 And first, we need to approve the agenda. Are there any changes or amendments to the agenda as presented? Yeah, there's one we would like to add. It can be under management's items to talk about the penalty for late filing of homestead declarations. As he? As he? Sure. Any other changes to the agenda? There being none, is there a motion to approve the agenda? So moved. Seconded. Thank you. Motion. Any other comments on the changes or if not, if we could move the agenda, all in favor say aye. Aye. Any nay. Aye. Thank you. The agenda passes. We have the consent agenda item. I make a motion to approve the consent agenda items. Thank you, Katie. All second. Thank you, Danny. Any other comments on the consent agenda items? There being none. There's a motion and a second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. And there being none opposed, a motion passes. This is approximately 703, we're right on time. This is the time when we have any folks from the public in comment. If they are going to speak about something that is already on the agenda, if they can wait for that item in the agenda and you're more than welcome to speak then. If anyone wants to make some comments, you're welcome to do that. You can keep it within two minutes. Thanks. On my seat. Come on up. I have a cousin. I didn't expect to be here tonight. He's on the screen. Hi, Cous. Hey, how's it going? Good to see you. Secondly, I'd like to salute these gentlemen, some of the finest. And that comes from a nephew down in North Carolina serving this community. Who just came up here and traded in his patch. Probably taking one of your patches back. Thank you, sir. Some of the finest gentlemen. Some of the finest. Cous, I only got two minutes. I could use probably 10. Okay, I've been to this board five years ago. I believe it was. I think you were there. I'm a staunch advocate of affordable housing. I'm here tonight on the absolute thousands of Vermonters throughout the state. The hundreds of Vermonters in this community. And how many more cousin within six or seven months are going to come out of that school system? Okay, as highlanders, as alumni. And how many are coming back from college? And where are we as a community going to house them? I've spent 40 years of my life cousin down in Richmond. I've just built a street. I've named it perpetual lane. And seven of my 10 units have been converted. And they've been sold through the housing trust. If this town does not start doing those same things similar cause, not individuals, but the community in the town. I don't see a future for the younger generation here. I think you as a political leader owe them to look them in the eyes or write something publicly or state it publicly. That it's in their best interest to fight for their future here or to pack their bags and go find their dreams somewhere else. This is not sustainable because have you researched what happens to a society to a community when you lose and you don't have affordable housing? We're in the first to second phase cousin. I never would have imagined this or I would have never imagined the traffic on Route 100 when we were boys. I've went to numerous towns cause I hear a lot. I addressed the board. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Sure, Bill. Thank you. Okay. I've addressed the community by my workmanship here in this building with my company with the church. I apologize, Bill. No problem. Okay. No, I feel I should, sir. Okay. In saying that to the board. Okay. I lost my train too, Bill. Darn it. To the board. Can you also say, I don't know if you say anything. My name is Jeff Atwood. Okay. Okay. I own property on 3250 Waterbury Stone Road. I also own property, 58 Perpetual Lane Enrichment. I've spent my life, my majority of my life in Richmond. I'm in commercial construction. I built municipal facilities here in the community and throughout the state of Vermont, sir. Okay. Thank you. Okay. I heard not to look at you and even though I'm trying to address the board. So I've used my two minutes, probably more. I have an opportunity. I have an opportunity to bring affordable housing to this community. But I'm not going to do it without seeing it from a community that wants it. I want to see a community that wants all men and women of all colors, all race, all communities representative. Hi, it's just Jeff. It was a little retort. I've had a career in affordable housing. I'm a longtime member of the Vermont Affordable Housing Coalition. I'm a strong believer in affordable housing. And I think we can do what we can, but we have to be brought to projects. And what we can do to promote, I know in the zoning rewrites, we're probably going to be trying to be as positive as we can on creating affordable housing. But again, we're a select board. We can't necessarily bring the projects. We would love to see projects come into town. We have some that have done that. We need more. I agree with you 100%. Sir, we're on the same side. Right. I would also say as an advocate like you, it's very difficult for me to drive by looking up on the hill at how many units up on the hill, 80, 100, not one unit, sir. It's a big issue, Jeff. And, you know, the group in the construction industry talking about it all the time, the real estate industry talking about it all the time. It's impact on the locals. I was just talking to a game warden today was telling me about, you know, people in California selling their houses out there the average value of the home in California is $880,000 to a million dollars they're selling there and going down to Florida there's no inventory down there because it's getting bought up, you know, by people that are moving in down there and the same things happening here. People have the affordability to come up here because they're selling out where they are and they've got the pocket change to pay 50, 60,000 more than the average local person and it's shoving their ability to even consider a home right out before. With all due respect because I've spent 15 years being an advocate, studying it, understanding it, seeing what comes down the road. I've seen the bus going into the ditch with the school kids in it. So all I'm simply saying with my last 30 seconds is I want to do something. I want to do it right off Route 100. I want to put a big billboard up. I want to say this is what Waterbury. This is what the future of Vermont is. Affordable housing. And because I'll tell you how I feel into this board directly. You need a housing boom. You are way out of balance to provide a future. A future like we had. You need to build thousands of homes and I know how hard that is to swallow. I don't like it myself, but we squandered 15 years. We put it in writing in the legislation in 2005. To declare your designations of where you're going to build affordable housing. And for 15 years, imagine if a governor when he bought 20 acres would have shown and led by example, I'm going to build affordable housing because we need it. And imagine if we would have built thousands of homes at zero to 2% interest. Oh my goodness. And if there's one thing I've learned and I believe most of us in this room have learned by now, it's the squashed and it's the missed opportunities in life that you take with you forever. We missed an opportunity because it's going to take some hard, long work. 10 years I'm predicting. I'm saying it publicly right now. It's not up to me and it really shouldn't be up to us. It should be up to that generation that needs it. If they see it and they understand what's happened, maybe just maybe they'll fight hard enough for it. I don't know yet, but I know I'm going to go out there. I'm going to holler and scream for it because that's the only chance we have as business owners. Okay. I can go on tonight. Really appreciate it. Wish you all a happy holiday. Thank you. This is not something that we're going to solve in a few minutes here. It's probably something that's good for a future select board meeting. Maybe focus more directly on affordable housing or maybe even a separate, you know, meeting that we could discuss that have developers have housing advocates in, you know, I think there are a lot of people who are interested in affordable housing in the community. So thank you for bringing that to our attention. Thanks, Jeff. Any other public comment? If there's no other public comment, we'll get to our select board agenda. The first item is to consider the appointment of the library commissioner. She's here. Hi. I'm Margaret Moreland. I'm Margaret Moreland and I moved to Vermont about eight years ago now. I worked in libraries my whole life. My first job was when I was 14. I was a page in the local library. My last job, I was a law librarian in a law school in New York. And I think I have a lot to, I have a lot of experience. So I would like to make use of that and volunteer. Do you have any questions? Do we have any questions to the board from Margaret? Can you remind us the term that's open for us? Three months. Oh, right. It would be through the town meeting. Right. She would do a petition in January. I'll send a reminder to run for an unexpired two-year term. And are you planning on continuing for the two years after that? Yes, yes. As long as I can keep going. There will also be another five-year term open. The library commissioners have recommended it. That has been my question. So that has been something that's been recommended by the other members? They've agitized. They interviewed, there were three candidates that were interviewed. And this is a candidate that they're recommending for an appointment. I don't have a sound, but yeah, it's a good experience. And I wish you luck. That's the library commission. I make that motion to appoint Margaret as the library commission. Thank you. Second? Well, second. Thank you. Any further discussion? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Second? Well, second. Thank you. Any further discussion? Welcome aboard, Margaret. Hi. Welcome to the library commission. Thanks so much for being with us. Thank you. Thank you for having us, sir. Okay. Next item. Conversation with the state police. I'm so glad to be here, especially as representative of the central Vermont state police advisory board. We really appreciate you. I don't know. I know Kyle, you were at the picnic. I was at the picnic, yes. We were really glad to show and we really appreciate what you all do. I think the contract with the state police has worked quite well. And we want to have you here as kind of an open dialogue as maybe I'll open it up to you. What you guys see is things that are working. Maybe things that need to be improved, et cetera. So first, Mike, this is Lieutenant White. Yes. The station commander. You can introduce your troops to us. Yes. So obviously, as the representative from the state police, I'm very happy that we have entered into our second contract with the town of Waterbury. I've been fortunate enough to be here through the entire tenure of the first contract. And I feel that everything has worked out very well this year, just out of sheer, I don't know. These two guys joined us. It was nothing that was planned. The former day shift trooper Keith Louia deployed earlier in the year. And trooper Ryan Reimler stepped up to the plate and stepped into our day shift position. And then a little bit of a few months later, I guess, the night shift trooper Joe Chiraco put in for a transfer back to New Haven and trooper Tyler Raincourt put in for that position. So we're lucky to have two new troopers to kind of bring in the beginning of the second contract year. And again, I think that everything has been working very, very smoothly, at least from our vantage point. On a monthly basis, when I prepare the monthly recaps to the select board, it's pretty random as far as we could go from having 110 calls in a month down to 60 calls in a month. So there's really no, nothing that I could put my finger on in terms of trends. I know the last year and a half, almost two years now, it's been difficult for everyone with COVID. We've gone through a different, numerous different response levels, which limited our contact with the public and what we actually allowed the troopers to do throughout the state, which kind of varied what our responses look like to different things. Definitely, it has affected our motor vehicle work. And again, it's just to err on the side of caution to keep the troopers and the public safe and to limit contact across the board. Just in the last year, though, just for the town of Waterbury, the state police has responded to well over a thousand calls for service, a thousand and 12 to be exact. Out of those thousand and 12 calls for service, we've managed to make 119 arrests based on those calls. We've conducted pretty close to 500 traffic stops with 239 traffic citations or tickets issued and 218 warnings. So even under the COVID protocols and restrictions, I think we still did the town of Waterbury a decent amount of service. The calls, like I said, they vary from month to month and there's really no rhyme or reason for it. But just the latest one that I just submitted to the town manager today for October, there was nearly 100 calls for service and the troopers took about two-thirds of those calls. The contract troopers took about two-thirds of those calls. So it again varies from month to month, but we're definitely doing some good work out there. To the calls for service for the year you said around a thousand, does that include the motor vehicle stops or is that the motor vehicle stops in addition to those calls? Yes. The motor vehicle stops are not considered a call for service. These are just everything from assaults to larcenies to frauds to vandalisms to arrest warrants and things like that. Those are the calls for service and then additionally the 450 or so motor vehicle interactions that we've made. And just to refresh everyone's memory, the public in particular, the town's contract is 80 hours, so 40 hours for each of these troopers. And we have a day shift that's what, Tuesday through? Monday through Friday, 8 to 5, and then the night shift works Tuesday through Saturday, 5 to 2 a.m. First of all, thank you all for your service. I know I come from a law enforcement family, so I really appreciate what all you guys do. I'm going to leave it first. I have maybe a few questions about leaving to the board members that they have questions. Sure. I appreciate you coming tonight. Lieutenant White and as well the other officers and welcome them. A couple other folks. If you can give me a minute. And I'm going to turn to the water berries. Serving the town of Waterbury. The last year and a half. Throughout the state. Have you seen. The general decline or uptick. I mean, I know it's hard to gauge. Because of the COVID restrictions. But. kind of been on an even keel or is it have you seen an increase or a decrease? I think just as a general rule it's increased and I think a lot of that has to do with the restrictions that the department put on the troopers for actually being out there. So a lot of the proactive work which turns into a lot of the deterrence for criminal activity the ability to do that was sort of taken away from us under the umbrella of trying to be a little bit more cautious to limit the interaction that you know we all had with with the general public. So as a general rule I would definitely say that crime has certainly increased a little bit and now that we're kind of I don't want to say back to normal but we're trying to get back there I'm hoping to see that they get back to where it was and then maybe a little bit better. I think originally when we originally contracted with the Vermont State Police there for services here in Waterbury out of Middlesex I believe at the time you guys were employing 15 troopers out of out of the Middlesex barracks with the I'm thinking with the additional two here to Waterbury that product is 17. Is it still at 17 or have you since employed more or less. Our numbers our numbers should be we should have 14 troopers and Middlesex plus four sergeants and then the two Waterbury troopers are in addition. So I should have 20 that that uniform troopers that work in Middlesex. Right now today where we set from those 20 we have two vacancies and three people are deployed currently and one is on a longer term training assignment but it's to get a new patrol dog trained up so we welcome that that absence for now because it's definitely going to to benefit the state in the long run. But yeah we're in Middlesex where unlike any other barracks throughout the state we are our staffing level is has decreased. But that's the national trend. Everyone everyone's having staffing issues and law enforcement in general. So when we contracted with the state police again I thought we were Middlesex had 15 officers serving 17 towns with the current staff you have now and you can correct me if I'm wrong Bill wasn't there the availability if they needed to call the trooper or troopers from Waterbury to assist with other with other issues in other towns. Wasn't there that availability as part of the contract. Well the troopers that are here are assigned to Waterbury and that's where their assignment is for their 40 hours a week. I'm sure that if there was an incident that another trooper needed backup assistance and these folks were closest they would certainly go and we would we would encourage that and want to see that. But I believe for the most part these gentlemen are here in Waterbury unless there's an urgent situation that calls them somewhere else. Yeah that's correct. At the present time we have a number of shifts that we fill on a monthly basis on overtime and that's open to every to all the troopers. It would be just an absolute you know drop of the hat emergency where we would have to pull the Waterbury trooper but it's definitely not a it's nothing that we would schedule these guys are here in Waterbury and under just drop of the hat sort of emergencies would they be pulled. Yeah I don't have any issues with that that scenario whatsoever. I just didn't know in the last couple of years that we've had to contract if you had to had to use that resource or anything there's been an issue where for some reason you had to pull off one of our officers here to help out just out of curiosity. You know more than happy to assist if they needed it. I don't have any certainly complaints about that scenario. I didn't know if there had been an issue like that that came about. Nothing that I can recall in the recent future for sure. All right I appreciate you taking my questions and that's all I got Mike. Okay thanks Mike. Yeah so thank you again for coming and I coincidentally had a phone call this afternoon from a resident who was a little concerned about in his perception a lack of visibility so to kind of follow up on his angle a little bit not looking for hard and fast statistics but when you do write traffic tickets percentage of time that you're writing tickets that are on Waterbury's ordinance on town highways versus 100 over 2 or anything like that. Do you do write tickets? Do you do speed patrol on town highways around the town? Yeah so I mean my I tend to be in high this locations like you'll see me backed into the fire station in the front parking lot looking for texting and with us for writing tickets versus warning that's that's our discretion right so it's not it's not a oh this is that that's certainly a ticket so it's case by case basis fully you know there's not many spots other than you know this main strip for speed patrols but you'll see me daytime parked there across from cold hollow try to try to stay more high visibility spots and kind of the entrances of the town. Do you ever do Guptell Road or Neon Flats? Yes so I'll be yes I make multiple trips throughout the back roads probably three or four per day of all of the Perry Hill Guptell Neon Flats Gregg Hill so you'll see me cruise around through there you know probably three or four times a day. We have a select board got an email today from somebody I don't know if he has his own radar gun but yeah he was running radar evidently on Loomis Hill Road so yeah we want to talk about that so first I have a couple of comments and then I'll have questions one I think our relationship is probably one of the best things we're seeing in policing I think this is a real model of what we're doing with with the contract with you because a lot of small communities are wrestling with the cost of maintaining their own police departments for why we're here now and I think it it works well to get you know we may not get maybe as good of a service because you know if you have your own police force but in small communities afford to have all the training the equipment and whatnot it becomes a real burden on the taxpayer so I think this is a model that a lot of communities may want to look at and I don't know if maybe that could help you know the governor you know get you some more positions you know I know you look at Burlington they're having problems with you know recruiting you know anecdotally I would think Burlington would probably be one of the higher paid police departments in the state and when they're having problems getting I assume you're having problems with recruiting you know you know troopers it's it's a real tough time in policing and you guys do a great job and it's tough going into a couple of questions I think speeding is kind of and it's interesting because just the last couple of days I've just I it's probably just coincidence I've seen a couple of stops in in different areas in the community where you know over the course of COVID you know and I understand why stops aren't going to be made because you know there's a whole bunch of you know if someone's going down the down group 100 at 90 miles an hour that's probably one thing if they're going you know 10 miles and over you know with the COVID issues it's probably not as much of a priority but we're seeing I think Bill kind of raised a couple issues Gupto road Neal and Flats we've had a lot of complaints on Little River Road going up to the reservoir people speeding and complaining and I know you can't be everywhere but how do you think we could you know I know you're not going to be everywhere what do you think would be good ways to approach some of these troublesome spots other than you know maybe putting you know the blinking lights stuff like that so the town already has several things that employees for to operate as they're speeding there's the flashing lights that are currently right in both directions on star road I know in the last month maple street became a real issue especially with increased tourist traffic water bridge dough road but the the speedometer that are the speaker could be moved up there or even one of the signs that's on stow street moved out in that direction just the lighting operators now I'm the night shift trooper and I often spend the first couple hours making sure that everyone in town gets to see the colors on the cruiser so I try to hit almost every through it that's in town everywhere the guys and that means usually around dinner time when folks are downtown I'm usually coming back and forth up and down route to the back side of the neighborhoods up stow street stuff like that everyone sees those blue flashing lights and that just automatically the town wants me to put them on when I go through so I think part of it too is that particularly that email phone that was referenced was like the early morning so it's times when you're not here so that's just part of it you know people are going to work it's still dark because it's dark all the time this time of year so that's what we had talked about you know like the flashing lights I'm being you know a tool that we have to use because it's just you're not here what you know it's not on you can't be there but that it kind of leaves my question as I was looking at the numbers of calls for service you know when you're when trooper they're not on duty versus on duty and it looks and I'm I'm only looking at two months so I'm not sure like the year of data but it looks like it's pretty evenly spread and it could wait either way sometimes and I'm curious what what was looked at in terms of those hours and if it feels like it's working really well or if it seems like maybe there's room to move and I wasn't a part of the board when things were first when the contract was first done and all the hours so I'm curious if it's been talked about or thought about if maybe there's different hours during the possible so I lieutenant white and I were both here when the first contract was negotiated and when we were talking with the folks from the state police the colonel and other people who were assigned to come up with the first contract we were told that you know we would have to work within the parameters of the state police and and their normal work schedules so they have a they have an agreement with the state and the troopers work certain shifts and those are pretty typically the shifts that are available we chose to you know basically the troopers are assigned 40 hours a week standard there's there's overtime but we have two troopers for 40 hours a week each it's 80 hours and we essentially chose to leave Sunday as the day that we didn't really have coverage at all because day times Monday through Friday were the times that people are going to work we have school and session and then having a trooper on Friday night and Saturday night seem to be a good idea given the activity in the downtown I believe the contract does have a provision that says that if it can be worked out on their end and we don't get to dictate anything but there is some ability that you know Lieutenant White could assign somebody well we want you to work this week on Tuesday and Wednesday come in at six o'clock now if they did that in the morning there's probably some ramifications in terms of overtime and everything else and that might trickle down to us but I'm not sure we've never pressed that provision we've never really asked um only really one time during the whole contract to this day have we ever really reached out with a specific concern and Lieutenant White and I worked pretty um we had the issue with vagrants if you will camping up behind the old off ramp on the interstate up behind some of the houses on stow street and I don't know if troopers went out at odd times to deal with with those kind of issues but that was really the only time that we had any real kind of particular burr under the saddle issue that we were getting a lot of complaints about from the public I mean every now and then we got this one from Tom Scribner today about you know the speeding on Loomis Hill Road I did ask Bill Woodruff to get the radar feedback signed up there even though we've already kind of taken him in for the winter I asked them put it back out for a while but you know and I got the phone call this afternoon which was about patrolling in the neighborhoods and the particular person said you know on Route 100 at Guptell Road a lot of times in non-high traffic hours people are taking left hand turns on the red light there because they don't feel like waiting and I said well you know unless you're right there I mean if there's a trooper parked in the pullout on Route 100 people aren't going to do that so we're only going to be able to catch that if you happen to be driving up the road when somebody doesn't but anyway so I don't know if you have a comment about the off hours just I mean mainly for the for the off hours um it wouldn't be something where I would just ask Ryan to sign on early because then it becomes a safety thing because literally if if we have a day shift the day shift guy comes out on it like five so that he can address issues that he sees at you know at 6 a.m. or something like that he would literally be out by himself we are the largest part-time police agency probably in the country because we don't have the the staffing we don't have the bodies to to have a 24-hour response so our night shift goes off duty at 2 a.m. and they're on call until 4 30 and their day shift comes on call at 4 30 until they sign on their shift at 8 o'clock so if there was some specific data that we had like if you had the the sign up there that said you know on a regular basis at 6 15 in the morning there's you know vehicles traveling and well in excess of the speed then I could certainly if we had that data to back it up I would certainly say hey can someone come out with with Ryan early and I would feed him some overtime to to come out so that we could have a couple of guys out and it's just for it's just a safety thing for us because literally if he's out by himself and gets into something at 6 a.m. you know the that next troop were on call could literally be they could you know the you could live in random and have to come all the way up here and then just to speak to kind of the days of the week when there's things going on in town on a Saturday and I can think back specifically back to the car show I asked Ryan to to kind of shift his schedule a little bit so he was in town during that weekend so that we had presence during the day when normally we wouldn't and I've asked these guys to do some things like that we have the 4th of July 4th of July you're probably lying for the parade yeah the river like parade these guys are both kind of are going to come in for for that on off days or on off time so if we know that there's something going on and you know we can we can shift it far enough in advance to to make that happen we do that just to make sure that there is a presence when they should be around. Maybe you could help us I know this is kind of right outside of the contract and maybe you know it's something that's becoming more of a problem in Waterbury and maybe you could have some creative ideas for us in our downtown we have parking problems and we're seeing that you know I think you have a lot more important things than giving a lot of parking tickets and stuff like that anything that you could recommend to us to do that might help with the parking situation. What specifically is the issue of your terms? Well we have it just in the downtown you know what we used to have by the bank parking lot is now a paid but no one wants that go to paid parking and people are going farther and farther away and you're seeing people parking in illegal spots and stuff and you know some of them are supposed to be temporary spaces but they're being used for maybe longer term parking I don't know what you know we're just looking for some help. Well I've already told you on parking stuff right it's that kind of stuff you know you can you don't need to be a sworn officer to issue a parking ticket so we could hire somebody you know 20 hours a week to go around and write parking tickets for downtown parking enforcement. We have had some complaints of late from Gary Dillon the fire chief who's just concerned about trying to get emergency vehicles around school at school in particular pickup time in the afternoon drop off time people come they drop their kid and they drive away but in the afternoon they're you know they're queuing up on Stow Street on High Street and you know it's it's a challenge and we haven't talked yet with the school principal about that. You did and I think something outside of an enforcement officer or something out with some creative way to maybe help that whole park. Yeah I was I was going to echo what Bill said you know to issue a municipal parking ticket you don't have to be a sworn officer and then the thing around the school is with emergency vehicles I think it comes down to just taking the time to do some education and getting people to understand you know what happens if something goes on right now and you're just sitting in the middle of the throughway or however and maybe just takes a you know someone to kind of point out those things. Okay and just the last thing you know being part of the central Vermont state police advisory board I really I think there our attendance has been waning and stuff like that and I think the group the people still involved can be really helpful because I think the dialogue like we're having here is really important you know and I think that group is a lot of people who you know believe in the importance of law enforcement I think you know that group has not met with you know the state believes in a lot and I think just in terms of the whole central Vermont area I think if you the more we have dialogue about things the more effective policing that we could have and I think it's really really important you know especially in these times crazy times where you get attacked with so many things that you know and I don't expect you to be guys to be social workers but sometimes you wind up being social workers for a lot of a lot of things but you do what you can and you know you're doing a really you know noble job it's really a noble thing to be in law enforcement but you know I think that could this communication is great and I think you know working with the whole central Vermont advisory board I think would be really helpful I know your times are really stretched with COVID and stuff like that yeah and I just met with with the president Jeff last week and that's kind of why we postponed the meeting that we're supposed to have tomorrow night so that we can try and engage the other towns within within our board that don't have the representation and try and kind of get get some of that back so the hope is that we can get through the holidays get some get some more interest through the towns and and get the get those folks that are are represented in their town to kind of help us kind of forward that message to the other towns to to kind of get that representation because it's like I said the communication is is huge and especially you know it'll be it'll be good to get back to that thanks okay and I really appreciate that Mr. Barnett did I make a comment? I just I live on South Main Street and you've heard complaints about people coming right go up so the other people can hear from the council. I live on South Main Street and I think you've heard some complaints about you not being visible but I just want to say thank you because before we had the contract with you we had a village police department and our houses were getting broken into and South Main Street was a drag strip and that hasn't happened even since the paving you know the paving had been done down there for a year so I think your presence has been a good one I feel like I can leave my door unlocked at times again now which I hadn't for several years and I don't think you hear enough compliments but whether it's your visibility or people know the troopers are now in town or whatever from my perspective I have at least the same if not better coverage than when we have our own village police force so thank you for that yeah I think I'm from the rec department to make me from the rec department I mean I have no issues I came in right when the contract started we've transferred through a bunch of officers and nothing but positive things I text Ryan all the time he's got really clever spots through Waterbury Center here if I wasn't working for the town or I was going fast so definitely would be speed I would definitely get it because he's got some really good spots but super good response time to the park stuff like river of light and all the parade stuff any community events they're super super on it so yeah thank you thank you thank you hey I'm coming it's not I thank you for coming and we want to keep the dialogue open I think this is great that we had this thank you thank you very much take care of you all keep up the good work okay move on to our next agenda item consideration impossible repeal of the town of water very important regarding act 250 review designation speed yes I'm here okay so we've had a number of discussions and I'll take my mask so people can hear better so we've had a number of discussions about this issue just a quick recap we've had the the town of Waterbury ordinance regarding act 250 review designation since 2013 a select board at the time felt that we needed to stay as a one-acre town for commercial projects for the threshold we were previously a one-acre town we enacted subdivision bylaws in 2012 which normally would have the town go to a 10 acre threshold so the select board at the time opted to stay at the one acre threshold just to have that added layer of review we had the establishment of the development review board the year before that so they were fairly new to the review process the planning commission has discussed this at some length and we don't have any planning commission members here tonight see part your came to your last meeting and I thought he gave a really good recap I don't feel a need to recap that I think all of you were present at that meeting so you know there definitely are concerns and so I just assume keep it short and sweet I got in touch with our municipal attorney David Rue and we Bill and I reported the last meeting David's advice you can repeal an ordinance by putting it on the agenda and as a repeal if you take action with with the repeal with a motion to repeal the ordinance then we have to post a notice in five places and put it in the newspaper within 14 days and then there's no public hearing required but there is the option within 60 days for a petition if citizens feel strongly they can do a petition for a vote a town vote and that would be regarding again regarding the appeal so that potentially the town voters could overturn your action that's really the only appeal if you will of this select board actually it's actually 60 days for it takes effect in 60 days okay let me you may be right yeah so you have to put it in 14 days so unless the petition is followed in accordance with section 1973 of this title it's a state statute or does shall become effective 60 days after the date of its adoption or at such time following of expiration so they the specific statute that allows a petition so once we post it yeah they have 45 days to submit a petition okay don't submit okay that's in the other five days then it okay becomes effective in 60 days okay I think it's your state um I did five percent I think it's five percent of the voter check similar to other how many is that count 230 something 200 about 220 yeah ish about 220 thank you so that's really all I had to say unless you have questions on more of the legal side of it so Phil we're in the process now we you know we have basically started that process so unless we have an appeal letter so you haven't repealed anything yet right we only agenda tonight if you want to make a motion to repeal that ordinance right I think you have language they have to do that and then what happens once you make that motion then as soon as practical tomorrow we'll we'll post the fact that you repeal the ordinance and we'll post with it instructions that says the voters have 45 days to submit a petition to ask for town meeting to overturn their decision if no petition comes in then 60 days after the vote on the 61st day the repeal is effective okay if a petition comes in within that 45 days or 44 days whatever it is then that comes to the select board and then the select board would have to warn the town meeting to see if the voters would appeal that would repeat would overturn your decision so that's what the process what's the time frame on the town meeting 30 days 30 days well 30 day notice they'd have to warn they probably have you know within a certain prescribed time but they would have to have a warning that 30 days in advance before that motion is made is there going to be discussion tonight about it it's up to the board it's the board's the board's meeting so well maybe because I heard at the last meeting we we've heard very compelling evidence for a possible you know change to go to you know go to you know from the one acre to ten acres wouldn't affect too many proposals uh I know I I at least I could speak for myself I didn't see too many slippery slopes maybe if you could expound Steve on the reluctance of the planning commission sure so our review process for commercial projects is limited to site plan review and conditional use if a project requires conditional use to review so in certain areas like impact historic sites and historic districts broader traffic impacts some impacts to natural resources wetlands things of that nature our criteria are quite limited in scope so the active 50 criteria are much broader and more detailed and the active 50 process is essentially a referral process to state agencies so if their wildlife impacts the agency of natural resource gets involved if their transportation impacts the Vermont agency of transportation gets involved so if their historic district if their involvement there the division for historic preservation makes comment so the criteria are more detailed the referral process is more detailed so projects that might we have actually six historic districts so we often have projects that do have some impact there so there are some situations where with these um types of projects that there is more it's a more robust review through active 50 the flip side of that is that there's a cost involved there are significant fees there's a consultant cost sometimes they're trafficking or a transportation impact fees like Paris gun shop bill recounted that experience which was a bit of an ordeal so so there there is an economic development aspect to this that it's an added cost you know especially for smaller projects that might only be on an acre and a half site and Duncan and his engineer John Petrosky gave you some testimony about that so I think that that's kind of the spectrum of concerns the planning commission is working on the unified development bylaw ultimately we'll get to site plan review conditional use review the current draft has some additional criteria the planning commission proposed historic district review and our other historic districts that was met with a lot of opposition so we didn't move forward with that but there are other ways that we can address some of these concerns some of them may or may not you may decide or you will decide whether to move forward with those ultimately so so there are some gaps that we can fill locally but the reality is that a local review is not as extensive and we don't refer things out to the state agencies we don't have local active 50 review such a thing exists but it's a very high bar we have a lot of extra standards we have to meet so but that again really just affects projects that are under active 50 jurisdiction so this a chicken and the egg kind of situation where I think you just suggested that the unified development bylaws they're considering additional criteria for site plan review you mentioned historic stuff and there's been opposition so my question was whether before or after the select board makes this decision the planning commission through the town plan process in the bylaw process has the ability to expand the criteria by which they will reduce that right correct so they they could address some of these things but it will take time and if the if the bylaw is repealed now then we just go forward with what we have for the existing site plan criteria right correct yeah that's correct and and then the planning commission could propose more robust criteria later yes right okay so so it is it is as I thought and as Steve indicated that you know it's it's more robust right now through active 50 and if you do it right now our our review process will not be as robust as that and it probably will never be as robust as active 50 even if the planning commission added some things they probably would not you know carbon copy the 10 criteria plus some of the permits that you were mentioning were already required to get even without the active 50 review like in our permit or construction general permit and really active 50 is just a summary of all the permits that you're required to get through all the various state agencies and I think I'm right on that so I guess my my point is the cost of going through active 50 just to go through a summary of all your permits that you're already required to get I'm not sure there's a real benefit for a smaller project as you get higher up in my deal of creating conditions for you to have to follow but I guess I'm kind of following on the side of our DRB current regulations might be okay because once you submit an application to the state they actually go through the process and let you know what other permits you might actually need to get and then active 50 is just a summary of that and is that correct Steve um yeah I wouldn't necessarily agree okay I think that certainly what your point is good that um any projects regardless of size that need certain thresholds have to get stormwater permits well and permits other state permits so you're absolutely correct there but I wouldn't agree that active 50 is a summary I think there are other criteria that get into other areas whether it's historic issues or something beyond but certainly a curb cut on route 100 is going to have to be dealt with regardless of the size of the parcel so you're absolutely right but active 50 is a more robust sort of expansive it's an environmental protection law to be honest with you it's really and it's expanded into historic preservation some other areas air pollution they talk about traffic they talk about aesthetics in some instances in the white so it is uh it's it's more than what you said John yeah um but just so everyone is clear what John said is true even if you repeal this ordinance and um projects from between one and 10 acres no longer have to go through active 50 it does not mean that they don't need to get state permits if they are so thank you for that yeah good that's one so first of all I'm going to try not to cry because this is very difficult because I'm on the opposite side of John and I apologize he's my son and he's buying the property we own but I've had the and I've been vaccinated and boosted so um I have seen how DRBs work and active 50 work because I lived and put and was involved in a soup with a dirt pile incident on South Main Street so I wrote something for each of you and I'll try to read it today because I know those guys you might want to make sure they yeah I don't know everybody I know I'm saying hi and I do feel bad you were just a little over an acre but I just had been burned badly so um so over the past decade I've learned a lot about active 50 and the local zoning process including DRB appeals I've learned the strengths and weaknesses of a citizen board as well as the need of a system of checks and balances that's underwritten by strong local zoning regulations it's my understanding that you may be voting tonight to repeal waterbury's current status as a one acre town for the purpose of active 50 consideration since I only recently heard of this myself I'm curious and concerned as to how informed the general public is of this proposal in addition how involved has the planning commission been in the proposed change they spent the last past couple years or more and I've been at a lot of those meetings updating the local zoning ordinances and probably a valuable insight into whether or not the active 50 criterion will be adequately covered in the revised bylaws I'm hopeful you reach out to all the stakeholders in the process versus just those close to the development process development process I'm hopeful you'll consider my following ideas and deliberations tonight and postpone the vote to future day when all stakeholders have been consulted number one the local DRB is often made up of engineers architects and builders who potentially have biased opinions and favors of the developers they do business with in our small town some members which was the case in my case have pre-existing working relationships with local developers which can make objectivity difficult this is in dark contrast to my personal experience with the active 50 board members who come from various corners of the district and not from our town in the past I've been told the town of waterbury does not have a large enough planning budget to handle permit enforcement for its existing zoning laws to say anything about adequately overseeing the additional criteria currently being used under active 50 our current zoning laws do not yet have ordinances that pertain specifically to historic preservation in the entire historic district versus just our historic disc downtown however criterion eight in the active 50 process covers aesthetics scenic and natural beauty and the preservation of historic sites one of the reasons we were successful in getting the dirt pile out from behind our house was because of the historic preservation criterion as well as the fact that there had been no stormwater changes made or stormwater permits gladdened piece of property so excuse me criterion so the unique homes of north and south main street have history and architecture dating back to the early 1800s including waterbury's first home which sits on probably an acre or less down on butler by butler pond see um lemmry house which was the first i can't remember the what was the man's name as revolver it's imperative that we continue to maintain the historical integrity of these properties versus allowing them to be burned down by the local fire department to wait make way for more modern structures which was the case for a beautiful house on south main street not but two years ago i found my past drb experience to be incredibly flawed pertaining to the checks and balances needed to ensure that developers get the appropriate state permits before beginning construction this includes consultation with floodplain and stormwater experts as outlined in criterion three and four of act 250 given my home's proximity to the floodplain on south main street and a shared ditch that said shed stormwater from 170 plus acres including interstate 89 i have concerns that flood and stormwater reviews will be minimized or even checked at all which has been my past experience with the drb i had to bring the checklist issue up at a drb hearing when they were going to give the permit they there was no requirement at that time to me to get any of those state permits and i don't know if there is now uh lastly i fear the expense of appealing any infringements by the developer will fall on private citizens versus the developer who often has many lawyers and professionals at their disposal we spent upwards of 125 000 of our own money um trying to get the dirt pile removed from the floodplain we got behind our house before we connected with the act 250 commission ultimately required it to be removed i realized that an expense to the developer for using the act 250 process but i believe that expense will be fairly transfer unfairly transferred to bordering landowners if we change to a 10 acre 10 acre town and they'll be the one spending the thousands of dollars to fund the experts and still the developers within vermont we have approximately 128 one acre towns and 134 10 acre towns several 10 acre towns are considered such because they've not yet adopted permanent zoning and subdivision regulations so they automatically fall under 10 acre townships however others such as waterbury have elected to remain one acre towns until their zoning ordinances are further updated which i wholeheartedly agree with i cannot support becoming a 10 acre town until they're supporting evidence of the act 250 criterion that i spoke of are adequately covered in waterbury's local zoning ordinances and the planning commission has an active role in that process to do otherwise is to put the community its taxpayers and our government at risk for further litigation as well as appearing overly biased toward development i'm hopeful you consider my request to table the repeal at this time and wait till our current zoning laws can provide equal protection to both private landowners and developers thank you can you say i have a question for you okay i've done a question for you so if you own this property and you want us to wait on this why are you just not saying after the project because i think the project is a good project okay and i think i think that i don't think that they will have the problems getting that permit that the ambulance who also had interest in that getting it because it's not going to be as discerning to the neighbors this was very difficult for me i mean i would maybe we needed two acres or 1.5 acres i mean i feel really badly about this but i just can't go through it again because the field bond my house is two acres so if you go to one acre or 10 acres that could be exact no i know you're gonna say that mr. Lambert no one's more than 10 acres but people can sell an acre to somebody or two acres to somebody for a temporary time no i have to go through act 250 and then buy back him and i'm not saying he will do that but i just i really feel like the local press has failed us and i don't want it to happen again thank you thanks happy one i do want to address some of the issues that you you did bring up in this discussion i know i served with your son on the on the drb and i don't know things have changed in the last three years on them on the drb but i think unlike what you're portrayal here i think it's a very dedicated group of individuals who are not just i'm not an architect but i wasn't a developer i was involved in affordable housing i was involved in farming i had a very broad and i hope they recruit a broad brush group of individuals i know they're very professional individuals i think at least from my opinion they're trying to do the best for waterbury and i think some of what they could request in civil traffic 50 reviews they could request from that developer do historic preservation do environmental reviews do all kind of traffic studies they can but it's not required that's what i was told i was told that there's no policy that requires those permits from the state and that they as a board agreed that they wouldn't require that it's only as good as the rules mark you weren't on that board i know i know we did for some of the ridge lines that we required to do some screening assessments of of things before project work were approved i don't know if things have changed on on the drb but they can do a lot of things i understand and well this was a true problem i'm really sorry what happened with your with your situation i think that's very very unfortunate but i sometimes don't i don't think act 250 is necessarily the solution to everything in our state it was developed and i know from being you know i was in environmental education and agricultural education as a student i studied under darby who's one of the architects for act 250 act 250 has you know the change was it was to prevent large scale developments from you know that are going to impact our community and that's one of the i i don't necessarily think i think there are really a handful of projects that will potentially affect that if we have an active drb who will ask for historic studies which we can we can work with the state historic preservation office if we want to do environmental reviews we can ask for that and i just i i just think too do you know the 96 i think it's another level of bureaucracy that we're that we're asking to do and i think our drb if they if they don't do the job that they're supposed to do they can do it but they need a there is few requirements and b just so you know 96 of projects that go through act 250 i looked on the state website today are approved 96 so it's cost ultimately this state is i'm very i work with people from all over the country our development costs in this state are huge that's why a lot of people from other states don't want to work here because i i'm not saying i think some of the standards to keep our environment to keep our historic reservations are really important but are we going to sacrifice a lot of our economic legality to protect a few projects i just want to say i don't i want to make sure that you feel like you were heard and i appreciate your letter and then it's terrible when things don't go right and you're the one in that position and i don't want you to feel like as we move forward with the discussion of the vote that it's because we don't hear what you're saying and and and this is valuable and also to address what you talked about with stakeholders this is i think the third meeting at which we discussed at length planning commission members have been have been here have listened to the meetings have given input so it's not without communication so i just want to address that to make sure that that's clear and also it's again the third public meeting it was on the agenda not as an appeal or a repeal last time but it was on the agenda all of those meetings can be reviewed also via zoom so if you want to see or the recordings so if you want to see the conversations and the input that we got from other folks that's a way that you can also yourself here and also send it to others my understanding was the planning commission was split on it is that accurate so they didn't give us an input as a board only certain individuals gave input so it wasn't like a vote or anything like that where there were members you know i just want to clarify i know a lot of the drb members now and i do think they're fine but there's no guarantee that that will always be the case unless and you say we wanted or we asked for but we're with act 250 it's retired it's not wanted or asked for run for a seat on the drb we need a variety of people with different skills you don't have to be a professional architect and whatnot you just have to have some good common sense it's good to have engineers architects on on that on the drb but i think sometimes when people come with that common sense perspective i think that's important i just wanted to thank like yes i could could you chris could duck and speak first and i'll go to you okay sure go ahead so i'm dunkin mcdougal and i've spoken about this project before the background is that the children's literacy foundation a nonprofit that's been run in waterproof for 23 24 years now is hoping to purchase a 1.3 acre property on route 100 and hoping to build a one-story 3 300 square foot building and first of all i respect and thank you mrs. grace for sharing their heartfelt feelings and i would just note that mrs. grace's situation and cliff's situation are neither of them are common i think for the most part our situation a local nonprofit that has a one-story building that has very little traffic that's probably not totally representative of the projects you may get and unfortunately this is grace's situation with the dirt pile that's probably not common either and i think what the select board should think about is what kind of support do you have from the drb and from the planning commission as you've heard before of all the towns in vermont that have subdivision regulations there are only three that are still one acre town and they seem to be doing just fine and our drb and our planning commission are really quite strong and we have for example on the drb we have a historical preservation expert and we have other folks who have a lot of deep background and as steve said at the last meeting if there are any issues that come up with regard to wildlife preservation of historic preservation those are things that the town can turn to the state experts and get their advice and support for i do not disagree that act 250 is a much more robust process and that those folks in that process perhaps have more expertise and more experience in this there's no doubt about that but i think the question is is that level of rigor and review necessary for a smaller project that's under 10 acres and i appreciate mrs grace saying that you know the action 50 96 percent of the projects are approved and i think that's an important point to remember that projects like ours are going to have to go through the whole process the time consuming process the money the experts and everything else and this is a 96 chance it's going to get approved and most of what's going to be covered most of the permits that we need we're going to have to do anyways because the state requires it we're already starting to file all those permits so it's almost like we have to go through this whole process twice in a much more expensive way and for a smaller project it's probably not going to have that kind of level of impact and if it did your town with the drb and the planning commission had the ability to deal with that so as i said at the last meeting if you were a developer and you had a small project and you had a couple of towns that you were considering you really might think twice about coming to waterbury if you're under 10 acres because you have to go through this whole process that involves risk and time and money and in another town you might be able to just get local permits and go ahead so it is a development issue for the town and it certainly is an issue for our local nonprofit and i do understand that act 250 would bring more expertise and all that but the question i think you all need to decide is is that really necessary for the kind of projects in general you're going to see they're going to be some outliers on both sides but overall does that make sense and someone earlier on said the planning commission was not in support of this but at the last meeting there was a representative from the planning commission who said the board was indeed split he was in fact in in favor of making the change some other members were in favor as well so we've heard different views but i think really that's the the balance you have to strike is yes act 250 would bring more rigor or expertise but also for those folks who are trying to bring development and opportunities to our town they have to go through a lot of hurdles that may make them think twice about coming to waterbury so what makes sense in the balance it's not black or white it's not this is perfect and this is not they're tradeoffs on both sides which i understand but i in my view the tradeoffs seem to indicate that it's probably worth making a change most other towns and from on in this situation made the change a long time ago and there hasn't been a big uproar in that the zoning bylaws are being changed right now as you heard they can be strengthened to fill certain gaps and you have the ability to to turn to other outside experts if there are certain gaps you really feel you need to have covered so thank you for listening i appreciate that thank you very much and some things for sharing your thoughts thank you sir okay chris yeah thanks mike um i first want to say i i recognize and appreciate hathie's concerns as well as duncans um a couple questions for steve um um has there been any conservation groups that have come to the table expressing any concerns about these possible that's possible repeal that's number one question number two question is do we have to go from one to ten acres is or is there an in between number that you could hit um um that might satisfy some of these smaller projects such as duncans uh and how does addressing some of these act 250 concerns or concerns that kathy brought to the table as well uh we repeal this tonight does that just mean that we automatically stamp somebody else's project that comes through that's such as as duncans or is there a time frame in which planning commission has a chance to address some of these issues and maybe incorporate them in the zoning regs that we have here to perhaps strengthen a little bit more of the criteria that we currently have um to address some of these other concerns all right let me try to answer your questions chris um so um the conservation commission um to my knowledge is not weighed in billy victor who's a member of the conservation commission is on the meeting this evening and i think do they get the select board agendas or does the chair they may be on the list i don't know um if they subscribe they would receive yeah and um they are on the distribution for the planning commission agendas and and it has been on the agenda a couple times for the planning commission to discuss so uh they're definitely um you know in the loop as far as um having opportunity if they so choose to to weigh in so on the one to ten acre um move chris uh there i should look at the camera otherwise i'm staring at the screen but um so the uh there is no middle ground um either we shift the the ordinance is repealed and we become a 10 acre town because of the act 250 for commercial projects for the threshold or we remain the one acre so there's no we don't have an option to pick two acres or five acres or some other um number so so that's the answer to that question and the time frame for the planning commission is up to them as far as enacting or proposing rather any regs it's up to the select board it's up to all of you to enact them but um so uh they're not it's not in the current draft to address the site plan or conditional use criteria they're focused on um the area between i-89 and um the wunuski river and they're not dealing with the review process right at this time uh that will come down the road i can't give you a time frame but it's it would not be within uh the 60 days if you decide to repeal this it would not be within the 60 days um that um the time period before your repeal would become effective barring a petition within the 45 days that that bill talked about so i think that's the answer the best answer i can give to that question well i just i i feel almost like to some degree that we're under pressure just like we were with a lawsuit that was uh up towards the town here just a little while ago for not meeting some other zoning requirements um not that we have a lawsuit pending on this one but um you know i just i don't want to have i don't want to get stuck in another knee jerk reaction um if there's if there's any way of maybe bringing some middle ground to this process you know maybe a low impact versus a high impact criteria that would cover us if if uh you know in a case like duncans where i would perceive that as being a low impact um and the criteria for that would be obviously less and if we got into a high impact development project that the criteria might get a little more strict um if you're back part of possible you know new regs to address this 10 acre if repeal take place to address a 10 acre ruling you know 10 acre uh mario can i just add one quick thing to your to your question or your thought christ that this is sort of a quick thing that's just come up my understanding is that revitalizing waterberry has been advocating for this for some years and that the development what's her name the development uh well listen listen listen was the economic development director she's something that she has been advocating for for some time while she was in her role so this is not a brand new thing but it's just popped up it's something that has been considered for a while and has been advocated for for a while thanks Steve as illicit keep kept that that decision i think that's her personal view as chair of the planning commission i think um she spoke that there there are a range of i don't think there are i i don't think there's uh that's why we're america yeah i don't know the middle ground would take a while press i think we're at least a year or two off before the planning commission is going to be able to get to it as well as if we you know the number of project we're not the door isn't being banged down necessarily with project after project where i think like if the repeal happens you know early 22 that it's not i don't know that it will make a huge difference to wait six to 12 months necessarily and that there'll be like a flood of things that cause problems um like the time you know so that i don't see necessarily the a huge benefit to waiting um a significantly longer time knowing that we can continue to work on the changing of bylaws yeah i understand that the first gentleman who spoke about affordable housing right you know if you want us to build thousands of affordable housing units on less than 10 acres if you do this that won't go through active 50 right well our drv is going to be on top of that situation let me just answer the question so so the threshold for housing is different that has changed so it moved i think from six lots to 10 lots triggers active 50 and a multifamily housing so this only affects the non-residential projects right also people keep saying that the drv can this the drv can that the drv can only enforce what's written down right now we don't have any historical pieces in our zoning laws that's why that house got burnt that's why if somebody buys the oldest house in library they could a tear it down they could burn it they could put something up there that's not even related and there's nothing in our drv that uh prevents that but but i think steve's talk about her but my uh i'm sorry i didn't mean to interrupt the finished chapter right when i brought up our her starter role been to our house during the drv i was told didn't matter we didn't have any rates in there when i brought up the water things it doesn't matter that's not part of our race when i brought up the checklist of than having to go to get a water permit to go to the floodplain coordinator the state to go to all the things that i was said they had to go to i was told that that drv board didn't have a policy on that so the our zoning laws are only as strong as what's written down otherwise people can say yes i'll do that or no i won't do that and that's what's going to cause lawsuits so my um only with regard to the historic preservation stuff and you might have alluded to this at the beginning of the meeting i think we had a pretty good conversation and most of the general public came out and said they didn't want historical preservation and that was the district review for all of our districts that yeah i think it was a lot of confusion it wasn't that they didn't want to preserve the historic part there was confusion about whether people were going to tell them what they could do with their windows and there were not answers to the questions being asked i just want to make that clear that you can't keep saying it's going to be up to the up to the drv because it's up to what's written on that paper right but they could if something's in an historic district they could ask for a historic review well let me just i address that mic so if it's conditional if it's a conditional use review there can be no undue adverse impact to historic sites or structures so so that's the criteria under conditional use if it's just site plan review then um their their hands are kind of tied other than what what's proposed and what we can put that storm last work that's a state issue hopefully the updated zoning process that that's going to be looked at a little bit more yeah we'll we'll we'll look at it again absolutely well that's why i said though why don't you wait until we get a tape the zoning laws because you know you say how many projects are out there well once you change to a one acre town and some of those holes are there you may see a lot of them right any further questions or comments may i make a comment yes i'd like to just respond a little bit to the conservation aspects of this um steve is right we do get notice from planning commission agendas we do not get sorry i'm a conservation commissioner we've not addressed this that i'm not speaking for them i'm speaking for me we do get planning commission steve is good about getting that to us um i personally didn't appreciate uh the act 250 question until i saw lisa scagliati's article in the waterberry reader we have not addressed this um the commission has submitted comments though to the planning commission um basically um for the new development bylaws really reflecting very significant weaknesses in protecting the environment in the existing development bylaws and we were relying on those to see those changes i've also participated personally in number development review board reviews and the treatment of conservation issues is um let's just say wanting significantly when i believe issues have been raised at the commission at the drb they've not even asked so what i would ask is if if you want the views of the commission i would ask the select board to ask the views a little bit i can take it back obviously and and see see what they say about this number one and number two i would say from the environmental standpoint you should not assume the drb of the regulations will protect any of the environment um like on um ridge line hillside sleep slopes conditional reviews review the callan project for example drb was going to pass that until the act 250 permitting process required the applicants to change some roads so they wouldn't destroy a riparian um buffer or riparian area um in the shootsville hill wildlife corridor and i'm not going to go through a list of other things but act 250 has played a good role at least for larger projects so i'll just stop there billy can i ask a question i mean so something i'm trying to i'm dandy by the way hi i'm trying to understand because a lot of what had been said at previous meetings was that there wasn't a lot in that one to ten range that would um be a massive issue regularly right so like the projects that you're talking about sound larger scale and so i'm trying to understand where where those kinds of projects or how often or how many like what what types of land exist where that between the one and ten these types of issues would arise is that question clear i'm sorry yeah i think it was and i wish i had the data and one of the reasons i was not going to say anything is because i am just i act 250 is foreign to me at this point um i'm thinking the developments and steve correct me wrong um the bigger developments that have been up on uh like the worcester range have probably been over 10 right steve so i don't know that there have been subdivisions up there or developing the last two to three years that were less than so statistically i'm not sure there would be a lot there maybe you're right um but i don't i don't know what what the data would show because i do believe those are five acre parcels up along that range up there i would i would just note because i've spent two years looking for a piece of land for the children's literacy foundation and there are no commercial properties up there pretty much all the commercial properties that are available now are now along you know the main streets and along through waterway center itself there's i don't think if you're worried about the worcester range and up to the call in kind of projects nothing is commercial out there and that would be then if my knowledge is correct if housing projects over a certain amount even if they're less than an acre they're still subject back to that that's correct this would not this would not impact any uh residential properties uh the that threshold already changed as i mentioned before so this is uh strictly the the commercial projects so we don't have an inventory there there are plenty of parcels in our commercial districts they're in this one to ten acre range the the pace of the development of those parcels is you know is relatively slow we've basically had two projects over the last five years um one built a peros gun shop that um this ordinance required them to go through active 50 and then and now Duncan's project so the the pace is is relatively slow we don't i don't anticipate a flood of projects if you repeal this ordinance but there they may very well occur so there there is definitely some if you think of it as a as a risk so thank you yeah so Mike yes of course so i i agree with Steve's last last comment there that i was going to say you know in fact that no activity or little or none has taken place thus far doesn't mean that there wouldn't open the floodgates if we allowed the you know this change to take place without any any guidelines or any more guidelines than we already have on it is there a way of structuring said project as a residential project uh and then after construction and this is i'm just throwing this out there uh and then apply for a change of use or is that not possible on this particular scenario and would and would allow us more time to maybe implement some regs pertaining to the concerns that everybody's brought to the table tonight well i think any any site that allows um commercial use can can have a change of use from residential to commercial so i i don't think this this ordinance really has has a bearing on on somebody who may want to develop something residentially and then if they change it to commercial then it may it may have some some bearing so no i i think you know if you decide to repeal this and um want to request that the planning commission address this um issue we can certainly bring that to the planning commission and uh and see if that can be made a priority but um that that's fine but i don't i don't i think this is pretty straightforward it will it will affect certain sites in a pretty prescribed way anyone else have further comics if not what is the board's pleasure it's a it's a difficult difficult topic oh i still have may i make one more comment right sure my last comment to the to the question of whether this is going to open the plug gates doesn't sound reasonable to me just because there are so many other towns in bramon they've already done this so it's not like waterberry is going to be the only town that has 10 acres of it you're going to be one of many now so i don't think it's going to open any floodgates at all what it is going to do is make it simpler for those who are trying to go through this process not to have to go through this extra layer of examination and consideration all of that but it's not like people who could have gone to any of our neighboring towns who are in the same situation is suddenly going to come here i mean they have lots of other choices too it's just going to even the playing field i think that's what it's going to do it's not going to open any floodgates as far as i can tell your your comments aren't falling on deaf ears uh Duncan because i've been waiting for months for permits of my own project so i know exactly what you're going through buddy um do you have the verb it should we want to make sure i'll just give it to you it's underlined here it's very simple it's motion to reflect things the agenda item perfect um so i moved to repeal the town of water very ordinance regarding act 250 review of the designation there's a second there's a motion and a second further discussion call the question those in favor of um repeal of the town of water very ordinance regarding act 250 review designation in favor of the repeal say i chris and katie i don't have any information yet um i'm gonna have to say nay at this time there are three eyes and one name the motion passes and it can be a petition correct the people inside right and i think that's if there is a if there is a petition you know we'd be gladly i think it's something that the town people can speak to that they think this was this was something that we did in error and we would love to hear that uh those comments thank you all for for your very vocal comments on this issue thank you okay we'll move on to the manager's items uh bill capitol put me first okay um we have two of them to talk about tonight i gave you some information in the agenda against you thank you so in our capital plan for this year we have posed to replace one of our bucket loaders and we had $150,000 in the budget as i indicated the loader was ordered it was just a little short of $116,000 and we were supposed to get the loader in october and the loader is not going to arrive until january at the earliest now um and because we won't have the loader the spending will have to be in 2022 when we when we buy it celia and bill wilgriffe have approached me and said you know next year's budget included which hasn't been passed yet but the the schedule for capital equipment purchases included the purchase of a new excavator in 2022 and that excavator is a little less than $88,000 so it's less than the 150 that we budgeted this year so it would make sense i think to go ahead and and flip-flop these the town does not specifically vote for particular pieces of equipment or particular capital projects we typically put in the town report this is what we think we're going to spend it on if you're looking for the town report this year for paving it says stow street we decided not to do stow street we did blush hill instead because we got a grant for stow street and it's just going to be easier to do that next year so this is not unprecedented if the if the excavator was going to cost more than the loader then i would feel a little bit more of a pause to say i'm not sure you should do that but it's it's less i sent out this afternoon or this morning i can't remember which um a comparison of the specifications for the the excavator that we currently have and what we're proposing to buy the 2021 Volvo is a little bit bigger than the one that we have now and i know chris had expressed concerns about that before the public works director and the highway superintendent cilia clar don't feel that we want a full-size big excavator this is something that we use on our streets and the ditches and we don't want to necessarily have to block the whole road with it so we're not looking for a huge activator that say you know chris would have for his for his large projects they believe that this 2021 Volvo will meet our needs for years to come so that's my proposal on the excavator versus the loader and what will happen is if you approve this we'll buy the excavator now last we check the excavator is available you know we've got all these supply chain issues that's what the problem with the loader is if we buy the excavator now hopefully it's still where it was last week when i set this out and we can get timely delivery within a few weeks the loader will then be in next year's capital so in the grand scheme of things we're going to spend the same amount of money just in a little bit different order than we would chris you're the resident expert on heavy equipment what were your concerns well knowing the machine she had before and in hearing comments from you know some of the staff difficulty in loading the trucks because it just doesn't have weight you know just just enough reach to load the trucks and i wasn't suggesting maybe that she gets something as big as the stuff that i've got but something big enough to load a truck adequately but yet small enough to not take up the whole road the zero turns today basically the cab and and uh you know the cab stays within the parameters of the tracks and on some of those smaller i mean that machine she's getting now or the one she's requesting to get is just a few hundred pounds heavier than the other one uh i looked at the specs on it there is you know some some reach and big depth differences not a heck of a lot of difference i don't know if the if another machine up bill woodruff had actually asked me at one point there we were supposed to kind of get together on this and and look at it but we never were able to connect um i just wanted to make sure that she had something that was adequate and i know she does do some stuff that gets into the right spot so a smaller machine is obviously better for that um but i think i think you did this machine is did she rent a similar machine to the one that she's requesting bill this year here i think so christ yes christ is this i'm trying to get a handle on i know it's not one of those real small excavators so this just maybe fill in the lines i know it's not a full-size excavator so my my what i call my mini excavator getting inside the cabs like getting in a telephone booth um it's the same about the same weight as the yanmar the 11 000 pound machine um which is what we have now yeah and i have difficulty loading my little one ton dump truck with it um so i just thought that something having something a little bit bigger i don't i don't know what the next steps up in the Volvo series are um those silly silly it feels this is bad but silly and bill both feel that this is what they mean i'm not an expert i understand i mean we've run the 2010 yanmar for a number of years silly likes it they've been able to get the trucks filled maybe it takes a little bit more manipulating she does a lot of work out there you know by herself and then the trucks come later and and get filled you know we can i don't if we say no then we're not going to buy anything this year we're going to have to buy two things next year or the year after and you know i'm not an expert on this all i know is that silly and bill woodruff said this is what we should buy okay my opinion we gotta trust our first judgment i i respect you know chris's point but if if these folks feel this is going to work for them i have no especially with these only supply chain issues i think we're crazy to yeah some of these things i didn't notice i didn't notice until tonight they're kind of hard to figure out like where it says dig depth 12 feet nine and a half inches on the 10 2010 yanmar that's understandable the other one is 13 feet 13 inches so that's like what 14 feet one inch right the ground clearance is the same one foot 22 inches i'm sorry and the ground reach 20 feet i think it's 20 and three quarter feet is what that really i'm sorry okay but anyway i don't have a real skin in this game one way or the other i think that silly and bill feel that this is a good deal for us you need a motion for us to approve this i assume so is there a motion to approve this purchase home moved purchase of what 2021 volvo dcr 58 excavator there's a motion katie can second it any further discussion if no i just wanted to say that i i wasn't protesting the consideration to buy this in fact that's why i asked if celia had rented one because obviously she did she knows full well what she can't can't do with that machine so without without the opportunity of me being involved in looking at the different types of machines i can't dispute bill and her recommendation to buy it so okay thanks for that well chris any further discussions if not all in favor say i hi all right okay thank you thanks um snow we still got one more equipment purchase to talk about come up to the table yes so a couple of meetings ago we broached the subject of another uh band for the recreation department and we talked about okay we can buy it now we don't have specific authority to buy it we certainly have had we're much better budget position than we dreamed we were going to be in when we put the budget together this year not only are we receiving full payments on pilot and and forest and parks pilot and current use that we had budgeted about third of what we were going to get the recreation fees that we've collected this year are significantly higher and we also got a grant of well two grants from from shaw's albertsons for a total of seventy thousand dollars the first ten thousand dollar grant was specifically for the band that we already purchased that was in the budget at our meeting the second grant for sixty thousand dollars was to run a feeding program basically with some other things nick did a good job with that and you know not only was able to purchase food from local restaurants to give them business but to feed our whole recreation program for the for the whole summer and still have some money left over right yeah and um albertsons shaw's would like us to spend the full sixty thousand dollars in 2021 if we go into next year 2022 to buy this van we can get voter approval for it specifically but we won't have the ten thousand dollars so i'm going to turn things over to nick right now because there is a specific man that he's talking about so go ahead i think christ sorry you don't have this memo he didn't give it to me until just uh before the meeting tonight i think the rest of the board has it no i'm sorry uh it's somehow they'll ask me to have a paragraph and i'm taking after more and more now these days and going to extreme detail plus um right we packed bricks that van in early 2021 with albertsons grant and um when we purchased it's a 2017 with fifty thousand miles basic model it was twenty six thousand dollars um and that was hard to find i had to jump on that within two days to get it after you know looking for a few months um since late summer we really noticed throughout the summer as i mentioned the last meeting that we've outgrown this van already um i was looking for another one and you know normally i would wait until next year to um propose this as a as a capital improvement uh purchase but um we have to spend this ten thousand dollars by the end of the year by shaw's um the extension process is kind of inexistent it's not really non-existent they're they've never gone through that process before and they're not they don't seem very um keen to that idea they really want to spend it uh this year which is why there's a little bit of a push additionally as the shortages of everything for for goods has has impacted us uh it's also impacted dealerships and used car prices so uh there i've been searching right since late summer there hasn't really been any vans in the area how people are getting vans right now is they're calling dealerships and asking you for on the list and the dealer will call and they're on the list next for the van so it doesn't hit the site um so that's what we did i did that and there's a van that's being held right now and uh lamoa valley board uh they're awaiting the outcome of this meeting um it's much nice it's a you know same 15 passenger van we have but it's much nicer it's uh it's got a high roof it's got an extended cargo space it's a duality it's got more um capacity to carry equipment and whatnot um and it's you know it was 48 000 i've talked them down to 40 000 just because they're hoping to get municipal business in the future it's used it's a 2019 but only has 17 000 miles on it and it has a 100 000 mile um power train warranty so transmission goes uh why not it's covered just because the previous owner of that van had purchased that and it carries over um that's really expensive to buy with a new van for the previous owner of what no i haven't i haven't asked that far but um i went up and checked it out and uh it's it's in really nice condition i was just curious if it was like a recreational person or just a commercial yeah i think it was a bike from the salesman he didn't he didn't really know off the top of his head but it seems like it's a it was a bike like a bike tour okay uh that i outfitted for a trailer and and can it accommodate handicap uh people no no uh handicap vans you know how we would deal it for our program is if we had a handicap person that that needed an accessible van we would rent one so our program would be inclusive um this van can't do that because it would take up almost all the seats that the handicap vans um don't really have passenger seats in it it's usually just meant for wheelchairs um handicap buses are big enough where they can have space for for a handicap like a wheelchair and and then seats so yeah this van is um i you know problem down for what it is it's a deal uh it's the only van in the area for this price um you know i've reached out to as far as as philadelphia um you know build a drift and we're talking about having to go on a road trip to get a van um so uh this is this is a good deal it's a bill and i kind of came up with a number of 40 000 and that's what i was able to talk them down to um 10 000 and that is covered by the grant so the 30 000 put on i've talked to dealerships about ordering a van um and right now there's just a ram dealer told me they ordered one of their vans and it it's on back order until next june and they ordered it in may so uh it would be yeah it's just it's been difficult to find a van so we're we're next in the list for this one and uh it's up to you guys this side if we do it i guess i will talk about expenses real quick and revenues um because that helps so we budgeted we projected we'd spend 32 000 or 325 000 and $15 for this year um we're as of today we're two thousand dollars under that we're obviously going to go over it but not by not by a ton um our revenues we projected we're going to be 164 000 uh we've generated 279 thousand dollars in revenue so um both of the expenses and expense and the revenue include that 60 000 grant so even though we spent 50 000 of that grant we're still under our budget for what we projected we would spend uh this year for recreation programs um and we are you know that puts us at 115 000 more revenue than we projected so the purchase of this van and four of them would would not you know we wanted to would not um or three of them would not put any additional stress on the budget for the tax pension so from a budgetary standpoint this is a no-brainer we've we've got the money um i think without going into great details the likelihood that having the van can help generate additional revenues in the future is something that Nick and I have talked about already um but i don't want to gloss over the fact that this was not approved by the voters and if you know if the board feels any discomfort about that uh we certainly respect that and understand it i think you can um you know the old saying it's whatever better or easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission i think you could explain this to most voters and most of the voters would say you did the right thing there's always going to be somebody that says hey you really should have come to us first so we're not trying to put you in a difficult position if the answer is no now uh we'll certainly accept that uh we'll budget for it um and then you get to decide ultimately whether you want to put it in the budget or not and then the voters can choose next year to do it understand that if we do that there's a likelihood that we won't have the van for next year's summer season if we wait until April to order because that's typically what we would do is wait for 30 days past time meeting before we would make the order and we would also lose that 10,000 and then the 10,000 would would lose out on that having said this we have in the past um it's a little bit different because we've put together budgets that have been sent to the printer and we're we know what we're going to be asking the voters for but you know last year you know we ordered some capital things before we actually had the vote it was in the budget and you know we we have ordered things in January because of long lead time and the like so it's this is not unprecedented to do this this way but uh we do understand and appreciate that this has not been vetted and you know everybody except Lisa and Elizabeth have gone down so uh there's nobody watching much outcry in uh things that have happened like this in the past no not typically I mean somebody might ask the question and it gets explained at that meeting and we tell them what we have this opportunity um and we've got I I think you know the I'm not I know Albert Sins has said that they'd like us to spend the money this year if we say no to this now is there something else we can spend $10,000 I don't know I haven't talked to Nick yet we'd try to spend the money but whatever we bought for that $10,000 would not have been in the budget either you know because we didn't really know about this grant until after the budget year yeah exactly um or did we know about it no it was after it was after town meeting that we got it ordered early June so so anyway um thank you Nick and Bill for your eloquent description of the problem of the issue does the board Katie um so the senior senator had used your last fan are you are you going are you anticipating letting them use this one if we do purchase it I see that it's uh it has more space it has a higher top so is that yeah I put that in there because we rent we rented our van out on you know we use it every week it's we put on a thousand miles roughly every month so far with it so it's definitely getting use um we rented it out to a few different um organizations you know aren't sure if we rent it out to someone who doesn't have insurance like isn't going to be putting on their insurance then a municipal employee has to drive it so we rented it to the senior center and uh Bill would drift the time before I drove it uh that was difficult for adults to get in it's a low roof it's a base model like I mentioned before it's perfect for kids right the the booster seats fit fine it's it's it's great um for adults it's tighter we can still use it for adults but as we piloted with the senior center it's it's not the best uh this van is bigger right and it's a heavy duty it's HD it's got a little bigger of a of a chassis um it the seats are a little bit wider and the high roof makes it so you don't have to duck around like I've I've gone in our van and I can do it because I'm nimble but putting some car seats right you're like hunched over trying to do it I feel like a you know mom or something so um yeah this van's much bigger a lot of folks would appreciate we actually respect your right right right exactly exactly um and then initially right it has more cargo space too so when we do do you know the potential trips for the van would be camping trips in the summer whatnot we'll have that space to put the kids stuff and take the kids I wonder just from um a transparency standpoint if rather than just letting it happen and then people find out about it if we may get a really positive announcement when it happens and and be really clear and let the public know about it because I think it's a huge asset to the program we wouldn't we wouldn't hide it well and I don't mean that I just mean like to to take it a step further yeah I could make a promo or something at least you could put something in the uh in the paint I think that I think the community would rally around there just why waste the $10,000 and it's something that will add to the program I mean the feedback for our first van purchase was great right there wasn't a single person that said why do you need that like even our highway guys were like cool you always have a few curmudgeon say they don't like to spend much money Bill's on rec here to sing when he got rid of his car that the rec department needed a van so I can dispute that but um no it was really there was it was very positive for the first van uh I've talked to the rec community about our our need for another van um they're excited that this is an opportunity uh but I don't you know understanding that we are presenting something that wasn't originally uh approved by taxpayers to purchase uh even though this won't have any stress on them for this fiscal uh year you know it's that is a true that is a true uh any other questions by any of the select board if not I would entertain a motion to approve this purchase so moved dated one family yeah probably all that's okay you got it you got it there's a motion a second did I hear okay I thought I heard enough I just wanted to make sure we have a motion and a second any further discussion there being none uh all in favor say aye aye aye any opposed Chris you're on mute just so you know but you you in favor Chris Chris you're muted thank you yeah I'm sorry um I was going to say if for some reason we decided it's a bad move we could just unload it right get over all of what we yeah we're not probably a money yeah we'll get more money I don't have any I don't have any thank you I know from purchasing a new truck to say this summer it's crazy with trying to get vehicles yeah absolutely if this doesn't work I have a I have a cousin who sells for it so you might be able to uh get get something dirty okay where is uh actual New York that's not too bad I contacted a guy named Indiana because that was the next closest dealership that was able to I'm sure I'm sure he would try to do some just both yeah thank you yeah that just happened last you know can you wait for staff reports all right good staff reports yeah you're good but you're staying so a couple things first uh Mike stole my thunder I guess Nick did I have to put his title in there so uh Nick has just been awarded uh doctorate degree from the Liberty University he has his capstone project was this recommendations for improving staff responses to disruptive behavior and summer recreation program at the time of why we're watching and uh you know uh Nick when he was hired here he had you received your master's degree already I just about just about yeah and uh told me got his master's degree and he said I'm going to go get my doctorate now and I laughed out and said we'll see and you know like two years later he's he's got a doctorate degree so it's pretty impressive and congratulations to you and I'm going to read this okay I have a pain in my knee can you do anything about not that type of time in addition and this isn't like brag on nick day but he did he has received a couple of awards and I don't know what I did with the first one the second one here so this this plaque was given by vorac right yeah and and then where's the other one so the governor's committee on employment of people with disabilities most of you were on the board either when or shortly after we were sued for having somebody claim that our programs were not accessible to someone with emotional disability we've always tried to be available for for physical disabilities but we had challenges with that but anyway Nick was nominated by um Volk we have Vermont 2021 Spirit of the ADA award and he has been awarded this can you tell me what it's called again yeah it's the 2021 Spirit of ADA award to Nick Nato and the town of Waterbury and it's for basically for making our organization the recreation department in particular um fully accessible right yeah not just the participants right like the people who we hire to you know employ like more the town does it in general has that statement but we put that into work with some of the employees that we employed this summer um and and that our employee currently right now with the after-school program so it came out of left field and I see it coming either way so Nick Nick was hired right after maybe you were even here already when the lawsuit was filed against us as I worded I inherited a lawsuit that I didn't know was happening um but yeah and uh you know we we we fought that and and we were um not happy that we were subject to that suit but when Nick was hired I talked to him about you know we need to do training of staff and he's done that Nick has some background with uh with Howard Family Services I think it is Howard Center Howard Center and have you know gone out of his way to provide training to our staff to how to deal with people with both physical and emotional disabilities so it's a huge step and I just wanted to recognize him publicly for for that I hear me and Nick I just want to say in behalf I'm sure I speak in behalf of the entire select board you are a highly valued member of our town team and I always look at it we're part of the team and we all need we all work together and try to do what's best for this community and you're such an asset to the the rec program has been so much better since you know you've been here and I hope you we see you continue uh I appreciate that I'm sure I was being told by the other select board there's a good foundation that that father laid for him and he's certainly built on that this award this is just a piece of paper um there will actually be a I guess it's going to be a virtual ceremony yeah instead of an in-person ceremony but there will be something more coming on for that right yep thanks for setting a good example congratulations standard right thank you do you want me to take both of these books did you find people to work your thanksgiving day break camp yeah we kind of work okay we move on to consider authorizing an attorney to act to the town and the matter of property transfer from beef blood to the town right so um very simply the board met with EFUD talked about those four properties that EFUD would like to transfer to the town uh the select board has indicated its willingness to to do so you know there needs to be title work there needs to be deeds drawn up and the the uh most efficient and cheapest way to do that is to allow the same attorney to work both for EFUD and the town it's basically there's no real consideration being asked for by EFUD if I've had to pay them there's no negotiations it's already been kind of laid out the only thing that EFUD is asking for is the ability to uh have four employees work in this building without being charged rent they already more or less do that now so um did you get the motion yeah so somebody if you're okay with that if somebody would make that motion given the nominal consideration already negotiated between the parties in the manner of the transfer of four properties from the Edward Ferraro utility district to the town of Waterbury and understanding the same firm will represent the Edward Ferraro utility district in the transaction I move to engage the law firm Stitzel page and Fletcher to represent the town in these transactions do we have a second second thank you it's been a motion a second any further discussion on the motion I don't see any issues Stitzel and Page is a wonderful I think they can record I also see very little conflict in this issue and I have no problem with them representing the EFUD and if there's nothing further uh all in favor say aye aye all in favor no opposed motion passes D inflation and resulting pressure on the budget yeah so back in April I presented to the board wage and salary ranges for employees and you approved that and authorized me to make to provide wages raises that were in line with the budget at the time the inflation rate was still in the two and a half percent range if you read the news last week it's about six and a half percent now public works departments in particular in our region and across the state to a lesser degree but in our region are coming under pressure wage pressure a there's like in every profession I can't find people to fill positions I drove back home from Georgia over the weekend Saturday and Sunday and Pennsylvania and New York they've got electronic message boards the Department of Transportation needs pod drivers you know please apply online whatever I know V-trans here in the state is having difficulty with it so I took some action a couple weeks ago and made some temporary wage increases in the highway department and I would like to make those permanent and I would like to be able to so in our region City of Montpelier has just negotiated a new public works contract the base pay levels about five percent increases and then you get all the steps and grades in there and you know significant increases the City of Barry is if they haven't ratified already they're also in contract negotiations we have surrounding communities that are trying to hire people and we've got people who are working for us who are saying well if I know somewhere else for more pay the folks who are on the lower end of our highway and public works extends to to EFOD for water and sewer but that's not your problem the folks who are on the lower end of our scale really they need to come up a little bit more so what I would like to do is to to make permanent the what I've already done it's about 30 out 30 dollars a week for people right now 75 cents an hour and then probably for a couple of them make some additional changes before the end of the year and then when we do the budget in April there'll probably be some more changes I don't think the the range that I've presented to you in April don't think I have to change that it's just that people especially at the bottom end they're going to have to come up a little bit I know it puts pressure on the budget as I said before we're in a good budget position right now I know every year is different there's other challenges but I I believe I have the authority already to do it but I want to be transparent with the board to let you know what's going on and I really don't in open session I don't want to get into specifics about how much and who and things like that and there's no real you're not really evaluating anybody's performance so there's no real opportunity to go into executive session the highway budget this year even though the we've got like seven weeks left in this year so it's it's not going to significantly impact the wage line I can't promise that the wage line will not go above what we budgeted but it's not going to go above by 10 percent you know it's a budget you know we're usually within a couple percent one way or the other of budget so that wage line may go above what was budgeted for the wage line alone the highway budget itself the bottom line unless we get a really really wintry november half of november and december the highway budget is going to come out in good shape so I don't need any any action by the board but if you have comments or concerns or want to tell me no you need to make a motion to say I can't do what I want to do do you think I'm not asking for anyone specific but are there any rumblings of people looking at leaving or oh yeah there have been okay and I you know I can't say I don't need to say who and you know we talked we talked to if you remember probably back in may that you know if there were retirements from the highway department maybe we wouldn't fill all the positions so just because somebody might want to go but the problem is is that you know the the people who are long-term veterans and who are at the higher end of the scale they're not the ones that are looking to go it's the people that you know are kind of up and coming that would be the ones and if you lose them and then somebody retires down the road then you kind of you know your transition plan kind of gets shot so I think we may have addressed this but are we are our hscales competitive with surrounding towns yeah pretty much so well I didn't bring it with me but vlct just did a salary sorry I just came out just came out about a month and a half ago was published and released about a month and a half ago we are certainly in the range of average and median in the light but as I said if you look at the people who are at the low end of our scale right they're significantly lower than than some of those averages so anyone have any questions about it Chris any questions you got nothing to say no no okay we're good then great e penalty of late filing right so we have on your tax bill if you remember it from when you had to pay it a week or so ago two weeks ago we have the eight percent penalty and the one or one and a half percent interest that is imposed if you're late making your payment nobody likes it when when they get it but we can easily justify it and and just say hey that's the way it goes there's another penalty that is not as transparent and it's frankly so untransparent that we often forget to talk about it when we set the tax rate so we have two tax rates right there's the non-residential tax rate and then there's the residential tax rate and for those of us who own homes you know that you're supposed to file a declaration of a homestead if if you live in your home for the requisite number of days a year and if you file that that homestead declaration two things happen or could happen one your tax bill is going to have the homestead tax rate applied to the value of your property and two if your income is such you might be eligible for a state payment that reduces reduces your tax bill when act 60 and act 68 were first put in place the homestead tax rate was typically lower than the non-residential now in most Vermont towns it's flip-flopped and the homestead tax rate is higher than the non-residential and why where is that in that situation so there's a lot on the books that says that if you fail to file a homestead declaration and you live in a homestead or if you I won't go into the or because we're talking about homesteads here that a penalty will apply and if you don't file your home and if you have failed to file a homestead and it would would be non-beneficial when you file that you get a three percent up to a three percent penalty we have asked the legislature for a long time the reason why they put these penalties in place is because if somebody files a homestead declaration late the state sends a download to Dan Sweet our assessor and he has to make some changes and then he has to give it to Michelle Lyon the bookkeeper and she has to make some changes and then Karen Petrovich the tax clerk gets involved and we have to produce a new tax bill now it doesn't cost us if if your tax bill is if your education property tax is five thousand dollars and you get an eight percent penalty because you failed to file on time well eight percent of five thousand dollars is you know four hundred bucks doesn't cost us four hundred dollars to print the new tax bill we did this calculation today and we figure that about a two percent penalty would would do the trick in terms of how much it costs us to do this and the funny part of it is is that they put this in place because they're trying to prevent people from fraudulently either filing or not filing to get the benefit of the lower tax rate right but if you file late you're clearly not trying to defraud us you've admitted well hey I I live in a homestead here's my declaration oh it's late you're not trying to get away with anything you file it so what I would like the board to do is to retroactively change because we took no action in July when we set the tax rate we defaulted to that eight percent penalty for people who didn't file a homestead on time and a three percent penalty for those who who would have gone the other way it two percent is plenty for us for those yeah for make it the same for both because it we're talking about printing a new tax bill one way or the other and what we did Dan and I worked together figured out that the average assessment for residential property town is about 350 thousand dollars and if you go through the machinations and you multiply that by two percent that covers our administrative time to do this is about 40 people that filed late most of whom got an eight percent penalty some of them got a three percent penalty we'll have to if you approve this motion we'll have to make some refunds but it just I mean I can talk to somebody and say you didn't pay your taxes on time it's clearly stated on the bill that this penalty applies and this interest applies but there's nothing on the bill that talks about this and there's really nothing even on your tax your income tax bill that tells you that you're going to get an eight percent penalty if you don't file it on time so I would ask the board to retroactively make the penalty for late filing of homestead declarations two percent but it does say clearly when you file your tax your state tax return that even if you need an extension you really need to file that declaration by the tax deadline and maybe I know Lisa's out there listening maybe she could put something in the paper you know the power of the press is important that I understand people are late and for various reasons don't file just throw it down one page for them and do it and we're you know we're not waiting the penalty right where there's still a consequence to their action but this one just but people don't realize that they're going to be that's a huge penalty it's a lot and and and as I thought about this over the weekend I said you know the only people that are getting this penalty are people who didn't file their homestead declarations and then they do right the people who might really be trying to commit fraud and never file it right they don't get this penalty so too if you make a motion to make the penalty on both sides two percent in addition is there a way to make it more clear the way that the late payment is clear because they're well really it's too late to print it on the tax bill yeah the homestead declarations supposed to be filed by me right sorry and Karen would like the motion to also include that the refunds be refunded to the taxpayer some of these payments were made through escrow companies and it's just very much cleaner and easier to refund the taxpayer not the escrow company it's not huge amounts thank you that clarification Carla do we have a motion to that effect yeah okay we have we have a motion do we have a second I'll second we have a motion and a second any further discussion on the motion if not all in favor say aye hi hi great any opposed thank you motion passed would you all sign this look your license please this is kind of a little off script but on on behalf of the Waterbury Rotary we we did a little garland hanging and the Rotary and they were giving away they were giving away gift certificates for the for prohibition pig in the end of the woods etc and I said you know a few left over I didn't bring it today but Bill I advocated you're getting you're getting a gift certificate for all the good work you do to the town anything else to come before us it's not a motion to adjourn is in order second all in favor say aye thank you