 folks, I think we're ready to call ourselves to order. Gus Selig, who is currently actually our town moderator, is not available to join us, so unfortunately. So we need somebody else to moderate. The select board has decided we are not going to moderate this discussion because it's sort of somewhat independent of select board. So I am actually, I'm going to go ahead, if it's okay, and make a motion that Barbara McAndrew moderate serving in Gus's place since he can't be here. I'll second that. Denise is seconding. Any other discussion or comments? Any other nominees? I guess all in favor please say aye. Aye. And if you could, I'm circulating a sign-in sheet, so we have it for the record if you could all sign in. I'm going to sit here to take notes. Well, you should sit here, Barbara. Okay, folks, so we're going to do this as expeditiously as possible. The Curtis Pond Association has a few things to share with you in a short order, five to ten minutes, I understand. And then we'll open the floor to questions. And if we can hold questions until they're finished, that would be the best approach, I think. You might, I think for the record, you should read in the article. For now. Okay, I can do that. Glasses on. So this is Article 20 regarding the Curtis Pond. The article reads, shall general obligation bonds of the town of Calis in an amount not to exceed $450,000 subject to reduction from available state or federal funds or other financial assistance be issued for the purpose of renovation of the Curtis Pond dam to state dam safety standards, the estimated total cost of which is $700,000. So that is Article 20 put forward to the town by Australian ballot. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Colleen. I'm going to start with a really brief introduction of Curtis Pond Association and the history of people talking about fixing the dam. I'm the president of Curtis Pond Association and we formed that. Heidi Thompson and I were very informally, you know, in meetings that, you know, seven, eight years ago, we really should have an organization. We got together 50 postcards, sent them out and we started the organization with some, some more meetings. It was good. We had good attendance. I think one of the highest meetings was like approaching 50 people and all we talked about was Lilies. That's all we talked about. And then Heidi and I, again, a couple of years later, were like, well, we won't have this lily problem at all if the dam goes. So maybe we should talk about the dam. So we started the Curtis Pond Exploratory Group. I think it was three years ago. It was right. It was the summer of the pandemic. In fact, our first meeting was at John Rosenblum, which John, why isn't he up here with us? He's supposed to be up here at John's house and we had it outside because it was the pandemic and met a lot since then. So first of all, a lot of people have been doing stuff about this since about 2000. And we have a lot of that background. A lot of it's on our website, including letters to the editor to Times Argus. They're really interesting. But so a little bit about the CPA. I'm president. Jamie and I are sort of co-presidents, vice president. Marge Sweeney is secretary. Mark Mahalley is on the executive board. Noreen Bryant. Jens de Goose is secretary and ginger. Is that everybody? Marge is treasurer. Marge is treasurer. Didn't I say that? She's secretary. Marge is treasurer. She's secretary. So we're the principals that are signing things and stuff like that with the select board. With the exploratory group, it's mainly myself and John and Rene and Mark and Marge. Mark and Marge were pretty big principals. Mark was the legal mind that got a lot worked out with ownership and all. Marge did a lot of work with numbers about, we'll get into that later. And Jamie joined in, has been really heading fundraiser, but she does a tremendous amount on the website. The website is, I mean, there's more information than you ever would want. If you have further questions tonight, you can call any of us. But the website has a lot. And so, I mean, one might say, we've been talking about this since 2000. Nothing's happened. So why do we need to do it now? Good question. But the lien, the degree of lien has changed dramatically. The state is majorly concerned and they are taking dams. They're lowering water without like giving like a week's notice going in and saying, okay, we're taking it down four feet. So without a big weather event, it wouldn't happen any time. And it is happening across the state. So anyway, that's the background about how we got here and how we started our thing. And now I'm going to turn it over to Jamie. Yeah, so about three years ago, we were having conversations with the state dam safety. And that's when we learned that if the dam failed or if the dam got in poor enough condition, if the state deemed it necessary to lower the water level, they would reclassify the pond as a wetland and no longer issue a permit to replace the dam. So they came to us and said, just so you know, it's been really bad for 20 years. We watch it closely. If it fails, you probably won't ever have occurred as pond as you know it today again. And so that's really what kicked us in the year. And so the first thing we did was look at all the previous efforts. A ton of community members, a lot of people here who've been involved at different stages over the last 20, 25 years. And so we talked to a lot of those people who had been involved and said, what was the roadblock? What stopped the project when you were working on it? And we sort of made a list of all those things. And then we got together and talked to a lot of people and said, okay, those are the first things to solve. And one of the big ones was ownership. And sort of the state was saying we can't issue a permit except for the owner and there isn't an owner so nobody can get a permit. So we worked with a bunch of lawyers. We talked to the town attorney, the select board. And we came up with a plan to have the town take ownership after it's fixed. We looked into the idea of the Curtis Pond Association taking ownership, but it's really only reasonably insurable if it's municipal owned. So we weren't able to go that route and we went with the town route. In talking to dam engineers, we looked at two different potential designs. The one we went with was the, it'll be a concrete dam built behind the current existing dam. So what they'll do is they'll build, they'll put in an inflatable coffer dam across the point, sort of from the, roughly from the point behind the heist's house to somewhere near the blue barn dock. And so that big inflatable dam will hold back the water of the whole pond. They'll drain the cove, excavate out the muck, and pour concrete footing into the bedrock just behind the existing stone dam. And this route allows us to keep and tie in the existing dam so that from the road it will still look about the same as it does now. It'll have a concrete spillway that lines up with the existing spillway. So we'll still have the, you know, the waterfall coming over the stone wall and have that great look. We did look into another design that involved basically piling granite blocks on the downstream side of the dam. And it would have cost about half as much, but we would have lost the historic look of it. And we might not have gotten the permit as part of the permitting process goes through historic preservation. And it would have required annual upkeep. And so the annual expense of maintaining that type of a dam we felt like would be too onerous for the long run. So there were a lot of reasons we went with this stronger, longer-lasting, better-looking concrete dam. So back in about a year ago, I think last April is when we started our fundraising. We received a price tag 5, 6, 2013. So now, almost 10 years ago, it was going to be a $350, $360,000 project. And with updated numbers, it's about double that. It's about $700,000. So we set some ambitious fundraising goals. We started looking at grants. And in the last year, we raised about $232,000 from private donors, largely people who live on or near the pond and or use the pond regularly. We've done a ton of events and outreach, door-knocking and phone calls and fundraising letters. It's been a really fun experience in a lot of ways because we've talked to so many people, heard so many stories of people who learned to swim there many, many years ago, generations of use. So it's been a really great community-building project. And it's exciting. I think that much money really shows the level of community support. So the general funding formula we're looking at is $250,000 in private donations, $100,000 at the select board, approved pending passage of the bond, which is federal ARPA funds. And then we expect the actual bond amount to be in the ballpark of $350,000, although we have several grant applications in the works. So that number may continue to decrease as we get closer to construction. I think that's most of what I was going to hit to you. Either you want to add anything before we show the video? So we should get people tied? Should we play the video? We just have this three-minute video that... Art Bell, friend of, well, big in video, but a friend of Don Isis. Who loves Curtis Pond and loves Pond hockey on the pond. Loves ice skating. Oh. My son's learning to play hockey here. My grandson caught his first fish here. It's a large freshwater pond hidden in the hills of Vermont. We started our Christmas hockey parties around 2005. The Marty Grom Winter Carnival started in 2008. As soon as it warms up in the spring, the kids flock to the town beach for soy lessons. Returns many of these same kids to race back to the frozen pond for their first milk-crate skating adventures. Followed by all day endless energy on our containers. Farther out on the pond, it's ice fishing in cross-bucket skaters, winter skaters, and even a turtle ring. Using frozen gilly learning containers. Every spring, as soon as the ice melts, the canoeists, paddleboards, campfires, and puppets return. Some people come just to hear the loons. The last time I tried to count, a few thousand come to Currispan every year. This is a place where so many of us and now our children really learn to play. This is the first place you ever take your girlfriend. This place builds confidence in and around the water. My water really builds up good neighbors and good citizens. If America ever wanted to paint a picture of what an ideal community should be, Currispan would be it. Like the one house in the neighborhood where everybody goes. Almost a hundred years ago, some folks had the wisdom to build a dam here, put water power to pathologs, and grind the lanes. Now the dam's in trouble. Our responsibility to this community is to believe it the way we find it, for our children today and for their children to grow. It's not all of us to keep it going. Today, and this was news to all of us who love this place, if a dammer fails as it, it likely can never be rebuilt. We need to repair and enhance so all our children can raise their children here and this water in this community. The reality is, without all of us Currispan would refer to a large swamp and a few small paths. The end of Luma, he walks along the shore. The end of campfire scores and wet, occasionally cold, but usually giggling, kids of all ages. Yeah, so are you ready? Alright, so this is an opportunity to ask questions to the board. And I'll just remind folks that this is not an opportunity to make changes to the article, right? This is an article that's being voted on by Australian ballot. So with that, I will do my best to answer questions in the order I see them. Could I ask one thing? Sure. Even if I know you, could you state your name so I can have it for the rest of you? Any questions or comments? Folks want to meet? Matt? Matt Gardner Morse. I noticed they talked about water power and there is a pen stop there. Did we look into generating power from the dam or, you know, the other thing is that you're talking about the silt behind the dam. That, of course, is going to build up again over the video but do you have to maintain it on moving that silt? So we did look into hydro power. We had a bunch of different conversations with folks and it was deemed that there's not enough water flow for it to be economically feasible. In terms of the silt, the design is built to withstand that. So it'll fill in as it has built in currently but engineering-wise they don't foresee that being an issue and it won't require digging it out regularly. It just needs to be dug out now to get the footing pinned to the bedrock. Where's the silt going? That's a good question. I'll take it. Right. The question of the silt. No, no, I'll take the silt. The contractor will be responsible for hauling it away and I don't know the specific plan for that. I know that Steve Sweeney took all of it from the fishing access which was a lot like separate big truck pulls that came out and he leveled out a whole bunch of stuff that when they put the dock in he took all that. I think there may be landowners that would be willing to take it. No, that's a good point. It's precedent for that. It's nice silt. I don't think it'll be an issue. Probably it's a little fundraising. Right, yeah. Buy the bucket. Sell the silt. Yeah. I'm going to stand up because I don't want to impact everybody. I may be discussing the garden party here but some of you probably read my post on the front porch forum. Is there anybody here who thinks the dam shouldn't be fixed? I mean, come on, look at that video. I mean, no, the dam shouldn't be fixed. Right. Is there anybody here that thinks the dam shouldn't be fixed? Soon. I mean soon, not the 20 years we've been waiting for. I don't think I don't think we should keep pushing it down. No, no, no. Soon is something. Currently, I'm not defining, but they have, but I have. Give the fact that the town has a swim area in the island. Is there anybody who thinks the town shouldn't have any financial interest in it? No. Does the town own the swim area because it belongs to a Vermont land trust? It belongs to the town, as does the island. I suspect it belongs to the land trust. It reverted to the land trust if you have swim lessons there. The town probably owns it. The land trust owns the development rights. They usually. Well, I wasn't trying to. Why don't we say, yeah. That's a fair question. But that's the thing. Because I think the point is still the same. Does anybody think the town shouldn't pony up any money? No. So there's an awful lot of common ground right there. I am with you on all those three questions. The Curtis Pond is the sole enable corner. If you didn't believe it before the video, that's pretty impressive. Nice work. Whoever the fellow was. That's when he got scared. I looked at the pictures of Marty Gras and come on. It's amazing. And yes, it attracts people beyond the Curtis Pond and make a corner area. But you've got to consider that it is still somewhat neighborhood centric and there are other neighborhoods just in Calais alone that have similar either have or have had events. Memorial Hall in North Calais is their effort, I think at kind of bringing that part of town together and they've done an incredible job on who's looked at it lately but we've taken one of those the other day and I'm ready to write another check because it's just an extraordinary job. It was a million dollar project. The town has $50,000 East Calais store 2.2 million town has zero dollars in it. Without that store, that village is going to just crumble. And I'm really glad we're fixing that. No town, no public dollars. There's a pass through, one pass through grant. Well there's public dollars. Pass through grant. There's no town money in it. It's what I was told. There's no town money. There's no tax money. There's no town. Somebody, Olivia just pointed out in a post the other day the island was purchased through the efforts of people in this room. $22,000 privately raised. $5,000 of town money. It's maybe not quite on the point East Calais fire district. Without that fire district those people don't have water. $250,000 bond they voted for. 54 people are going to pay off that bond. No public money. The town hall that we're sitting in we've owned this and we spent $530,000 fixing it. Only $200,000 that came from the taxpayer dollars. The people who were interested in having this happen all went out and raised the rest of the money. So the dam even using your conservative, the most conservative figures 64% of the 700,000 is coming from public dollars. Oh, your voice keeps going down. Okay, I'll raise it. I don't like being discovered in our department, but I think this stuff needs to be pointed out. 64% of the cost is being borne by everybody in town. Yes, everybody in town has an issue. I used to live in this corner. I haven't been in this corner for a lot of years. Do I still think it's important? Of course I do. But it's a big chunk of the nut for a neighbor, primarily neighborhood centered asset. So people have compared fixing it with roads in schools. It seems like a fair comparison except that the town is statutorily obligated to fix the roads in key schools. So this is like well yes, we own land on it. So yes, some should be bummed up to it. But I just think the 64% is too heavy. As far as the soon, how soon should it be fixed? I really don't believe in another year, another more fundraising and more outreach is going to get that dam should. Particularly with the amount of evidence being done now. I think it would be fucking. My other questions are what other dams are over assets in town? I'm a little apprehensive about the town owning it. I wish the Curtis Pond Association would take ownership of it. I'm not convinced the town has as easy a time as you think getting insurance last I heard they can get a billion dollars. Well that might take care of the big corner store. I just think there's an awful lot of unanswered questions. I can stop there and I the argument is that if the dam nobody wants the water to disappear I don't believe the water is going to disappear. I think the dam is going to get fixed. I just wish you'd push it off and do a little more outreach. Dirk kind of misquoted me in his post. He said I wanted to see more community involvement. I said what I really said was I wanted to see more community financial involvement. I know you guys have been working your asses off to get this thing done. I don't want to take away from that at all. I just like to see you push back one year raise some more money apply for some more grants and don't expect the rest of the town to prop up. Well the arguments have been your property values will go down. It's not really it's not my job it's not our job to make sure that standing in the lane barn doesn't fall down because it's beautiful and yes their property values would decrease if it went down and we'd all suffer but it's not the town's responsibility that 64% of this suggests so my urging is to sharpen your pencils and come back next year. Okay. Other comments and questions? Yes Steve, case. What contractors have laid in building is proposing a cost I've only heard DuBois and King mention and then stating the figure are they only showing town for this project? No actually they're not the ones that have estimated the cost it was Larry Hebert out of Williams town I sought we sought three estimates. Two of which said his sounds pretty good in other words they may be interested in putting in a formal bid but they didn't want to necessarily sharpen their pencils and do all the work Larry's from Williams town a lot of people know him he's real familiar with town politics because he's been on this life board a great part of his life as head and everything else in Williams town but he's been out twice here and we talked to him once a month to say hey might you still be available might you still be interested and we do keep hearing the cost of cement concrete but everybody is just skyrocketing and it's going to continue too but it's mostly from him and he did Nichols pond he did a huge fairly huge pond down in Fairleigh that holds back about what did he say four times the amount of water much much much bigger three towns three town municipality and much bigger deal of a job we were pretty impressed with him he seems to be he's been around the block has done a lot of damn work in his life and we talked about the stones downstream and all that stuff so most of the numbers come from him and the other two people were like yeah that sounds about right and climbing rather quickly you mentioned in the on your website that you put it out for bid if the funding comes through do you know who you send those bids out to or request from um we yeah they have a list of contractors that are qualified to construct the Amazon come on and they would let the request for bids out and then see who shows up and they've already told us they have availability for that the main reason we went with them this time and didn't go out to bid was they did a complete application in 2013 that is on our website and so it was ready to be submitted basically obviously things change between 2013 and now ten years a lot of things like we have seven eight nine permits now that we have to get but they already I mean we had we were in close communication with the Sean Patonaut who was the engineer who did that application he's now head of snow making in sugar bush but we've had a lot of communication with him and he assured us that in his opinion he didn't leave a disgruntled employee or anything like that but he assured us that he thought the most efficient thing financially and time wise was to stick with them because his application was ready to be submitted so that's why we stopped with them and on a related note one of the reasons to push ahead and try and get this done as quickly as possible is as we've seen over the last couple years costs of construction and materials and everything is growing rapidly and so there's this fear right we say okay yeah great let's do it next year instead and raise money for another year well you raise another $200,000 and then it's a year later and the project costs $190,000 more we're kind of in the same place in terms of funding so that's just another tack on why getting it done sooner is better than later no unless you vote for a recession when price goes down sorry you're back Sam Aaron a two-parter first Paul was just mentioning looking for grants in the next year are there other grants out there that are possibly available to help to create the cost so you guys have seen in your research yeah so there are there's one federal grant that we've put quite a bit of time and energy into and it's in the process and if we were selected it would likely pay 50% of the cost of the project but it would be four to five plus years before we know the outcome of that grant and so that's sort of like no we wouldn't be able to do it till if we're relying on that for our funding so that's in the works it's a safety measure the other problem with that grant is they would likely require us to construct the dam significantly higher so it wouldn't maintain that historic preservation as much and then there are two or three other smaller grants that we have in the works that may come through this summer and we're working with a grant writer that you worked with Denise at the East Warrants and Liz and looking could we put many many queries out does anyone in our midst in the town have grant writing experience but not just grant writing grant finding and that's what and Liz if anybody can do it so we are probably let's just say the if the bond fails and we go back to the drawing boards we will probably take part of the money that we have fund raised to she's a professional to pay her to look for more grants but we have explored many many grant possibilities and most of the big ones are on the four to six year pipeline one second question you mentioned the land trust holds development rights for some area I would imagine that they probably have an easement requiring that area be kept open for recreation has anybody looked into talking to them about helping with fundraising I know they do sometimes assist folks around the state fundraising projects usually around easements but that may be something that they might be willing to be involved in if they have a vested interest did you have a question Lisa I'm a little mystified at the mention of the land trust because I had never heard that they were involved I think the documents I've seen show the the Calus Conservation Association pink bought the property for $7,500 tore down the buildings and then they held it for a while and then I don't know if they gave it directly to the town I don't think the land trust was in the business of easements I've never heard the land trust I know because the Maple Corners Maple Corners Community Center was looking for we were looking for a parking the community was looking for parking for a commuter lot and where the bus could stop and we checked out that area and I think it was the land trust that said you can't change that that's where I got it from part of the Maple Corners Community Center not absolutely positive that was I know some restrictions were put on it some of the words are absurd you can't cut a tree that's larger than that I was just reading that with the camp cover but that's a point that Sam is making that's fine you all can investigate further but also Sam what I've said all along good luck but the fishing access it's a very, very popular and well traveled fishing it's known as the best I always get this wrong bigger, wider largemouth bigmouth a lot of fishermen say it's the best in the country there's a lot of paid guides that bring people out here because we live there talk to all of them and we do plan on talking to fishing game I doubt that we'll get any money from them but they do, they make money from us and so we'll ask about these bushes I can answer part of your question about about the land or even the land trust when I was on the swim committee back around 2000 when we built the granite wall I had to get permits from everybody to talk to the select board and we go to the state and we get water permits and the land trust is more involved in that if swim lessons stopped being held the ownership I thought reverted back to the land trust and I don't know if it had any stipulation I don't know if it did have a stipulation or not about being in the public swimming area I can't answer that I just want to keep some lessons in going because I think it's a great resource for kids Linda I was just going to add it's not just local I mean you go over there and you see there's people from all over I mean the weekend especially and that pond is used and when COVID came we were thinking well I don't think I was going to do these at that time about putting up signs and everything in the select board and should it just be callous but you know it was such a gift to everyone it's not just maple corner who goes to the pond it's many many many people just like number 10 pond has a lot but I think I heard us gets more I just wanted to say it's not as local as it seemed Other questions or comments? Matt? Do they have a timeline where they have to be spent by is there a deadline on the archipelago? Yes they have to be spent by sometime in 2024 I can't give the exact date Completely standard the project has to be shared between another detail You can say no I don't know for sure I think it would have to be spent because you have to go into the system and put in what the funds were used for to come up with your total funds that we received from ARPA Any other questions or comments folks? Just to reiterate I guess everyone in the rooms heard this but when we evaluate the loss and the grand list value that would happen for lack of a dam there's easily the grand list value would be lost forever the dam bond is 20 years it's easily even in that 20 year period it would be more expensive for people in east callas and for inanimate property taxes due to the grand list value every single house on the pond would be almost worthless but my house across the street from the pond and anyone within a half mile of the pond their property value would drop Additionally as a member of the maple corner community store board we have 200 shareholders not just in the maple corner who own the store who have flood insurance for two reasons one is we can't afford it the other is if the dam breaks the store wouldn't have enough revenue to survive we just and so that would be a loss for all 200 shareholders also if you look at real estate as anywhere near you know Kett's quarter etc they often they're almost always I can tell state that they're within walking distance or a couple minutes drive of the maple corner community store and when bar that's actually a property value increase too so with the loss of the store there would be further grand list loss I assume and I think that I think any real estate agent would tell you that so I just want to make sure that everyone realizes it's actually going to cost every taxpayer including all more money so that's why it's actually important for people who are not in maple corner to support it because they're actually going to pay more money in taxes if the state comes and lowers it or if another Irene comes through the dam still weighs too narrow it's already listing and the dam is the poster child of our state auditors report which is pushing the state to take action and and accusing them of failing to take action on these dams that are their markets failed with board grades so this the state is under a lot of pressure to right now and that pressure could indicate that they'll come at some point soon and pull the thing down and have to have permits they just do it I just want to be cognizant of time folks it's 10 of any other comments from the floor or questions Cindy gardener I have a question when Adam had flooded out and lost the road did the dams go out there and who paid for that that was a privately owned dam and as far as fixing the roads I don't recall if we got reimbursed for that John do you remember first off the dam was not damaged the dam was circumvented it went down the side and created its own new spillway and I don't know if we got grant money to take the town I don't think yeah I don't think we did I think we just mixed the roads it's been years I wouldn't say 12 10 or 12 years and I don't think Grant Smith was with us because he was out there with me he didn't have a music school and a super mill a lot of silence any other thoughts alright I think we can call this a wrap if that is I don't know if I should I be calling for a motion to motion to adjourn thank you second second and similar adjourn thanks everyone thanks everyone thanks for coming out thank you all thank you