 Yeah, so the first item on the agenda is the listers to explain the need for the CAMA software action unlikely. Listers. Welcome. Good evening. All right, can you hear us. Yes, we can. We can't see you. Amy can we see you. I like to see people when they're talking to us. We're at the Lister computer in the office and we do not have a camera. Oh, okay. Yeah. So, um, before the meeting last time, um, Eric and I had basically just gotten off the phone with the, um, representatives, uh, regarding the CAMA software for the Lister. Uh, it's basically the system that contains all of the parcels, all the parcel data, not the grand list software, but this is a separate chunk of software. Basically the appraisal data. It's all the appraisal data with the drawing sketches, all the square footage and much of the history for all the parcels is in that software. Um, and so, um, we also heard that. It was, um, that we needed to get you anything about budget stuff. We needed to get it to you that night. So that's. We want to do apologize for the short notice on this. It was something that sort of came to our attention last minute. So it's not something that we had thought about. It was something that came to our attention broadly. Uh, before, and then it sort of all of a sudden came to light that it's going to need action before the state stop or action. Let me set a good way to put it, you think? Basically, yeah. As you're well, all, all are well aware. I'm sure the state's mandating that we get this new grand list software. And it's going to come this summer sometime. No, not this summer. It's two summers. Yeah. By this August. We're going to be loading. No, we're not loading the state stuff until two years out. The state stuff originally was supposed to be a year out, but they're, they pushed it out another year. So it's going to be for FY 23 instead of 22. Okay. So again, you guys have now confused me again. I apologize. I'm confused. You're saying we need to have this software this summer. But when is the state going to actually have it so we can use it? Okay, there's actually the, the short end is we've got an A and a B. The software is the state grand list software. There's a partner software. That's the B software that is the Kama C. A. M. A. And that is the software that the town currently pays for a subscription through NimRick to use NimRick's Microsoft Kama. That's the current data system that we're using for our Kama. Again, so two different programs that work together. The state owns the grand list software. The town pays for a license to use currently and has for years the Microsoft NimRick system to maintain all of the parcel data. They partner together. One talks to the other to create the grand list that gets generated each year. And this has been in place for years. It has been updated since way before my time here. So the state is stopping, they're no longer going to offer the NimRick software. They're mandating that we buy this software. No, the state has never provided the Kama software. The towns have always been on their own to pay for whatever Kama software they choose. And many states, many towns, including ours, have used the NimRick software because it was part of the package deal that we got from NimRick. The package deal from NimRick with regard to the property stuff included the Kama and then the state owned grand list. The Kama, okay, okay. So just stop one minute. So the piece of this that I'm missing is, right now we're using NimRick Kama software. We pay them a fee monthly or quarterly or whatever it is to use that software. Are they no longer going to let us use that software? Why are we switching to the new software? Their software is very antiquated, and we have been led to believe that the new grand list software will not, well, the state will get the information it needs for grand list value. But from the town's perspective, it will make it harder for us to maintain the Kama information because some of what is in the current grand list and what is in the current Kama software is not answered. The new state software has more going on than what we have available in the current Kama software. Does that make sense? It's hard to talk in theory, but it is. And have you, have you had a chance to see the new software? We have. So the state started talking. So we are members of BALA, which is the Vermont Assessors and Listers Association and most of the towns in the state are members and cities too. And when we have come to end the State Department of Taxes, PBR, Property Evaluation Review, that's the office that we primarily work with as Listers. So when we, we typically would go to a BALA meeting once a year, a big conference all day. And this year it was online. Before that, it was usually in person, Brooklyn, or Lake Moray, somewhere around the state. The past few years, when we were at the in-person conferences, we have actually had a chance to go to workshops where we were forewarned about this. And we were encouraged to go to demonstrations that were being provided by the various vendors of the Kama system. And with regard to that kind of system, there are many in the, well, no, there aren't many. There are several in the marketplace. But there are really only two, primarily, that are, that the state was, and BALA were inviting to these meetings. So we were sort of being funneled to look at these two different types of software. Neither of them was the Nimrack software. One was the vision company, and that's the information that we passed along to you. The other was a different company which provides the software called Patreon. And it's a similar type program, but it is, it has been used for years by some towns in the southern part of the state. And over time, it has the folks that have used that either love it or hate it. It's not one that we're familiar with. And the demonstration that we saw of both, because we went to each. The vision system seemed to be much more user friendly and, frankly, looking forward, it made more sense because it is less clunky. To zoom forward, there was a Zoom meeting for the BALA conference this past year. And during that meeting, a representative from Axiomatic, that's the company who the state has contracted to make the new Grand List software. During the BALA meeting, we were able to see a demonstration of the Axiomatic software. And we were also able to see from the vision vendor how they would potentially work together. So it was the first time that we actually got to see it was in this online meeting format. What the two softwares look like from the position of sitting at the computer and seeing how they potentially work together. So we took that information, we've had the paperwork from the vision company now for a couple of years. And when we saw the presentation back, I think it was like September, when we saw that, we started trying to figure out whether we needed to get in touch with the people. Sooner or later. Long story short, time got ahead of us and we realized in late November, early December that we really needed to get in touch with these folks to figure out what it was going to look like. You know, what that would take, the CAMA software, what it would take to put a new CAMA software in place. And, frankly, we hadn't thought about doing that in advance of having the new state grand list software. But it became painstakingly clear in talking with the representative of the CAMA software that our lives will be easier if we have the CAMA software perfected and the parcel perfected before the state grand list software is introduced for fiscal year 23. So that is when we scrambled with her to try and get a number from her and provided you with the documentation two weeks ago. And we have, just to be really clear, no intention of signing any contracts with anybody anytime in the next few weeks or months, just to be really straight up. We are also not 100% sure which way we would go on the software. We kind of go back and forth talking about, you know, would it make more sense to have somebody do a full conversion for us, or is it something that we actually might be able to do partly in-house. So we're still thinking through that, too. There's a lot of, we still have a lot of questions, but we do know that the old Nimrick software, Microsoft, which we've been using, which, not to confuse things, but we also pay a third party vendor for our sketching program, which is really old and out of date. That's the one that provides where we go in and we make the drawings of each house. We pay them a separate fee, the third party company Apex, and we pay them an annual fee, and we've never done successfully getting support from them. So Amy, I'm so receptive. Could you just give me an idea of what we are paying now for the way we operate now, and what we will be getting under the new system. I'm sure we pay for the software and then there's some kind of a monthly or annual service charge, right? I don't know the numbers. I mean, I really don't have them on the top of my head of what we pay for Nimrick. We pay Nimrick thousands of dollars every year for both the office, suite, and separately, we pay them thousands of dollars a year for the camera separately. And then we pay them for what they call disaster backup services. Again, for both of those and they're built separately. We also pay lots of different intermittent fees for things like Marshall and Swift access, or again the drawing software. So it's a mish, it's a mishmash. Enough, please. So all I'm all I'm suggesting is, when you guys get your arms around this, we put the money that you requested in the budget as a as a placekeeper. But please share with us the more detailed information as you come to making a decision. I understand it's your decision, but we just want to understand, you know, lead us through the decision making process when you get there. Does that make sense. It does. And I think part of that. I mean, if anything, Peter, we're probably respectfully, we're probably more transparent than we ever need to be, which confuses me by giving too many details. But yes, absolutely. We don't, we don't need to know the nitty gritty truly, but understanding why we have to do it. And, you know, what the future looks like down the road to the extent you can tell us is just helpful. It's good information for us to have because it's it's a good chunk of money and you will know and it's a good chunk of money right now. So anyway, it is. And we do pay thousands of dollars a year for the current maintenance. There's no question. And we can, we certainly will before we find anything or even, you know, come to a real decision. Look at the numbers on, you know, what the difference would be with the different options that they offer. But it would be to put it in a rough analogy. If we continued trying to use the numeric Microsoft system going forward with where the world is going with GPS and where the new grand list software is going. It would be like trying to run a Windows seven system right now, which we all know we had to get rid of all of our town computers because no longer support it. So it's it's a crash waiting to happen. And we want to avoid questions. Board members. Yeah, I have just one comment. Amy, when you put that stuff together, can you see if you could put together the numbers of what we're spending now so that we can compare that when you come out with the new numbers. Sure. You mean on the maintenance that we pay right now. I think you had mentioned earlier a third party in there too. So anything that's associated with it that's that we're going to be replacing with a new system. Sure. Sure. It would primarily be the maintenance costs because we, we, I guess, paid for the numeric room. I don't know if we actually ever paid them a lump sum of money for it or if we just pay it in the maintenance. Whatever. We'll find out what we just pay the fee, I believe, unless you've never seen any lump sum payment to never have you. I know we pay like $5,000 annually I think the number is right now, which they just went up in the last year it was a lot cheaper previously, but I believe in Amy can probably answer this but that's mostly support and not the actual different modules. Yeah. But I write though that we didn't actually pay for the modules you say they give us the modules but we pay the support fee. That was that was before my time. So I don't know. Okay. Thank you. Yeah, I'm not. Yeah, none of us is sure how to track that one back here. Yeah, I'll look into it. I'll see what I can find. Yeah, thank you. How much did we put in the budget two weeks ago I couldn't remember exactly how much 15,000. Thanks, Steve. Anything else for Amy and Eric. Okay guys thank you I, I, I didn't mean to be grumpy when you when you jumped us at our at our budget meeting but there we were scrambling for hundreds of dollars and all of a sudden you hit us up for that big number put us in a It wasn't your fault. Well, I mean it was, we did, we didn't. Yeah, it just sort of didn't have nothing at the fan until there did. No. Okay, we got it. Well, thank you very much for joining us tonight. You have anything else for us while we've got you. You guys are doing great work. Thanks for putting in the time you're doing on all this stuff. Okay, thanks guys. Good night. Okay, review on meeting morning. Everybody received that correct. Yeah. I mean that I didn't look at the typos one. I mean I only found one type of which was putting in mosaics twice. Is that anything else. Sarah. Well, that affected the total that so the purpose of the, an article 15. It is $100 less so the sum is 5,017 100 less because it's you had it in for 250 for each one. I don't know. It was that was listed twice, but prior to that there was another one listed twice that was $100. And we caught that one in the total the second one was not added in there it was just listed twice it was not part of the total great so the figure article 15 is 5017. Okay. I must have the most recent one, because that's what mine says. Yeah, should. It should have a little 19 in the corner 1921 in the footer. Yeah, yeah. I move it. Oh, sorry. Hold on Mary. Table. All right. Okay, go ahead. I have the 2021 warning for the annual town meeting on March 2, 2001. I'll second. Okay. So article two and article three are basically exactly the same as what we're doing now right Sarah. Yes. So Darynda and I discussed changing the dates that the 20th landed on work days but we decided that it was probably or different I thought it was a good idea to just stick with the 20th it's a number people can remember goes all the way back to our old number November 20. So I agree that every, every time we do something to change those dates we cause more chaos than we than we saw. And I just asked one question about the figures is article four still correct if we have to reduce article 15 by $100, the $1,382,738. That's the town budget, the one that we changed with special articles. But isn't the special articles. Okay, all right, you know, they're all separate. They might get voted down. Yeah, right. Okay, sorry, I forgot. Right. That's the right number. So I just have a, I just have a question on wording in article five, which is talk about the big surprise. Instead of saying new greater do we say new road greater. And do we say in an amount, instead of saying up to do we say not to exceed 290,000. That's a good idea, both of those. Do you want new road greater in amount, not to exceed 290,000 for a term not to exceed 15,000 15 years. Can I just ask, is this so this would be starting in fiscal year. 22 right July one 21 is when we would be able to purchase it. Yep. So what would the first payment be due in the fiscal year 22 or not until. In 22, it's exactly one year from the date you take out the loan. So we need to be careful exactly what day because taxes won't be coming in until August. Right. Sorry, go ahead, Liz. I was just going to say, and just to refresh my memory, the book that we get in the mail the town report. Well, there be any explanation around these, these articles or is this how it looks with with no explanation because normally at town meeting we talk about it. That's what the informational meetings are going to be. Okay, Liz I'm just asking for clarification when you say these articles do you mean just the greater do you mean everything else. I basically mean all the articles like you know someone may not know like what the middle six conservation fund is free single every single article requesting money has a has an accompanying report that's why that's what we're killing ourselves over. So there will be something about the greater. I have not written anything about the greater someone else would like to write something about the greater go ahead I know nothing about the greater. You're saying everything that has a dollar value attached to it is going to have a narrative a written narrative, even big heavy world. What the hell is that big heavy world. Well, it's on your it's one of your $250 request. But my question is, I know that those get those little articles do these articles that we usually they all have a narrative to I just don't remember I don't have a thing in front of you. So, so let us just to be clear, the article one is always Australian ballot so there's really nothing. Yes, of that we don't typically have statements from Canada. Article two. Typically we have not put anything in there unless we're making a change and then we put it in our select board report. Yeah, and the same with article three. Right. And so I think that my question is for some of these things that may not normally have some sort of narrative associated with them. I think it would be who best to have something because most people aren't going to attend these public hearings and and if they have something that can explain why we need a new greater. That would be in the town report. That's what I'm asking is my question. Yes, aren't they. As far as I, as far as I know that's the town report isn't going to change. We're going to still publish the thing with a with our special articles and all of their explanations. Yeah, I'll speak for Sarah but they're already there except for the one on the greater because that was just added. Home health in hospice all of those are in there. Yeah, okay. So Steve. Yes, I mean I know we sat down and went over the went over the road report did we talk about the greater and the road report. We didn't we should. That's where it would that's where it would appear. Well, it should be it should be spelled out in a separate one too so people can follow it even if you take the same sentence out and put it into someplace else. Why don't we get something together to put in the town report. Sounds good. Okay, where would it go though. Well, wasn't wasn't Phil going to write some sort of budget explanation. Maybe it would go in there with like a little breakout what the what you would do with it why are you asking for all this money for a town for a greater. Yeah, I actually think that's, that's a perfect place for to be but that of course is not included in the town but you know this, I just would I, I always tell you I come up with these things in the middle of the night but honestly God that's what I think of these things all but I don't know. I'm a road grader I sat right up in bed. So, anyway, we need to, we need to make sure, because that's a big deal that's big money. And it's a big deal and yes we're going to talk about it at the informational meeting but you're right for the people who don't go to the information meeting and are just looking at the town report. And that's going to be there. So I will, I will make a note and I will talk to Phil about that. Well, I agree with what Steve said to that he should have he put something together and add it in his town report. The bills report is going to be in the bad report. Yeah, but don't you think that that that Steve ought to say that too. He can certainly say it in the in the road report. Yes, Mary. Oh, yes. The more we say it the better it is. I'll add a paragraph to that highway report. Okay. I mean the best. You know we've been talking the other thing is, hopefully people are ready for this we've only been talking about it for five years but you never know. The problem is, and we've got to be careful what we say but we have financial information and maybe Steve should put this in his report about the estimated cost of leasing a greater if our current greater dies because there is some probability if we don't get a new greater. Not only is this greater inefficient to use but if it if it dies and all of a sudden needs $75,000 in repairs. We're going to spend a great in value completely and be we're going to spend a lot more money than we would spend on the bond paying for a rented greater until we can get approval at a special meeting or whatever we have to do to buy a new greater anyway. I don't want to get I don't want to get too far in the weeds of this if people are ready to support it but it's a big number. A question about that like so. And people might not understand this, like in terms of of how like the, how these votes work so like, we're voting on article for the town so we're going to an article for which technically doesn't include a greater right now, but will if that passes. And so right now, 1,382,000 is a certain percentage of a budget increase right we came up with what was it 3% I can't remember. Right, so adding in another 20,000 per year or whatever it would be 290 plus the interest. It's not in this budget it's a year away. But there are no payments for a year. I thought you said it would be in fiscal year 22 the first payment. No, no, not a year from when you purchase it that's why you need to wait until after July 1 to purchase it won't be till fiscal year 23 and therefore it will be in fiscal year 23 budget. It's a $5,000 monthly. This is not this is not changing this year. Okay, okay, got it. It's making a commitment for the long term. And so, I don't know I think that should also be explained then in. If it can be that it would be that the first payment would be in next year's budget so that people that's a good idea so people don't. I don't think that's going to change this year's right. Here's the reality. We don't have we're not having conversation about this accepted or informational meetings that if we're lucky we're going to get, you know, people to come to which hundreds of anxious voters will be participating. I hope so. You're correct. That's why it's more important than ever, because in a normal town meeting format in our old format. You know, someone from the town me Steve someone you would get up and explain all of this well, we're not going to have the opportunity to do that and also I would point out. The last article on our warning passes, we will never again have the opportunity and it will make special articles presented by the select board a little more difficult. So this is good practice. Yeah, anything else. Yeah, well I did have a question. So Phil's letter that he's been writing over the past few years is that I can't remember I thought that was a separate piece of paper that sort of showed up at town meeting but it's in the actual It's usually tacked on to the end of the select board reports just kind of like okay here's the select board report from from the previous year and then Phil talks about the budget that people are going to vote on. And that's in our town report to everyone's getting mail today. And of course the report from the budget committee is also in there. Yeah. Okay. Thanks. Can I ask a question when it says by petition only one of the articles by by petition is the north branch, everybody else was given what they had the year before and didn't have to do a petition is that correct. That's correct. And then, when did this last item come in. This The last second. It came in at 445 p.m. I had the signatures verified by 450 p.m. It came in around 440 p.m. On Thursday. And that is this regarding special special articles that begin like with article six or all All special articles, but not the town budget. Not the budget, but if the town puts in, you know, a special article for $5,000 for this or $290,000 bond for road grader those are all special articles. So it may cause us to rethink how we do our budget, like we may want to include those things in our budget and then talk about them so they are not special articles and they are and they come up at 10 meeting but that's right. So it's required to be a separate article, regardless because of the bond. Yes, I believe right. For a certain period of time you have to put it as a special article that has to be put it on by paper ballot. But remember, remember, it know about that so we've only started doing it like for two or three. Sarah please repeat that because there are people talking over her. I couldn't hear there. If you, it's a, it's part of the indebtedness statute of the Vermont's the VSA, if you borrow for a certain period of time I forget exactly how much it is I think it might be five years I think it's above yeah you have to put it before the voters and they have to have vote on it by paper ballot. It's no matter what you still have to vote on it by paper ballot greater would have been a paper. Raise your hands like what we did with the fire department the fire truck and then we realized oh no we had that's why we had to have that special election do you remember that a few years ago. Yeah, I do. So it always has to be if you're going to borrow it that long it always has to be by paper ballot regardless. So is there also the opportunity to explain in lay persons terms what article 16 means to people because I can guarantee you there will be some pushback from certain people in the town on both sides as to why people should vote for this or against it and I don't want to say it in a sort of non, I don't want to use partisan but just to say, what does this mean to people because I wouldn't necessarily know what a special article is. And so, you know, in my mind. And, like, so for example, if this were, if we were looking at this morning right now, which articles wouldn't be included like article three and article four and article two, or just article four. Article four would. That's one two and three. I mean, so town meeting in the future. Okay. Is going to be everything down through the budget and that's it. Except that article one is already by Australian bow. Oh no it's not. Oh yes it is isn't it. But I'm just but I'm just saying. Yeah. So basically town meeting is going to be a discussion of the budget. Well, if you had something like, you know, should we change the treasurer's term for one to three years, or you have one of those non binding articles those would not be affected it's only articles that ask for money. So I think that needs to be like somehow stated so that people understand what types of things that they would be. So that's what it says requesting town taxpayer funding. So maybe that's. So, here's, I mean, here's an interesting question. So, there's a case where we haven't I mean it's, it's a petition right. So the people who I would I would have said to them if they had asked me which they didn't, the people getting those signatures. They're going to be on the zoom meeting to talk about the article that you petitioned for. Also say to them, are you going to write something up to put in the town report to talk about that because it is the people who are petitioning. Yeah, I really don't think it's up to us to select work to talk about that and explain it. That said, if there's nobody who's ready to stand up and talk about it. We're talking about it at the informational meeting so we handle that. Well I agree with Liz though not a lot of people are going to be as many people as we would hope are going to attend the special meetings and it's confusing. So do we know who led this petition effort that we could contact them and ask them to write something up. Sarah, do you know that. I think it was a community effort from a lot of people. So here's the thing I would. And I don't want to say they shouldn't be the ones writing it up. But I also think that there could be some bias and how it's written and I think what we're really looking for is what does this mean to the townspeople just directly in two sentences. Maybe this is it maybe this is enough to say, and it might be like what this what will this mean to you it means town meeting will only be talking about the municipal budget, and any articles that don't require funding or something like that. That's all it needs to say it doesn't need to be, you know, it just needs to be clear so that people understand, like, it shouldn't say, Oh, and this means potentially the demise of town meeting that's going to happen on front porch forum by people who want to persuade voters to vote one way or the other. I want to make a short. Should we ask Sarah to add we're going to consider our select board report in a few minutes here. Should we ask Sarah to write a paragraph which talks about article 16. Yes, probably where it should be right. Yeah. Why do you think why do you think it should go in the select board report, because it's your warning. Yeah. Okay. So what does this one and I just add a paragraph that says articles, you know, article 16 is a new addition to the or relatively new addition to the warning. And what it means is that budgets would be voted on it by the floor and other requests or issues would be voted on at the floor, as long as they don't ask for money but if there's any, any article, any request for money, including from the town. Outside of the budget, that would have to be voted on by a paper ballot Australian ballot. Yeah, just like town officer. Yep. Yeah, I think that's, I think that's good to make it just a very like impersonal, not taking sides. This is what it is. Right. What would you do you think an example would be helpful like saying, for example, this annual warning that only articles two, three, and four would be considered. If we had, we're able to have an in town, a real in person meeting and all the rest would be voted by Australian ballot. I just think that's fine but I want to make it simple. You could just say that dinner will start at 515 instead of seven. Not going to say that that's that's bias right there. I'm joking. That was a joke. I just, I just think that you know, if you had an example of how much would now be Australian ballot, it would be helpful. Yeah, I think I'll do that if you want to that way we can just keep it really cut and dry. Just break it out at the bottom and just explain as for article 16. That's, that's what this is about. I just want to understand just people just so people understand that that what that it is. I mean people are going to look at that I think a lot of people like Liz said are going to what's a special article I mean I just don't think they're going to understand what that means but Yeah, well money articles that ask for money that's what it means other than the budget. I just like the I like the example because there it is. You could say for example, articles six through or five through 20 or whatever they are would be voted on Australian. Whatever. I trust there to do a good her usual good job of doing this and explaining it. That's why we need to beat a dead horse it's not that complicated. But I agree. I am, I am very concerned that we're going to have maybe half the number of people who at these informational meetings that we normally have a town meeting, which means it's going to be a small percentage of the voters and that is disappointing if that's what it is, but that may be what it is. So anyway, are we ready to vote on the warning on the motion. Let's just say the amendment to article Peter what was that article five offered by Peter hood. Yep. Okay, what amendment what we just changed the language in article five a little bit tweak the language. Oh, right, right, right. Yeah. Okay. All in favor. I, I, Steve, Liz. I think he was gone. He was gone. Please seconded it. Well, I don't see him up there. No, he's not he's gone. Well, we have enough for good. He'll come back. The passage of H 48 considering whether to mail all active registered middle sex voters residing in the US absentee ballots residing in the US absentee ballots for the 2021 town school meeting and considering correspondence from the Washington County, whatever all those initials mean supervisory district regarding coordinating town. Hey, he's back. That was fast. We approve the warning, Steve, in your absence. Yep. That's great internet. No, I got it. So Sarah. Tell us, tell us what's going on here. Okay, so we got a letter last week from the superintendent of the Washington Central Universe unified union school district saying, guess what. All the five towns have to mail the school ballots the same way, because otherwise, it's not fair. And the best comparison, the problem that we have here. And I've spent a lot of time talking about this with will setting at the secretary of state's office and there's some good news on that front is that the center of the school district is now its own municipal entity. And just like we can't automatically mail three fifths of middle sex voters balance but require two fifths to ask for for balance. The same needs to apply for the school balance. The problem is that the legislature did not imbue this municipal entity with any statutory power to run its own elections. So tonight, we have several towns as empowered by age 48, which was signed this morning that are deciding whether or not to automatically mail ballots, or not mail ballots, and it looks like four towns are going to mail ballots and Berlin is not. And I'm not sure how that's all going to work out. Will said it may be that actually the school district takes over Berlin's ballots and mails in the forum. But in talking to will, it seems like for one for one, the cares act has a little glitch in it and if we did not apply for grant funding last year to pay for the mailing that we did. Yeah, we are eligible to get it this year so the postcards that we mailed are all 100% reimbursable and any mailings that we do for the town because of COVID make sure it's in the minutes are also 100% reimbursable. If we mail town ballots, if we mail school ballots as well, which is what we'll probably do, then we bill the school district somehow, and then they apply for the funding. And that is where we are the same envelope or separate envelopes. We usually mail them in the same envelopes we always have the differences that when we were part of the when we were the middle sex town school district we got $4,000 from the school to offset our costs for a treasure, including the school report, all those things. Now we get zero money from the school. So we still mail out the school ballots we did for example last year. It says that we've never the school has always paid for their own ballots it's just that now we're mailing to you know close to 1500 voters it's a big expense. Well, my position is, they should pay and I don't know how we deal with that they created this problem not us. They did, and the legislature did but they're there, there does seem to be some reimbursement so that's the good news. There's a reimbursement include include staff time for doing it or is it just the cost of ballots ourselves in the postage. I think it's well the school pays for its own balance the, and the state pays for the envelopes, what what we're really talking about here is postage, and it's going to be about 65 cents. And I'm assuming it's about 65 cents packet for 1500. Part of that would get reimbursed by the school. Well we would have to figure out what the difference was between mailing one ballot versus mailing, you know, two ballots and then we'd have to build a school, the difference. Yeah, I would say that's the cost of mailing their single ballot which is probably 55 cents. And if we get our ballot in there for another 10 cents so be it. I mean the money is there will says there's $2 million earmark just for this in 2021. So let me ask you this Sarah, how does it work like you just sent us all those postcards and people are starting to send them back to you I'm sure. And are you holding on to those because obviously you don't have anything to mail right this minute anyway. And then if you decided to do. The whole town wide mailing, everyone would just get one right, and you would just continue to get these postcards is there any like problem on your end that we've done this and people are sending back and the value the value of the postcards is also the same as the value that the state had when they mailed their postcards out last summer, even though they were automatically mailing. I'm finding out which are bad addresses it's amazing how people's addresses go bad so fast, but. So, they're serving that purpose and they also had information on them, probably, you know, informing people that there wasn't going to be town meeting so they're they served another purpose. But we're not going to if unless even if someone says I don't want to ballot I think I'm still probably mail a ballot just so I meet the law but the important thing is that it's up to the town legislative bodies to make this decision under H48. And you have to when you make this decision you say you're going to mail everybody ballots because of coven. Just make sure that's in the motion. I think we should. And I believe me I've thought about this a lot my initial reaction I think was the same as Sarah's at the last meeting that that the postcards were good enough and if the school had a problem that's their problem but if the bottom line is, we have to mail out Why wouldn't we why wouldn't we mail out our ballot and just say that people do to a recent legislative change. Everybody's going to get a ballot. Plus isn't it easier for you Sarah then you don't have to be like oh I'm getting 2000 postcards in the mail and you know did I send it out to so and so if you're just sending it out to everybody. Well, the easier part would be to doing what Callis is doing which is they're going to use jet service to mail out all these ballots both their school and their town will strongly. He's he truly talked me out of that because he said there are some there's some definite problems and jet service is doing a great job but they have this huge huge new responsibility that I won't go into here and it might be just safer if the town just mails out everything. Who's Will. Will sitting as the director of elections for the Secretary of State's office. Didn't he grow up in Duxbury to still lives there. Yep. So, and, and, and we know that that's going to be extra work for you and the assistant town clerk. Well it's going to be extra work for ideally the board of civil authority, but the reality of yes it'll be, I'll be a lot of late nights watching investigation discovery stuffing envelopes. Well I can help you with that too. I'm on the board of civil authority. We all. I think that you know we're we'll just get a system and get it down and it's it's a lot of work. I know. I guess I have come around to the idea that especially where the cost can get reimbursed not that the cost is everything but when it was a cost issue, I was flip flopping the other way but now I think just everybody gets a ballot. Done. Yep. Somebody willing to make that motion. Peter. Peter this is Randy. You would ask the question as to whether or not staff time was reimbursable through that. That cares act funding and I didn't hear an answer I don't know if it was answered or not but just curious. I don't have no idea. I'm certainly going to put in for it let's put it that way. I think so I think that this sets a precedence to if the school continues to ask for, you know, this type of service down the road where, you know, the cares act money isn't isn't available. You know, it sets the tone that that that's our expectation. Is there isn't there a movement in the legislature to give the school authority to do its own voting and or the state is going to take over all the school voting. I mean, you know, frankly the school district could do this now as the rule, the last people who sent out ballots to everyone was was LHS, a company a printing company in New Hampshire, it's the rule is it's not what goes out it's what comes back. So the school district my first when I first heard about this I said to the school district why don't you guys do it just do it, you know, you got we'll give you our checklist you can do it. Oh no no no that's not what we. But I mean right now. I mean just just so everybody understands in case anybody's forgotten. What happens is the ballots to our office. We put them all in a big bag and carry them somewhere where they get counted we don't count them. I mean, they just go right back to the school, they're their own municipal entity why do they come to us why do we even get involved, because the legislature hasn't given them any power to do that. No I understand but I'm saying I believe I believe the legislature is going to give them that power or they're at least talking about it but anyway, for now, for now, is someone willing to make the motion that we will. Go ahead Mary. I move that we send school and town ballots to all voters in the town of middle sex is that it voters. Sell the school. Yes, they're sure of the cost. Through COVID funds. That it be reimbursed and that the school pay. It's share of the expense. This is due to cut wait. Due to the COVID pandemic. Yeah, that's Sarah that was a little bit sloppy. I'm just going to start off by saying that Mary move that due to the COVID epidemic, the town will mail town and school ballots to all active registered voters in middle sex and build the WC you USD for its share of the cost. That's exactly what I said. Okay, is there a second to that motion. Second. Okay, thank you Liz. All in favor please say aye. Any opposed. We have done it. Thank you. And now the draft select board report. We're going to add that paragraph which we discussed earlier. Good job on the reports are I liked it a lot. Me too. I think of the days when we used to sit around the table and struggle to write these damn things. That was not fun. No, it was not fun. And I appreciate Sarah doing this for us. But that said, it's our report. Is there anything anybody wants to change or thinks we need to change. Other than adding the paragraph about article 16. One more time. Yeah, I'm going to look at it one more time too. Let me know when you're ready. Don't we have to revise it to add the new act 48 stuff to Sarah. When we're talking about voting. You know, the second and last paragraph. Well, I can. Yeah, I will. That's a good catch, Mary. Yeah. Do we want to mention that there's a new road commissioner road foreman. Thank you Liz for publicizing that it increased my call volume considerably. I think that's in the highway report, isn't it? It is. I do have this one question you said the board like to thank former employees stepped down into 2020, but I thought that Steve's stepped down in 2021. You can take them off. Well, I mean, I think we should say it, but I think we should just say and in 2021. Steve Martin road commissioner. Yeah. I think it's nice to thank people. I don't think we need to be too picky about the day. I don't need there. Did we double check the zoom ID and everything? I didn't double check that, but. Yeah, I got it memorized by now. Okay. Can you remind me the paragraph that Sarah is adding. Aside from age 48 in the third. About article 16, Mary. Okay. Got you. While you're talking about that, I just want to tell you guys that I did contact zoom and for just $50. We can get a one month upgrade so that you can have up to 1,000 people at your informational meetings on the 16th and the 23rd. Perfect. No emotion yet. We're reading. Sorry. I'm looking back at the agenda. Times up. Okay. Thank you. Was there a second? Wait, with the added. Piece that Sarah's going to put in about article 16. And also. Act 48. Eight 48. Yeah. I'll second. Okay. Thank you, Steve. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Okay. Thank you, Steve. All in favor of the motion. Please say aye. Aye. Any opposed. Okay. Yes. Russ Bennett has joined us. Welcome, Russ. Hi guys. Hi everybody. Hey, Russ. So. Uh, Next on the agenda is considering approving an application for the better places grant action likely. And Sarah did send us. Out copies of that information and Russ is here. I presume to talk about it. Uh, yes. And I think actually Julie Beth. Hinds is also on the line. Oh, okay. I'm sorry. Yeah. I think she can sort of set it up. And she discovered the grant. I thought it would be something that would be good for here. Perfect. You got that Julie. Yeah. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Perfect. You got that Julie. Great. Um, thank you. And, and good evening to those I, I haven't met before. Um, Julie, I'm. Dinner. I'm Mary. You know, if you don't know, it's just pointless. We'll identify ourselves. Our names are on the screen, Mary. Yep. Okay. Very handy. Um, I am a planner. I work as a planning consultant to a lot of towns and, uh, some private clients around Vermont and a lot of other places. I was the director at the Mad River planning district, um, long before Joshua Schwartz. Back when telephones had cords. Um, and I've been really happy to work with planetary matters, but also with your planning commission for the last couple of years on getting some of the grants lined up. And so, you know, I was kind of in the process of the state's plan and. Now there is a grant opportunity. Um, that was made available. During COVID. I'm not entirely sure of the source of the funds, but it's being run through the state agency of commerce and community development. It's called the better places grant. And it's up to $20,000 with no match. So, you know, I don't know if you're a town or a nonprofit has to apply, but it can fund a construction on a private property. Provided there's an agreement for public access. And working with Russ talking with Sandy and Theo and the, your, your terrific planning commission. We came up with the idea to apply for funds to install. And we're going to be talking about the public. And then we're going to be talking about the public side of the camp made property. I. Mostly grew up in Waterbury. Downhill from Eddie steel, which probably accounts for my colorful language. And. You don't think about the Winnowski as a. Good coming through middle sex. You know, it's kind of been back there or below the dam. And this is an opportunity to put in a couple of safe overlooks that are coming through that little gorge there below the dam. So. What this requires is the town would need to be the applicant. And it also requires a, an agreement. It doesn't have to be an easement. It doesn't have to be, you know, a full license agreement, but it requires at minimum some sort of memorandum of agreement between the town and that landowner that. And so. This will be that there will be an agreement to allow the public to this space. You've been issuing permits for public events at camp me. There's a great relationship there. And so. What we've put together is a draft agreement and Sarah. I'm going to look at you if to figure out if that got to town attorney. Sandy was very helpful in putting that together. I think it would be the town and planetary agreeing to work towards some appropriate recorded legal document for public access to these sites. The grant application. Would not need the town to commit money. If however. And then in Russ and his group have estimated that the cost of building one overlook is about 12,500. And then there's going to be some ancillary costs. Your town attorney's going to have to look at it. And. Doing two overlooks would be just north of 20,000. The grant maximum is 20,000. If. The town were willing to pay the attorney's cost to do the reviews and develop that license agreement or easement. We could apply for both overlooks. If we want to keep it all clean with no money out of pocket, we got to go only go for one. So that's an option. The grant can be written with a plan A and a plan B, and they can choose either to give you the full 20 grand or to do a reduced amount. For one overlook. So I'm going to pause. Russ, I'm sure I'm forgetting something and Sarah would be great to know if this got to the attorney. It did. And I sent it to Peter. Did you see it? No, I didn't. I didn't see that either. I was on there until recently. So what time do you think he sent it? Well, let's see. Over 342. So I probably sent it right after 342. I was bad. I was out on my snowmobile at that time, not reading my email. Okay. Well, I can. I downloaded stuff earlier. So I didn't go back and look. Why don't you, is it a short? Is it a short thing, Sarah? Yeah, I can just write it right now. It says, um, All right. I have reviewed the proposed agreement between planetary matters LLC in the town. This proposal lies somewhere between a member of. Memorandum of understanding and a fully realized land use slash easement agreement. It can best be described as an agreement to agree. The whereas provisions provide sufficient information as to the intentions and desires of the parties. The binding sections of the agreement require both parties to work with each other in good faith to negotiate sufficient easement rights. And I think that's a good point. I think that the agreement also requires both parties to work with each other in good faith to negotiate sufficient easement rights to provide the public with a perpetual rate of access to the areas within the, within planetary matters, private property described in the attachment to the agreement. I was not provided the attachment to the agreement. So I'm assuming the description of the property interest involved is sufficient. The agreement also prohibits pre planetary matters from taking from the time of entering the agreement until such time as a permanent easement agreement is executed, which would impede or reduce the potential for future public perpetual access within the areas of the planetary matters property designated in the attachment. Finally, the agreement binds planetary matters to negotiating a future easement that is granted without consideration such that there would be no cost to the town to obtain this land use interest. That's it. I don't understand it. Someone needs to explain that to me. I'll take a stab and I know Sandy's on the line as well. What this sets forth and Rob categorized it perfectly. It's not a draft easement. It's not a draft document to be recorded in the land records. But it sets forth the reasons why the town and planetary are committing to working out some way to guarantee public access to the river and through the property from route to basically through to the river on that private property. That is as much as the state requires to apply for this grant. So it's basically committing the town to work with planetary matters and vice versa to figure out the right legal instrument by which there will be a perpetual right of public access over a pathway corridor to the river. Does that help? But all this land is owned by planetary matters right now. Is that correct? Yeah. So why does the town have to get involved at all? Oh because we're applying for the grant. We have to be the one. We have to be the applicant. Right. The one question I have is who actually administers the grant? Does planetary matters administer the grant or does the town? We would have Julie Beth administer the grant. It would manage that. We would cover all that so there wouldn't be a burden to you. But just to sort of clarify a little bit about what our intentions are and how this came about is in the walkable middle sex grant that you guys got, one of the things that we started talking about would be would be really great for middle sex to have a river walk along this piece of the river because it's such an incredible piece of geography. You know, geography is where it is. It's not like something else where you can you can build it or whatnot. As you know, the gorgeous is gorgeous. And since we now have the what was the we call it the blue house. It was Seavers. That property goes right to the dam and it's a stunning view there. But we don't really want to open it up to the public yet until we know somebody can't just walk off it and drop down 50 feet. We are committed to wanting to be a part of creating a long term public walkway across the lands that we have that would connect to other lands that we don't have. You know, we can't commit for anybody else's. But it seems obvious that the right away that the Green Mountain Power has and if something could be worked out in some time with the Cornwalls property or whoever might come after them and connect all the way down to the Walter Kelly Park that that that could begin to be something. So the legal document that Julie Beth was talking about is a commitment to commit to creating a license or a right away that would forever remain public. At this point in time, we don't know exactly where that path should be. And I think townspeople and the path trail people all kind of people like that should be involved in deciding what those are. And we also don't want to commit to something when we don't know what else we're going to do with the property and then find out we have it in the wrong place and we can't move it. So what we saw with this grant is this might be a good way to jump start access to the river and in a safe way so that people can at least go down behind the Camp Mead portion where there's a nice overlook that you can see the generating plant and with just a little bit of trimming you could see the waterfalls that come down over the waterfall. And then there's another small overlook that I think we could easily contain with enough space and if somebody's foolish enough to try and defeat a barrier that they wouldn't to be then dropping straight down into you know into the last drop. So our our thoughts really are the same as everything else that we have working with the town of Middlesex is that we want to all be on the same we won't have the same goals. And if these aren't goals that are yours and they're not going to be ours either and to try and find a way to you know bit by bit things don't always come in the order that you expect them opportunity just comes when it does. So it seems like it would have been a mistake to not try. And we are in a tight time crunch to approve this right we need to do it tonight. Yeah unfortunately this one came out with a really short time frame it has to be filed on Friday. Sarah I think all I have to do is give you a PDF to send to two email addresses but it does have to be filed on Friday. This one it came out three days before Christmas with a one month turnaround. Nice. Yeah I just want to make sure everybody understood that time is of the essence as I say. I have a question. I'll ask first. Looking at this map are you I see four overlooks with stars one two three and four is it the stars one and two that ideally you'd like to apply for the grant for? Unfortunately we need to remember those. Okay number three Russ is the priority one. Yes and number two is the second one the it's the two there's one right opposite the dam that's number two that's the one that's the steepest drop it's a little point a little sort of promontory kind of thing that we would do but I think we'd be able to get more access to the public because the public is already on Camp Mead the Camp Mead portion and we'd do the one where the power line the power company just leveled a bunch of stuff out back there and would make a bigger space it's a bigger safer space with a good overlook so that that would be the number one one and then if there's enough money we would do a little containment little fence over by the other one and then the other ones are one there's a little place right near where there's always two chairs on the right away that would be nice to put some kind of barrier not a cyclone fence but you know something like that and because it's beautiful as you know it's beautiful along the gorge or the filled in gorge and the last one down not that these are the only ones is there's a place where you can walk right down to the water in the summertime and you can actually take a dip or something down there if you wanted to so that one I don't think would need much in the way of containment but I think it's up to the trail committee and you know working with us and whatnot to figure out what's safe and sensible and and we would commit to doing and you know volunteering and helping cut a trail as long as we knew that if we ended up needing to do something we could move the trail you know our intention would not be to end this our intention is to make it public so this another question I have is is if if the grant if 12 000 pays for one and you're really looking at like oh it would be great to apply for the full 20 is there someone from planetary matters that can commit to that planetary matters will pay for it and maybe they do their own private fundraiser or some sort of town fundraiser so if people want to help pay for it that way you can get the full 20 000 as opposed to oh we're going to say right now because they're last minute we don't want to we don't want to just throw in an extra five say we'll pay for five thousand dollars when we may not want to but I'd like you to play pay for the whole 20 if there's someone who can guarantee outside of the town that they would pay for the remaining cost yeah I mean it's going to be what the grand the grand tours might say oh well we'll give you 10 or we'll give you 15 or you know whatever it is but we figured we should try and go for all that they what the maximum is and identify that we did quick numbers and a quick sketch for what we think is in keeping with other forest service and and those kind of kind of barriers that are used to this um and yes I think over time we can raise we will go a path will want to be maintained money will need to be raised um we would I think we would do what the grant would do at this point in time but I think it would get us started and get the public more um interested in it and then we figure out where how we raise more money yeah if this particular year as you know is not like the most lucrative year right for um uh spending money so um it's not that we don't want to see these things we really do want to see these things and we're happy to participate I would suggest we're I'm sorry I was just going to say I would suggest we uh in good faith assuming the board is willing to support it go for the $20,000 and if we get the $20,000 then work together to spend that money or you work to spend that money to get the most weekend for that money I mean what we don't want to do is create some half-baked thing where it's dangerous so right you gotta you gotta I know how these how these things go you put down numbers on a piece of paper and we go to actually build them there's always something that comes up that costs more money so you know I just want to be careful about that but I I support the idea I appreciate you bringing this to us and I love the idea of having a public public access to overlook the Winooski River Mary I have never been there well yeah I've never I went to the Vietnam Village years ago I take it you wouldn't want to execute a nice town until you actually decide which ones you're building or is it your intention to build all four uh no our intention is to you know we're doing this last minute too and we just picked a couple places that we thought we could throw on the table for discussion and I think the two that we're we've suggested are the ones that will sort of get the most wow for the buck as it as it would we're also very concerned about liability and also not creating you know as you know in the insurance world and attractive nuisance we don't want we want everybody to be safe so you're going to build four and possibly three or are you going to go all the way down and build no I think the number one one is not on our property so we can't say that we would do that I think this is us the two that we've said are on properties that we own so we can control that and I'm also sensitive to I mean I I love the idea of having a walking path that goes actually you know from route 100 b up to as far as it can go but I also know if we start drawing lines on other people's lands that it can make them crazy um because you know we haven't really talked to any of those people and there is that I think we need to have a much more public discussion about the values of these kinds of things you know and we we can volunteer to sort of jump start the process just like we did when we're talking about the walkable middle sex plan and the idea of could we put together volunteers and some of our own folks to pick a path we can pick a path on our own land and make it available to the public you know to walk hill and dale and and whatnot um in the in the meantime because I think that's in everybody's best interest Russ Steve here um Julie Beth you were saying initially um you know for one of the things 12 500 and probably you could do two of them for 20 000 there were some ancillary costs in there and you talked about the legal fees so what are you and you your comment I believe was that you were asking the town to pay that cost well here's the thing and I thank you for bringing that up um the maximum from this grant is 20 000 full stop um any other costs beyond that somebody would have to pay the estimate for overlook number three labeled on here for construction fabrication and signs to get people there would be about 12 500 right this grant from talking with Richard Amor at the state and from doing this for longer than I like to admit really wants the applicants to button down their costs what about marketing what about how are you going to get people there now we can make a straight face case that between the town's what next middle sex and can't meet social media we don't need money for marketing they want people to they want these to be projects that bring people in that's covered but they're going to ask what about your town attorney to figure out the liability the signage get the easement recorded and make sure that as we did in south burlington with the new musky gorge park you've got the signs up there that tell people if they decide to jump or take a selfie we're not liable there will be a cost to that and that has to be identified in this application and we'll have to represent that either that is coming out of the town legal budget or that you're asking for grant funds to cover that because they want this button down neatly and tied with bows I really might recommend that we apply for the one overlook and identify all the other ancillary costs and ask the state to write a check for that it would be great to say you know we'll do external fundraising we'll do this or that unless we've got it identified by friday it those are the kinds of things that send these particular grant reviewers saying well do they really have their act together do they really know so I I'd really advocate for either a fully identified cost or I think that's all they will fund what would you estimate that cost to be 15 5 so 12 5 for everything that Russ and his group have identified to build overlook 3 with barricade fencing clearing and grading sign fabrication to get people there you're probably going to need I don't know what your town attorney's rate is I'm going by Stitzel's rate in other towns you're probably going to need eight to 10 hours of your town attorney to execute draft and execute a license agreement come up with the liability language maybe not that much maybe it's six hours but it's not two you know that is that within your normal legal budget probably they'll want it identified in here and it's either the town's committing that it'll come out of the town budget or it's got to be paid for through the grant so having just struggled with our with our budget and Russ is exactly right this is a this is a tough time to do to do any kind of outside fundraising effort I like the idea of being able to do it all within the grant and having no no financial consequences for the town or for planetary matters if the grant gets approved but you know Russ given the plan B option I mean yeah I'm just thinking out loud saying you know here's this opportunity that came down the pike if we can get things started I mean you put in the budget three grand for the town's attorney and I think it makes sense for the attorney work to be done by the town because in that way the town's interest is definitely looked out for you know maybe we could split that cost if that's what we need to do planetary matters could put in half of whatever that would be and the town might be able to put in half or we could fundraise for that other half the trail committee etc the town maybe would be the backstop but we could we could find a way to not make it be an impact on the taxpayers in this particular year just you know sort of thinking out loud I'd rather try and get all that you can get you know once once you decide that you're going to go to the trouble you must yeah I mean the delta the delta that's my thing the delta is 3,500 bucks so to do the second overlook your total budget would be 23,500 so that's that's the we're talking about 3,500 bucks that we'd have to come up with 1,500 and you know I mean I don't have my partners on the line so I'm reluctant to just say hey guys well I just spent another 3,500 bucks and out of which wallet um but um I'm uh I'm sure that we could come up with at least a half you know it may be it may be we would get it covered it may be 2,500 if the town attorney doesn't need his many hours is are you asking us to commit to saying we will give money that's I think the bottom line because I think that we don't want to commit to that like I think that you should apply for the 20,000 that we would be supportive of fundraising efforts down the road like if there's some sort of you know um I mean so for this is an example we have right now um in the works a community fund that is uh and it's tied to our food shelf and there's people who give donations to it and there will be in the works this idea that you know maybe there's other uses for the community fund um right now it's just going to people who need money during coven for groceries and and paying their electric bills and things that they can't get otherwise um and that's where the money's going to so I just think given the sort of short notice of this I as a town's as a select board person while I completely utterly support this and I want to see this and down the road I may think as a select board person that yes we we want to put some funding to this that right now is not the time for us to say that we would commit you know up to three thousand dollars um towards this project um I mean that's my that that's my opinion right now and I'm somebody who loves to spend money don't get me wrong like I'm willing to just always be like yeah let's pay for that let's pay for that but I think right now given the work that we've just done on our budget and knowing how some people are feeling um in the town about the village and the expenses around the village um that I just think it would be in everyone's best interest to for you guys to apply for whatever amount you want to apply for and that we work as a community to raise any extra monies that may need to be raised that's my opinion if I'm fine with that yeah Sarah if if we carried two grand for town attorney um in your experience with that probably cover getting an easement put together I don't know I haven't seen I'd have to look at Rob's bills I don't know exactly what he charges I assume that the going rate is around 275 an hour right so how much is yeah yeah um for municipal stuff yeah no that's that's about right um 2750 call a 25 hey look guys here's yeah let's let's agree that we are going to go forward in good faith without without you guys are us committing any money at this point in time and let's see first of all if we get the grant then we can talk about community fundraiser we can do all kinds of things if we don't get the grant then it's a moat point okay right figures in doesn't she I do I have to put in I have to basically say the 2500 you know if plan a is funded uh the town planetary matters will provide the 2500 in match and we'll sort that out that's what we do okay I think we should do what our initial understanding was is that this should be a zero cost to the town so we should make it be that okay um and if we need to cover that then we'll figure that out um but the backstop will be planetary matters okay um for what that is we obviously don't want to have it be like oh well the attorney's fees ended up being eight thousand bucks no that that wouldn't really work I think I think this is you know we can put within range line around it yeah thank you so let's just like to keep it simple yep and I I will just quickly say that the enthusiasm at the state for this project and for everything going on in middle sex villages there you are very much on their radar screen as a overachieving superstar doing a lot of great work so um I think it's got as good a shot as any any of the things that are going in there's a couple of others I'm aware of and I think this one is really realistic and well thought through terrific I'm very excited about it because I honestly have never ever walked down to that side of the river and I would be excited to do that and behind any of those yeah yep so we need a we probably need a motion that in light of well this will these minutes be sent with the with the application Julie or no you don't need a you don't need that you will need the to execute the agreement to agree that is critical and it does go in with the application um that's the select board or select board chairman authorized by majority of the select board okay so all that could be in the motion right now correct I would say so who's our head motion maker married I know well I'm just trying to see what what you need to have I move approval of the what do you call it the agreement yeah applying for the better places grant to apply to the floor the better better places grant and to to um authorize peter hood as our chair to execute the agreement to agree that has been drafted and that has been reviewed by our attorney rob helper is that it second any further discussion it hasn't been drafted by rod rob helper at the draft and said reviewed by because I wasn't really done by sand others right reviewed and approved by rob helper or you know just the agreement to agree how about we just leave the agreement to agree and just drop the rest so mary moved approval with matters the agreement to agree with planetary with the planetary matters right you're ready to vote all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed okay we're off to the races guys awesome thank you second so sarah i need to stop okay correct yes and i think you sent me this is the uh this is the well i've got it julia julie beth i've got this with a big draft thing over it so i will remove that and send it to you all right great you thanks so much and sarah i'll be in touch about a couple of loose ends i need the town's tax id number and some other stupid miscellany this week anything to do with treasury stuff you should contact the treasurer dorinda crowl okay dorinda the only thing that it's not like i don't know why the state of ramon can't look this up but they would like the town's tax identification number on this application don't worry no problem sarah has that one that's about it but otherwise we're in good shape great great pretty exciting it's fantastic i i think it's really exciting um there's so much potential there so great okay hey have a good evening all right thank you so much good night thank you yeah we'll go hiking here we go okay uh highway report advertising for road commission or action possible uh speaking as your interim acting whatever i am a road commissioner uh my goal would be to agree that we advertise immediately for what i would call a real road commissioner rather than an acting road commissioner steve has steve has said to me and promised to me that the activity and this responsibility is relatively minimal in the winter time i just got a good taste of it over the last over the last week i know though steve probably got more calls than i got because everybody thinks he's still road commissioner but anyway um but i would like to do and we need to we need to put together a job description for road commissioner but i don't think we need to do that to advertise so i think we should we should put together an ad i think i think we're not asking for a volunteer it's a paid position so we need to think about how we're going to say that i do think um in the ad and and help me out of your steve that we should say approximately how much time we think it's going to take uh and i know that's a that's a that's a squishy number but i mean is it you know is it 10 hours a week is it i don't know what it is and i can help you with that so i i guess what i'm what i'm informing the select board and i don't think we need emotion is that steve and i are going to work to put that together and get the ad out there in all the usual places i i'm hoping we don't have to spend a lot of money on on advertising if our uh our response to our financial persons ads where we spent quite a bit of money we basically didn't get much bang for the buck for many of the public advertising but uh i'd say we should put it in all the usual the usual free places first and see uh and see what happens unless anybody disagrees yes torinda um i know you guys all know this but it's no money was budgeted for that position right correct so what are the so there does that does that make sense to everybody that we do that yeah but peter what are the three places that we post at first when you said free so sarah what are the what are the places there's the tenure clerks so there's the vmcta the um in the case of the road foreman there's going to be i think v trans has a site there is the vlct has a site that's very popular for we're looking at uh job openings so those are the free ones besides our website and you know front porch form right sarah sarah don't say road foreman say road commissioner did i say road foreman somebody said road foreman maybe i did it's anyway i'm exhausted sarah i'm gonna be putting the um the accounting position on the unemployment um website we may want to consider putting that out there too that's a good idea yeah say peter can i say something yes um did i understand you i don't you're going to put out an advertisement for the job but you're not going to give a description of what you want we're going to give a general description we're not going to give a full blown job description okay i mean it's you know generally the job description is it is at interview time but yes we've got to say you know we want somebody to be road commissioner be responsible for this that and the other etc uh absolutely i i would presume i mean yes the answer is yes but i would presume most people who would apply for the position have a good idea what their responsibilities are but that's true are you going to ask for though any uh any credentials you're going to ask for a degree you're going to ask for uh experience or what i'd say we're gonna we're gonna that's that's a good question we got to figure that out victor i don't think we'd be i don't think we'd be asking for a degree we'd be looking for we'd be certainly be looking for relevant experience and qualifications and it has to be a paid position not necessarily there's a good question it doesn't have to be um i don't know that's that's a good that that's a very good question i mean can we can we say we're looking for someone to be a volunteer i mean historically historically as everybody knows for the most part our road commissioner has been a member of the select board and received the munificent salary that uh select board members get and that's the only compensation right so never has it never has been a paid position but when you when you reach out when you reach out i don't i don't know the what does everybody think do we say like a volunteer to serve as to serve as road commissioner i don't know peter might even be a stipend of some sort but go back to what dorinda said we don't we don't have anything in the budget for it and why why make the shift now i guess is my big question um is it because we don't have interest for volunteers now i mean has it been is it just a general a general notice i am i am serving as interim as a volunteer steve had to resign because his son is now the road foreman so we're we're between the devil and the deep blue sea i'm certainly not interested in being road commissioner long term i have my hands full doing what i'm doing um but i'm happy to do it until we get until we get somebody i just i don't know so pete can i play the devil's i'd pick it here sure and you know i don't you've had two people volunteer to do it and now you still want to go ahead so you're throwing those two people out no the object was the object of going we're not we're not throwing those two people out and uh i did understand that the one person would do it as a volunteer uh the other person did not say that well the other person said it to me but that doesn't count i guess that's what i took from it so just i mean i he can change we're talking about we're talking about about uh about vict wire and uh our previous road commissioner gary uh that's right yeah very good i mean i'm not trying to that's not a secret right so good to be i thought i was i thought i was told one person withdrew their volunteer one of those two yeah is that not the case apparently not both of you can't are you talking about me yes i didn't i didn't say that i think we are talking about you right i mean i i feel there's a lot of transparency going on here you know i have to say this as a citizen not as a treasurer but i think there's there's something going on where we don't want these two people in the position and i think if that's the case the board needs to step up and say why especially if they're gonna ask for it to be a paid position over a volunteered position and go against what what we've been doing this whole time i'm not sure darinda i i agree with your statement but we sort we haven't had any i mean the question for me is this the question for me is this we have promised ourselves as a select board that we will not just accept people who who volunteer who come along who are maybe perfectly qualified and maybe perfectly good at the position for these positions but that we're going to advertise them so i'm i'm suggesting i'm not suggesting that we exclude anybody i'm just suggesting that it has been our practice and policy to advertise so i'm suggesting free ads so we don't spend any money but let's see we can get in our net we've got we've got we've got two two fish circling the circling the bait right now if that's if that's who we have then we can have a process to decide between them but i'm just uncomfortable just turning around and appointing them but maybe maybe or one of them but maybe other people feel differently i don't disagree with advertising it i don't disagree with advertising it but from a as a resident i think for me especially if folks that are volunteers or have have the experience or you know the certifications or whatever you want to look at to do it to suggest that you're going to advertise it as a paid position and overlook volunteers that can fill that role to me that doesn't that doesn't sit well i don't disagree so so peter maybe uh i can't do it again here i i don't have any problem with your advertising i was just wondering what your motive was i don't i didn't know maybe you had somebody uh in the waiting in the wings or somebody you want to crit to not at all not at all of it look peter let me interject here for a second um no our advertising i mean i think we're going to end up advertising for volunteers in that sense or or maybe a stipend but in the meantime we still can put that advertising out peter but in the meantime we can interview the two volunteers that doesn't preclude us from interviewing them in the meantime whatever the type no i that's fine but i i i guess ideally i just i just want this to be an open and fair process and i don't want it to appear that it's you know an inside job and we're interviewing these guys and we're really going to pick one of them but we're just but we're just uh but we're just putting it out to advertise because we think that's the right thing to do but that's all i'm worried about and to answer your other question vick uh there is absolutely no one that that i have in mind and i don't think peter has either he hasn't mentioned anything to me so we don't have somebody out there at all that we're thinking of so that's fine i'm i'm fine go ahead and advertise it i'm i'm fine with that i just can i make a question may i make a comment yes peter um so i i also just want to you know acknowledge that and i said this before at the last meeting or when this was brought up and vick vick had expressed um you know this and i understand it it does feel like you know we're saying oh uh thanks but no thanks vick but but what i do want to you know stress is that this person not only has to have knowledge of the roads but they also have to have a good working relationship with the staff because we also have to think about our staff and if it and and so i think that the staff need to be a part of this conversation and and i just want to make sure that the person that that we do choose whether it's a volunteer or not is someone who can get along with the town and has an and our new road formant a road foreman um so that that so so that you know there isn't discord um and and i sense you know and i will say just and i'm not going to say who i've heard it from and it's not the select board but you know it's sort of behind the scenes that that that possibly vick and i don't know this myself because i like you vick i only know you from these meetings and from seeing you in town but that there might be some disagreements that would that would cause people not to want to have have you as the road commissioner i'm being very frank right now but that's what i've heard and so there may be a concern that that that you might not be the best candidate to be overseeing the the new road foreman and and the the road guys and so that's just you know why i think it's important for us to have it be not just someone who volunteers because this is a bigger job than just oh hey i'm gonna you know go out and and volunteer my time there is there is a element of um you know dealing with with personnel issues and so i'll leave it at that well the answer that uh liz uh i i agree with you wholeheartedly and i and i do remember paul sermanera saying that at the end of the two meetings ago and uh you know paul and i might have had uh some uh differences but uh i think they were genuine uh we tried to explain it to them i tried to be as uh forthcoming as i could be um also in the last few last few years that uh i had been around that road crew quite a few uh quite a few times and i listened to their complaints and uh it wasn't about me so uh they go to both ways let's just do this i i what i'm hearing is what i'm hearing is uh uh let's let's steve and i get together and put together the ad put it in the free places for some relatively short period of time and then whatever we have we'll we'll commence the selection process and my strong preference would be that um that shane is shane is included in the uh in the interview process as the road foreman to get his his input and his support for whoever the candidate is and whoever whoever on this board is interested in doing it i guess i'm presuming it would be uh be steve and i but we would welcome other people to be involved in the interview process as well i mean i just don't want any any appearance right wrong or otherwise that this is some kind of an inside put up job i don't think it's good for the town i don't think it's good for anything so i want it to be a deliberate thoughtful careful process and it's not it's not an emergency i mean my my goal would be to have somebody in place by the spring construction season because that's i'm pretty good on on road sanding plowing i can deal with those issues but when it comes to real construction that's not me so it's fair enough we have time it's not it's not an emergency thank you for being straightforward lis you're welcome so does everyone i don't think we need a motion on that does everyone agree that that's the right approach yep any disagreement so steve you and i will you and i will put that together okay okay and vik thanks for thanks for your comments and and lis thank you also for your uh for your comments i appreciate your absolutely welcome thank you thanks um in terms of uh a highway report in terms of in terms of other issues um we had our first big big snowstorm of the year this past weekend the weather forecast was back and forth about whether there was going to be rain or not our road foreman made the decision not to plow early in the day uh it turned out in hindsight beautiful that it was going to rain and it was going to be icing um we did get some some push back from some of our residents about where's the road crew how come the roads aren't plowed blah blah blah um he made the best decision he could make we support him i support him and making that decision the best way he knows how but in hindsight in hindsight they probably should have been out there plowing uh but the roads are plowed now they're sanded they're in good shape and uh we're in full on full on winter mode now the equipment all held up the guys held up they're tired but uh but they're fine excellent job beater i'm sorry i said they did an excellent job yes i i agree vek i think and if if anybody uh is familiar with the work that they do would know that uh the reason they didn't plow uh some of the roads was exactly what uh you said they didn't know whether it was going to rain or not so if they plowed them and it rained on it they're ice so yeah totally both roger hill and the national weather service were forecasting serious rain so we can uh we can put it on there uh on their shoulders absolutely good time to have winter tires the one car that i ran into in the ditch had worn out summer tires it's hard to have much hard for me to have much sympathy for that um um anything else steve that you have to add no okay any questions anyone treasurer's report dorinda uh sent you the financials as they stand through today's payments um that's basically it we still got no response to speak of on the ad and that's the treasurer's report so thing i want everybody to think about when it comes to this is um i think fairly soon and and dorinda's going to do another another run at some some of the free advertising not the paid advertising but if we can't if we can't get somebody to apply for this who's qualified and appears to be what we're looking for i think we're looking at hiring an accounting firm as a subcontractor and i want everybody to be prepared that i think that's what we might have to consider doing i just want to be sure that we have the new position or situation in place uh well before well before july 1st so it's none too soon to uh to be pushing ahead on this and i don't know how everybody else feels about that but i don't think we have a lot of choice does that reduce at all um hours um for dorinda like that free up some time for dorinda herself currently that's the that's the idea yeah and um it's not the time i mean it's more or less somebody who can do that daily that data entry and do it correctly um it's not my time so much because i'm not doing it and i'm not going to step into that position and do it i don't have the time um to to vote to that and i made that clear when i came on okay um and does it cost uh like how do you pay for those is it a contract that you have from certain number of hours peter well that's what we have to that's what we have to figure out if we get to if we get to that point how many how many hours it is and i think we need to we need to interview interview potential candidates and see what they think it's going to take how many transactions it is it's their it's their business they should be able to tell us what they need but the other side of this is we have heard up to three current clerk treasurers from other towns that might be interested in doing the work but then you go away from what your original um thought process was by having somebody available in the office when people called and things like that so that's you know i think so so i'll i mean i i would just tell you in my business career for for it services and other services um we made arrangements from time to time where we had someone someone who worked for an outside entity who was in our office on a regular schedule every week right so you know it might be that it might be that they were in the office two days a week three days a week i don't know we have to we we have to work our way through that uh through that process but a qualified accountant could come in and look at the work we have and tell us about how many hours they think they would need to do it but that won't address the grant situation will it no the grant the grand thing needs to be part of it i mean it isn't just our goal is not just to have a bookkeeper but to have somebody who can do some of this higher level financial stuff as well so we've got to figure out we've got to figure out that piece we've got we've got our work cut out for so i'm just saying my concern is we can't sit on our hands much longer we've got to get moving and i'm sure i'm pretty sure that there are accounting firms out there who would who would be interested in something like this it's good work for them and guess what it isn't going to be it isn't going to be cheap but thank god we put a bunch of money in the budget have we um have we posted on front porch forum do you guys want to do that we haven't i don't think i don't think we have i mean it's not going to hurt they might be somebody out there i mean i think we get the word out anyway we can i i just don't want to spend i mean the did we get a single response at all from our uh paid advertising you mean the seven days uh one yeah and they had no municipal experience they weren't uh certified in any way they owned a business and used QuickBooks for the last x number of years no that's not that's not what we're looking for yeah do i have one question yep yep this uh general ledger uh this is a current um this is number seven the period seven does that include tonight yes through today perfect thank you any other any other comments or thoughts on that uh on that subject so dorinda i would i would go ahead i like the idea of putting on front porch forum and let's see but let's be ready to let's be ready to move ahead sooner than later here i'm at list right i'm sorry she suggested the unemployment list as well you know when gobs for you know one would hope that we might find somebody there be nice it would be well let's see let's see who we can uh who we can get but i just want to be darn sure that whatever we do we have a plan in place yeah okay um improving january fifth select board minutes action likely is there a motion i'll make that motion is there a second second okay all in favor hi all right any opposed you texting me list sharp in the middle of a meeting really i've been hearing all these little abnormalities yeah yeah i'll respond after the meeting um okay we've approved the minutes correspondence um the only correspondence we've had has been was in support from for the trails uh that the grant that you guys just discussed that was from adrian migheed and the trails committee and i think i forwarded that to you um and there was some chitter chatter back and forth about notch road um from the two residents on notch road but it's nothing earth shattering and i also forwarded that to you guys as well yep can i ask a question can we can you please refresh my memory and maybe steve you're the one who knows um is that park is the new parking lot on notch road ready for people to park at and is there a little trail to go to the main trail the parking lot that's that's uh up by the town forest is that the wma parking lot the wildlife management area and we expanded that and that is ready for cars and people are using it but they have to walk up or they do walk up the class four road to get into the town forest but what um brian is referring to is the old parking lot right that's the one oh well what about the one that's going to be in the sand pit area the oh yes we did construct uh one in the sand pit area and people can park in there but uh they've got to walk up through there's no there's no trail that leads up to the town forest okay so they basically then have to go back out and walk up notch road in order to get to uh correct and so are there signs that show people that there's that new parking area uh i don't know i'd have to talk with lee was going to uh had talked about doing signs and i know that we talked about a sign i'm not sure if there's a sign up there yet or not i don't think there is but i'm not sure yeah i mean i'm just wondering if we should do are we talking about this now i mean because i was gonna say we should maybe do um have the regular parking lot that's there that holds like four cars and then have signs that say no parking allowed on the road overflow parking is back at the sand pit yeah the one that's up the wma parking lot up there now um i was up there uh once after we had put put that in and there were 10 vehicles in there so it will hold a few cars oh it did hold 10 okay wow that's a lot that depends on how people park because they can come in there and park five feet apart and then all of a sudden you only got five cars in there great so i believe the other thing that the that the trails committee was talking about was creating a trail list from the lower sand pit parking lot around they had a plan to go around the uh the the town pit and connect with uh and connect with the town forest somehow i don't remember exactly yeah that's what i thought sort of like the hunger mountain has two slots and there's two different ways to get up hunger mountain with two different parking areas okay but the idea and i don't think that happened to my knowledge that that didn't happen yet but that that's in the works because the idea is not to have people walking up uh right up the road so um so brian you know was you know pretty upset with all this i mean i personally have avoided even going there in the winter because of it i don't want to be like that person you know who can't find a parking space and then causes grief for the people that live on that road because they have to park on the side or he can't get by on his truck or people get stuck and all of that so i think you know we really do need to consider putting up signs we we've we've sort of caused a problem that's a good problem people are hiking and getting out and people are coming to middle sex but we need to address the people that live in that area and if that means you know saying parking here no parking on the road and park down in the you know overflow parking then we need to do that because it sounds like a ton of people use this trail they're definitely people using the trail how big how big a problem is is is obviously uh open to discussion and the neighbors up there have divergent points of view so it makes it challenging but um i agree with the signs i mean we got to have signs and and uh who do we plow the wma lot who plows it that's where we turn around yes we do okay and are we plowing plowing our sandpit lot as well i i don't know that answer i can find out i bet we're not we should be okay but we need we also need signs all uh i'll reach out to lee and see where he is on uh on signs but i but i feel as we need signs yep since we're talking highway issues even though we're through that officially i noticed that they had put some uh someone had put up some signs for snowmobiling on one of our town polls are they allowed to do that i believe we gave them permission four or five years ago when that when the old trail got closed off mirror okay so like they've been doing that for the last four or five years okay when they're down near here on the weeds is okay and the other thing is it seemed like they're they were on the main road for a while but maybe i'm wrong is that not the case with that snowmobile if it's anybody on the main road it's your uh select board chairman trying to get to the vast trail so wait a second aren't those signs uh i mean i'm just looking at the signs that were down by the peak cars mailboxes and then that is that is the vast trail yes okay so there's a little small section where you go on the main road right well i think there is it's i would say it's three quarters of a mile yeah but i thought you get back on the trail the new land owner over on the other side closed off the old trail so it was a was an issue hasn't been i i am not aware that it has created any problem since it's been there and it's been there quite a while so they do a good job putting those putting those signs up um have you got enough order signers darinda i've only got two okay i'll look um i do have just a couple just a couple okay i have a couple of quick things number one are uh our new town emails are in place you all got uh i believe emails from phil telling you how to set it up i set mine up his his instructions were good um i would make it a goal before our next select board meeting that everybody gets their new email set up so that we can then change the emails on the town website etc etc and have people start contacting us through that and i would also suggest that after the next two weeks all our correspondence which we're now getting in our old emails get switched over to the new uh get switched over to the new emails which is the uh which is the intent so i'm happy to help people if you have a problem i i found it pretty uh pretty easy to do but uh it does you gotta follow the steps and you gotta make sure you type stuff in correctly otherwise it isn't gonna work yeah i did it as well it took me a while first i i had to it didn't take me a while because he gave me the wrong password but i also put it on my phone and you do have to follow it exactly to the t um and it took me like a couple tries because i did like dot com instead of dot org and i was like what's wrong so it's very easy if you follow the instructions to the t okay i started setting it up on my phone and i got stuck so i gave up but i've i've got more work to do but all i'm saying is we're we're finally there where we have this tool to use and we need to uh and we need to use it so please uh please make an effort to get that set up um that you reminded me i forgot about it the other thing the other thing i have is and susan clark has been uh has been whispering not so quietly in my ear offering offering uh help in organizing our informational meetings um it seems to me we have two two decisions we need to make about the informational meetings other than other than contents of the presentations which at some point we have to figure out um but one is uh sarah has also said she's gonna she's gonna expand our license so we have no issues with numbers of people on the zoom but does it make sense to hire someone and this is not uh belittling uh our ten clerks efforts to run the zoom meeting from a from a technological point of view and uh the reason i'm asking that is i participate in a lot of zoom meetings when you have somebody who really knows how to do all that stuff like you know put stuff up on the screen take stuff down deal with multiple screens with multiple participants recognize people who are raising their hand virtually on the zoom uh it makes for a much better meeting and i'm just afraid uh and if we don't have that many people i don't think it'll be that challenging but i think potentially being able you know if people are asking asking questions about things being able to put documents up on the screen would be helpful rather than have people pawing through their town report but i don't know how other people feel about that um the other question is uh who's going to run the meeting are we going to it's a it's essentially a select board hearing i guess so am i as chairman going to run the meeting do we ask the town moderator to run the meeting i don't know the answer to that so i had a conversation with susan about this very topic um after she had talked with you peter and i do agree that it would be helpful to hire someone um and she had in mind her sister who does who did our um what's next middle sex she does a lot of this already it doesn't have to be her sister but i think she'd be affordable i'm thinking at the most we would probably i mean she hasn't submitted a budget or anything like that but i would imagine for two meetings it might be a couple hundred dollars per meeting so maybe five hundred bucks or something for the two meetings who's in she did say the word we like so much to me today great she said volunteer yeah and she may volunteer as well but i think to put it out there it would be nice to pay someone to do this work um and and that's probably even sort of maybe not stipend costs but whatever so i think that that would be you know i think it's a really good idea to have someone and i too am on meetings all the time i've been on big you know conference meetings and it's really helpful to have someone who is doing all that work because because we're going to be the ones listening and answering questions so and then peter's question about should he run the meeting or should um susan potentially run the meeting susan said she didn't have any sort of um she had nothing against running the meeting but she did say what she didn't want towns people to get confused at as to as would this act like a town meeting and it doesn't like people can't make changes people can't you know um it would basically be a um what what i would envision as we run through the articles that are on there um explaining what each article is and offering questions um specific to those articles um so either peter could run it or susan could but it would not be run like a town meeting and so she was a little worried about people getting confused you know it's a town meeting this is a virtual town meeting so i just wanted to throw that out there that i think personally it would be helpful to have peter run the meeting and that um we hire someone to to be the person that shows the stuff on the screen and um and is there to moderate the questions that that people have coming through um and that would be good enough i think i agree with that i think we should have somebody really knows how to do it what time are we starting those meetings i can't remember six o'clock that's plenty yep that that's like sorry okay well with that with that direction uh i will talk to susan and ever talk to her sister does that make sense to everybody and if she's not available she indicated immediately that she thought she was available for both those times so i think that would be in terms of i guess in terms of content i i guess in thinking about it i think we go down through the articles where i'm where i'm uncomfortable is when we i mean i'm you know we're going to need to talk about the town budget we're going to need to talk about the road grader um in terms of in terms of all those all those other special articles what i've been telling people who've asked me is that they should get on the zoom and be prepared to defend themselves just like they would at town meeting now how many are actually going to do that i don't know i don't know if it makes sense for us to suggest to those people if they join the zoom how do you feel about that sarah uh well that's up to you peter well i'm just curious what you what you think i i am not that sounds like hell to me but you know you go ahead i mean i'm just saying i'm i'm fine i guess talking about the conservation fund i'm fine you know i can talk for central roman economic development but i'm not qualified to talk about cvh h h or community connections or i think we need to extend an invite to them that they need to at least know that this is happening and they're not going to know if they're not living in our town um and and and they can decide whether or not they want to join um don't say that they're going to be required to speak on it but if someone has a question they may want to be there to answer that question yeah i mean those guys and having them at town meeting and be available to answer questions sarah what were you going to say i said i email those guys pretty frequently i had to email them to remind them to get their reports in and all to get their requests in so i've got a i've got a generic mailing list already it won't take any time to send it it's they don't show up they don't show up right thank you sarah you're so efficient we take it for granted yes thank you sarah but i i think the idea is just to go write down you know write down in terms of an agenda for the meeting we go write down through the articles unless anybody disagrees i think that's what we do okay well i'm i'm fine doing that i will reach out to uh susan about her sister i think the question is do we and and this is something peter that you'd want to think about and you would probably be talking to delia about this very question is do you want after every article for there to be an opportunity to ask questions i think that makes the most sense right and so yeah yeah absolutely questions questions questions and you know what i'm hoping is that you know we can ask people i i found that i don't know about you liz i found the the hand raising thing that's built in to zoom to be confusing to a lot of people i think just saying if somebody's watching the screen or somebody goes like this the technology person or i will realize they want to be recognized the other thing too is there actually is a um that's different from hand raised there's two boxes there's one for comments and there's one for questions so the questions one you could actually type in your question and if for some reason somebody's on a phone or doesn't know how you know to how to ask that question via typing um they may just that you're gonna want to talk to delia about that too like if there's someone that's just i'm sure she is going to tell us how to do this that's what i'm hoping and we'll follow her recommendation and see how it goes we'll learn from our first one and do better on the second one right perfect everyone agree that peter should do it and not susan clark i agree with that i do too i'm fine with that peter's fine with it so susan's fine with that she pointed out an email today that it's it's it's a select board show not a town meeting show so that's exactly what she said to me yeah that's exactly what she said to me and i'm i'm fine i'm fine with that i have a little moderating experience yeah how many words so i i do have one one last thing and i'm sorry to sorry to keep you i know we're we're past time but steve do we need to affirmatively somehow say where we are on this whole notch wrote situation because it feels to me like we keep trying to tell people what's going on and they're not satisfied we keep getting snarky emails saying what's happening why aren't you moving forward why isn't the road being maintained you know well i don't know mostly coming from one person but no i don't know what to think well i think we've got to move forward with that uh how to go about that i mean as i mentioned to you before i think we're going to have to have some extra meetings to be able to handle all of the stuff that we've got and that might be one right there where we have a meeting to try to get this and have these land owners there and and uh w ma needs to come in on that meeting too i think that's a good idea i just i just feel like we're and i know the personnel changed at w ma but i just feel like we're sort of between the devil and the deep blue sea and we're not really really doing stuff yeah uh the others steve and i had a conversation and i i meant to talk about this earlier but steve and i had a conversation he was he was suggesting that on these on these bigger issues which we seem to struggle to deal with that we potentially schedule some extra meetings with those items being the only item on the agenda and invite the interested parties and and have it out and try and uh try and move things forward the other the other one which i have on my radar screen which has been a struggle for a long time is uh the whole welch park situation and uh i am ready to make a recommendation that we withdraw from welch park i've had it i'm done i'm done with carl balan i'm done with benderson i'm done with all of them and i think the town has little or no benefit of being part of uh part of welch park and a fair amount of aggravation so anyway i'm not i'm not asking for decision tonight but there's another example of something that we need to sit down and focus on and figure out which we don't seem to be doing well if you do have that recommendation maybe you'd have the steps we have to take to do it too peter well i thought i would i thought i would have a conversation with the attorney i i think we just put them on notice and say we're withdrawing the the the the horse trade is is probably going to be or might be that uh we agree to uh maintain that road which we're basically already maintaining we're plowing because it goes to our fire station but it's pretty mature to even to even say that but uh certainly we're not going to let that road go unplowed peter i'm sorry i said who is the attorney these days um john riley john riley is the one who did the amended bylaws which still to this day to the best of my knowledge have never been signed by all the parties i've never even seen them so but we looked at him we looked at him way back when marimie was over a year ago yeah but i remember we asked him to do it and he was going to do them really quickly and i never remember receiving them but maybe that's just not him i mean i haven't i haven't looked at him i haven't looked at him in a year in a year either but uh you know everybody everybody verbally agreed to accept them but then from my knowledge they were never executed i don't i know for the town we never signed them i never signed them um but anyway that's that's just another example we're gonna have we have we have other things uh we have other things lurking in the background as as well so on the good thing i mean what's w m a um steve that you want to include wildlife management area oh right right right hey it's the state yeah well that okay well that's going to be a big meeting um okay um hey steve of m peter can i talk yes my concern about notch road is that there's a statutory process for taking a class 4 road up as you know that's right and it seems to me as though we're the frustration that's coming out is the fact that this process isn't being followed either you say to the people who live on the road you bring a petition to us and we'll follow through the procedure or else the select board initiates it goes through the whole site visit procedure and either makes a decision one way or another sarah i don't think we're quite there yet to do that we still have some preliminary stuff and like with the state of remand the wma to agree on something that's further up before we say oh okay now let's change the classification of the road because there's just a if people there there's a procedure and it's a public requires public hearings and requires notice and that's correct but i don't think we're there yet okay just bringing it back to your attention no certainly from the town's point of view we're not ready if if all of a sudden if all of a sudden we received a petition we'd have to act on obviously um i just it's just frustrating to me right i mean we need to we need to tell people what's going on and either do it or not do it or or whatever and i don't mind i don't mind telling our uh our our landowner up there who keeps telling us that we're being irresponsible and we've created a safety hazard bottom line is he's creating the safety hazard not us but anyway we did a we did a preliminary uh timeline uh an anticipated preliminary timeline and and that that was out there that and and uh brian has that i mean and that was a case where and why i said we aren't like he doesn't have it anyway well and i've said on notch road tonight but um i couldn't agree more we need signs up there and i will i will talk to uh i will talk to lee about that and i will talk uh go forward with um uh getting the sister to uh help us with our help us with our zoom meetings perfect anything else anybody no it's been a very long meeting i know i'm sorry about that uh so just just remember everybody the first one of these meetings is january 28th it's coming right up what what are you talking about no it's not january 28th peter it's in february first meeting is you have a select board meeting on the second of february and then the first informational meeting is february 16th the second one is february i've got some i've got some funky dates written down here i'm sorry what are the dates again the 16th 16th at a regular meeting in the 23rd you've got uh you've got a little postcard here i've got it down here i'm reading the wrong thing i'm sorry i'm tired i've got the right dates here who is our next select board meeting the next select board meeting is february second february second yeah i got me scared there because i've got something else on the 20 sorry guys i'm sorry i've got all this paper set on front of me and i'm looking at the wrong paper i apologize anything else anything else anybody i was gonna say quickly that um we scheduled the first meeting for um the subcommittee meeting for the budget for the capital spending plan committee and there's a good sort of large group of people that are interested that we had gotten from the survey that we sent out to the town and i just wanted to say that peter and i are going to be there and if one of the if anyone else on the select board said oh i really want to be at that meeting then it's going to have to be warned and so you're going to need to tell me that in advance well i was thinking of going on it but that mean i don't i don't know what it is you don't know what i don't know the date of it it's february 18th so if you're interested then we're going to have to warn it because i otherwise i'd have to kick you off why why because it would be more than three people on the select board meeting potentially so that means if three of us meet in the grocery store that's a select board meeting and we're going to be talking about the town at this meeting okay guys it's easy enough to warn it that's a simple thing let's speak i just don't want to forget because i'm not used to this kind of thing right i'd like to go okay so sarah we're going to need to warn the meeting all right just send me an email saying you know five o'clock whatever zoom all right so should i use the town zoom probably i was going to use mine i've already sent it out with my zoom and it depends on what day it is but yeah it's because if another if like the planning if it's on a wednesday or something in the planning commission is using it then no you can't do that what day is it what day of the week is the 28th 28th it's not the 28th it's the 28th wednesday i think or it's i don't know i'll talk with you about it sarah it's a person you're good well send me an email would you uh let her stay up all right are you guys adjourned yeah i think we're about to be yes i hope we're about to be i got another meeting so i want to get off this one okay thank you guys thanks for your patience and understanding bye everybody thank you