 5.30 here. So we'll open the meeting. Call the meeting to order. First on the agenda is public comment. This is for anything that's not currently on the select board's agenda. I have something. Hang on. I got to go ahead Sally. I'm here for the library. And I just wanted to let you all know that last month or maybe the month before we finally settled on a new logo for the library. And our new website is up and running as of I believe December 30 or 31. It is fantastic. Thank you all to go check it out. Go to Kimball library.org. And it means the same information, but it's absolutely gorgeous. And we have the grandma Moses project starting the small poster is up now in the window of Bell mains. It was in the newsletter. It was in the newspaper. Last week, I believe, if you're interested in being part of this project, you can sign up and get your six inch square from the poster and reproduce it on a blank 12 inch square and we'll put it up in the window as soon as we get it. I think there are only about seven squares left. So if you're interested, it'd be really nice to have the select board represented in this project. I got to tell you. Robin Goodall is going to run for a second term on the board, which I think is pretty exciting. And we have agreed to put up what we refer to as an awning. There's a canvas cover at the hospital over the stairs that you go into downstairs. We're doing something similar to that off the side entrance at the library, so that people can come to the downstairs door to pick up books drop and it's it's accessible whereas the stairs up to the front door are not accessible. And this will also make it easier, much easier in the winter. And then when when the virus is finally under control, and we can come and go as we please it will provide space for strollers and other items to be left and not take up space inside the library. So that's that's going to be make a big difference and I think it'll probably make a bigger difference than we even anticipate because it's going to free up room downstairs for other uses. And then I when I was asking Amy of she had anything else she wanted me to tell you all. She pointed out that overdrive, which is the library system ebooks and audio books has seen for Vermont has seen a 45% higher use during the first nine months of this year that of this fiscal year which is before COVID 45% higher use in the same period of fiscal year 19 and before we had to close our doors and then then after we had to close our doors, the views absolutely she says went through the roof. So the library, I think is continuing to provide all the services that we provide almost all the services that we provide with the doors open, and people are taking advantage of it and using it to help us just get through this terrible terrible time. So thank you, Sally. Any questions for Sally. See in any day. Thank you all I'm going to go. Thanks, Sally. Thank you, madam chair, are you calling on me. Yes, I did. Thank you madam chair for your time and for the time of your select board. I am here to share with you all. Not a certain number I haven't actually had time to count but these past couple of days I've been gathering petition signatures of overwhelmingly supportive of two article measures that I hope will be on this year's town meeting day ballot. The first one is. All the town voters authorized an exemption to the Randolph center area fire association for real estate taxes on the Randolph center firehouse at 107 furnace street, furnace road for a period of five years. And the second article is, shall the town Randolph permit the operation of licensed cannabis retailers subject to such municipal ordinance and regulation as the select board may lawfully adopt and implement. And because I didn't submit them today in time for the deadline is your. The agency is yours madam chair and your select board to decide how these articles should be written, because that legally binding petition was not submitted site. What I'm here to say is that there is the support for these two ballot measures to be included this year on March 2, but it's, it's up to you as to how they're worded and actually frankly that's, that's how I would prefer it because the second article there is the one more controversial. And it's basically putting to the voters at large, the question of whether or not Randolph should permit or should not permit the sale of marijuana in the town. And it seems to me that this language is far too ambiguous to offer comfort to the voter that that the thing that the marketplace would be regulated. So let's say on there that it's up to you all the select board members to decide how it will be regulated. Perhaps you would create a cannabis control board for Randolph or some such regulatory arm of the select board but to me it seems like maybe I might consider including the language. Let's say you you put it to the planning commission to decide which zones of the downtown should be allowed if this ballot measure passes. Now this is just to get it on the on the ballot and it's actually it would be in the interest of folks who are vehemently opposed to marijuana and it's sale to have this question on the ballot to so that they can vote no. In the next few months if if you Madam chair and your select board does put these this article on the ballot. There will be a public discourse regarding, you know, education about this topic so that voters have an opportunity to think about this between now and then and and by the time they vote be well informed. So thank you. So that's actually under old business for town meeting and town report. That will take that question up. Fair enough. The else. Okay, not seeing any will move on to approval of the agenda. I move to approve the agenda. All those in favor. Aye. Aye. Opposed. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Next is the consent calendar. This is a variety of meeting minutes and warrants. I have a couple of comments on. Two of the meetings. A minutes. On January 5th. Under executive session. I would move to approve the consent agenda for those three changes. I'm second. Manager. To complete. Personnel interviews. So as people. Public knows why we went into executive session. And one on January 10th. I would suggest the same thing. And under adjournment of O was three to zero. Tom had left by that point. So I would move to approve the consent agenda with those. All those in favor. Hi. Hi. Opposed. Stained carries. New business. First up is a EC fiber appointment. In your. In your packets, there was no information other than just a briefing on, on this request. There was some confusion in communicating with our reps. Freezy fiber in the town. Our initial thought was. For the initial request that we had received appeared to say that. The appointment requests would be held off until March. When the board appoints, you know, makes new appointments to the reorganization meeting. But this week we learned after we had sent the packet to the board to the board that the request is. Is now to appoint. The recommendee Ian Sears. Today. And then again reappoint in. March. So. That is a bit of a change from what had been described to the board. When we send their packet. So. Leave it to the board to decide. Did we get. Anything with the background or. Interest, we got nothing, right? No, we received an email from, from Jerry. Just indicating that Ian Sears is interested in the position. We do have Ian Sears here on the call. We also have. CJ stump. I don't know if it appears to be on the call and Jerry ward was on the call, but I don't see that he's still logged on. I'm still here. Oh, there you are. Okay. So Ian, could you just maybe give us a really brief. Background. That's relevant. Hi, I'm Ian Sears. Thank you for giving me a moment to explain my interest in stepping up to. Serve. It's a pleasure Randolph. Is it. Delegate. Alternate delegate. The EC fiber board. My background. Has been for many decades in. Internet engineering. I'm a student of the LSI reference model. I worked for McDonald Douglas and IBM and NASA. And I've worked for many years here in Vermont. Some of you know me to build websites, which is a quick way of explaining. But I do have a history of TCP IP, the link to the internet, how things are wired and the. The processes and procedures to go into this. I'm. Good friend of. Jeff Tolber, who unfortunately has passed. And we chatted well before EC fiber was formalized. About the need in our town for something like this. And so when it came up and I heard that he was. A delegate I was super pleased. So it just in light of the change that happened last year. I contacted Jerry and CJ and asked if they'd find me suitable. And I've been in attendance of EC fiber. Board meetings. And I was originally, I meant, I mentioned some of you seem to be around town. Seven or eight years ago, getting everyone to sign a petition that we need EC fiber and building consensus and pass that into EC fiber during its original year. So it's been a long passion of mine. I believe in its benefit to our town. My interest is, is town focused random. My home. So I respectfully consider that you will. Approve me as an alternate delegate. I believe CJ and I would like to see Jerry take the position of official delegate. Enter him at the very least. Until the formal vote in March. As would as would be normally on the agenda. I'm open to any questions if anyone has any. So what we're being asked today is to fill the. I think we're going to need to fill the vacancy. I think we're going to need to fill the vacancy. An alternate delegate. On here. Jerry would like to take that question. It's filling the vacancy left by Jeff, which is the position. Yeah, if I. I think I can. Give some background information that hopefully will simplify it, but I wish it was a little bit simpler to understand. But I think we're going to need to fill the vacancy. I think we're going to need to fill the vacancy. I think we're going to need to fill the vacancy. I don't have the obligation to do anything tonight. One of my earlier expectations was that this would be taken up at the March meeting, which is when it usually happens. By statute. I'm talking about the enabling telecommunication statute that brought. The communications district into existence. And so. That's what I'm talking about. I think it's been very popular. And so every year that delegates that designates. Who the. The main. First delegate is they call it representative on the form. And up to two alternate delegates. They all have equal. Powers, if you will. They all have equal responsibilities. There's really no difference from the rep. From our perspective. It's purely a statutory. work, if you will. So we have two functioning delegates, CJ and myself. There's no need right now, but it's available as an option right now to appoint a third delegate. And that would be Ian or someone else if you want to open it up to the public. So that's one choice that you could make. But again, it's not mandatory by any pressure that is coming from us. And I think I'm speaking for CJ with that too. Yep, Jerry's correct. This was discussed briefly on the EC fiber boards, along with the fact that there was a little bit of confusion due to language in the legislation, but the board's discussion supports what Jerry just said. So if you're interested in two paths, there would be the least amount of bureaucratic hassle, if you will. You could, I think you could just, if you like this current slate, just approve them and go slow on submitting it in March. And then you'd be done. You wouldn't have to have another meeting. And I think that's totally legitimate. The only possibility would be if you have new select board members who come on, who I want to retroactively want to review the decision because you'd have some new board members presumably. I'm not hearing that we need to take any action tonight. Right. I'm just, if you don't want to have to deal with it again in March, there is that option you could take some action tonight. And I'm pushing it one way or the other. It's your call. Tom? So hopefully that makes it more clear and not more muddled. Tom, you're muted. There we go. Sorry about that. Just to get some clarity. So all three of you have equal voting powers at any, at any meeting, even though the alternate suggests that there are like substitutes, if you can't be the prime representative, Jerry, am I understanding that correctly that you all have equal voting? Yeah. The way it works is that we try to coordinate with among ourselves to make sure that at least one of us is there at every meeting. And sometimes there's two or three of us. We work it out collaboratively about who's going to be the voting delegate that night. Okay. So only one of us votes. We never have votes opposing each other. It's totally dependent on us to work out consensus if there's more than one opinion. Thank you. Are there board meetings between now and Townley? There is one and possibly two depending on town meeting date. Yeah. They're the second Tuesday of every month. And to be clear, these board meetings are open to the public. And so it's always good to have people attending. That's just kind of a public service announcement. To the board members, anybody want to take action tonight or do you want to wait until March? I'll make a motion. I'll move. We approve adding the NSEERS to the EC fiber alternate list till Townley. Second that. A little bit in favor. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. Next up is a request for a variance for wastewater ordinance from pay. We should have our water superintendent on the call, but I'm not sure if he's on. Yeah, I'm here. Can you hear me? Yep. There you are, Chris. Thanks. Chris, would you mind introducing the water variance for the proposed construction in town? Yeah. Thank you. So faith Sherman's property currently address zero self pleasant. This is his parcel across from the self pleasant cemetery. Just beyond Fairview street. And the issue is, is that he wants to put in four. Three bedroom homes. In the sewer district. The issue is, is that where he's located. We'll not tie into the wastewater system in a manner that doesn't. Either serve as a heavy financial. Issue like a very expensive pump station. On his end. And in order to do that, it would also tie into our property. And then we have a line from being bill, which poses future problems for ourselves. The other issue is there's no gravity feed line. The nearest one is down on the end of maple street. And it's several hundred feet away. And it just. Elevations and that type of stuff wouldn't allow him to do that. So that's the issue. So that's, that's the issue. If you do the site testing, they can put onsite septics for all four properties. So that's. Pretty much the gist of it. There was a letter from the engineer that kind of had. A little more detail. I don't know if you guys got that or not. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, we have it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The letter wasn't prepared yet, but I had asked the water sewer committee at the time. If they wanted to discuss it or if they wanted to wait. We did discuss it. It did pass with a motion. To allow the variance. Any questions. Sorry. Chris, how far would it have to be pumped to feed in the water? I don't know how many feet. I'd have to do the math. I'd have to do looking on the map, but it's. It would be a couple hundred feet. Do we have any estimates of what it would cost to do the different options? I noticed the engineer carefully avoids them. I do not. Have an estimate. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The kicker there is that if he sells all four parcels. Per the ordinance, we end up owning the pump station. And on average, it costs us about $1500 a year to maintain a pump station. And if you figure. Four parcels at 10 units. That's $1500 a year. That's $1500. Times the sewer rate of 1250. And then that's $500 for one quarter. And times that by four quarters, you only come out with revenues of about $2,000. And if we have a pump fail. Or any major maintenance issues with that pump station. It could end up being more of a. A hassle. If you have a pump station there. That's just from my end of it. I can request that the engineer supply. Some estimates. If you would like to. See those. We're just talking about wastewater, right? We're not talking about town water. Correct. He's already done the water allocation. I don't know. Maybe I didn't send the water allocation one. My apologies. Yeah. I figured it probably was only wastewater. Yeah. No, it's just wastewater. My bad. I'll have to send it for next month, but there was supposed to be water. It was also approved. Okay. So from personal experience, we've done this before because I was actually one. I think it was, it was more of a. That was important to me. So, you know, I wouldn't have a problem with that. You know, Grannis. That's just my opinion on the subject. Is that emotion? Could be, I guess, wanted to be a motion. I can make an emotion. Go for it. All right. So I would make a motion that we grant the request. Second. A motion and a second. All those in favor. Would I discuss it? Please. from the town's point of view if we're going to pay for the sewer plant there's a reason we have that in the ordinance that they have to hook up and four properties with each one of them would I'd say undoubtedly use more than 10 hundred cubic feet so that's a low estimate as to what they're going to pay. From the town's point of view I would think we would want to have everybody hook on again to pay the bond we have. I would agree with you in general Pat, but from the documents that we received and from the testimony that Chris gave during our water sewer community meeting it seemed basically like you know if we deny them this request we're going to render these sites undevelopable. We really don't have, it's not a matter of getting them on the system or not it's really a matter of whether they're going to be allowed to develop these and put homes on them or not and we're not going to lose out on the opportunity to add folks to the wastewater system if we deny this. In addition to that you know you'll pick up a lot of tax revenue on the properties that are going to be developed there. Absolutely. So that's why I don't have a problem with it because we really don't have a good access point and you know I don't know whether we really want to take on the burden of maintaining a pump station if there's not a lot of money in this for us so I'd much rather see the tax revenue from the developed properties and kind of wash this off as a loss leader. Chris the way the ordinance is written do we have to take over the pump station or can we if we want to? So it gets tricky there you could force them into a like a homeowners type association but again you know I don't know if that would hinder the development of the property and it I just don't you know the ordinance do say that we're supposed to but again if they were to if we were to say we'll you know no we require this but they go that route or they choose not to go that route then yes we are required to take it over because it's four separate connections. That's where it gets a little tricky there there's a little more detail it has to be figured out and it ends up going into the I believe that dips into like the zoning construction permits of it all. I think this is a reasonable exception I don't think we're setting any kind of precedent this is kind of an unusual circumstance. I guess I would like to see more cost figures and so forth before I favor it. Okay any other discussion we have a motion and a second on the floor seeing none all those in favor aye. Aye. You're muted Barry. Aye. Opposed. No I think it's premature. Abstain. Motion carries. Next up is a request for an increase in a waste water allocation for New England Precision. So this week we're getting a lot of good use out of Chris. Chris so thanks for joining us today. Chris has been working with good folk in New England Precision on their proposed plan to increase operations. They approached Chris some time ago to work out potential increase in their discharge. So Chris has been working with them and Chris do you have any more details to share? So basically going into COVID they were already kind of pushing up against their I think it's 748 gallons per day limit and one or 765 sorry and then once COVID struck they manufacture certain little parts that took off plus they received some new contracts and they've actually been operating above their allocation of 765 and they immediately approached me and wanted to make it right and so this has been in the process that's an allocation charge of $1,100 or 1175. There's wouldn't be no change to their BODs any of that type of stuff it's just the additional gallonage for treatment. They've actually done a fantastic job of lowering their BOD numbers and what they send us to make it a better quality. So that was kind of you know this is a little more straightforward. Did I ask some questions of course? Yep. They have their own water supply right? No they do not they so we supply the water. So we supply the water so there'd be an access fee for water too? I believe I might have to double check this but their water allocation is far above that because they didn't used to have a wastewater restriction they used to have their own leech field and if you remember they always used to have all that steam pumping off so they used to boil off all their process water this is for this is for their process water discharge this isn't for their like their bathrooms or hand washing that type of stuff this is for the water that's used in cleaning parts manufacturing that type of stuff. So this is a separate meter? Sorry say that again. Is it a separate meter? Yes they have multiple meters because of how they're set up. So they wouldn't need more water here's something I don't think they would. Yeah I would be happy to look into it to make sure that the water allocation is still good to go but this is for their process water. Yeah well I think that would be worthwhile looking at lease checking. Do they have a written discharge agreement? I see you said they have a discharge agreement is that? Yes they do this would be an amendment to that agreement. And do they pay a higher rate for that or is it the same right? No they pay so it's based on the BOD numbers if they go over a BOD of 250 they have to pay a surcharge to us which they generally do pay that you know they their cliff would have to probably could help me a little bit with what their bills are but I know they pay you know they pay a fair amount over the normal rate. Based on their BOD. That is correct. And there the access fees five dollars right for wastewater. Correct. Thank you. Any other questions on this one? Seeing none I'll entertain a motion. Perry you're muted. Okay I'll make a motion to grant NEP's request to increase their gallonage to a thousand gallons per day. Seconded. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Opposed? Stained? Motion carries. Next up we have the special appropriation request for the Orange County special investigation unit. So earlier this week we received a request or the request was submitted to Emery from the Orange County Sheriff's Department. The request had indicated that the Sheriff's Department had suffered a loss in grant revenue that helped fund the special investigations unit. They'd been working with Emery on this particular project and so Emery if you're on the call if you'd like to speak more about your communication with them. Certainly. Can you hear me? Yep. All right. My video seems to be out but just today I just I received a letter from them. I was speaking to their executive director for an amendment and a clarification. The special investigations unit is actually part of a larger nonprofit and they want to keep it separate and be treated as separate entities. So they would therefore like to amend and clarify their previous request to include a special appropriations for each organization, the Sheriff's Office and the nonprofit which is a really long acronym and I can say it if you'd like. So essentially the requested initially arrived to the town was that the Orange County special investigation unit was asking for approval from the board to be added as a special appropriations recipient and they amount to $1,500 and then today on the day of the meeting a second group that is associated with the Orange County special investigation unit which is not a part of the Sheriff's Department but is its own nonprofit organization submitted a request saying we are also a part of this unit. However, the initial requested didn't include us. We also want to be considered for a second $1,500 request. So it's an 11th hour request from a nonprofit that he had not heard of before but claims works with the Sheriff's Department. But didn't we vote that special appropriations had to submit signatures and petitions? Yes. These guys think they're not part of that. Their initial letter to us asked them to exclude our nonprofit from the collection of signatures. But we already voted to make people that wanted to be on that list have to get the signatures. That's right. I don't think that's fair. I agree. Yeah, I agree. And I don't get the distinction between this second nonprofit that's coming at the 11th hour. It's separate from the special investigation unit and it's the special investigation unit in its own right, a nonprofit that's not part of the... Are we talking about two nonprofits here? Well, I don't know. It's not clear to me. But I think the point that Trini made is really... The most germane. Yeah, exactly. They're coming to us with a request to not have to put in signatures and I think we specifically wanted that and so I think we should deny this request. But we always have the option of doing it ourselves if we wanted to. True, but I think we were clear in our intent and I personally don't think the slack board should be in the position of approving or not approving on a case-by-case basis people who come in without signatures. I think that we have a pretty good system. It's reasonable. It's fair and I think we should stick to it. Yeah, that could open up a whole Pandora's box if we go that route. I have one quick question. What does the special investigations unit investigate? They focus on sex crimes. That's what I thought. Okay, sex trafficking, sex crimes, pornography. Is the public allowed to make a comment just to clarify what the special investigations unit is? Jack, can we do that? If Trini is answering, she's muted. I think we've got the gist of what it is. The issue isn't really what they do. It's that any non-profit, no matter what they are coming to the town, asking for special treatment seems to be unfair. Anybody want to take action on that item or? I'm not even clear what the question is at this point. What the other group is? Do we need a motion? We don't need a motion. We can pass on it. Being none, we'll move forward to the proposed bids for the East Randolph Hall. The town had released a bid in working with the East Valley Community Group to request architect bids for an assessment of the Hall in East Randolph. The town received four bids, three of which arrived before the deadline. One arrived two hours after the deadline, but arrived late because it had been sent days in advance, but was from the markings on the FedEx package. It shows that it was in transit since December 31st. It only arrived two hours late on the day of the deadline. We did also receive a fifth bid this week, which has not been shared with the select board. The challenge with the fifth bid submitted is that it was submitted over a week after the initial deadline and then also after the amounts had essentially made public of the initial four bids. There are some challenges with considering that bid, even if it's far lower than the initial four. There are legal issues involved with that. Because of the varying amounts of the bids, they far exceed the budgeted amount between the town and the East Valley Community Group. One of the strategies that has been considered is that the select board direct town management and town staff to essentially re-approach all of the bidders with the same information to say, would you be willing to itemize all of your costs so that they're not just lumped into one pot? And then also to ask if they would be willing to allow the town and the East Valley Community Group to tailor what their proposal would be so that we can cherry pick from the itemized items list and potentially have a project that falls within our budgeted amount. So we hope that the board would consider authorizing town staff from the East Valley Community Group to take that route to try to continue forward with this project. Can I offer one more comment Adolfo? Hang on John. Okay. Part of the challenge here is that how the pricing should be done wasn't specific in the proposal. So the way that the bids came in, they all priced in a little bit different format. So it makes it a little bit challenging to compare bids for some of these, but with having them so far over getting the data in by task will allow development of a scope that can move forward so that there's at least some forward progress made. Do you have more to add John? I was going to also say that I believe the intent is to still down select to one of these, not cherry pick from one to the other for specific tasks. Oh, you'd have to pick one contractor. Right. It allows you to only move forward with a set number of tasks instead of having to award the entire scope. I may make a comment. Yeah, go ahead Mark. Thank you. Before very high bids were all not really addressing our scope. They all had a lot of other stuff in there. Of course, there are also some very high costs within the scopes that they propose, but the real problem with the high bids is that they had included a lot of things that we didn't ask for. That seems to argue then for exactly what the administration is proposing, which is to go to this itemized route and then work together to cherry pick those things that we want done within the itemized bids and choose the, not necessarily the lowest bidder, but the bidder we're most comfortable with within the context of what we decide the scope will be. Any other questions on the case here? I would like to move that we authorize the staff to work with all bidders to request itemization of the bids and a resubmission. I'll second that. I have a motion and a second. I have a question. Yep, go ahead Pat. Sorry. Would that, would the intent be to get a new scope and then redid that or what's the intent here to work with only those four bidders anyway? The intent is to get a pricing by task item so that you can then figure out how they compare better. Some of them are like lump sum. So we need to get it broken out. It's not to, we're not developing a whole new scope of work because that would require a whole new bid put out to anybody that wants to bid. We're just going to ask the four that have submitted to refine their bids in a format. As Mark suggested, it sounds like, it sounds like some of the bids were way beyond the initial intent scope wise. So this will help really focus things by taking the itemized approach. So that excludes the fifth bidder, which was like half as much from being involved. I hope all the bidders will be invited to resubmit. Including though the one that was a week late? Actually that one came in on Friday. What's been really a week like? You can't allow the fifth bidder in. I mean, they already knew what the others bid when they put their bid together. You're going way out on a slippery slope with that one. Yeah, that's true. They were actually the late bidder here, but they were actually the folks that had initially quoted the entire effort to begin with and with whom the project had been scoped earlier to develop an approach. They should have gotten their bid in sooner. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, what is the name of that company? It is Scott and Partners. No, that is one of the groups on the list. Oh, you're right. They're on the list. It's Vermont integrated. Well, unfortunately, they needed to hit the deadline or before the bids were opened. Once the bids are open, they're public. So you can't you can't then take one that comes in a week later. Excuse me. This is Betsy. Hi, Betsy. Hi. Can it just be reopened and put out to bid again? And then clarify exactly what we want in the scope. And that way, the company that gave us a bid in February and then did it again now in January could be included. That's actually an excellent suggestion because all the bidders were far above budget, expected budget. It's not the challenges that the challenges that we're going back to ask the bidders to break out their bids and to they essentially all received the same RFP for requests for bids. And they reviewed it and they responded based on what we had made public. If we don't like the price, it's one thing and we could cancel because we didn't like the price. But if we then reissue while we're having this conversation now with the intent of, well, we like this other company more because they have a lower price and then go with them. And now we're creating a scenario where we're rigging the game. We know that they were late. We know that they have a more favorable price. We're going to switch the bid request to tailor it to what they know is what we want. There lies the rub. What we can do is we can not accept any of these bids and develop a new scope of work, which it sounds like from Mark's comments that somehow the bidders have interpreted that we want stuff that we don't really want, which leads to maybe the scope that we all wrote together isn't as clear as it could be. So we can not accept any of these bids, redraft the scope of work and put it out again. I think that would be a good way to do it. Frankly, the other four didn't really address a lot of things and they certainly included a lot of things that weren't in our intention, weren't in the scope. So it would be great to try again, I think. That was exactly what I was going to suggest. It sounds like the original scoping was vague or ambiguous enough that we got a lot of mixed bags in the bids we got, a lot of a mixed bag in the bids we got. I think if we're more precise about what the scope is and resubmit the RFP or as in the resubmit would be the best way to go. Yeah, I think actually what the people did was we got sort of boilerplate bids and they included a lot of things that they ordinarily do, but aren't necessarily like for example, mechanical for this building, which has a new heating system. We don't need mechanical really, that kind of thing. It sounds like John and Mark would like to take the existing scope and redraft it. Looking for a vote from the board then to not accept any of the votes and authorize a rebid. I'll move that we reject all four bids because they're so much higher than the budget is and authorize rebidding. I'll second that. I have a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Opposed? Stained? Motion carries. Next up is grants. None to bring to the board today. Great. Town meeting. We are accompanied today by our town clerk and Joyce and Cliff and I have been talking about what town meeting 2021 could look like. The state legislature has at least the house, not yet the senate has passed a bill on what town meeting could potentially look like this year. And if the board would like, we have Joyce on the call. Yeah, so just a quick question on we had Jay presenting the two petitions earlier that have the signatures. Today the deadline, Joyce, or is it tomorrow? Deadline is today. It was at five o'clock. Okay, somehow I had the 15th in my head. Probably because it's my kid's birthday. I think it may have been the 15th last year. Wouldn't want to be consistent. Keep us on our toes. Okay, thank you. So, I don't know if Jay wants to comment about the legislation. My understanding of what the legislation is, is that it would give permission to the select board to choose to potentially move town meeting day to a date later in the year when potentially it would be safer due to the current COVID-19 situation. And I believe that with moving the meeting, you would also potentially be moving the voting piece. You do also have the option of still voting the Australian ballot piece town meeting day, March 2nd. You could have your meeting just call the meeting and then recess it. And then you can recess it to a time later. But you would have to at that time specify that you are recessing this meeting to a date specific so that you don't have to re-warn the warning. And then you can meet at that later date. And basically to be sure that people know about it, you just need to be sure that you put advertising out there so people are aware that you have moved the date. And so if you were to warn the warning right now, stating that we would be meeting the Saturday, February 27th for our meeting, but make it known to the public that the intent of holding that meeting would be to just initially call the meeting to order and then to recess it so that we could meet later in the spring, but then still also go ahead and vote the Australian ballot issues. Act 162 from last fall, I don't recall if the select board voted to vote all public questions and Australian ballot questions by Australian ballot. If you did, then we could still proceed with voting all that on Tuesday, March 2nd. And then that would be done and you wouldn't have to deal with that later on. Then you could hold your meeting later and then discuss whatever you wanted to discuss. You could discuss the results of the vote. And if people want to bring up other issues, they could bring that up. And the Act 48 also, I believe, gives permission to the select board to authorize me to mail ballots to all voters. My recommendation to you is not to. We have five ballots. Not everybody gets all five ballots. Some people get two, some people get three, some people get four, some people get five. And if I had to send ballots for everybody, it will be a nightmare to try and pull it together and get it out. I would recommend that we send out something to all voters letting them know that we are encouraging them to vote absentee, that it is a simple process for them to get their absentee because they can call my office. They can fill out a form, drop it in the drop box. They can come to the door, ring the doorbell, fill out a form, we'll give them a ballot. And they still will be able to vote on town meeting day. Again, it will be similar to what we did in November and in August. It will be limited capacity, but they still will be able to vote in person. And the usual COVID restrictions that we have will be in place and will be spacing everybody out. I believe we can manage that as we did before. Generally, with town meeting on a good day when we don't have rain and snow and everything else, we'll have anywhere from 800 to 1,100 people who will vote. When we have bad weather, we'll get anywhere from 4 to 600 people to vote. And I think that if we were to let people know that they have the option of getting absentees, if we advertise it well, if we send out the postcards to let them know, I think you'll have a vote similar to what a bad day for town meeting may be. I think you'd get at least 600 votes, possibly more. The board already voted to go with Australian ballot. And we voted on candidates didn't have to get signatures and the rest of them required signatures. So what you need us to decide tonight was whether to send the postcard to everybody, letting them know how they could get their ballot if they wanted to do absentee or if we go by mailing ballots to everybody. Is that the decision you need? Well, until the legislations is signed by Governor Scott, this is all discussion. This is just potentially what can happen. Last I heard, I believe it passed the Senate and had gone to the governor. I may be wrong on that. Joyce, I think it's still with the Senate. So we have to wait for the Senate to go through their process and then wait for it to go to the governor. We don't have to, right? We could make the motion pending. Yes. You can make a motion that if this legislation is passed, this is the direction we would like to take. My concern is otherwise we're into February. Just to be clear, it doesn't mandate mail-in balance. It gives towns the option. Is that correct? Correct. Right. It's not a way the legislation is written right now. It gives the select board the option to do it. It's not a mandate that they have to go out. I have a question going back to the multiple ballots. Why is it that there are so many different combinations of ballots, depending on where someone is? Is it related to the village and East Randolph, Randolph Center? It is related to the water sewer and police district. Not everybody's in the water district, not everybody's in the sewer district, not everybody's in the police district. Some people are in the water sewer and police. Some are water sewer. Some are just sewer. Some are just water. Tom, I would take a reporter to stuff those ballots. Wow. One other thing that hasn't been mentioned is, and I'm not sure if this is in Act 162 or not, I believe, but we are obligated to have a pre-town meeting informational session on the warned items 10 days or sooner before the Australian balloting. We do that, Tom. If we're locally as like the budget meeting, but really it's a public hearing that we do every year. Presumably we'll do that by Zoom. Yes, you can do that by Zoom. The public hearing is required by law because we vote by Australian ballot. The meeting needs to happen within the 10 days prior to town meeting. Exactly. It can be done remotely. There is no requirement that you have to have a physical location for that meeting. Town meeting, however, you do. You have to have a physical location. Yeah. Yeah. So a couple of points. I think this bill is that pass the house is basically certain to pass the Senate and be signed by the governor. So I don't think we need to worry about whether that's going to happen or not. I also, if I remember correctly when the select board discussed this last time, we actually did already authorize the town to put everything on Australian ballot, all the elections, everything that could be voted upon. And we did actually say that we were going to mail out all ballots. So I think considering what Joyce is saying here tonight that we should undo that decision does seem quite onerous to put the town clerk's office through that process. And yeah, I would be okay with going through the process that Joyce described instead, sending out a postcard describing to voters what is going on. But I think we do need to be specific about that so that we're undoing what we said last time we discussed this. Another thing to be aware of, and I believe the figure is $2 million, the Joint Fiscal Committee has allocated $2 million. That hasn't passed yet, Jay, by the House of the Senate, but they made a recommendation that municipalities around the state have a pool of $2 million to tap into to supplement the added costs of having mail-in ballots. I wonder if we couldn't even supplement some of the costs of mailing out the absentee ballot reminder from that pool if it's authorized. I can say that based on the meeting that I attended on Monday, I attended a remote meeting with all a number of town clerks and with Will's sending the director of elections. And he indicated at that time that if the monies are approved, the costs for mailing either notices to people about voting, that they have the opportunity to vote by absentee, or if towns chose to vote, to send ballots to all voters, that that money would, those two things would qualify for reimbursement. We would just need to be sure that we kept track of costs involved as far as if we have to print up postcards, the postage, those items would be covered. I would say that, you know, in our last meeting, we didn't know that that money was coming and we had decided to mail things out anyway. And in that spirit, I think that we should, hopefully that money will come through, but I think we should tonight decide that we're going to send out that postcard and do whatever we need to do with the mailing out absentee ballots, whether we receive that money or not. Hopefully we'll get it. I wasn't suggesting that that should have an impact on our decision. I was just pointing it out that it will be there, hopefully. So it sounds like the first motion that we need is to reverse the prior decision and go to just mailing out a postcard, instructing people what they need to do if they want an absentee ballot. So moved. I'll second that. Any discussion? No questions, Pat? Not this time. Motion and second. All those in favor? Opposed? Stained? Motion carries. It didn't sound like we needed to make a decision on what we would do yet for the actual town meeting day, that some of that we could plan later once we know what we got going on there. It may not be a popular thing for me to point out, but if things change dramatically between now and when our deadline is for submitting everything to our printer for the town report, we could bring to the board an option of holding either a special meeting or an emergency meeting to discuss any major changes that may have happened or even to select a date or even to make other changes. So that's always an option that's available to the board. What is our printer deadline? I know it's typically a two-week turnaround. We have to have town reports available at least 10 days before town meeting. So that would put us at roughly about February 17th, February 16th. So we are looking at roughly about a deadline of last week of January. Joyce, do you have the calendar in front of you? You're on mute, Joyce. The last Friday is January 29th. Yeah. Sorry, Joyce, you're on mute. Joyce, you're on mute. The town reports have to be available no later than February 20th. So if the printers need two weeks, you're looking at probably about February 1st is probably the last day you want to be trying to do anything. And the warning has to be posted no later than January 31st. And so the 31st is a Sunday, so I'm not going around posting warnings on a Sunday. So that needs to be done by the Friday, which would be January 29th. Now, a warning for the most part is complete with the exception of two items. Cliff and Joyce have both provided edits for changes to the previous warning. So the base warning with the amounts and everything else is done, that's the exception of any changes that the board would like to make or the actual date for town meeting this year, if any changes need to be made. Joyce, your understanding of the town meeting, we would still advertise it as the actual town meeting day and then call it to order and give another day by which it'll actually take place. So the town report would print it with the actual, would town meeting day in March? Yes, it would show that the actual meeting would be the February 27th because we voted to hold the meeting the Saturday before town meeting. And basically we would meet at the date and time, so it would be the 27th at 10 a.m. since we normally meet at Chandler, you could say we'll meet at Chandler, we could actually meet outside Chandler at 10 a.m. You just need three people to be there, the moderator to call the meeting to order, one person to make the motion, second person to vote, the second it, and then whoever they are to pass the motion. Okay, so that's setting that follow-up date doesn't impact the printers. That's right. Okay, so the only other items are whether the board wants to move forward the Randa Center fire station tax exemption vote and the marijuana sales vote. So let's take them one at a time. So we have the marijuana sales article that is, it's a statute, correct Jay, that the town has to, does the statute require a townwide vote? Yeah, so the legislature, the cannabis legalization bill that the legislature passed last session, or might have even been the one recently, it's basically requires towns individually to vote on the question of opting in or opting out of the marijuana marketplace, which is sure to take shape in 2022. You can, I think you can articulate the language of the question to be either, but ultimately it's a yes or no question on whether or not Randolph is allowing participation in that or not, but it's a local control question just similar to the one Joyce articulated regarding ballots. It's kicking it to the towns, I decide. Okay, is that a binding vote? It would be binding if you opted in, I believe, and if you opted out, I've heard that you can try again the next year, but I'm actually not certain about that. It's possible that you're saying for good, you can't, I'm not clear on that. If it's helpful, I could share my screen that shows the proposed article that Jay is presenting and then also the recommendation from the Vermont League of Cities and Towns. So are you saying the Vermont League of Cities and Towns has put forward recommended language for? They have. Yeah, and I'll do that now. In fact, I think maybe some of you have a copy of the, yeah, this is looks like what Josh Jerome drafted. Yeah, right here. So the issue to me with the language that was on the petitions that I was gathering, it's ambiguous. It would be better, I think, for the voters to understand the question with a little bit more explanation. It just doesn't feel like it has quite enough there. There are essentially three different options in this scenario. One is, and I'll highlight so that everybody sees these three options here. The first one is if we're only looking for cannabis retail, which is this proposed language here from VLCT, then the second language is if we're only looking to authorize integrated licenses in Randolph. And then the third is if we're looking to authorize the sale of cannabis and integrated licenses in the town of Randolph. What does integrated licenses mean? Does that mean sale and cultivation? I'm not familiar with that. And processing? I mean, what? I believe that's the case. I think it expands. This is the reason why I left that off of the petition because I think we should do this one step at a time. I'm not entirely sound on what it means to be integrated licensee. And so I said, well, I guess we better not address that question if I can't even explain it fully. There is a definition and a third paragraph about integrated licensee. Yeah. Just above the overview of Act 164. Last sentence. A person licensed to engage in the activities of cultivator also a product made. Yeah. That's exactly what I thought it was. It basically opens it up to packaging, growing, cultivating, processing, manufacturing of edibles. I would imagine it's probably falls within that. So can I ask a question? Maybe make a point. So one question is this is a petition which is being, which is, which was circulated and to get on the on the town meeting day vote, right? And so I'm wondering why it wasn't submitted, you know, as, as a regular petition, like, wouldn't that have been the intention to have had it just submitted like any other petition would be? And if, and, and why it wasn't submitted that way. Great question. And the reason is because of exactly discussing now, which is if I had submitted it, it would, the language on the petition would be binding. You would not have a choice as to revising that language. Today, I'm asking that you, that you do. Okay. It just, it seems to me that we, as a, as a town, unless we pass something that says otherwise, that it's, this is not permitted, right? So as long as we do nothing, where it's not permitted, none of this stuff would be permitted, right? And definitely, you have to opt in. You have to have a vote total that supports the question, the yes answer to the opt-in question. That's greater than the more portion in order for the land off to be legally allowed to participate in the retail market. And my, my understanding of the petition process is at least the spirit of it is that it's something that is independent of the select word, like, you know, it's something that comes from a body other than this body. And so it seems, it doesn't, I'm just not sure why we would want to be making this decision when it seems like it should be appropriately coming from the public that, you know, somebody who feels like this is important wants to get it in front of the voters. I'm not maybe not saying this so well, but, you know, I'm not sure why. Jay, how many signatures did you get? I got a total of 174 signatures between the two. So I didn't have enough on either. But to me, that, that doesn't matter. What I have is a preponderance of support for both of these articles to go on to the town meeting day ballot, which is. And we do have the option as a select board to put things on the town meeting day ballot independent of the petition process, correct? That's correct. Please, how many signatures are needed? Roughly five, we need five percent of the voting population. I think that number changes, but Joyce, is it like 180? It's like 170 something. You needed 174 signatures as a minimum for each petition. I just have a question. Is there a deadline in that legislation for towns to opt in or opt out? I'm not certain. Can you vote in for it? Trying to put this on the ballot for 2021 for March 2nd is because if Randolph does choose to allow this marketplace to exist, then why would we not want it to happen earlier than later? I mean, you hear people talking about missing the bus. I don't think there's necessarily a proverbial bus to miss, but let's just try to get on the earlier bus than the later one. And what I've done today, and yesterday and the day before, is gone around during a pandemic. And I had ounces and ounces of hand sanitizer and a watch. That's what you're going to say, ounces and ounces of something else. I did so much. Even though I feel as though I shouldn't have had to, but the point is that I have a lot of pages of support and I can continue to gather it if you'd like, but the law has always offered two options to the public to getting a question on the time meeting day ballot. One is to do it via petition, which would go above or around you all, the select board. And the other way is to ask you all, the select board, to represent the interests of your town voters in this respect. I hear you. So just to be clear though, none of this is going to be going to effect until 2022, correct? I mean, they're just in the process now of establishing this cannabis regulatory or the process. The governor is seeking applicants for that right now. This is only step one. This gets it on the ballot. I actually, I'm going to be candid with you all. I feel like this is likely to be voted down by the town of Randolph. I just have a hunch. I think it will be close. It would be close to 50-50. But the point is we should ask the voters what they think about this question. And I think we should do it sooner because we will ultimately do it eventually. And if we do it this year, it will give you all a great deal of time between now and 2022, as Tom just mentioned, to figure out how to regulate it responsibly and make sure that you're not going to have high schoolers getting their hands on it if we can prevent that. What's your feeling about the integrated license issue? As you're putting this forward, you're only talking about retailers, but we have a significant agricultural community here that perhaps we should consider giving them the option to. I'm just putting it out there. I would certainly support that. And as I said before, the language that I put on the petition was just airing on the side of simplicity so that it would take fewer minutes to explain to each signatory what it means, what they're putting their name on. But I do agree with you, Tom, the agricultural community would feel bummed if we didn't include that based on that definition. So I do want to point something out here. This is discussion and action from the floor. So this is not an Australian ballot item. So that's where it's worn. That's where it's worn right now. It says right here, for discussion and action from the floor, this is sitting in that category. This would be very similar to the climate action change article from last year that was discussed on the floor. And everyone had a comment. I'm sorry. Where are you seeing that, Perry? Is that in the document that Adolfo changed? It's article number 30. It's the draft ballot. That's where it is now. But we've authorized the Australian ballot. There is no discussion in the floor this year. Well, so why to know about that? I mean, you've got to sit here. I mean, what are you going to, is this what you're putting out or not? Is everything that's on here now going to be Australian ballot? Because that's not how this is reading. What's the point of having a town meeting and postponing it and recessing it if you're going to have these articles on an Australian ballot? It could be that because I used an older template. I didn't take off the header from the, you know, at the time. Okay. Well, I'm a little confused because I'm trying to get to the points. What's the point of having a town meeting and postponing and recessing it? If all these things are going to be voted on from Australian ballot? My understanding is that the only reason why we would have an actual town meeting at some later date is to consider items from the floor, which are not being voted on by Australian ballot. Things that, you know, every year someone just brings something up that they want to discuss and we would be giving people that possibility. Well, we don't vote on those. They have to be warned. It can be advisory. Yeah, it could be advisory. Okay. So is this or is this not going to be on the ballot? That's, you know, my question here. That's what we're determining. That's chair permission to speak. I guess I'm asking of the select board is to make that the case. Yeah, that you put that on the question on the back. Yeah, Australian ballot. Yeah. And you end that you word it the way that you see it to be most explanatory. I think Larry, some of the difference of this one is the other articles that people get petitions for are for their own items like the tax exemption for the senior center or the station or whatnot. This is actually a legislation that came through advising towns that they have to take some action to opt in. And although I think you're right, if we never took any action, we're by default opting out. But it also gives us the ability to manage what goes out there in that to kind of control how that all happens. So we don't just opt in and it's a free for all. You know, we could do the language. So we're opting in, but giving it to the planning commission to look at, you know, developing what that looks like, you know, where is it allowed, what types are allowed, you know, those type of things. And then it comes back to the select board to have to adopt that ordinance. So I think some of the differences that this is coming down through a legislative decision, right, to give it to the towns to decide. But it's also I think what Jay's handing to us is the ability to craft the language for this article in a way that actually gives us as the select board and the planning commission or whoever else we decide a little bit more say in the direction by which if it's voted yes, that would play out nicely. Yeah, I'd be all for that. I mean, I think you just definitely should put it to all the voters. Yeah. And I think you should include all of the options to whether it's farming, processing, retailing. Oh, absolutely. Because it opens up, it opens up the opportunity if it's approved, it just broadens the palette of various businesses that could potentially operate here in town. I don't see any sense of having a, you know, a marijuana distributor at the retail level, let's say in the village and denying one of our farmers the right to convert their property to to hamper or cannabis production. It sort of seems like a slap in the face to the agricultural community, assuming that people, you know, yeah, the agricultural community, whoever's involved is going to have to come up with some substantial, this is not just going to be grown in the field, obviously, as you know. So any agricultural entity that's going to make a substantial investment into infrastructure to grow this and secure it? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And similarly, Chase, he's handing on the select for the opportunity to say whether it's through the planning commission or what, you know, I don't I don't want to see a retail cannabis operation happening within, you know, 500 feet of the high school or, you know, 100, a thousand yards of the high school or whatever. I think that's where I think we need the community input. Yeah. So if it does go through the planning commission, you know, then the planning commission can address that and hold those public hearings that they're looking at this. And if it's helpful, most of our sensitive areas like our like our park and the schools, there are they are in, you know, I'm not looking at the map now, but they're typically in the medium density district or identity area where a cannabis sales place would qualify as a retail location, retail sales. And those types of retail sales, whether it's cannabis or whether it's like a supermarket or whatever it is, would not be allowed in those districts, or if they are, it would be through special permission from the DRB. Right. So it's not like variance. Yeah. It's not like they would be eligible to be plopped down by our sensitive areas. There probably be no different than alcohol use too. You mean you've got to have select board approval to be able to sell it. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. The planning commission can do a separate overlay this to identify areas that you don't want these different activities taking place. So you get your parks and in your schools and, you know, maybe there's a you know, a daycares, I don't know, whatever, but you know, you have that ability to actually flesh this out and get better detail of what you want, where and how you want it. The issue is right now is if we want to allow this to go forward as an article on the ballot and if we do how we want it worded. And do we need to make that decision tonight in terms of the wording or could we direct, could we direct a Dolfo to work on and the town staff to work on the wording and approve it at a later date prior. I know it might require a special meeting, but we're going to have that anyway, Tom, to approve the final ballot. That's true. So I think directing Dolfo to work on language for that that gets presented to the board for approval to include on the draft ballot is perfectly fine. Yeah. That sounds good to me. I must say that you know, I'm not opposed to putting this on the ballot in principle, but it seems like a fairly weighty issue and having to decide tonight feels a little rugged. Can I ask a couple of procedural questions, Trini? Sure. The first one is in this case, if the town voted yes or no, if they voted yes, dropped in, then we'd have to do an ordinance or what if we didn't do anything? Would they or do we have to do an ordinance to control it somehow? Is that part of the Well, you don't have to, right? You could just say have at it, but I would think it's responsible way to look at it would be to toss it to the planning commission. And we could put that even in the article that, you know, should should the voters authorize the planning commission to develop you know, the an ordinance or overlay or however we've looked at it. But, you know, I would think you wouldn't want to just turn it loose. You would want to somehow tie it to getting an ordinance or getting an overlay of where it would be allowed or but not it seems to me like it's not very responsible just to vote it in and walk away. Yeah, I agree with that. But they would have to any ordinance that was created could not conflict with whatever had passed at town meeting, right? The wording of what had passed? I would imagine that through. Yeah, that's any ordinance you pass is going to have to be passed by the select board anyways. So you're going to get to review it, correct? That's correct. So, you know, we get final say or the select board at the time will get final say and how it goes down. They don't like it. They can send it back to the planning commission. We I guess I'm asking we would have the ability to restrict it to some extent. Oh, yeah, with the authorizing legislation. Yes. But we want to put that in our in the article that we pass, right? So the voters know that a thumbs up on this means it is going to go to the planning commission to develop how it'll play out in town. Okay, I just want to make sure that we're doing it correctly, not taking sides, but just whether we do it correctly. I have a question for Joyce, too. If we meet on Saturday, we don't have to put the town meeting off till another date. We could what if we wanted to have it complete as of that day? What's the purpose of putting it off? If you're going to hold the meeting, basically, if you're going to hold a physical meeting, it's got to meet the guidelines that are put out by the agency, one of the ACA, whatever it is, ACCD, you have to maintain certain social distancing capacity for the building has to be, I believe they cannot be more than 75 people and those 75 people have to be so many feet apart throughout the building. So you have to meet all the guidelines for that that are laid out if you can't meet those guidelines and you cannot meet in person. The other alternative, though, correct me if I'm wrong, is that we could hold the town meeting by Zoom or some other, no? No. I statue and that's been the rub. It says, you know, voters will meet on the first Tuesday of March to meet and vote on town business. In person. In person. So we have to hold a town meeting at some point in the person. You're required to still hold a town meeting, which is why you would have to recess it to a later date. It would have been ideal if the legislature would have allowed for the canceling of town meeting this year, but I don't know why they didn't allow that to happen. Can you speak to that, Jay? And was there any discussion in Montpelier about allowing much the same as 162 kind of change things for this COVID time period? Was there any discussion about waiving the in-person requirement? Back to the local control question. I mean, town meeting is meant for to deal with a number of questions, budgetary items. You can't outright cancel town meeting and therefore not vote. We did cancel town meeting. Town meeting is not going to happen. And then this is alternative to town meeting, the voting process. And that's what most of tonight's discussion between you. It's not that we said, no, you can't cancel town meeting. We required everybody to cancel town meeting and decide if they would hold an alternative to town meeting at another time. Whatever combination of, you know, however you answer the annual questions that voters decide on in Vermont. And when separating that from the actual meeting, you can have the meeting later. Tom, to give you a little more detail, I think the challenge that we face here and I think every town faces is that I think the legislature had the option to say, well, let me take a step back and say residents of every town can convene a special meeting, a special town meeting, and then vote to cancel town meeting. But the problem is residents still have to get together to hold that town meeting, to cancel town meeting. And the challenge is that the challenges that the legislature could have just said, we're canceling that requirement for everyone to come together to force them to vote to cancel town meeting because it defeats the purpose of, you know, canceling, of getting together and preventing everybody from getting together. So I'm not in the legislature. I wasn't around to, you know, propose a bill, but you know, it would have been because we are a Dylan's rule of state, we could only do what the legislature allows us to do. So if the bill that was passed included something that says select boards may cancel select board, especially, you know, town meeting and hold it later, you know, the next year when the pandemic is over, but the bill is proposed is essentially saying, you have to have town meeting, it just has to be later in the year, at a later time. But we could come together and then vote to not come back together until next February. That's true. Yeah. Rich DeFacto, could, could we put, could we put such a decision to cancel town meeting until next March on the Australian ballot? I don't see why not. I mean, there's a, there's a possibility. Just do an end run around, do an end run around the meeting in person, you know, voting from the floor requirement and just say, shall the, shall the citizens of Randolph approve of postponement of town meeting? I mean, everything they're going to vote on, they're voting on by Australian ballot. So it seems excessively bureaucratic. I know the law didn't, the legislature didn't address it, but it just seems kind of silly to have three people meet on the steps of Chandler on, on the first, you know, Tuesday in March, just to postpone a meeting at which nothing will be discussed later in the year. It's, yeah. I don't have, I don't have the bill in front of me, but my, my recollection is that the bill gives select, select boards the power to postpone the meeting that we could decide that now. The reason, the reason for that is just because some communities probably could still have a town meeting. They're not, maybe they don't have that bigger population. Maybe they have the space. And, and sometimes that's why I think they did it. Yeah. And, and some towns are going to be postponing their meeting to some time in May so they can get things voted on and do it outside just in time for budgets to pass and stuff. But if I'm not mistaken, I think we can just decide tonight that we want town meeting to be postponed. We could say we're just going to have it on June 1st. And we don't have to worry about any of that budgetary stuff because we're going to do all that on by Australian ballot. And we don't have to have any kind of in-person meeting on town, on our normal town meeting day. Appreciate it. The challenge is we don't know what June 1st is going to bring. Yeah, we might be safer going with like August 1st or something like that. We could do whatever. I mean, we could just say it's going to be outside. I mean, there's not going to be much to discuss. And very few people are going to, I mean, we have enough trouble getting people to show up for town meeting under best circumstances. I don't think this town meeting is going to have more than a handful of people out of it anyway. Could I, could I say something? I don't want to be out of order. I think I'll just a second Ian. So the decision then, do we want to go with a different date? Or can we? Because the voters actually voted for when we would be meeting. Yeah, I don't, I have to look up the statute, but I think every conversation that we've had about moving the actual town meeting day required us to have the voters approve the change. And we did that two years ago. I'll move it to the Saturday before meeting day. But the legislature's authorized us to move the date. So doesn't that supersede? My understanding of the legislation is the select board will have the option to move the data of town meeting. If they move the date of town meeting, you're also moving the date of the Australian ballot. Really? That was my understanding. I may be wrong. That was the impression that I got from the meeting on Monday with the discussion with Will Senning is that if you move the meeting, you're moving the Australian ballot and then you all, you vote all that later on. How does that impact select board terms or town clerk terms? By moving the meeting, anybody who currently is serving would continue to serve until the new vote. So if you were to move the meeting to June right now and we move the Australian ballot, in my particular case, I intend to retire March 2nd or March 3rd, whatever. If you were to move that to June 1st, that means that I would need to continue to serve until June 1st. However, if you do that, I'm resigning March 3rd. I'd like to go back to the first suggestion, which is hold town meeting, recess it, have the Australian ballot, and at that point in time we'll have more guidance and maybe we recess it until May. Maybe we have to recess it until June, but I'm pretty confident that we're not going to be holding town meeting until the public gathering size is allowed to let that happen. And I don't know where that limitation is now, but I know over the summer it was 150 people and I think it's even less now. So that would be my suggestion. Just hold the meeting, make a motion to recess it and move it to a future date and that way you can still have your Australian ballot. I like the idea of putting it as an article too. Do we recess it till next February or do they really want something in May or June? Yeah, that's a good question. I mean if we could put it on the Australian ballot, it would be interesting to explore that possibility because what's there going to be to talk about after everybody has voted on the Australian ballot? Not much. The only thing you have to do is let people to the budget committee, that's usually what you do from the floor, so you wouldn't be doing that right off the bat. So those people would just have to continue serving. So can we get VLCT to weigh in on this? You know, could we do that? Can we do what we just talked about? Put that second, you know, put the meeting actually on the ballot? Do our questions have to be yes or no? So do when we put questions on the ballot, do they have to be in a yes or no format? Yes. Or can the yes be no? So we can't have, give them an option where one option is delay it until May or June, the other option is cancel it all together? No, it has to be yes or no answers. And as far as budget committee, where we normally would nominate them from the floor of the meeting, if the people who are currently serving plan to run again, they just need to do a consent form where we can vote them Australian ballot like we do everything else. If they agree to that, correct? If they agree to it, yes. So if we want to put the question on the ballot of town meeting day, do we put the question? So it is, shall the town of Randolph cancel the in-person portion of town meeting? Or is it shall the town of Randolph move that portion to May or June date? If it's got to be yes or no? If you've already recessed it to a date definite, which I would think you would have to choice, that vote's going to come after, right? Correct. So it's not going to be there. Unless you work, Bradley. It depends on how you word it. So in your wording or in your motion on Saturday, you might say unless so voted. I could also say that it's recessed until a date determined by the select board following the information coming in from the voting. Does it have to be before a certain date this year? I heard some discussion on the clerk's listserv where a couple of clerks have indicated that they're looking at starting a meeting and then they're saying we're recessing it to next year. Wow. I think Harry may have the best suggestion, have VLCT kind of weigh in on this dilemma, but if we could put it off for the full year it seems like that might be the best way to go and then put budget committee people on the Australian ballot, reach out to whoever the current people are serving and or invite others to step forward. Well, if nobody fills the vacancy, then we can appoint them later. Yeah. If somebody decides not to run and we have a vacancy, we can do that at a select board meeting down the road. We've done that in the past. That's true. Haven't they all decided to run, Joyce? I believe Cliff reached out to the budget committee and I believe I know that I got one consent form already for one budget committee member. I haven't seen any others yet. They have until Monday the 25th to submit their consent forms. So it would only be one that would be up for election one or two? I think there's a... I think it's three because of the quirks of the way things transpired last year. I think we've got a three-year term, a two-year term, and finishing out the balance of the term that was resigned last year that David Siloway got appointed to. No. So I was just looking at the bill and it doesn't seem, as far as I can tell, to say that we can change items that we would normally vote on in person to Australian ballot items. That was in the Act 162. Yeah, that was in Act 162. That wasn't in H48? No. Okay. That's the Act 162. So let's see if we can wind some of these down. As far as the meeting itself, do we want to... We need the votes to go forward for the budget, somewhat not. So it sounds like we don't have much choice but to meet on the steps with the three people thing. The question is whether we extend it for a year or we extend it for a few months or whatever until we can meet outside. And that will be potentially putting an article on the ballot to vote on. Is that where we're at with this one? And how do we manage only three people showing up, the moderator, and two people to make the motion? I mean, suppose somebody else wants to show up and I don't quite understand how we manage that. You just have to advertise it very heavily that the intent of holding a physical meeting would be to recess it to a later date when it's safer to meet. Right. I think if the meeting description said the town meeting on February 27th will be held on the steps of Chandler Outdoors. I think that'll prevent a lot of people from wanting to be outdoors on the steps February 27th. Especially just to recess the meeting. Right. I can't imagine anybody's going to be a gadfly and try and upend that process. They six feet away. Put your mask on. Don't get near me. So do we want to put an article on the ballot to figure out if people want to cancel it all together or they want to reschedule it for some time in the summer? Or do we want to have the select board make that decision? Well, cancelling it and moving it to a date in the summer are two different questions. Right. So they're actually. Those are basically our two options. Right. But if you reschedule it to a later date or we cancel it by rescheduling it till next February. Right. So hypothetically if you hold a meeting on the steps and you make a motion to recess the meeting at that point in time would you also make a motion to would you pick a date and say and that you know we move it to say May 1st at that same time? And if you did then you could hold if it still couldn't gather you could hold a meeting on May 1st and you could recess it till July 15th or something. Could you do that? Yes. I think that might be the best way to attack this is make a motion you know at the steps and this is going to be the new town meeting date and if we're not able to have it we hold the meeting and recess it again till the next available we think window. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's cleaner. It is. I question why we would need to do it in May or June. No. No. Why not just push it out far enough? So yeah. So that so that we have a reasonable chance unless things take off again. Yeah. Right now it looks like general populace vaccinations are probably going to kick in around early spring like April 1st something around then. So I think doing it in May or June would be a little bit premature. Literally. Yeah. Yeah. We can talk about that date you know as we get further down the road there's nothing we don't have to make that decision tonight because we've got until February whatever 29th year to make that decision. We could talk amongst ourselves and say okay let's recess it till August 1st. Yeah. Yeah. The only question that we have to decide tonight is if we wanted to put something on the ballot asking the voters if they wanted to cancel it all together or move it out into the summer. Yeah. It can't be either or right. No because it has to be a yes or no answer. Can't we do our own slip of paper choice so there's six of them. If it's helpful we could if I could suggest if there are two questions one question could be should the voters wish to cancel down meeting and reconvene in 2022 and if that fails then the next question can be dependent on you know article 34 if meeting is to be held this year shall the meeting be held on like August. You can't write a question that's depended on another question. Oh okay. The only way we can get an answer of preference on that is with a total separate ballot that gives the voters a choice and I think we just let's just roll with it and we'll figure this out later on. Yeah. Because we're just bogging down on that issue and I don't know that we really need voter input on that and if we did we could do we can find and we're going to probably have to find another way to get the temperature of folks. Yeah. So we're back to the two articles that Jay has brought forward and we hashed out we hashed out one of them pretty good. The cannabis one yeah. Yeah. The question of the rental center firehouse has been on the ballot for two or three successive town meetings that I've been to with a one year extension and the petition that Jay circulated and referenced earlier talked about a five year extension and I'm just wondering how people feel about that and Jay what your thinking was you mentioned you got. Sure. So on Monday night the monthly business meeting at the rental center firehouse took place and I suggested to the to the squad that you know maybe we ought to just extend it for one year because the reason that it's been in one year increments these past several is because the question this legal or this insurance question I think between town of Randolph and the Randolph Center fire association has yet to be resolved in a permanent right in some kind of permanent agreement. For what reasons I'm not entirely sure but I know that the most likely reason that it didn't that wasn't solved this past year was because of this pandemic. So I said geez why don't we just ask them to put put it on put it on as a one year extension because that's how they usually put it and I was over I was boated that I didn't succeed in they said let's know let's go for the five year. Well I'm sure they did but if it's helpful I can't share with everyone that it yes it was five years for many years the change from five to one year was not made administratively it was made through a motion by the voters at town meeting and the change was made so that it would allow the town and the association to negotiate find a resolution to it you know I the board can do absolutely can do what it likes but I feel that if it switches from one year back to five years without a resolution it would go counter to the wishes of the voters. Well my other concern is this is the second or third year in a row that we have punted this issue down for another year and I certainly wouldn't want to punt it for five years that seems antithetical to the intention of going to one year I'm sorry the pandemic intervened and we've gone through another year of not resolving this issue but it kind of feels like we need to you know put the pedal to the metal and get it done in this coming year and I certainly wouldn't want to extend it to five years. There has been progress made I can't share with everyone from when the voters switched from five to one year we now have you know more of engagement happening with with the fire association in the center there has been a committee that has formed you know granted it was you know it's time of a pandemic that stopped the work but there is an official committee now that has been established with a membership and I do think we are we're moving in that direction so you know if the select board were to choose to keep it at a year as opposed to five I think it would it would help to keep the issue on the front burner. I would like to move that we put the question on the Australian ballot with a one year extension. I'll second that Tom okay to move it I mean we're not going to gain anything not putting this on the ballot and not voting on this tax exemption because the town's going to pay the tax we pay the the operating cost of that fire department right now and that's what the whole issue is is that we've got this this quirky setup there that keeps impacting how things work and ownership of equipment and all that and the bottom line the town pays the bills so you know it unfortunately we didn't get to the table this year we didn't get this resolved would love nothing more than to see this resolve and go away because it's it's taking a lot of time and resources that are just better spent elsewhere but maybe Jay would like to join in that discussion with us and help us resolve it and then exchange we'll put a one-year tax we don't want to go this for that but um yes I do have an interest in trying to help resolve great so we have a motion and a second on the table for this all those in favor hi hi posed there is a sustained motion carries the other issue out there is the cannabis one and we had talked about a motion to have town staff draft the article circulate it to the board and present it on the final paper my mind just went blank yeah yeah for the voting and that's where we were at with that one I would like to make that motion that we direct direct the town administration to and town staff to work on the wording of that and present it to us for a final approval second that would that be would that be run by the league too at some point I could check with the league on the final language you know it definitely would the league has been involved already in creating a template and example so I would I would check with with the league and our attorney as well thank you have a motion and a second all those in favor hi a post sustained motion carries are there any outstanding items that we need to do for town meeting not we still have the town report to hit I just want to say thank you I'm gonna sign off I really appreciate all your time and your thoughtful work on all these very arduous issues and the exciting ones so thanks a lot take care jay hi jay the town report we know we have a deadline of February 1st of the latest to get it to the printers that's right we're we're working emery's uh pedal to the metal trying to collect all of the necessary reports that committees need to submit and everything else so um I don't recall the volunteer to draft the select board message but if they could get that to emery within the next week or two that would be ideal yeah I'm volunteering for that I I already uh I already volunteered for that I missed that I thought Trini was gonna do that no Trini Trini handed it off to uh handed that one off to me oh wonderful little double fake action there um my question is what is the time frame for the annual report in other words what what dates should I be writing about select board actions between it's usually within the last um the last it's like a year in review um so it's from last town meeting to this town meeting roughly yeah okay all right I just I wasn't entirely certain about that so that's fine um Trini I would like to um maybe just have a separate conversation with you about um some bullet points that I should address in that report but I don't know that we need to have that as a um full select board discussion that's appropriate we can chat okay and the other item remaining for the town report um emery had sent over photographs from a previous meeting and then additional outreach had been performed to try to obtain additional photographs to be considered for for the mostly for the cover because every photograph not selected for the cover we sent to the printers and then they use as space fillers when needed um so I wasn't sure if the board had a preference of all the photographs that we have collected to place on the cover or if there's something else that they would like for us to go and photograph we can head out to photograph and share that through email with everyone uh one thing I can send to emery is the um you've already got a photo of the sculpture that's gone into the elm street garden but um I also uh given that we've gotten the grant and and local fundraising all wrapped up for the mural project I have a artist's rendering of what that mural project is going to look like if that's appropriate we might um we might include that it's not a photograph it's an artist's rendering but might yeah it'd be something to add to their part for sure I'll I'll send that to you tomorrow thank you now we're was were you proposing using the one that said town report on it as the cover no uh no yeah we don't have a a recommendation to to make to the board it really is up to to the board any writing that is on any of the photographs were or was included by the person that submitted the photograph so yeah thanks for catching that training um it's not a recommendation we're making that's just what was submitted to us in that way so the one that says town report on it isn't a suggestion for the front cover uh not from staff it could be from sunny but not from staff okay because I was thinking I like the idea of something that actually relates to Randolph being on the front cover yeah yeah like a building there you know like east randolph hall since we're working on that or there were two or three that I sort of flagged this possibility wondered what other people thought I'd be good with the town hall east randolph hall yeah there's three votes I kind of like the little girl sitting next to the fence with her cow might be a little partial to that one that's your cow no that's our sons but that's my granddaughter haha all right all right little patronage here I was just going to comment anytime we have any pictures of kids in the town report we need to be sure we have permission yeah we have the permission but it's also not showing her face it's from the back of her head intentionally if we showed her face it would be too cute a humble family you know it I did have a request from Josh to try to get some pictures of snowmobiling and I think he said it would be nice to put some of those in the town report but also for some of the marketing materials so we're working on that also I don't have any snowmobiles today I got some extra photos okay I was going to say I have something I winter fastened two years ago with snowmobiles if you're looking and nobody's going to know when they're from necessarily right yeah so did we decide on the east randolph hall for the front cover I think we had three votes for it that's enough right sure I'm fine with that nice little piece of history and it's in east randolph so it gets us out of the village fix you know fix too so you know what how fundraising I would put yeah I think so would that be the front view of the community hall yes thank you but I'm not opposed to you somebody going over and trying to get a better picture I think those were snapshots that folks took and some of them are nice but they're not if you look kind of the cropping is a little off just saying Josh has a like a high-powered digital camera large-scale one so we could potentially snap some better shots maybe try to pick a sunny day yeah get the whole building in there yeah and it's really pretty went right after it snows well we'll pick a few and then we'll we'll pick the best looking one so you know now that we know what this what the select board wants the view we can take the best one of that view and then put it in good okay what else do we need for the town report is that the last that was the last of it needed and then staff can work the other pictures in that's right yeah we can we can pepper them in and ask the printer to just spread them around great Adolfo I can and Emery I can draft in addition to doing the select board report I can draft a paragraph as I did last year for the arts and culture committee as well thank you that'd be great yeah and two weeks is enough time yeah sometime next week next would be fine fine thank you sure next up we have the draft budget and capital plan we just wanted to follow up on a few of the questions that the board had previously asked one of the questions was related to costs for household hazardous waste we or I was finally able to connect with the A&R staff member that manages the solid waste program that includes HHW events yeah unfortunately all towns and cities in Vermont are required to participate in in these events towns may towns and cities may go at it alone and they have their own event or they can do what Randolph is doing and join an alliance and spread the cost over several towns so that that is a cost that we cannot we cannot eliminate we could only reduce over time as we add more towns to the mountain alliance so that was an answer for household hazardous waste costs the other was related to cemeteries we know that that's more of a long term issue to address because we have to take we have to you know take better tracking of staff time as they work at the cemeteries but we did hear from our cemetery commissioner that you know we can propose increases in certain fees that won't be the biggest hit you know in terms of revenue generating revenue but it's a start that'll get it gets us going in the right direction anybody have any questions on the proposed budget hearing none any questions on the proposed capital plan the only change that I can share with everyone to the capital plan was what the select board approved at the last meeting which was just increasing the amount for for paved roads right there are no questions do we have any emotions motions to approve sure I'll make a motion to approve a second all those in favor I post stain motion carries other business business no other business can I go back to one thing Trini when you have time yep article 32 could you just explain that to me general fund surplus not necessary to level taxes what does that mean I mean I think I know what it means but what does it mean um are we all we're talking about the draft warrant yes sorry the open here article 32 it's the one that got left off last year oh um yeah that we're talking about if there's a if there's a surplus at the end of the year then we first would have to say for example there was a hurricane or an emergency in the town had to dip into the emergency reserve fund the surplus that's leftover would first have to make hold the emergency reserve fund and then any monies that are left over then could then be allocated to a specific reserve fund that we that we identify and in this case it would break down into whatever whatever funds are left over it would break down into the allocation of 20 for the gravel roads reserve and 80 for the highway paving reserve so to level taxes you're saying that means an emergency basically right yeah and it also gives the board the opportunity that if there is a deficit at the end of the year the board can then say okay we're going to use the surplus to make up for the deficit that we had um and it also gives the option of being able to allocate funds into different reserve funds if there is any money left over thank you sure great on to managers report uh i just have one one item the the town had been working with a non-profit firm to have a income survey performed of the Randolph village water district we this has been ongoing for the better part of the last six months seven months we received a report today that confirms that we have what's called the LMI score it's a low middle income level for the water district that coming in at 54.4 percent in order for us to be eligible for community development block grant funds we have to have a percentage higher than 51 percent so we actually met the threshold with a brand new income survey so that's going to make us eligible for the half million dollar cdbg grant and now we're going to include the report in our application we're going to upload it to the state so that they can consider it for their meeting in april and hopefully it'll give us another half million dollars for the reservoir project and that's it that's what i have to share during the manager's report great next up we have executive session make a motion that we go into executive session um and inviting a dolphin tom um yeah we'd invite a dolphin into the executive session a second motion and a second all those in favor aye opposed motion carries