 All righty, we're going to bring this meeting to order. I'm going to go put this thing on the board. It's 5 o'clock, Tuesday, August 15, the middle sex select board meeting. And I'm here to welcome the guests. Could you please state your name? And reporting in progress. OK. Peter isn't hearing. Who's here? But just go ahead and state your name. Steven does. Thank you, Steven. Shelly to start. Thank you, Shelly. And thank you, Samantha. We have Orca. And we also have representatives from the state of Vermont who will be speaking briefly in a moment. So we will approve the minutes of August 1 select board meeting action likely. Any discussion about the minutes? Is there a motion to approve? Brandi moves and Vick seconds. Got that? Yep. And then we also need to approve the agenda for today, August 15. Is there a motion for that? Move that we accept the agenda for August 15 today. And is there a second? Before we approve that. Yeah, is there any additions to the agenda? I was just thinking about a follow up on the letter from Rob that was putting together. I think we were. I didn't see that on there. And I thought Peter was going to have an update for that. OK. Is that all right with everyone that we add that to the agenda? The letter from Rob. Peter, do you have some information to share on that that we can put it in the agenda? I was just on the phone with him, and there's no there's no update. He's overwhelmed with flood stuff. So anyway, I'll give a little update on the whole thing, but there's no update on that. OK. OK. Is there a motion? Sorry, did I ask that already? Yeah, I will second that. You said OK. So Vic moved it, and Randy seconded approving the agenda. OK, we are ahead of schedule. Woo! 508. We have Erica Radke and Todd DeLauz here to continue the discussion. I have this in second, but there are problems. Yeah, I'm going to help online and pull up my PowerPoint. OK. So I can set the stage for Erica against technology together. My name is Todd DeLauz. I'm the deputy secretary for the Agency of Human Services for the State of Vermont, also a middle sex resident. And we were here last week, talking to the board about the state's plans to potentially repurpose the middle sex therapeutic residential community, which is down Route 2 from here right next to the state archives. For the past 11 years, I believe, it housed about seven adults in the custody of our commissioner of mental health. Those folks were recently moved a different set. It was constantly changing group of individuals. But that facility was vacated in favor of a permanent facility up in Essex. And in the near term, as Erica will walk us through when she has a minute to get online, the state is planning to use that facility with some significant fit up for some of our high-end youth. And so those are largely justice-involved youth. Kids have been charged with either delinquency or criminal conduct. And it will be a secure treatment space for them. At this point, you let me know, Erica, I'm jumping all over your presentation. I'll help you. So it would be for three, possibly four youth in that space. Ideally, no placement's longer than two weeks, but we certainly can't promise that it would only be that long. It's really a spot when kids are in crisis to bring them in, assess what's going on with them, and figure out the right course of treatment for them. So Erica can get us squared away with how we got here. It's a pretty brief presentation. And then we really want to invite questions and discussion as folks desire. We got it? Just to get on to the zoning. Just for your information, I'm sure everybody here is interested in Todd, but there is a few people I invited, or that I dropped off agenda, agenda, agenda. Anyway, on route two, none of them is here today. Good. And I can add to that too, Sarah. I talked to the Cornwalls right down the road here, whose houses somewhat near the site, they were very supportive, understood the need of the state. I spoke to Connor Brothers Construction, who owns the building. It used to be Sky Barges, immediately adjacent. John Connor was also very supportive, was going to talk to the one about transit, who is their current tenant in that space and likely to lose the space for longer. Mostly that outreach is really just to introduce the plans and make sure there's a clear point of contact for folks in case there are concerns that arise, both of me with Erica, with the state generally. I think, as Peter spoke to last time, it's been a pretty good relationship. We've had very few problems with that facility in general. And we do plan on putting quite a bit of money into it to make it more secure and last a little bit longer. Those are temporary trailers that really are reaching the end of the life. We really intend not to use them more than three years from when kids would move in, which we anticipate around January of 24. So I will say just while Erica's getting ready, a lot of it's now going to be redundant. But the other pieces for folks to understand, we are in the process of putting together an RFP from the state for permanent facility so that we really do have a path out of middle sex. And this doesn't become a forever temporary, which I can understand was the case with the last time it was used. So we really don't intend to use it much longer than those two or three years. And that RFP is already in process and will go public. I anticipate within the next four or five weeks. And at the same time, we're putting out an RFP imminently for staffing for that and to have a vendor come in on the program for us here. And so yeah. Yeah. Is that subcontracted services, Todd? Yeah. The state will not be providing the staffing. The state will look for a vendor to provide that. According in progress. Okay. I know we need to mute, sir. You want to mute your speaker and your... Oh, I'm here. No, but there's something else happening. I think it has to be. Is that working now? No. Is it better than that coastal? Yeah. How about now? How about now? Bridget, how are you right now? How are you doing? East Southern. Oh, yep. Right where we're at. Okay. How about that? We did it. Okay. We did it. We did it. Okay. And I'm skating with Bob. Okay. Okay. Did you do it? How'd you do it? I got to do it. He's up there for an eight to eight test. Okay, so now I know what to do. Eric wants to put up a power plant. Did you share your... Allow her to share? Got to love technology. Makes the meeting go faster. We could have printed like this in the end of the month. This isn't a 25-year plan. That is true. Save it a tree. We'll make it be like we're going across the server. He says he's doing it on the left. It's in frame with the solicitors after last night. They have two more skates. Yeah. They're on the side. I can't do it on the side, so I can't do it on the side. I can't do it on the side. Yeah. He's trying to get through it. Some of them, they say that out. If you lose your muscle through and you go hard and you're in six suits, your abs are bad end. They can't bottle it, they're good. I'm not going to skate like that. They say it. I want to take this one. It's a ball. He probably told you the story about his dad. He said it was a blast. He never made it to the end. He was a kid, he would skate to out of control. They wouldn't get in for that. He does really good in that. Yes, so that's good. He didn't hand me the problem. I thought we'd go a lot later tonight. I gave him about 50 seconds to shoot now. He was playing deep breaths. Okay. And I had so long, I couldn't screen the rocks. Nothing's happened in here. Okay, so we've got Eric's screen there for a while. We had to dance a little, so we'll see how it goes. Okay. Oh, not at this skate. At this skate, if I'm on the ice, it is. Oh, really? I'm going to do it. Yeah. I started my friend at the ice. Hit him on the ice. That was four years ago. Where are you playing now? Now? And then we can start at the ice. Do you do the Saturday morning group? I don't do anything. That should be a good one. I do the Saturday morning group. That's my, yeah. I did just my, yeah. I'm going to get up the, yeah. Okay, yeah. Because Joe says, that's Joe's way. Yeah, Bobby says that's the low, that's the most relaxing. Yeah, Saturday morning. I mean, it's kind of like, it's going to be two, three, four, five. It's going to start here. It's going to start here, so obviously. Do you ever do the year stuff? It's going to be two, three, four, five. It doesn't take long. I think it's the last one. The last one is something that's cool. Yeah, yeah, there you go. All right, no. Well, here we are, like, three years in and we still, every day, I have a problem with this kind of thing. It's like, it's not perfect. So just thank you, everyone, wanted to say we really appreciate your time today. You know, we came last month and just wanted to talk to you a little bit again about our plans for the middle sex facility and we really just appreciate you all being so open and welcoming to that discussion. Looking at, looking at. So this first slide, I want to talk a little bit about the youth justice in Family Services Division, which is the vision that I lead. And something different in Vermont that most states don't do is that child protection really in our state combines child protection as well as youth justice in one agency. So in that role for youth justice, we're responsible for working with youth whose behaviors put them at risk, supernizing youth who are on probation for working with youth whose behaviors put them at risk, supervising youth who are on probation for committing delinquent acts, assessing youth to determine their challenges. What does it, what does it mean? No, it's not, it's not a question. You go ahead and stress. Challenges and strengths and placing youth in temporary out-of-home care when necessary and working with those youth and their parents towards a safe return home and finding permanent living arrangements for those youth who can't return home safely, preferably with extended family members for known connections. And really it's this last bullet point here as far as placing youth in temporary out-of-home care is what brings us here today. So these aren't foster kids necessarily, or could they be? Oh, they're definitely in DCF custody. Oh, okay. So, but you're working with the actual parents, not the foster parents. Right, okay. Yes, because these are you, generally, we're talking about youth that couldn't be in foster care, but specifically today, kids that will be in residential treatment, that we're trying to make sure we can get them and their families to a situation where they can come home. So in this slide, really is talking about our current high-end system of care and the high-end system of care really focuses on those youth that have the highest level of acuity and need the most intensive supports and services that DCF offers. And what's happened in the last three years as a combination result of the pandemic as well as the closure of Woodside. But what my team has noticed is that we're now operating with people who are set fewer treatment beds that we had pre-pandemic. Pre-pandemic, we had about 200 beds where we had places for youth that needed residential level treatment, whereas now we are at about 93 beds. And we even have a fewer number of beds due to the flood. So it's really significantly a decrease in these beds. And if you look on the left side there where it says secure programming, where we did have 16 beds at one time and now we're at zero for the last three years, that represents Woodside. So the closure of Woodside resulted in another loss of 16 secure beds. So our struggle is to make sure that we can have enough beds that are appropriate for each youth because what happens is with the children at this highest level of acuity, if we don't have anywhere to place them, we end up placing them in some of our staff secure settings, which causes a real pressure and cascade effect throughout the entire system, whereas then you have pressures to place youth either in residential treatment or in foster homes or in community-based services where it's not the best setting for each youth. So in response to this, DCM has been working really hard and we've decided to work with our state partners and our stakeholders to develop a state-of-the-art treatment campus to meet both of Vermont's secure treatment program needs. And so what we're doing is we're working on a dual track, working simultaneously on the permanent solution as well as trying to stand up a temporary solution in the interim. And so what we've done is we've established a really aggressive timeline for development and construction when we're hoping to have that permanent campus program fully operational by early 2026. And what we've done in that, right now we have published an RFQ and we did have three interested builders. That would be the ones that would be looking to stand up that state-of-the-art facility and we'll be publishing an RFP immediately. And that would be looking for a program to run the facility. And in the interim for the temporary facility, we've considered immediately viable locations throughout the state that could be able to house a small, secure, therapeutic crisis stabilization program which really represents our most critical need. The two most critical needs we have in Vermont is for the crisis stabilization and then the crisis treatment bed. Those are where we really have noticed a gap in our care. So the former Mid-Sex Therapeutic Community Residence structure represents the potential site that can be most immediately accessed and minimally renovated to address the current need for secure, temporary crisis stabilization programming. The facility will require some hardening to serve a youthful population because the prior population was adults with some mental health challenges. Hardening efforts that will be put in place to reduce the risk of elopement and the damage to the facility and safety of the youth, staff, and local community. But these hardening efforts, they won't increase an institutional or correctional aesthetic to the building which is important to us because we want the kids to have really a therapeutic environment that's trauma-informed and informed by the data of what's important to getting our kids the best care that they need and we don't want them to feel like you're coming into an institution or some kind of correctional facility. And I should make a note that these renovations will occur in the existing building footprint. So when I talk about crisis stabilization, the details are that it's really intended to be short-term, ideally serving youth for less than two weeks while they're waiting other placements to address their access need. But I do need to make sure to let you know that in some of the more complex cases, youth may exceed that target placement timeline. But for decades, Vermont has been moving towards using the least restrictive settings possible in a variety of systems of care. And this is consistent with the more therapeutic approach which is something that DCI values. Our program may serve any justice involved youth regardless of gender that require this function of your secure program. This program will serve no more than four youth at a time and will generally be supported by a staffing ratio of one to one or greater. We give that mixed support. But we have experienced trauma, have significant adverse childhood experiences and often experience mental health challenges as a result. And really in terms of who these kids are, I mean, these kids are our neighbors, friends, students and maybe youth from our own families. And it's just important to us that as a community and as well as the state that we do have an obligation to support them. And our work as FSD is to support them in a way that helps them move on to really a more stable, productive and law-abiding adulthood. So any questions? Yes, comments? I definitely appreciate the transparency. I think it's, you guys have been good at, you know giving us a sense of what to expect. I wasn't quite clear about what hardening efforts are like a chain link fence, like with this hardening effort. That's a great question. Actually, today I ran this over with my 19-year-old daughter if I like to go through it. And I did not have these technical issues there, but she asked about hardening too, which is like, what does that mean? Like you're talking about, there might be some minimal fencing in terms of making sure the walls are stabilized because sometimes you might try to punch the walls so that they're hardened there. And more, what's the word I'm looking for? Your lost materials? Exactly, your lost materials. There's some things making sure lighting fixtures are caught to make sure that you can't do something to hurt themselves. It's all in the efforts of making sure the building is as secure as possible from not being damaged as well as making sure that you are remaining inside the building and on the premises as well. Gotcha. Todd, do you have anything to add in terms of? Existing fence is an unclimable 12-foot fence and there are a couple areas where an adult probably couldn't escape, but there are areas where we're going to close some fencing, et cetera. I see. Accessing the roof in a way that I don't think most of us might be able to, but a party 16-year-old might be able to. So what are the next steps that we can expect from hearing from you guys? You have one question. Oh, sorry. So we've had experience with that facility in the past of kids pulling firearms. But then it was continuous. Yeah. Is are you going to address that? We certainly can. My understanding of part of the refit has been to, one, it's going to be a different staffing basis than we had for the short period of time when kids moved in. So that facility was briefly used during the beginning of COVID when we decomburgated the Woodside facility and as we began to shut the Woodside facility down. And a lot of the hardening efforts are based on that short-term experience where there was a lot of disruptive behavior, both a lot of holes in the walls as well as some of the other actions being taken. And my understanding is not only one are we getting more robust staffing so that we have more eyes on, hands on. Well, we don't aim to have any hands on, but we have the ability if we need it. And also to cut back on access to that because I think part of the reason was when it was an adult facility had a different population who wasn't looking to disrupt for the purpose of disruption. And now we anticipate some of that. I mean, I don't know how I'd be glad teenagers, but then you've got kids who've really had traumatic life experience to that day. So I'm happy to follow up directly and just get a sense of what we're doing with specifically the firearms that's very, yeah. You know, it's good that she brought that up now because we are going through a punch list of if we've had consultants come up to take a look at what would be needed. And that's something we can always talk about and add in. What have they done at other programs to make sure that fire long is protected but accessible when needed. And as Ty talked about, we're really working to make sure our staff is more robust. And like I mentioned, we're talking one-to-one if not greater. So that'll help with a lot of that, those kinds of behaviors. Yes, Randy. That staffing ratio around the clock, I'm assuming the one-to-one ratios, or do you anticipate a drawback in the nighttime hours? I'm not sure. I need to talk to my guy, my programming guy. I'm not certain, perhaps, but I don't think so. And some of that we have on the vendor who's finally chosen to run. But part of the hardening is also making the doors accessible in different ways so that there's security within the rooms. But it's got to be compliant with both constitutional standards and some of the, I wouldn't say correction, but detention facility standards for youth. Any other questions? Once you get it before it is occupied, if we could come in and see how what the procedures are for our access from the fire department. Because in the past, it's been coming in the front of the first door, that's got to be closed, and then you can get in the second door, but sometimes it's got to be open. So we need to go through those procedures to see what it is that we're going to have the other guys. And how, so the one permit that's required for it is going to be a fire safety permit. Are you linked in with this when the state Department of Public Safety, Fire Safety Division does their check? Okay, so we'll make sure that happens after they've given their approval on more of an operational level. Yeah. Okay, great. Any other questions? And just what can we expect next from you all for in terms of communication? We're happy to let you know as construction is completed again. I think we're anticipating and there are two different tracks. There's the fit up and the vendor selection for the program, I think. We anticipate January as a date. Certainly happy to say when it's ready to accept youth. That's going to sound like to be updated on. Great. There's some construction going on over there. I don't think it'll be noticeable compared to everything else that's going to happen. Okay. Well, thank you both for coming in. Thank you, Erica and Todd. Really, really appreciate it. I gotta say, everyone I've talked to has been incredibly supportive of the board, including Sarah's been tremendously helpful as well. So thank you for your support of us. You're welcome. Thanks for coming in. Thank you very much. It's in the meantime. Sure. We can reach out. Great. Thank you. All righty. We are here now to talk about the monthly meeting of the middle sex volunteer prior department. Action possible. So it says. Yep. We're back to a more routine number of calls. We had five in the past month, four in the 62 so far, our young majority is in or out. Yes. We're at 3.8 for our average response. We're in a small number of calls. That's not bad. We had a truck hit a propane tank, I'm not sure of. Part of which is deer. It's only going to get more as the seasons get closer to that season. Motorcycle accident ended up being just a blown tire and he wasn't pulling anything. Two cars, motor vehicle accident on the B-9. Any power, or do you have a power line and use it on the portal? Excuse me, excuse me, Jeff. Yeah. Could you get closer to the one on microphones please? I'm having a hard time hearing you. Thank you. So you want to repeat the stuff I gave you? One more. As far as training last month, we did interior search and rescue down at the building, the salvage yard down there, Moortown fire has control of that and they let us use it if we want to use it for training. So that's what we did last month. Work night last month was discussing the flood response. As far as repairs, we had what I believe, maybe I'm jinxing myself by saying this, the last repair on our current rescue, which was the gas tank straps that we were waiting to come in and they came in right before the flood hit. So then we had to wait for Barry to clear out before we could get it. As far as the new rescue took the deposit up to North Hyde Park, they signed off on the purchase agreement and so they're just waiting for their new truck to come in, which hopefully will be in a month or so. Fast quad, we had a total of 11 calls, nine of those were medical onlies and then as far as the water filter and softener, that deposit was dropped off and they are scheduled for the 1st of September. So barring any other weather catastrophes, that should go in as scheduled, it should be a one day deal. That's about all from us. Sorry, don't have 20 minutes worth of stuff. That's how we do it. You were right on the other one. Yes, Terri. I have a couple of things. Did you ever get us back a copy of the signed agreement? Yeah, I gave it to Cheryl. You did give it to Cheryl. Okay, because I didn't see it. All right, and secondly, we need the hours for the stipends, even though it's not time to turn them in, just to have it for during the flood, what was allocated for that. So you just want the flood period time? Anything related to the flood, we have to have that. Even though we won't be paying it until six months or whatever, but we need it. So, because we'll be probably be hopefully submitting some part into that. So we also, we paid for, we bought dinner for us down there. You guys got reimbursed for that. Yeah, we just went out. Oh, okay, all right. Check some of the mail. Sure. Okay, yeah, we can get you those hours. Not in the problem. Did you guys say that the fire department takes down trees to set the fire department job? No, I said there was a, we went to a call for a tree on a power line at Portland. That's the power companies. We go there, and the only thing we really do is if we need to is traffic control, but we don't, that's their purview. We don't go near it. But the trees then are done by the town crew, right? There's a tree in the road or something, yes. Yeah, those two on Culver Hill Road, there's like a whole swath of them. You're aware of those, okay. Sometimes the fire department gets called out for those. But now somebody from the road department usually shows up like this. That's amazing. Any questions for the volunteer fire department? I have a question about those trees because I get questions about this all the time. Does the town remove trees or take down trees or do they not take down trees? I just need a sympathy as you're going to start on this. 11 years in this job, what? If they're in our right away. Yeah. And it's something we can do safely, yes. Okay. But if it's Ben, you know what we're at at looks, which is the number one call I get. Tell them to call the tree warden. Yeah, that's the proper process. I mean, they're definitely in danger of like the reason they're calling in place, they look like they're going to fall into the town's right away. Yeah. And you're saying that they should call the tree warden, not you guys? Unless it's in the road already, then they should call the tree warden and the tree warden would then consult with the road foreman about how to proceed. That's the whole idea of having the tree warden in place? Yeah. I just didn't know. I thought it was going to go the trees because they... It all depends on the tree and where it is. That was right. Yeah, I think so. I'm going to take these trees down. But then I thought the problem is, is that the tree's going to fall on the road and then they would need like cones and stuff like that to not get in trouble. Okay. Anything else for the fire department? No? Eric and Jeff, you're all set. Okay. Okay, great. Thank you for coming in. All righty, are you ready for the highway department? Eric and Vic to give an update. And is Steve on or anything or no? Steve's not coming, Ty. And so we're doing an update on the post flood road conditions. And then we're also going to discuss temporarily Steve Martin as a flood recovery project manager for roads action likely. Well, as far as the roads, Culver Hill is done. Brook Road is done. And Lower Sunny Brook is not completed yet, but they are... I have not been down there this week to see where they were at, but I know they're still plugging away at it. But I think for the most part, all of the culverts are done down there. I think it's just the final cleanup. We're on Macy Road. We've got most of that put back together. We got some culverts to replace on that. And then we're going to be moving to Upper Barnett. We got McCulloch Hill. Yeah, McCulloch Hill is in process. You guys said about another week and a half on that. That was the J Hutchins. We also went around this weekend. We looked at East Hill. And when I say we, Eric, me, and Steve, correct. Went around and looked to improve the highway, improve the road from Montpelier, down the line all the way through to Mali-Supol. And we took inventory of what things had to be done like maybe another culvert or two, but... And then some ditching and some stone fill, a little bit of driveway repair, a lot of stone fill going up East Hill. And maybe we have to unplug or culvert down just before you get to Peter's house in the dip. And the thought of that was that type of work would be put out to bid. So we've got some numbers. And we're going to make up a proposal for a bid and put it out to different contractors to see what we can come in, what it will come in for. And this is related to the flood, like FEMA. It would be FEMA reimbursable. That is correct. Yes. This is all flood-related repairs. What about the road next to Macy Road, the one that goes up West? Wood Road, yeah. We've filled in all the washouts. We're just going to have to dress it up with gravel. And then Jay Merrill's been on... Shady rail. Shady rail. Doing the paved area, fixing those so we can get that finished up. And government's done, too, already? Yeah. And Jay's reinforcing that along the... It would be the west side of Shady rail where it washed out the new pavement underneath that first lift of pavement. So we're correcting that. We're cutting it out. We also cut out some sections down in Shady rail on the lower, down below, or down by Government Hill and where you go for Wood's Road. Yes, where it was all washed there, as well. Undermined, yep. And there's a culvert that he has to replace down below Wood Road that undermined the road, as well. Yes. There was talk in our last meeting, I think, when you guys gave the update about that seven-fold culvert that was repaired, I think, it was spliced together or something. Yes, it was patched, yep, on Portal Road. Is the plan to ultimately go back in and replace that? We're going to have to, at some point, at some point it's going to have to be replaced. I think what we'll have to do, because it is so big, that it becomes a... Box call. Agency of Transportation bridge. And so whenever there's a bridge, they have to, they probably will design it and put it out to bed and... As part of our FEMA efforts, is it? I would say, I'm not sure on that, Randy. I really am not. I would say that it would be more state funds. It'd be like a 90-10, 90% state and 10% federal. I mean, 10%, 10%. Or maybe 90% federal and five and five. Do you mean a real bridge, instead of a culvert, a real bridge? It'll be a box culvert, but any... It's classified as a bridge instead of a culvert. But you still use this... What I took from... Yeah, it'd be like a box culvert. Maybe over four feet, but the state of a mind is considered a bridge. Like the culvert on Dolan Road is pretty big and Warren Road. Those are the same kind of things you're talking about, okay. Anything over four foot. What do we... I had a question about the culvert that you guys replaced that's still in our driveway. Are we responsible for getting rid of that? Disposing of it? Is it plastic? Do you want it? No. I'll come get it. Okay. But is that like the general rule? Is that why you'll take it? Yeah, we can get it. Some people call up and say, well look, I put that culvert in two years ago and I paid $500 for it. And they're putting a bigger one in for climate change. We're going to get more water, we need a bigger pipe. And I just say, if you want it, just ask them to toss it on the lawn and you can have it and keep it. Because he paid, the person's paid for it. Right, I think we've probably technically paid for it too, so I don't want it. I'm more than glad to come pick it up. Okay, you guys will use it or not really just use it? Depends on the condition. I think it's in Gucci. Okay, cool, thanks. And then the next, moving right along to... Yeah, I missed the word on the agenda, sorry, it's higher. It's simply higher Steve Martin's, oh, temporarily higher Steve Martin. Now, did we hire? I'm sorry, I mean as a talent employee, I don't know, something left to happen. Okay, right, right. That's my understanding of it. Peter has had some conversation with Dorinda, making him an employee. Well, what will happen, if we don't hire him on us at a time as a talent employee, he should have had insurance coverage and all in place two months ago, basically, or six weeks ago. So he's kind of been operating without that. If he went to get an insurance policy now a day, they're not gonna back date it, I don't think by for six weeks. So that becomes an issue. So the easiest way is to make him a temporary employee and we would classify him as a temporary employee. He would fall under our insurance and then we would just pay him and take out taxes and workers comp and all of that and that should all be reimbursable. And that is the other thing we haven't done. He wasn't quite ready, he was thinking about it last time. I think we have to talk about his pay and what we're gonna pay him. He did say, he did ask us if we were gonna go into an executive session for that. I don't know if that's something we can go into an executive session. Sarah's shaking it, Sarah's shaking it. Absolutely not. This is gonna be double taxpayer money. That's an open discussion that you actually have. The only time that you would not have a discussion about this that we go into second executive session is if it would harm the employee or harm the potential candidate. In other words, somebody works for another town and you don't need to know. But that's something that I think should be absolutely in the open. I think people will all come and see those minutes. Okay, and we wanna make sure that that gets in the minutes tonight. That's not my decision today. Is it considered contract negotiation or because, I mean. Well, I mean, I just don't know. I don't know. This is the first time we've ever hired somebody temporarily on a situation like this. Ideally everything should be up front in town. It seems like establishing a rate of pay fall under the negotiation piece, but it needs to be established in open meeting once that's been decided. Is that, that's how I'm thinking of that. Peter. Peter. Thank you. Just a couple of quick things. The other thing I think it's important to understand is I asked Sarah to reach out to FEMA, which she did. And it was absolutely their strong recommendation that he be an employee or temporary employee. And just to reemphasize what Dorinda said, it would be prohibitive, absolutely prohibitively extensive for Steve to go out and purchase liability insurance to cover him for this short-term thing. I mean, it would be thousands of dollars. So I think this is a good solution. I think it protects him. I think it protects the town. And I think it's the right way to go. The intent is you looked into the benefit situation Dorinda to make sure that we don't have to provide him with benefits. Well, so as long as we hire him as a temporary employee, we should be fine. There's a rule if we hire a regular employee, but we're classifying as a temporary, but even as a temporary employee, I think he has to stay under 1,020 hours. Totally. I had a conversation with him about how many hours he thought it was going to be going forward. And he said fewer and fewer, certainly less than 20. A little uncertain. I mean, he's a little uncertain too. But what I told him is we needed to work together to make sure he didn't hit any of those limits. So I don't have a copy of the personnel policy over here, so I couldn't read it. But isn't it so many hours in any given pay period? It has nothing to do really with our personnel policy. It has to do with mostly the retirement benefit portion of it. Anything to do with beamers? If a person works consistently over 24 hours a week or 1,020 hours a year or 1,040 hours a year, then you have to pay the retirement benefit. But that's why we have to make sure we only consider this a temporary employee. That's how the state hires all of their summer help as temporary employees. So at this point in time, he has not signed a W-9 or done any of the paperwork? No. So we need to do that. Right. I think the question at hand here is, though, do you go into executive session for contract negotiations to discuss rate of pay? Or is it an open meeting thing? I think that's where we left it at. I believe Sarah said it correctly. We can have a discussion about the rate of pay in executive session. But then we need to come out of executive session and have a motion that the select board accept the recommendation of the no. You're saying no? She didn't say that. She said everything should be out in the open. The only reason that it wouldn't be is if they were an employee that was already working at another town, and we didn't want the town to know that they were looking for a better job, and all of that. So that this should just be. Only harming the employee. Yeah, and it's not harming the employee, so it should be done out in the open. But I think what I thought I heard Randy say or somebody say is that negotiations can be done between Eric and Vic and Steve, and then you come to the board to say, this is what we're proposing, and we all say that in public. I mean, I could tell you right now, I would propose $35 an hour, which is like $75,000 a year. I mean, I think that's reasonable for the work that he's doing. That falls under the range of project management services. Yeah. So can I just say something? Just to be clear on executive sessions, after making a specific point that premature general public knowledge would clearly place the public body or a person involved in a substantial disadvantage, then you may consider contracts, labor relations, arbitration, remediation, grievances, pending civil litigation. So that's got to be the first thing. The second thing, and I worry about saying this in a public meeting, is that ideally, before hiring Steve, what should have happened is that three phone calls were made and that those people submitted their prices. They said, I will perform this service for X dollars an hour. And my strong, strong, strong suggestion is that if you have not made those phone calls today, you make them tomorrow. It's better to make the effort and show FEMA. We had this guy, this Ford Road Commissioner, he came in during a crisis. You might even be able to get help for him. But right now, what we did is we made three phone calls. We contracted these people. These were the prices that they said they would do. And one of those people should be Steve. But I don't mean to be a big blanket, like I always am. But I also don't want to have this bill. I can't ever add to that. Liz, I think Victor. Yes, Victor. So what happens if we see, I mean, I don't disagree with anything. I tried to do this a couple of weeks ago, and I got pushed back. So but what if we call these other people and they say they do it for less? So what do we do about the stuff Steve has already got? What you do is you pick the best person for the job. They just have to be able to make an argument with FEMA and say, we did call these people. But Steve had stepped in during a crisis. He offered to do this. And he was on the hit the road going, and he knows these roads. It's a four-road commission that you don't have to go strictly on what people say. OK, I didn't understand. Director, you can say, we did contact with people. This was to have much money. They were like, this is how much to do is we're going to charge per hour to do the service. From that, also, we'll give you a good base of what to pay Steve. OK. Does that make sense? I think so. And how is that get documented, sir? Well, I think that part of Steve is kind of keeping all the documentation. But they should keep notes or Eric should keep notes. You just make it, by noon tomorrow, you have the phone calls done. You choose the people and you call them and say, how much would you do to do this? They would tell you per hour. Just keep it all on the same level. So you can't have someone who says, I'll do it for a month at this rate. Or I'll do it depending on this thing. Close the grapple. Keep everything apples to apples, oranges to oranges. That way, FEMA can say, OK, they call these three people. Turns out Steve was the lowest end again in the most experience of the town. Great choice, middle sex. Here's your check. I would just define that scoring criteria ahead of those phone calls. So it's the capacity to do the work, the pricing, their availability, the whole nine years. And just define what that is, record that through those phone calls, and then it's straightforward. And then, I don't even think you have to come back to the board. I don't know, since it's going to be, you haven't gone for any of the other contracts, right? Maybe you do. Well, they had approval prior to, but without having the rate of pay presented to the board. That's a good point. I feel like they should then come back and say, these are the phone calls we made. Here's the recommendation that we have. Perfect. Great. It's really hard to do this when it's an emergency, right? Well, I think what maybe what we need to do is make those phone calls and then have a special meeting to finalize this. Because I think going any further before we make the phone calls is just going to make the process seem really screwed up. Well, Eric's going on vacation on Thursday, right? Tomorrow. Tomorrow, but you don't have to be here for that. Yeah, he doesn't have to be the one to make the calls. Do you manage to set up a meeting? Yes, you may, sir. While we're in this topic, I am happy to report that this afternoon we got a call from Jerry Bishop, fresh in from San Juan, just arrived to Williston. We have been assigned a project development manager from FEMA. This is fantastic news that we were going to have a conference call with him on Thursday. This means that the ball's rolling. So these types of issues, by the way, he'll be very interested in. So he will be able to give you some guidance on what to do. He's also going to want to walk the roads. He's going to want to see what you've done with repairs. And one last thing, what we learned today during the night when we attended a FEMA meeting was that there is a separate category with also for funding from FEMA and has in the hazard mitigation realm. This is a good thing to talk about with Jerry Bishop, the project development manager, because this is like, well, this road didn't exactly need to be repaired, but the culverts are shot and the design sucks. And we would really like somebody to repair this so that the flooding doesn't happen on this road. I'm thinking of Baby Wood Road, what we're talking about with East Hill. Those are great projects to consider. So this is all great news. Yay. Is he getting other counts? I don't know. I don't care. Just go away. So folks, just going backwards a minute. Victor, do you have the capability to, I mean, I presume Steve counts as one phone call. So we need to make two other phone calls. Do you have perspective candidates you could call? I think you've made some phone calls, right, Victor? Well, yes, well, one person, yeah. And there's also someone who's interested. There's another person you talk to. Paul Sermonera is interested. What's that? Paul Sermonera is interested in receiving a phone call from you. And receiving a phone call. Gotcha. Yes, that's good. So what I would suggest is that Victor make those phone calls and then come back to us with a recommendation and hopefully we can have a very short special meeting to make that decision and get this taken care of. We could even have an emergency. Do you have access to everyone? Sarah has a suggestion. I want a phone call made to Steve. You should ask Steve how much his hourly rate's going to be. We already know that. What is it? Oh, you don't want to say? Oh, you don't tell us, that's right. So just keep that to yourself so when you talk to the other guys. Okay, good, great. Okay, so you have a couple of candidates you're going to call in addition to the third candidate, Steve. Yeah? I did email a contact back when we first started this that if you're looking for somebody else there's some contact info there. I copied you on that email. So if you need some extra contact. You had the gentleman's name, it's... Yes, I got it written down. I don't have it on top of my head, but. All right. And we'll have to call him. And then the other one that we mentioned before for total transparency was Jason Merrill. Okay, good job. Alrighty then. So just to circle the wagon. So Victor, as soon as you've been able to do that and you're ready to make a recommendation if you would reach out to Sarah she can set up a quick special meeting so you can present out to the board and we can make a decision. Does that sound right? Yeah. Okay, thank you. Okay, so no action on this until we have a special meeting, right? Sarah, which is going to be maybe when? No, no, these guys make the... But maybe this week. Yeah. Wednesday or Thursday, probably. Okay. I can't do it Thursday. So nervous, so nervous, better. Could we do it during the day? It's going to be a five minute phone call. I have to leave at five o'clock to go pick up my daughter at the airport. No, but I meant like, can we do it in the middle of the day? I can. Yes, so can I. We can do it on lunch break or something. Okay. Should we plan for that? What are we planning for tomorrow? Will we have the answers by tomorrow? Hopefully. I've got time for tomorrow afternoon and then I've got opening between noon and two on Thursday. Yeah, I realize I have to, I have a two lunch meetings Wednesday and Thursday, but I could spend five minutes at like noon. If you guys just want to pick a time, how about on Thursday at, would it, would it, would it zero if you wanted to? I have noon to two on Thursday and then tomorrow I'm pretty flexible in the afternoon. How about you Bridget, noon to two on Thursday? I'm pretty flexible this week. Great. How about you, babe, noon to two on Thursday? Lunchtime Thursday? Yes, you. I can't hear you. I'm sorry, I figured noon to two on Thursday. I was gonna say does not work for me, unfortunately. Okay, but we just need three, right? Yeah. Okay, so one, two. Victor, are you available at noon on Thursday? No, I'm Randy. No, I had one other question. I would prefer to be part of that meeting if we could schedule it, if I can. Is the only time everybody can do it in the afternoon on Thursday? Well, what can you do? I can do almost any other day or time. It's just I have a, I have a doctor's appointment at that time, I can't do it. What about tomorrow afternoon? If we think the phone call is, Is that flexible? And are you flexible tomorrow afternoon? And are you flexible tomorrow afternoon? Okay, let's do tomorrow. I'm always flexible. Maya. Very flexible. How about three o'clock? Does that work for everybody or does it work for me? Kind of cuts in on my nap time, but. So, three o'clock, special meeting tomorrow. Three to three o'five. Yep, three to three o'clock. Is there going to be a Zoom? Yeah, it's going to be a Zoom. And now, where did the Paul Sermon era thing come from? I had never heard from Paul Sermon era. Oh. And originally I didn't, and I got three before. Do I have to call Paul Sermon era? No, you just, I think that it's just, he's interested in getting the ball rolling. Paul's at this meeting right now. He's at the meeting. Well, let him speak up. Okay, so three PM meetings tomorrow, great. You have enough people to call. Okay. Great, thank you so much. Anything else about roads? Okay, we're going to move on to, oh, it's perfect timing, six o'clock. I have one quick question related to the, and I don't know if Victor or Eric can answer it. Do either one of you know if we were getting, or maybe Paul can answer it? If we were getting a revised day of Percy bill, Steve said there was something about the bill we received was two different projects or something like that. I think it was the Percy bill. And that, do you know anything about it, Paul? So when I talked to Steve, it sounded like what he wanted was the bank armoring portion of Brook Road to be a separate quote unquote scope versus all the culverts, road repair and replacement and all of that stuff. So the riprap was what he was hoping to have as a separate scope. So I've already sent him kind of a four preliminary edited version and I've just got to tune that up with accounting to just to reflect his requests on that, if that sounds like what he was looking for. Does it change the bottom line of the bill at all? It does not. No, it was just the way, more or less the way it was presented and broke out. And he's also had me write up just a short editorial about what we did on a weekly basis, just to kind of recap the recovery week to week and progress made. Okay, great. Thank you. I just wasn't clear what was happening with that one. All right, in Shelley, you had a question. Just a quick one. And I'm sure it's already on there because you probably got a list this long of to-dos for roads, but not troders on that list for the washouts. I think I almost ran you off the road the other day because that rock and lake, he's gonna try to get around that and he's trying to get around the washouts. That is on the list. Every road had damages, seems. Oh yeah. Okay, anything else on roads before we move on to the next agenda item? Alrighty then, Jorinda, you are up. Oh boy. Action possible. Well, we've got lots of stuff going on. First of all, the good news I'll share is we've got just about every bill and we think now for last year's budget. And I think we're gonna come in just about 8% under budget for last year. So that's positive news. So these are two. I contacted RB Technology after our last meeting, which was August 1st. And I have received no response. That is in regards to installing the other computers and questions that we had relating to the refurbished equipment on the quote he sent. And I've got nothing back. I did show that estimate to somebody that I know that's in the technology field and they felt that for refurbished equipment, that was a pretty high quote. But they're not in the state, so we can't compare that, but just thought I'd throw that out there. And the last thing is we are currently at almost $700,000 in bills for the flood. So far, I talked to the bank. We can get a line of credit at 3.99%. We have to, we can only go to the well once and it's, so we have to tell them in advance how much we want to have this line of credit for. It'll take anywhere from, they said to plan on two weeks, but it could come in a little bit sooner. And so what we do is we just borrow down on the line of credit as we use it. So I, I've asked several people what we thought this number was gonna come in at. And I haven't been able to get any kind of estimate. So I came up with a number of 1.25 million. I don't know how anybody feels about that number. So that's where- It's a line of credit. It's for a line of credit. So if we don't borrow it, we don't. But right now, if I was to pay every bill we've got sitting here right now, we'd have very little cash availability. Does it affect your credit at all, like to have that much of it? It's just like are we worried about that? We don't have a credit. You mean if we don't pay our bills? No, like we wanted to borrow again for something else. No, I don't think so. So the other thing which I did here this week which is not overly important, but ARPA agreed to let FEMA money, flood money be used. Use ARPA money for flood. So if we wanted to use it for that, we could. That was just approved this week. Granny, do you have a question? Yeah, I was just thinking, going back to the road folks again, do you have a dashboard estimate of like percentage of completion on the road construction? Like does it feel like we're like 70% complete of what people are doing out there? Yeah, I mean, as far as the major issues that we've had, yes, I mean, there's a lot of little stuff that we're gonna have to take care of. Like how much did my Culver Hill Road problem cost? A couple hundred thousand? That big thing? Yeah, I'd have to go back, I don't know. Whose bill was that? It was just my touch ins. That was like 178. 173 or something. Just that area. Oh my gosh. I would suggest we be very deliberate and careful about this and assuming there's no penalty in asking for more, if we think we're 70% of the way there, we wanna include everything we can possibly include in the FEMA reimbursement. So we don't wanna hit some kind of a cap where we don't, now we could use some of the ARPA money, I understand. But I'm thinking if we're at 700,000 right now and there's probably work we haven't been built for and there's more work to do, maybe it should be 1.5, not 1.25. That's just my thought. And I don't know if that makes sense to you guys. We're looking for guidance from you, but I know how expensive everything is and I'd rather have the line of credit and not have to use it than be butting up against the end of it and trying to figure out what we're gonna do. That was initially a number I thought of, but then we also have a fund balance. So I didn't know how much you'd want to borrow versus using some of the money we have available. We probably won't receive any money from FEMA until spring or summer next year. Oh, really? Yeah. So we have to carry ourself for a long time before. That's why I wasn't sure how much I should be. It's a best guess and I have no idea myself, but I will tell you that McCulloch Hill's not all in there yet. I say we go 1.5 million. Because 875 is 70% of 1.25 million. There's no closing costs, right? So there's no... No, it's just a lie. It's just because they are offering this up and it's a one-year term. I asked them what would happen if we couldn't pay it off in a year. They said, chances, they'll just roll it forward for another year. Where's the, what bank? Community bank. We do all of our banking with them, so we have a really good relationship. So I just, you know, but the caveat is it's from the time the paperwork has to be signed, it's gonna be, you know, you'll have to sign. She sent me through just sample documents, but it all has to be signed by either the full board or you guys have to delegate somebody being the chairman to sign off on a line of credit. And they'll draw up the documents and all, but I don't know when you're due back, Peter. A few back Saturday if you're not going to run that, so by the time they produce any documents. I don't have documents ready by then, you know. So. I would support the 1.5. Do we have to vote? I think we should. Oh yeah, you need to vote on it. And the motion has to say that this is a current expense line of credit for 1.5. The loan term will be one year. The loan purpose will be to cover FEMA reimbursement or however you want to word that. And the lender is community bank NA. And that has to be all in the motion or the resolution you make. I like that. That's all related expenses. Just state it like that. Yeah, from the July 10th flooding. So what, FEMA related expenses? Flood related expenses. Flood related expenses. Do you have to mention that it will likely be covered by FEMA to rid of? No, you can reimbursement for reimbursement from FEMA until reimbursement from FEMA, maybe something like that. Did we say that FEMA has a math, like we have a 10% in kind or something? Yeah. You can't remember that, okay. Does someone want to make that motion? Peter made it already. Oh, he did? Okay, who seconded it? I do. Okay, and Victor seconded it. All those in favor of said motion? Say aye. Aye. Aye. And can we make another motion to a white chair? To sign. To sign. Okay. Should we just add that to the motion or not make it some? Go ahead. Let's just add it to the motion, Sarah, and that we approve Peter to sign the loan document. Okay. And then my next question is, I plan on sending out some of the bills tonight or tomorrow that we can, but I don't know how far you want me to, do you want me to start borrowing immediately on the line to pay some of these larger bills or do you not want me to borrow until we're out of money or? I'd say. I would start using the line of credit. I think we should hold on to our reserves as long as we can. I think I'll keep it cleaner too. Okay. Well, I'm going to send out, so it'll be basically, I'm starting with the small ones and then the large ones will, you know, as soon as that money, and she said we should have it within two weeks. So from the time the paperwork is signed. So is that essentially that whole group of 66,000? No, so. Well. 666,000? This is, yeah, so, but that's taking out. So that I have in this everything we owe as of right now. I've got the checks here, but I was not going to mail them until I had money. But you could take the total and do an Excel spread and then take that off of the line of credit. Right, but I can't do anything further. So I can pay, you know, like I took the smaller ones and have paid more of the individual type people as opposed to the big corporations. But, you know, I could squeeze these out, but we would be leaving ourselves in a predicament. Let's just try and get a lot of credit and force as soon as we can to run down. Thanks for doing that. I just don't want to run us into the hole and then there's some hang up at the bank and. Right, yeah. I want to be sure that doesn't happen. So just let me know. I'll make myself available any time to come down and meet you and sign that paperwork or go to the bank or whatever I need to do. Yeah, when I'm, as soon as I get it, I will let you know. Okay, thank you. Yeah. Anything else, Linda? Treasure related. I think that exhausted my time. It is now 615 and we're on to other business considering candidates for emergency management coordinator to replace the EMC coordinator, Paula Otenty. Action possible. Sarah, do you know, are there people on the line that are interested in this? There is only one person who has applied so far and that is Steve and here he is. I think that is his letter, I believe. Okay. Yes. Well, Steve, would you like to tell us why you're interested in this position and what you're bringing? I'm interested really just to help the town out. I know Sarah's been working like crazy and so is everybody else through this issue. And I have a lot of years working on like construction project management projects. I've never done anything as far as like FEMA's concerned but I've worked on multi-million dollar structures from high end resorts like up in Stowe. This is the last 126 patient bed addition at the hospital where I ran the temp power for more than 23 companies where I coordinated with like 46 other foremen and project managers to move temp power around for daily needs for the construction site with more than 400 guys. So I feel like I bring some level of project coordination to the table that might be useful skill in this situation for the town as well as just the desire to help the town out. So. Great. Would this anyone have any questions for Steve? Do we have an idea of how many hours Steve would have to put in? Only if we have an emergency. Yeah. Oh, so it's not retro. There's a couple things that we do. Like there's a couple things that because, you know we're a town in the state and everyone has a number of decision management plans. There's like a plan that you look at every year and you revise to make sure that the numbers are right and stuff like that. So I've done a little bit of research as far as like that type of position goes and I've been doing quite a bit of research on my own as far as like the theme of stuff. Like I was looking into the hazard mitigation grant stuff that Sarah was talking about earlier. I haven't been able to, on the FEMA website there's like some webinars that were, that I missed before that I've been trying to get like the reporters to like to view and stuff like that. But I've been pretty proactively trying to research like grant stuff and everything like that. As far as FEMA goes, I've found, I've even found, I call it like a Wishing Well grant. There's like a general grant that you can apply for that's basically can be for anything really that is really just for somebody with obscured wealth looking for like a tax write off and they might take your grant at will even. Just as something to do, I'd like to kind of so their own heart and kind of give away some of their money. And so like I could forward that to the town as well for people to apply for and not that, anything would necessarily come with it but there's always a chance, any extra money for some people right now. I know it could be a good thing so. I think the emergency management coordinator also you know oversees the committee. So in the past we've had like meetings every two to three months. So the folks who are on it who are interested in like serving in that capacity. So like some of the things that we've talked about are having a shelter guide in place like what happens if we need to use Romney as a place for the fire department like having an actual written plan in place. And I know Honeybee Barrett is interested in sort of figuring out like that plan so that the next disaster that comes has like a system in place. That was what was sort of lacking in this disaster was I had two text chains going on at once and I had no idea who was on the text chain or who was even texting me about stuff that was going on and just having a clearer sense. So like I think that if you're up for that task also of helping the town prepare for the next disaster and working with the committee in that regard. That's definitely something I'd be interested in. I've never done anything as far as hazard preparedness on this larger scale. Over with my commercial industrial electrical background I've worked on like live 15 KB services where we go through like all kinds of OSHA trainings and safety trainings and we had safety meetings prior to working on live electrical appointments so that what we have like basically like who calls 911, who's going to get help, who's acting as a first responder in those types of situations. So I have a little bit of like hazard mitigation preparedness kind of in my background built in because of the electrical safety that I've had to go through over the years. But I would definitely be up for the challenge of helping the town out in that regard as well. Thank you. So I was more of a statement actually. I can, I'm going on vacation for a few days but I can get together some information for you for trainings for you're going to want to have some ICS training, which is all online and stuff like that. But I can get a list of that stuff together that would help you out a lot. Yeah, that would be what it calls. That's actually what I wanted to say. So the emergency management director has some ICS training. This would be really a great chance to move out of that dynamic with you or someone higher. You know what I mean? Someone's going to be present to get that training because only then can you sign some of this stuff. And also, Liz may I talk to you? Yes. Our hazard mitigation plan, as you know, is expired. We will not be getting any, we will be in trouble with FEMA because of that. That is not our fault. We have been waiting for grants to open up to hire a consultant that we need to do. And so I hope you'll be part of that. FEMA assures us that that money is going to be coming down. That award is going to be opening up this fall. And they're also going to ask for a waiver for the town of Middlesex because like a lot of small towns, it's a hard thing to do. And the laws have changed. The data needs someone to do data. We need someone to do all this stuff and we have to hire a consultant for that, oddly enough, according to FEMA's rules. And I would also suggest that while it's fresh in our minds that you think about pulling together a meeting, you know, when you get back from vacation, that includes, you know, honey who did work, you know, I think I'm the committee person from the select board, the fire department, so that we can talk about like lessons learned from this because it's going to, we're going to forget, right? And we're going to have memories that are false and like, you know, just all that. So I think it'd be really good to have a debrief of what went well where we could have had improvement because I think that'll really help us formulate, you know, this plan for the next time this happens, of how we handle it as a town of communication and all that kind of stuff. All right, any other questions? Yeah, Brandy? Yeah, I just have a question about like, your work environment and during these, you know, situations where you have, you know, a freak storm event like this, where this position may need to, you know, come into action and how that might work with the work that you do and understanding if that capacity really lies there? So I'm a local to technician, by day I'm formed for Alliance Group, formerly the Alliance Mechanical and I've talked to my direct manager about this and if the need arise where I had to take time off during the regular workday, they would just, they'd find a way to work around it. They know that in a time of crisis that things just need to be handled. They've been really accommodating with me personally with the issues as far as flood damage at our property. The days that I've had to take off, we've met with wetlands people recently and somebody from FEMA and they were totally cool with that. So they've been pretty accommodating with my personal life. So, and my direct manager felt that they would be, you know, fairly accommodating understanding that, you know, this isn't like, hey, I'm taking off two days a week, you know, you know, every other week. So I've got to do stuff for the town. It's like, you know, there's a severe weather, you know, emergency or something like that and the position was needed then, then I'd be able to step in when I was needed by the town. So. Thank you. Any other questions for Steve? Do you want to add anything more, Steve? Oh, I think that pretty much says it. I mean, I have a real desire to help the town and get involved as most of you know it. I've been kind of putting myself out there here and there to try to get more involved. So I think this is another great opportunity and maybe some of my skills in my own personal life would be able to help out the town. So. I just have one. Yeah. You do know historically this job is volunteer. Yeah. Okay. There are revisions during FEMA events when one can submit like Paula did for a compensation, but I just want you to know that. I know. And make sure you're cool with that. I'm totally fine with it. It may lead to bigger and better things. Well, that's really good news. Okay, so there are no other candidates, Sarah? Not to my knowledge or information. I have already. So is there a motion to appoint Steve as the? I'd like to appoint Steve Dennis to the position of emergency. What's the title? Management Coordinator. Management Coordinator. Is there a second? Is there a second? Is there a second? I'll second it. Okay. I'll second it. Bridget first. Bridget seconds. Sorry. Peter. I've done good. Okay. Got an accent. Okay. All those in favor of appointing Steve Dennis as our new emergency management coordinator, say aye. Aye. Aye. The ayes have it. Congratulations, Stephen. And thank you for stepping up to volunteer. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you for the opportunity. It's going to be great. It's going to be great. And probably I would imagine too Paula has some things that she can pass on to Steve. Yep, we have a whole binder down here. Yeah, a whole binder. I was looking at it the other day. I poked my head into it. Good for you. And I would recommend like maybe in September, pulling together, you know, a six o'clock, the end of the evening. Oftentimes the alternate Tuesday works for people because they're already, you know, about this like four minutes, so. Okay, cool. Thank you. Alrighty, next is the Welch Park update, Peter. Thank you. Oh, gosh. Thank you. I've had four conversations with John since our last meeting and he promised me right after the last meeting that he would have an update for me and then the flood came. So I was on the phone with him just as our meeting was, was starting and it's basically the same old story. He wants to do it. He will do it. I said to him, I said, John, I said, if you don't have the time to do this, either we need to have you hire somebody to help you with it or you need to recommend somebody else or, you know, we need to do something to move this forward. And he promised and promised and promised me that he will do it, but he hasn't done it yet. So that's where we are. Alrighty. It's a little, it's a little frustrating. He knows, he knows I'm frustrated. I know, I know the select board's frustrated and I will keep, I will keep the pressure on the best I can. Alrighty, thanks. So the town hall updates action unlikely. Is that referring to me? Yeah. Yes. Okay. So the, we met with VIA two weeks ago, was it Sarah? Or last week? I can't remember. I think it was almost two weeks ago. Yeah, almost two weeks ago with their final sort of draft drawing of the town hall as well as we spent a lot of time talking about the cost estimate of the project, which is, I mean, I'm not even gonna say a number because it's really about in real time today what it would cost to either refurbish the building or have a brand new building. It was upwards of $2 million, Sarah. Do we have that number on top of our heads? I know. It was like 2 million to refurbish it and like 2.2 million to buy a new building in today's dollars. So, and that's before any other funding sources that we would have available to us like the MIRP and possibly Historic Preservation Grants and any other grants that are available to help us. So the next step is for the IA is coming to our October 3rd select board meeting and they are going to, we're gonna give a presentation and what we hope to have at that presentation is and I might be confusing timing because is that also our public meeting, Sarah? I think they said do it all together. Yeah, do it all together. So that's our public meeting as well where we would educate the public on the steps that we've taken so far, what the IA accomplished and sort of preliminary. It's not even, at this point they said like you don't really wanna start talking any detailed numbers because we don't, it's not accurate as to when we would actually be doing this if we were to do this. But I think what we would do as a sort of a very basic thing is to say if we were to bond 50% of this cost over 30 years, this is what we would be looking at for a cost of both family just to give people a sense because it's gonna be a combination of grants and bond and fundraising potentially as well. You know, like doing some sort of community fundraising. So, and at that meeting, we will present the two scenarios of the replacing or the refurbishing of the building. But as a committee, we've, you know, we are gonna probably recommend refurbishing the building not finding a new place for it and buying land and things like that. So be prepared for that. There'll be a little presentation from me and BIA and Dave Megida who comes with his buildings and grounds, background. He's been really helpful in this whole process. Anything else, Sarah, about that piece of it that I'm missing? I don't think so. I don't think so. Yeah. I think that we talked about it for the cost in terms of thinking about the total of special articles that's passed every, every March and how that leads to the collegiate, the big, the big, special art. Yeah. I mean, yeah, you know, we're looking at, you know, over a very, over an extended period of time that it becomes much more sort of manageable in people's minds when it comes down to, oh, it'll be a $400 increase per year on your taxes, you know, for a $300,000 house or whatever, or something like that. So that's what we hope to sort of be able to give an estimate of, yeah, it's probably not even that, right? So, all of my taxes went up by $400. Got my tax bill. Okay, is that what it is? It was the school part? Okay. So the other thing I was gonna say that I was just mentioning to Darinda to give you a heads up on is the municipal planning grant. I sort of miss, I guess I misunderstood or there was sort of a miscommunication on what the work that could be paid for from this grant that was done by the IA, I was under the very clear assumption that they could still do the work prior to March 1st, but they couldn't bill us for the work. But when I reached out today to Jenny LaVoy, she said, no, they can't even do the work be prior to March 1st. The good news is that most of the work was done after March 1st. So most of the money that they're billing us, we can apply to this grant plus we already have to pay a portion of it anyway. So I believe it was around $5,000 for the first two bills combined of work that they did, because they were just needing, they hadn't really done any deep dive work. So that is, and that may, it may all be a wash anyway because we have to pay a part of it anyway, but that was a little disappointing to hear. What it could mean is that we either don't spend the whole grant or the IA may be able to do something a little bit extra for us that we didn't anticipate or may be able to like, we could add it to that. I think they said that even like, if we were to go ahead with them for a phase two of this project, we can apply part of that to the previous grant. So we still could use that money we paid prior to this grant towards our portion, is what you're saying? Yeah. I mean, because we ended up having to pay like the last municipal, we ended up paying everything and we get reversed, right? So we've already paid the first five in. We say it's for everything, right? And what they do is give us back their percentage. Their percentage, right, yeah. And so, but what they said to me was they, so when I fill out the grant, there's gonna be a couple of places that I have to like remove the dollar value because it was done before March 1st. So I haven't done the second submission yet, which is where you actually break down what you paid for. So that was, I tried and they were like, oh, I couldn't submit it because I had done something wrong, but she said it was a little premature to submit it anyway. But anyway, so, yeah. You just listed that as our match. Yeah, we listed as our match. So anyway, and then the other thing I was gonna say, related to the town hall, which is this is the, oh no, it's not, it's really this, but I've been meeting this Thursday. I think it's a Thursday, right, Randy? With Sam Lash from Central Vermont Regional Planning Commission and Lowry's joining the meeting. That's the energy person as well, energy committee, to talk about the energy walkthrough for this building, the level two walkthrough for this building and then also the fire department and the garage. So I hope to get some answers from Sam Lash as to next steps. But we've applied, we're in the queue and this is the thing that has to happen next is that we have a meeting with them. It's only half an hour, so I think it's just logistics around scheduling. So Eric, would you be the contact for like the road and the fire department probably, right? And Sarah, you would be the contact for the town, right? For scheduling that walkthrough, okay. And then just while we're on it, this is all related. This is this here, if anyone wants to look at it, it's the $4,000 grant that's called the community resilience or something capacity building grant, which we can use for like hiring someone to help us write the Merb grant for the town hall. We can use it for community outreach events and it's for $4,000 and we've been awarded it, but it just needs to be signed. So Peter, I was just gonna go ahead and sign that. Do we need to appoint me to sign it, Sarah? I don't know. I don't either. How do we do it? We have an industrial case. I would suggest, we do just have a motion authorizing you to go and listen to the minutes. Okay, I'll make that motion. Okay, in a second. Okay, Victor seconds it. All those in favor, at least start signing the capacity building grant application. Aye. All righty, so I think that's it. Is there any questions about the town hall right now? Okay. That grant, 500 of that goes to the energy committee? They wanna, yeah. If I could be able to do some of that outreach activities. Oh, and that was the other question I had. So you'll get a copy of this, Dorinda. And like, how will you know where to deposit it? Does it get like, just go to our discretionary. You don't have to show receipts for what we spent it on or anything like that. I don't think, I have to look at the, the recording. There is a, but I'm just wondering if we're supposed to put it in a. I would assume we're gonna create a grant line and show it as income. Okay. I'll let you see whether it is. So when you spend it, we would spend off that grant. Just a quick question related to the town hall. Yeah. Operational heating system. A limping operational heating system, is that correct? That's a fire department. Of course you're not, I was here too. Here, yeah. Yes, that's true. It's limping. I mean, they have a grant line to our heating system. No. They have, they find the part, Sarah, to repair it when they need it to. That's no longer exists. Oh, I thought that, but how did they get it fixed when you had that problem? That was a couple of years ago. Was it already? Mm-hmm. So it hasn't broken. Knock on wood. Okay. So that'll be something I ask Sam about because the Merck grant is gonna be a long process. And I'm wondering if we can get reimbursed for expenses that are done in advance of getting the grant, like reimbursable. So when we talk. I just don't wanna be in a situation where that heating plant fails and we have to put in a new heating plant and then tear it out later when we're gonna make the building. So. I know. And I mentioned this to her, like in the beginning, like how we had a failing system for the fire department. And I was like, you know, we don't wanna replace it with a fossil fuel if this funding is coming in two months, right? It's like, and can it be reimbursable? So I think they, anyway. So if this has to do, I have to do a report detailing a narrative summary and how we spent the funds at the end of the respective fiscal year. So if we got this now, isn't that? Oh, we just started with fiscal year. We just started. We just started. Yeah, okay. So that'll be it. Yeah, okay. Every property is submitted for each fiscal year that the funds are spent. Okay. So my recommendation for those funds is that we get to hire someone to help us write the Merck's grant. You guys have to vote on that motion. Oh, we do? I thought we did. I think everybody ran the vote and big executive and you said 500 votes energy committee and then you guys went off on another discussion. We voted before. We voted before. Yes. Sorry. I don't think we need to vote on how we spend the 4,000. No. Okay. Alrighty, CV Fiverr. Is there someone from CV Fiverr on the line? I thought I saw someone there earlier on the Zoom. Yeah. Janiel Smith is here. Hi, Janiel. Would you like to give us an update on the CV Fiverr? Yes. Good evening. Thanks for having me. I am the executive director of CV Fiverr and we are currently, we have retained crews through Eustis to construct in our, what we're calling Rumney School District because originally the OLT was the hub to power the network was gonna be at the Rumney School. We changed it, but still called Rumney School RS01 and RS02 are both within the town of Middlesex. So we are constructing within the town of Middlesex now in several places. And we, if you go onto our website, you can see what roads have been passed in Middlesex. And I was taking a look at it earlier just to kind of familiarize myself with it. It looks like we've passed several locations on Center Road, East Hill Road, Picard Lane, South Bear Swamp Road, Leland Farms Road, Molly Supple Hill Road, Shady Hill, Shady Rill Road, Tamarack Road, West Hill Road, Macy. Actually, not Macy yet. But if you go onto CV Fiverr's website, there is a map that shows where the passings are, where we have passed the location of the fiber. And there is a little red dot on that location. So you can actually put your address into the database using the little open search icon that looks like a magnifying glass. If you go into that and you click on it, it'll say find address or place. And if you put your cursor in there and put in your address and then click the magnifying glass button, you can see whether Fiverr has passed your particular address. So we're very close to that. We're now gathering what we're calling Friendly Landlord. So we've asked our operator, Leedsfields to Champlain Valley Telecom to help us identify some friend, what we're calling Friendly subscribers or people to test the network. And these are folks spread out throughout the distribution area through RSO1 and RSO2 who can test the technology of the network. They will be testing the billing system and they will also be testing the marketing subscriber platform that you can use on the CV Fiverr website as well. So we are now seeking Friendly subscribers to test the network. And we're guessing that we will be lighting friendlies toward the end of September and opening up the greater network sometime in October. And I am real hesitant to say the dates, but I know everybody wants to know when and we are really close. So I feel confident to say that we're working hard toward lighting folks this year and even within the next couple of months. Is the plan to do every road in Middlesex like the entire town? Not every single road is on the build plan. It is most roads wherever there isn't high speed internet and where it's considered unserved or underserved and that means just without high speed internet. And it is applicable to on grid addresses. Currently the off grid addresses are not part of the current build plan. That doesn't mean we won't get to them eventually, but we've kept some off grid addresses off because that is not within the initial build plan. What does high speed internet mean to you? Is there a search? Yeah, so what it is is we're offering 100 over 100 is the slowest speed. So 100, 100 is the baseline. And then we are also offering 500 over 500, one gig and two gig as well. I guess I meant to say, you said the roads that already have high speed, what is that definition? Oh, yeah, like 100 over three. It's most of the roads don't have high speed internet and 100 over three is the standard. And that's how we based our build plan. Sarah has a question. Sure. Yeah, I'm going to go for the number one question again is cost. Yeah. So yeah, so CB fibers prices are available on our website residential packages start at $79 a month for the subscription rate. That's for 100 over 100. And it goes up from there for light speed, 500 is 99 a month, 1000, that's one gig is 129 a month. And then the two is big as 199 a month. And then we also have commercial services one and two gig at 179 and 259. And if you have a business to connect that's going to require greater speeds than that, then we'll do a site assessment. We also offer phone service for 29 a month for residential per line and 35 a month for commercial per line. And there's a connection fee of $99 for everybody. There, if you have a long drop where and that means over 400 feet overground overhead or underground that would be $1 a foot after 400 feet from the takeoff call. And you need a site assessment in order to identify that. And then capstone is my office is doing the signing up folks for low income folks for internet. I forget what it's called, the community broadband. It's called ACP, Affordable Connectivity Plan. Yeah, it's a fair program. Yes. Is it eligible for that, right? Yeah, so yes, there are certain criteria you have to go through the ACP program in order to qualify, but it's typically 200% over the poverty rate or you're already receiving some kind of benefits, children receiving free or reduced lunches and other benefits. If you are an ACP eligible subscriber, then CV Fiber will be working with that program so you can qualify for a subsidy. That subsidy is $29, it's either $29 or $30 per month. I think it's $30 per month that you would qualify for. That federally funded program is not guaranteed to continue as long as it continues, CV Fiber will work with ACP. We're also looking at other ways to make the services more affordable. We're working with the state as well to come up with affordability plan as we are working through our next funding vehicle we're looking at ways to make it more affordable to folks. Did I ask this question of when you think the whole town as the plan is in place right now of who you're going or where you're going to put your Fiber, when will that be complete? All the roads that are on your map for our town? I think it'll be done this year. I shouldn't be saying dates because we don't know because it's all subject to weather, construction, things like that. So I don't have a huge amount of control over it but we are making excellent progress. We are physically constructing there now and we're aggressively aiming to light friendly landlords toward the end of September, early October and lighting customers after that after we've tested the network on the heels. So to me, that says most likely this year. Janine, can I ask you something? What's the word that you're using? Did you say lighting customers? Yeah. Turn them on. Turn them on. Turn them on, turn them on. I didn't know what she was talking about. Turning the lights on for the internet. And I would say, the other thing I just want to say since we have you on the phone, there was some chatter on our front porch forum where folks were like, didn't know who these people were. And they were questioning them and the people didn't know who they were working for. And so I'm just wondering if there's an opportunity for the workers to, I don't know, have... A plaque or a name tag or a script where they can say, this is who I work for. Because these are coming from out of state. They don't know the area. They don't probably even know who they're doing the work for. They just know who their company is but they don't know what they're doing necessarily. For CB, right? Yeah, we were... Yeah, Eric. That was brought to our attention and we gave handouts to all the workers. And as of this week, they apparently all have enough handouts in the trucks. I don't know about that. So hopefully that won't be a problem going forward. That's great. We did have quite a bit of chatter about who are these people in these trucks and what are they doing, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Hanging fiber. Yeah, yeah. On your website, will it tell you if your address is gonna be upgraded? So you know if it's coming towards our house? Yeah, there's two maps. There's one where it shows that it has... That it already has been built. And then below that we have a map that shows what distribution area you're in and it'll show if you're in that, within that build plan. There's a third option too, at the very top of our website, you can actually put your address in and sign up for service and it'll send you, we'll send you routine updates. So you are in RS2? Yes. Mm-hmm. I'm here. Just make it true. You get it, I get it. That's right. Everybody that's screened is in RS2. Okay. Yeah, so Middlesex has some in RS01 and RS02. Is there anything else you wanna tell us about it? I wanna thank you for your generous contribution of ARPA funds. That will be matched dollar for dollar. Middlesex committed $100,000 to be used within the four corners of Middlesex and the Vermont Community Broadband Board has promised $100,000 in identical match and that is in the process of being vetted through. I spoke with BCBB about it just a couple of weeks ago and they have to give notice to all the towns that aren't in a CUD in a communications union district before they release the funds but they fully intend to release the funds. So that will be $200,000 in connection fees to be used just within Middlesex. And that's, I looked at the Memorandum of Understanding that Middlesex signed and it's toward connecting households and community facilities. So that'll help connect not just households but also community facilities. I think the elementary school and the library were both mentioned. Any other questions for Janiel from CB Fiber? Board, anyone on the Zoom? Yes. Alrighty, well thank you Janiel for coming and giving us this very informative update. Absolutely, thank you so much for having me and have a wonderful evening. You too. Thank you, good night. Good night. Okay, orders, those have been passed around. I'll look at those in a minute. And any correspondence, Ms. Merriman? No. Okay, no correspondence. And any other matter that may come before the board? Yes, I wanted to follow up with Peter Hood again regarding Mead Road. Peter, did you hear Samantha? She wants to talk to you about Mead Road. I'm sorry, so Samantha, the plan is that the, is Eric still there? So the plan I believe is to regravel the road, the section of road, which is of concern to you. And once that happens, we're gonna send a letter to all the neighbors explaining what the, what the rules are and guidelines for activity in the right-of-way. Namely that you can't modify the road without prior permission from the town. You can't permanently park vehicles or block the road in any way, all the things we talked about. But of course, with this flood situation, do you have any idea, Eric, when you'll be able to get to that? Working as fast as we can. Yeah. So the letter is waiting for the work is basically what it boils down to. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, any other questions from? Yes, Shelly? No questions answered or not, but I know we're not doing what you have to. We've been depending on whether the road is and where the road is, because the road is like three L into the road. Yeah. There's a lot of error, because the road itself has been being finished and then there's items being placed on the railroad. But that's okay, we'll talk about that. Okay. All righty. Anything else? Shelly, you're gonna talk about several calls from people wanting to know why they have to pay the taxes. They can't wait for them to come. Sorry. What's that? They can't come. And I had to talk to the board of civil authority. And I'm not gonna let the person know that you had talked to them about that. There's a fraud called the Batement, correct? That they had to do a written, written talk to their actor for a letter to be on the list. And we're gonna go in front of that. Civil? It goes before the board of civil authority. It's a board of a basement, which consists of the board of civil authority. The treasurer of the listers, the JPs. It's a board. I don't know, I don't know. I don't think that's a bad thing. Until the pass down, they should just get it back to us because they don't get a penalty. Then we're gonna have to have to have all our time. There's no legal requirement as to when we hold this meeting. Or whether we will, it's all, we're waiting to see the tax bills just going out. It'll be interesting to see if any more come in. So we're gonna take it from there. But people are still on the hook for the tax bill. And in their time frame for a Batement or not, it can be anytime. Anytime. Yes, sir? Yeah, I think the most important thing is what we've been talking about today. So it's an optional, there is no, what I'm like going to appeal a grievance to the board. So sorry, there's no, there's no, there's no legal mood for this. In general, the board of Batement, only their discretion, the board's discretion, can do it and not. Batement, some are all forever, or if you could not do anything. And there is always the knowledge of failure. Something that the board of Batement has in mind is that these taxes don't go away. These liens, if you're doing your taxes on your teller, they'll be your neighbors. So if they can get those phone calls, if one of our, Sure, but they're free to file a form, they're free to ask for a hearing. But one thing they know is that there's no magic in the, there's no magic government that's going to take those taxes away. Your neighbors are going to get rid of you. I understand that completely, sir. And that is what I told them. Alrighty then, on that note, is there any other matters to come before the board? Going once, going twice, we are adjourning, we're speaking at six, six, five, five, eight, six.