 And I'll call to order this April 1st meeting of the Waterbury Select Board, noting that we've got one Select Board member who was absent due to a death of a family. First item on the agenda is to approve the agenda. Do I have a motion? I have a motion to approve the agenda as presented. Second. Move from the seconded. Any discussion? I will propose to remove the minutes of March 18th from the consent agenda and that will be the 1st item before public. And also to add a buyout request for 34 Union Street before next meeting agenda at 935. By out and elevation by out and elevation from 34 Union. Okay. Any further discussion on the proposed amendment? Hearing none. All members say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Okay. Now we're voting on the amended agenda. All members say aye. Wait a minute. Just a discussion. Was there a second? She's seconded and then amended. But someone has a second. I will second that. I say just to be correct. Okay. All members say aye. All members say aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Okay. Now we are voting on the amended agenda. Any further discussion? Hearing none. All members say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? All right. The agenda is approved as amended. Next on the agenda is the amended consent agenda. So I have motion. I make the motion to approve the consent agenda as presented in the agenda. Okay. All right. Moved and seconded. Any further discussion? Hearing none. All members say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Okay. The consent agenda is approved as amended. Next on the agenda are the minutes from last meeting. I have motion. I move to approve the minutes of March 18, 2054 with additional clarification regarding Valerie Rogers desire for the Vermont State police reports, which was just in public comment and is adding forward as requested. Okay. I will second. Okay. All right. Any further discussion? All in favor of approving the minutes as amended. Please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? All right. The minutes are approved as amended. Next is the session where the public is invited to address anything not on the morning agenda. I had two people signal their interest in coming forward. First now. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. We're. We have no orders on you so. And we're here because so. She had. I can sit down. Yes. Where I heard. Because we're pretty petitioning to get it. And the. Protection of the reservoir. The white folks. And what's happening. We actually had a big win. On the 14th of February. And that was. We got the. North arm and the east arm protected from. Wakesport use. And so now there. The dam on. And. As about a mile long. I showed you. And. It's 500 feet from shore. And the point of situation. Because. Anyone who has experienced these boats. Even the fishing boat, motorized fishing boat. And easily get rid of these things. And. So, and every, every boat, every. Every boat, every boat, every boat, every boat, every boat, every boat. Everybody coming off the dam. The object of dam site is going to be. A pattern. Those folks and. And they would be out with us. And we don't want you to write mine with. Right. The. Cap site is over. And also. Make. A lot of noise for the campus and the state. Cap bounds. They're dealing with that. So. I don't want to. Another thing I want to share with you is that. It's a. For. For that state. I think. Do you copy? You kind of pass it around but they. And I really, if it's okay, just if you stay at the table that owl has. Thank you for the meeting. And I just want to make sure anyone on the line. Comments. This is. The statement right there is what we're asking for. It's a simple sentence to simply saying. board petition to prevent the waters or weak sports of the water barriers. And this is not the strictest rule. The strictest rule would have been 1,000 people sure, and even that rule, weak sports people would have 96% of the surface waters that they could use. So in any kind of a contested situation, 96% would be a pretty nice win. So it's not going to be going to a number of other organizations to get their support. And I'm hoping that there is that one second that's all we're asking for. And so I'll be, I think I just showed you the first but we're getting close to getting this thing done. But in that petition, I have to tell you, I have literally hundreds of hours in that. The time sitting down and researching it has to be exactly right. There's no fluff involved here. The people in our DC are very aware of the whole situation that sits unfolding. This is the first year, by the way, that the industry itself is making a major push to occupy these lakes in New England. And the reason is that they've saturated other parts. And the thing that I sent you today, by email, if you go online and look at that, you'll see that they're one of the places in Georgia. There's just some pretty interesting stuff here. Everyone, ever they come in, even one of these boats, just one on a one grade reservoir dominates. You just don't dare go out there when they're there. You're going to get ripped over or whatever. You know, if you had a big enough boat, you wouldn't be probably much small fishing boats, small rise fishing boats, out of boats, canoes, whatever. So, you know, I won't take up much of your time. I know you appreciate very much a couple minutes here to the show. Didn't kind of explain that, but I'll be glad to come back as we get this thing finalized. And so you're going to get, you're going to continue circulating the petition. It's all right. Yes. And finally, this isn't a petition for signatures. It's a petition from a support of people like the Conservation Commission, yourselves. It's that kind of a petition. That's it. So, see, right here, that's the sentence right there that we're kind of looking for something like that. And I can leave this with you, Tony. We have 11 signatures. You probably know most of people with these letters in town. I got my first, Mike, my first letter from a fisherman. And we have two fishermen that work with us at the, you know, up in still at the fishing place there. And I never got anything from the folk all that. So, and Gordon Lang, I don't know if you know him or not, but Gordon's really, he moved to Bush Hill to be close to the lakes, his fishing before his fishing. He hasn't been out on the lake for three years because of the wake posts. So anyway, I'll leave, I'll leave this copy here. There's some really nice writings in there. We'll let you know I'm here. Eric, thank you so much. Appreciate you coming in. Take your time with a lot of work into this. Oh, thank you. Yeah, I'd like to just add one thing. Come on. The board is awake. Is that I'm going to state your name. Stephen Brownlee, a Friends of Waterbury Reservoir. Also, we have Al Tritter, so steps and a little bit of history in the Waterbury Reservoir. One of the aspects that we really want to make sure that you folks know as a select board of Waterbury is this um wake vote policy that's happening all around the state. Most towns have, wherever there was a pond, there's a lake association. Waterbury Reservoir is unique in that example that there is no lake association. So the voice of the community is really the select board and article organization and a friend of Waterbury Reservoir. And so we're just trying to amplify that a little bit and get sure folks are involved in you know what's happening on this lake. Is it like it's really not from town? If you're not a Waterbury Reservoir, thank you. And just if I could add just a little thing about the the revenue that comes in from this. I just went today and actually one of these things I just gave you, but the forest of parks that the state has estimated that close to $100 million dollars comes in from the lakes and ponds of the state. The Waterbury Reservoir had a meeting about 10 years ago, said it was about $8 million dollars of money coming into this area right here. And it's probably more like $15,000 now. And you can do it. And so it's like a gift. I mean, somebody who had a town like this that didn't have a lake, they would beg for it. So like this. This is our first amount, Mansfield, if you will. And it's probably $15 million coming into the area. It's a revenue producer that we don't even have to think about. So, anyway, thank you. Thank you. We'll look at the agenda for next week at the end of the meetings. And I'll see if we can take this back up. Any other comments? It's not on the agenda. Thanks again. Thank you. Just an acknowledgement right now, as we speak, the University of Vermont Women's Basketball team is playing in the women's NID. They're in the men they call the elite eight, but I guess in the women they call the great eight in the NID. So good luck to UVM. If they win tonight, they'll go on to the WNID Final Four. An amazing thing for us. Good luck to UVM. All right. Any other comments? All right. Let's move forward with the board recommendations. We have three seats available on the Harvard Unified School Board and four candidates. And so we'd like to ask the candidates to come forward. I think we'll go in alphabetical order by last name. And the first one is Elizabeth Brown. You're going to be in the hot seat at the same time. And I was just welcome and thank you for stepping forward. I think we'd just like to hear why you're interested in the position and why you think you're qualified to serve. Do you have a, can I have maybe three or four of them? All right. You have 10. I have 10. All right. I've prepared some remarks. So here we go. All right. Our education funding goes to Miss Broken. Known as debating that consensus on the key problems and the drivers is in question. But underlying it all is too much complexity, lack of transparency, and band aids that are only exacerbating the issue. Vermont has a history of being very proud of its public education. But we must not correlate the second highest spending in the country with the best outcomes. In fact, over the past decade, some research shows our results are in the wrong direction. Additionally, we cannot include that per student's spending correlates with equity and equal outcomes. But that is fundamentally where we are. The problem that Harvard faces is not just getting through this year's budget. There's a four-year cliff and taxpayers need to be prepared for large increases, not just this year, but through 2020. They also need to understand that with these increases, the Harvard budget is modestly increasing. The new proposed budget is only about seven to eight percent and their programs will be cut. In other words, as a comparatively wealthy area where our student population has sustained versus the profit data down 10 percent, we are shipping our dollars elsewhere. That needs to be abundantly clear to our taxpayers. We can cut programs fundamentally to our kids and to our communities. We can consolidate schools because without inclusive data showing this, that seems to be the other catch-all for solving these problems. We can watch our buildings crumble. Or we can do things differently and be a force for facilitating and crafting the change required. What I find frightening is listening to the Hours of State Education Committee testimony and that the majority are looking to our state for direction. Many legislators who are new to their role may or may not understand the history of how we've gotten here and certainly don't understand the funding formula. But yet, we are sitting on a wealth of skills, talent, experience, knowledge, and our community that are not being tapped effectively to solve the problems we face today. The solution obviously does not just sit within the hardwood district. More should the rain sit squarely with the state. We need a balance of guidance from the state with more partnership and more input from districts and regions. With 30 percent of the budgets failing, representing 40 percent of students, now is the time to secure that regions take back more control and more say of how the money is being used and assure that it's being used effectively with clear measures that our community can hold is accountable to. We need partnerships with the state, not just big data. There's been excellent analysis already done on what needs to be accomplished to bring our costs down while improving outcomes. I'm referring to the PINCAS-Odin engagement that was completed in 2016. We do not have to reinvent the wheel. We are not the only state who has to consider poverty and rural areas, but we do have to think differently and be able to challenge the status quo. Abortability of Vermont, many believe, I believe, is the most important issue on the table right now. Almost daily on the gauge in conversation or over here in our community saying they just can't do it anymore. They're happy that. And the Harvard School Board has an important role in making it affordable for our taxpayers to remain here. Equally, we must deliver for our kids and empower our teachers and provide a sustainable living for them, doable. I believe that my two decades' class of experience in financial management, banking, strategic planning, and strategic development make me well suited to represent our community as we're facing unprecedented challenges. We can't do it all, but with precision, focus, communication, clarity of goals, hard choices, we can balance the needs of all our stakeholders, taxpayers, students, teachers, and administrators. With inclusion in the near term, my focus will be working with the state and across districts to make sure our voice is heard in educational reform, deep thought into Harvard financials to find efficient leads, and lastly, making sure we're providing better communication to our taxpayers so they fully understand what we can control, what we can't, and that's up for debate and how we're making the most of what we do have to protect and to deliver for our students and our teachers. Questions? I thank you for your very germane comments. I think what you said was very important, but would you be supportive? I know the existing school board, I've been to several school board meetings, and they have taken off the table potential staff. And I said, well, you may have to consider them because we're at the point where we just can't afford, taxpayers can't afford it anymore. And I'd be a blank stare from especially the superintendent's office like we can't cut it anymore. As a matter of fact, I had one alternative that they weren't even going to consider. So would you consider cuts of staff if you could reorganize some positions to better sustain education at Harvard? I haven't been under the hood. I haven't seen the line items, but my gut reaction to that is absolutely you have to. Unfortunately, right? And these are people who live in our communities we're talking cutting jobs. When you look across the whole entire state, you're probably talking about 500 jobs, you know, as these budgets, these 30 weeks at that bill, we're talking dramatic dramatic cuts. These are our friends, these are people in the community. It's heartbreaking, but you have to do that because there's only so much taxpayers can do. And when you're still looking at a 20 to 25% increase in property taxes and more the three years after that, I don't know that everybody knows that it's not doable. And so with the current system, the way the state is dictating it, that is what is going to happen. So I would hate to do that. And that's why I believe we need to fundamentally be working with the state and say that system is perfect. But I think you do have to look at cuts. Thank you. Hey, you mentioned the background in banking and finance. And so my first thought was, well, when a bank is thinking that a business is failing, the first thought is to liquidate. So with that being said, we've already spoken about staff cuts. You mentioned you haven't been under the hood. When it comes to public education, there's not much in the way of liquidation. Now a whole lot left to tear off out of the builders. So when you cut staff and you increase care for classroom sizes, what else is there left to do? We're distributing sports out, sciences, arts. There's not a whole lot left to strip out. How would you solve what seems to be an endless cycle of, we can't cut it, but we can't afford it either. So I would say a couple things. I think the first thing that would do is actually not the good day. You try to write science a shift, right? And so you have to get under the hood and see what you can do. And I believe that you can, I think across the board, and again, coming back to the testimony I've been listening to on YouTube at the state level, I think we just keep coming back to the same old solutions, right? And I know that our population within the Harvard District is flat. It hasn't gone down. And then there's the legalized people, you know, this year. But we do have the administration. We've got other types of support. So it's not just student ratios. And although in our student ratios, but I do know that our schools are at capacity. Yeah, I don't have all the numbers in front of me. And so, and I'm also the component, I have two children, by the way, who are in the schools, grade five and nine, you know, and I've got an athlete at Harwood. And I keep hearing about the testimony that they're coming to provide all these mental health services and other types of services right now. And I'm a strong believer that these extracurricular activities and having kids be strong in their bodies and be healthy is just as important as that mental health. So I'm not somebody who's just going to say, okay, we're going to cut out the extracurriculars. But I think that there are efficiencies. There's always efficiencies. I've had to deal with budgets in my 22 years of working. I've had to make some hard choices. There's always line items. There's always money to be found. And we're going to have to do that. Any other questions? Thank you. Next candidate is Dan Walton. Thank you, too, for stepping forward. I'm also dressing while you're doing the candidacy. Yeah, so I've been in education, public education in some form for about 20 years. I've been a classroom teacher in multiple states. I've been a district administrator. I've worked at state departments of education on various projects. And when I moved to Vermont here in Waterbury a little over a year and a half ago, I was hearing a lot of the churn and the bubble and upvote some of the concerns that were just spoken around. And I think my classroom experience, my just overall education experience coupled with my business experience. I'm currently a vice president at a educational technology company that really focuses on or that gives me the purview or the lens to really look at a lot of these challenges and how do we maintain supportive, healthy schools with vibrant communities, while also remaining sustainable. We cannot fund our way out of many of these problems. So I think the opportunity to really roll the sleeves up with that experience help look for some of the hidden dollars that oftentimes we find in school systems, whether that's consolidation or whether that's staff reductions or whether that's looking at individual program lines at schools, sites or whatever curriculum or technology solutions are in place and where those overall costs I've walked into school districts across the country that continually cry for and then have shrink wrap textbooks in their closets at the hall that haven't been touched in eight years. So again, borrowing the phrase of having to look under the hood, there's always something like that, right? And so to the extent where we can maintain our healthy environments, where we can maintain our high performing or our high standards for learning and outcomes while making sure that we don't price our communities out of the community through tax increases, I think it's important that I'm willing to roll out my sleeves to help find those two questions. Questions? Next, same question that I asked, Ms. Brown, how do you consider AFM staff cuts? I know none of us like to hear staff cuts, but if they're necessary, how do you look at some heavier staff cuts than the supervisor just depends on your own decisions. I think I'm going back to something I said a few minutes ago, is we have to look at where those staff are allocated and what service functions are they allocated? Are they curricular? Are they directly informing instruction in the classroom? Are they superlative, supporting things outside of, say, core academics, maybe more resource officers, social workers, or something to those effects? Like to what extent can we look at the individual programs, measure the efficiency and efficacy of those programs, what kind of personnel are associated with them? My point is basically we have to look programmatically across each piece and that's part of that, not just evaluate the spend on consumables or technology, but also look at the spend on the personnel and where are other gaps existing where we may have open headcounts that we're trying to recruit, where we can retrain, repurpose some of those people, cut the program if it's underutilized or it's not being utilized at all, but we're still funding it for some reason. To what extent can we look at those types of savings and the people that are associated with it and possibly repurpose it? So we can maintain or we can maintain staff levels potentially. We have to look at the detail by lowering some of the program costs, repurposing those staff elsewhere. If all that work has been done and we don't have programs that are either underutilized, not utilized, or not delivering the effectiveness and so we have to use that data that all of our systems are consolidated to determine whether or not those programs are effective. If we've answered all those questions and the answer is staffed and we can't sell property and we can't raise funds through volunteers or other forms that does so fortunately they've personnel that have to go. Thank you. Thank you for your interest in this position. I come from a family of teachers and recently the complaints have been about low size in the classroom, whether it's students or caseloads. My mother and sister are both special educators and the size of caseloads are growing every year. So when we do come to post cutting and looking at the amount of folks that are on staff, if we end up having a couple of millers on those caseloads grow, we just end up losing those educators to other districts. Is that something that you consider walking in to the school board? Every day I deal with the school district across the country that's struggling with staffing. I mean, they put us across the country, right? You know, irrespective of the amount of dollars that we could potentially throw, there still has to be a pipeline of people that actually want to do the work, right? And so what I want to make sure is that we don't necessarily, that we look at the problem of class size and we don't just look at it as throwing bodies at it, but what other resources do we have that can offload that? Are there process improvements that we can play? Are there additional, you know, are there underutilized technologies or tools that we can help with some of the workflows that make the day to day easier? Because I remember juggling, getting there in the morning, doing my morning duty, teaching a full day of classes, also covering three days a week at lunch and then I coached after school, right? You know, there's a lot of, there's a lot of capacity, but I also know that there were tools and resources that weren't necessarily available to all of the teachers or they weren't necessarily aware. You know, I think there's ways that we can approach the class size issue through improved workflows and improved efficiencies that leave it as it is, but I don't think, you know, we have, we don't know that throwing additional bodies actually reduces our class size if we're going to continue to have the training that we have. So irrespective of that, we still have to be looking for these other areas to draw from. Can you speak to experience on a volunteer board in your perspective on relationship between board members and administration and staff? Yeah, so I have served in volunteer capacities, not in Vermont, but where I previously came from in North Carolina. That's been through animal rescue, that was a big thing that I have been a part of for a number of years, and as well as some educational work, PTAs, et cetera, those types of things, in terms of relationships, et cetera, I think the leader in collaboration, right? I mean, you know, any board that you work on, people need to know kind of what your positions are on certain things and identify the areas where we can address and try to compromise. And so that happens through open transparent conversation, that happens through professionalism, that happens through a shared agreement on the outcomes that we're moving towards. We may choose to approach them differently, but we can't disagree on what those outcomes are. In this case, we're looking to have those strong sustainable resources. You mentioned that you're interested in workforce development. How would your position on the school board help to develop that? So I think one of the things that we struggle with is, you know, and is clearly articulating for our students that there's alternatives from just graduating high school and picking up a job, graduating high school, and going to college, there's a continuum between those things. And I don't feel that we have done a great job and as a broad education in ensuring that our students are aware that that is a continuum that 20, 25 years ago, the push always was we'll go to college, right, and everybody go to college. And then what you end up having, you have still 30% of the population with college degree, you have increasing dropout rates because we don't articulate pass and we don't have great community business relationships that extend beyond like a chamber of commerce agreement or something like that. So when we look at things like, you know, the semiconductor work that's coming to Vermont as part of some of the recent legislation or what are the educational needs of those future employers, whether it's, you know, a leading edge employer or an established employer, what are those connections to what the students need to deliver and how do we create more of a pipeline outside of just sending kids to a college or putting them immediately into a workforce or sending them to the military, what are the apprentice programs, what are the mentorship programs, and how can we use the tools, the systems, the volunteers, the businesses, the changers of commerce, et cetera, to ultimately help influence and inform more of what those students are going to need from a true workforce position into the classroom to take it more of a partnership. Okay. I don't have a vocational school and I appreciate you saying that. Okay. This question is actually for Jim, if we could hear on the board currently for a word. Do you know what percentage of college students or attend such a Vermont faculty? I don't know the exact percentage, but quite a high number. Is it? Yeah. It's that way across a lot of central Vermont. That is a very highly utilized type of center. I don't know the exact number. That is a good answer. Just as a follow up to one of your comments, you said you were from North Carolina and I sounds like from your experience, you were involved in education down in North Carolina. How do they actually provide you with districts in terms of size, related to the size of say, you know, the Harlem district, you know, one of the Vermont districts in general, and how efficient are they based upon your size and staffing? So North Carolina in Arizona, which is where I also taught, operates on largely county-based boards or city boards. Okay. However, counties in those states range anywhere from 220,000 students all the way down to 800, right? One of the district that I lived in the longest in North Carolina was a school district that supported around 3,700 students. You know, so it also is a, it's no different, I would say, than what I've seen here in Vermont. The state education authority proposes policy and things that then the local boards have to implement through their policies, et cetera. So I don't generally see a difference beyond the, what I've received, it's the reverse phenomenon that I see here, where the local boards have some greater voice and was maybe not necessarily moving the needle, but greater type of, I should take back. Okay. Thanks very much. Corey Hackett. Hello, everybody. Thank you and to your family for your setting forward. My name is Corey Hackett. I'm a Waterloo resident. I've been a Waterloo resident for 20 years and the reason for looking to be on the school board is when I sat in that water booth and I let me go select a school board member and having nobody there, her, my wife had been on the water for four years and I had thought about the idea of taking her spot and she decided to step down. And I kicked myself for not moving forward and to get myself on that ballot because I didn't see that there was no names on that ballot. I've watched this with my wife being on the water for the last four years. I've watched almost every meeting. So I have some, some, some what's where that's what's going on in the event. I wish I'd written something out of a read. I think our, do you want to understand? I think I was just wondering on there. I think my position on the board would be suitable as I've dealt with or I've been on many different leadership boards in the past years of career work and actions on his own board many years ago. I think I, I feel like I've worked well with others. I think everybody needs to have an opinion at the table and differences are good against the discussion going. I don't claim to be the expert at some of the previous two that spoke to some very, very beneficial to their role to do it. Present a lot to the board as well. All right. Question takes a question. Mike, just to be fair, I've asked the other two candidates how would you, how would you deal with, you know, we're facing sort of challenges, you know, on those, a whole, you know, district, how would you look at, be receptive and how would you look at significant touch for personnel, you know, in the district to help, you know, mitigate, you know, actually, I think we really need to understand what those cuts mean, right? And it's, I understand administration's presentation to call out what cuts might be, because people are going to feel like they've got a left target, like that's my job. But I think it's passed the way we need to go, because we need to, as a, as a whole community, understand what those cuts might mean to our students in terms of community. I also think the, and I know the administration is doing this on an ongoing effort where they, as they get nutrition, they review that position and decide if they need to go to the board too. I think having that as a part of the process would help the quality of life. It helps, helps avoid cutting them, cutting the heads and even, you know, just understanding what are these, I wonder how we're evolving. Okay. Yeah. So, I'm just going to do the questions that I'll ask too. So, Mike, I might have some questions. That's fine. So, I'm going to ask you about, you know, I'm going to ask you about workforce development. I really like the last few days. Application. As I said before, I'm a graduate of a tax school, and it was an incredible event, special for me. I don't think, now that I would have graduated, I suppose. Yeah. Not very good student, but there are a lot of students now who see college or workforce or trying to military, as I said before. Do you have any ideas behind what promoting alternatives that would be a class in the style of a classroom? Strong advocate for that. My old son is very interested in the trades and trying to get into some program to help develop that. He's worked with some local training in summer time, which is great. He's taken advantage of the CCB program that's coming up in the year, and actually we have 10 CCB at a senior high school. He's also participated in some work shadowing. I think as a district, I think there's, I think there are things we are doing that are being done. I think we need to help advertise that more, speak up about that. And I think that will help those that might not know what's offered to the children or the kids out there, what opportunities are there to help perpetuate that super strong order for research and trades. I'm a general contractor in the South Europe, and we need more trades, and for sure. Corey, you mentioned that you work well with others. You've had leadership experience. Can you say how, what you see your role being on the board? We've got six towns participating on this unified school board. Waterbury is the longest one, but there are others that are fiercely resisting, trying to protect their primary schools with a number of students. What do you see your role being on the school board itself? I see it as a conduit to the voice for the Waterbury. I mean, the avenue for waterbury is the voice there, thousands of things. I think it's understanding all the parties involved on the other side of the valley. So you mentioned that they might not be up to some of the things that we've wanted to do in the past, trying to understand more about that and have that discussion with those members about why and how can we, what grounds can we come to, is there a common ground or just some of the middle of the plan? I think maybe in the past, too, you tried these different consolidation plans, but there was really no plan other than to consolidate. It really wasn't spelled out well, how that was going to happen. So if you can come up with a better way, if that's the avenue and take the help of Goss and come up with an actual plan, I can communicate there with the jest. Any other questions? Thank you very much. We have one more candidate. Dan, let's call it. Dan, I may have put your last name. Rossioli. Rossioli. Nadia. I heard my voice. Thanks for having me in. Thanks for coming forward. Your mind also explains why you're interested in this position. Why would you qualify? I'm going to start maybe by addressing why I think nobody ran for this position in the first place, because I think that's a piece I haven't done yet, but serving on a school board, I think it's a pretty thankless position and they tend to get beat up a little bit. And I think everybody on some old nodes that the next five years of finance is going to be a disaster. And who wants to sign up for that voluntarily, right? So thankfully, I think there are four good candidates here today, so I'm glad to see that because I was a little bit worried that I'd be the only one signing up. I think on a 40,000 foot level, the previous candidates have already talked a lot about what we need to do in the next few years. We all know the state school finance system is broken. We know we don't have control over that piece. So the role of the board has to become has to focus on the controls that we have. So backing up and just giving my personal story a little bit, I have four kids in the system, ages eight, 11, 16, and 18, all of which have taken very different academic approaches so far. And through that, I would maybe argue the opposite of what some people said, that I don't think our outcomes are fantastic right now. And I think that our educational outcomes could be improved considerably. For example, one of my kids effectively dropped out in the ninth grade because he wasn't learning anything. He wasn't getting anything out of school. As soon as he turned 16, he got out of his GED, did a couple classes at CCB. He's almost done his Champlain program right now. He's like 16 years old. And he flew through that once he got out of a public school system. So that told me that there are some issues in the public school system that probably go beyond just the finance piece that we're focused on right now. As a small business owner for 20 years, I kind of made a career of doing more with less. And I think that's kind of the position that we're going to be in for the next few years. The first candidate mentioned that this is like a four-year tax increase that we're looking at where it could be 25% per year. There's nothing changes, which, I mean, 100% tax increase in four years is a tough pill to swallow. So I think my business experience will help us kind of look at bigger picture items that I think maybe get skipped a lot of times when we're having discussions about how to save money. So to me, the board has been looking a bit good trying to find Nichols and Dimes here and there. It's a bigger picture, how to be restructured, how to be restructured great, how to be restructured the panels, and then holding the administrative team to finding the Nichols and Dimes that are to be found within each time. So for example, in one of the cost comparisons in the bond discussion, the board was comparing the cost of a very new high school by 180,000 square feet to the cost of renovations. 180,000 square feet is huge. It's way bigger than what the Department of Education would suggest we need for a student body or sex while you're looking at 180,000 square foot school as a cost comparison when we need to be half of that. So there's these bigger questions that I think the board hasn't been even asking for the last few years. And all these things that we're missing is preventing us, I think, from really tackling some of these cost problems. So you've asked fellow candidates about staff, right? In 2022, we had 366 full-time employees. They're 385 right now. No more students. Why do we have 20 more, 23 more staff? I think those questions need to be asked to the administrative team. There may be good answers. I don't know. I don't have all the answers necessarily, but I think I can ask the right questions with these board meetings. All right, cool. Questions? Well, you answered the already answered question. Thank you. I really appreciate you breaching that issue because I think a lot of people don't look at what outcomes are versus sometimes. You know, it's not always in dollars and cents. It's really about outcomes. You know, I know I went to school to enforce system teachers. I'm not saying that system teachers are not needed, but they have to really re-look at what the education system is. I don't think, you know, it's easy to throw more money at things. And I think you brought up an excellent point. They want to have a big facility and what happened to finding students. Right. Yeah. I mean, it's easy to look at the last two or three years and say, well, enrollment is steady. We had a nice little bump of people in the book here. Right. But the 20 year trends and all the forecasts show a considerable downward trend in enrollment. So are we going to be having this discussion every year? What's the right staffing number? I think we probably are. All right. So how do we brain that discussion? So every candidate that we put to, including yourself, has talked about running a business somehow or another and cost cutting. I also manage a heavy section of the business I'm employed by. And when it comes to cost cutting, we usually hit like the first when we're going to, you know, products. But I don't have a student body that I need to educate. So when it comes to cost cutting, how do we maintain at least some level of a decent education while we're cutting staff and cutting the extra fat? Okay. Let me offer one idea as an example. The discussion in the last few years have done about closing our middle school consolidating to across the program. Those have all been attached with, well, we get to grow across the program. If we're going to do that, we get to spend however many millions of dollars on bond money to that. Well, why? If we pay Cardwood 8, 9, 10, 11, 12. So A3 is out of the system. They can consolidate, keep Cardwood, they can process the same size as it is as it is and not have to spend on infrastructure. There's a lot of different ways. We've talked about, I think, aligning things in terms of towns. Fellowship-based inflows should, you know, this type of stuff, well, maybe we should look at how to realign grades. But if all the schools, the primary schools were K to 4, 3K to 4, instead of having a mix of some going to 4 or some going to 6, what if the high school was 8 to 12 instead of 9 to 12? But how do we shift things like that so that each school is in more of a sweet spot in terms of their capacity? So right now we have a couple schools that are 50, 60% of their theoretical capacity. And then we have a couple that are probably over 100% theoretical capacity. Well, how do we distribute those students so that we're running a more efficient 75% capacity across all the schools? So all those questions, I think, haven't even been looked at, very much are a lie. You mentioned that you were convinced that the outcomes were as good as they could be, so in case of your own student. What are some, can you set one example of how you might improve those incomes, outcomes? Okay, the state itself, well, I call them a lot of the finance mess. I think they, in some ways, they put in some really good programs. For example, as Gordon mentioned, his son is doing a CCD for the college program. Well, my kids did that. Do a moment. One of my kids did that. One of my younger ones, who wasn't being challenged in math at Berkside, is doing an online background program on his own. We have this tech, I think, that's available to us. And these systems that we rush through with their ability times, that had some real positive outcomes for some students. I'm not saying everyone should be learning at home, that's not the answer. But what pieces did we learn from that that we just kind of threw away in the process of getting back to normal? I only have a sample size of four in my house for kids, but they all excelled in the hybrid learning of being in school part-time, being at home part-time. So maybe there's opportunities to use those kinds of models that have proven successful in a number of places, rather than just trying to maintain the educational model that we learned in the last 100 and some odd years. Yeah, thank you. Our job is to select, we had zero candidates a month ago, and now we have four for three spots. Our job is to select three that candidates came forward tonight to fill the slots available and make those recommendations to the school board. And we are going to be doing that during our deliberative session later on tonight. Actually got a legal opinion about that. And because you are making a recommendation to the school board and you are not the appointing authority that has to be done in an open session. Well, all right. It doesn't have to be done today, of course. It has to be done in an open session. All right. Well, now I'm sure this is what I was about to say. Do I have a motion? Sure. Are we going to do one at a time? I don't think we might as well. Well, you could suggest a slate. Yeah, we would have to have one. Sure. Are we going to be able to comment before you? Sure. I'd just like to say that we're going to the discussion. My name is Steve Martin. I live in Waterbury. I attended, I think every in-person school board meeting that's been had since this whole budget then came up. And we'd just like to offer my opinion that first off, I think all the school board members are currently there, good people with good intentions. It is heavily weighted in my opinion to people that are looking, not looking at all that, any possibility of staff cuts, student ratios, anything like that. And very little, that's what the actual financial impact is. So, from my two cents, I would like to see the board recommend some people that can provide some balance. In business life, I was a hard case and I needed people around me that took the emotional person side of the issue. In my opinion, the school board that exists now needs some additions that will help them look at some of the financial side of it and the tax side of it. Regardless of the outcomes, I don't think we can afford doubling the tax in 40 years, like was suggested. And I don't think Montpelier currently is looking at anything other than new taxes. So, I think it's important to have some balance in the school board. And if we have candidates that have qualifications that help balance out that side of the equation, I would say that would be a good addition to the school board and probably all of the people here tonight would be good additions. But that's where I see a future. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Yeah, I'll make a comment. Yeah, I'm Jake and then I'm just a former board member now besides just to become a head and track coach. So, one thing that I just kind of wanted to offer to the candidates that spoke, but also the select board itself is, you know, it is so great to hear any of you, you know, offer all of your personal expertise based on various other life ventures that you've been through. But I do just want to make it clear that, you know, the processes that exist today at the board level like in real time during a board meeting is, you know, we have an administrative team that comes forward after doing hour upon hours of work in which we pay them well to do and they come forward and they show what they've worked on. They present scenarios, especially when we talk about the budget. And it is up to that board of directors to then have a healthy and enriched discussion about what has been brought forward. So the reason why I'm bringing this up is because it's great to hear that so many of these candidates have this this background expertise perhaps from a financial perspective or even an education itself. But at the end of the day, you know, it takes quite a lot for just a regular board member to actually actually put a motion to the table to suggest like a very significant and tangible idea that they have that they really have to put forth a motion and perhaps even be scheduled on the agenda to do that. So one of the other reasons I'm saying this is because I just wanted to sort of understand that general like debate and communicative skills among board members might be a little bit more valuable than you think. So, you know, keep in mind when you're making your recommendations and you're talking it over, you know, making your motion is a few moments from now. The ability for a school board member to come to the table and have a healthy respectful discussion is very valuable. A school board member that just comes to the table and just says, I have this idea, this idea, this idea, this idea. That's not how the system works. There needs to be a proper structure for which that board member makes a motion to present these ideas. So I just wanted to offer that perspective. It's something that I thought of while hearing all these candidates speak and, you know, just know all four candidates here that it's quite, it can be a little bit cumbersome and difficult to really make your ideas come to fruition. It takes a lot of planning and execution. It's a lot more complicated than just raising your hand during the board session and saying, here's my idea. Thank you, Jake, and thank you for so much. We appreciate it. Chris. Yeah. Thanks for the candidates that came forward tonight. I thought you had good comments. In response to Jake's comments as well, you know, I've looked at this thing over a long period of time. This year has carried out my life. I've struggled. I've seen friends struggle with economy from 50 years ago. A lot of people work from there with the wages that paid people to back then and the efforts to make yourself secure for the days when you get older. Buy yourself a home and create a family. Have a good business or a good job and hope to die where you grew up and raise your family. Watching the education system go on over the years, having been gone to Ireland, what appears to be now that we've started out with a campfire that's now become a forest fire. And Smokey the Bear is nowhere in sight. And this forest fire, as to the young lady's comments, I'd like to know a little bit more about what you see come in the next four years because I've been trying to stay on top of a lot of this stuff for some time. And if you've got more information, I'd like to hear it. It's going to burn a lot of people out of their homes. And to my point, I don't know if you were at the Wakefield bond meeting on a discussion, you must have heard me say it then. The kids that are going through the school system now, I said it then I'll say it again. When they come out of that school, I hope the jobs that are available in this state have the income levels that they will be afforded to have be able to afford to live here because as we continue to burn ourselves out, it's going to become harder and harder to live here. And we want them children to stay here. My God, Elvis is going to come out. So the system's broke. Not probably some people aren't going to want to hear this, but I encourage everybody to continue to vote down the budget and budgets across the state until it gets forced back to the state house. And even then, that's where I believe the problem started. We can't let them just take it again and feed us a bunch of crap like open solidate your tools and everything will be okay. Because as far as I'm concerned, it didn't make a pink litter dam difference. It's over where we are now. So I wish the four board members, whichever three of you get elected tonight, wish you all the best of luck to figure up against the valley was where I originally came from. Back here, my mom was here all her life, she's back here when I was 17 and stayed here. But I'm paid right now and you've got some strong headwinds over there when it comes to pushing back on, on, on everything, everything that they want. Thanks. Thanks, Chris. Any other comments? Now for my last thing, just, just to be clear, just for everyone's knowledge, if the budget is voted down again by law, the district needs to operate at the seven, I believe, percent of last year's budget, which would be headshot. If you don't want to see staff cuts or you don't want to see very many staff cuts, oh boy, will you see them then? It would be, I guess, half of the budget will fail in a second. Okay, thanks. Yeah, I'll go first. I'm going to put you to your last name. I would make a motion that we recommend. Dan, would you like to perhaps pull me in? Rossioli, Rossioli, for an appointment at the school board. All right. All right, moved and seconded. Further discussion. Dan made a commendable presentation. Certainly got some great ideas to support his nomination. Any others? Any other discussion? Okay, so we're not following. Thanks everybody on that motion. Well, he just moved one candidate, so. Yeah, yeah, we'll just take him out one at a time. Yeah, Mike. Well, I just wanted to, it sounds like you're looking at other, other motions. We can only do one motion at a time. So, we have a motion on the table. I, it's moved and seconded. I moved and collected. All right. All of you say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Dan, congratulations. All right. Do I have another motion? Mike. I make a motion to get me right. If I draw a lease, a lease for round, is it? Round? Yes, it is. Yeah, thank you. My senior year, I make a motion that we nominate our for our recommendation to do the school board for Waterburgers, following Waterburgers representative. Okay, do I have a second? I'll second it. Move and second it. Further discussion. Again, all the way first. I was just going to reflect on Jake's comments on his last comment here, reflecting on the if the school board gets voted down again, catastrophic that would be, and for all folks who we recommended the school board tonight, just keep that in mind. Further discussion? Hearing none, I'll ever say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Well, congratulations. Isn't it true, Jake, that it's June 30th, the school board hasn't been voted down again? So, if nothing else is terminated, the next budget is the death penalty of about 87%. They've got time to get to the end of June before the budget is passed to the adopted. So, you don't have to necessarily vote yes on the next one. You might have another chance to vote. Okay. All right, nominate two. We've got one more to go. I'd like to also say that we have other openings on various other committees. So, if you don't get nominated for this, there'll be other opportunities and I suspect that there'll be also opportunities coming forward. So, if we don't get nominated this year, there'll be an opportunity coming up next year. Ask a question. So, you're like, correct me if I'm wrong, but this seems like a bit of a foul-seeing this process right now. What happens to the candidate that just doesn't get motions for consideration at all right? They don't get voted on? Well, we only have three people. I would get similar to what you alluded to with the school board. We are using our select board process, which is what we've used in the past for appointments. I recognize that it may be fluttering perfect, but our process for appointments to various boards and commissions pertains things. I've been to hear from the relevant candidates and then and the select board member is able to make a motion around the recommendation. So, we're going to take the sum of the recommendations from the motions this evening and share that with the school board. Okay. But J, our recommendation is purely just that the school board can do what they want. They don't agree with what our recommendations are. They can do something else. Okay. So, they're asking, I think they typically historically have accepted the recommendation as opposed to a select board, you know, you know, for school or the public. Any other motions? Yeah, I'll be right back. Okay. To recommend courier hack into the school board or consideration. I'll second that. Okay. Courier hack it. Moved and seconded. Any further discussion? And none. I'll never say aye. Aye. Aye. They opposed. Any abstentions? All right. Cory, congratulations. Thank you. All right. And then thank you for coming forward. There'll be other opportunities I think going forward. If you are interested in serving. Thank you. If you want to know more about the shameless plug. I think I got a whole lot of people. So, Tom, do you want to forward our nominations to the superintendent? We'll do it. Okay. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Appreciate it. All right. Next on the agenda is to adopt the rules of procedure. Followed by. Thank you for the rules of procedure. Specific to the vicious dog hearings. Go ahead. Move to adopt the rules of procedures for the rules of procedure. For select for the vicious dog will buy our hearings as written. To have a sign. All sign it with the note that the intent of the rules is just to provide a clear outline process so that we can explain to everyone and we'll go through them. But yes, sign it. Okay. Moved and seconded for the discussion. We can provide written comments to everyone, but it just outlines the process of how we would hold this hearing that emphasis is that all the comments are directed at the chair who runs the hearing. We have an opportunity to accept comments. And then this is one where we do have the option for to close the hearing either continue it to a date, certain or delivery and come back. Notably, the procedure for domestic pet will hybrid hearing shall be considered in the following sequence. Open the hearing by reading the warning or notice of the hearing be read the complaint received and remind all present that the hearing is mandated by the state law and will be conducted in nor girl manner. See that the complainant respondent if he or she has received the copies of the rules of procedure and whether he or she has any questions about how the hearing will proceed and then direct complaining of what his or her representative on all other providing evidence thereafter to step forward in the following over. It actually goes on quite nice after that. Yes, it is written here and we do have the full sequence of events. We need to sign this before it's yeah, there's more to sign this. We still need to pass the motion. Yeah, we do have to pass the motion. Any further discussion? Yeah, Mike. Just one real quick thing and I don't know if it's just something I've kind of missed somewhere. Has there always been vicious dog won't hybrid or that's something that's been added with a hybrid part is to regulate. But we've seen it that way. It's always been okay. I think it's not just animal control. I thought so, but wasn't sure. They probably added because in the last presence of full libraries has kind of been a somewhat more recent kind of anomaly. Okay. Any further discussion on the rules procedure? Hearing none, I'll ever say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? All right. The rules of procedure are passed. I will sign off and miscalculate. And now we'll go move right into the vicious dog hearing. Yeah, I can introduce it real quick. He did never wait in the submission ready for this one. But the hearing proteins, too, that the hearing was requested by Jonathan Cameron and his spouse. The hearing pertains to dogs that were the 55 North Main Street Department 3, which is right on the corner of Maine and Butler. Where five dogs in the apartment, to my knowledge, there were five dogs registered to that address just this past Friday. Mr. Hammer, I think, can come up and tell a story. All right. Welcome here, Mr. Hammer. Can you state your name with the record list? For record, my name is Jonathan Hammer. My wife and my children have been mauled at by several dogs occasionally. They haven't attained any wounds, but they do keep getting jumped on. There is two people that I find out that have been in the building. And my concern is that my wife and children will be the next victim. So that's why I would do you guys to possibly have something done about it. So it's not just being a go. And do you know the owners of these dogs? These two right here? Personally? No, don't mind. I do know their names, but I don't know. Personally, I don't know. All right. Well, thank you. Any other questions for Jonathan? Yeah, I'll listen. Can you just describe what your response has been to the situation? What has happened and what you've done? I've let the property manager know. I've also let Tom know. And that's basically that's what I've done. Thank you. Are the dog owners, all of them, registered in the same complex as you? Yes, I'm out of that home income. Okay, so has this been brought up to the property manager? I'm the property manager. Okay, yeah. Have you dealt with? I have. Well, yes, I have. Well, I'm sorry, just an order of procedure. We need to have one witness testify a little bit. So I will ask her to come up after John. We're done with the questioning. John, what was that? And he might thank you. Thank you very much for bringing this to our attention. The property manager, I didn't get your name. Pauline Nelson. Yeah, I'm Pauline. I haven't talked with them about the dogs attacking the tenants or people walking by. We have a lot of problems. I have a lot of complaints from people walking by that are afraid of the dogs. They'll be walking their dogs or just walking. Their dogs will charge out. They're off the leash. They're always on a leash. They'll charge at them. But I have something notices or given them notices in talk with them. When they moved in, the dogs were supposed to be gone by the end of that week, and that was on September 10th. They're supposed to be gone September 10th. Yes, that's what they told us that they were going to be gone. Yeah, Pauline. How big is the apartment? It's a three-room apartment. One bedroom, one living room, one kitchen, one bathroom, and a small closet. So it's a one-bedroom apartment? Yes. And there's five dogs. There's five adults and two children living in that one apartment. They're supposed to be leaving by May 3rd. That eviction notice has come. We went to court last week, yes. Any other questions for Pauline? Do you have any in their leases? Are there any restrictions for what kind of pets? Yes, there is, but they didn't sign on the lease. They didn't sign on the lease? No, they didn't. I didn't run it out to them. The owner made the agreement with them, and things fell through. So they're living on months and months? They haven't paid any rent since they moved in. Pauline, thank you. Appreciate you taking the time. All right. Anyone else want to ask Pauline before we bring the dog overs forward? Yeah, all the way in the back there. Come forward, please. I'm Jason Carter. I was at the time staying up in the Worship Department where it is. Good to have you. Thank you. I was staying at the time spending a couple of weekends there. Personally, I've been bitten by the dog. I had to go to the doctor's and get a tetanus shot. And they were not told if they were registered or had any shots or anything like that sort. So he's kind of scared for me and my foster family. And as a former DCF child, I am scared for the children that are in the home more than the people that walk around the building. I just know that the dogs were not fixed and I'll have their shots. And just a bunch of other stuff was going on, and I'm going to mention it's not a problem. But just dogs in general, that's just unsafe to have our own children who aren't fixed. And I feel like that's really bad. And it just really puts me in a comfortable spot. And just knowing my position, I wouldn't know what it's like to be in that position, which is screaming and barking and accusations, dogs biting people. It's just, personally for me, that's not a good influence as a parent. I feel I would have my dogs on a leash at all times and have their shots before I even enter an apartment. I would have my kids completely awakened to the dogs if I knew they didn't have shots. I just think the whole thing is a whole mess. And I think they sound OK to me. Deegan, thanks for coming forward. Questions? Alyssa? You can take your, anyone else, report the bite to anyone? I had a couple of employees who also reported the bite. I also had somebody who's living in the apartment, like right now, who's also living in the apartment and can't afford the bite. One question for you. You said you went to the doctor and you had, you gave your tetanus shots. Is there evidence that the dogs were rabies vaccinated? And did you still do anything in terms of rabies? No, not in terms of rabies. I just got tetanus shots. I'm wearing a single shot. When I was sent home after that, he did ask me questions. But do you like anything about that sort, which if you're not? And so I had to get a little too many milk shot block, I believe it was. Mike, the dogs are, you do have that one, rabies vaccination, they were, you may recall, two weeks ago, at the end of the meeting, it's like they're authorizing me to issue tickets as the animal control officer. So I had told the dog owners that I will issue tickets of $50 a day for a dog, with the dog for not vaccinated by today. Sorry, it's the dog's not registered by the day. They were in fact registered Friday. So that's been taken care of. Thank you. Bill Shubbler, former health officer. I'm Bill Shubbler, the health officer. Mr. Carrer did call me, typically, when somebody goes to a medical facility and gets treated for a dog bite, the medical facility contacts the town clerk or the health officer directly. That didn't happen. Mr. Carrer did get ahold of me. I contacted the clinic that he went to, and they did ultimately send information to Karen, the deputy district town clerk. I processed that. I don't recall the owner's names of him, but I didn't speak to the owners. They admitted that the dog probably bit Mr. Carrer. I was told that they believe the dog's road had their shots, but I couldn't ascertain that they were licensed. I'm just the health officer, not the animal control officer, so I couldn't issue any kinds of tickets. I worked with the owners and Karen to try to get them to come here to register the dogs if they were not registered, and it sounds as if they weren't registered until Thomas had to intervene. But I'm just here to tell you that there was a report made to me. There was a bite, and it was corroborated by the medical facility that Mr. Carrer was bitten and that he had received a death shot. I did tell the owners that the best practice was to keep the dogs confined. They're supposed to be confined under observation depending on the facility, and I'm sure that they don't show any signs of potential rabies. And I followed up and there was no indication that the dogs were actually any kind of army. That's our report. Thank you all. Thank you very much. Any further questions for Bill? Anyone else want to testify about this case? All right, let's bring the owners up, please. Where's the lion? I don't know why. I don't know why. I don't know why. I don't know why. Christina, what was that last thing you mean? I don't know why. I don't know why. I don't know why. I don't know why. I don't know why. I don't know why. So we have testimony that the dogs may not have been registered, but they are registered now. There was a dog fight that was verified by our town health officer. Can you sort of state your case, please? That dog that did fight, he did get rid of them. He was black and white. She's brown and white. He is my dog, Sassy's puppy. He's only a year and a half old. I have Bella, who is also her puppy. She's a year and a half. I keep my dogs on a leash when they're outside. How many are there? There was six. There's five. Because I got rid of the one that bit. My dogs are the sweetest dogs. Unless you harm me or my children. They're all fixed, but one. We lived in a hotel before moving to the apartment. And we lived there for two and a half years. And not once did anybody give it nor complain about my dogs. Yeah, they bark. I have a dash of Yorkie boots. I went to Walmart today and bought muzzles to stop the barking when they go out. The neighbors will go by the door when we first moved in and bark. Because my dogs bark, so they would bark back at the dogs. We have had issues with the neighbors since we moved in. The daily moved in. There's been issues ongoing. We have never gotten along with the neighbors. They either stop on their floor, which is on our ceiling. And like she said, walk, stop up the stairs, get the dogs going, or mocking the dogs. And we've had issues with them since day one. And we did sign a lease. It's just the landlord, Michael 3, didn't want the lease or anything. He, what happened with that is Tyler, he'd worked in miscarriages. And he felt that Tyler lied about a charge that he eventually beat in court. He was found not guilty. We moved in Saturday and Tuesday. We were handed an addiction notice. So, and then from Tuesday on. I'm sorry, which day is this? I'm just trying to. It's September, September 10th. We moved in and which is was a Saturday that following Tuesday. I feel great. Fire Tyler and gave us an addiction notice. We he wanted us out. He offered us money to get out that day. $500 and then offered us again. $2,500 to be out within a week and a half. But you weren't going to take it? I'm not going to. I'm not. I didn't do anything wrong with that. He thought, like she said, he thought I liked about a 12-year charge. That happened 12, 13 years ago. And then the recent charge that I beat at a court for an investment that I didn't get. He thought I liked it. When I told him about my interview, I'm going to register for this. I'm going to go over this. I'm going to beat it. He let me work for him two and a half months before moving into the apartment. Then I moved to the apartment, still worked in Berlin. And then we're two days here in town. And that Tuesday at 11 o'clock, I went to clock. I need to go in. I couldn't clock in. They gave me my two checks. I said, oh, and then and then we have to leave on. We begged and begged at least for the boys and I don't stay. I would have left and I just heard my son and his little brother. I'm not going to see them on the street. I'm a grown-ass man. Sorry about the language. I will live on the street. That's what I want her or the kids do. And we went to hand them the money. And Pauline wouldn't take it wouldn't take anything. She couldn't have been like all said something. Yeah, I guess we put a name on it or something like that. They couldn't take the money. Well, the focus of this real discussion is more about the dog. I feel that you guys get a phone call the day our eviction is final. If my dogs were that much of an issue, why have you guys just finding this out seven months later? Yeah. Tom, when did you first get the comment on this? Pauline been working towards this hearing for three or four weeks. We mentioned something that was at least a couple weeks ago. Other questions from the board. Mike, I just have a question just seems unusual that when you went into the property that you would have signed some sort of a lease before you got in. Why did that not take this that would protect your rights as well as the landlord? They gave us, let me move in. I got the key at the restaurant and we did all sat down and signed the lease. And I went and brought it down to Berlin. He didn't want to sign it. He didn't want to do nothing. We got up here to Waterbury when I was working because I was working to keep both of the spots. Twin city lanes. In Berlin. In Berlin. Okay. Well, now they ended up here. He didn't want to sign and do anything down in Berlin. He wanted to do everything up here because that's where he was living in apartment six at the time. Did he not want you to move in? Well, he let us all move in and everything. Hello. Mike has happened to live in a hotel. And I started working for him and I'm like one of his other employees. I was just going to comment on the purpose of this hearing about the dog. Did somebody, did they have claims about it? Have you claimed that the dog who indeed did the biting no longer resides on the property? Yeah, I'm lucky. What happened to the dog? I gave them away. Any other questions? That black and white one was just there the other day. I saw him right out the window. My wife has a picture of him. He's brown and white. He's brown and white. He's not there. He's not there. The black and white one, he's nice about it. Yeah. There's two brown and white ones. Yes, I have sassing. And we have now registered for five dogs and registered. Yeah. And then all shots, all of shots. Yes. Do we have a motion to the board or do we can take this into the load room session if we want to? Yeah. I would just, like we have. An instance of a specific dog biting a specific person. Or we have the evidence of the dog biting a person. We know which dog it was. And the dog has been really a different sort of shit. I think outside of that, there's not a lot, besides going by the book. We can't go to the extreme and take a dog away because they're not there anymore. No, but we kind of can post five. So, how do we look at the case now? How do we look at, there was a period of time that there was a problem. And I don't know where we look at the finding period. And because I know, as King just said, there's a little discrepancy. The second one party is saying the dog is no longer there. And you know, neighbors are saying it's been back. Well, he also said that he's been sort of, the other dogs have jumped on him. Yeah, right. No, when they, the other day, my wife was coming back in from letting him take this. I did the school bus and they were letting the dogs out. One of them escapes right from their apartment and jumps right on my wife. This is the stuff that, you know, I'm trying to avoid of, you know, having my wife get more or my kids get more, you know, there's steps and stuff that is around there, which, you know, if my kids or my wife trip down, you know, the stairs, that's finished here. And you know, this is the stuff I'm trying to avoid. It's nothing against you guys or your dogs. It's just we need to have control of how this is. Kind of shut up. Can I tell you something? Falling in the back. Oh, okay. Falling in the back. Yeah. Yet the dogs aren't vicious. Then when I go over with the repair man or whatever, we have to go ahead. Why do you lock them in the bathroom and stand and hold the bathroom door shut? We don't hold the bathroom door shut. And Roger, it's on the outside of the board. This shouldn't be an attack on individual people. So if you have a comment, Polly, I'm going to ask you to direct it to Roger as the chair, and these folks will also direct that comment. All right. The goal is the one. Well, if the dogs aren't vicious, when I go over with the repair man or whatever, and I go in, Tyler locks the dogs in the bathroom and he stands here and holds the bathroom door shut. So, I mean, I would assume that there's a reason if they're not vicious. And Tom, Barbara was supposed to have sent you a paper or something because she pushed the e-mailer. We can talk in the phone. Oh, yeah, okay. Yes, Alyssa. I want to ask if you have anything else to add that hasn't been covered. We have a lot of for this accusation right here. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What's it got? Are they always unlicensed? They're always unlicensed. Even before I opened my parents. Well, we've heard some testimony that they have jumped on kids coming off the school buses or something like that. Is that true? Yes, but they pat them. His wife has pat my husky. So I don't understand. Both kids have been in our husky and Bella. Which is the year and a half old and then our black and white one. They all, even John has. All right. And from what I understand, also you have received the eviction notice. Are you planning to leave to the department? We're leaving in state May 3rd. Yes. But you might ask why? Why don't they take a picture of our windows? Just don't have the documents. Well, we'll do one of that. I'll call it. We take pictures from their windows and from other spots around the property because since they moved in, their dogs have gone out on the lawn and at the neighbors lawn and used it out of the classroom. I have on my phone numerous pictures. They have cleaned it up. They've done a good job of cleaning it up lately. But all winter, it was just dog feces all over. And the neighbors, Scott Brooks's property too. And they need to clean that up too. It was that's why we take pictures. I have and I have them. Yeah, so far I'm wondering if Tom should share his feedback publicly as part of this hearing. And then I was going to move to close this hearing. If there is any further comment and we'll discuss more in the next session. So the name Barbara was mentioned. I did speak with her. She echoed Jonathan's comments that the dogs would have jumped on her and she lives in fear of them. That was the general statement that she feels like it's a problem we need to have some more. I think Jonathan sent them in. We could also take, there's two lords to go up my apartment. We can take them out because separate to our beds and by bedroom. For the last month, we're there. Okay, Mike, just for the record. What are the breeds of all the dogs that are there? And what kind of size are they? People, people, mix. I have a dash. I'm dorky, but that has since 2017. He stayed past your ankle. And he's the one that you'll hear. He is the Barker. And then I have a six-month-old Samaritan Husky. There's no more testimony. I think we've got a reasonable picture of what happened. Appreciate the fact that you folks have taken some measures to get your dogs registered and keep them on leash. We do have some testimony indicating that it certainly was a problem before. And certainly we hope that there's not going to be a problem going forward. I think we will take this into a deliberative session after we close the meeting tonight. And you'll be hearing first. Okay. Thank you. All right. Now we have a number of permits. Is anyone representing 100 on 100? No? Okay, one on zero. And one on zero. 100 on 100. No? No. We do have the permit request from Evan Dulecki. So I have a motion. It was a real life force that's been run for a number of years. There comes a truly big amount of water break in August 10th Saturday. Usually in the morning. I believe last year there were some permits on the safety of runners and drivers alike for this. And they had addressed those then. But I don't see anything addressing that either. In that way? Last year committed to memorizing. Is the UT tier they've been wearing it? Yeah. As I recall, there was conflicts with like it was the car show beginning. And so I know that happened on that same day. Thank you so much. I will say I'm they are indicating. That was actually your comments. Yeah, yeah. There we go. You should not call for it. There you go. Noting that it was a busy weekend. But in terms of notes. It's not even that. It's the goers that are participating in the vehicles that follow this 100 on 100 from us. Starting in the stone area through the water break down. You shouldn't get out of the water break. It's a matter of where they probably fell apart. You're going to move in. You really know. I don't understand anything that the path in which you're going. I don't really have the public. So, because everybody knows that I work in the local on the weekends. I've had it for 40 decades now. It's just recent been on forever. You know, to be wrong and stuff with it. It's just a matter of I'm just hoping that, you know, as these organizers continue in that traffic. That road gets busier and busier and busier every year. That they take the opportunity to advertise a little better. Maybe some weeks' pregnancy or something to, you know, not to halt it. It's just to make sure the safety of the options and the people that are in it, you know, are taking care. And this route has them using the, you know, a waterway through the wreck path. So, they avoid being on U-100 while they're in a waterway, except for going across the bridge over into Duck Spring more times. Which is good. But in years past, it's kind of right, right with down 100. Yeah. And they turn on to, on the social and down to that direction. So, you know, the path changes. Today that may be one of the, you know, they put in the place to make it better. Looks as though they were listening to you, Scott. So, yeah. I mean, this is probably the busiest street here, so, so street. Well, and I would just say they know that there will be police officer present monitoring runner and vehicle traffic at the U-100 crossing as specified, as well as runner outfits and the like. So, I would go ahead and move to include the 100-on-100 event on August 10th as of. Okay. We're just talking in a early discussion. Hearing none, all of the members say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? We'll issue them a permit. Okay. Next on the agenda is the circus smarkas. Okay. So, David Merman. Hi. I'm Alan Lambert. I'm on Zoom here with our operations director and our administrative director, and I'm the tour general manager for circus smarkas. Yep. Thank you for coming on. Could you just explain to me how many days you'll be operating and what measures you're taking to ensure public safety? I can take that. So, we'll be there performing three days, and we perform two shows per day. Every show is at from one to three, and then again from six to eight. In the pat... We were there last year at Farsfield, and we were working with fire chief Gary Dillon. He did not recommend that we employ a fire detail nor a police detail nor an EMT detail. What we do to ensure public safety is we have several employees trained in crowd control. We also have many employees trained with CPR and first aid, and then we have volunteers who assist us with parking. Mm-hmm. Okay. And have you had any issues that you'd like to call our attention to and how you dealt with them? Nate may be able to speak better to that. I've never had... I don't think that we've ever had a public safety issue, but, Nate, you can maybe speak to that. Yeah, public safety issues we have not really had. Every once in a while, we have a performer who, you know, has a slight injury. We take care of that. I think probably the biggest thing last year, obviously, we had the flooding of that field with the river right next to it. And yeah, so we're... We always monitor weather. We monitor lightning strikes and weather in the area, but definitely we'll be keeping an eye on and rain that's coming our way and definitely be thinking about that. And hopefully we won't have anything like what we had last summer. But as far as public safety stuff goes, we have not had anything in the past. And, Nate, can we get your full name just for the record? Sure. My name is Nathaniel DeGruel, D-U-B-R-U-L-E. Well, thanks. All their questions. Have you been in touch with Gary Gillum this year? Not yet. I was waiting to get permission from the town. But you do intend to be in touch with him? Definitely, yes. Because Gary will be out or send someone out to inspect our tents. So we get the state inspectors out from the Waterbury office, and I've been in touch with them. And then we'll have Gary come out and inspect the tent as well. And about how many people do you accommodate at each show? We can seat what we call butts-in-seat. We can put 745 in the tent at one time. That's for a totally sold-out show. I would think we try to limit it to around 700 to 720. I don't recall the numbers last year. I do think that we had a couple of sold-out shows. And there's adequate parking at Farfield for all those shows? We expect maximum, probably 275 cars we usually ask to plan for 250. I don't know that we've had, at Farfield, we definitely haven't had trouble last year with parking. Right. So several sold-out. Yes. Yeah. Just as someone who attended one of the evening shows last year, they did a great job of planning the parking. Good access in the tent. It was, I think it was a sold-out show, but people were able to come and go. They needed to get out as easily without being seen, felt like they couldn't get out of there. It was a kind of issue and very efficient when it came to police. So I think they did a great job. All right. Well, okay. Very good testimony from the little town health officer. Thank you. I appreciate it. Do I have a motion? It's not all about it. Super, two questions. Do you have, do you use your own tents and facilities with you of a tent company that's here to avoid? Yeah, we have all of our own trailers and tents. We bring the big top and midway tents and our backstage tent and we set it all up. Then we're there for a couple of days and we take it down and go somewhere else. So we're a complete package. We travel by ourselves. Okay. Do you also have, are there any concerns from the landowner, like for instance, if we have flooding or not flooding, but say if it's kind of wet or muddy on the field? Is there any restrictions by the leasing of the field? John Farr, no. John Farr has been willing to work with us and we were off the fields without, I don't know, Nate, you can attest to the damage that might have been done last year, but I think we were off just prior to the rains. Yeah, we left two days before the floods happened and we did work closely with him to ensure that we took a route across the field that was not going to damage it because he was definitely very worried about they had a dog show coming like the next weekend or something and I guess it's a big to do. So he was very worried about the state of the field after we left, but as far as I know, he was very happy with the way we left it. Thank you. He agreed to at least do us again this year without any, there were no other stipulations. So I believe, I don't think he was unhappy. Any other comments? So I have a motion to approve the entertainment for service members for the days of July 2nd through the 4th? Second. Moving second. Is there any further discussion? Hearing none. All members say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Congratulations. You have your permit. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for taking the time. Bye. Bye. All right. Walked off. The gravel drive. The flash. Uh-huh. All right. Please state your name for the record. Yes. Keep it shown. Is there water? What river is it? And can you please explain how, what safety precautions you're going to implement in order to make sure that you have very well-safe gravel drivers? Yeah, of course. So essentially it's our sweet 16 edition of this route race. It's the 16th year. We missed one year during the pandemic. Otherwise, we went on a street route. There really has been 16 years of frankly not having any real mistakes, but tweaking the process, the plan, the route, year after year. We have two routes that we use. It's probably 60-40. This year we're hoping for 350 to 400 participants total. So a couple of things we've done as the event has grown is split up to that group. Everyone used to leave in a mass start. Now we have two different groups. They've been half hour apart. We intend to best-case scenario have a state trooper do that, that departure to help maintain traffic. And essentially the home base will be at Russell Parker. And so we leave out Railroad Street onto Stowe Street over to Perryville Road. And then folks start to spread out and disperse once you get to Perryville Road. State Trooper comes back as the second group. That's the main first piece. And then the route itself, we stay to as many back roads as we can. We do not cross through 100, which is a huge aspect that we like to avoid. And then on the extended side, so folks would go Waterbury Waterbury Center up in Stowe, Stowe Hollow and back. They just do a big, great loop. And then folks who will continue out in the moorhound, it's on some last four roads, mostly back roads. And we try to stick to have as many right turns as possible on any busy stretches. And when we can't do that, when you're making a loop, we just make sure that we've adjusted the route so that you have complete visibility on traffic so there's no blind turns. The other piece, we do have course marshals at major intersections. And then also prime all the riders with email notifications and information about a month before the event. So in the next week or so, we'll get the first notifications about etiquette, rules of the road, things like that so that they know they have to be good stewards of local traffic and the respectful of all things larger and heavier than them. Questions? Sorry, one other major thing. I apologize. We let know all EMS and ambulance, fire and police, well in advance of the ride, all of them have been notified so far. I haven't gotten positive confirmation back, but they've all been reached out to for all the time to be positive. Like no real questions. I really appreciate the thoroughness of your submission. I wish they go on like this. Appreciate it, Dan. Loop, thank you. Can I just get a little clarification? I'm seeing Sunday, May 7th and that. That's awesome because they did a great job. So thank you all for that right there. So I think that has been talked, it's changed in there now. Okay, great. I know version. Thank you. And we'll be back with vendor and DLC permit applications the next meeting. And the rest of the park reservation has all been done. It's all been submitted. I believe that population is contingent on this, right? Correct. It does mean insurance and progress. Any other questions? Okay. I have a lot of emotions. I have quite a few comments. Yeah. Scott here. So I guess my comment is I'm a Periyah resident. Yes, sir. So from the StoStreet comes on to Lincoln, Lincoln to Periyah. That is a very long, steep winding road. Yeah. As a resident up there, I'm always surprised that this function has even been going on because there's really no advertisement on that hill for let anybody know. But this event is going on. Sure. And when it does, it's up a hill or wide into those winding corners. And there are a lot of people that come up and down that hill on Saturday every day now. But it's just one of those deals where for the public safety means in the safety of your participants, I don't know what the rules of the road is for your gravel grinder setup. And half portion from Lincoln to your off the Periyah whole section. But that would be a suggestion that I would have. And I did bring this up last year also because, I mean, I mean, even like a garbage scenario last year at the bottom of my driveway, which I claim that would. Thank you. But that's very, very minimal compared to somebody losing a life or someone coming around the corner and having to ditch their vehicle down over a bank or in a bank. I think it's not really how the road or road was provided like. Fairly. Yeah. And two of us is the wall. Yeah. So that can assure you the last few years that's not always been the case. In the entirely rich section. Yes. Up past two, you started the large point to the dirt road upon top. Yep. That's not always the case. And I live on that steep hill. Okay. So. We're done. We're, like, signing the minimum but it's right away the week before. I think everything would be better than nothing. Sure. And like I said, I applaud you for doing this a lot of work. I understand. I think it's a great event. And I want to see, you know, that accident and anything that happened. Do you have something to do with the path of your travel as well? Is it as windy and windy as something you don't want to see anywhere else? Yes. Thank you. Check it out. Okay. The nose agreements. Do we have a motion? I mean, to approve Wallace's comment about the gravel grinder on May 5th. Moves and seconded. Any further discussion? Hearing none, I'll be able to say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Congratulations. Thank you very much. Thank you. Have a good event. Appreciate it. Okay. Leap beepers. Half marathon, 5k. Okay. Schedule for Sunday, October 6th. Anyone here to address that? Anyone online for the leaf beepers? Leaf beepers? No. Okay. Again, this was a race that's been run in and around our town for several years. Race course this year, looks similar to previous years going from the horseshoe by state complex and then going out on the pain street over into Ducksbury and then out on Water Road in Ducksbury all the way out or coming back at the bridge for the 5k. Okay. So we'll run on a Sunday morning 9am. Leap beepers half marathon, 5k run for Sunday, October 6th. Moved? By house sign. Second. Moved in second. Further discussion? I applaud that they're delivering postcards to all houses on Main Street and River Road. Though it's in our neighborhood Ducksbury but for other events. Just to have a note as a comment and discussion, it would be nice when someone's applying for someone that they send a representative that we could answer. I don't know if you can see it. I will say the race director's email says I would be happy to attend the meeting and answer additional questions and notes that he has secured to question from the state for the use of the version. So I agree. We want to continue it. I feel comfortable with this mission. I feel comfortable, especially as it's been spelled so many times before so I don't have a lot of questions but just as a general force, I think we could have a representative ask questions on what we could need to be. Yeah, I've heard some comments from Ducksbury residents but they're not of our particular concern. Moved in second. Any further discussion? Very none. I'll bear to say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Congratulations to me. Peakers. All right. And the last permit of the night. Is the Willie Bright. Scott, come forward please. Thank you for having me again this year. Sure. So I sent the packet over. It's for you guys to review and review. I'll also send to Geary. The same identical packet that you approved last year. Nothing changed except for the population of the number of individuals walking down the the road from the back row facility to the state place. And it's increasing by about 22. Which is great. We're going to hold the same format. I have Matthew Nadu who's a VFT detective of the state police. He's actually going to line up the the elite car for us. I've already reached out to Steve Harrington, his team there from the NS transport. They're going to give me the two backer vehicles like they did last year. I've got 21 volunteers this year. I hope it's the 12 I had last year. I'll be reaching out to Silvia Clark in regards to combs. And I have that star already set up for my volunteers for traffic control. We're going to follow the same e-tour route that we did last year. And we're going to have a continuous travel behind the parade as it goes. We plan on setting it up at 12 30 down here in the back row facility. Into the road by 10 minutes to one. And in roughly 40 minutes, 35 minutes, if I know how little legs move and how the nails goes, we should be down on the other end. Having the kids check out the police car and dispersed them by somewhere around 1.30 or 4.5. This would be a rain or shine event. So I'll make sure we have proper attire as needed. And I'll make sure I have plenty of information after the right events that we're going to have this event. We scheduled for the 11th of May. Now we're going to bring it up to date weekend because we know that's a heavy traffic time. And I think we get another week in the May and help us with the event and whether or not I'm driving or they're supposed to be getting it again. And it's pretty much what I have to you guys. So whether you have your questions or concerns, we'll be happy then. Did you have any lessons learned from last year's? I had a couple lessons learned. There was a placement of which groups still small feet in the front, other two feet in the rear, that type of stuff. Having traffic coming to us and having them come to the side to the parking. So that worked out really well. The police presence was awesome. And the trip where we had last year was very impressed with the whole program and the way it was set up. And I think it went off without a real good edge. The reason for the 10 more volunteers isn't because there's 20 more kids. I really felt that having those volunteers there is just another hand, another hand to carry. Especially when we try to keep the Stow Street the dry bridge and that stuff when people turn in one way. And then it gives me two people there to watch each other's back or both to have them going. So that's why we lost that number. And like I said, this is only year number two, but there's a crazy thing going on for several years before that. And it dropped off and we just tried to bring back something. Something old and they can do it again to the community. And I mean, any sort of great announcement on the days before? I'm actually in talk to that community right now. We were told we'll have some PSAs there and we'll get some signs up at the same time. Which we did not do last year, so that's another advancement. As well as keeping with the social media release in our website as we hadn't also reached out to Lisa to make sure we can get it in the round about and move forward from there. Other questions? I will comment as I did last year on the stick figures. You know, on the years of our class, I don't think you know. I think. Well, like I said, I've been doing traffic control for 30 plus years. So it's one of those deals where this comes first hand. And when you're talking about families and community members and children mainstream on Saturday, you know, you can't be can't be fair enough and safe enough. No, but just the way you drive, the way you drive, the city. Yeah. More, more cold. There you go. Over quickly. I've been in the gym for over three weeks. Trust me, they go pretty fast. Yeah. Well, thanks for, again, another complete packet. And I think it makes our work easier. Do I have motion? I move to approve the literally grade for the May 11. Second. We've been seconded. Any further discussion? Hearing none. All of her say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? All right. Scott, congratulations. We wish you the best of luck. Thank you. And a hand of the weather. Wish you good weather. Well, I always get jerkier, isn't it? Thanks again. Okay. Next on the agenda, we have volunteer response team. Matt. Yeah. I got it. I'll see you next week. And it was back, Cheryl was there. Matt, Cheryl did ask you to prepare this committee. Your name? My name is Matt. I'm sorry. Thanks for making time for me. I'm here representing this brand new committee. We met three times. And we have a request. We have a request as of our third meeting. And so I'm just going to read for brevity, which is something I assume you'll appreciate. So our committee seeks select board permission to move forward the process of creating a plan for the development and maintenance of a Waterbury Volunteer Corps. The committee has determined that, given the many aspects of disaster relief and with our committee's capacity in mind, the establishment of this core represents a reasonable, actionable initiative that can address one of the most pressing issues with last year's floods, namely, lack of a sufficient number of trained volunteers to respond in the critical hours and days after the emergency phase of an event has passed. To be clear, the primary job of these volunteers would not entail emergency response rather than for what would be involved in cleanup activities. The working concept, and I want to stress that both for Marine Brainstorming Mode, but for purposes of timeline would be very helpful to get approval for this effort sooner or rather even later. So the working concept is that this floor will be comprised of block leaders who will oversee small teams of volunteers. The majority of them will be recruited while in advance at disaster events. Block leaders will meet at least annually to assess the town's supply of cleanup tools, such as bucket shovels, vinegar, etc., to present updates on the volunteer roster and assess any needs and to receive training on cleanup processes. In an emergency, a town-level emergency official would provide information directly to block leaders whose responsibility it would be to, in turn, activate the volunteers to address needs at individual properties. Well, I appreciate you taking this action and also to the entire team for coming forward to address what was currently become something a lot of where it needs to be taking action on. Thank you. And we never know when the next flood is coming, do we? So I have a few slides. First of all, let's see if there are questions from the board. Mike. Are you looking to request I knowledge beyond the volume from the budget, but in future budgets requesting funding to this endeavor that the proposal? No, not at all. We could surely dream up something that we could have. Everyone can have. Right now, no. Okay, yeah. That, of course, leads aside the idea of the discussion we've had about supplies in a place to store them. Right. That's kind of where I was thinking, because we kind of presented that, and that might be some cause for the need. Right. I would say that since we've met three times, there's so much we can and have sort of talked about. The most concrete thing we're thinking about right now is this core. And then we'll build one thing at a time after that. Thank you. Yeah. Other questions? I was going to just comment and say that I attended all three meetings. And once the committee zeroed in on something, they went for like the ideas started flowing. And then this response team immediately went off. And I was like, I think we have to ask this commission on that. So Matt decided to come in and he wrote this whole thing up. And I was like helping him spitball. And then all of a sudden, Matt emails me this. This is what they'll do. This is who they talked to. And I was like, oh, wow. Right. So I was really impressed by the committee so far. We appreciate taking a lot, taking the leadership to get this all going, by the way. Well, Melissa, you were very much involved in the coordination of volunteers, particularly in July. Do you have any observations that you'd like to convey? I was going to make a joke about if anyone ever asks if they can create a plan. I'd like all the plans. No, but in all honesty, I guess I would say thank you. And my reading of your quote around creating a plan is really doing that. It's just wanting to one again. Thank you for coming in. But just saying, like, we certainly won't have a plan if we don't create one. And I think just having a continuing dialogue might follow up. She was like, have you talked to the fire chief and the people? But at least what I'm hearing and taking it to be is you're just starting them. So I want to make sure that all makes sense. And you know, figure that all out and let us know. Yeah. Yeah. As you can imagine, one conversation, and we've all had many, with British Lego, will set your brain in many, many different directions. Right. So yeah, a lot to learn, a lot to figure out. But we also want to do something that will help us be proactive. Getting two floods in six months is a really good reminder that it can happen again really fast. So we're trying to at least bite off discrete pieces and make some progress. And I'll say I feel like something worth thinking about as a board and just to figure out how it relates to this is the if and how this is used is just, I will say, the one big question in my mind not to say there isn't many willing or reasonable and appropriate uses, floods or otherwise. But I just would think in creating a plan, I would love to know. I think we're thinking about like what river forecast means, what in terms of what we should be doing. And it's been seed of the pants thus far. But I think to the extent this can be one thing where there is a plan, or just be clearly outlined how it happens. That would be an important part of the plan. Mostly thank you. And I can have a motion. I'm in, right? Sure. I move to approve the national, the natural disaster response committees plan to create a volunteer corps. Shack is the right one. Okay. We're seconded just in terms of discussion. I'll also note that Dr. Chris Kaleva, who was a previous Waterbury resident, and still holds a position that UVM asked if Waterbury had a plan for volunteer coordination. And I said that it was in progress, but that this will help hopefully advance that progress. So I certainly support this initiative. Well, Dr. Chris, we're former colleagues. Tell them I said hi. I didn't know you'd have that question. Yeah. He has a grant from, I think it's Noah, to study the interactions between community reactions to natural disasters. And he asked if there was a community plan, and it might be in a certain way. I said, yeah, maybe there will be. I will tell him that you're on near here, at least taking a part of that. That's cool. So not to belabor you, you're very busy. But he has moved, I understand all that, but he's still funded to do research in the Northeast? Yeah. Yeah. Great. I serve all the community. He's been leading here. We've got a meeting coming up. So I'm having a spray. No. Sure. Yeah, wonderful. Wonderful. Yeah, so perhaps there's a way that we can sort of bring this support to some of his research. Okay, move to second it. Any further discussion? I'm just saying we're not surprising by creating this in the plan, but just to note, we'll circle back around what it means and how we're using it and whatnot. Yeah. Sounds great. Okay, all of you are to say hi. All right. Hi. Any post? Any abstentions? All right. Thank you all. I'm going to have your sailing orders. Thank you very much. Thank you for coming forward. All right. Actually, we do have another entertainment permit. This is Rotary Concerts in the Park, submitted by Al Lewis. They have a list that looks like about a dozen programs. Al is out. He's right here. Yeah, there he is. I did. I did. Hey, Al. Al Lewis. I'm representing the water warriors that you have with this park committee. Yeah, this is our first entertainment park. We've gone, this would be 42nd year it's concerts in the park. Since we began in 1983. And we've grown from five concerts when we started to as many as 12, I think one year we had 13 concerts. However, this year we've got nine. Yeah, I mean prior to COVID, we had about 10 to 12 concerts. Rotary kind of set us back. Even though we hold concerts during those years or didn't hold the two years, the concerts are mostly for the park. But we did hold some concerts for the community. So we can say that we have continuous Rotary Concert program. I think it's the oldest continuous program ever sustained. That's what it's been reported on. Anyway, started again in 1983. Our Rotary Club maintains the park. We build almost all the facilities except the monuments there. And the way we look at the concerts in our club prepares what's necessary in order to make sure that the concert performance accommodated with everything that they need. We open the dance stand up. We close the dance stand up. And then in the evening we release the park. Basically the principle that we worked out with the village at that time when we built the park was whoever uses the park leaves it the way they said they found it. And that's what we do with Rotary Clubs. During the season there are going to be a number of other events going on. And now that this is a town facility, I suggest and hope that the town will also pass that on to whoever's using the park. That they'll be a representative of whoever's reserved the park. And that representative will be responsible for leaving it the way they found it. Because after some of the events that we have, and this doesn't happen permanently, but we've had to clean up and take care of things. Every once in a while there's something broken we'd like to know about it. So we know we can prepare for fixing it. So I think we've got a pretty good track record. We have had before the company's form call, but we had a long waiting list of performance. And we went through a process of making sure we provided the opportunity. If we didn't do it one year, we did it the second year or the third year so that performance has an opportunity. And it's on any Thursday night there could be 450 people there, but the deadline, which is incredible. So anyway, our first entertainment permit request is being filed here. It's for nine concerts, but the dates that we've got is from June 6th because we still don't know where our program's going to be. We may even be able to fill it in with another one or two, depending upon who we can get to perform. But basically, our rotary plug wants to reserve Thursday nights, June, July, and August so that we are flexible enough in order to be able to provide these concerts for the public. We raise the funds, the public goes to the concerts. We don't charge them anything. We have a 50-50 raffle there. The proceeds for the 50-50 raffle they could be anywhere from $150 or something that they don't say anything here for the cost of the performances or it also sets off the costs of the performances. So that's basically the process we'd like to continue with as we go forward, but we are looking forward to celebrating our 22 years, 42 concert series since 1983. Okay, that's a great community service and we appreciate everything that you've told me and I've proposed it to you for one more year. Questions from the board? Yeah, okay. Maybe we could stop for another year but working with like local venues, we would typically host concerts, right, one at Zenn Barn or higher ground, maybe a higher one. But organizations of that nature who have like larger booking capacity to see if you could fill the concerts on the venue with out-of-state venues. We do have out-of-state venues. Again, what we do is we basically would send out information or somebody comes to our attention and they say, here you go and you'll see us perform. In the past, I'm talking about prior to closing, we had to send a CD and so we went to the CD and if there's a judgment call, we don't want to have glaring drums and guitar music for the whole concert. We don't want to have solid rap for the whole concert but we'd love to see what kind of blended music they have. We know over the years, I think we've satisfied a lot of people. It's a family gathering. It's not a lot of culture. It's not a rap concert. It's hopefully something that everybody will enjoy. We do have a, thanks for letting me, but to say it, we do have a decibel limit that we try to, I mean, it's kind of difficult sometimes when we try to make sure that the speakers are faced toward the park and not to the neighbors and then the decibel limit is a little, I think it's 85 to zero notes. For the most part, we do a pretty good job of that. There were occasions when the North American is pretty loud on this atmosphere too, a nice night. I know a lot of people on Bramble Street have done people say, gee, you got a concert going there. We can hear you quickly, loud and clear. But anyway, you know, I was going to say, don't get me wrong, I love the guys at Maple Run. Yeah. Well, we intended, when we started this, we intended and it still is a cultural arts program. We actually had a puppet show once. We had somebody try to perform. They had a little play that they performed and whatnot. The difficult we had back in those early days is we really didn't have a venue for it to get the sound projecting out to everybody. We would have to wear a microphone, for example, if it was a play and we just didn't have that. So we're wide open to suggestions for the news and others can use the part on Tuesday night, Monday night, wherever they also put the line in the illustration part. So we kind of encouraged the part to be used for that. The bandstand is certainly an improvement over the gazebo. We, none of us work, we're acoustical engineers and when we designed the gazebo with the pitch of the roof and everything, we couldn't envision at that time people playing in the gazebo, the sound going up and the sound going down, but it doesn't go this way. And it's the performers that let us know that. So then all of a sudden, the performers started to go on the outside of the gazebo on a nice night. And as long as it wasn't raining, they would perform on the outside of the gazebo because the sound could get out to the crowd at that time. And so we kind of learned over the years, even the bandstand, Jamie Lee Thurston was the first big name group that we had there and his drummer said, I can't, after the concert, he says, I got to add it again, I can't hear what's going on because the sound vibration in the bandstand was so loud. So Thurston's own four galleries and what not, we went over there and said, give us some rugs and rugs and boats and we stuck them on the wall, so you know that. And the next time they played, they said, you know, this is perfect. This is something we learned, but I think we're down to a sister's right now where the public enjoys it and we enjoy putting it on. Thank you. Melissa. I'll move to approve the first ever entertainment permit for the Waterbury Roadway Club bandstand for the concerts in the park series from June 7th through August 22nd. And should we get retroactive for 42 years? I was going to say no comment there. I was going to mention the farmers market and then I decided we trust Al and the Rotary. Well, we used to submit the schedule to the village to the Waterbury Bar Utility District and sometimes we get some comments and most of the time, you know, we just come back and do like, you know, we had just something beneficial to the community and as long as there's no police, as far as the building club is concerned, we really never, never had a problem with it. I would like, I would like our local, local police, the state police on those nights to be present just to drive through and circle around. I think it would be at a today's day and age. It's helpful just to have some presence some bottom portion of those nights. Sometimes even if they want to stop and enjoy a little bit of the concert, that would be a good name. So can you suggest some? Also, I'd like to publicly thank you for helping us with the Waterbury Winterfest this year. I will be bothered to collect some of the skulls from our fire that we had that are still there. I was waiting for the Slovakia melt away and I think it has, we don't know what's going to happen. This Wednesday and Thursday, but barring any other problems, I'll get those out of your way and then hopefully the grass will grow back. It's still on the two-by-fours, by the way. You still have the two-by-fours. Okay, well. Is it Aaron? Yeah, Aaron Flynn. I can get ahold of him. Okay, he's, yeah. He was out of town, unfortunately, what we were supposed to talk about. But yeah, if you, if you're into us, we'll make sure you're not going to pick us. I'm going to say. Yeah, okay. Good. Thank you. Moved and seconded. Any further discussion? Very none. All dares say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? All right. I understand. Okay, one abstention. By the word, red box. Come on. Yes, yes. Because we do have a forum. Okay. That was a lot. Yes, lots. Okay. Next on the agenda. I picked on the 20 seconds you had to roll with the songs. Well, maybe folks could all weekend. Charter update. Sure. This one's easy. Well, the governor signed the charter Friday, just before the end of the quarter. So the local option tax will be collected to let it serve. So I can bring out a more formal estimate for the next meeting. But no, the estimates that were discussed before were in the range of $650,000 for the year. That is backwarded a little bit to the final quarters of the year. So thinking your minds may be 350 this year. Is it beginning in the third quarter? Yeah, beginning till I won. Till I won? So all systems are go. I may in fact bring proposal to you in a couple weeks about a gravel road project that works. Have all businesses been notified that they're going to all change their way to the tax department does that. The tax department does that work as much. Okay. All right. And again, Tom, thank you for staying on that and making sure that it moved through the process with all equity. The rental property ordinance where the draft in front of us. Tom, would you mind just hitting the highlights? Are we able to see that right? There's extra copies up front and I can pull it up on the screen and make sure. Can people in the zoom world see that? Yeah, it's the ones that have highlights on them. If I pull up the word document and people in zoom see it. Yeah, you think about sharing the screen. So I better share the screen. Second year. We'll get there. Yeah. And then we can make that a little bigger. So on this draft agenda, you left the property manager notes on most of the sections. Town manager notes. Yeah, that's all. So those are just by way of explanation. Yes. So I want to start with, I did include in your packet title 24, section 2291, which is general power is given to town select boards. 29 separate items, but in fact, the very last one pertains to your ability to regulate short term rentals. The other 28 articles don't specifically refer to long-term rentals. However, in speaking of council, thinks it's well within our jurisdiction to include these as one. The other piece just based on prior conversation with the select board is that this ordinance in general is about a registry. It is not about regulation. I included in the packet ordinances from other town where they they refer to things like requiring your safety inspection from the state fire marshal prior to receiving your local approval. I did not include that for a number of reasons. I can talk about that length if desired. This is generally about establishing a registry and the language is really focused on that. The definition section that definition short term rental is something that's contained in a number of other places, number of other ordinance, but it's the common I think the common version used throughout throughout the state which I think should be stuck to. Chester I noted those distinguished between the hosted short term rental meaning for short term rental versus another type of short term rental. I'm not sure that's needed a definition that can be done in the actual questions as part of a registry. I drafted the definition for long term rental with the help of council. Joe camarada and housing task force objected to my draft definition. He feels like we need to somehow capture those those people that might follow me know of a short term and long term. I think he's thinking traveling nurses people like that. Part of the crux of this ordinance is that whether it's a long term or short term rental there has to be a designated responsible person. Someone who in essence can answer for the property be generally available and be generally local where it is reachable. And that's one of the themes throughout these ordinances is something that Gary Dillon feels very strongly about. Waiter in the ordinance we suggest I suggest 45 minutes as a call that time. Where did that come from? Well, someone wants to say an hour and some say 30 minutes so I stuck to the note. A lot of detailed analysis to get to that 45 minutes. One other little note since we have a charter in other other towns they're the ordinance. The select work designates who that at the staff level who administers this ordinance that's not required anymore since I can designate that. So it makes our makes our lives a little easier. Should we blow it back again? Not at all. We didn't blow what's the explanation. On the actual registry piece I simply suggest it's a form that we create that can be adopted later by the select board. The form is not attached to the ordinance because we don't want to have to amend the ordinance every time the registry form itself is changed. We are working internally and really close to purchasing software that can all be done by the property owners online. Not quite there yet but that's the that was a thought behind January one. We could probably accelerate that a little bit but I can't really say that with certainty because we're not quite there with the software yet. We're really close to signing a contract that might happen by the end of the week but implementation is a not a matter. One part on the third page that I think could be a little controversial and it's probably more thinking about fire chief would like every rental property in town and in fact every commercial building in town to have a lock box just make it easier for him to get in. It's been a consistent complaint of his since I started at least. They're not free it's a few hundred dollars and the part of property in the debt is installed. I don't feel as strongly as him about it. I tend to thank you for getting a designated responsible person. We can perhaps give it a year and see if see if that person in fact is responsive and see if the fire chief might soften his thinking there a little bit or at a minimum I suggest maybe that that requirement can be in the ordinance but not be required January 1 but at some future day it's a cost it's a pain for the property I'm sure so it's just something worth talking about I'm thinking about. Was he thinking of like the lock box just having one universal kind of lock box so they could get in uses for everyone because there are a million different kinds of lock boxes. I think ideally yeah that's his thought process. Oh, what is the one tax? That is on the third page under under rental property requirements. So that's the one area I think where this ordinance goes beyond a registry into requiring action beyond registration. Going on to the fourth page I do just refer a little bit to some of the other towns and the areas where they go beyond the registry and the two common areas you start to see first pertains to the state fire marshal and state fire inspections which are not a requirement part of one in the rental property and in and looking at that look what other towns do I think it's a bit of an overreach in our part to require the state fire inspection as part of our ordinance that pertains to state regulation I think we should let the state do their job and I think we should leave it at that. Second piece is sometimes look at look at wastewater permits and they look at that and they establish occupancy limits based on the wastewater permit. I think through a registry we can get data about occupancy if in fact that person is an e-flight customer we may do some adjusting there to their bill but in general as a property owner on a private septic is essentially renting their house at over capacity I'm not quite sure that's our business to regulate maybe something that we develop a different opinion over time after getting data but it's a state permit and I also want to add to that that something council warned me about and this is something I think you see in a lot of towns if there's a desire to regulate something but not truly in force it shouldn't really be an ordinance I think dog ordinances are famous and that a lot of every town has one but very few towns actually really follow it to the to the degree that is written so I think if there's not really an intent to enforce us at that level that's what resolutions are for I would even question whether the state fire fire marshal has the capacity to do this kind of and that's another that's another especially if if more and more towns are going to do that they're just not going to be able to do it it's just like it's just like housing inspections there are not enough housing inspectors especially since we don't know how many rentals are even in Waterbury right so and then on the fourth page there's a another part to the ordinance that is not about the registry it's a different section of law but I broadly wrote this as a rental property ordinance and that governs security deposits something that Cain mentioned to me after I sent the draft was common maybe not common practice but but practice is sometimes first month's land first month's rent up front last month's rent up front plus the security deposit and Cain I think suggested some language changes to say that effectively last month it's a security so you don't get three months on day one you get the first month and a deposit and that's the cutoff Cain I think you also mentioned some potentially some change from that so defining that yeah this you know so Burlington and Mary have similar ordinances and I can speak more on anybody's questions about the ordinance of the section of the ordinance that speaks to security deposits but in Burlington specifically they include the pet deposit as part of the security deposit I don't think that's necessary for us I think if you have a pet most landlords want a pet deposit sometimes are distracted habits so that language is not reflected in this draft as written I think it could be just kind of one one we feel as a bearer or necessary to have one and then what if I just end Chris and then I just on fees and I want to make sure fees are not fees or fees that would be established as part of a registry fees are not enforcement enforcement as if you don't comply with the registry but on fees sometimes not just in Vermont have looked at the rental market especially the short-term rental market as a revenue source by the while we are really supposed to tie our fees to our cost to administer the ordinance it's hard to really predict what the cost to administer this is but it is not a very high number in my judgment especially in year one where we're simple where it's simply a registry and we're information gathering so what's a reasonable fee I don't I don't exactly know because I don't know the number of rentals in that town but I would suggest somewhere between zero dollars and 20 dollars in the high end it's certainly not hundreds of dollars not really legally defensible number at that point and then the enforcement section which has in essence penalties that section was entirely stolen from Stowe's ordinance which was written with the help of our council who's the same council for Stowe so quite comfortable with that language so that's the that's the short it's like run down U.S. when this block so would be for authorizing the cover these fees that is spelled out it would be I guess it would be sorry but I have a typo but because I still look from Stowe's it would be the fire chief and the town and the town manager yeah question before starting sure I guess I would say I have a couple buckets of question one it was like there's some specific policy choices we as a select board each discussed for talk about I'll start with saying I don't think we need all of these purposes at least personally there's some that are more important than for I think an adequate market supply of short and long-term rentals is an end is an end it's late in and of itself I don't dispute it supports little employment in business growth but I guess in my mind we as the select board can just be supporting rentals in town and I guess just to highlight because I know some folks haven't been here again the goal is at least the housing task force brought a recommendation to us looking at we just don't understand what the break term is long-term short-term what folks are doing with their property so in my mind that last bullet point about a registry to better understand this is just really key I even will say I have not that I don't dispute residents wanting rights to quiet enjoyment or believing that it's important in other towns to me it's just not a driving reason we pursue this policy speaking for myself so I guess my question is how we are planning to go about it and then I guess my other bucket of questions is around enforcement Tom you said January one but I do feel like per candidly a lot of the content of our meeting tonight we have ordinances and policies and like where the rubber meets the road is who's doing it and obviously you can deputize anyone but I just have questions about how we're doing rollout and outreach recognizing that this is also coming covering long-term rentals and I would say like some of that fire inspection stuff came up also in housing task force around barriers to providing long-term rentals in the community and just making sure we're being thoughtful about how we're doing this outreach when we get there and on the outreach I could also speak with I believe Julie Marx is her name but she's the head of the Vermont short-term rental association and I don't want to I don't know she's here so I don't want to exactly quote her but I think in general our conversation sent around that she was not impairment opposed to a registry the regulatory side which were at least at this stage avoiding was where the conversation got difficult for but my understanding from talking with other towns too was that you know the the Airbnb is the purpose of the world has been good about working with their members to get them to comply with registries yeah okay to this point about let me see it's in the purpose create one you know I'm trying to pretty spoke on it so I know it's here oh garbage and all these outdoor nighttime activity and public instances I'm going to I'm going to recommend that that stay in this first draft and not make it to the second one because people who live in long-term rentals and who own houses can also cause these disturbances so sure as a home owner from beyond to a not start sure I was just going to see if we had any more comments from the board and then open it up to the public may I just from the board no definitely I'm more close okay I can see I can see I can see which way this is on saying Anderson 25 North Main Street I have a Dubai family well which currently has to air these innings so when I look at all the reasons that you are interested in having this ordinance I don't see why where any of these aren't already achievable without it I guess you know if you're having say let's just take the one she came just spoke about adverse impacts on parking gardeners noise outdoor things like if there's a problem you'll get complaints and so I guess you should already know that if there's a problem with those things and then if you want to create violent violations of the ordinance I guess it's a money making thing maybe that's what it's about I don't know if it's about better understanding about housing we already know there's a housing problem and we already know that part of that probably is the short term rentals and I think you know putting it on black and white maybe that's useful but only if you're going to take the next step and do the regulatory thing in my opinion and so I think a deeper conversation of let's just put it out on the table that's the issue let's talk about why and part with it you just heard in the earlier part with the other testimony earlier today landlords have a hard time of being protected and so you have somebody that's six months in a rental not paying any rent and having six dollars in there you know scratching at the bottom door and damaging stuff so I just think that this isn't necessarily going to get to the end result that we view with the end result is which I would hope is increasing housing eventually so I just was wanting to kind of open the door to that conversation and say is that the reason and you know maybe this is in the that area and then for the deeper dive very Dylan you know I've been on the fire to kind of the higher of me with the friction so I feel bad for saying this however I do think that a slight overreach to have lockboxes and to say this I've been inspected by the state fire marshal like I take it seriously we wouldn't need a lockbox because the doors aren't unlocked and you can get turkey and like so a phone call would do it like I think there's some level of we're going too far and so I would ask the question again what's the concern there commercial properties where nobody's there sure that makes a whole heck of a lot of sense but where people are living and housed I'm not sure everybody needs a lockbox in an apartment any different than a house easy access and not said and I'll trust them because I trust them completely but I just don't see the need for it or what the if you have somebody who's continually not being available when you need to get in somewhere I think then deal with that one person you know I guess those are my comments I don't want to respond directly but you know I'm gonna respond directly so you know that comment but two pieces I would add is one I would just say like this is a draft for review so I will say like I was asked by play division other members and this is the first we're seeing this proposal so just to say that the lockbox at least was not a specific to the question about housing at least I'd say in my two years on the board we have had feedback about short-term rentals and concern about short-term rental impact on the housing market and there is more like documentation on this for the housing task force but when Joe when the group dug into the data and pulled as much data as they could they still couldn't definitively answer the question is it the short-term rentals that are doing it is it the long-term rentals is it folks buying what was a primary host that's becoming a secondary home that's occupied by no one when that owner is not there and it kind of hit a dead end so I guess I would say personally as a policymaker that is the hard piece so I I guess I would hear the end of correct this is not a proposed regulatory but I would say folks have asked me and I've said you know I don't I would like to know more if you like we have some missing data so I'll say at least the housing task force does have some conflations around data they were able to gather and where there was gaps just to say that is something we've looked into that's far yeah now I'd like to just address another layer when we travel over Europe we've always had to produce a passport and we have to do that right at the beginning registered whoever was checking us in we had to have a passport and that passport would be reported locally by the person who's renting the property whoever's managing the rental of the property and I think that goes an extra distance for security for the people who are living in the area because I was all very ill and they're fighting through rental properties now around us and we are more concerned with what's going on in the world about who's there what kind of not that we want to fly or anything but if there was a problem all of a sudden we started seeing stuff missing from the house for example or there was an issue we saw smoke coming up would we contact in the case of where I live the person who rented across the street from me a small wood place it's fine everything's gone fine so far but he's in England always been in England he's renting through some somebody's managing the property or who that is but it would be a very simple thing but a long way to have the rental property manager whoever the owner is whether it's in the home or whether it's a separate dwelling whoever's managing that to register but also when person comes from Airbnb or verbal or whatever it is that they're required to identify themselves so that when they make the reservation the name's there but when they come to basically get into the place they don't just simply go up there and go to the lock box and take the key and they're there and frequently I know places we've stayed around before and in this area and over in the you know we just drive up in the driveway and they say the key's there and nobody checks to see that we're we're the ones who are actually right in the place and I think for the security and comfort of the people who are living around and also from a law enforcement standpoint that there was a problem very simple thing is to have a positive ID and have the responsibility of where I was managing that property whether it's the owner or the representative of the owner who's on record on that they collect that information or at any beginning so they have to be there and they have to check the person in otherwise you know who knows who's going to come and go and I think it's wide open for a potential problem and certainly it makes us nervous more than that we were 20 years ago and I wanted to be in the place of construction while this is around I just want to end I don't know whether this is appropriate time but that extra layer looking at it from the what are we going to do to keep track of the people that are actually coming in and using these facilities and putting that burden on the on the rental property itself and some representative the owner probably contracted that and I think passport or or driver's license or something like that thank you yeah also you know I'll just mention I guess my thought on this I think we'll we'll sort of move to is that this is the first time that we're taking a look at it they kind of they've done a great job of holding from a number of different towns that have been doing this process and trying to select out things that really address what have been identified as the purposes of this were identified by the housing task force but that I'd like to see this be available to the public for public comment for another month and take invite public comment written and otherwise before we take it back up to pass the pass and find the ordinance and then even after that you have time to uh challenge that uh for how much time 11 now 60 days no 60 days yeah uh I'm my name is Sandy Sayden I have a couple of questions but actually one of the statements what is the statement on those ordinance is not really working out wrote very well for them right now because they got a special meeting on Friday and it was very even they're that part of it it's not working for them so we should maybe you know which part is not working or the whole ordinance they had it it was a big I was young yellow room or it's not going well so it's not it passed but they're trying to decide whether or not they can just be passed for actually like they're making more to it so that made me something to think about but the second part I wanted to ask came why what is your reasoning behind the want the making it a one-month rent not going to be you know right now let's speak from a wide at this point but there's a few want to very now for one bedroom apartments are going for a $1,800 piece so if you need to pay all three up front $5,400 that's not a whole lot of liquid cash that's a ton of liquid cash that a working person who would be potentially renting a one-bedroom apartment would need to have on hand for that most landlords throughout the state and a lot of landlords who want to vary do too right the first and security or the first and last but the extra three in a time of housing crisis like this seems unnecessary and since it's working in places like Bromington and Barrie there's no reason it shouldn't work here but is it working I mean it sounds like it's working for the tenants you have an example right here I was a landlord with two different units and moderated for 20 years we I don't know how many people we went through that we had effect now we were told by a lawyer the best thing to do instead of doing first last and security is due first and the positive two months rest the reason for that is if you have first and last and security they when you go to addiction they get an extra month because you gave them that first that first and last so that gets them another 30 days if you do the whole thing two months as a deposit once the deposit being doubling if the person's good which every person that we had since we started doing that was good because they knew they could get that money back if they were good you could say in the last month just don't worry about it just use that that part of it and we were told that that's the we did not have a problem after that as far as so I understand it's a lot of money but six months without any money at all you think that the landlord can afford it especially now any better than I mean why should the landlord have to be the one that loses I mean I work just as hard as you do so why is it on me I mean yes I realize it's 1800 I've rented a a tiny little place for 1800 a month when I first moved back longer and it's ridiculous and I know that and I'm putting it at 80 even now to help out so I understand both sides actually I'm actually running renting it out for the Eclipse so I even know where the short tower I was like so it's just not fair to put more on the landlord because the state of Vermont it's already on the side of the tenant I didn't I couldn't buy my house in Waterbury Center for 14 months because they didn't get the person out he hadn't paid in 14 months but the state let him stay so that's I don't think that that's fair to put that on the landlord at all but this is David John John Granger from Waterbury and with the Web Summit and Zoom for what it's worth we have a long-term rental and we did we did the first month last month so we are one of the people you spoke about so far we've had good luck I can sit back in your situation if you had an awful situation we're going to differ and so I see what you want to do with that because it is hard for people to come up with three months full rent the part that I'm here to ask questions about specifically or just have concerns about is the Airbnb registry we bought the building that my wife's business is in from Sylvia all who don't will build in forever and we felt like she didn't trust us with her baby and we bought it because we wanted to make sure that we had control of our own rent for that business because it felt like a lot of places were being bought up by people that means to buy extra homes over many buildings or even have to stay and invest and crank up rents so in that building we have two commercial leases we have a long-term rental and we have an Airbnb in a small like one bedroom apartment which Sylvia had started we feel like we are able to keep our long-term rentals a little bit lower because we have the Airbnb to help us keep that building we're stay here in Waterbury we're restoring any painting and upkeeping a beautiful old building in town and so please just in your mind when you think of landlord think of the local people that are trying to keep the buildings open and keep them ownership local if you do a registry fine have the information if it's let's tax Airbnb's or they're the problem and start raising those costs some people are just sell their building because they just can't keep up with the cost and the taxes and the school going up and I get it my kids in the school system we want them to have a great school so just landlord can be the local person trying to keep a building that's all I have to say thank you thank you I just want to respond to John I know myself personally I I understand the Airbnb process pretty incrementally and I don't think and I'm not going to speak for my fellow people folks on the select board but I think folks look at Airbnb's who are owner operated someone who's in the community you know that they have a extra part of their property that they want to have for some rental property I don't think that's the problem I think it's the out of state investment that's buying a whole lot of property but that's what the problem is is is that's where I think that's why I think I'm very much in favor of the registration process because we have to have a handle on what's there before we can do anything I don't know if we want to jump right into regulating but I think from everyone I've spoken to I know a lot of people in the SOE community short-term rentals are exploding there and it's really taking up properties you know for people you know that can otherwise possibly buy them I know SOE is not that much of an affordable community one of her is not that far behind but I think to prevents a property owner from converting part of that property to an Airbnb type function for some extra income so they can stay here I don't have a big problem with that you know but I think I think the community probably is going to have more of a problem we have these big out of the state landlord coming in buying up a lot of properties and we're going to have less and less units available for rent and for purchase by Waterbury and other area residents and I think that's what the actual short-term problem is Thank you Phil, Chef, Waterbury I think the registry is a good idea just to kind of get a handle on how many Airbnb's are out there and whether or not it's contributing to the lack of housing availability for people who live here I would encourage you not to do a lot of regulation Tom, you talked about the wastewater permit I don't know I understand that you don't want to necessarily speak to a lot of things that you might not want to enforce but I think it would be helpful if even if there was some mention on whatever registry pool that you have that you know if you have a single family three or four bedroom home that putting 20 people in there for every weekend all summer long might not be a good thing for your subject system I have an Airbnb that's right next door to me the people are from our state and it's rented a lot and that's my major concern about it is that it's and we have a their leach field is on my property there's an easement it's a separate leach field fortunately but I do get a little concerned about that so if there's a way to address those kind of issues just to put the light bulb out there I would suggest that would be a nice thing I too was a little curious as to the to the provision about the short-term under security deposits and I'm not a landlord and I haven't rented for a long, long time I understand completely what we said came if you know there's a 15 or an $1,800 rent and it turns into $4,500 or $5,400 from it's difficult what my concern would be is that if landlords are asking for this in my experience of people is that they don't typically do it just to take money out of people's pockets it says here that all of the deposit can be held against normal wear and tear or against non-payment but if you take the first month and security deposit and then there's damage to the property and then at the end of the lease people don't pay there last month well then you don't have your last month and you don't have your damage covered so it's a little bit of a concern so I think people who are property owners have a calculus as to what they decide they're going to require for deposit and to me I would let the market regulate that I know it's tough for the renters my kids are you know within their threes and my son in particular has a tough time and I get it my concern would be that if a landlord is deciding that they need first, last and a security deposit and then the town tells them that we can't do that that maybe the landlord just says you know what I'm just going to make it an Airbnb and I don't have to worry about this and you take another unit of circulation so I think you just need to realize that if you make a regulation it will react to the regulation and it may be counterproductive to what you're trying to do but it may just take places off of being long term rentals and the last comment I would make is on the enforcement and I know Tom you just copied this right from stone and I know you said earlier about fees and it's not intended to be a money maker and in fact fines are not supposed to be intended to be money makers that tend to make people comply with the ordinance I would say however that if you have an ordinance that has a waiver fee and you have first through fourth and subsequent offenses and the civil penalties are also first through subsequent offenses forth subsequent offenses maybe you should have a waiver fee for the first and second offenses if they keep violating the ordinance and you're you're issuing a fourth subsequent offense and they can get away with a waiver fee of $400 maybe you ought to be taken up to court and try to even with a civil violation they seem to be maybe losing the system of that thank you Bill one question as a health officer do you have any jurisdiction if let's say rental property is got a fellow septic system not as much as we used to the state has primacy with regard to onsite septic enforcement now if there is a there is a violation of a of a beach field being health officer might be involved in the health aspect of that suggesting that there could be a public health issue and you know when you come to the select board and and have to maybe engage in attorney but in terms of permitting and all the rest of it the state takes care of all that stuff I believe it's all right again so so it could you know from just from a published health standpoint the health officer could get involved but with regard to actually regulating and and overseeing the standards necessarily whether the beach field meets state requirements that will be the state function that we're doing the other the other challenge is we can certainly in a registry ask the question about well you're essentially your max capacity we put in theory compare that to your for septic but not all first of all that's an awful lot of work because you've got to go permit by permit and not all permits are on a lot some of the other ones are not so it's just not something that realistically I think we could get done without a whole lot of time and energy yeah I don't think I think you're right Tom I my point was just to if you just haven't worked with it you know just be careful not to put into a into a single panel yeah I think that's a good idea and the last thing I wanted to say and it's more to the to the point that was being talked about with regard to the you know out of state owners properties that are short from rentals especially those that are corporate owners and that's really an issue the state needs to come to grips with they've got to be able to find a way to somehow tax them differently than just the standard you know non-residential homestead of non-residential tax for education purposes because some of these communities think I think you know the town manager in Stowe told me that you know they're down to like 30 percent of their single family housing stock is actually still resonates and the rest is people from out of state and in some places I don't mean the town because I'm not certain of this but some of the others here it's just one that has you know a local ownership and occupancy rate of less than 10 percent and the state's going to have to address that with education taxes because it's not it's not there to do that that's not really great so we have this lovely Vermont property tax return analysis and when I said Joe will dig up any data Joe will dig up he got the 2019 to present property taxes and water brain just I can share this I was trying to find the other housing task force slide and I will say it was actually a lower amount than anticipated about residences being purchased by out of state LLCs or transferring for rental but just to say like we are trying to get a handle on I'm not just reading that this is Waterbury and I can do he did total transfer to a non-Bremont buyer all sellers all property types then we had the transfer of how many is a primary residence going to a non-Bremont buyer how many is a secondary residence going this is all based on what folks have to fill out when they transfer but I will say like this is exactly the stuff I feel like we are trying to dig in and the way that answers because to be honest some of these were really surprising when we went through them at the last meeting in that you know yes there certainly is turnover I'm not disputing it but we didn't see these and immediately say oh my goodness you know we had dozens and dozens and dozens over the past five years but as property values continues to go up you're going to get a higher percentage of I think how to say a lower percentage oh yeah no I'm not just I guess I'm just saying again you know my part my cards are on the table but my bottom line is I think driving to a registry so that we can start trying to track some of these dynamics with more things I think I'm hearing that there's complications in some of the other pieces so you know I will say I'm not opposed to the septic thing I don't want to give anyone a disincentive to register in terms of like even the e-bud comment he made made me nervous around like I've rented a long-term rental and I'm just thinking about like the outreach it will take to have every property in Waterbury that rent short or long-term registered to me is just no small lift but I also think it's really important to do so that we can start having more nuanced conversations but right now we're doing the best we can with the data we have but we're all talking in anecdotes and generalities because it's all we have thank you and I've gotten to the point of being okay with the registry at this point because I do I did wonder if that was the goal like I'm really appreciative of that feedback but two things so at first last and security I want to make a comment too I appreciate that you guys who brought the thing that you have as but you did have a long-term rent helpful a lot of years we required first-class security but then were flexible with somebody who said I just have first last or whatever it was and then I said okay we'll take an extra hundred a month and we'll put it in there so we get our security they can afford to get in there but without the choice which Burlington and Berry loses you've got a huge huge huge housing problem in both of those areas if you look at the data people don't want to rent when they have no protections and then when you talk about the septic I'm very appreciative of that we just heard seven people and six dogs in a one bedroom apartment then you're going to find a landlord for that I mean just think about the grandma of the Asians that's all I'm saying yeah I can't turn my video on this is Mark I can't figure out how to raise my hand okay thanks thanks Mark Friar Waterbury Center um I I appreciate that the work the select board's doing I you know I sat on the board for a number of years and I think one of the challenges that the select board and the town has as we get into this affordability problem that has been growing year over year is that you got to have the data and I think the board if they haven't done it yet should make sure that they all agree on maybe a goal vacancy rate that they're going to work towards with the planning commission and and vacancy rates the huge a huge indicator of supply demand and price so I think you know when we talk about affordability when supply goes down because Airbnb's take over long term and and single family houses and those turn into Airbnb's and that supply goes away but the demand for just renting or buying continues and those units aren't replaced then I think you find yourself in the situation we found ourselves in so I think unless those units are replaced which grows grand list and helps with affordability then you're going to continue down a road of if the market bears that we're going to continue to be a popular tourist destination and other reasons why people might even have second homes here then we have to replace those units the other option I think without totally flipping the market is you know I own a property down in Austin Texas and since I when I bought it they had a moratorium on Airbnb's and I don't know if it was based on growth before they would re-allow more but it's a consideration that I think once you found if you state that you're going to want to try to get to a long-term rental vacancy rate percentage and you have all the data that you need because of this registry exists are other ways that you can get the information you could work towards goals and then when you hit those goals you could you know I don't think there's ever probably going to be a point where the board screams for more Airbnb's but I think the board should be screaming for more long-term rentals and single-family homes so how do you get there I think this is a start I think it's got some work obviously as the discussion has shown but overall I think it's important to have the data and use that data to your advantage to hopefully make Waterbury a more affordable place thank you thank you Mike okay yeah Chris so I heard you I'm just going to uh give you a few comments here tonight I've got a two bedroom apartment it's been vacant for six months and uh the last tenants are in there were friends of mine they uh I didn't charge them a security deposit or last months because I trusted them because I they ran in from me once before on time ago and uh they were great people and they left the place just as they just as they entered it but now I'm thinking of about an alternative for that unit not sure what it's going to be yet but maybe Mickey if you would mind speaking to it he's got a few apartment rentals what the cost of repairs are today when it comes to you know restricting first month rent last month's and security deposit I think we all know that the cost of the building period is astronomical so I've got to believe that that extra money is there that the landlord takes would be eaten up pretty quick when it comes to repairs to Mark's point the moratorium that they had in Texas to try to offset the problem with long-term rentals that's a state issue that needs to go to the state as we've heard here a couple times tonight that the disparity or the or the lopsided scale when it comes to tenants versus landlords it's in the tenants favor that needs to change that's probably part of the reason that I'm not interested in going out and rent my two bedroom long-term because I just worry about getting a bad tenant in there and having to deal with that where short-term you can still have problems with that but it seems like more secure and bad in the long run thanks yeah yeah if I can idea man my name is Mitha Petri which I do have two rental buildings one I've been in since 2012 so I have a really solid rental history with all of our experience and how pretty much economics and how everything works so and I hadn't many dams of different demographics in the past 12 years I had ends that would believe this place up sort of the spotless I had ends where I had once that I had to leave somebody and it took like six months to make them and $5,000 of water fees I took about a year and a half to be covered to recoup all their money but I feel like from everything that I heard that I do will be really beneficial for members of the board to have somebody on the board who actually really understands of what is involved in and how much risk and how much work is involved in being on that full-time level a lot of many times I thought about switching to the A and B and B and having that hope because A is way more lucrative than a full-time level and out of the minimalist reminding because dams are coming couple of three days there's not really much they can you know ruin or break in a couple of three days versus somebody who is who is in your apartment for a year to three or five most of the time even if the dams leave the place on a best note that security advice they were talking about is nowhere nowhere near to cover just the flipping cost for the next step so with everything nothing gets damaged we're literally just walking and everything is perfect by the time you paint the place there's some kind of touch-ups and then there's usually a month's place a month's time we lose that rental income until the next time it comes in it costs you twice as much than than that they possibly were talking about so the moment we take somebody in all the risk is on us and as the long-term landlords or we don't really have an incentive from the time or a state there's literally nothing that says okay we're going to incentivize you to then a full time if it is the goal of short or cutting down short-term rents so I think that with the beneficiaries they have somebody who can really like break down and see what's involved I just want to say we have two landlords that I don't think either are full-time on the housing task force and we're specifically look for that and I will say this was not a recommendation from the housing task force Jess recommended straight by go straight short-term and long-term just to kind of comment on on the limiting how much and I fully agree I fully agree I have rental units there I believe they went from $1100 a month about a year ago to $2,000 a month but everything is quite enough property taxes maybe about 30% property tax increases coming that cost is to be tested for somebody like somebody has paper unfortunately is that and because you can't really come out of landlords I don't think that is unfortunately cannot sell so the margins are really slim the risk is huge and your little your uncle only for seven there's no there's no down pack though so on yeah that's a lot of that attention all right thank you yeah no no hi Matt over going to Waterbury for residents long-term renter I have been renting in Waterbury for five years as of May I got extremely lucky my partner and I you know not a lot of open rental apartments in Waterbury even five years ago could be much harder now if we're trying to find a apartment here again I think maybe just a perspective from a somebody who's been renting here for quite a while you know one thing that I think is very difficult for people who are renting is we would love to buy you know as many people would love to but ultimately there's a set number of houses that are here building as we all know is takes a lot with activity and other regulations and I think the the hard thing is housing is not optional right like housing is not a commodity like an iPhone there's market demands on housing that if you are the owner of that housing and you're renting it out and you're letting market conditions decide the rent worst case scenario that perhaps you are losing half of income you are losing investment property if you are the tenant in that situation and you are you know priced out of your you are potentially on the streets and you're on the streets in a state that has you know inhospitable outdoor conditions both of the year and does not have adequate social services as we saw you know with the armory with a lot of the conversations around the hotels so you know I am I'm very sympathetic to people who have these homes that have been in their families that they'd like to keep you know maybe they're renting it out maybe it's a full-time job but you know for a lot of people we haven't had our first yet well there are many people who have seconds or thirds already and so you know the registry I think is the very first step to understand you know an accurate picture of renting short-term long-term in Waterbury but you know longer term there are these really huge barriers to long-term you know purchasing home ownership for a lot of people in my generation you know I'm not I'm 29 almost 30 and the prospects for me and buying a house in Waterbury are you know pretty bleak right now and so it's probably going to be renting for the foreseeable future if there were more homes available and people put their apartments up for sale like that would be I think huge to a lot of people in Waterbury so I'm sympathetic to you know the flight of you know landlords getting back tenants and things like that but ultimately you know the need for housing stable good housing I think has to take precedent over short-term passive profits and you know you have private equity you have headphones buying up so many single family homes it just creates an uncountable situation for so many young people in the state and it's you know the reason why people are leaving it's the reason why a lot of people can't afford to stay you know I know someone who got priced out of their rental in Waterbury and now has to take the Amtrak into work like that's the Amtrak so it's not a good situation and it's it's unfortunate so I'm really excited about this prospect I think the security department reducing that barrier to entry for rentals is really huge especially if you know we want to allow people who who get off the street you know I mean like if you're not in permanent housing you're not going to be able to cop up seven thousand dollars to be able to get into long-term housing so reducing these barriers to entry prioritizing affordability all these things are great but you know we can't really begin to do anything until we even know how many rentals there are in town so very supportive of her step big shout out of a good landlord so I hope they know I respect them so thank you thank you case and just like you say where I'm recognizing that we're almost an hour over time all right well then I go I'm just going to pull the comment back recognize and also my intention is to leave this open and I'm going to be voting on this tonight should I add one more thank you go on um that was a second I've just been thinking about this I'm just throwing it out kind of creative thinking the last comment you know seemed to be at odds with what I said and what Mr. Petridge said about the security department so if that's a real issue and again this is just a food thought I if I was sitting where Tom is I would think about this and then bring it back to you but I'm not sitting there anymore so I'm just going to throw it in his lap and give you guys kick it around but this almost sounds more like this is a public policy issue a concern that if there are people in the community I don't know if there are rental units available that somebody has to you know wonder whether they can come up with first time in this period if there's no units it doesn't happen but if there are units out there people want to rent them and they can't I don't know if you have any aqua funds left I know you've got all kinds of different reserve accounts but maybe the talent could be the bank as opposed to the landlords for the first last and security process the landlords I think have a lot of risk that they're taking they've got a lot of expenses and I think most of them own their properties hoping someday to sell their properties they bought for 300,000 for 600,000 but during the time that they own it they're hoping to kind of break even they're not most of them aren't landlords that are making their living often being landlords they all have other jobs like John and Mickey do so you know if the town could set aside $50,000 and say will be the security deposit bank or the down payment bank if you want to buy a house come to the town you know the bank wants you to have whatever 10% down payment and it's a $300,000 house and you've got to come up with $30,000 or $15,000 whatever whatever it is that you got to come up with and they can only come up with 10 or if they've got two months security deposit that they can pay and they need three they can borrow that money from the town and pay the town back monthly over a certain period of time that would replenish the bank it's not or even if you don't have our money even if you don't have reserve money if this is an issue that's so important to the town to try and get young people to be able to buy in this community put it on the ballot put it before voters at town meeting and say do we want to invest in our town if you know one you know five sevens or five eighths of a cent on the tax rate would give you $50,000 and if you have to manage it it'd be some people that wouldn't pay it back how you put a lien on them to get that back I don't know but if this is that important maybe it should be the town that takes the risk as opposed to forcing the landlords to pay the risk now I'm jumping right so I've actually had a couple conversations just over the couple of years with different board members what you suggest about down payments so if you think still is unaffordable go to Aspen you won't find anyone working in Aspen that's a resident of Aspen that's just the way the way it is so ski towns out west are ahead of us I shouldn't say ahead of us behind us in that respect so I'm going to ask but put a more clarity of the clarity of the so there are models where there's down payment assistance for individuals at work in that community and in some cases it's not even to live in the community to buy in that community should to maintain your work and you can live nearby because the community itself is unaffordable the challenge with all those things is you know, administratively there's a mortgage you know, you've got you've got attractive and people buy and sell if you're talking down payment assistance if you're going to give someone 10 percent what's the average sale price now 600 something like that so you've got to be awfully well capitalized on day one I've seen programs like this where the way they treat it is it's a mortgage on the property the owner sells it when the owner sells the property if the buyer qualifies for the same program that equity stays with the property the buyer doesn't then the Ms. Pallie has to get made whole for the sale so it's it's not free it's not easy but the real challenge is capitalizing upfront if you're you know, $50,000 if it's down payment assistance is one or two properties so if you wanted to do it you know millions is what you need to start with to do more than a few that's available already the land trust habit the palsy finance authority has it you know so it's there's a number of sources yet that have that down payment it's the question you offer for the renters yes I think that I don't know if the renters can you know that could be a fair number but you know the renters don't have that right and it's just it's just to think about I'm not saying you have to do it but and you might be right on that for down payment assistance I mean I think in any of this assistance you wouldn't you wouldn't want to be fully funding the down payment or the for the security deposit but you know maybe they'd like to come up with half the money but we were talking more about renters and that was my main focus was that if you're going to limit their plans in terms of how much down payment or security deposits that they can get on plan and we've heard why that is sometimes difficult for landlords to do maybe there's an opportunity for the town to be the bridge so good suggestion thank you thank you all right I think I'm going to cut off debate on this so I appreciate everyone taking the time providing your input I think we'll be taking this back up on the first session in May and I encourage you again to submit your comment through the bound part so that we can be better informed we'll take a vote on your final ordinance thank you all thank you all have a nice good afternoon thank you have a great day all right good bye next item on the agenda is a proposed buyout at 34 union street buyout and outhand elevation yeah an elevation to the owner of 34 unions we get his main right for the record Ben Gernand pretty strong last name G-E-R-N-A-N-D G-E-R-N-E-N-D N-A-N-D yep Mr. Gernand had the enforcement experience of buying chef before Irene I spoke to him today about an elevation project and he mentioned that he started down that road some years back so I'm hoping we have enough of a file from the past that the first step in in doing an elevation product is you've got to invest your own money and get an elevation certificate you've got to have an architect engineer to send free development to you that raises the structure of both the flood plain that may have been done some years back so we're going through the files to try to find that if it wasn't he'd have to take that first step he's interested in that conversation he's also I also talked to him about buyout and in essence what I said is there's no harm there's no found pursuing a buyout it's a long time to get to the actual number that FEMA would offer and you can say no so in essence it's a risk-free no obligation quote to sell your house without a real estate fee on top of it interestingly enough he was expressed that he had been interested in the buyout when he bought the house but at the time the town was uninterested in offering buyouts so part of the conversation was that you know he wished this was on the table after I reinvented I think it just in general wasn't I'm not sure but in general he's interested in pursuing both options at this point I don't know the paperwork with me for the elevation there's nothing to sign there's simply an express interest by the select board that I can convey a FEMA for the buyout there is paperwork which I can bring if you're all interested in going forward letting him pursue both options I don't like to speak to the situation any more make a motion are you asking for a motion today on this yes okay go ahead I'll move to approve the option or suit you want I move to either support an elevation study or approve the buyout for 34 months straight second that okay discussion well they did they hit the deck was able first for priority well I guess we know the paperwork it doesn't matter yeah it's an ongoing process so a bit where it is time goes on if additional people express interest that the state chair yeah well that's why I say I think I would make the motion regardless but yeah the call I mean it's union they've been really badly flooded I think if someone wants the option we should support anything just for the information how many buyouts are we up to so it says to be four right one on main street right and this would be the this would be the fourth but this would be the third on union yeah I was saying there were two already there a little more on main street so okay okay okay any further discussion you're none I hope they'll say I I may oppose any abstentions all right thanks for right next is next meeting agenda we have a copy of the draft agenda for April 13th yeah I have one suggestion get the notes have been in the pipeline a long time I know there was an annual hearing today but you might want to consider not having two draft ordinances being worked on at the same time you might want to get through the rental property ordinance before we undertake the animal just to think it can be delayed yeah strike the annual control ordinance and I'm fine with that if we sub rental I feel like to me that we need to work front ordinances I mean or or parking is going to be a healthy discussion too but I guess we can revisit this rental you had just said the next meeting Roger but in terms of like I think we heard testimony from folks tonight I think there's decisions around like this fire box around security pause out around what we proposed and I guess I would say I'm interested in having a conversation about what implementation looks like as part of our concern well and I was indicating that part of implementation of registry was the software for which we don't have a lot of information yeah we can have more yeah so we can wait so you're saying make both message well I guess yeah I was thinking that we do ourselves a month to get more input on the on the rental thing and then try to address that the first meeting in May I don't know that I guess I'm wondering whether the animal control ordinance is going to be particularly controversial and whether we wouldn't whether we'd be in a position to approve a an ordinance up next on animal control at the next meeting pretty well some of it was just like minor updates that and or caring proposed so on yeah yeah generally I don't believe controversial though I do get a fair amount of feedback about animal issues yeah so I will just say recap the bylaw hearing I asked what I walked in is warrant for May 6 I don't know if it's confusing to have the mental ordinance and the first hearing of the planning commission don't need regulations after saying sure yeah I mean it gets fine and it may be inevitable but I'm just naming per the bulletin board bylaw hearing is May 6 the rental one to two weeks from now or two weeks from I would ever mind this is the next meeting this is the next meeting after this so yeah you're going to switch animal control was helpful sure and we get so disgusted from the lot of the discussion about being sure got pretty heated there just an FYI next meeting I might not be here in person because I'm going to be moving my mother-in-law to a nursing home so I could probably be a zoom okay yeah I'm pretty sure that Ian will be back just a family I should tonight okay anything else on here that I think is we're going to have a fair bit of time devoted to trying to fill vacancies I would also propose as a practice that we don't source a public comment on that which is a shuffle of quote but on vacancies on board appointments I guess I don't know I don't want to have a substantive conversation but I think it can put folks in a weird position to be asked be asked questions by a member of the public here I think like we as the select board are appointing folks and I sometimes feel bizarre about endorsements or have tapped it in on endorsements from audience members or wonder if that's a reasonable expectation of someone they only have to take that I'm not limiting to tonight's conversation I'm thinking like a year ago planning admission appointments when we have what is your view on the future growth and development of Waterbury from an audience member so anyway it's just it's on the agenda you know and Bell Shuffle it's been like he has said before like it's a board I don't know I in general like that we so it is one particular one I think it can be bizarre and it's a it's a board appointment or in this case a board recommendation but at the same time if they're appointed to the school board those very questions will be asked of them for quite a long time yeah no and I'm not saying it's I've to be clear I mean it's a point of discussion like if folks over will be I'm not going to say I'm just it's a dynamic I know this that is sometimes odd well I appreciate the fact that you will not ask people to address me I do think that that helps avoid that dynamic where people are being attacked personally if someone is bringing an issue that they feel needs to be considered I feel much like so I found kind of a little odd getting the email endorse from public member endorsing some of the candidates I think it's fun they can get them just see that it's very different that right I can all only opinion on anything educated or not it doesn't mean I'm presenting it I'm not sure it's going to be ready for the 15th we're finalizing the work in it with CDRPC but the hazard mitigation plan we should put a placeholder in the 15th I think I don't think it'll be ready I think what to modify I think Roger and I before it's finalized going to take it off but something we have to get done Mike you asked about handicapped parking in the business district and I'm noting that we also have parking ordinance Tom is that a view a meal of someone so there is the good old fashion I bring this up because it's before the bylaw hearing there was parking ordinance that was the villages that is now ours that involves cars staff 17 high outside the reservoir to me parking minimum requirements and I'm just wondering if I guess we're not going to have a draft proposal because to me it's germane to the handicapped parking in the business district and so so I've been in a couple of people for handicapped they said you know it's really unfortunate that you know granted there are some that are a little but some people pretty limited mobility and there should be at least one space dedicated in the business district yeah I had a brief conversation with Bill Woodruff about this probably something to do with the big deal we're going to you know obviously there's standards right that we're in compliance with we were going to go through and see if I see if we can identify a couple others thoughts to potentially make handicapped that made sense and bring something back to the board with it so that I understand that too I don't think after my my needs stuff when I have limited mobility we can we can have that not that I had even a handicap of space but I could see some people who would have to live with that it'd be something that would really be germane to them all right any other comments well I'll take those and try to get the everything worked into the agenda for the 15th thank you all right and next yes why is leak paper traffic in in in the car I have nothing I have the thing that says the stuff uh leak paper parking was a question of doubt whether we needed there was going to get by any of the advantage no it was not about the leak paper event it was about the people weekend and I think because of a change of ownership at cold hollow there was not a public police officer right all right I got in traffic as a result to the traffic going the wrong run to the center I think it has to do with like the marathon and all that but yeah it was just the usual last 400 problem weekend in September the first weekend in October traffic mess on the 100 and I'm I don't feel like we need to have that absolutely nailed down until probably some time into the summer so everyone care to make a motion about entering a deliberative slash an executive session yeah so that's the thing yeah and there's separate items so you think okay do I have a con is it a contract so the executive session I'm requesting is about the employment or employment or evaluation of public officer employee so technically that which you would technically need to make a signing that premature public knowledge yeah I got that a move to find that premature general public knowledge we clearly place the public body or person involved at a substantial disadvantage in regard to contract negotiation second move and seconded all of every say aye aye aye any opposed any abstentions write all that down yeah or all my yeah you said contracts well what did I do it was I have I have a claimant an employee issue claimant or employment or evaluation of the public officer or employee so close we'll try again all that doing the money yeah we'll we'll pass that one I moved it on pass the motion just passed you could do a friendly amendment well actually you don't want to just it's it's wait for we'll we'll move to enter executive session for the purpose of evaluation of a public informer thank you second second move and seconded all of every say aye aye aye any opposed any abstentions