 Okay so Trini's not going to be here tonight so I will run the meeting and I'll call the meeting of the slack board to order at 5 32 p.m. The first order of business is a public comment so if there's a public here this comment that is not already on the agenda now is the time for you to speak. Yes Tamara. I'm just here to update for the library that our fundraising letter is going out in the next couple weeks and our 2022 budget a draft has been submitted and we're working on that that a new logo and website are coming by the end of the year. Very excited about that. We're going to have recorded story times so people don't have to gather two for kids and one for adults about how to read to their kids um and currently there's curbside six days a week and public in the building Mondays and Thursdays 50 minutes for brazing and 45 minutes for computer use and then you can always contact people for drop-off and exchanges of materials at the door. I have one thing I'm here on behalf of the East Valley community group and the committee and um I'm uh Trinity suggested that there would be a discussion and vote on the idea of releasing the RFP and so that's what I'm here to see about. I didn't really see anything on the agenda although Trinity said it was there. Mark it's uh under new business it's the second item request for proposals East Randolph Hall architect services. Great thank you. Is there anyone else? What is Mark's last name please? That's Mark Kelly. Kelly, K-E-L-L-E-Y. Okay so we'll move on to approval of the agenda. If I may ask the board to consider a change um a inadvertently excluded one item from the agenda that the board had reviewed last uh month which was the draft purchasing policy change. The board had asked for changes and it asked to have the item back on the agenda this meeting and they inadvertently left it off but um if there was one change to be made uh and it could be considered we'd like to add it under old business. Sounds good to me. Thank you. Tom were you trying to say something there? You're you're muted. I said that um I would move the approval of the agenda with the um addition that Adolfo just stipulated. I'll second that. Okay we have a motion and a second. We'll in favor say aye. Aye. Motion passes three zero. We'll move on to the consent calendar. Make a motion to approve the consent calendar. Second. Have a motion in the second to approve the consent calendar. I'll in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Motion passes three zero. Move on to new business. I'm starting out with the branch with lot environmental assessment. Yes this is one item that um is a partnership between the town and Tourist Auto Quiche. They've been working closely with Sarah Wright who's on this call as well as with Josh Jerome who's on staff. It is in relation to the phase one environmental assessment of the branch would plot and um I'd like to ask and invite Sarah and Kevin to speak more about this to the board please. So uh ready? Here we go. Yes please. Okay so I'm gonna lead off and then we're gonna go over to Sarah and then come back to me a little bit. Can you all hear me okay? Yep. Loud and clear. Wonderful. Uh so just to give you a very brief recap of Brownfields in general and what we're doing on that particular site uh the branchwood site as you know is on the kind of eastern edge of the village it's the next to the railroad track has the big brick smokestack in it um and it is mostly along the railroad track and then there's one little section on the other side of the street uh but it's pretty flat uh vacant site right now with the exception of the smokestack. So we have done a phase one environmental assessment which Sarah's going to talk about in a second and that is just an overview look at the site and its past history and what its current condition is yet uh does not involve any testing or about to do is based upon the phase one do a phase two uh the phase two is a thorough testing of the site um including boring for groundwater all the way up to official stuff uh going on there it is bounded by the phase one and that the phase one basically says these are the things um that might be there there are no known releases of product on the site but there may be stuff there and that's why we're looking and um but you only look for certain things in certain places and that's basically the phase one point two in that direction and that's what we're about to do. Then after uh the phase two typically if there are things that need to be cleaned up um then one does a corrective action plan and that lays out what would need to be done and how much it would cost and then that's where we would stop uh we don't have any funding for any actual cleanup if actual cleanup is needed. A lot of times cleanup is not done even though there are materials there you just leave it alone or you put a notice to the records or that type of thing. We also are hoping to do what we call an area wide planning study for this particular parcel which is really a little bit of a of a what what might go there and so we would try to bring in some expertise from our consultants who would look at actual redevelopment possibilities and sketch ups for the site as you try to drive redevelopment which is of course the whole purpose of the project is to redevelop that site. And so Sarah's going to talk about the details a little bit of what we've done and what we plan to do. Thank you everyone can you hear me all right? Yes, yes. Thank you so much for having us this evening it's it's a pleasure to speak with you all. Just to review a little bit about the work that has already come before this point. So we we've done a phase one which as Kevin mentioned doesn't actually involve doing any chemical testing on the ground. It really is focused around records review and speaking with local members of staff, local community members who are familiar with the site's history and identifying what might be some potential areas that should be tested, some potential contaminants that might be found on the site given the site's history and it's past uses and current uses as well. And so that phase one was completed just recently. We have we I believe that the the actual documents been shared with Josh and others so that that should be available to you for your review. It was finished in August and it sort of lays out a number of what we call recognized environmental conditions which is factually the maybes of what might be on the site and that sort of is the roadmap for what will eventually be tested in phase two. And so the the conditions that were the potential conditions that were identified are really very closely tied to what we already know about the the history of the site. We know that there was a fire on site and whenever you have combustion materials that can lead to deposition of contaminants or perhaps there were there was material that was stored on site that ended up being either sort of burned or sort of stirred into the soil as a result of the destruction of the property. We know too that you know the site has a very long and rich history in the community of having been a wood products manufacturing facility. So we know that there were a number of chemicals that were used and stored on sites like he sows and glues and some some wood stains that sort of stuff. So that's something that you know we need to take into consideration when we think about future testing. We also know that the the former manufacturing facility had oiler on site. Obviously there's the you can still see the smoke sack on site so they were burning coal and wood and waste and that included some of the chemicals that were used on the wood products within the within the facility and so there was presumably some atmospheric deposition from from that oiler activity. We know that coal was stored on site and sometimes there can be chemicals that result from sort of leaching out of that storage pile. We know too of course that the railroad was right nearby and so there's some potential contaminants that might have resulted from railroad activity or from the railroad ties themselves that were located there. We know that the town has been using the site since it was acquired in in various ways and there's been some vehicles parked on it. There there's been some piling of of soil and other materials. Also snow has been sort of stored on site and so there are a number of contaminants that might have sort of come into play as a result of those activities there. When the site visit was done there's sort of one site visit that was conducted as part of the phase one just sort of a visual assessment of the site. It was observed that there was some staining of the ground so there there may have been some sort of contaminant that was released on the surface and we we don't obviously know anything more about that but that's something that's been flagged for further investigation. It's a pretty small area that that we're seeing some staining there and then there's also the potential contamination from nearby properties. We do know that there are a couple of former underground storage oil storage tanks and gasoline storage tanks that were located at the smart stop and then also another another facility nearby. And we have documented releases from those underground storage tanks so it's possible that some contamination might be migrating on groundwater toward the site itself. So that's something that we keep in mind and we take a look at. And so to date we've spent, we spent about $5,500 on the phase one and this is thanks to the the Generoski VPA who granted our region through to Rivers a grant for assessment funding to help communities to revitalize these sites. So we've invested about 5,500 for the phase one. We've also committed another $4,000 to make a sampling plan for the phase two and the at the moment the ballpark estimate we have for what that phase two study is actually going to cost is going to be an additional probably $40,000 as Kevin mentioned as well. This site is an excellent candidate for doing an area wide study which really can help let catalyze redevelopment and revitalization in the area and that would be about another $9,000 to we're figuring if the phase two comes back and says that some contamination was found as a result of the various activities that we discussed earlier through the phase one then there might be additional assessment costs that would be required and that would be something that would be determined conversation with both DC and the EPA which keep very close very close tabs on on all assessment processes and so I guess moving forward it's something important to note for the town is that we are in a place now where moving forward to the phase two would require sort of very careful understanding of where how things are distributed on the site and making sure that that doesn't change before we can actually get out there and sample it so it doesn't actually confuse the data that we end up taking so it's going to be important that the sites currently used for snow storage and dumping and that sort of thing and that's perfectly fine but any more intensive use of the site where you're moving earth or you know doing parking equipment that's going to be you know leaking leaking materials onto the ground that is going to change the the sort of testing needs for the site and so we would ask the town be very careful about not not causing too many of those activities on the site and really just sticking to snow removal until we can get that testing done which we anticipate would probably be winter or spring that really needs to have need to not have snow cover on the site when when the testing is being done if at all possible so we're in this place now where it's not likely that we're going to get regulatory approval to start testing before the snow flies and so it's it's probable that we're looking out till early spring when when when the soil is finally thought a little bit and we can get out there with a drill rig. Kevin aspect to you. Thanks so we have the plan which we're going to go over with EPA and the state next week just to make sure they're all on board because they they will do the sign off on the testing is three groundwater wells about 90 surface soil grabs so we basically grid out the site we've divided the site into four areas I believe so right three or four four four four areas and so we can kind of basically we take a bunch of samples and we characterize each area because each area might be a little different and then they check through all the analysis on that and get us back some information the the biggest thing that I want to make sure everybody understands and and our previous conversations with Adolfo it was really good is that this basically is a process that any redevelopment would go forward through anybody touching this site is going to say I need a phase one and phase one comes back and says their issues there maybe and they're going to say well let's find out what those issues are and do a phase two and so in this case you know we're bringing the money to do that there is the possibility of course that we find something on the site phase two can do that and that that recreates a requirement to clean it up because right now you don't have a known lease on the site but you haven't done any investigation actually and should there be a known release and then there may be something that needs to get cleaned up right now the most of the concerns we have on the site we think are sufficient so most of our testing is going to be in the top foot and a half of soil out there and what we generally see from burned places and stuff is that sufficient contamination and the main issue isn't that it's going to go into the water and pollute elsewhere it's really that that you touch it and you do that type of thing and so a lot of those contaminants can simply be put under buildings or under parking lots and be dealt with that way and not even moved off the site but that would be you know what we need to figure out in the going forward part of life through that corrective action planning but right now we just wanted to check in we always do with owners and make sure like okay we're going to okay our people to go do testing and once they do testing then we're going to get a result and of course we don't know exactly what that will be because that's why we're doing the testing oh Sarah mentioned the adjacent stuff yeah I did I went up there today just to refamiliarize myself with the site you have a couple of large pieces of welded rail on the site and a few new brand new railroad ties yeah you don't want to be bringing in new soil material because again we're going to take a detailed snapshot at a certain point in time and any change in the site except the usual stuff like the snow dump will require a new detailed snapshot and we don't have unending amounts of funds there to do that so any questions or comments or concerns sorry go ahead okay Kevin were you going to mention Brella um I wasn't going about Brella is a good idea you already own the site but but you can go into Brella Brella is the state's program and it essentially it does a couple of things it um it has a slightly higher level of review I would say and when you come out of it you get something called a certificate of completion basically there are two end products from brownfield sites one is a smack letter is what we call it the sites management activity completion letter which is you've done everything you need to do you're fine for now it's better to go through Brella and to get the certificate of completion which is you've done everything we need you to do now and forever more letter the I don't know if the town intends to keep owning the site or if it tends to transfer the site potentially to a private owner but the certificate of completion transfers to other people so there they get as good as protection as you get and so it's good to go through that process so somebody had a question I don't know who that was yes I do hi hi yeah I'm the administrative assistant for the town about a month ago I reached out to through an email chain through various people to the railroad company regarding those tracks and the ties and all of the junk that's on that property they never confirmed that they're gonna come get it but you want me to make sure that they don't you want me to leave that site the way it is um if they want to come and take the rails that's perfectly fine there are probably I would say six or seven brand new railroad ties on the site they can either leave them or they can take them but they shouldn't just like move them around willy nilly or bring some more stuff um you also have some non-town industrial equipment on the site I don't know why they're there if they just park there regularly or whatnot but in general that's not the best idea once we kind of get going you can't secure the site there's no fence or whatever but you you know you don't want people just parking there or potentially depositing things on the site thank you very much Adolfo would it make sense to let the sheriff know and ask them to sort of discourage folks from parking there for long stretches and heavy equipment uh we we can we can implement that really the only thing that they can do is is ticket or tow so um you know if we post you know private property no parking or you know could be code then that we can do that but it makes it more complicated if it's a like a big rig or or something else so but um yes I could coordinate with the sheriff's department so the past activities have been happening there have that basically has been the boneyard for a number of construction projects that have been going on around town and so along with that there's also been I think there's one or two folks that may drive track trailer that have been using that as a parking spot for their truck over the weekend so um you know I'd hate to be ticketing somebody for that so I don't know if we're able to figure out who that is but maybe we can just nicely tell them that maybe that's not acceptable at this point they need to find another place to uh to park yeah we typically the sheriff's department does what it can to reach folk if they if they're parked illegally or you know in our case in the winter time they're parked in the road the challenge is that the sheriff's department will go off of information that's registered with the dmv and we find that sometimes people don't give their telephone number to the dmv and we're unable to reach them so um but yeah we could you know we we could work with them to say you know the first time that someone is there it could be a warning instead of a ticket of you know don't park here anymore you're going to get towed uh and then the second time the same vehicle is it's ticketed it could be a either a ticket or a tow but after a warning well I'm only seeing that because I don't want to see us get into a situation like we were getting into last winter with parking bans and we don't need to be getting involved in towing a tractor trailer truck so yeah yeah sure Kevin Kevin this is Pat friend can you hear me yes Pat I can thank you sorry I was having trouble getting into the meeting so I missed the first part could you say two rivers has the money to pay for the level two yes so we've spent about five and a half thousand as Sarah said we anticipate spending another 40 thousand on testing is what our scope is coming back at right now um and then make another nine or ten thousand in site planning around what might go there in the future that gives us a little wiggle room should we find you know a surprise out there in terms of an additional test but um but that's pretty pretty conservative and we'll know more after next week we essentially have to get the EPA and DEC to approve the testing plan and if we did find something serious would we be able to get help to clean that up we don't have any funds to do that the state has a limited pot of its money to do that and since you're a town you are potentially available to get grants to do that whereas a private entity would be getting a loan to do that and again as I said a lot of what we would expect to find in the site um typically just gets covered uh through redevelopment and so that might drive redevelopment plans and then in terms of like it's better to put the parking lot over here versus over there putting parking lots on the site contaminate them directly so kind of weird chicken and egg thing any other questions thank you I have a question I'm a community member though I'm not a select board member can I this is Hannah Arias can I ask a question um sure Hannah is it brief yes I yeah but I hope so okay um what sort of communication goes out to uh the community that lives either adjacent or very nearby a property when there are plans how does that work uh when when there are plans to redevelop a site yes uh well I would imagine you know redeveloping that site's going to involve a great big deal of community stuff in the area wide planning process there is a lot of public outreach to try to to kind of do what we call a charrette and think about what might go on there and then they actually do some um sketch ups of what might go there so whether it's you know is it residential is it industrial is it commercial residential mixed up all that type of thing there's outreach on that during just the straight old testing brownfield side we just communicate with the town directly on those things got it thank you thanks Hannah that's a good question you you live not far from there and that's perfectly reasonable if you don't want to know what's going on yeah very interested out following but anything that happened there's going to go through a complete you know zoning process development review process so you know there'll be plenty of opportunity to weigh in on anything that occurs there I'm really happy to hear that thank you great thanks for that comment Perry okay other questions just just a comment I would assume that the level two investigation would also be open to the public so that they can find out what what is there to correct the phase two documents once they're done are public documents and the town will have a copy it'll be a thick copy most of the important stuff like in the phase one you have is really in the first 20 pages or so and then there's like 400 pages extra there but just read the front great all right well if there are no other questions or comments I will thank Kevin and Sarah for joining us and providing this very helpful information thank you great thanks and so um we'll move on to uh request for proposals for the east Randolph hall architect services so the east valley community group had been working with Trini to create a draft of the of a potential RFP or RFP for the receiving of bids for an architect services in your packets it was there was a draft of the request for proposals really at this point we don't necessarily need a vote from the board um I think you know we could release it since the board has already voted to match the funds for 50% match really the the idea was to share the request for proposals with the board and if there are any objections we can then discuss it and create any change that's necessary okay I did have one one item to share with the board that I did notice in the in the request and Mark maybe Mark Kelly could speak to this but I did notice that the request refers to the hall as the east valley hall um but the hall is actually named the east Randolph hall well of course it's the east valley community group that started all this so there's a certain amount of uh just the idea that that it does belong to the entire east valley not simply to this Randolph you know it's been used that way forever but it actually is for the entire region it's one of the few places where a public meeting can easily be had so the words east valley are our preferred words but we're not wedded to them I mostly say this in jest but I would I would I would I would agree if our neighboring towns in the east valley would contribute towards the operations of the hall as opposed to the rate only presumably they will pay fees to uh to use the hall in the future so thank you mark so uh yeah if there are no objections um you know uh Trini and I could continue to work with the east valley community group um and then at some point in a very near future release the request for proposal can you give me a little bit of uh idea how the the rest of this rollout will work you mean the bid process so uh so typically what what happens is we create a either request for proposals or request for bids uh really depending on the project that itself uh and in their request uh we include you know the scope we also include what we're um implementing in terms of timelines and uh the timelines tend to coincide with select board meetings so if the request for bids or proposal is is sent out within the next uh you know a few days uh what we would do is we would set a timeline for a deadline for questions for any architect firm or architect to submit questions uh following that we would submit a or create also a deadline for any addenda that we would add to or any changes to the RFP or RFP and then following that we would also include a deadline for the submission process for when the document is submitted uh typically in in non-covid times the bids are open in a public setting so that everyone who's submitting a bid writes down the amounts of you know that that other firms are submitting as a bid but uh in current times we we either do them through zoom or we just open the bids and then release the amounts to the bidders um and once we have all of the bids in and we've had chance to review them as a staff uh we then pick typically the the two lowest but not always the two lowest bids it really depends on the quality of work that's being proposed and then the select board would review and approve of a bid and uh how how would the uh how would it be advertised I guess that's the uh the advertisement of bids is is guided by the purchasing policy and and how we advertise projects so we uh post it on the website we posted on a state bidding site and then we also posted uh in the herald for a local publication I think that there may be other places that we may want to uh post it but yeah once it's once it's out there yeah please yeah we we do welcome anyone to share it with everyone once it's once it's public it could be emailed forwarded advertised I'm just saying in the preservation trust there's one all right any other comments or questions on this topic okay thanks Delpho hearing no no other comments let's move on I'm delighted one more comment great thanks Mark thank you uh we um a letter from IUPE uh yes the town has received a letter from the international union of public employees that is the bargaining unit that represents uh town employees within the highway department water wastewater uh grounds crew um and formally with the uh when we used to have the rental police department as well uh the union contract that we have in place at the moment is said to uh expire mid next year and so the union has sent us a letter in advance of the expiration date to notify us that they would like to renegotiate the contract or negotiate a new contract um so you have the letter ideally what happens is uh the town manager and the representative of the board and finance director participate in the negotiate negotiating team we could also hire a labor attorney to do it but we did fairly well last negotiation two and a half years ago with just may a member of the board and the finance director so if there is a representative from the board that wishes wishes to volunteer or or two members of the board that wish to volunteer to serve on the on the negotiating team that would be ideal but no more than three because these uh these negotiating sessions are not public and if we have three board members they would have to be a warrant to meet right okay we also don't have to decide tonight it could it could you know you could think about it and just let me know that sounds good to me I'm prepared to move on to the next item if there's no objections that one's fine okay sounds fine to me so next next piece of business is the local hazard mitigation plan review yes the town per FEMA and the state is required to have in place a local hazard mitigation plan it is a five-year plan that essentially confirms to FEMA and confirms to the state that the town has adopted best practices for mitigating risk for for mitigating potential issues that arise after an emergency our plan is scheduled to expire this year so we participated in in a state grant program where the state issued the town of grant to update its local hazard mitigation plan we partnered with two rivers out of qui chi to update our plan and we are now at a point where we've submitted our plan as a first draft to remote emergency management they have reviewed and provided comments the select board at this point what we hope to expedite what we hope the board to do is to approve the plan pending the changes required by by remote emergency management so that then once those changes are made we can then submit to FEMA as a final plan okay sounds like you need a motion yes please so the motion you need would be to say to adopt the current plan with the condition of incorporating changes needed to ensure approval by vm vm yes please yep okay you have it thank you peri second i have a question how come those changes aren't already in the plan uh we received the changes very recently from vm and our consultant to rivers out of qui chi uh has not been able to incorporate the changes into the plan yet thank you have a motion can we have a second that was a second that was a second yeah that was a second i'm sorry i missed that because you have a motion a second all in favor of the motion say aye aye motion passes four zero next in our agenda is the proposal from the town listers the listers have submitted a proposal to the select board mostly a notice of the select board that they would like to restructure their existing pay scale they are proposing a pay scale that would maintain their pay within the existing budget for the listers and the pay would increase i don't have the form in front of me at the moment but the pay would increase cliff do you recall the amount of the increase i have it in front of me i have the form it says there they're requesting that the town compensate the list is a rate of 22 per hour yeah and if i'm not mistaken the proposal will also decrease back to the normal wage once an assessor is by the listers and they have been actively searching for an assessor right okay so you need a motion for that too i don't believe we need a motion because it is the our listers are in they're within the budget right yeah say within the budget it was more of a notification that they intend to do this okay so i want to just to work together with the board all right yeah well that sounds fine to me yeah sounds good to me yeah and me too i'll talk for we we saw we saw this previously what why did it come up again i don't recall uh we we received the previous notice the day before the the morning of the select board meeting impact brought it up as part of a discussion but we could not we could not have the board review it officially because there was insufficient time uh and so i had committed to the board at the last meeting to bring the the issue to this meeting okay great all right so if there's if there's no other questions or comments we'll move on we'll move on to grants first one is uh let's grow kids grant uh let's go kids grant is part of the part of a an effort that josh is really is really just taking the lead on and has worked with the community group and um believe mary who's on the call has also been been involved um the grant has already uh been issued to the town this is a grant that the select board had authorized the town to apply for uh the grant amount was increased to the amount that it is now from the original amount that we thought we would receive so now we would just ask the select board to authorize us to accept the fifty fifty eight thousand i believe it is josh do we have the specific amount it is fifty eight thousand yes yep and what's the purpose of this or the intent of this grant this this so this grant is building off from the municipal planning grant that we received earlier this year from the state of vermont um to um to who then piggybacked off from the child care task force work um so specifically the let's grow kids grant is now focused on looking at the vtc enterprise center the upper building of that parcel and redeveloping that into a child care center and so the fifty eight thousand dollars would be used to carry over the consultant that we use for the municipal planning grant riva murphy former deputy commissioner of child family services for the state and she would be coming on as the project coordinator and walking us through the the process and then some of the work would also be designed in architecture um work that will be done on on that location um and and work is already underway um about about sort of looking at the blueprints and and schematics and obviously the town is working with green bound economic economic development corporation and the and the task force in this process okay thank you things things are looking really good uh for that project um to potentially have a you know much larger and necessary and needed child care facility off off the highway so i'd like to move that we accept the let's grow kids grant i'll second that having a motion and a second all in favor say hi hi hi hi uh was there it i only heard two people did you you did okay i saw his mouth motion passes most impasses for zero and we'll move on to the v-trans municipal highway storm water mitigation grant uh we were we are the recipients or we were issued a notice indicating that we had been awarded a 32 000 grant for um engineering work for the issue that's developed on north randolph road um we'd like to ask the board to accept the grant so that once the grant has been processed and we have a grant agreement we could then work on a request for bids for an engineering firm to evaluate what is needed to repair north randolph is it anticipated that that cost our 20 will cover that cost yes for the engineer work yes and the grant is strictly for engineering only yeah okay this is just for information you don't need a motion do you uh we do need a motion to accept the grant oh okay this to accept the grant okay i'll move to accept the grant i'll second the motion and second all in favor say i hi hi motion passes for zero could i ask could i ask what the people ask what are we looking at in terms of getting this done sorry paddock i couldn't hear question i'm sorry too i um what are we looking at in time frame in terms of to do this with with the grant and then to actually get the project done uh that that it has been a challenge we uh attempted to try to resolve the issue earlier in the year um the the obstacle that we came across was from the agency of natural resources they said that they would not permit the work um necessary at north randolph road until we had performed uh this engineering study so the engineering study really would depend on what the engineering firm you know sets for a timeline with our recommendations the challenge is that several alternatives have to be um investigated one of which puray and r is to potentially abandon north randolph road because of its location and you know the potential damage in the work necessary uh to repair it so it really would require i you know i'm gone on the limb and say several months because each one of these alternatives will require a considerable amount of time plus public input sessions from the community to see how they feel about the alternatives so we're probably looking at springtime before before this type of review is you know finished and that's kind of that's on the hopeful side because we haven't even received the grant agreement yet that allows us to start using uh or even advertise the project as as being funded so springtime and that's wishful thinking yep so the whole thing is a long-term project very long-term project potentially very costly if there's no other comments or questions we'll move on to all business first item is appointments and we're going to look at the economic development committee first yes a part of your in your packets there was the action item sheet of a request that has been made by the economic development council one of those requests includes the removal of a current member and the second request is the appointment of a new member we have the chair in this meeting so the reason i'm asking for this change is because um the person i'm asking to be removed since our last conversation had only attended one economic council meeting so the attendance is poor and i think it's time that we replace that person and with the person i have spoken to and she's willing to take on the responsibilities and as far as the person to remove they're more than welcome to attend meetings as a guest but they have not really contributed to any of the activities of the council as of date mary can you speak a little bit about um sarah jackson and just since we don't have a statement from her just kind of give us a little bit more background on her sure so sarah jackson i worked with um on the r3 uh economic development uh task force and she and i worked with damien i'm putting together the business survey that was presented i believe in april of 2019 maybe i i can't remember the date anyway um and that was from a SWAT analysis where i gathered all of the data uh from the local businesses and put it into an excel spreadsheet and then sarah did the narrative and um then told asked me you know to do the graphs and pie charts and whatever else uh that was incorporated into the book that we distributed to the community um she's also the executive uh director on vital communities she just uh had gone into that position and i think it's a great opportunity to have someone uh from that organization to work and participate on the economic council and uh there was some concern whether there was a conflict of interest but i sent her all the information regard regarding the council and as of yesterday she said that their board said there was no conflict of interest and that um she was free to join if as long as the uh select board uh approved the appointment okay i i think that's a great organization for us to have that connection with and i'm glad that um that her board sees it that way i agree and again sarah and i have worked very closely together uh with past initiatives and she has been attending the economic council meeting and uh i think she would be a valuable person on on the council right i would move that we add sarah to the economic development committee and uh do we also need to uh including that motion um cj stumps stepping off for i'd rather do that separately okay uh i'll if i well i'm sorry to interrupt them i know uh just uh i'm not sure if the committee is already at max capacity or max members yes they are at we are at the max capacity okay so the board would not be i'm sorry to uh ask for a change but the board would not be able to appoint the new member until we remove a member sure yeah this raises my concern of before with with the same person actually i think where we don't have any policy is how to remove somebody which we should have if somebody's missed a certain number of meetings or something it seems like that's fair to the volunteer to um know what the guidelines are and i guess i guess mary has been trying since then to get in touch with her so but seems like there should be a town policy that when you're removing somebody how and why you do that in addition to pat and also um i had uh i've sent out the minutes and um cj had sent me an email because she said she went to the town site read it and that she would be in attendance on the november 2nd meeting but she was not yeah i'm not arguing the case on this person i'm just saying the town should have a policy in general so i can yeah i agree there should be some guidelines i thought so maybe we don't have a policy for committees but i thought we're for sure we had a policy for planning commissions in dr b positions because i know that when i served in the planning commission we did remove somebody from the planning commission for non-attendance what my understanding is that the committees um come up with their own rules for so maybe that's where this fits in yeah yeah i having formally served on on the economic development committee i can i can um speak to the fact that this individual's attendance has been a long-standing issue uh so um as the liaison to that committee i can assure you that you're correct about that so yeah so it sounds like um perhaps the discussion of um of whether the town ought to have a town-wide policy governing the removal of members from committees and commissions is something that is a separate conversation that we ought to have i think i would agree i would agree the only sort of aside being that we might not have um commissions are are my understanding are by state statute and so we might not even have authority to control that but so we should look into that i have a question so if if we're unable to make the change at this time and the term is up um and i don't know what what her expiration term is i i haven't gone out to look at it recently um at that time and i guess march would uh if her term is up and or time for a change would that be at that time or or is that something you folks will discuss amongst yourselves and then let me know what i need to do uh on my end i don't know if i'm wrong but didn't we um some time ago and it might have even been within my nine month tenure on the on the select board didn't we say that all committee appointments were going to be renewable annually well i i i think right now the what we really need to focus on is is this particular position and i yeah the the board right now has the authority to remove a member and appoint a new one so right right i would suggest that i would entertain a motion that we do the removal and appointment now and move on larry i'll make that motion that we remove c jay and we add sarah jackson i'll second that i've heard a motion and a second all in favor say i hi hi motion passes for zero and then we'll move on to um thank you thank you mary thanks mary to appointment to the water wastewater committee yes in your packets you uh also have a request from the water wastewater committee to appoint mariah de kenga and mariah is on the call and in your packet you have a statement of interest for mariah does anyone have questions for mariah mariah do you have any background in this particular field i do not have any backgrounds no but i'm very interested in learning if i may also add with the board we have had historically a hard time filling positions with the water wastewater committee and we recently did have uh someone resigned from the committee who was the most recently appointed person to the committee so and as i'm the chair of that committee and we recently had a meeting that we couldn't get a quorum for and so it's it's really important that we um try and get a false slate of folks on this committee so that we can do our business larry i'll move that we add mariah to the water and sewer committee um and just to comment on that based on the fact we need somebody there watching what larry's doing all second that okay we have a motion and a second all in favor say hi hi hi okay motion passes thanks for joining the committee mariah appreciate it thanks for having me looking forward to working with you um what's next sign ordinance approval the select board had previously reviewed the side ordinance that had been created uh or updated by the planning commission um and the select board's previous conversation regarding the sign the updated side ordinance uh it was rather robust conversation about the banner uh located uh over main street um so during my um conversations with uh folks in burlington that do manage the the banner signs in burlington um at several different locations we found that um even they had not fully looked at the the legal part of it and we're just kind of advertising banners as normal so um we have posted the sign ordinance it has been posted uh we're almost two months now so anyone interested um has had an opportunity to review it and at this point um if the select board were to vote to approve it um we could we could move forward with the new sign ordinance could also add that the planning commission spent a considerable amount of time uh updating the process and and checking with legal sources and performing their due diligence yes we did waiting for motion well i'm on the committee that puts it together so you guys got to do that fair enough i will move that we approve the new sign ordinance i will second that we have a second all in favor of approving the sign ordinance say aye hi hi hi motion passes for zero thank you move on to the town meeting and town report yes this is a section just to follow up on the statutory requirements for town meeting and um some of the deadlines that uh we have internally for the town report um emory is managing or writing hurt on this project um this year and emory if you have any any information to share with the board this would be a good time yeah hi so there are two things the easiest being that someone um you can choose who you can all fight for it but you need to uh write the narrative for the select board a section of the town report uh please get it to me sometime before december 9th it can be a group effort it can be we'll give that to triney she's not here all right i'm happy to help triney wordsmith it um but since she's not here we we can hand that you know be careful when you don't show up sounds good yeah the second one is um y'all all need to decide when you want to have your meeting for town meeting day i believe last year you all decided to do it the saturday before instead of town meeting to allow other people to come so you don't necessarily have to decide tonight or right now but that's something to discuss i would like to raise one issue with relation to that and i've become aware of a number of communities around the state that are because of covid and it's anticipating that it's going to continue well into possibly the spring of next year um i know that pom fritt at its last select board meeting uh elected to um hold its entire town meeting by australian ballot and apparently that is part of a trend that's happening with smaller communities around the state so that might need to be something that we have to consider as far as the date for town meeting goes that was done by the voters so the voters yeah that's right day before yeah yeah i mean as far as alterating something for australian ballot that might be another conversation to be had once i i'd like to hear a little more information about how that fits the statue yeah i believe i actually have some information on it that uh that uh the editors at the would at the vermont standard with for which i've been writing forwarded to meet today um but i haven't had a chance to look at it yet i would have to review the motion made uh i believe now it's almost two two town meetings ago yeah i believe the motion was just to have one town meeting which was this year this calendar year's town meeting on sat the saturday before town meeting to see how it would work um leaving leaving the option open for the board to then choose whether or not it wanted to keep it on saturday or on town meeting day but you know after speaking with staff we found that the attendance level remained the same it was just different people so it didn't really encourage or didn't really increase the the number of attendees which was the purpose for changing it to the saturday i think we had one of the things we had discussed was was the potential of keeping it at saturday for more than one year to sort of give people a chance to kind of wrap our minds around the change in date and then give them more of a chance to before we go to changing it back sure the wording on the the wording on the article was was um was vague enough so it wasn't specific for one year it just says shall the town voters agree to change the day of town meeting from the first tuesday in march to the first saturday immediately preceding town meeting day and they voted to approve that so to me it seems like that means the town meeting is on saturday it certainly does sound like that um i think it gives i think it leaves it up to the select board to kind of bounce it around i think it's authorized the move but it would be up to the board to decide well this year saturday or next year you know i hear his point you don't want to dig into that for me you but i agree with parry okay now emory just out of curiosity when did we have to when was it required to set that date when we need to do that let me check the list here we have to warn the we have to put the the ballot out i believe it's within 45 days of town meeting so we have up until 45 days i'd have to confirm with with joys or clerk but i believe it's up to the 45 days before the meeting before we have to post the warrant and the warrant has to include the location and the date of town meeting right and then you're also with so with that you also need to be able anybody who's looking for special appropriations and those things need to be in and that's why they have to be in by near the last week of january yeah yeah might not say 40 days before elections okay 40 days yeah it is 40 we went through that with the last town meeting with the vote on the surpluses that's right yeah all right and we'll also decide at some point if we want to be mailing a ballot out for town meeting correct yes that could be something the board could could discuss yeah and also in terms of making all of town meeting by by australian ballot i mean we're pretty close to that now um it's very it's very little which is actually decided from the floor so it'll be interesting to see what what we what it would entail to move those few items to australian ballot yeah one thing that comes to mind is the appointment of the budget committee which i don't know why that is but that's something that seems to always occur at town meeting which is not on australian ballot right i don't know why that is i think that's how it was worded back in 94 or 1996 somewhere around there of i yeah i think from the past come back to haunt us yeah absolutely it's monetary issues that are voted by australian ballot that was the vote and everything else like policy issues remain on the floor yeah i think what what tamin mentioned i i i think at some point between now and town meeting the legislature may create changes that uh will allow towns to make it easier to have town meeting either virtually or through entire australian ballot i you know i think there are additional measures being taken this week and next week to reduce the number of people gathering together and the tom's point you know we're barely going to be getting out of winter at that point and i don't i don't see things easing up anytime soon so right now well there's a little bit of work for you early in january larry gotta fix that one please i think emory also had one other request for the board to potentially either start considering or really just start start considering a person to dedicate uh dedicate this year's town report to as has been the tradition okay yeah that is correct and when would you need that decision by just before you go to press with the annual report correct certainly a little bit before then would be fine but yeah yeah the copies are going to the printer in january for the 31st okay we'll need it in time to decide on somebody and also write up a little blur yeah yeah when are we going to decide then uh there are roughly two meetings remaining at least two official regular select board meetings uh and in between there will likely be sprinkled special meetings with the special meetings that have been held so there will be at least two or three opportunities for the board to you know to talk about options that they may have individual members may may have in mind oh maybe what we should do is submit our thoughts to you Adelpho yeah yeah that could work and then i can apply a little future meeting yeah anybody's got a little list or anybody they'd like to nominate maybe we just shoot those names off to Adelpho and then you could put it together in the next meeting it's a good idea and i could share it with everyone yeah absolutely sounds good okay anything else under town meeting and town report not for me okay if there's no other comments or questions move on to other business and i know we we added something under other business but i do not recall what it was uh added the purchasing policy under old business yeah oh under old business of course of course okay well let's continue with all business then uh so the in your packets uh not in your packets but as a as a supplemental email uh you receive the updated purchasing policy that includes the changes that uh that the board had requested to be made uh cliff has been working really hard on the purchasing policy as well as other policies that his department is working to improve and so if the board likes the changes that have been added uh and those are the changes that the board requested to be added to the purchasing policy then um at this point if there are no questions um just a motion to accept the purchasing policy has updated well i'm assuming cliff you just took our notes and fixed this and there's really no other striking changes that we are not aware of that is correct i the substantive changes from the last uh draft that you looked at was um moving the threshold required for a purchasing purchase order up to a thousand dollars and moving the other thresholds the the one threshold that didn't move was the um the ten thousand dollar threshold where um it has to go off for a bit yeah two quotes or something so yeah okay well i'd make a motion to approve the uh purchasing policy that's been submitted and all second okay we have a motion and a second to approve the purchasing policy all in favor say aye aye motion passes four zero okay do we have any other business um i just have a question and i'm not sure it may belong under old business but i just wonder if um given the the the report that was in the herald maybe two three issues ago now relative to the east roundoff baptist church and the potential uh purchase of the beffel boy scout camp um it seemed like there's some reticence on the part of some of the church leadership now as to whether to go through with that and i just wondered if we've heard any more from them uh since that report in the paper two weeks ago which by the way also said that um the church leadership um may have some concerns about um the use of the property if they do purchase it uh use of it by groups whose philosophies or purposes might be antithetical to some of the church's philosophies and teachings and i just i didn't know if we've heard any more um since that article appeared in the herald or not uh nothing has come into the town um other than just the decision by the by the east randolph baptist church to choose to not accept the property um or they haven't really formally have they formally notified us that they're not going to accept it to me through email yes they have they have yeah okay that's what i was that's more or less what i was asking because the article in the herald just indicated they were still mulling it over but it sounds like they've stopped mulling and decided so we're back to square one on that yeah okay yeah uh i i have some thoughts and a suggestion about it but perhaps it would be better more appropriate for next month's meeting um yeah i would agree tom mostly because it's not a worn topic exactly exactly no i totally get it i totally get it but i'd love to hear it so can we put it on the agenda for next month yeah sure i actually actually have two thoughts about it but um right uh let's let's put it on the agenda and uh i'm happy to pursue some alternatives if if we agree if we all agree that it's worth pursuing so okay adolfo do we have any other business uh no no other business okay managers report uh just uh i was muted can i do another business go ahead that i'm sorry i didn't thought i was unmuted but i wasn't um when i was counting ballots election night the town ballots there were several comments on the ballots about fish hill road they agreed with the transfers but they'd like to have fish hill road fixed i don't know if anybody's been up there lately but i'm wondering what's happening there adolfo and did we have received uh we finally received estimates from uh two or three potential bidders uh and i wouldn't say bidders but estimates given to the highway department uh just the basic shim which is really just like a five to probably a five to seven year coding on top um is upwards of 60 to 80 thousand dollars depending on the on the contractor um so the challenge is you know we're facing issues with north brand off road we're facing other issues with stock farm road with the river meandering and potentially majoring that that project um and that's not to say that uh fish hill road isn't isn't a challenge but we also have other challenges so um at some point you know we could make a recommendation of the select board it really would follow the board on what to fix and i'm pretty sure that you know if we do leapfrog some of the roads say for example school street uh which is equally in need of repair we would have to have a reason why one road is picked over another and if it's more of this squeaky wheel syndrome um so i you know i could share with the select board the bids that we receive or the estimates that we receive um and then i would invite our highway superintendent to come in and share with the board you know from his perspective which roads which of the roads is in dire need and which is just more of a it doesn't look pretty um so i i could share more information with the board during the next meeting with with the cost estimates i would like that sure because i'll the fish hill just need a shim coder does it need something more than that uh probably would need a lot more than just the you know the the basic covering um that's also the challenge is weighing the option of do we spend 60 to 80 000 on just the basic knowing that within the next eight years it's going to require a much bigger uh type of repair uh i'm not an expert in that type of work which is why i'm encouraging the board to really take the advice of our highway superintendent and he could give more of an expert opinion on it did we get a petition about fish hill road i never saw one uh one was brought to town hall over the summer you know and the petition was uh i wouldn't say over the summer i would say harry will you say august it was in august august yeah and the petition was called for yeah the petition called for the road to be repaved by the end of this construction season and you know i spoke with some members of the community and i understood that they were very you know passionate about the repair but i explained to them that the town just doesn't pave a road without having had a plan within a month or two month period it is a it's a long process because it's a costly project the residents were very passionate about the road so you know i would be lying if i said they understood i think they understood i don't think they agree but i could bring all that information uh to the next meeting it is pretty bad i would like uh i would like to have him come to the meeting sure invite him i'd agree with that because like i said i've gotten numerous phone calls about that road so yeah i'll get it that some of these other ones are also in needing a repair but and i'm not sure that we should continue to put this one on sure i'd love to hear from town for performance okay we've been in um manager support uh some of it was fishel road and some of it was to discuss that um cliff and i have been talking about um pulling together a more long-term paving plan that would require the highway superintendent to really grade roads not the physical grading but like issue a grade and potentially have a grade of anywhere from one to ten with ten needing to be great you know repaired asap and one it can wait every you know every couple of years so that's that's potentially in the works and that's it for this week okay i know that and in some cases it did actually even if a road is in terrible shape from a priority point of view it can make sense to to do work on a road which is in better shape prior to it because the road that's in terrible shape was going to be need to be completely rebuilt anyway whereas if you let a road that might not be in such bad shape go any further it might require even more money um in the long run so it ends up being more cost effective overall to do some repairs sometimes on roads which might not seem like they need it as much to to to gain those efficiencies over a long period of time and we would be looking at a plan which would be considered of those sorts of um what's the word um occurrences you know the way the way the roads are actually are and that's sort of that's sort of scale uh yes it would be an all-encompassing plan so and Larry's right um for example whenever you see a road on the actual asphalt surface by that point the damage has been occurring for years during the subroad base so um you know it it that's how the problems start typical with potholes they don't start at the top they start at the bottom and then they work away up to the asphalt portion of it so um yes the potential plan is going to be more than just the visual site um the visual inspection that will also include if cracks are starting to develop on the on the surface of the road and if they are developing um in how how close of a proximity are the cracks to each other and if there are many then that's the sign of more of a systemic problem but um yeah to Larry's point it's it's less costly to repair a a small problem right away than it would be to wait for the road to continue to be deteriorated because then it's more than just the surface repair it's the sub base repair as well and Adolfo do we have the expertise in house to make these assessments uh you know I couldn't say um you know our crew has have had years and years and years of experience but you know sometimes these type of issues do require trained engineer I and that's not to say that 10 20 years of experience doesn't give somebody that that eye to be able to determine um what it is but um you know I couldn't say for certain if our crew um has that that perspective or has that ability we're going to base that much money spending that much money on a plan we should make sure we have the right input into the plan well no um I'm sorry if I gave that that impression earlier you know the plan itself isn't going to cost us any money other than staff time you know that's the plan that I would work with cliff and with uh highway and we could incorporate v-trans into the plan so that that's just staff um you're doing its job no I'm not carrying out the plan and maybe doing the wrong things first yeah I think that I think maybe what that what you're what you maybe have heard was the cost of repairing official road the the cost estimate which is 60 80 thousand dollars and that's not to fully repair it that's just to um like a basic very one or two inch code at the very top of it no my point was if you're going to have a plan that's going to spend as much money as we need to do on our roads in the next five or ten years we should make sure it's based on knowledge as possible oh right yeah yeah you know and I could work with v-trans to see if uh or with the state funding agency to see if a municipal planning grant is something that can be used for this type of plan and then if it is then we could potentially hire an engineering former consultant to pull the plan together based on uh direct expertise on the subject matter to get more more of this information to share with the board for the next meeting when I have um when I can share with everybody the cost estimates and the petition and everything else in a meeting packet or possibly v-trans has money because you'd think they'd really support that yeah all right so if that's the end of the manager's report um I believe we're done with the regular meeting as well uh yes yeah the only thing remaining is an executive session