 our slack board meeting get in touch with the town administrator because we will be tasked with appointing somebody for these positions the slack board will be if no one runs for these open seats so if anybody's got any interest in in planning or other open seats that would be great Rene yeah I don't know right but that's that's been an issue in the past is sometimes maybe people don't know about the open positions on some of these boards but we would love to have people come in if they've got interest in any of these open board seats it's not too late to mount the right in campaign as it's not too late it takes 25 votes I think is it 25 I think so yes ma'am is it 30 okay um so the planning commission is tasked with uh planning that's what why it's called planning so there's two meetings generally a month the first yeah Zach Zach is here the chairman but I'll just I'll just quickly touch on it so first and third Thursday they have meetings usually seven o'clock to nine o'clock and they talk about the town plan which may need to be updated they talk about zoning which may need to be changed so they do the planning portion of the zoning aspect in the town they're not enforcement the development review board does the actual grantee of permits and listens to appeals of permits etc they strictly do the planning aspect now Zach Sullivan's here he's a chairman existing chairman of the planning commission it does he have anything to add to that that's Zach Sullivan right in on your voting that's Kim Watson um one one thing one no is if you get up to say something please introduce yourself um that's okay I just I know that's what Michael Dwayne usually says but maybe you forgot in fact I have right here we have four students from the East Montpelier elementary school who are our pages and it's Brianna, Kaitlyn, Calvin, and Karis and they're standing on the side portable microphones and so for order and identification purposes for the record if you raise your hand to be recognized one of our student pages can come over with the microphone for you that would be helpful to all thanks very good thank you so much Mr. Graydon, you are? Yes sir did you raise your hand? How long is your term for the planning? Um they're either two or three years and the ones that are open I don't see it here but they're the two or three years are they is that correct Zach? Two or three years? Three years. So we'll take us through the cycle where we are updating the town plan in the next two years and then into a cycle we're probably looking at whether zoning changes needs to be made now to implement the town plan you know as it's changed now the other thing is you know well I'm not going to go into the fact that sometimes people can't serve the whole term and that's okay because we really like you to serve the whole term but you know it happens that sometimes people move out of town etc etc etc so it's it's hard for it's like for sometimes to appoint people because we really want to get people that are interested and sometimes that's hard to find so there you go all right so any more questions on the open positions so I want to go to page 14 which is a select board report and I'll just scroll down through it quickly and then we'll can answer questions so paragraph two deals with select board membership has changed we had a long-standing member Amy Willis step down from the select board and her husband ran for his seat her seat and it is Mr. Hess Scott Hess he is in the middle here we had a lot of talk about his outfit today so so Scott she I asked that last night at the select board meeting what color cummerbund I should be wearing because this is my this is my first select board meeting and town meeting and he said I probably should not wear any cummerbund so I well there were okay there were other aspects of his attire that we touched upon but I don't want to go into it any further so anyway then we had Judith Dylan on the select board she she couldn't finish her term so Zoe got appointed she's fourth down for me and she's running now for the seat permit for the three-year term and she served one year so she has two years left no one's running against her correct the other seat that's open is Tom Brasier and Nick are running Nick has been appointed on a temporary basis to fill John Jewett's term John moved out of town and so he couldn't finish what he was doing though he could have zoomed in but whatever and there has been some changes in the town office and I'm not really going to go into that unless people ask me questions it's just people have had different changes in their lives they've had to move away they have relatives to take care of etc etc so it's nothing going on internally in the office it's more that people have had changes in their life and have had to do different things the next thing odd crew is mentioned in the select board report that has been pretty stable the only real difference on this road crew is we've had a little bit more part-time help from a new person that wanted to work on the road crew and we needed some part-time help especially dealing with all the flood flooding etc in July so we have a new part-time person Steve Levenberg who's been really nice to have on the road too so I touched on the flood the flood was a big deal East Montpelio did better than most we didn't have nearly the flooding that our some of our neighbors had some sections of road have not been finished because we're dealing with FEMA and if anybody knows anything about federal agencies they move slowly so that's one of the hold-ups in the repair process is dealing with FEMA and their requirements but the nice thing about FEMA is eventually the town will be reimbursed a significant amount of money for the repairs that we've made that were due to the flood so thanks to our town administrator and our road foreman they have been working on the FEMA stuff due diligently and this makes a big difference on the money that comes back in is the process is following the process um yes yeah it's the the there's a couple of culverts or I think one what's that the question is which roads have not been repaired due to the flooding did you got that okay so on Santa circle up on off the horn of the moon there was a washed out culvert up there that has not been fixed it requires a hydraulic study and FEMA is will be paying for all that but the move the wheels move slowly with FEMA and the hydraulic study the engineers have to be involved it's a big repair job it's very expensive that has not been fixed yet and then there's a culvert also on Sodom pond that is been fixed temporarily but that's also one that's going to be replaced so there's a couple places in town that require more work any other questions on that then the next item that has mentioned the select board report is ARPA and yeah Barstow yeah Rick yeah thanks um I thought that culvert on Sodom pond was not going to be replaced because that has withstood many floods and it's more solid than the ones they put in nowadays um so I don't know why they've changed their minds you want me to yeah the state determined that that culvert could no longer was no longer acceptable for that location so we only have a temporary permit to cover I I know but we only have a temporary permit to cover it and to repair it to open the road and that permit only lasts 30 months and then we have to replace the structure I saw it's completely exposed it's beautiful that that was Rick Barstow for the record Rick Rick again go ahead the thing of it is that culvert did not wash out just the material washed out around it and it was far easier far cheaper I just put new material in there and then the culvert was good um you know next time if I don't know if these culverts that they're going to put in there I don't know it's maybe some giant monstrosity um but uh I don't know if we'd be any better off that that's called common sense Rick and that doesn't always play out just let me know okay yeah well that's the Barstow can you appeal that decision can it be you can uh I don't think so I agree but sometimes these things get on a track and it's hard to stop them but if you wanted to try to appeal it you probably could but I don't think that's going to change the outcome yes it's not a town decision at that point and the thing that happens is to get the FEMA funding to fix this you have to go through a process maybe Gina could Gina go ahead there is an H and H study hydraulic and hydrologic study that's being done by engineers in the unlikely event that that study actually states that that structure is sufficient then the structure would remain but odds are it's I mean we I was with the river scientists when Guthrie and I went out and toured the site and met with her she was immediately clear that structure was not sufficient to cover one big question about that structure was its historic significance so um I did read that was one of the delays with FEMA because they kept telling me they did that but ultimately they didn't so I worked with someone at the state who reviewed it and unfortunately because of the damage that had occurred the structure no longer retained its historic significance um so it was deemed that it could be completely removed but yeah there there is a study being done right now the engineers were actually out there that's why um Saddam Ham was closed um on Monday um and that was really for them to start doing some subsurface surface testing so it we are waiting on all of these results so right now no clue I've met with the engineer a couple times um no clue exactly what will replace the structure but yeah we've kind of gone through a number of steps I'm not 100% sure that there is an appeal type process I've never seen that with the state to appeal these these types of decisions so um we've received a temporary permit that has a definitive expiration date of when we have to replace the structure that's there or if the town decided not to I'm guessing then no FEMA funds would be I'm not sure what the implication is I'm not doing it that I don't know is that help but one of one of the things that does happen in these uh studies is they use a little bit different criteria as far as rainfall goes etc etc so we've had an upsized culvert significantly in the town because of the uh rain events that we have more often so you know when a when a culvert was adequate for the last 50 years it is true that they are no longer able to handle the significant rain events that we get now you know nine inches at a time you know so if you're going to work on a culvert they'd like to see you make it oversize so it can handle those big rain events question from Colin Blackwell hey Seth Colin Blackwell um I was just curious because I talked with Guthrie and his um I don't want to speak for him but we had the concern of the next culverts down so I just know if there's any discussion on that right now that just could get people informed if you look at Foster Road that's a small culvert too and then on Horn of the Moon Road so when a FEMA goes in and puts in a big you know arching culvert all that water is now available to go down so should we be looking at the next ones down kind of that's I mean that's a good question but I'm not privy to that information but what's that yeah ramifications further down the pike any more questions concerning the flooding and FEMA um that's a good question I was looking at that myself I I think that's a rented one you're talking about the picture on one right picture on page 15 yeah yeah that's a rented excavator now yeah that's what I thought so the good news about the equipment that we use to fix the flood flooding is that money that we spent at that point will be reimbursed to the town through the FEMA funding which Gina and Guthrie have been working on a lot because it's a lot of paperwork but we do have they do have a person FEMA has a person buried that they're working with all the time so you have to play through the process but at the end of the process if you do everything right you'll get a significant amount of money coming back to the town yes Renee carpenter pages so pertinent to this discussion there's legislation talking about responding to flood etc and so forth and I'm not privy to it but it might serve our town and the people who live in our town to find out what that legislation is which committee it's in who sits on that committee and go to that committee either send each person an email or ask to testify at a hearing or raise your questions otherwise because that's how things happen so if you're concerned about downstream getting taken care of that is one place you can go to make sure that it's heard at the state level and then you won't be arguing with the agency of transportation and their hydrologists about what is and what isn't appropriate to the town thank you no that's it okay so i'm i okay yeah i've got a question Ellen canadler question yeah um this is a little off topic but um as i was coming in this morning and found a five dollar bill on the floor so if anybody's losing a five dollar bill come and see me you have to identify it so i would i'd like to continue on the slack board report um so the next item after the flood was the arpa funds and we have done various things with the arpa money um so if if there's any questions it's it's a little hard to identify every place we put the money but i can yeah uh jenny callum question un thank you um i had a question there were a couple of select board meetings where there was discussion about some grant funding yeah for non-profits in east montpellier with arpa funding and i'd like to know how that got resolved okay so what what we did with the money we decided to give away around 50 000 dollars out of the arpa money and we had four applicants for the money one was twin valley seniors needed money to repave their parking lot um all together now uh needed some money to replace the boiler in their main structure where they run daycare and school for um pre pre i think it's pre kindy garden children um then the historical society wanted a little bit of money and the trails association needed some money to replace a bridge so there's four entities in town non-profits that applied for the 50 000 at the end of the day we gave half the money to twin valley to repave the parking lot which wasn't really enough money to do the whole parking lot but because people were struggling to get in and out of the building with walkers and canes etc navigating potholes in the pavement we decided that that was a very worthy cause to put a bulk of the money which was half of it um then we gave i think it was 10 000 to all together now in 10 000 the trails uh trails association to replace the bridge over mallory brook and then we gave 5 000 to hysterical historical society to do some upgrades and cabinets so they could display some of the historical artifacts that were down the town office gathering dust so that's kind of how that all played out um yeah yeah so so that's a great answer to talk about the process that we initiated after jinny callan came to the select board and said hey how about using some of the this money for non-profits in town prior to that we decided right away we've been hearing for years what a priority good internet service is here in town and we thought we could without any compunction take a hundred thousand dollars of that and give it to cv fiber to help them provide connectivity faster to people in town and the four corner schoolhouse association came to us and they said we have a big mold remediation project and we would like to get 30 000 matching funds from the town so that we could apply for a state grant to take care of that and we gave them that 30 000 out of the arpa funds so so there's a few other items that we spent the arpa money on but one thing that we made sure that we did it was for one time expenses so we weren't setting up for future tax increases what we really did on some of the one time expenses we spent the money to keep the municipal tax rate down which you'll notice in this year's budget that it only went up three cents on the municipal rate and some of that's because of the shifting of expenses that we did to arpa money for one time expenses to soften the blow to the taxpayers one other thing that we did is we did keep some of the money by an accounting procedure in the money in the capital reserve fund we've got over 200 000 to put towards future capital projects that we may deem worthy of supporting you know if we do do the town garage we've got some money in the capital reserve to put towards that project so that's are there any other questions about the arpa money because we're all here and we definitely can answer your questions but that's kind of a summation of what we did so I don't see any others so I'm going to keep going on with the select board report and the next one was kind of segues into the last paragraph it's talking about the town potential town garage replacement um so where we are on that project is we've identified a need in town to replace the existing garage um we went out for bids for a sketch a sketch plan on that site to replace that garage it's going to cost the town up to 40 000 to get the sketch plan that money is not coming out of your taxes that is arpa money that we spent for this one time expense once we get the sketch plan made or the potential design comes into our hands we put that out for informational meetings for the town folks to look at to comment on to tweak or whatever um and then being how we'll see how the informational meetings go I don't have the design in my hand yet or our hands yet we will put it out to bond vote so if the townspeople think that the plan is a good one they get to vote on that we'd have to borrow the money to build the garage so that's where that project is at the moment we've also hiring a town representative to represent our interests in the garage project to do our due diligence and to keep an eye on the project to keep it within our parameters and our goals our financial expectations we have someone representing us and they are just hired on a per hour basis it's not a lot of money but it is a good idea to have our interests protected at all times so are there any other questions about that and and the other thing that's also happened with this project is we have Andy Shapiro who's a longtime town resident who's very invested in the latest and best technology as far as green building energy efficiency etc he's been on board with the whole project a huge amount of help and he keeps his eye on the ball at all times as I do myself so if anyone is wondering about carbon footprints and green blah blah blah he's the man to talk to and he is looking at the plans almost every day so that's that's where it's at yes Rachel we are going to have a further discussion under article three on the town garage itself so unless there was a pressing question we are going to move into a separate discussion about that momentarily looks like but Rachel if you have another question if you have a question related I can't hear you thanks I was just going to ask for a little bit more detail about what's wrong with the garage but if that can wait till question three so there really isn't much else on the slack board report we do have a new fire chief Albert Petrella if anybody's got any questions about the workings of the fire department ambulance service he can answer them or I can also because the slack board does go to meetings fairly regularly and we're all pretty well versed with what's going on but Albert's right there every day so he could be reached or I don't think he's here but he could be asked any questions more specific to the inner workings and then the last item on the slack board report is the budget I think I've already touched on it but we've managed to keep the increases down as far as the municipal tax rate goes Gina Jenkins our town administrators done a tremendous amount of work on the budget and working with the numbers very very specifically each item so we managed to keep it down due to her hard work actually and also because we shifted some one-time expenses to the ARPA money we've been able to keep the tax rate down to a sustainable increase so if there's any questions about that you can direct them to me Gina Carl whoever on the slack board because we've gone over the expenses with a fine tooth comb and we want to keep the tax rate increases to a sustainable level we actually I'd like to do it not at all but unfortunately within inflationary environment they were in it's really hard to keep the expenses even so they had to go up but we've tried to minimize the increases so any questions on that any other questions for the chair with regard to article two hearing the report which we've accepted to hear we don't need to approve it it's already in the warning hearing none article two is concluded article three which is to discuss the replacement of the town garage is there a motion to discuss the placement of the town garage no vote is going to be taken but is there a motion to hillary farrington and ellen canadler moved and seconded article three to discuss the replacement of the town garage and chair board chair of the select board south gardener is going to start off the discussion so um i just want to touch on it very quickly why we've decided to replace the town garage so i think that's one of the questions coming up is those originally the first part of those built in the 50s has been added on multiple times unfortunately the equipment is outgrown the garage so there's really impossible to fit all the equipment in the garage and so we've had to utilize the fire department building which is right next to the town garage we've taken up a bay or two there to put some of the equipment but to work on the equipment and to fit it into existing building is just about impossible um so you know the thing is that when the town buys equipment they don't do it willy-nilly they do it because they need to maintain the roads they need to cut down the astries we need to do this that and everything else so demands on the road crew have actually gotten more and more and more especially with climate change and people expect a certain level of service in the town and to meet those expectations it takes a fair amount of equipment and labor so because we are evolving in a different world we've had to we need to upgrade our town garage to reflect the needs that we have going forward now it's expensive so that's the biggest robin the whole thing is the expense so anyway i'm i'm willing to answer any questions that i can on the project what's that i can add a description of the tightness you can i just i thought it would be helpful for people to know that i went to take photographs to eventually share with all of you to see just how tight and small and cramped it is in the garage um i'm not exaggerating and i have photographic evidence to prove that these machines are being parked within this distance of the wall backed into they're literally being backed in and coming this far away from the wall it's amazing um but as it is and the i think in the the second the the other bay where the fire station is um when the doors close the actual the fire escapes are blocked and it's currently not it's not a safe environment at all um the the workers have to actually jump over plows to be able to move around the truck so it really is like Seth said it's literally almost impossible in the in the literal sense of the word and i i am going i'm working on trying to share photographs with all of you thank you zoe so anyway we're here to answer questions about the potential replacement of the town garage any questions for the chair i see a hand one in the back there uh looks like edith um eddie miller oh people like to sit in the back buddy yeah and then um they don't want to be right i'm eddie miller i um i just want to go back to what you mentioned before Seth you said there is a you've designated a person to be involved in the planning could you explain that a little more who who is the person and what are they involved in are you talking are they representing the town with the the people who are presenting a design or what what's what does that mean so the town representative is someone that represents the interests of the town and protects them so the town representative we've just hired i don't even know the name v is services i think they call them um so that's a firm that has people working for them and they would come to the town and report to the town on what's going on with the project and when they go meet with the architects that are designing the building they make sure that our interests are always foremost so they're doing their due diligence protect our interests that's what they do that's what we're building they will be inspecting materials when they come in they'll be comparing what gets built against the plans they'll be doing everything they can to make sure that the building is carried out according to the plan and to protect what our our taxpayers money was being spent on and to make sure that invoices line up with the bills blah blah blah make sure the invoices line up with what's being delivered to the site so there's a lot of different little tasks that they'll be doing then they will report to the select board um we're hoping we're going to meet with the representative at the next meeting and we're going to set up a timeline for the reports that they'll be making to us so they may be able to zoom in to every meeting to report to us of what's going on especially also as chairman of the select board i've pledged to go visit the site regularly because it's not far from me to make sure everything is going as planned so that's kind of the process that we've sort of outlined as we move forward and as you probably realized at this point we have just started down this path i think that's a very good approach to have a town's representative can you tell us who that person is i don't know i don't have the name okay yeah the firm is vs i think it was peter somebody but um we don't we have not met the person yet like i said we're just started the process and we've we have we have um we have committed to hiring the firm because we did put it out um to bid and we only had one responding but the respondent um on the recommendation of andy Shapiro they are a good firm to work with and then they are going to send their person to meet us good um and i want to just stress again that andy Shapiro who's been working with us is very very qualified to help us through the process he's a volunteer he's done a tremendous amount of work and he really knows what he's doing so you can feel comfortable that the end of the day there's going to be good representation of the town of their interests and also they will come up with a building that's going to meet the needs of the road crew and also to meet the various criteria that we put forth as far as carbon building carbon etc etc so there's a lot of little different nuances to planning the project it's not just putting a box up there it's also meeting energy goals and also the needs so that's about um all i can say on that but i'm i'm i'm more than willing to answer more questions um steven miracle had his hand up and then betsy barstow one of the pages gives steven the microphone please and on a note of moderators privilege i'd like to welcome norma rayman to our town steven you have the floor any questions um yes hi steven miracle and um this is uh awkward for me but i'll try so um my understanding is that the idea is to use the existing uh building lot where there's a structure that is under size for the needs of the road crew to do the work that they're trying to do and uh the proposal is to knock the building down and put up a new fancy building with you know solar panels on the roof and i'm questioning that given on given the the history of uh well what i watched happen with our emergency building when a lot of money was invested in architects uh to renovate a building that turned out that we couldn't even have it there because the state was reconstructing the intersection and we ended up carrying the architectural plans across the road to a lot that we bought and built a building that it's really kind of a dumb building didn't need to be so i'm sort of being brave and speaking out and saying do we really want to do this do we want to knock down a building that is standing i looked at it it's not sagging or anything the greater sitting out in the rain it could fit in that building really nice it just be a lot of space around it and the lot is jammed up against the road with uh water behind it so we can't really expand the lot to be big enough to do um what the town needs for a facility to run the road crew out of and maybe we should be looking at buying a piece of land somewhere you know i fly around and east montpere's pretty big there's a lot of roads and there's a lot of space so if we're going to spend millions of dollars let's not do it dumb and um i'm concerned about details like we're going to put the building up against the road so that the solar panels can go on the roof well that means that doors are going to be in the shade and you really want the doors facing south so that they're melted off and the sun can shine in and i know the energy guys are you know they're all about making sure that we do it according to the new fangled way but i'm a shop guy and you want to open the door and let the heat in on the floor when you can and uh you want that south facing exposure for the where you're working and then there's this other piece where you really don't want to have the trucks or whatever it is that you're taking care of uh stored in the space that you're fixing them in it's just not how we do it you know if you go up to the airport they're not fixing planes in the hangar where the planes are stored they they go out there in some big building that's maybe heated just a little bit but the shop space should be just that we should have a really nice workshop for these guys to fix dump trucks in that you bring in a dump truck that's already thawed out and washed off and then they fix it and the building that the vehicles are stored in should be kept at just above freezing so that corrosion is at a minimum and it reduces the amount of energy it takes to heat the basically dump trucks full of sand that they fill up the night before so that they're all ready to go at five in the morning and uh and then there's this last piece of we want to they want to heat this building with electricity and i know i'm old but i remember when they were talking about energy that's going to be too cheap to meter and i'm very skeptical about the heat pump wave that's coming our way and uh it just seems like um i have doubt not certain no i i doubt my own doubt which makes it really hard for me to stand up here and make proclamation so um these guys are working really hard and i think it's important that we tell the architects what we want and make sure that it's the right thing and don't tell them what we don't want because they'll give it to us and uh i guess i'll shut up thank you thank you uh betsy betsy barstow had her hand up and then i see kim after that betsy is there a microphone for betsy please folks so betsy barstow and my original question was how you decided which architectural firm to go with both it just a matter you only had one applicant oh you had okay that's what i want to so we had a we had an informational walkthrough back in november we had eight was the eight firms i think we had eight uh representatives of firms show up at the town garage so then we did a walk through and then we had requests for bids and we had four firms respond with bids and then we met um john jewett myself andi shapiro and a woman that we hired to help us go through the whole process and we went it down to one we did that because um the firm that we chose was the most qualified to lead us on this plan um they have a lot of experience with building other garages and they're local they they're from barry um the two brothers that run the firm the father was a builder so they're really hands-on and um they were also the cheapest which was we don't always hire the cheapest because the cheapest is not always the best but they happen to be the cheapest and they were the most responsive so that's how we got the firm and they were significantly less money over 20 000 less almost 30 than the nearest um other firm we because we've narrowed it down to two we had four we narrowed it down to two then we interviewed both and then we took the one so that's how the process worked and it i think it worked pretty well you know andi was at the meetings he asked a lot of good questions i did myself john jewett when he was here it was two he's had a lot of experience with buildings he used to be the town manager in hardwick so i think it worked out pretty well so that's how it happened kim watson had her hand up and then chris you have to stand up if you're not going to use the mic anyway kim there you go um i have a question does the firm have good references as have they completed other buildings yes and and of course um the most important person to ask is guthrie you know how does he feel about the new construction and working under those circumstances yeah i can give a little context on our interaction with the architects because i'm i meet with them every time guthrie does as well so not only are they wonderful to work with i have been very impressed and just for anybody that knows i may be come from a finance background but i come from a construction background so these are meetings i'm actually very quite comfortable in and happy to be in um one they're listening to everything that we are everything we're asking for in the building from and they are looking at it from an energy efficiency perspective from any requests that they are asking us bringing us ideas they're not moving forward with anything on their own they are asking for our feedback at every step of the way guthrie and i actually drove and met with the architect at two buildings that they designed in the town of georgia and the town of grandisle one is steel one is wood because we don't know which direction we're going to go partly because wood is more energy efficient more sustainable but we're not sure if it's practical for our site um so guthrie is involved in every meeting he's included on every email as is andy shapiro as well because andy's looking at it from an energy efficiency perspective so just so you know yes guthrie is highly involved guthrie is the main person that provides feedback about this project and how it relates and how it's going to be efficient for the road crew but um i can't say enough about wla wyman lamphere and associates as who we hired as the architect they have been incredible to work with so but yes guthrie is guthrie is the key man for this maybe it's already been said but uh guthrie perry is the road foreman in town chris prat had a question for what steve miracles just said i'm also in construction with windows and restoration of and weatherization of windows spent my life studying climate change and working on these issues and energy efficiency carbon are two different things so i would i would really recommend that they do a carbon analysis not an energy analysis they're doing that that's been done and they come up with the fact that it's more carbon efficient to tear a building down and build a new one because i think that is that insane sorry i mean if they i'd love to see that because that that's something everybody will say the greenest building is the one that exists and you have operational carbon and then you have embedded carbon okay and so i mean i don't want to get into the weeds on this but that that is an issue that needs to be fully vetted and everybody who's in the building wants to build new and everybody loves new buildings and architects love new buildings nobody wants to fix an old building so they're all biased towards tearing this thing down just just my point of view thanks thank you we had a question there stage your name please sorry and then ed carol dixon um this is a related question is there a sense that any of the materials in the building can be repurposed or reused or sold um we've discussed that as far as repurposing goes so we haven't really come to that moment where we've hired somebody to take down the building but that has been on the table as far as repurposing the material so i want to i just want to reassure you that that's something that we've talked about and we will continue to do so as we move forward ed deegan had a his hand up just to note ed was not present this morning when we introduced the candidates he was out working the tables ed is running for auditor ed go ahead with your questions regarding article three um so i'm on the capital budget uh we're talking about this as being some new thing that's just come up this has been ongoing for a decade or more that this has been a need of the town i'm a very big fiscal pragmatist and renovating is often more expensive for less benefit than building no it just is and i own multiple properties trust me uh um Seth is my neighbor so to speak on one of his properties my wife will tell you and she's a CPA MBA that we should have bulldozed that property and rebuilt from scratch because i put so much work into it and i'm still working on it i've been working on it for 35 years it's never ending a new energy efficient building is the way to go but as the fiscal pragmatist and the capital budget side of this thing is um the goal of all boards and that we service the capital budget the select board is to safeguard the assets of the organization of the town we have millions of dollars in assets sitting over there we need to protect all those vehicles and give a uh Guthrie the the resources he needs we shouldn't be buying you know a 200 000 and every time i turn around you know it's getting more and more expensive uh you can't be leaving you know these vehicles uh without a good aspect of service so this thing has been ongoing for a while i'm fully supporting the direction that we're going i do understand where everybody's coming from with the renovation be fiscally pragmatic but a lot of thought has gone into this this isn't something that they just came up with like the spend taxpayers money this is going to long term benefit the town and safeguard our assets and be more fiscally responsible any other questions or comments uh gene troyer pages uh genes right there with the microphone did we lose our microphones seems like there's one being one around one being one around okay hi gene troyer um i want mic up more okay um i want to echo some of the things ed said um one this looking at the town garage and what needs to be done with it the town has been looking at that for 10 or 12 years anyway um and it's good to see that it's now starting to move forward finally um i've also been a builder for a long time um i've renovated a lot of historic buildings in an aram Montpelier and i've built a lot of new energy efficient buildings in an aram Montpelier i'd like to say that in terms of protecting our tax base and protecting what we're going to pay to support this place going forward i think we're going to be better off putting up a new structure um i've been in the old pole barn um that's the original part of the garage and there really isn't much there in terms of um energy efficiency um it's a lightweight slab on grade um which is going to be really difficult to heat as it is now but it's going to continue to be difficult over time um if you look at the furnace in that building um it's probably older than Ed Deegan or I um that's pretty old right um so i would like to say that we should try and be as efficient um in terms of energy in terms of space in terms of building enough space the new fire department building was brought up and when we built it it looked like there's a giant thing um that was way too big and if you go down there now some of the new fire trucks barely fit in the base um and we need to be looking at that you look at the old garage town garage and it's not wide enough for the dump trucks with the wings on them forget about the road grader um and I also so that being said I have a question on scope of work um when we look at this new building and know that we're already storing some equipment in the old fire department building there are you looking at taking down that fire department building and combining spaces are you looking at wastewater on the site I know there's not a lot of septic there but isn't an issue that we're going to address in this project yeah those are my questions okay so the wastewater aspect is definitely has to be addressed so it will be addressed we have to probably drill a new well and we have to identify the existing septic system which we're working on right that's a good question now as far as the original fire department building station number one which is adjacent to the town garage I have brought that up as far as combining that space and perhaps taking down that building that option doesn't seem to be I'd like to say well received but maybe that's not the right word but it seemed to be off the table kind of quickly but I can bring that back up because that was definitely my thought is to get rid of the building and combine space with a new building so that would be my preferred thought but I'm not sure that is acceptable to fire department and it wasn't when I brought it up so that's the answer now there are wastewater issues to deal with that building as the town garage so that hasn't been completely addressed yeah yeah yes right right jean would you repeat the question please just so the jean was just I was just commenting that if that building if you were tearing down the existing garage if you also removed that building yeah it gives you a lot more sight to work with yeah in terms of citing a new building in terms of maximum passive solar gain stuff like that that's this is all true jean um but that was an option that I put out there and it didn't seem like that was gaining much traction uh but I can definitely put it out there again just to see where we're at on it but I want to tell you that that option's definitely been looked at can I do one more question over on this one over time there had been some talk that the state was going to at some point require that towns cover their sandpiles no is that something still that was not the word that I have received you can ask jean about that but I haven't heard anything about that in the sand pile issues seem to be resolved as far as proximity to the stream goes so it doesn't seem like we have an issue there as we move forward with the design of the new building we're making sure that we have room for material etc etc so it's kind of a whole holistic plan on the whole site um to stack material access to the building the garage doors etc etc etc so bruce howlett thanks jean bruce howlett right there I want to follow up a little on what jean just asked about the scope of work for this project and so working with the construction management firm in the architect you've given them some general specifications for what to do and so I'd be interested I mean the town I presume has done an inventory of the needs that are to be addressed with this building um and granted all this is still preliminary in draft but it would probably be it would be interesting to see this and to maybe put a brief description of this on the town website so that we know the scale of what we're talking about here it's on the it's on the town website yeah so everything that we have so far is on the town website including the rfb including yeah yeah yeah there's another hand up yeah anyone else before I call on kim again then looks like edith uh kim watson right there could you please stand here comes the page with the mic just to clarify um we'll have a lot of you know possibly a forum once the designs come out and stuff to comment I just want to know that process so we'll before even thinking of going to a bond or anything like that we'll have a lot of communication to the community correct the architectural firm that we've hired is going to help us with the presentations and informational meetings etc and we still have to talk where the town representative is going to be involved in that process too but I think so um so there'll be there'll be meetings worn meetings about this as we move along in the process eddie miller had a question or comment I wanted to go back to Steve miracles comments about the site have those been have have you addressed or looked at the things that he talked about the limitations of the site itself uh yep we've talked about the site actually there we talked about moving the site completely the thing that happens though when you start developing new sites is you you run into huge expenses much more it would significantly add to the cost of the project and we feel that if we can do the new garage on the existing project without compromising the design of the building that it's it's going to save the taxpayers a lot of money and there aren't any drawbacks with the site it's a good place for us to operate for a multiple reasons so there really hasn't been a good reason to move away from the site uh because we haven't compromised what we need to do if we ran into significant compromises we would have to move the site but I'm just warning you that when you start moving away from that site you run into increased costs quickly and a huge delay in implementing the plan so we did look at another site and it was very quickly determined that that was going to be hugely expensive and problematic to develop so that's this is why we're on the existing site but I can assure you if it looks like we're going to have to compromise then we will definitely look at other options any other uh rick barstow thank you hi thanks rick barstow I'm wondering is there any possibility we looked into possibly expanding the land footprint there a little bit um whether that next property owner might be willing to um sell off a little bit of land to make that area a little bigger and help accommodate what we want to build so so the thing is that the site is surrounded by wetlands and the town forests okay so we own the land around this existing site we already own it but the thing is there is some room for expansion on the site but not a lot because we did um we had a wetlands engineer come in and I myself and also Carl walked around the site and we delineated um some area that we could move into if we needed to but there isn't a lot of room there because the wetlands aspect of it any other questions or comments regarding the article of discussion with respect to the town garage plan anyone else hearing none seeing none we're moving on to article four article four shall the town raise the sum of two million two hundred and sixty one thousand two hundred and sixty three dollars as proposed by the select board for laying out highways and other necessary town expenses for fiscal year twenty twenty five which begins on july first this is by australian ballot and the polls were open from seven until seven article five shall the town authorize all property taxes for fiscal year twenty five to be paid to the town treasurer without discount in two installments i'm paraphrasing on a before november fifteenth twenty twenty four and on a before being postmarked on a before thursday may fifteenth twenty twenty five is there a motion to adopt article five there is one by luring star seconded by kim watson and also bob moary all those in favor of article what is there any discussion regarding article five comment if not all those in favor of adopting article five please indicate by saying aye all those opposed say nay the eyes have it article six shall the town raise the sum of fifty one thousand nine hundred and sixty dollars for keloch harvard library for the support of the library again to be voted by australian ballot there is a report from our representative on page eighty i believe no it might be seventy in the town report it's there there is a is the representative here just to speak briefly because this is an australian ballot item a public question and the keloch harvard library is on eighty six any questions comments can't have much discussion because it's australian ballot yes one person thank you are you sara yes i am sara height you just state your name hi i'm sara swift i'm the trustee for keloch harvard library from east mump hillier and uh there is an increase in in um our ask this year um there hasn't been an increase in a couple of years and uh uh it's not it's mostly due to uh increase in benefits for the library staff and um the flood we had one point one point uh five million dollars in damage um we mostly in the basement the library was opened back up to um uh to circulation uh quite quickly a week after the flood we had a tent on the front lawn is maybe some of you know uh we are in the process of uh rebuilding the basement in a sustainable way from the flood uh and that is underway the library has been fully open since october with the exception of um the book sale which we hope to redo in the summer and uh and um the elevator so we're not fully accessible but that will be by the summer too does anybody have any questions for me thank you sara great again that's by australian ballot article seven shall the town raise the sum of four thousand five hundred dollars for the four corners schoolhouse association for operating expenses during fiscal year 2025 is there a motion to adopt article seven hillary farrington seconded by ellen canadler any discussion regarding the four corners school vote on article seven rachel grossman in the back thank you so in the absence of our fearless leader hobie guy on he asked me to speak to the town oh i'm sorry i'm rachel grossman and i am the um on this four corner school house i act currently as the role of treasurer um and so i just we just really want to take this opportunity to thank the town for the matching grant um we have been piecing together the schoolhouse for um teen years um patching up here patching up there trying to fix this mold issue trying to fix this window and that window and um amazing members of the board and i am not one of those crawled around in the basement with god knows what to remove god knows what um and it's and now we have the funding to really do this right and so um and this was um the the impetus for this was more and more people were complaining about this mold as they came into the schoolhouse and there were people who just don't come to the schoolhouse and use the schoolhouse because of the mold problem so we really wanted to protect this wonderful historical building that we have and thanks to the town we have a grant and the very generous donations of town's people we have enough money to complete this project and hopefully um we will do so by you know hopefully by summer or soon thereafter we will be ready and open for business and you can look forward to a grand opening thank you rachel any questions or discussions regarding article seven the four corner school if not all those in favor of article seven please indicate by saying aye those opposed say nay the ayes have it you have adopted article seven article eight shall the town raise the sum of twelve thousand dollars for the east montpelier signpost to provide for the production and mailing of six issues of the signpost for each east montpelier resident during fiscal year 2025 is there a motion to adopt article eight bob morrie seconded by rachel grossman any discussion comments questions regarding the signpost article article eight ellen canadler ellen canadler i just want to thank the people who get the signpost out because i look forward to it every two months and our house it's referred to as the gossip scandal sheet an excellent gossip scandal sheet thank you ellen any other questions or comments yes just state your name for the record i'm sorry charlotte staples um i have to say that i go back to the last signpost back to 1990 when i was part of the first group that worked on it for the first i did for the first six years anyway my light table was my patio door when i did the layout um so my question is looking at their financial statement on page 6667 they have said that their costs are nine thousand dollars for the year they have more than enough for two years and i'm just wondering could they explain why they chose to continue the asking for another 12 000 thank you rachel sorry i was just looking on page 80 excuse me 6667 okay go ahead thanks i get to answer that question too because i do the books for the signpost um so the reason that our request is that 12 000 um it's probably my fault um but um we are rectifying that what happened was i took over the books in 2019 and i looked at what we were asking for and we had plenty of money in the bank and i went to the signpost people and i said we don't need to ask for any money we've got plenty of money in the bank um so we didn't and what i failed to know um is that we don't get the town monies until december so it looks like we have plenty of money in the bank but we're going to spend half of that or close to half of that before we get our next infusion from the bank so the signpost since it has started has um tried to keep two years worth of operating expenses in our budget and so that year there was a jump um from one year to the next from a request of i don't know 9 000 to 12 000 something like that um and so we've been requesting that 12 000 and through you know um we we have recovered and we're at the point now where we need to look at it again for our next year's request because this is the first year that we can comfortably look at the budget and say yes we've got the two-year um cushion but it's it's um that 20 000 or 23 000 dollars we we won't get the 12 000 that the town gives us until december so that's where the um that's why it looks like it's way more than what we need thank you any other questions and thank you sherry for your question uh and stanton i just wanted to remind folks that during the i believe it was one of the years during the pandemic we didn't ask for any money at all so um we we tried to be super uh pragmatic and cautious and frugal and all the rest of that thanks and any other questions or comments regarding the signpost article oh rachel one more please thank you the the other reason to be cautious is that the price the cost of paper and printing has we don't know what's going to happen with those costs um they they are rising i mean i went to buy a ream of paper and it was 14 it's staples so i'm sure we're not paying that much to elbrown but um we're just being conservative on that so thanks rachel any other questions or comments regarding article eight seeing none hearing none all those in favor of adopting article eight please indicate by saying aye all those opposed say nay the motion carries article nine shall the town raise the sum of four thousand dollars for east montpellier trails for enhancement development and administration during fiscal year 2025 is there a motion to take up article nine becky reid as there a second to that motion ed deegan richard brock told me he could speak if there was need for someone to speak unless there's someone in the audience who can speak and noona estrin are you available to address any questions or concerns regarding article nine you need to uh if you could stand up and use a microphone you're both available okay i thought you were going to add do you have a question and then luring uh just a little input uh i look at the trails as a real asset to the community it's a real benefit to have them and with climate change uh if everybody believes in climate change and i certainly do these trails have had really rough time in the last couple years a whole sections of the vast trail were shut down this year because so many trees came down in december and so we got to support these these people and a lot of volunteer work goes into maintaining these trails and that's a huge asset so thank you all for for doing the work that that goes out there but uh four thousand and i think if it was eight thousand ten thousand i would be still supporting it um because these trails are getting a lot of wear and tear from climate change and it's just something we have to deal with luring star luring star i'm a trail steward for a very small piece of the system i to echo ed deegan i am really really tired of trees falling down on the trails because of that i would like to do a shout out for all the trail fairies who cut up trees anonymously and help clear our trails so a shout out for that any other questions or comments regarding article nine uh no not estra hi i just i said this last year and i'm going to say it again this year um there's nothing like uh having a small aging group of volunteers that do this kind of work and going out on a crew and finding that it's already been done by who knows whom uh we appreciate that more than we can say however there are landowners who make an important part of their income from a lot from taking occasional very fine trees and if those go down uh if you see a beautiful tree with a long we used to call that the bore big enough for boards um perhaps it's best to check with the landowner not perhaps please check with the landowner before you cut any other questions or comments regarding the trails article seeing none hearing none all those in favor of article nine please indicate by saying aye all those opposed say nay the article passes article ten shall the town raise the sum of ninety seven hundred dollars for the montpellier senior activity center for operating expenses during fiscal year 2025 is there a motion to adopt article 10 regarding the senior center looks like doug kevet kelar and florida smith seconding article 10 any questions or discussion regarding article 10 the senior center seeing none hearing none all those in favor of adopting article 10 please indicate by saying aye all those opposed say nay the article passes article 11 shall the town raise the sum of six thousand dollars for twin valley seniors for operating expenses during your fiscal 2025 is there a motion to adopt article 10 salina more seconded by jenny callan any questions or discussion regarding article 11 seeing none hearing none all those in favor of adopting article 11 twin valley seniors please indicate by saying aye all those opposed say nay the article is passed article 12 shall the town raise the sum of 6500 dollars for central vermont home health and hospice for operating expenses during fiscal year 2025 is there a motion to adopt or to take up article 12 one by renay kevet kelar oh lindy hi lindy biggs and seconded by tom brazier any questions discussions regarding article 12 seeing none hearing none all those in favor of article 12 please indicate by saying aye all those opposed say nay article 12 is adopted article 13 shall the sum shall the town raise the sum of 7,834 dollars for support of rural community transportation i will paraphrase this is the service ongoing commuter bus along route 12 with service into east montpelier and a thousand dollars therein for the share of the cost of providing the commuter bus along route 14 and 15 going north into east montpelier route route 2 was the first part it's 68 the thousand is for 14 and 15 routes article 13 is there a motion to adopt article 13 is that rachel yes and seconded by becky reid any discussion or questions regarding article 13 for rural community transportation 7,834 dollars yes question page is there a page for right here coming down the aisle thank you just state your name for the record margaret grant comings road and my question is whether the transportation agency has any plans to come up county road maybe take a loop around horn of the moon go right by my house something like that something like that could make the difference between people being able to stay in their houses longer as they're no longer able to drive is anyone available to answer margaret's question carl um actually they don't have any plans at the moment one of the hold backs from ridership in my estimation well from expanding routes is they don't have a robust number of people riding on the bus um and it's heavily subsidized as it is so they are working with limited funds and ridership is hasn't been growing exponentially um i i talked to folks in public transportation on relocalizing vermont my radio show quite a bit and the way they explain the process of getting new routes is that um they sort of start out easing into it a lot of the routes are around commuting and they start in with a commuter van that's subsidized by the state and if there's a lot of take up of that then they look at putting in a new bus route but um i haven't heard anything about that particular route so but if you're interested uh then you know talk to your neighbors and um you know see if people want to get together a commuter van to go somewhere and then you could put in for some money for that so so carl i just wanted to ask you do you think that there do you think that the ridership is growing because i haven't gotten not much covid really yeah heard it big bite out and i asked that question at the meeting because they come in every year and give the report and the answer that we got was kind of vague it wasn't that ridership was really growing and i think because you know i probably shouldn't say this but because fossil fuels are relatively cheap people are not moving into mass transportation as quickly as some of us would like that correct i agree okay right uh eddie miller had her hand up for a question or comment i i'm always confused by this article and the next one both of which talk about a commuter commuter service on route two could you explain uh are they overlapping are they the same what what's the deal could anyone answer this question which melds into article 14 sure if if you hang out by route two and watch the buses go by you'll notice some red buses go by and some white or multicolor white blue green buses go by so both rct operating out of the st j area and the green mountain transit operating out of our area and other other place jitten and county um that they share that route and so we are paying some money to uh both agencies but but she's asking do they overlap they don't really i think they coordinate don't they coordinate yeah they aren't competing with each other yeah so they don't overlap does that answer your question eddie the ridership is not great just don't understand the uh the how how we need to or do they service different things or what it's just that some of the buses on this service you could think of them as one article um because some of the buses on the service originate in st j and some of them originate in near montpelier and they just go back and forth so it's it's the same coordinated service we're just being asked to pay two different organizations to do it but they are they are coordinated is that what you're saying that's that's my point i just want to make sure we're not we don't have low ridership and yet people are competing to do it no no they look at ridership uh they look at times that people are using it okay they coordinate together thank you thank thank you for helping us to clarify that thank you eddie and carl kim watson please um i just wanted to clarify some of that the rtc rct really goes around the route to 1415 area where the green mountain transit will do the burlington routes and things like that as well but they coordinate coming to certain locations thank you any other question jenny callan if i'm sorry carl if i may clarify yes so so that is true and what we're being asked to vote on is for the service along route two for rct at this point plus uh as the moderator said a thousand dollars for their service on route 14 and 15 that comes into to mount uh to ease my jenny article 13 uh and aside is that i know there's a new organization starting up called gopher vermont and they will be doing ride services for people in our area it's uh they're a nonprofit and they are particularly interested in serving low-income residents and bringing them to doctor's appointments and grocery shopping and all kinds of things so that's something new that's just kicking out thanks jenny any other questions or comments regarding article 13 loring star loring star in terms of county road i'm just thinking if you build it they will come and maybe i'm naive but think of all those lovely people in callas who could drive ride the bus i would have loved to have had a bus going to work but also in terms of senior rides green mountain transit does now offer a free senior rides service you sign up you call them you say i need a ride next tuesday they pick you up at home they take you they pick you up and bring you back home and it's usually works really really well okay but that aspect of the service is under the article 15 okay man may i respond to that yes you're max so i i thank you if you if you build it they will come i i would turn that around in line with my earlier comments and say if you build it they will come if local people grassroots say hey we want a commuter van here then they'll give you money for that and then if a lot of people are using that then they'll talk about building routes around that same route bus routes around that same route article 13 rct any other questions or comments before we vote on the motion all those in favor of article 13 please indicate by saying i all those opposed say nay the eyes appear to have it the eyes do have it and you have adopted article 13 article 14 related uh and touched on shall the town raise the sum of $1,499 as its green mountain transit portion for fiscal year 2025 uh along route two is there a motion to adopt article 14 renae carpenter is there a second to renae's motion becky reed uh discussion or questions yes sir mr grant grant is that thompson okay thank you just a point of clarification why are both of these numbers for the transportation funding odd numbers why are they even numbers something a question for ed deegan but does anyone have an answer to mr thompson's question about the numbers an amendment but to add one dollar is in order there you go there's enough do you oppose it did you do you propose that amendment mr thompson proposes to add a dollar to article 14 to have it read uh $1,500 is there a second to mr thompson's motion will duane any discussion with regard to article 14 as amended hearing none seeing none all those in favor of article 14 as amended to the amendment carl we're voting on the amendment first well there's two ways to do it but if we could do that all those in favor of the amendment of one dollar please indicate by saying i i all those opposed to adding a dollar the eyes appear to have it the eyes do have it you have amended article 14 and now we go to the principal article which is article 14 as amended all those in favor of article 14 as amended unless there's any additional discussion all those in favor indicate by saying i i all those opposed say nay the eyes appear to have it the eyes do have it and you have adopted article 14 as amended you can make a difference article 15 which is on page 10 and before we start getting close to the end i wanted to thank our pages again from the east montpellier elementary school for their work we might have a bit of a discussion on this and i also wanted to take the opportunity to thank again callin mccaffrey for the excellent sound system although this is has 33 subparts article 15 shall the town raise the amounts listed below as recommended by the study committee for the following organizations for fiscal year 2025 the total being 23,000 six excuse me 23,916 dollars is there a motion to adopt article 15 as printed on page 10 is a is that julie uh julie potter and kim watson first and second respectively any discussion or is there anyone who can maybe even address the committee uh we may not have any questions but um i'll leave it open if anyone has a comment or question paul erlbaum thank you only if someone has a question there's a question in the back row please state your name for the record hi my name is ashley helman and i'm just wondering why we're giving money to green mountain transit again can anyone answer ashley's question i can answer that sef so this is a separate service it's not the bus service that goes on route two or goes to burlington this is a service that picks up seniors goes to the houses brings brings people to appointments etc etc it's a little bus that goes around the neighborhood taking care of that aspect it's nothing to do with the commuter bus that's on route two through 14 going to burlington etc etc it's a completely separate service so that's why it's in this article okay any other questions regarding article 15 that paul may be able to answer renai and then charles um i think that bus is also the bus that picks up seniors and drops them off at the senior center i'm pretty sure that's this extra um it's not extra it's just a different program and i just want to appreciate the committee that vets all of these organizations and also all of these organizations most of which function by volunteers and so the little amount that they're asking for from the towns does is amplified by all of the volunteers and so it's like we are so fortunate to live in central vermont and have all of these organizations supported by all of the people who come out to make sure that they function on a very minimal budget that's what i wanted to say thank you charles johnson you had your hand up yes charles johnson i bring your attention number 33 a few years ago i questioned why boys and girls in this age of gender neutrality that were spelled differently and i'm pleased to see that they dealt with my concern by renaming the whole organization so just just before we proceed any further on this i just want to give a brief synopsis of why there's 33 different organizations under one heading of the funding requests so this was this process was developed years ago to make it more efficient rather than have every one of these under a separate article they were lumped together in one big article and because there are so many small requests now we had to keep it under 25 000 because the rule in the town is if it's over 25 000 you have to vote by australian ballot so this way we keep it on the floor under 25 000 and we can discuss it openly it's a lot harder to do that when it's on australian ballot now the other thing that does happen is once what happens every year is we get um asked by the funding committee how should we handle additional requests and bumping up this and that so they vet the funding request committee vets every one of these requests and occasionally what happens is a bigger organization starts to bump the whole total over 25 000 so what we've done in the past that big organization that bumped it over 25 will get moved under its own article so we always keep it under the 25 000 and you know every request once again does get vetted by the volunteer funding request study committee they do their homework they bring that back to the select board with their decisions and we look at over also so i just want everyone to feel reassured that this isn't just rubber stamped this is looked at carefully every year so you can you can look at the articles from article six on as part of the same process but with two different parallel tracks so these are all similar sorts of organizations but because we years ago set that 25 000 ceiling here at town meeting for what we'd consider on the floor then as as the chair described we have broken out certain ones of those and the ones that don't go to the funding request study committee for their careful vetting work those organizations come to the select board and make a request to be put on the ballot so everybody that you're being asked to vote on an appropriation for has been vetted by the town in one way or another and actually for this article article 15 they've been vetted twice because the funding request study committee makes a recommendation to the select board yeah thanks bob morry could someone on the committee explain to me what the vermont bar foundation is and why their request is 10 percent of the total budget here i don't understand what the vermont bar association does and what how it benefits us here in this room can anyone answer mr morry's question yeah ruben oh you have a question you you have the same ruben has ruben venison same question thank you all their mom could you yes one thing that's worth noting can you hear me is that for each request each of these is at 33 requests we find out how many people in town have been served by this outfit that's it maybe the most important consideration but as far as the bar foundation they in turn fund legal aid the legal services organization that helps people throughout the state and a lot of people here in east montpelier with free legal services is that answer the question because they get their funding through the bar foundation that's just their source uh ruben does that answer your question thank you nathan philips had his hand up east montpelier residents okay thank you right um article 15 the 33 subsets any other questions comments that anyone wants to make donald welch and then diana fielder shot short stopped you so go ahead diana please thank you and i just want to thank the residents of east montpelier for supporting the onion river food shelf every year at town meeting and also the individuals from this town that volunteer their time and their resources to continue to serve many many households at the onion river food shelf during the month of february we served over 100 households that is close to 300 people that we fed during the month of february and our hours have now gone to nine to two because we could not handle the overload in a short time span of only four hours so we're now five and we're there every wednesday from nine to two run by volunteers many from east montpelier thanks diana donald welch had his hand up in the back row there and i see his hand up as well donald don welch uh i just wanted to add a historical perspective a little bit here because if you any of you who've been here that long when this was started we were discussing every every article and just going through the process of reading and so forth and everyone being presented and then we went to this combined article which is good i just want to remind people that this can be split you and if you have a particular argument with the amount that's been there can be increased or decreased i believe that that was the original intent i assume that's still possibility it is there has always been this sort of unwritten tradition that you can't amend something that's in the warning but you can't state law does allow that we've done it before we've done it before we did it today yeah we did today that was a different yeah dave connor has his uh hand up i know aren't they doing a great job this category is the category when i was the director of the lamoille family center that we sent all our staff to all the town meetings if each one of them had gone to the town meetings early and asked for a certain amount representative of all the different services that the lamoille family center prepared in in about five to ten counties around us our staff would not have been able to cover it all so the fact that it could be lumped together is an action that saved us many many things by a little bit from each of the areas helping us continue to serve this the people that we were serving in the way that we were doing it thanks dave um yes could you state your name for the record i'm sorry i'm liz benjamin i'm happy to vote for this article um because they've been carefully vetted i would like some more information on some of these and maybe we could have some articles in the signpost okay good point to don welch's point if i may as a moderator privilege we used to spend 20 minutes arguing over two thousand dollars and then there'd be no discussion over a million dollars it was just we don't know that anyway yes um carol dixon i i don't think you address this um seth and and carl but if you did apologies so it's getting close to the 25 000 cap and so if it gets what would the next step be would we be asking for more money um to be able to approve more money in this item or would we move some of the items to individuals or you know presumably things are going to need to ask for more money in the next few years so what happens when it gets closer to the 25 000 cap so it sounds like there's two parts to your question so if one of the articles today got amended on the floor we'd have to keep it below the 25 000 cap today now next year when these articles come up for review we would have to move one out and be a standalone article to keep it below the 25 000 and of course you know there's some requests that come in with increase they need increased funding and you don't want to just deny it because it's below the 25 000 so then you would have to move one out if you deemed the request worthy of an increase does that answer your question well we we meet every year and that's the discussion is like well if you have to move one out then we'll have to look at that so that's what happens or additional information is the cap used to be ten thousand dollars i think you might have already mentioned that and it was around 2005 or so that the town decided to raise it from 10 000 to 25 000 and you know that could be raised at next year's town meeting to raise it to some other number but it's it's not all that likely that will raise above the 25 000 it's a lot more likely we take out a bigger item to keep the other ones below the 25 000 when you sum them up okay i mean in every year they funding request committee comes into the select board and say oh what should we do and we're like well you've got five percent to work with try to keep it below that but it's pretty flexible because you may have a request that's going to bump you over the 25 that would be worthy of consideration so any other questions or comments with regard to article 15 the funding requests and the 30 subs three subsets if not are you prepared for your vote all those in favor of article 15 please indicate by saying aye all those opposed say nay the article is passed article 16 to transact any other business that may properly come before the meeting nothing binding just a second thanks nothing binding it is has to be germane to the purposes of the town of east montpelier i was approached by the central vermont economic development corporation to say a few words given the time and we're right on schedule with the kitchen it was perfectly coordinated abhijin is here to speak to that however is there anyone from the assembly who yes ma'am the and steven energy committee correct you're going to speak to that okay from the floor and renee has her hand up these have to be germane to the town of east montpelier and you have got it okay so we'll start with renee with regard to article 16 rachel you're standing in line i have something on yes got it okay i think i so i am speaking for the friends of coburn pond page is 76 and 77 in the annual report gives an update for um i don't think we've been before the town since before the pandemic um and as many of you probably know coburn pond took a major hit in july so um just wanting to be present i wrote up most of what needs to be known in terms of an update and um we are in process of updating our main web page which i think hadn't been updated since 2019 and we definitely will be doing a fundraising campaign so that we can continue to expand our group the very small group has been participating with the town on green update keeping that area clean um we collaborated with friends of the wanuski river back in i think it was september when they did a massive post flood river cleanup and um we have been in our very grassroots way maintaining um a tidy property it's a 76 acre property it's got the six acre swimming hole there's no cost for the hundreds maybe thousands of people use it all year round so on a hot day people don't have to pay to picnic people walk their dogs people swim their pets i could tell you stories but instead of taking up time um i'd love for you to look for our web page give us another month or so to update it we have a page linked to the towns community pages online and um we would like to now move forward where we dropped off around 2019 and get a full management plan so that the few things that have happened in the past five years are um more formally addressed so thank you for the time here and come out and see it it's a fun place to be steven miracle can you address the other business portions um i'm a member of the uh newly reconstituted son um energy committee and we're working on uh developing an amendment to the town plan that would count as an enhanced energy plan as described under act 174 which i think is cooked up by the public utility commission and meaning a determination of energy compliance that we put into the town plan will give the town a stronger voice when it comes to citing large renewable energy products projects which is important because uh big corporations can come in and stick in gigantic solar arrays where we might not want them so we really need to have um some leverage there to protect ourselves this um greater weight in citing decisions is described as substantial difference in uh section 248 citing process for energy generation so um it's kind of a cya factor that we're working on sticking into the uh the town plan oh and then we would also like you to know that we were planning on having some public command comment opportunities for in the coming months as the plan begins to come together thanks steven uh a person over there had a question please identify yourself thanks he comes out runners thank you i'm patty geovara i'm a member of a new committee uh that formed in 2023 here in east montilier and that's the emergency preparedness committee we're on page 57 and all of the members are listed it's called emergency planning but we changed the name to preparedness so that's the difference on page 57 the goal of the committee is really to be ready to help ourselves and our neighbors stay safe during extreme weather events several of those types have been mentioned here today during power outages road closures and other things that that happen so one of the things is we don't want to reinvent the wheel so we're being careful to make sure that we're learning about resources that currently exist and we want to increase awareness for all of us in the town about what some of those resources resources are we're learning from and partnering with the callus emergency management team uh there's actually a training coming up this saturday if anybody's interested in shelters um the callus emergency management team is sponsoring a training i can tell you more about that we're working with the select board and the emergency management coordinator and emergency management director on ways to improve communications during emergencies another piece that we're working on is a neighborhood groups model i know that um lots of us help our neighbors out during times of emergency what we want to do is bring a little bit more structure and help to neighborhood groups so that we can really be prepared know what resources our closest neighbors have and what help they might need so two things for today that i specifically want to mention um so several community committee members are here they can raise their hands the who's on the committee and um listed also on page 57 we have some handouts um for you so uh there's giveaways that are on the table um from vermont emergency management primarily so and also so we welcome more people to get involved whether you have ideas whether you want to be part of the committee and another piece of this is that we're also helping the select board to identify uh candidates who might be interested in being emergency management director for the town seth fills that role now as the select board chair but he is open that if there's somebody who's interested in taking on more leadership roles around emergency management or emergency preparedness please let us know thanks thanks patty thank you very much also note i should have noted that when mr. miracle was speaking that the energy committee report is also in the next page before on page 56 and any other other business from the assembly nona estrin i see in zack and rachel who was told me she was standing in line so okay uh no night you have a few a few minutes a couple minutes on hi this year we had an emergency none of us anticipated certainly i didn't which was we didn't get our mail for long periods of time and uh this uh came as a huge surprise and a shock and there are many members of our community that depend on the mail for checks that they live on etc etc medications that come you know it just was a huge uh hitch and neighborhoods got together our neighborhood got together and picked up mail for one another but that's a piece of emergency preparedness that i never would have prepared for or expected and i want to take this opportunity to thank our postmaster and his helpers he was delivering mail after 9 30 at night uh on uh so thank him thank them thank them all and keep planning okay so edie miller and then rachel wilson please i would like to make a plea for more involvement for town school meetings and in one specific way uh we last night i attended the informational session for the school because i've been out of touch with them and i wanted to hear more about that unfortunately it overlapped with the informational meeting which i usually go to for the town i would like to urge the town and the school to work together and not do that that's happened the last two years i think it's discouraging uh involvement with both and um there's no need for it i don't think um i hope there's no need for it but i you know i think those i'm speaking to the choir here all of us are here because we want to be here and we um hold town meeting in in esteem and regard so let's do everything we can to keep it going good point rachel rosman i have two things and i'm going to be brief because i understand lunch is getting cold and people are probably hungry um but i have been um noticing that i read an article that there are some towns that are hiring community nurses and the community nurses do outreach and advocacy for people who need it in town who are falling through the cracks and provide services and i also read that the state may be funding those positions sometime in the future but i just think that um i'd love the select board to look into that more and see about possibly having a community nurse or social worker or somebody in town who can reach out to vulnerable people who are not getting the services that they need um which often saves us money in the long run so that was the first thing and then the second thing is this is sue raconelli's last year of providing us with a stellar lunch sue took over the reins for me i don't know how many years ago and brought lunch to just another level and this is her last year and so i wanted to thank her and also remind everybody in town that if no one steps up to do town meeting lunch next year there won't be a potluck so um i that sounds very threatening but um you know since it's done her time so thank you sue thank you any other matters under other business um from the assembly zack celibon just very quick update from the planning commission we're starting the process of rewriting the town plan which is due in 2026 um so it's a multi-year process as part of that we do have a survey available trying to get opinion from people in the town that is available on the town table just outside the door if anyone would like to take it this is not your only opportunity it will be on front porch forum it will be in other venues we will you know we will get that survey out there but we wanted to make it available to people at town meeting in case anyone wanted to take it here thanks Zach Ed Deegan and then is there anyone else before we have a brief comment from the economic development yeah um so i've been involved in many hats over the years on the rec board up to the justice of the peace and everything else i want to thank everybody that volunteers in this town um and all of our employees rosie michelle jena doing a terrific job we were very lucky with the transition that occurred from don and bruce we've come out the other end they're in very good shape and the certainly the select board i think and i'm a fiscal conservative here um nobody does this for the money okay they're not doing it for the money okay and i don't serve on committees for the money there's no money in this for me i you know uh but the select board stipend hasn't been moved in many many years and i got to tell you these guys are like you know my it's come up a couple times under the position and my wife's like you're crazy you're not going to take that there's so much work is involved there's multiple meetings each month they go for hours so long and then in between there's a numerous other things that they're just constantly dealing with stuff for this town so a i want to thank you and b i want to put into you know maybe not a discussion but just input that maybe we should be looking at increasing the stipend a little bit for these guys they they were like if you get minimum wage they're like a dollar an hour based on on the amount of work that uh they do and and i don't know if everybody knows how much is involved and how much work these guys do for us so thank you all thank you now from the floor um before oh i have a one quick announcement from rosie there's a rabies clinic at the east mom pewyer fire department saturday from nine to twelve and dog licing is also available is abby jen here come on up or get grab a microphone please thank you abby is with this central vermont economic development corporation wanted to say a few words before we break she she is not a resident of east mom pewyer so without objection i would let her speak thank you thank you um my name is abby jenny this is nirsi shean and we're here representing the central vermont economic development corporation has anybody heard of us all right that's 50 so this little talk is for the other 50 of you who haven't heard of us um we're here to remind you that we offer a huge variety of free services for business owners or people who are curious about entrepreneurship it's totally free our website is www.centralvermont.org it's really easy to remember it's the org bit that will trip you up um but feel free to reach out to us uh we've done a lot of work with our all volunteer board of directors um we serve business owners and employers at every phase of business development and um and growth in 22 municipalities in central vermont including yourselves all of washington county as well as washington and orange um this summer i started working there so i'm a little new but i worked in their small business flood recovery center in montpelier where flood impacted businesses could come and get support um be it grant writing support uh necessary document documentation support like they didn't have their duck center and it's hard to get funding when you don't um we gave referrals to free legal support provided by the vermont law school we met with landlords on behalf of businesses we assisted with sba loan applications in our office and in person at sba sites uh we reached out to the federal and washington county legislative delegations and testified before the federal delegation and the vermont state economic development and house of commerce included uh the federal delegation and staff and meetings so we're kind of a link between y'all with your small businesses and big businesses and the legislators sometimes not lobbyists but we do collect a lot of data from you folks and present it am i forgetting anything okay cool um yeah so thank you because i know that you're looking for lunch so uh does anyone have any questions any questions for for abby yeah and if you just want more information my email is abby abby at central vermont dot org and you can reach out to me or give us a call and this is mercy she's mercy at central vermont dot org if you like her better so thank you very much for your continued level funding helping us stay afloat we really appreciate you so uh have a great day a motion to adjourn would be in order uh mr moray seconded by becky reid all those in favor of the motion to adjourn say aye all those opposed say nay the ayes have it the meeting is adjourned