 I believe we have Rick here from SBA. Thanks for the time opportunity. So I'm here, I know, I'll be short. So right now, we don't have any more centers, disaster recovery center from FEMA and SBA. The last one was in very city today. They closed, so we're still here. Why I'm here because we want the government to help us to reach the most people as possible, sharing information through social media website, email or in the bulletin boards. Why? Because the people can still apply with FEMA and SBA for the grace period, for the two weeks grace period. Of course, they have to justify why they are applying late. The deadlines, they were October 31st, but the people can still apply. That deadline with the SBA that was for physical damages, that means for infrastructure, real estate inventory equipment for businesses who want to strengthen their profits. Oh, this is related to the past lots of July 7th between July 7th and July 21th. So that's why we are still here. Right now, we are going to be on the field. We are going to work on the long term recovery. We don't have any more physical centers, like we said, but we have a deadline for economic damages. That's for the next year with the SBA in April 15th. So that's for the losses of profits for the businesses and so on nonprofits. That's the most important information right now. I brought some flyers, flyers from the USDA. I'm selling for information the 100 number that they first stepped to the people because right now they don't have any place to go. The 100 number is there and also the website because the people can apply through the website. I know that it's not that easy, but we don't have any more centers in Vermont. The last one was in very city today and they closed. So Rick, what is the new deadline? The new deadline is for economic damages, the losses on profits for businesses, some nonprofits, that's for April 15th of the next year. Like I said, the deadline for physical damages that already expired, but because FEMA and SBA, we have a two weeks grace period that people can still apply. With both, of course they have to justify why they are applying late. So that's very important to me. That would be November 14th. Exactly, two weeks after October 21st. That's the most important information. I don't want to talk anymore, I know that. I know that the agenda is very tight. I saw the agenda. Yeah. Thank you. So thank you so much. Oh, thank you very much. Thank you for that information. Thank you for letting us see the thing. Bye. So if the Ministers actually have a quorum now, go on to approval of the agenda. All those in favor, carries consent calendar. All those in favor, carries business. Do we have two rivers out of Quiche here on a grant proposal? Unless he's on under another name, Kevin Geiger was going to jump on around this time. He's the two rivers. Sydney's on. That's it. Sydney's here, but I think she's here for the bylaw stuff. So if you want to maybe table this, see if Kevin has a chance to jump on. I think for IBSC 80s here, so you can certainly do that. OK, so grant application request for Kimball. This is a request for 16,000 for the Fiber Connect grant. Anybody have any questions on that one? Not seeing any, we'll do a motion to approve. So moved. Second. All those in favor, aye. Opposed? Motion carries. Ores and committees. We have one applicant for the committee. I can't see if she's in the room, I don't see the name. Tony's here. Is she here? Yeah. Anybody have any questions? Any motions? I'll make a motion to make the appointment. All those in favor, opposed? Motion carries. Annual tree lighting permit. Tree, tree, before we move on, would it be appropriate at this moment just to talk a little bit about the various committees and how well they're being populated right now and who the left board members are who are connected? You got the T-sheet on it? No. I'm not in the room for it. It gets too much on app. Yeah, I do that. We can ask for a status. At some point, I think we should have certain committees that can use some beefing up. And we also never, when Alyssa came on, we never sort of. All of them. And we never kind of reconfigured that situation. So just worth a look. Worth a look sometime soon. Sure. Permit for the tree lighting. Lines are spinning. Way in. Maureen's on if you have any questions. Trevor, has Scott approved that? Maybe he sat down and went through everything. We'll go closer. Smaller footprint than how we need. Questions on the application. They got a motion. Sorry. The motion has a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. B-trans sidewalk scoping study grant application. We got the feedback that we could do both. 60,000, which is what we were hoping for. Was it a low amount? Yeah, that was good news. I didn't see anything that came through in the proposal. Do we have a draft of the grant application? Other than any changes to that? Any questions anybody has on that? Would we be able, from the scoping study, to look at the small scale, just do a comparison cost-wise to think about phasing it out in a small scale state? Yeah, that's usually part of one of these scoping studies. Sort of it'll identify the next steps and what some possible funding options would be. So it won't lock us into the federal? No. No, the town could take the results of the scoping study and build it themselves. I mean, it's not going to be a set of design plans. Question, I saw on the map that it proposes that the sidewalk go down Weston Street just past Hale Street. And I'm wondering why you chose that spot to stop it. Yeah, past Hale Street? That might just be a slate. I didn't pick that up. The RPC helped me with the map. So that might have just been a, that wasn't the intent. I was thinking that it would go down to the senior center. I was thinking that it would go down to the railroad intersection. So then we'd have a possibility of being able to lock a whole loop from downtown Weston Street and school streets. So if we could have the scoping study include that whole way to where it connects with the city. I don't see why that. You can't have a sidewalk terminate at a railroad crossing, though. So you've got to go over it or stop at a natural street for that. So you may have to look at it. Maybe you just want to look at the whole loop. I'm sure that'll be the kind of thing that would get more fully fleshed out. Yeah, I can definitely make that change. Any other questions? Any online motions to approve? It's removed. All those in favor? Aye. I'm curious. How do we have you in person and online? I wanted to see who is online. But I can now see after I'm online that it's on the screen. On the screen, sitting in the room. Yeah, just in the video. There's two of you. Guess who the rear one is. There's an intervention one here. We always need more Jeffers. We're going to skip over a few items to get to ones where we have folks in the room. The Village Fire Department side by side. So can you just give us a status of what the league said they would insure it? What was there? Were there any conditions on that? Other than, we should connect the lost control one. So we started that process. We don't have a full set of, if you add it, here are the things to consider as practice when you lose training. So we'll keep working that. But yeah, they can insure it, they consider it a category of, they call all of them missful equipment or all of their equipment. And it's about $400 a year to add it. So we'll keep up all their lost control consultant on safety prepared and just have to pass on to the Fire Department folks. Should you accept it or not? Jeff, in front of you there. And if we accept that it should be with the understanding that they have to meet the lost control. So. That's pretty standard with all the buildings. We haven't built a new Larry Hems once or twice a year. It goes through the building inspections. It looks like some of those pieces. Different Larry Hems. Different Larry Hems. I don't remember any of those. I don't remember any of those. Yeah. Different Larry Hems. I'm sure you appreciate what I think, too. Any questions on that from anybody? Any motions? I'll make a motion that we add the side-by-side vehicle contingent upon the lost control issue being addressed. Is that OK? Those in favor? Opposed? She carries. Inter-Minicipal Energy Coordinator Proposer. Wow, we're really not in line alone. I can't even tell if it's OK to have those on. You can if you want. Turning about the bylaw. We don't need Kevin for the bylaw discussion. We'll go back to that. OK. We had one on here. OK, no, that's fine. So, could I get... So, I'm Jerry Ward. And John Pimentel and I have been kind of informally self-appointed to the Regional Multitown Committee that I think you've already heard about from Nicole Sear and maybe someone else in the past. Unless it would not have heard about it because she wasn't there. And I'm not exactly sure at what point it was the developer was when you last heard. So, I'd like to just give a little brief recap of the rationale for the position and describe the examples that exist in area towns a little bit and really get quickly into what I think you really want to hear about is the potential job description and what in my opinion is finally an actionable reasonable proposal that is I think pretty cost-effectively provide leadership depending a lot on the person who gets into this position. But it could be a way to galvanize the effort for multiple towns all of which are smaller than Randolph and Randolph to be able to take on the goals of meeting energy resilience and the benchmarks that we keep hearing that we're supposed to be meeting and if we're honest with ourselves, we're not meeting them. So, that's kind of, if you can go on to the next one. That's kind of quickly what John and I are going to talk about today. And Jeff may want to chime in some too. William, which one? Just on the chat. So, I'm going to go pretty quickly for the first part and if you want me to want to chime in with questions because I'm going to assume that at least some of you have read the handout and some of you have seen the prior presentations. So, I'm going to go on to the next one. So all this, really, I guess that from Bethel's perspective they helped prepare this slide. It was for Montcounsel Rural Development that catalyzed the process. I'm not sure how many towns. It was up to 14 towns that all together for a series of facilitated discussions that really dug quite deep into climate change response at the municipal level and helped towns realize what they could do and ended up with a list of potential community actions. Mostly in goals one and two up there, and summarize it. They came down looking pretty heavily on the need for town energy committees to get more informed, more mobilized, and detected a weakness in the spirit of volunteers on those committees that needed some attention. And go to the next slide. These are the towns that were originally there. Don't let your jaw drop. They're not all still there in an active form. It's down to less than half of that number of towns that are still coming and acting like they're interested. But the clear focus on a single goal out of a bunch of possibilities was to establish a structure to hire a regional energy coordinator. That was the most actionable, useful goal that they thought would be cost effective. So the reason for this energy coordinator is to help meet all these benchmarks that have been for years is populating our mail and some people have come to us. The legislature had the Climate Action Plan in 2021 and the Comprehensive Energy Plan in 2022. And two rivers keep sending out these... When I was on the select board, I remember getting them and they were pretty dispiriting report cards about how we're flunking out if that's what we're being judged on. And so we're not doing a very good job on energy. And it's not just Randolph. I'm not actually Randolph. We do better than most towns. But they identified lack of human resources as perhaps the major thing that could be quickly addressed as a common thread throughout all these towns. So you can go on to the next... This summarizes the reasons to have our Energy Resilience Coordinator. And I suspect this is about where Nicole got to you with the presentation. The biggest thing from the fiscal standpoint is to save dollars by being able to share the cost of a position across multiple towns. And so there's no... None of these towns would be able to do it on their own. And this way it becomes more affordable by several fold factor. They would increase the capacity to be able to apply for grants, IRA money, meet the benchmarks. I think that piece about mitigating risks of oil dependency is nice, but it's kind of fluff. It's not where we're going to be with this kind of proposal for a while anyway. And a big one would be able to... We'd have a cadre of other towns who are in the same boat working together. And so we can share some resources, some expertise, and some ideas. So I think there could be some... Some collective wisdom there that would help make the whole process more spirited. And one that's not on there that I would add is to a large extent I think this person could be a leader who could help facilitate some of the conflict that was identified between municipalities and their energy committee volunteers and the people who are like two rivers that are urging us to get more compliant with the benchmarks. So it would be somebody there to help smooth out all those tensions of communications. So in the next slide, this talks about some of the... We're not reinventing the wheel here. There's viable models that have already been happening for several years. Hartford took the lead. Maybe it was five years ago, something like that. And Sustainable Woodstock and two rivers had Stephen Dower as a overall planner. I think it was what his job description was. That's morphed now into the one that's partially occluded up there, which is the two rivers Inter-Municipal Regional Energy Coordinator, which is not a mythical beast. There's one of these right behind me right now. And in front of me. And in front of me. Jeff Grout is serving in that position right now. And this is what the proposed position we're going to talk about is modeled after. Because that seems to be working pretty well. There's one major difference that's worth highlighting, though, is that it is modeled now as an employee of two rivers, I believe. And what they gave us as a proposal that made it a lot more affordable was to have what they called a remote position. I may have the word wrong, but it was somebody who wouldn't be physically housed there. I think they would actually maybe hire the person, but not be responsible for being the boss of the person, really. The ultimate boss in this new model would be a committee of the towns. Each town would appoint somebody to be the overseer. So it would be a more direct type of responsibility to this consortium of towns. And that model was achieved by a bunch of these towns in the discussion groups so far have actually been select board members from Pittsfield, Royalden, and Braintree. All had select board members. I'm not sure about Brookfield. So I think they're thinking that if they're going to be employing somebody, they want somebody maybe more than the energy committee members who are most interested to be involved in overseeing this position. So, Jack, let me just ask you, do you have anything to add? Does that sound about like a fair portrayal? No, it is. I do work now for that in the regional energy coordinator position for two rares. I work for six different towns in our region. We are actually making a lot of progress and I wasn't involved with this so I've kind of been seeing this for the first time already. It's over it before. But thanks to John and Jerry for putting this together because it does model it pretty well. Some of my frustrations, I do think this would be a great fit for Randolph with the right structure. One of my frustrations is I'm working on a lot of energy projects and we're getting, there's a lot of grants out there right now and I really think Randolph could benefit from those. So, and I know a lot of the towns probably, you know, these towns are very similar as far as not having the resources really to look into the grants that are available and to really know where your energy spend is in the town. I don't know, I don't think anybody's tracking that but really that's one of the first things, first jobs of the energy coordinator is to make sure that you know where you're spending your money now and where you can improve it. I've been doing this for a while not just with this position but generally if you come into a town or a town or a commercial business, large building, whatever when you really look at how the energy is, how the buildings and facilities are operated somebody at this position could probably save 10, 20% without a whole lot of effort or a lot of expense but I think I don't want to ramble on too much but the structure you mentioned is the same, the way it works now is I work with six different towns each town appoints a person usually from their energy committee we do a few select board members and they're the steering committee and they direct where I spend my time and what's important with their community. I think this is great that you're talking to the select board because one of the largest challenges I have is I work with the energy committees but I work for the select boards they're the people that approve the funds and actually pay my salary so you have to see the value and you have to align with your energy committees and sometimes that isn't the case they're going off in different directions but it's a town leadership that really has a good feel for where the work really needs to be done so I think this is good to put it in front of you and get binding up front because it works if you have leadership or direction from the top if it's something that you think is important for the town it would be pretty easy to come in and get this job done but if these things are important to you if climate goals are not important or if energy spend isn't important I shouldn't say important to you but I mean if that's not a priority for the town if it's not the funds or resources to do it it's not going to work you really need to have it has to start at your level but we're doing some great things there's a lot of energy funds for buildings the MIRP municipal energy resilience program is specifically funded for old town buildings to improve weatherization and upgraded old heating systems we have a few buildings in town that really benefit from that there's EV charging grants if that's a priority I happen to think that's very important for Randolph is to get some charging stations downtown and drive these electric vehicles down into the town it's been shown that they really bring business to the area excuse me when they charge up they're spending at least a half hour in town and we've got a lot of businesses that could probably use having that driving force into town I'll stop there and answer any questions if there are any I think you'll have another chance if you read it straight so if you can go on to the next budget this is maybe the meat of what is most important here tonight the job description and it's in your packet so I'm not going to read it but it involves some things like tracking and recording the current town data because unless you have a good handle of what that is you can't do much to monitor how effective you are or even where to work or how it compares to industry standards and some of this could apply to schools too I want to point out that schools notoriously have inefficient buildings and it's a good place to be a role model too and a lot of this role would end up being a facilitator and a mediator and a presenter at things like town meetings and school board meetings maybe and select board meetings and energy community meetings so in the next one I think we get to some actual potential projects none of these are set in stone but this is the kind of stuff that people want to see is what is this person really going to do and how is it going to make a difference and there's several projects outlined there and with the goal of getting to some deliverables and I think we'd have to be straightforward the first six months probably everything you'd accomplish in 2024 is going to be just getting your feet wet and establishing relationships when you have six or seven towns and you have to meet the energy committees you have to get familiar with the town building you have to meet the select board members it's going to look like nothing is happening for a while but that is my sense and so I think it's a bit aspirational to think that there's going to be great deliverables in 2024 it doesn't start till July the fiscal year which is what I'm assuming but I don't know that for sure so if that makes sense to you all I will pass on one more we talked about all the towns that were in on this discussion and originally we were thinking about these four these 14 and don't focus too much on the numbers I just want to point out that Randolph is relatively huge it's we're by far the biggest town sometimes by a factor of 10 and so it's one way or another it's inescapable that Randolph is going to be a big player in this for better or worse if we assuming we sign up for it all so and it just amplifies the notion that these are towns that have very limited resources to any kind of energy work with additional staff members because they are already so limited and it's hard to justify but together there's something we can do and with that I'm going to pass it on to John who's going to walk through the actual model that we worked on to develop a cost structure and an actionable proposal for some reason Jerry thought I was better suited to discuss this part of it so a lot of discussion took place around what kind of model might work for all these towns and so with T-Rocks and the working groups working together they looked at having a full time in-office position a full time remote position or a part time in-office position and they wanted to understand what the cost and impacts of those different models might be they also reviewed different cost division scenarios that included a flat fee per capita and a grand list and through all those meetings the model settled upon was for a full time remote position utilizing the grand list to determine the cost divisions the benefit of the remote position is as Jerry talked about earlier the cost of that will be less it wouldn't have T-Rocks overhead load on it because the person would not be housed at that location if I could ask Jeff a question are you remote or in-office? it's hybrid so that's the one they settled on was the full time remote grand list approach so they looked at full time which is $1950 $37.5 hour work both a remote working from home are in a town office provide this position compensation range would run from $44 to $60 an hour annually excuse me, per hour and that's an estimate annual would be $86 to $117 K with T-Rocks involvement providing some administrative support the maximum with this administrative load was determined to be $125,000 per year and it may be less so how was the cost calculated? well, as stated earlier the grand list was used to determine the division of costs the task force felt that that was the most equitable way to distribute the cost without pricing the program out of reach for any one time the maximum would be $125K per year with all the compensation and benefits and the administrative cost from T-Rock there is a potential of using Merck funding grants to offset first year costs if those have not been used if Merck grants were used across all towns that would reduce the $125 by $32,000 if they were available in the second year once this position is up and running the cost per town may be offset by savings generated by the program at that point this next slide shows the seven participant towns that are still active it shows what the year one cost would be with Merck funding included per town for Randolph it looks like $27,500 if we default to the year $225K $36,800 for funding from Randolph again based on the grand list why is Bethel going to put in $162,000 excuse me that's a typo that should read $16,648 Bethel would be surprised by that yeah I know if we could pass I'd want to be great we'll take that one we want that one it's a new accounting system there's a new map out there our share of it would give us about 585 hours of workload dedicated to Randolph from this position is that self-invasion to be self-managed in other words if this person is reporting to an executive committee representatives and energy committees of each of the seven towns who is who are they responsible how are they responsible for managing those hours I guess I don't know the answer to that question they have to document it monthly or something like that that is a question we could look into and answer for you I just want to make sure that everybody gets there but they don't have a boss we heard they don't have a boss like that doesn't work management by committee doesn't work I can tell you I do track hours now and it's tracked by town and by program and I submit a timecard weekly with the hours to T-Work so you have a boss he has a boss and your wife it's a little bit problematic too because we know from our own experience that the I don't want to say the quality but the strength of it that way the strength of the energy committees are going to vary from one town to another so you're going to have some towns that are more engaged and others that are less engaged and I don't know how you respond to the way it's envisioned right now this person isn't reporting to an energy committee it's a representative appointed by the town so the energy committees would play a part certainly but as far as the interface to this position to the select board would run through this representative select board that committee is only as good as it's it's like the Beatles better than some of their parts it's often been said anyway I'm just saying that that's said a member of committee even if it is comprised of representatives of each town it's a little hard for me to fathom how somebody well we don't have anybody that reports to the select board either we have Trevor that does to some extent but you don't get very far if somebody needs day-to-day interaction if they got to wait once a month for a board meeting too that's another tough management structure are you aware of how this was worked out or has it even gone that way? No the details of what T-Works role would be had not been worked out they're trying to see if they have an entity first before they just told us about this remote status and I don't think it means they wouldn't necessarily have a boss it would mean that they wouldn't be physically housed in the building and they might still have somebody would they considerably be the fiduciary for the salary and benefits? Yes I think they would because none of the towns individually would be capable of doing that unless one town stepped up to volunteer and just like Randolph didn't want to take on that role or several years ago no town is eager to take on that role what happens if Randolph does it one year and doesn't want to do it after that then it doesn't you just won't throw your whole pyramid into a tailspin? Sure the goal is for this to be a success and to show some forward motion going into year two with a clear understanding at that point that there are targets in the future that will bring great benefit to the town so it would be worthwhile for us to continue with this position if at the end of year one the towns don't reach that conclusion then of course it's up to each town to do it then possible scenarios training could be downsized the position to three-quarter or solicit or maybe be solicited by one of the other towns that's waiting in the wings to get in I think these are pretty likely the towns that are most likely to approve it but there's other ones that just didn't all through once they hear about it I think you're going to want to get in on it if they see it, is that going to say it? Is it too late? I'm more concerned that the structure of this is at the whim of who gets elected to each of these select boards so if you go to one that's looking at where they can cut costs and where they can do different things or isn't as pro energy it's just a very fluid setup for it Do you have your position split across six towns? It is, and it's very much like this it's based on population or I think I don't know exactly if it's population but it basically is by the size of the town and how many it's the same grand most Do any of member towns have any said we don't want the 100 hours we get from Jeff we can get by with 50 has that occurred and other towns can pick it up? No, we have had a town drop out but it was a smaller town so it had really didn't have any effect I'm a little this position he said does not report through key work it's remote but key work is giving you some administrative oh they are I missed that part Can you highlight a little bit more about the difference between and I don't know Jeff's best to speak for how you envision this being different than the planner role which has similar responsibilities regionally I'm not sure I understand the question, sorry so there is a slide that showed that this kind of evolved out of there is a planner an energy planner already at T wrote last year Oh for a different setup so what is the advantage of moving to this model versus continuing to have a regional planner focused on energy those other models did not include Randall nor did it include these other six towns as well and where is teamwork expressing interest in getting in hiring another one fully so how would the position differ Jeff you are in the best position say this you are with T board this position the way it is presented you will be administered by T work what that means is you have to meet the term how would it differ from your position in other words could T work be persuaded to hire another energy coordinator to take on these seven towns while Jeff is managing the six that he is that was my understanding of what would happen so I guess I am a little disconnected from where this committee went and came with this solution but I thought that that was we have talked there about an IREC too early on when I started the position I have been there since February fairly new position but similar work to what I have been in the past but we had talked about what happens if other towns want to join we had towns things started from this that had interest so we talked about having an IREC too which would be exactly like how it is set up now the difference is I think what you have touched on if I guess the bottom is that T work would be the admin but not the management of the position so then who is how does the position get priorities and the definition and leadership even now I have a manager a key work but I really work for the towns I work for the select boards and I work with the energy committees but with the towns and the town manager I work very closely with them maybe as much or more as with the energy committees who come up with the ideas and Tom was right on and he said there are certain towns that have very strong energy committees and we have professors from Dartmouth and some of our energy committees and towns that I work with so a lot of the ground work is done but they they're what are the results I mean the results of this position basically are I'm saving energy or I'm getting grants for the town and many select boards that's all they're looking at how did you save this year and how many grants did you bring in to work on projects and I'll go in front of the select boards and show what we've done in fact I'm sitting in front of Woodstock next week exactly that what have you done this year and you can't really compare completely to the salary because a lot of it I think is educational it's not purely grants that you bring in well as I try to make it easy for the select board to bring in either grant money or energy savings that more than cover what they're paying to have that position and that's if you have a town that hasn't been really paying attention to that that's relatively easy to do and generally when you get those savings and energy it's not just that one year that you get it it's you're saving that energy year over year so you can build on that I think I'm getting off track what was the question no no I think you're going to write on track so what I'm hearing is what I'm feeling is that this position as proposed would have more gravitas and impact potentially if it were directly tied to T-Roc as energy position two or whatever you want to call it I don't know I just don't understand the rationale for it's not being other than it's being remote and plenty of people work remote and all kinds of different jobs so that shouldn't be I can share what I heard from a T-Roc employee who I think not at the upper level but what he conveyed to this multi-town committee and I think I heard on two different times but they would take on a a second Jeff if you will but they said they were obviously not going how to do it and I think they have requirements to share all of their overhead of the whole organization with any employee and they calculated it was going to be about 50% more expensive for the seven towns if T-Roc just hired the person that totally managed the person and also they thought that we wouldn't actually get quite the responsiveness that the towns would get by them actively given the person their their marching orders, their priorities and so they seemed to carve out this special status and I sensed that's what we were encouraged to do not that they wouldn't hire an I-Roc to but they thought it would be more cost effective and maybe just what they prefer not to do it I can't say anything more because it's all unofficial but it's certainly something that if this goes to the next level we will need to get much more specific from T-Roc yeah some of that is news to me so I don't have any inside information why it would be so much more expensive other than I believe there was initial grants for this position when they started up the position I think it was approved in 2019 but there are overhead and I think that if there was more expensive I would think that would be the reason as we do subsidize the part the position at some point now that wouldn't apply to newer towns but if we have a town drop out and somebody else comes in I don't know sorry I don't have any information of why that some place has to pay their old tax in the fight and all of that but that appears to be minor I think what they're saying is the overhead two rivers would then want to spread their overhead over that job too but that overhead shouldn't be that's an extremely high overhead yeah I'm not sure why it would be that much more don't quote me on that 50% plus my office is in a 200 year old town farmhouse so we have huge overhead brought up the schools and the town government doesn't control the schools have you thought about adding the schools into this model too and the way that works now is the energy committee wants me if they consider that part of their town then we will work with them that's part of the contract but no we haven't that's actually not a bad idea it seems like it should be the town of Randolph they are definitely a supervisory union and there's towns where we definitely work with the schools and there's a few other towns where we're just wanting to concentrate on our municipal operations but I meant there's another party in there so you have the towns and you have the school particularly given that this Randolph union high school is the most occupied it's the largest number of people in it between faculty and students but they're also talking about building a new school so they aren't going to put a lot of money or energy into fixing this school that new school years and years out and it could be good to have somebody who has done energy and getting energy grants to go into planning for the new school they still just voted down a $39 million dollar school bond on Tuesday night and Woodstock's looking at an $85 million dollar one next large and I would think 80 having an energy professional energy facilitator whatever you want to call an IRA folding those entities in to this kind of a lot of sense okay I heard two big concerns one is how is the position to be managed the other is what happens if a town drops out certainly we need to have more detail as to the role of this person with interfacing with towns and shows and interface with the select point was there anything else top of mind that adding the schools and then the other thing I think was how how you monitor the hours like you're splitting up the cost of it according to the grand list but you're allowing a town to end up with a certain number of hours it almost feels like you should be it should be more of a rate per hour and the town could in for what they want for hours and I think I would also add so you have one grant that you're looking or funding that could bring down cost but what if other grants came along that could have admin cost included and what would that look like if like where do those happen in Costco would they go to T-Roc or if our portion of it was $36,000 I would say I'd assume that grant would go towards reducing that level from Randolph I think it could quickly get yeah I don't know how how it would work with towns funding T-Roc for instance manage this position I don't know what that then there's also the question of who's managing the grant who's doing the reporting all of that too and that sort of needs to be addressed we do yeah we do project management and grant management as part of this project do you put that is that built into the grant so that you get project management yeah the grant is done by the town and again they'll direct me to work on that but that is part of what we do but I would assume let's put in the grant it should be but they're paying me to manage if they allow it right because some of them have to but that's one of the advantages yeah but that's one of the advantages so that's the other potential of bringing the cost down is if the position is actually successful in getting grants but it would cost all the towns less sure yeah and an advantage of having this position is that they take some responsibility off the town they'll manage the project they'll get the grants they'll manage the grants and yeah I guess that's it make sure the project is done direct savings on the position cost though you may get a grant that helps replace a heating system or something like that so your savings are over on your facility line item versus on your actual fee that you pay here but I think there's a potential there's a lot of federal energy money out there the goal would certainly would be for the cost benefit to exceed that 36,000 that certainly would be the goal of any town would be to exceed that cost with the cost benefits that the position would bring and the challenges comparing it to the cost that we would have incurred anyway versus new costs in changes right so it's on energy cost savings but if we're going and replacing a heating system that we wouldn't have had to replace anyway and you've got a match and whatnot it's then kind of it's costing you some more to have that position to do that work so yeah we can all manipulate the numbers anyway we want to go to the next slide there it is let's talk a little bit about the benefits of this position I've got this slide here we've got to wrap this up because we've got a lot you know the summary of benefits we save dollars across towns increase of towns capacity to help meet statewide benchmarks you mitigate the risks of oil dependency not oil dependency itself share knowledge across towns you reduce conflict between municipalities and volunteers provide greater resources for residents thereby serving them better ensuring volunteer power across the towns will strengthen the capacity of each town how do we become a white river ERC town one is to establish a structure a sign of volunteer representative the representative wouldn't necessarily have to live in the town we would eventually approve funding in each town and add it to the town's meeting agenda based on how presentations go with select boards over the next month the towns in this group the participants may shift making small changes to the percentages shared by each town we expect to have a firm figure for budgeting purpose in December what we have presented is in review estimates and concept so the question is based on what you've heard tonight is this like what interested in our continuing to move forward developing this model and firming up and answering the questions that you've asked tonight enough for us to come back and do an additional review with you in a nutshell have you heard enough to make you interested to hear more I think I think my biggest concern is just clarifying what exactly the administration role is of T work and then I really do think there needs to be a buck stops here Harry Truman kind of person that this person reports to whoever that might be or whatever entity that might be just feels too squishy he'll define he could thrive in that environment but the wrong employee could just be a disaster and do more damage to you than it's going to do good you need something that's very self-directed in any case but they also need to have their head screwed on too by somebody else you need to be chucking in with somebody I wouldn't dispute any of those things these are all great great things that you've brought up we had this meeting because these are questions that weren't apparent to the group so it's important to have these answered so thank you very much for your time hopefully we can come back in December and walk through it again with greater detail I think the other question that we're going to have to answer on the board is if you could add a position and labor hours would that be where you would add them because we've heard Trevor talk about need help with managing grants not energy grants necessarily but the capacity that we have right now to do the workload that we have isn't there so if you were going to add labor hours is that where you would add the labor hours to come up in the budget discussions all right um we are all over the place aren't we let's go back to the top do we have the member of two rivers here to talk about the grant proposal looks like there is one Kevin is not here Sydney, Stine she's here for zoning yeah I don't see Kevin and I don't have a note just check real quick in my inbox didn't you mention that he had to be in two places at once at some point yeah so we'll go to the introduction and review of the proposed zoning bylaw amendments Sydney that might be you I was just getting everything set up um hello everybody thank you for having me Jeff is in the room too he's on your planning commission he was vital to all of this getting put together so Randolph has a bylaw modernization grant as part of a group of other towns who went on went in on the application together to increase the odds of you actually getting it um the bylaw modernization grant was to improve how the Randolph's use regulations treat housing into kind of in turn or in addition bring it up to speed with the town plan since the bylaws were last updated prior to the new town plan being adopted or the new urban town plan being adopted um so that wasn't grant money but that is something that we did while we were in there just because people had to have to when we changed things in the town plan the land use regulations are derived from that document so it has to be an agreement with it so while we were in there we also addressed changes made by the master remember act something 48 um for S100 which addressed housing in Vermont and made some mandatory changes so when that came out we got that guidance we made those changes in Randolph's land use regulations as well the major changes were adding some language more specifically about accessory dwelling housing units and exempting them from zoning permits they're allowed by right now because of S100 so any single family or duplex can have an accessory dwelling unit by right we added a little language about how those would be permitted or when they require permits uh there was added a cottage court um development type which shows up in the zoning tables it is designed with input from the planning commission and in conjunction with other towns developing something similar it's designed to allow for a development that's not apartments but it's kind of cottages on one lot surrounding an open central court another major change it's got its own language it's even it could be done with a PUD planning unit development but calling it out specifically as something that has its own defined of persecuting would make it easier to do than with the planning unit development sequence of events so it has to have to submit that um another significant change I'm just going to go over a couple a couple more is affordable housing language so in section 304 of the land use regulations there's no waivers for any dimensional requirements subsection on affordable housing and languages added to allow affordable housing projects without sewer and water you know more density with sewer and water even more density some of that is derived from S100 and some of it is just trying to encourage as much affordable housing as we can especially in areas with sewer and water so that's going to be essential to creating and maintaining the number of units that we don't need anything else um added some definitions to the plan and then not related to housing but related to um plan changes the town plan had combined a number of I guess zoning districts in the bylaws uh land use areas in the town plan they combined the then key districts the there were four the boundaries of that changed a little bit rural, residential and rural agricultural were combined by the town plan and uh east randolph and north and south randolph village areas were also combined by the town plan so that's reflected in the new proposed randolphs land use I guess that's my brief overview uh I think the select board has the changes document that I put together that outlines all of these do you have any questions or depth do you want to add anything no thanks just the very high level overall um idea with this was to address the housing shortage in vermont and just try to encourage more development and housing units in the village where the infrastructure exists for water and sewer so that was the overall um goal was just to make um some required lots a little bit smaller make it easier for people to get permits to have ad use in their buildings and to have smaller units maybe on their property but basically it was to help address the housing shortage and then like you said we did along with that um um just people you know making sure that the land use regulations match the town or the town you can get that backwards so the land use regulations match the town plan yes thank you yes so that was the overall you know just high level and then as you can see there's plenty of details that we went over in months and months the bylaws grant that we got were part of the 7-Town grant or whatever that preceded S-100 and then S-100 came along and sort of has driven this process even more quickly would that be accurate this night and these changes that we just heard about are consistent with what is required of us or with the spirit of S-100 yeah yeah most of the all the affordable housing changes as far as I recall and some of the other changes in encouraging housing were required changes that are in a result of S-100 what's the action that you what's the action where do we go from here I think we've got to get to the schedule is there a public form that needs to be held yes which I think is the deadline because there was a I don't know what that deadline means but was there a public hearing that had to be held by a certain time and then these implemented by a certain time so I'm not sure what the deadline means exactly but I had worked on a timeline with the planning commission being really tight on the select board so I've had some back and forth with the select board and found manager on this to revise the timeline to give the select board more time to review there's not really an action step to mind all this meeting beyond the select board meeting to review the document and have a solid discussion about future meetings or a future meeting I believe the draft of the working timeline right now has the select board reviewing it at the December 9th meeting beyond that I don't really remember there wasn't enough time we got it and had five or six days to try to digest all that and talk about whether we wanted any changes made to the language so it was a presentation at the December meeting we will have had time it should have had time by then to read it and see if they like the language or want to change it and then we notice it for the public hearing and then after the public hearing we make a decision of adopting or not adopting and we can make minor changes from what I understand after the public hearing and still adopt it but if it's anything that's considered a major change I guess we can decide if it's a major change it goes back to the planning commission to bring back you again it goes back into the 30 day but there's a lot of changes in there and there was no way we were going to be able to I had no time to digest all that sure and thank you anybody else unless you wanted to just live and breathe zoning regulations in town planned for a few days I've looked at at least one of these in another town as recently as this afternoon and just by flipping through this it looks like a lot of it is just consistent with the demands of this one I'd say the vast majority is either that or having our town plan and our language regulations you know stay the same thing not that people should look over carefully but I think what we'll find is that most of it is really falls into no brainer either we have to do it or it makes sense given things that we've already said as a town in favor of it's almost more like we're not approving these, we're just determining the consistency with both these state regulations and our own and there's not things we can necessarily oppose there's a couple of things like Sydney said there's the cottage court development which is new but as she pointed out it's new and that didn't exist before in our language regulations but it's not new in the sense that someone could have done this otherwise it just provides an easier format for a potential developer to happen and the other I think if I remember correctly then the other significant change is the reduced minimum lot size in the village district which we've reduced significantly quite reading thank you so much it's not that great thank you Sydney it's all pretty straightforward thank you please service committee update and deadline extension request you got that Trevor? you're on a roll there and we can see this right so please committee again last Tuesday night and there's no way we're going to have everything wrapped up by December 1 so there is going to be a public forum which will be November 28 at 6 o'clock and hopefully it'll be at BTC we certainly have contacted them about that so we have a few options and so the select board is going to be invited to be there to hear all the data, everything that's come out of this and the information what is going to be presented are the three options there's not going to be any decision until after the public forum to allow members of town to lay in on what they want to see the three options are laid out the way it is expand the district up towards Randolph center and south towards Bethel or go townwide and it'll go over the costs of each the impacts that's all the way from right sizing the existing sort of what the service demands are to a townwide structure which is obviously going to be ranked as you got to have a building and some things like that that will weigh into that but all that will go over talk about some of what the demands are that they're seeing and whatnot but then once that is over there's two meetings scheduled to bang out the final report and recommendations and bring it to the select board so forum number 28 yes so the original deadline was for December 1 it's looking more like a January 1 for mid December if we're really good I'm thinking it's going to be the January 1 and so we just want to bring it back and give you an update because one way or another this is going to have some level of impact on the budget and on the budget development whether it's some of the conversation was around we may need to take this in steps it may not be one time here we go to what the final is so it's hard to say what the impact of the budget is going to be until we get through after the public forum what their reaction is to what's been put together what time is this one 6 o'clock but I don't know the location for sure yet potentially BTC yeah we got a live on the I forgot to say sounds like a on a training file venue up at BTC and then she mentioned that she emailed me back to the A2 schoolhouse to defend them what we want schoolhouse has accessibility issues so it's very small we don't want to do that but it's a big room yeah it's not big enough it's a hundred upstairs which is probably plenty which has to be a factor about it we don't want the schoolhouse that's whatever the other option was that's where that is so if anybody has any challenges and wants to report someone probably isn't going to happen I won't say it's because of lack of effort we have had a lot of meetings it's a pretty good conversation and a lot of data has come out a lot of comparables it's just not easy enough to crack we don't need a motion to extend do you think that you tool both on the committee do you think that ultimately following the forum the decision will be won by consensus or as I mentioned it depends on where you're going I think it's possible I think it depends how it goes I think everybody is pretty open they're trying to understand all sides of it it's possible but a question has already been asked we have descending opinion so and yes that's fine too I don't know I don't know if it'll come in as a consensus there was a mention of coming to select board with lots of concerns too just the things that aren't part of that that are ongoing things that are not going to be met by a law enforcement you know the wraparound services somebody has an incident and law enforcement does their part but they need some type of social service to follow on what does that look like and who should be there was a lot of conversation about the Claire Martin Center has funding for some of that so it kind of takes it from that point and helps form that wraparound service to provide people with the full picture we kind of set it over in this like other things because we have our hands full with what we've got so it's identifying that it's kind of gone outside of of what we were assigned to do and what law enforcement would do but it is something that's out there and is a need and somebody should be focusing on it yeah it's a fun one alright next up we have the east valley community group building funding proposal hi I'm Peggy Whiteneck I'm a member of the east valley community group and I'm here with the president of our group which is Betsy Rays and with Josie Carruthers these are other members of our committee also Josie Carruthers Mark Kelly John Pimentel and we wanted to present this evening a proposal but we wanted to start with a little bit of the history because we've been here a couple of times speaking with the select board and I always have a sense that we're there's a disconnect somehow between what's going on in east Randolph and what's going on in the main town and there's so many projects and responsibilities and priorities that Randolph proper the town of Randolph has that it's sometimes overwhelming I think for the town and so what's going on in the Bergs east Randolph and the other south Randolph etc etc sometimes kind of gets lost in the shuffle because there's just so much going on in the center of town we did discover a memorandum of understanding that was executed in 2016 and 2017 that sort of explicitly addresses the connection between the east Randolph community hall which is the main concern that we have as a group and the town of Randolph and so I wanted to just share this memorandum with you all this evening as kind of a basis kind of a historical starting point for the yes thank you and if you're welcome okay okay what I wanted to call your attention to especially in this memorandum of understanding oops looks like I gave away all my copies of it thank you I'll give it back to you the town responsibilities that were articulated at that point for the east valley community hall were the town of Randolph this is number 2 I'm just going to read that section the town's responsibilities the town of Randolph shall take responsibility for maintaining the ground surrounding the building with snow removal long mowing and trash removal services providing building repairs and capital improvements as needed to meet safety and legal requirements including the heating system roof foundation handicap accessibility septic etc paying for year round utilities such as propane and electricity purchasing cleaning supplies and toiletries for building use working with the hall committee which is now the hall committee is now the east valley community group and let's see working with the hall committee to develop new uses and programs in the hall providing a stipend and or hourly payment to hall committee members which we have not requested that we're not particularly interested in that providing some operating budget for hall projects as developed by the committee and continuing to administer use of the hall including but not limited to rooms, cleaning areas and chief's office to be accessible to the east Randolph firemen so there's a a real connection between the fire department next door and the hall and then the town shall receive 100 percent of building rental income and shall manage all deposits right now that's not happening we're managing the group is managing the deposits we have some funds that we've already raised for this project and so we've been we've just been amassing that amount so that until at such time as we can do something with it we have about I believe about $37,000 right now in the fund so that's kind of the history that for me it was very helpful to find this memorandum of understanding because I was always like really confused about the relationship between this project and the town of Randolph so having given you that kind of basic understanding of the history that brought us to this point I'm going to ask Betsy Race to talk about the work that we're doing right now we're working on developing a request to the town to warn an article for the 2024 town meeting agenda concerning the hall restoration Betsy will take it from here so our capital campaign funding committee has decided we it's time to see where the town is going to help with the restoration this is document that shows what we have to be able to use the hall again have it bearing income for the town rather than just expense and this is all based on the assessments from the Frederick architect engineers that came in earlier and what year did they come in and I don't think you need to so these numbers are not even valid they're probably double or two and a half times what's on your paper well already well into into COVID time to be determined but it's not double an increase of last year's numbers even so I bet you're pretty close we can't know so we'll just keep on going ahead with the numbers that we have which are the best that we can do right now that has been done so we discussed this with Trevor Peggy and I did and that's someone we requested to be on the meeting we also discussed it with Kelly Green your moderator figuring out a process for getting this on the town meeting agenda for 2024 there are apparently different avenues one's a bond vote one is actually asking the taxpayers for money and they're assessed at that amount of money it's not a bond it comes in straight from tax and there may be others I don't know but we're bringing it to you because we think it's time the grants that we have been working on almost all of them require the project to be in process it's like you gotta have something if you get the money you gotta be able to spend it in a year it's kinda hard to put money towards a lift when you haven't even got the foundation done that kind of thing some of it has been the neat matching money from the municipalities and when we talked to Trevor about it he said that it was really difficult to even do anything with grant money because he just didn't have the time as far as municipality so we kinda wonder what you're thinking about we know that there's a way to put a petition out there get a certain amount of signatures to have this put on the agenda the town meeting agenda and that may be a reason for that the word an article on the agenda to be voted on the word on the word okay yep yeah so the line of saying is those are the two paths the petition is one pathway for getting a warrant yep and the other is for us to put it and I just wanted to emphasize that we've butted our heads against a lot of grant makers and all of the larger grants federal grants and so forth are requiring a cost share by the town to own the building it's just we can't get most of these larger grants unless we have a cost share because the town owns the building but we don't have to because we had this conversation a few times about either giving it back to your group or another organization if that's something you want to do as a town why don't you put it right out there on building for sale we can I mean I don't I know you say that I know you say that and so then we go back as the committee saying well this building are we asking people for money and then nothing is going to happen what are we going to do we have to give the money back to them we need some direction from the town it's your building we need some direction from you it's actually power building it's the town's building the town owns it on behalf of the people I want to make one one more point while you're deliberating and I want you to consider the east valley three of Randolph's five villages are there and we have right now a building that is has had some investment since the town took it over in 2017 but the town closed it down and just for the sake of Stephanie and Alyssa because you may not know too much about it what happened was the town a former town manager saw the need for community gathering space most towns do have some sort of community center our town does not and there's been talk of having some form of a community center for a number of years now and so the what we have is a building that was deeded over to the town at the which process was initiated by a former town manager with the idea we had to go around to the voters in the east Randolph fire district who owned the building at the time and asked them to vote yay or nay on deeding the building over to the town we explained at the time because I was part of this, Mark was part of this and so on we shared with them the proposed memorandum of understanding in an overall view that the town would maintain this building that it would be put to community use unfortunately what happened was that the town insurer saw that there were code violations and the ones that became town property that needed to be addressed so the town had to close the building right away so it's been closed since July of 2017 that's, what's that, eight years ago and we're still getting consistent calls the chamber of commerce is getting consistent calls talk to Andrea Easton about it she's kind of gung-ho on getting this building reopened because of what she knows about the need for rental space for reunions concerts there's community has needs for such a building so just to wind up here we have a building that is deteriorating steadily in east Randolph and as the building goes down the village looks pretty bad and it's not a wholesome environment we spruce it up we put up flower displays and holiday decorations and so on and we work to have events there like bingo and so on to the small extent that we can use the building we do halloween halloween that's right which is very successful our mission is to revitalize community in the east valley that's three of the Randolph's villages plus east burkefield so I would almost go out on a limb and say as that building goes to a certain degree goes east Randolph in terms of vitality, morale property values and so on if the building is restored and becomes the community hub that people have expressed desire for repeatedly even eight years later then we see more traffic to the store we see more attention being paid to the houses in the village we see that whole process that you're all familiar with known as revitalization that's what we stand for that's what we were founded to do was to work to revitalize and unite the east valley and generate a sense of community belonging, sense of place and frankly a little more optimism because that is what forms the basis of resilience we're looking to have support for our efforts at community resilience throughout the east valley and Vermont community halls are one of our sacred places it's where we build our community our culture is what brings people together it enables us to be bound together in good times and bad times and right now we don't have a community hall here at Randolph and we especially don't have any municipal buildings over in east Randolph that could serve south Randolph and north Randolph so this building is more than just a building it's representative of the soul of the community and right now it needs some tender loving care that's what's going to continue to bind us and help us to continue to build a culture that makes living in Vermont a special thing for all of us I'll add one brief thing which was that two prior town managers wanted the revitalization of the hall to serve as an emergency shelter supply depot and so on since those town managers have been around we've had our natural disaster over there in the east valley and it was a hum dailer for some of us and if the scientists are right that such things will be happening more frequently and with greater fierceness we're going to need that we need emergency facilities in the east valley for those three villages do you no matter which process by which you get on the warrant for town meeting and that's your objective here do you plan to tell the voters in advance as you're advocating for this plan what your plan is for the long term management I'm not just talking about the town keeping the facility up and all of that who's going to be booking the hall who's going to be scheduling events there I'm thinking about a role model right down the street here if I may and that's just the Chandler Center for the Arts which the town passed a bond for in about what one $750,000 and a non-profit organization was established to manage the facility today in a sense we sit from us we just renewed the lease last year for 20 more years but we have a very limited we the town have a very limited role in paying for for example the eating and electricity and all those kinds of things the Chandler Center for the Arts raises the money through fundraising and through programming and through grantsmanship to keep that place open and so are you up to telling the people of Randolph that you're ready to meet that challenge I guess are we ready to hit the ground running like Chandler? Of course not because we've got a building and just repair and so we haven't got that organization in place could we do it in the long term? Sure we absolutely could we are a non-profit entity in the East Valley community we have a set of officers and structure so we could take that on and we have a business plan for running it once it's repaired I'm just making a point that you're not just selling this plan to us you're going to need to be able to sell it to the voters regardless of how it makes its way to the monitoring I appreciate your question and it is something that we have discussed without fleshing it out because we're so focused on getting a building but we understand that we're still going to have a major involvement with this building which is why we prepared the business plan at the select board request few months ago and I've been doing some grant writing in the interim and the obstacle that I'm running up against is that we're not ready to start doing anything with the money we get because we don't have the basic support we need to get things going we don't have a relationship with you the select board that allows us to see our way it's just a fog and we've been at this for seven years as some of you will recall capital fundraising grant writing you know that's in the DNA of the East Valley community organization that's an assumption that need and that function is always going to be in place to raise money to restore the building and manage it that's already in our DNA and if we can get some funds from the town then that opens a lot of doors for getting a lot more money for donors I can't speak for anyone else but I think the bond route is a lot a lot more possible path for you than a taxpayer assessment or whatever the other option you suggested is just do the math $750,000 assuming that this holds true in today's dollars by what 3,500 people how many people do we have on the ground when we did some calculations ourselves on that we were talking about as much as I think as well Trevor gave us a 13 cents per 100 something like that somewhere in that range and that was and I know you're going through an assessment that's based on before we start throwing math around I just want to clarify that with some back at the envelope calculations based on just a straight number nobody should plan anything with that very I just want that right there no I appreciate that Trevor because Trevor made that clear that that was just an estimate nobody's being held to anything but we do of course we intend to be responsible and have an understanding of if we're going to ask the town citizens as well as ourselves for money we have to know what we're talking about here so that we don't want to burden people either we just we think that the building of a resilient community requires some investment on the part of the town that is building its resilience and we over in the east valley we're taxpayers too and you put the populations of east north and south Randolph together we're not that small a fraction of the total tax revenue of the town and we see you know to a certain degree we can see our communities economic fortunes fluctuate according to the fate of this building we have got new businesses in east Randolph too which is really nice you've heard of the Bethel University there's someone that's been talking to me about wanting to do a valley university if we ever get the hall open so there's a lot out there that can be done with it it was never done in the past if I could take another moment we'd also like to urge the town to hire a part-time grant manager you're just here looking for money everywhere I'm looking for a way for this town to pull money in and save money that's my goal it's not to spend money it's to raise money and I think we can do that by hiring a part-time grant manager I had the opportunity to talk to Gary Mullin I think you know him he's on the select board in Tumbridge he was hanging the field next to me yesterday so I had a conversation with him and I don't bring this up to say this select board is doing this why aren't we I'm just using it as a data point of what might be possible this past year they hired a part-time grant manager she works five to six hours a week and I asked Gary how's that working out and he said on a scale of one to 100 it's 150 he said you couldn't be more pleased with the performance she works with T-Roc and managing grants that they help bring forward our grants and so forth and he says it's just working out fantastically over there and the cost is small so you know it's our recommendation that the town hire a part-time grant manager we know of some that live here in this town that would be interested because the opportunities are there to pull more money into the town at very little expense and you know if we don't give things like this a shot we're never going to know if it works this is a low dollar risk with great potential on money coming in it's low risk to spend this kind of money to hire a part-time grant manager the opportunity is too great to pass up in my view we strongly urge the town to consider that that would go hand in hand with working with groups like these Valley Community Group enabling us to apply for more grants, manage more grants raise more money then we wouldn't be talking to the town about kicking in the next dollars we'd be talking to the town about helping us pull the grant into into the town we work on getting the matching funds if that's required for the grant and then with this person and working with the town the management could be taking care of that grant to me it seems like a no-brainer to pursue something like this some of what you were talking about was the project management managing the grant managing the project the grant is a different piece of it managing the project to get it to the point where grant funders were interested seemed to be where the challenge was from what I was hearing before versus the actual grant writing you said you were meeting talking with grant folks that managed handing out the money but their issue was your project wasn't to the point yet where they were interested in biting so it doesn't sound to me like it's the actual grant writing side of it as much and I'm not saying it's not a good idea but I think on your side your problem is you don't have the project management to bring it to the point where it's ready to go for the funders to be interested in jumping on board well it's not it's a challenge on it but it doesn't have to be one it's not just that some of it is well the town owns the building what are they doing well nothing right now but wouldn't you still like to contribute you know and it's hard to answer that question for example we we were shortlisted for Bernie Sanders earmark last year for $750,000 or 800 yeah and that's one of the reasons we didn't get it was that the town had shown no support for the project what kind of showing of support would be no the town really had to come up with some money how much money that's a very large you know if we can begin to genuinely talk about it then let's begin to talk about it we didn't come to this meeting prepared for some very specific financial conversation but we can and I think that it's a mistake to think that we have not engineered the process sufficiently to have a genuine conversation with large grantors because that's not the case as you know we did get the red loaf architectural corporation to come in and give us a very very detailed assessment of everything you know and we we've massaged that in terms of what's realistic for us to do when we've talked about phases for the project phases of funding but what we we've been operating by ourselves in a little playpen every time we've tried to get out of the playpen met with receptivity on the part of the select board that let us out and let's have real conversations about a genuine community it can be an asset or a liability we're trying to transform this building into an asset a money bringing in asset we're not trying to suck the town dry of funds at all we're all taxpayers here none of us are wealthy there was some outreach from and it came down to a decision for the town of whether we had drinking water and the grant for the drinking water system or the town hall we went with the drinking water so that's why the grant didn't come the earmark didn't come it didn't have anything to do with the town not putting in money it had to do with we had to choose between two projects that the earmark could come in for we went with the drinking water and he made that clear I mean as things stand right now if we did nothing it would be another ten years before we could even before the select board would be in a position to be able to allocate any money to this project because there's so many other urgent needs there's a lot of them so we're trying to we're trying to get out for much more we want a grant we want a slow grant potential police station there's all kind of that out there it sounds to me like your idea of bringing this straight to the voters through a petition process has merit and don't have the oneness just beyond the five of us I don't really want to be guilt-tripped about that I want to know and my question would be who is best positioned to advise you on the wording of the warning and the way you word it on the petition is critical because if you come to us with a if you come to us with a flawed petition it's dead in the water it's dead in the water so the people need to know exactly what they're voting on we need to know exactly what you're asking them to vote on so that we can put the warning out there in a properly worded fashion that everybody's on the same page and that's the whether it's Kelly or I mean Kelly's a lawyer she knows how this stuff works she's not only our moderator it could be a good position to advise you on what the wording of that should be but the dollar figure needs to be current and exactly it can't be some amorphous I think we should probably check with Emory on that too because I believe that whatever the wording is on the petition is what goes on and whether it makes sense or doesn't make sense it's the exact wording that's on your petition I think a combination of Emory and Kelly or some attorney who has expertise in grappling these things so that's exactly right the petition will say shall the people of Randolph approve a bond issue of $750,000 for the purpose of renovation of do you actually say bond issue? that's what you're asking for you're asking if they will bond for that amount of money for that amount of money and the bond is for a specific period of time over usually they're often 20 years it'll say for how many years well if they write it that way it'll say shall they bond for X number of dollars for so many years for the purpose of so when you say come back with a specific member we can't at least if I'm correct in our issue and our cue for a municipal building it's got to come from the town is that correct? that's what we went through before when we first looked at the hall that's the case what's the timeline on that? who knows I think answer to that because we have the red low estimate you have the estimate you can just update that and put it in today's numbers that's one way to get it we can pay something are there industry standard escalators that can be applied to the red low well just remember you're asking for a bond for the voters and that's a set dollar amount so that dollar amount is what will be voted on what I'm afraid with your estimate here and knowing what bids are coming in at things from buildings highway projects they are still jumping and so if you end up saying to the voters we want x number of dollars and we're going to give you this glorious hall and then you come back and say oh you know what we need another 500,000 to do that it's not going to work very well so is a bond the best route to go the question to the select what's the best route for us to go should we talk about a bond or a tax should it be a combination of raising taxes and having the intention for a grant a grant manager to be hired and pushing that side of the equation with us raising matching funds to augment whatever grant funding comes in what's the best way for us to approach this the most sense for the town and the voters Trevor do you want to at all on that question yeah and when you think about bonding capacity too it's got a different process in statute so you don't just warn a bond vote like you'd warn any other advisory vote and you're good at a deadline 30 days out there are some public hearing other notice requirements that go with the bond vote so you have to work backwards from that so we do a different process if we're talking about bonding for a building that the taxpayers are going to pay for before you make any decisions let's go tour the police department let's go tour the village garage the senate garage and make sure that we've got we get one shot at this for the next I don't know 5, 7, 10 years this is the one you want to take so there's that component if there's a $500,000 or $800,000 one time tax increase I have not worked in a community or seen that go very well if you're asking for that much so it's a lower percentage play one year could raise the taxes theoretically to go away a year after there's that if you're looking at sort of responsible progress and I hear the frustration in the room that it's been slow today that third pass might be the one that's the most responsible and balances all of the town's needs and that's the trick for you and for me is this all sounds good in the back which you've got to weigh against every other thing we've got try to create a comma just to say this is the whole Rubik's Cube we're looking at one side tonight so any one of those you can figure out the technical components too it's just trying to pick which path is the right one that's the most responsible that fits both of them here and now looks out for the future we do know we're going to have a substantial amount of debt service capacity opening up fiscal 27 and beyond putting together a budget for fiscal 25 now that sounds far out that's the link of nine in a lot of cases so just to sort of give you all of that there's no good answer do this do that do that but of those three rows those are the pieces we've got to get through first one question Trevor the restoration of a building like the hall certainly isn't done in one year it's probably a five to ten year process with the expense associated with that taking place over that time frame why wouldn't we raise a tax rate to reflect that spread over that period of time so year one you may want to bring in $200,000 to get the foundation done for this and get things up and running and then for the following four or five years you may want to only raise an additional $50,000 to $100,000 in one year what kind of model does that model look like it would certainly raise the tax rate lower from year to year rather than a one year hit you can structure it though the variable there is that it's on a year to year basis in any of these cases so if the voters in any of those years say no then that plan is altered from that point forward the other thing is that it gets into this sort of the whole we're looking at however many cents for this to try to rebuild some of the staffing capacity so we can be better at managing grants receiving grants doing those things planning and zoning administrator we can use some engineering services we're looking at capital reserve transfers these are all general funding expenses too for the most part we know we can't replace all nine fire trucks and the schedule that matches useful we can't even do the four or five that are most in need so we're going to have to look at reserve transfers they're still paving it's about finding the right timing, the right amounts the right structure and recognizing that each year there's a little bit of variability and for some reason the voters say no it's another way to structure but we would need to know what this staircase look like so where we started was the end goal and figure out the right amounts you know are they even payments across a number of years you start low and up to a middle point and kind of taper off we've seen it done both ways in capital planning projects for example when we think of maybe a major repair to one of our own buildings we may say for it in some measure depending on time frame it is one of your own building our own building I also just want to say like raising taxes I mean things are so hard right now guys I mean you're kind of it's so hard for families like any tax increase it's just it's not just no one cares things are really hard right now too it's central to the whole at least discussion on top of it too if you look at everything we're facing your regular stuff goes up right insurance goes up every year labor rates go up every year all those things in our budget we have a police discussion going on right now we've got both of our highway garages need some serious attention you know there's a whole laundry list of things out there that we have to do this needs to be prioritized for those there's no doubt this challenge and for you as a select board and for the town financially but I don't think anybody can point to one period in time where those challenges don't exist they exist every day they're always going to exist but towns don't stop moving forward towns find a way to move forward nothing remains static I know people who are actually moving out of Randolph because the tax rates are high and they can move to a community where they are just living better because they can buy groceries because they have a little extra wiggle room people are so paycheck to paycheck right now I mean I feel like that's one of the things that I want to be really mindful of too this all sounds great this is wonderful but when people are trying to decide where and how they can buy groceries willy-nilly why are we just raising taxes that's a big thing for families right now so I really think we should be mindful of that too we're sensitive to that we're families too and we don't mention this in a true little manner this is something we've been discussing for five to seven years it's not a harebrained scheme that we just hatched up we've been trying to look at this for years we've been trying to find a way forward as we said this building is worthwhile it's it's an honorable history in this town in this town because you use a community it really could the town doesn't have a community everybody has full access to you're not going to hold weddings and birthdays at Chandler you're not going to have a bar mitzvah in Chandler you're not going to have bingo in Chandler a town needs something like this to help us build culture to build community it helps to bind us all together it's important a town needs to invest in community or else it's a race to the bottom so this is one short point I haven't had a chance to talk about this yet every thing you folks are saying makes sense and I told you where you're coming from and I don't disagree with much of what you're saying at all in this estimate I see $800,000 plus other projects so it looks like just right in front of us we have a million dollars and it's an old estimate we know cost has gone up dramatically since then and given the other priorities that we've heard talk about this evening it's really hard to see how this is going to be our highest priority to raise a million and a half sort of near future so that's my comment on that part but I also heard you say things like well what if we were able to raise money a much smaller amount of money that we could then use as matches for grants that sounds much more doable and so I think knowing much more about what kind of grant opportunities are out there what are we really talking about we're talking about the town $50,000 to get $500,000 $100,000 to get I think once we start having those kinds of numbers then we can start really wrapping our minds around the magnitude of it because the value of something in relation to our other priorities is really going to matter it's not just the matter of how much money it is it's how much money what are we getting for our money what's our value and so I think the idea of just bonding the whole thing that doesn't sound like a good use of town's money in our current climate but if we're talking about spending really a rather small fraction of that in order to leverage a much larger amount of money I think that's something we can talk about I think that's what we're interested in I wasn't really hearing that very clearly yeah I know but you're right any amount of money that the townships in signifies the town's interest and that will be helpful in writing grants my recollection is that typically when we get like when Kimball comes to us and says we need to do whatever fix the building for some sort of renovation we've identified the grant and the match and then they come to the town and they say can we apply for this it's going to require a $50,000 match and then we come back and we say yes or we say no but we have something very concrete a very concrete fiscal proposal in front of us is that something that you can't do because it sounds like what you're saying is you can't do that we have to start with a foundation what do you mean a foundation a foundation the hall needs a foundation so you're saying that you bricks and mortar bricks and mortar if we could just get started on it like at least get the building picked up a new foundation put under it we can start really pulling more money in so you're saying that the town would need I want to be really clear so you're saying that in order for you to raise any money from any of these granting agencies that you need the town to invest in a full foundation for the building at the full expense of the town so this $465,000 plus whatever the increase has been since then is what you would be the ask for the town before you can then go out and then require more matching money to do other renovations is that correct? you're not entirely correct that's why I want to know if we're going to approach grand tours if we have the ability to say our group has raised $50,000 the town has committed $100,000 towards the restoration of this hall beginning with the foundation that enables us then to bring in the grants it presents a much more enticing picture to potential grand tours if we've got the backing of the town in that manner so you don't need to complete the foundation of the building before going for other grants if we're trying to raise money to do the foundation which is job one for the building then we can go after grants so there's potential if we have some some idea that the town will in fact provide the match so you're saying there is potential money out there to pay for foundation work so couldn't you apply for that grant come to the town come to the slack board and say we're going to need this match for this grant to go get money to fix the foundation can we do that? we need to do it before we apply because you can't apply for the grant get the grant and then have to give it back because the town is not in a position to provide the match so what happens right now with Chandler come to the town and you saw it some tonight right? John Kaplan was here to talk about sidewalks and he came and met with us last time and said hey we have this group we've done this survey we have all this data we'd like to apply for this planning grant to help us look at these sidewalks so if you came and said we have this grant opportunity this is the work we'd like to do this is how much we would be looking to apply for the match is X this portion of it will the town provide this portion that's the model that these others and then when we get it has to be spent in a certain period of time that's another big thing and the conditions of the grant are partly in form of our decision so if the grant comes with conditions that we feel like we can't meet then we wouldn't approve applying for the grant but if the grant everything seems like oh yeah we can do that then we could apply then we would allow the grant application process to go forward because we don't have the project manager and the day to day clerk of the works type activities on the project correct? Betsy says you can't what would the town do if you were going to build a new police station? dear lord we would be in a very serious conversation and you want to start with the foundation how would the town manage that? well on our capital projects if we have a large but when we get the fire station we contract it with a clerk of the works for that one we had a town employee at the time that was the head of our buildings and grounds and a clerk of the works and we had the chief of the fire department that were all involved and overseeing that project that was a very big project though so you're basically saying that any of the activities that we're talking about we'd also have to fund a clerk of the works to oversee it how do you put it how do you scope it what's your plans how do you fit it the municipal building that's we don't know where one will end when another begins and like we can't do some things because it's a municipal building you guys have to decide on the clerk of the works and all of that right I think that we're getting too into the details today and we got a whole list under the move but I think what we do is you develop what the project is you're going for the grant you find the grant and then you come in and that conversation takes place of how the grant actually gets delivered and the work gets done because every piece is going to be different I can't give you a checklist because it won't just go with everything role play role play and we have discussed this and put it into budgets and understood you know when we've been scoping out what grants we would apply is our grant writing genius we do have detailed conversations about of course we're not just going to put in for a foundation it's a big project it has to have correct project management okay thank you very much great conversation thank you we'll bring something in December can we get on the agenda again in December because we've been here so long tonight we've already got our time in for the rest of the year at the biggest you'll have to reach out to Trevor with what you have and what you want to do and kill if it's ready to go it'll probably end up on the agenda well you did discuss flood buyout programs in town participation in and out just to say this is another area where capacity has been the challenge generally project management capacity we've been approached a few times in different ways about talking out with either insurance buyouts or protection in repair activities there's two primary programs one is through FEMA that's where the buyout is the last one and the other one has been through the what they call the EWPP programs that's the natural conservation resource service so those are the ones like Lincoln would be a buyout under that program sort of pre-existing both storm and reflecting the damage to that property and then some of the repair work for folks who maybe have some slope stabilization on their private property that's been a resource the state has pointed folks to the challenge with each of them is they require either a sponsor is what they call it they need a municipality and the EWPP for example or they require the town to take on all of the tasks that are similar it's the appraisal it's the site assessment it's the hiring of the construction or the demolition contractor removal of the buildings it's remediation of the site and then in the buyout program options the town owns it the repair ones are a little different in that we could be responsible for all of those pieces up to and including the match there are ways to structure it so landowners are responsible for the match but now we're in a game where we're here trying to acquire this money from folks up front who by and like don't have it that's part of the appeal of the program or we don't have great tools to go and get it after so this is really just sort of a temperature taking conversation we assume a lot of these tasks a little bit like the NUP grant in that we might be able to create these sub grant agreements effectively or agreements with the individual property owners and we can probably hire a project manager I think for at least some of these it's an eligible cost we have to track that down the challenge we have with say the Arlington Drive property that prompted this conversation is that I don't know with the size of that slope with the relation of the house to where the new branch of the bank is thinking about where the rivers might potentially go I don't know that that property owner has a lot of great options Vermont Emergency Management may use this as part of its pilot project where they take on all those tasks that might go to us in that case though at the end of the day we'd still end up as the owner of that property so there's a separate liability consideration at least for some of these and then they're looking at ways to see other different programs maybe we can do with the canal with Arlington Drive those two properties are neighbors that share a boundary and a coastline coastline they come up with a little vehicles yeah but it's you know it's difficult for us because those are time intensive projects in an area where we don't have any expertise demolition is not what we do we're even managing appraisal RFPs in some of these other programs doesn't mean we couldn't do it but we would definitely need some higher secret reimbursement for who can do these things if we jump in we wouldn't have to concern so I just wanted to do a check on the emergency management folks so they would take your temperature in terms of that I think in particular we're thinking about Arlington Drive we can even just be as narrow as that it does mean we don't at the end of the day we certainly have liability it's just if that bank continues to erode and starts to approach on other properties I mean that's where you're sort of talking about any liabilities such as they are and then the same thing if we go through with some of the grant fund the purchase of 15 we can have we approve that we have some initial action toward that and that one has sat in states as student resources we decided to start a police department on the fly a little bit of time focus and and so it's just really I feel really I'm empathetic to these property owners they don't know that they have a ton of choices at the same time it's either extend ourselves into a place where we're less familiar with hours we don't have or see if we can find a different way maybe to get there so that's where I'll check back around with the pilot project that seems like an elegant solution at least for Arlington in terms of if they can take those pieces on that will help it we basically have to make a decision at the end about whether or not to accept the property and then if we do accept it you can't do anything else with it we could turn around and develop it put anything on it generally just probably stay in a natural space which is what we talked about with Lincoln Ave when that came up a while ago too so it's really just to speak do you have any sort of level of interest in us trying to figure out how to persuade in a way that keeps the sort of the town safe to make sure the projects move along that we fully understand any liabilities that would be associated with any of these the long term liability is what I would be most concerned with do you have any sense of what that might really be that Arlington property slope is basically a very tall cliff right now and so is Lincoln Ave but the Arlington one is even taller by a good bit and it's fearsome to walk out towards the edge because the ground is soft it's really frightening so if we're looking at that bank eroding further over time and threatening other properties and we would have liability as municipality that would be my biggest concern in terms of taking this on Trevor, can we go through the whole process in that land just become if there was an interested neighbor can they own that land versus the town they just can't build on it is that possible? we can see because I understand part of the reason we end up as the owner so that we can make sure that nothing else happens we wrote that into de-restriction covenant kind of thing that seems to fit the spirit but we have to know if that would be okay it does two things right it removes us from the liability in the future and it leaves it on the grand list not that there's that much to leave on the grand list but that's really the liability that's to be but if the liability is big enough for us to not want to take it on why would a landowner want probably a landowner want to take that some of them will but it could be an option we could certainly see if I had if I was looking at a parcel next to me and it was either going to become because we talked about changing the Erlington land into additional trails and space and whatever there was a whole recreation component to it that Perry was talking about when that whole thing came up you know maybe I don't want that happening in my new yard and I would rather own it and have it just turn into trees and vegetation versus screaming kids and disc golf course and whatever I know kids on my grass what are people like that and I'm just thinking you don't know one of the other things the state geologists we're trying to get them to come out and take a look it's sort of less it's easier to see how the Lincoln Ave piece is less problematic because you've got that sort of spur that goes out and around we've seen where the damages where our stormwater culvert comes out and that's sort of a section that's FEMA eligible for some work but if it's hitting the spur and that property is already banned and you sort of there's a lower threshold for what's really in danger who's really sort of in danger destruction of property that Erlington won though because of the size of the composition of those materials there's no way you're going to arm or stabilize that and so that would be the thing that I'd say the geologists could give a sudden insight on what's this thing going to do based on what you can see observe have experience in terms of this kind of thing that's going to march forward over time just because of what it's composed of or is this sort of it needs that kind of July 10th type of wallop or what are we really talking about so hopefully we get that piece in there too so we better understand I think it would be useful even if we decided to go to a neighbor who was interested or whatever they had that knowledge to at least say this is what someone who's trained in this thinks yeah it'll do with the caveat being like nobody really knows anything I think we got to explore it I feel like there's some you know it's back to that empathy side of it like if that's the only way these folks are going to have some way out of where they're at and we have to place some role in it I'd rather go in it with my eyes open on what it is but if BEM is looking for a pilot and bring it on let them to all the light work and what not just bring us a BEM I mean Arlington is the right choice because it's it's bad it really is and sadly the woman whose property was compromised on Lincoln is now living up on Woodsy just around the corner from Arlington with her her granddaughter who is the branch manager in Northfield so I know a lot of the players and I've had neighbors coming over and every couple of weeks I walk over there with Lori Goldman or one of the other people on Lincoln have and you know I read the thought of what's going to be there on another July 10th it's going to happen it's always by the bad corner though that river it just naturally you know it took out 60 feet but most of that wasn't because of the river though it was just we had so much rain that the sandy soils got so wet that it just slid it wasn't actually the river it was a huge landslide well it happened in chunks it happened a bunch of different times there's a pipe that extends out this was the emails that were getting the pictures of all the time so as long as we have rain events even if the river doesn't move we're going to continue to see these slopes much back after they did it statewide about all the different slopes and it is it's raining not just that hillside is just sand now can you imagine it to use on our roads? what happens if we like take that bank down easy and just truck it to the two garages it's an awesome idea we're penalizing through terracing and mining and maybe it's an option if we had if he was going to pay us to do something for armoring it would we get it down to where it makes sense and armor it the black snaps of Odessa can't take it from the river though can we take it from the banks and we've got to get down there somehow to armor it we might still make ourselves a little zigzag road zigzag road yeah does that give you what you need Trevor? yeah at a minute we'll start working in with the Arlington morning hopefully maybe that breaks a good model at least for some of the other ones that come up and then we'll see if we can at least identify and have somebody or some group of somebody ready that maybe can fill a kind of project manager role I'm trying to remember way back to the EWPD when T-Work pitched it to us for Lincoln I do think there is our costs are certainly eligible so if we can maybe under an out umbrella that's how we get someone to manage the pieces if we have to go separate programs separate route we'll do that but I think that'll work so that rolls right into the whole FEMA blood update yep we got our DI in on time the deadline was the 6th my oldest son just brought me some food so I'll keep it on screen so nobody's too deaf well there's no beer there to catch it and show it to us so we got that story too so we got that in we still have sort of one unknown cost that's what we're going to do with the beers that washed on John had the idea for a box cover which I think put a lot of merit to it for the alignment for sturdiness we put it in and that's similar to what we did on view building on the natural bottom for aquatic passage and all that but we'll also look at bridge so we don't quite know exactly what that piece will be we've got the temporary bridge everything's all set up to go and there'll be some armoring that goes on on the other side of that and then we do know for slope stabilization rough order of magnitude we did get a quote we reset to one responded on the Lincoln Avenue piece so we have an estimate of what breaks sort of right at the end of that corner where our storm drain shoots out that's what FEMA will sort of cover on either side so we can at least have some armoring prepare that storm drain and that outlet and that will at least help stabilize some of that there for that piece so those are the three open projects the rest of the stuff on the list is all complete we may have a few odds and ends we're just going to do a set of things everything else on that damage unitory is more or less there we're uploading photos FEMA's got a sheet and we did a good job taking photos the problem is now it takes a long time to get them all into that sheet and load them up so we're chopping away at that so we're in pretty good shape we know how 12.5% of the total we don't quite know what the total cost will be like I mentioned in the report where we spent a few out invoices outstanding I don't anticipate that would go too much higher than say half a million at the most conservative than another half or so for slope stabilization 250 or so for and can have and then whatever that um for a bridge project ends up being so we end up in that $2 million range at the end of the day which would be good it puts us around like 250 something like that we're thinking at one point it could be three three and a half but include a pretty good shape so there's we just want to just keep you aware as we go through these as we pass each threshold the damage inventory we have a 60 day window when we're initially Monday that sort of you can edit your list and you can add your list but to do those things much more difficult than to try to get your list right the first time of projects and then to get it in so we at last Thursday made sure we did a final review with our rat from FEMA made sure that we had a piece of Palmer Road that had to be repaired that had made it into a prior version so we got back in with some of the costs and the invoice and those so I think we're in pretty good shape hopefully we'll start to see money sooner than later though a few steps to go before that but we're getting closer Questions on North Wales and reservoir project update Again just another one to check in with you we have sent a bunch of materials we had $775,000 federal earmark Drew Sanders and his staff that filled the funding gap that we had up when we opened construction it's going to be an EPA state and tribal assistance grant so we're hopeful that we can start to move through kind of the grant agreement setup paperwork training all of those things the whole idea and then the bond bank just approved our SRF loan so the course we're on right now is kind of nice we did the interval financing carry us through earlier in the summer well once the SRF loan is in place we'll draw on reimbursement from that first once we've sort of drawn that amount so it's a million and a half dollars on another $600,000 of subsidy so we can draw that much back but subsidies don't go on the final loan amount and then the northern borders grant would probably be the next piece in the stack and then the EPA stack grant would come at the end and what's nice about that is that if it comes at the end the last major piece is the tank itself that's the thing that's coming next summer so those two things should marry up well in terms of we use that money for tank of tank installed in a pretty straight line between the two pieces and then we can have a conversation I think I mentioned it maybe at the next time we'll be able to link up so here's where we're at this percent of the way through the project timeline lies we're not quite 50% we have a winter shutdown built in but we're getting close to that a lot of tasks are being completed everything that can be queued up before the winter shutdown will be so that everything is coming back putting in the tank, making some connections a little bit of instrumentation installing a generator switching and restoring the site with the old tank so we're in pretty good there's some talk about a 50-day extension for the contractor that's tied to delivery of the tank but it's more contractly though with some engineering costs and any kind of significant going live in fact though we're thinking we've always said it's a lie to try to be conservative so we're still thinking somewhere in that timeframe that well it's fully online operational but not going to live so far so good so when we when we get to that point where it's live and whatnot but what point do we need to be looking at REITs because we're going to have that additional loan to pay back yeah I think we're going to start looking at REITs through the budgeting process and we'll want to engage the Water Waste Water Advisory Committee at around the same time and then through there so that maybe for July 1 we'll know what the rate structure should look like for that because we know that to repay that loan based on the figure we got from the bond bank you're talking a little less than $27,000 for that so we have sort of that known amount that rolls in and Fiscal 25 will be the first year that we repay and make a repayment on that maybe 30 to 30 years alright the drinking water ones usually are we may even want to seek we talked to RCAP Solutions a while ago Chris and I did about a rate study so that we could do the analysis and make any changes we need to now that process has been slow and may have even installed out so we were talking about different ways that we may seek to get some assistance to get that done so we may have a proposal for you there the next month or two but that would help accelerate that in terms of at least doing all the legwork building out some of the modeling and moving us along there but then a while I forget exactly how long it's been since we've it was a rate adjustment a little while ago we still think we're talking about 5 7 years ish if I remember the story right but it's been quite a while 5 or 7 years sounds about right so the rate study is only on the water but no we did want to do one on both ends yeah because that one we had talked about the minimum there was a conversation about a minimum and no right now we base it on everything right it's on flow or whatever going to a minimum so we didn't have the meters and some of that there was a conversation about I don't remember how it all went but it was the there was a town that had a resident pay dex and uh businesses were metered or something and we talked about the savings if we didn't have to have meters and we didn't have to have all that sort of that conversation don't I mean maybe we touch on it briefly I don't remember a very detailed conversation about whether the variants could be made so that were easier and we didn't have all the meters and all that meter building I think it came when we were talking about bringing in Randolph's center some seen as a cost savings too because you wouldn't have to have meters you probably have to make the minimum go up a lot though to make that work a lot of the lower users would see giant increases in their bills alright any questions on that topic managers report not too much to add from what you see other than at the end of more than 90 tons of hot mix shoveled and raked by hand they were all pretty tired so I think they got some pretty good sleep and then they were out out there early ready for the storm we were able to put some of the new folks out in to do the at least get them acquainted with we've got three employees in CDL school basically right now of the ones that joined fourth one we hired when he gets here just after Thanksgiving already has a CDL so we're good to go there that forced us to shift some resources around a little bit for response to the storm but tactically we went out they only did I think John said three truckloads of salt told for all the paved roads they might not have sanded in a few spots on the ground roads we generally left the snow because it's such a little amount the roads are not anywhere near frozen sort of a better thing to leave it rather than try to tear it up or knock it off so if anybody asks you why we weren't out there doing anything we were, it was a technical choice that we did last year and it worked well for us in this kind of weather context so they were out there getting after it and we were going to do a winter maintenance meeting the grand irony today we were going to do that and then I was home due to the school closure and they were out spreading salt sand anyway but we'll do that and check in that's where we coordinate between water, wastewater, highway buildings and grounds checking with the records keepers and anything just so everybody knows what everybody's doing and where extra resources might be and how to help worked well last year so we'll do that but we're at that time already the pile of trucks rumbled and they were out there did you get the phones fixed? Monday they should be up with full voicemail, there was a card of some kind and then it has to be programmed so there was a parts issue but we found a good repair person which was no small feat given the age of the system at some point we'll have to think about it but this fix should do us for a while right Kim? I think so that's well I know he could have come in and said you guys need a new system but he didn't he just said you need a new voicemail card and he got one installed that was missing a password so I'll have the new password hopefully by Monday and everything should be set but anecdotally though it's been kind of nice and that most of the phone calls we get are for the clerk's office and the way the modified system rings is it directly to them now so that part has been okay for us in terms of fewer call transfers I don't know if Mary loved it but it's been working out pretty good and he took my phone away yesterday to set the whole thing up so my phone was gone for half the day and I was like I can't answer it it's not even here it feels pretty good any other items or any questions for Trevor? entertain a motion to find that we need to go into the executive session this feels like a motion for you you can just say you think I have this memorized we consider a motion to find an executive session is necessary and prudent and the premature general knowledge will place the town at a disadvantage just a second I move that we consider a motion and an executive session pursuant to 1VSA 313A1E pending or probable litigation and 1VSA 313A3 appointment evaluation of a public official I've always wondered what that little squiggly S0 second them as well all those in favor bye