been able to come up with three possible solutions. One of which is the one that Janet got through in 2017, transferring the bond from school to town. But there are two other ways in which, which involve essentially either bond and buy, that is the new merged district would bond about nine million dollars and then buy each school in order to provide the restitution to basically fix the damage done by this cost shifting. Or alternatively, it would be a sell and lease back arrangement whereby schools, school property would transfer in all the towns that have to happen in all the towns except for East Montpelier. East Montpelier could do it too, but at least the other four. And in that way, what you could do if the property were transferred from the school district to the town and then were leased back to the new merged school district, you could essentially build it in so that Callis and Wister and now Berlin and Middlesex as well would be reimbursed the amount that it would take to compensate for the extra subsidies that they would otherwise have been paying. So that essentially in that scenario, all of our property taxes would rise to the level of East Montpeliers. East Montpelier, that would be however, the towns would be able to potentially lower their taxes so that school plus town taxes would remain constant. School taxes would go up, but for Callis and Wister and to some degree also for Middlesex and Berlin, town taxes would go down. And overall, school taxes would all go up to the same level, the level of East Montpelier. So you're looking at saying, bring up the town taxes and lower the town taxes and buy them and have the same. But the school and the state don't get to separate town tax rates, we do. Right, but here's the thing. For example, in this scenario, Callis school would be leased back to the new merged district for roughly $300,000 per year. Base, just to cover that subsidy amount. And then whatever else is negotiated for typical lease type costs. East Montpelier would be leased back for zero. So that $300,000. They don't own the school. They simply don't own the school. No, I'm saying how they can lease back something they don't own. They do own it. The town owns the school. Well, East Montpelier town then, whatever they do. No, for Callis school. Right. How can they lease back something? We have to vote this all through. Yeah, I'm not saying this is a good solution. Oh, okay. I'm just trying to explain. I'm just trying to understand how they can agree to this. It's really, it's really convoluted. This is the case of the puzzle. This is to solve only the debt, if we are forced to consolidate. Right. And then there's the, but there's also the things like the school closure issue and you know, you don't, the way this super board is arranged. I mean, the town essentially, that's based upon the population. The student party, we would have much lower representation than say, probably two towns would control all of the decision-making on that board. And the townspeople of Callis have, if they decide to close Callis, which they will. I mean, ultimately that will, because it will, they'll fill their capacity to these Montpelier, it'll be their financial advantage to do that. That, you know, we really would have no recourse. I mean, I don't care people talk about the Articles of Agreement, but we asked the lawyer in the 706B discussion, I asked the specific question, and he said you couldn't write those in a way that you could tie the hands of future board. What financial advantage would it be for us to move to Montpelier, to close Callis and send the kids over there? It wouldn't be to our advantage. We're going to be paying higher taxes under this scenario. Well, okay, so if the taxes can be fixed, and I'm just wondering how East Montpelier benefits monetarily, I just, you made a statement I'd like to hear. We're covering that debt, but then we're also, there's another side to this. But if you figure out how to cover the benefits. There's another side to this, and what happens is that you also, you know, you were trying to keep, you know, a healthy community here. You take a school away, the families, those people with kids are going to get as close to the schools as they can to go. That's going to push them into the East Montpelier, push those property values up. Hires get pushed down. We have a harder time bringing kids, if you're a family of kids in our communities. It's a big hardship. I mean, we've raised kids. You know what it is to be able, if you're far from a school, and you have two working parents, that's a big issue, to be able to get to them and arrange logistics. So there are a lot of loans. Of those loans, I'm just saying, we would still have a school, we would just rename East Montpelier, like Calpelier, and it would then become the school for the community. You might have a longer distance to drive, but it still would be the community school. We thought of that scenario, closing the Calpelier entry under that scenario. Scott's leaseback program is not something that's available, as I understand it, because the school would be out of the system, there's nothing to lease back. They wouldn't happen at the same time. I mean, that's years down the road. If you had a car, you wouldn't have a car. We'd lose the towns with the greater number of voters, I guess, or would have the greater sway. Another town essentially could close our school. And I think there's a huge constitutional issue here. I brought this up, I mean, years ago, Janet came to our select board when Gay Somerton had something similar. And I said, it's a constitutional issue. The state cannot force our schools to close, and other towns cannot vote to close or to augment, cannot vote to do anything with a property that we own and hold. We own that property in a fee simple title. And for the state to think that they're gonna come in and they're gonna take control or the vote of middle sex in Berlin, there's some other towns that are gonna vote the future of a school that we own. I don't see how they can legally do that. I really don't. I think we go to a charter school. If that happens, I think that's another thing. Well, I think what we have to do is they clearly think they can. I think we all have to get ready for a big legal battle. I mean, I think we're gonna have to take this to court. And we met this weekend with a group of other towns who are in the same boat as we are. And they were talking about options and they're fairly limited out there, what to do. But I mean, one discussion that I had that I'm actually quite interested in, they actually, this was in North Bennington, they successfully discontinued their school and restarted it as an independent. And it operates within the SU actually. They still access special ed funding and resources and then they pay for certain sources out of the SU, but they're independent. They retain control. So we may want to consider this. I hate to do that, I'm a big proponent of public education, but this is going, this is really going south on us the way and the way it has been managed is more of something you would expect from a fascist government rather than certainly a democracy. And it's so far from, you know, from my governance models. I mean, I'm astounded that the legislature would ever even consider this. And you know, I've, you know, this state has a policy on energy. We're trying to go local with our food, go local with our energy generation. You know, reduce our driver miles by car pooling and everything else that we can come up. And then when it comes to schools, we're going to bust them and what's going on for Rochester, busting them over the mountain, over a branded mountain to another watershed. I mean, it is like in a winter and that crazy road over Brennan, I mean, they are out of their minds and they partition and they disconnect it from, you know, an overarching concept in terms of what's best for our people. There, this is just. I think, you know, what is really egregious about it is that people have been saying this and put many people, you know, hundreds of them posing this and giving these facts. And Janet, you've heard it, you know, I've been in a lot of those hearings. I've done it even myself and it's come falling on deaf ears. I mean, it has been deaf ears. I don't understand what's driving that, but I tell you one thing, it's not okay with me. I, you know, I suggest what we do as a town, I mean, we can either roll over and just let this happen or we get out and we fight them right to the end and we take them to court and, you know, probably, you know, there were several lawyers in this meeting, we've actually been donating their time even, you know, but, you know, they're even looking for. People have been led to believe that this is going to fix the runaway cost of schools. There are a lot of people out there that studies have also been saying. And it's not. I don't tell me, I know exactly what they're saying. That's why they're gung-ho about it. We've been educating. That's what they think. Yeah, but there are a lot of people that prove, you know, giving the other the contrary information, it's just been ignored and it has been squashed. You know, that's what is bad here. It's one thing to go in with incomplete information and when you've got AOE in groups like that that are heavy lobby presence, I mean, my God, you don't see Rebecca Holcomb out in the communities. Have you ever seen her anywhere? She was on. Yeah, I know, but you know when I'm talking Dr. Lewis in this process, you'd see her every day in those halls and people and that's unfortunately, you know, that's the way this goes. Do callous select board members have any other questions? I mean, I've attended some of the meetings and some of the other board members have too. Yeah, so I did attend the last meeting. It was held at U32 and it was informative. And I, you know, I just want to say I applaud the work of our local school board and Scott and I agree that this is totally not okay. So what's the plan for August 15th? Because that's the day that they're gonna review our appeal or who is the day? I need to know where you have it. Well, that's the deadline for all the submissions, the resubmissions, right? That's what we have, we have seven hearings. So we have to have a resubmission for August 15th? Well, there's a one pager, the state board has asked for one page answer to I think four questions. We might have to go over a page or at least do a page and then have backup. Or we'll get an F, right? We'll get an F and go over a page. I think we're gonna get an F regardless. It's sort of set up. You do have that. We do have that. It's a state board and that's not the agency of education. Well, they're very tight. They're not the same, but they're my own assessment, my own read from the meetings that I've attended is that the state board will be inclined to do what it's told. Now, is this the group that was formed? You weren't there and you got picked to help? Oh, yeah. Is that, is this the one? That's the one, the three Musketeers? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Janet? And Flora. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. That's okay, I just wanted to add something about the F-49 that passed last year, which was intended to make it easier and a little more clear how you did an alternative governance structure, which is what we're in right now. And one of the things I managed to get added to that was language that said that one of the considerations would be a wide disparity in debt. AOE opposed it pretty aggressively, but it did pass. The governor signed it. And as far as I can tell, the agency ignored it. Yes, yes. In their report, because I read those, almost all of it, read all the callous at the Washington Central part of it. So I don't know whether it's gonna do any good, but I am gonna write a letter to the state board pointing that out. And it's not just that they ignored the alternative governance structure debt language, but they also ignored the language and the underlying statute that you're talking about. Yes. Which I can't remember. I thought the language was a little more broad, but to go back to that early discussion, I think that there has been, for the last year, room for communities to come to some different arrangement on debt. And, but, you know, they're not, none of them are ideal and none of them are simple. Jim. But they're there. I have a question for you. Who's running the show in there? The legislature really, I mean, they, A&E should not be dictating to the legislature what the hell's going on here. I'm sorry, this is- They ignored what we did. They didn't do anything. Well, I'm sorry, but you know, this is a democracy here. And I, you know, maybe I'm out of line, but I've watched this now for years. You know, I've been in this, before this was a fight, Scott and I, and you know, I have been astounded how little backbone I've seen. And certainly blindness from Dave Sharp and these are people I've worked with in the past and bailed out of troubles, you know, when they were in Addison County and things like that. I look, you know, in the complete toughness. And I'd like to know what was driving that decision-making because it's clearly not going to save money. It is clearly not gonna really help the kids in any way. I mean, wherever it's been done, it's been a disaster. I know I've talked to the states that did it. And I tell you, I can line those people up for you, I offered to, but nobody even wanted to listen. You know, but that's the, this is the reality. Why did you let this happen? I mean, they should not be dictating these rules and these conditions. I mean, this is way out of control. This, you guys have led us down in a big way. I say those are harsh words, but I'm understating them. Believe me, I might have been. Well, let's hope the legislators, if they think there's an unreasonable interpretation of the law, or they've limited the flexibility that was provided, let's hope the legislature, the those who control it, stand up to this. I'm just not confident because there's a divide in those that control the legislature. There are a whole bunch of Dems who run that legislature who think this is really cool. And this is great. And you know, this is just like to see an environmental stuff. There's the urban environmentalists who have their perspective on what protecting environment is. I mean, taking the beer can, putting in the recycling bin, instead of the trash can, that's environmentalism to an urban person. And these people are fine with big, huge school districts. They graduated in classes of 2,000 students. You know, they worked for them. They went to Columbia or Yale. And so, we're going to lose the soul of Vermont. This is just dismantling of our rural culture Well, you know, we're getting, I mean, we hear all this screaming about the development in this state. These schools are one of the last vestiges of our little town. Now, there's a threat at the federal level in our rural post offices. Then there's a threat now at the state level. The close our rural schools. I don't know what we're going to have left. You know, town meeting will be the last thing to go. Well, it's getting harder and harder to track. We're having to pay people to come live here. No, we're not. That's a crazy idea. That's not true. No one can argue that costs are becoming very, very difficult. But you know what? There are people to come live here. And that's just craziness. Well, they're not paying. Of course, that's not a proposal. No one's paying anyone to come live here. But taxes are too high. They're taxes are too high. And we have to figure it out. You know, I'm not saying that all this is correct. I'm just saying that we have to figure out a better way to do what we're doing. We can keep plugging ahead and ignore everything and just say, I want to keep the school that I went to school at because I went there and I would have fond memories. That's not the core of the problem. The taxes here, I grew up on Long Island. My mother, my retired mom, 94 years old, pays $16,000 in property taxes for a house that my dad built for $25,000, including the property in 1955. Their house is valued at like $400,000. It's not worth a million dollars. She's paying $16,000 in property taxes. Most of that is school taxes. So, and I have friends in Connecticut and friends in California. Maryland. But the issue is the taxes are high-related to our income. And there's a big, larger issue here. The wage here is terrible. And the taxes are high-related to our income. Down there, they make gobs of money. They don't care about a $16,000 tax bill. But to say, just unequivocally, our taxes are high. Our taxes are very low. It's just that our wages and our incomes are also much lower. You look at the whole picture. You gotta look at the whole picture. The tax drop here, the tax is high. They're not related to income. They're high. I don't know if you are. I wanted to give other folks an opportunity to speak. Chris, did you have any? I mean, you're new to the school board, so. I have nothing to say at this time. I'm still trying to take it in. This is only my second meeting ever. Oh, really? Oh, well, for you. Really? I'm coming to Callen. And my first one was the entire issue of board. So it was equally as overloading. Gail, did you have anything to say? Yeah, well, I have one question for clarification, along with everything else. But one of the latest I've heard that if our school does close, the building is no longer ours. Is that true? I mean, this. Go ahead, Scott. Oh, sorry. Yeah, if the merged district, as I understand it, if the merged district decides no longer to use a building, they turn it over to the town for, basically, a dollar. Well, they don't own it. We don't own it. Oh, sorry. Yeah. The problem is, they use that. Well, we don't think what they want, but they use the deeds. And the deed is very clear. We bought it. We own it. It's actually in the town that Callis' name. It's not in some school entity's name. It's in the town that Callis' name. So if they want to buy it from us first, so they can own it and then give it back to us for a dollar, we can have that conversation. They do not own it. Right. Thank you. The chain of title is clear. But if they were to give it back to us, it could be used as a community center, as a rec center. There would be multiple uses. Right? There's a room or two. There is a room. I basically just came to learn. I've heard bits and pieces of this conversation. I'm very concerned about taxes. I think they're high. If you're retired from a Vermont business and you never made a great fortune, and when you sold your business, you didn't make a fortune again, then you're worried about high taxes. And they just drift up every year. It doesn't seem to matter. Everybody at town meeting, oh, we want all that. And the school, particularly. So I'm on the verge of needing to move somewhere else to lower my overhead, basically. To that, I would say this, though. You're having been on a board, the vice chair of the board for six years in the past. And then involved with that school heavily ever since. I mean, there's local boards with elected officials who go in front of town meetings. They control that cost as much as they can, and they keep that reasonable. I will guarantee you, and this is what I heard from the main people I talked to, the second they consolidate it, you've lost that check. You have no voice. And the costs spiral upward because there's nothing. And they also said, universally, accountability went to nothing. And they wouldn't even have much to say about what goes on at U-32 because it's a bigger group. Right. And just imagine that. Well, I could only just say, by you'd think. I mean, by efficiencies of scale, that should be cheaper. Why is it that that's by far the highest cost per pupil? And there's a lot of waste in there. There is you can't oversee. There isn't the kind of oversight at that level that you've got down at the local boards. Assuming you're like good boards. If you don't, garbage in, garbage out. It's cause and effect. The communities have the responsibilities, like a select board. If you put people in that aren't going to manage well, you're going to cost you. Want to give Scott a cheering opportunity, and then we need to talk about trash. We're not talking trash right now. Yeah, well, I was going to say something on those lines. Scott, do you have something you want to say? You can't impose this structure. But there's agreements that go along with it. Could you talk a little bit about that, Scott? There would have to be articles of agreement. And there are sort of standard default articles of agreement that we would not want. We would not be in our interest. So what we're trying to do, I mean, Rick is sort of outlining one or more alternative options that we could really try to keep open. One of those alternative options is to draw up variant articles of agreement in order to cover the debt problem in particular. Because that is clear and present danger, I think. And you can quantify it. And it's clear that if we don't solve that problem, we will go into this new merged system with bitterness and all kinds of bad vibes and psychology between the towns that will not lend itself to good management or, you know, legal issues. Well, he's a district. I thought he said the articles of agreement though couldn't find future boards. That's quite the word. There's one school of thought that says, if the towns vote on the articles, the actual text of certain articles, and those articles might have to do, say, with closing schools or with distribution of legacy debt, if those texts are voted on by the townspeople, then they can only be changed by the townspeople in a vote. That's a school of thought. However, there are other, I've heard other opinions expressed that no, that wouldn't matter, either. So once you've relinquished that power of that vote, you, the town, is no longer. That's what the lawyer who was in the 76G stated. I would go with the first term interpretation, but I don't. I think it would be at least. I specifically asked the question that the 76B here, they had a lawyer hired to come in an asset, and I asked that exact question, and he said no. He said the base, who was? Giuliani. Giuliani. And he came in, and he just, he said no. Any board in the future could, at their whim, could change those. And that means that if you've got two towns that are controlling all the votes, that there you go. Any articles you put in place can be modified. But there would be sort of a moral bond that you would hope would. Where has been the moral of the long-sought institution? I don't trust that. All right, so I want to give Sharon the next thing to speak. Yeah, thank you. So I think I want to echo Rose's comments and just thank her. This is Sharon with a calc sliver. With a sliver, yeah. Right, I was seven minutes late, and you guys were all finished eating and like deep into the time. No. Some of us didn't eat yet. Yeah. I did. So I'm hearing that the debt is a big issue. But one of the things that I worry about in this kind of a negotiation, if you will, is that we've made a big issue with the debt rightfully. And that gets addressed. Oh, the debt's taken care of. You're not going to own these fund players' debt or anybody else's debt. So I think what I haven't heard with any clarity is how do we feel about the issue if the debt issue has moved aside? And what position are we taking now so that we're clear, perhaps, that the debt's not the only issue, because that is a solvable issue. And some of the other issues that we're talking about, the fundamental nature of the school in our community, which I agree with. I lived in this town for five years before I knew anybody. And I started meeting you all when the kids started going to school. Right. It's a huge community. It's a huge community. And the debt can be solved, but we still have other concerns. So I want to say that out loud. Yeah, I don't think you can solve the sense of community in any written document or anything. The sense and the feeling and the stuff like that that's important is just gone. And you can't get that back. Janet, correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe the debt can be solved. We've been working on it for two years. We don't have an answer, right? I choose, yes. We think it can. I think the Articles of Agreement can do something other than simply pulling the debt. Just not to say that it's easy to do or that it will be totally satisfactory. I mean, the things that you have to take into account. There may be some consequences in terms of leasing, and selling, and transferring property, and so on. So this is something we haven't tried yet, because everything there was tried to add in last year to the, I don't know, the traditional model, whatever it is. I'm trying to call it the preferred model, the non-alternative model, that allowed something other than pulling debt. And so that's been on the book since last year. And I think there would be, if it says specifically bonding, I think there'd be room to do something like that. The agency opposed that language, too. They opposed that language for the traditional merger, and they opposed the language. So I got that language in, and I also got the language in on the alternative model, and they opposed that. So the report reads as though neither of those didn't success, but they do. So at what point do we say it's solvable? And we know for a certain 100% that it is something that can be solved. I will write up. I'll show you the solution. It's a mess. You will hate it, but it's a solution. And it's something they're accepting. So I don't know if they're accepting anything like that, but this Washington Central is a little bit unusual in terms of the disparity, because I looked at all the other towns, other SUs to see how much disparity there was in SUs. And there are SUs, including merged ones, where there's a significant disparity, but not as much as there is in Washington Central. So nobody's done it yet, but I think that there is room to do it. 100%, it's hard to know. But if one avenue is to have a group of people figure out a solution, that would be acceptable if that's where we end up, just so that we're not sort of saying, no, no, no, no, no, and then realizing that we've got to figure something out. But every time we put a solution out there to any problem, it's ignored. Or else they end run it with a new rule. I mean, that's been consistent through this whole process. I mean, it has been, their eyes are on one point and one path. I think if voters in the five communities voted for an alternative debt structure, they would agree with it. I can't think why they would agree. They is who? They being the state board, ultimately it's the state board. As opposed to the agency of education, which disagrees right now. Ultimately it's the state board. But I agree with Scott. They're basically staffed out of the agency. So they're definitely on. They're in bed. Yeah, there's a division, but it's not as. So all of this is going to happen before the legislature goes back in session. So what are you prepared to do this legislative session if we don't get, it's just, I mean, you and other people there are obviously not in favor of this. I mean, I can't, without knowing what's happening in August and what's going to happen, it would be certainly easier to come up with a solution if the communities that actually voted, the fact that there wasn't a vote, I think, was one weakness in our proposal. And I understand why there wasn't. But I do think it's very, very deliberate. At every one of the 706B meetings that I have said, we've got to be out in the public educating them. We've got to bring them. And there was a deliberate effort not to do that. So we're going to have to move on. I understand what Janet's point is. I have the history. But your point is if there were, if the town's folks, we had a special school board, school meeting, whatever you call it, town meeting, and we had a vote on a proposal. And the town's people in each town voted to support that proposal, the alternative proposal with the agreements and everything else Scott kind of talked about. Then you think the likelihood is greater than the A. I think it's straight, that's it. OK. That's an extremely important point. And it raises a question whether we should try to get something for the November election. Yeah, I think you should. Well, we have to have this thing nailed down. Like, I think you ran towards scenarios of financing. The powers that be, you all, the collective needs to arrive at what they think the best scenario is, and the most likely scenario to get passed, by the way. And it doesn't bias for against any town. Like, that's the one that's going to get passed. And then that's got to be run by the voters, like in November, as you say, and we can do that before the legislature. So you have to get the other towns to agree to that. Because we know what's going to happen August 15. They're going to still say no. So I think we have to go with knowing that that's probably what's going to happen and be planning for the next step. Because that's really going to be the most important thing, is to get the vote out. I would say this. If we're going to put that vote out there, simultaneously, we are also putting out our clear message that we're going to court, if any legal means we can. And number two, we look at discontinuing the school and we can begin the expiration of the starting. Wait a minute, let me hear me out. No, what I mean is an independent school, because they can't really deal with that. And that shows that you're actually serious. I mean, the only reason I'm skeptical about this is that we've done this in good faith. All the towns in Vermont. And by God, they've been railroaded. So I don't see that process happening so quick that we have to do all that right now, I think. It takes about three months. I talked to the towns. The attorney general is going to have to get behind this and T.J. is not a dummy. And I think when he gets down to what the reading law is and who owns what, I think he's going to be thinking very long and hard about it. We're not going to have time to talk about trash, which we need to. Gail, just one comment. I'd like to make mention of those of us that attended the supervisory meeting two weeks ago. And when Michael Dwayne, who happens to be for me, is my failure. I'm an XAG. Got up and I'd staff on top of staff. He was very, OK, you know, there's already too much staff at the supervisory union. That's where they need to start looking at where the dollars are. That's where Michael is very down. He was filmed. OK, so can we talk about trash? Don't you want to stay and talk about trash, Joe? So just a brief history. I'm not curious. The town received a notice of violation for the dung on several different issues. Our depot, it's not a depot. Yes, the transfer station. And we had Bruce Westcott from Solid Waste Management District come in. And we got dung on the composting stuff, which we told them, never mind about this grow compost. What is it called, grow compost? The depot is serviced by a private and a real compost. And they weren't necessarily coming and picking stuff up as they were contracted to do so. John Braeban is now doing picking up the compost. I'm waiting for the phone call. From whom? I was told Grow was their last time. Oh, that's right. Isn't it July? July is their last time. That was July 8th or something. We'll have to check on the timing of that. But John Braeban offered to take that. But then we talked about we looked at getting a grant to put up a fence. People in the East Calvist and other areas didn't like the idea of a fence because it would look ugly. And we can't afford to have staff there to make sure people aren't dropping stuff off when they shouldn't. We got done because there was other stuff dumped there that shouldn't be there. There are rodents, those kinds of issues. So we thought, well, maybe we could talk to the school and see you about the possibility of having the, I guess they call it fast trash. They come to take the bags. So we have right now it's a fast trash but it's on a different location. A different location. Well, our current location is different than the school we're talking about. Right, right. So we wanted to talk to the school about possibly having the Saturday pick up, which is like for three hours, at the school. The school already has a dumpster and a composting dumpster. So we've talked about cooperation and sharing and all those nice things. So we wanted to have that conversation with the school. Well, to be clear, we're not talking about using a school dumpster, the fast trash. No, no, that would be for the compost. Well, no, they already have a compost. No, but we talked about putting the compost in the schools. The parries who do the fast trash, they take it off site the same day. So it would never be left at the school. So they just show up with the truck and the people bring bags. They bring their bags. Just what they do when they smell clearly around the WEC parking lot now. Yeah, the former fire station. Right. So we just wanted to have that conversation because we have to get back to the state with this violation that they've noticed the violation that they gave us. And the problem with the current site, it's historically been, it actually was a landfill at one time, it's where the trash used to go. And then it got closed to municipal trash and it was only a stump dump, as they call it, brush and stumps and that kind of stuff, which wound up being building materials and all this illicit dumping and whether or not someone's there. And we have no way to control that. And even though we've ceased that and our highway crew doesn't dump over there and you brush or anything any longer, we still have people backing up and dumping stuff and also leaving trash, knowing that they will get picked up on Saturday. So we need to end that. Are we gonna run into that issue at the school? I mean, we're gonna transfer that problem over to you. I think the fact that they come with the truck and they leave, right now, that's what happens at your place right now. No, right now there's, but right now there's people. It's an old landfill. It's an old landfill. There's a sign that says Callis Depot. There's the thing where they pull up so they can, you know, that, what is that, that boardwalk looking thing with the steps on it? So you can put the stuff into the truck. That wouldn't be there. So that leaves, I mean, those signs there are like, it's like advertising that the trash gets picked up here. So it would be trash when we advertised. I mean, if we did. I think you would find people, not many, but I think the opportunity for people to drive by Friday night and go, oh, they'll be here tomorrow. Sleep. Well, they can do that, and then you'll spend this, we won't do this. We can try it, and if it doesn't work, then we stop. If it's a problem for the school, it stops. You get what I'm saying. We can do it. An exploratory. We're proposing, at the very least, try this as a test run. We don't have any permanent infrastructure that we need to maintain at our current location or we need to dismantle. There's nothing there, and it's just going from one location to another, from one parking lot to another. And it doesn't work for the school, for whatever set of reasons we've been thought about, then we'll just end it. We'll come out of another. Right, and we've talked to the Perrys, and they don't care where they park their car. Really? I was thinking over by the dumpsters in that corner. We can explore that, but we'd have to, we do have a quarter of that. I would want to put it on a future school board agenda. We have to check with our insurance and have it work. Well, our town insurance, we could cover it. Right, the town insurance. And what we want to make sure that we're not- Our insurance would still have to authorize it. Probably have to have a waiver or something. Yeah, we'd have to work that out. We just have to make the concerns. We've got young kids there, so that has to be absolutely clean, and that we can't have people dumping them. So that would be major issue. Yeah. Well, I just wanted to put it out there that if we can work together on this issue, because we have to, we have to get back to the state. It's already been since April. And what do we need? We need a certain size parking lot, and what? What do you need? Room enough for a truck to park, room enough for people to get up, pull their cars up, and all of them- What size truck? They do it in front of the Woodbury- General's Fire station. Yeah, right, right. Every Saturday. So that much room there. Yeah, that's what you need. There's more than I've heard of in those lines. Yeah. Scott? What's the name of the guy that gave us demerits? They gave us the numbers of 11 roads. The demerits were the demerits of Western. It was Western? No, it wasn't Western. It was from the state. It was. Well, my question is- Deborah Pierce, I think, is your name. We have that sign up that says depot when we're registered. Right. What if we just say, no, we're not a depot. We're not registered. We'll take the sign down. We'll ask the shameless to drive his truck there forever. Just cutting off- I think people are going there because there's a sign they're going there because their grandfather went there, and they remember pitching it over the bank. There's no bank. They'd be pitching it on the soccer field of catalysts. It is different. My question is, does this guy inspect the Woodbury fast trash? Does he inspect the Woodbury? Well, I think the problem is we maintain a certification there, even though we no longer need one. The other ones don't. And so why did we do that? Why don't we get rid of that? We need to just not renew it. Yeah. Just get out of it. But that's not why residents are dumping there because we have a certification. It's why we're being inspected. I mean, inspection is legitimate. If people are dumping, they don't want to see that, and we don't want to see that. If we just have fast trash like they have in Woodbury and he's not playing stuff, that doesn't require any kind of certification. We wouldn't be an inspector. What we have now does not require a certification. So one of the things we could check out is getting rid of the certification. We send a letter, but it still doesn't matter if they happen to buy and they saw illegal dumping. They saw illegal dumping on your property. Right. They write the same letter you're dumping illegally. People run burn barrels. They write them notices, same notices. Yeah. Well, it wasn't so much that you didn't have a place to do it. I think you were offering to do it at the school to help with that community connection. Yeah, I'm also not right. It brings people to the school that normally wouldn't go to the school for any reason, another sense of using the school as part of the community. That's a very good point. It's trashed it all. Oh, but it's fine. You know, you can have Girl Scout cookie sales and Boy Scout, whatever stuff going on at the same time. Lile collection. Truthfully, I mean, it is a social event. I mean, it is. I mean, go to the doctor. That's where you meet people, right? Yeah. SK Squad, he knows that. Sharon? No, I think people have a different sense of accountability and responsibility when it comes to the school grounds and to the quiet bend in the road that there will be no reason to stay. Right. Yeah, so I'm sorry. Just speaking as a resident of East Palace Village, moving the trash pickup to somewhere else doesn't solve the problem of people legally dumping. So what's the idea? We could put berms up at that point. And just close the whole area. Go ahead and grass it off. That's the only thing we've discussed. Guard rail or something. Grass, I was interested. I didn't believe that there wasn't a solution. I was just here. We don't need a parking lot there anymore. The lovers can park somewhere else. It's not at the dump. And we can actually make that. We actually talked about that. Or we can make that like a picnic area. It's actually not a terrible place to hang out. So you could also make that a nice little picnic area. A little park area. And then another alternative, potential alternative, I'm sure it's probably been considered. But I know that the Calus Rec Association operates the rec field, which has a big parking lot that is not necessarily used for anything a lot of time. Yeah, but originally, the thought was the community, with the school in the town working together, getting people to the school. Like you said, they don't normally go there. There's a lot of opportunities to get people involved, maybe, in watching a sports event or something while they're there. There's no sports events at the school. All the sports are set up at the right field. But you could have it. They could use the library. I think if we're creative, there's a lot of ways to get people involved more with the school if they're taking their trash there. And those school lots are maintained year-round. Those rec lots aren't necessarily where they don't dial the notch order. So that's true in the winter. Yeah. I mean, I can just see it there being more interaction. And we need the compost bin. Right. Scott? I go there every Saturday. 80% of the people that come during the summer are from Woodbury, from St. Louis. Even though they have their own? They don't. Yeah, they go there. OK, one more comment, Gail, and then we're going to wrap things up. It's my understanding that that property belongs to the Dwynell Association. Direct fields? Direct fields, yeah. It's at least to the CRA for a dollar a lifetime or something. Right. I think that's a consideration. I think that's a consideration. No, absolutely. I wasn't offering it as a necessary place. I thought of the rec field, but I think the solution makes more sense. Well, again, there's no plow in the rec field. Right, you can get down there. I mean, the town plows out the parking lot at the school already, so. You'd have to put the ramp in at the school. That takes up a lot of room. I don't know why you have to have the ramp. They don't have the other. So you can get to the recycling truck. But they don't have that anywhere else, that ramp. They're at the fast trash places. Well, that's how Brian Barry runs. He's going to have to change his operation if it doesn't work for us. All right, I know we were going to talk about community engagement, but I don't think we have time. And that was kind of something Dot was on call for, so. And she's out sick. So I wanted to thank the school board so much. I know you guys are busting your tails. And we really appreciate it. And all the long hours, and all the meetings, and yet you came tonight, and we really appreciate all your work. We appreciate your interest and the invitation. We'd love to do it again. Yeah, I mean, this is important. We're both doing town business, and we're working in isolation on this. This is really great. Well, we're going to do it at least two or three times a year. And if there is something you need from us, as you're working on whatever, you want to have some kind of joint documents signed by the town and the school board, just let us know. As this thing ramps up, if you need more meetings, just contact Denise, and we'll just have a call. Right. Or if you want us to attend, you want us to attend your meetings. Right, so just let us know. I think the communication lines are pretty good. As far as the trash is concerned, I think we have a meeting coming up that we can just address the whole board meeting, and then we can talk to them about to get on the agenda. And also, just because I want to make sure I'm on the record, I was in no way operating or suggesting that the rec field was the place to go. I was just thinking about it, and I'll turn it over. Yes, it's already in the notes. Yeah. Can the times are it is? The times aren't made. I was going to see my mouth just like, sorry. But David's going to do this. He's already got it. This time, right? So. OK, so thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thanks, you guys. Yes, I make a motion to adjourn. Second. Aye. Aye. And is Katie's doing these notes, or do you all want to adjourn? Pardon? Sure. Motion to adjourn. So moved. All in favor? All in favor. Yeah, all in favor. All in favor. All in favor?