 Select board meeting for Monday, October 19th, 2020. First thing to do is to approve the agenda. Do we have any changes or modifications? Yeah, Mark, there's one thing I'd like to add. It should be pretty quick. We've got a request from the Green Mountain Rommers and Snowmobile Club, the local Snowmobile Club about opening some highways for winter snow machine travel. Any particular, just under manage items? Wherever you wanna put it is fine. Okay, we'll put it under manage items. Can I get an motion to approve the agenda with a change? Make a motion to approve the agenda with that one change from Bill. Second. All right, it was Katie the second and that made a motion to approve all those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Next is the consent agenda items, which is only the minutes from September 21st meeting. Anyone have a motion to approve the minutes? I make a motion to approve the minutes as presented. Second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. All right, any members of the public joining us tonight I would like to say anything before we move on to the select board items. All right, the first item on the select board items is a Ritalizing Waterbury MOU update. I'm assuming Karen, that's for you. Yeah, so Karen is here to speak to this, to answer questions that you might have about where our Velvry is right now, what's been going on. As a reminder, we've been operating under an MOU which basically says that the select board should give revitalizing waterbury information by October 1st, I think it is. If we're planning not to fund the economic development director's position in the following year, we had a brief discussion about that back in August. I think it was and the consensus was given where we are with the Main Street reconstruction and COVID in particular, that we wanted to continue this arrangement with RW at least for 2021. From my perspective, I think that, you know, they're a really good local organization that has provided a lot of service. We have a separate contract with them right now for the Main Street into the outreach to businesses. Karen can speak to that a little bit, but this MOU is specifically about the economic development director. And it's very similar to the MOU that we have right now. Toward the end, it really tries to make this kind of an evergreen document. It talks about the amount of money that we have appropriated in 2020, which is 44.30 per month. And then going forward, it suggests that unless the select board tells RW before October 1st, we'll go to town meeting, we'll present a budget. And if that budget passes, the amount of money would just be divided by 12 from April 1st through March 31st of subsequent years. So I think the MOU is pretty straightforward. It gets amended if either party wants to amend it and comes back to the board, but I think this document, if you approve it, can go unamended and we can just keep kind of rolling along uninterrupted until we get interrupted either by one of the parties or the board. So with that, I'll be quiet and Karen can say it to you. Everyone, I think Bill pretty much summarized it as we were reviewing some documents, we realized the MOU did a lot of referencing to the village and that we just really needed to clean it up. Alyssa's on the call too, if you have any questions. But the other goal here was that we didn't want to have to rewrite the document every April after the town approved its town minutes or the town budget. So it's really just, it was a housekeeping piece to make sure that the relationship was still strong and we had an MOU that sort of dotted the T's and crossed the I's. Well, you know what I mean, crossed the T's and dot the I's going forward. I know Alyssa gave you her sort of six month report in August, I think we were both here and was able to give you a good of what we're doing. And we do give you two reports a year plus are available to answer questions at any time. And we do feel like we have a really good strong working relationship and are happy to answer any questions. I'll ask Alyssa real quickly if she has anything she wants to say. Sorry, this lighting is never to zoom calls. Hi, everyone. No, I don't really have anything to add other than as has been said, I don't think this changes the scope of my work at all. It really, again, just removes outdated references but happy to answer questions if anyone has any. Yeah, the two reports that Karen spoke about are memorialized now in the MOU. And Alyssa has been very good with that. I do get an agenda and an invitation to all of the February and BC meetings and try to attend when I can. I haven't been for a while. I even set my alarm clock the last meeting and still ended up for other reasons having to miss it. So I'll try next time Alyssa. Sounds good. And also Mark Pryor, if folks don't know is a member of that group as well and also will be at meetings sometimes just as another select board connection. I think I'll just add one other little quick thing is that we have spent the last three years really focused on Main Street and it's been really important to have the Economic Development Director as a part of the multi-pronged approach to support our businesses in the town during Main Street. That contract with the town and VTrans expires more or less than the next six months when the project's done will be done but there is still plenty of work that to do to support our businesses as we come out of COVID-19 and really turn a corner on a sort of a new water barrier that we will be working to support. So just want to share that too. So my recommendation would be for the board to approve them all year. While we have you here, what's the feedback you're getting from businesses in terms of concerns about going into winter or anything that they think we can be doing as a town? I'm sure a lot of them have their concerns but I don't know if there's anything you can think of off hand. I don't have a specific recommendation at this point other than to say we are asking the same question and I would say it's, I think folks are kind of dealing with a lot right now so getting the responses on some of that have been challenging. We are collaborating with Stowe and the Mad River Valley which has been exciting in particular as we have kind of some common hospitality, lodging themes. So there's a meeting this Thursday with folks in the lodging world and there'll be restaurant and retail and subsequent weeks just to kind of again share what's happening on the ground. I think there is, as you've seen at least Mark, some sector specific kind of organizing happening where there's specific concerns in the lodging world and the restaurant world. But in terms of something that's at like a select board level for action or support, most of the asks I'm hearing at this point are kind of for higher level financial assistance which would be state or federal. We are still helping folks to navigate that actually just this afternoon they came out with another round of hazard pay grants and things like that. So someone that does continue to still be up in the air and I would anticipate that through the end of the year particularly as I know the state at least was fortunate to get a substantial appropriation and we meet weekly with Teresa Wood and she's been filling us in. They have to spend that money and so some things may be reallocated. We had a lot of folks interested in technical assistance around websites, marketing, advertising and the like but that's kind of again, unfortunately the answer is I don't have a great ask specifically for the select board but if one emerges I will certainly pass it along. All right, do any of the other select board members have any questions for Karen or Alyssa? No, Jen. Just a comment Mark, I do think, you know this just memorializes an agreement that we just you know going to enter into it still doesn't have any impact us if you know if funding is going to be changed at some point in time so I just think this is as far as, I give RW you guys done a great job. They're really meant for all your work and keep up to good work. Yeah, I agree with Michael's comments. I think we're lucky to have organizations like RW that have so much volunteer time you know that doesn't you know that really does go a long way and I know you guys do a lot with a little so we really appreciate the effort you guys are putting can I get a motion to is it to just adopt the memorandum of understanding or what's the motion we're looking for? You want to make a motion to approve the MOU and authorize the manager to sign it if that's what you like. Would anyone like to make that motion? I make a motion to approve the MOU and give a town manager the right to enter into where the free business is archived. All right, is there a second? Second. All right, the motion's been made in second in any further discussion? All those members in favor please say aye. Aye. Aye. Thank you Karen and Alyssa. Thanks for your help getting this done Karen. Thank you everybody, it's really, as always we really appreciate your support. Call us if you ever have questions. Yeah, thank you all, appreciate it. Thanks. Next on the agenda, we have the Vermont State Police Lieutenant White status report. You guys hear me? So yeah, yes we can Dave, thank you. So Lieutenant White who is the supervisor of the two troopers that are assigned to library is here with us this evening. We've tried a couple of different times to have a meeting with Kim and with COVID and everything else that's been going on and some of the challenges with the state budget. It's difficult to make this work. He is with us this evening and I have sent out to you his August report which is the last one that we have from him in terms of statistical report. I noticed Mark McHair is here on the Zoom meeting with us tonight and I want to publicly thank Mark for taking the information that Dave sends every month and puts it in the form that you're looking at it here which is a narrative with statistics. So I guess what I'd like to do first, Mark, is just let Lieutenant White make whatever statement he'd like to make and talk about things that are going on and that are important to him and then see if the board has any questions either about the statistics or just the service in general. So go ahead, Dave. All right, thanks for taking the time to be on this evening. Obviously we're into year two of this full service contract I know from a state police vantage point it's going very well. Just looking at numbers, year one compared to year two as with anything, it seems like as time goes on our calls for service across the board and Waterbury and across the entire middle sex coverage area increases. No change for Waterbury. So year one to year two, the calls for service overall increased just slightly just about just over 200 calls per service. More year two versus year one. About 50 more of those cases were criminal investigations, a noticeable increase in arrests between the two years. The first year that we did the contract, 85 arrests year two, we had 122 arrests and just a handful more of drug violations. From a motor vehicle standpoint, obviously year one, I think we did a pretty good stroke of business and we more than, well, just about doubled the amount of tickets. Our warnings went down, our traffic stops just about doubled traffic stops just to put some emphasis on the numbers. Went from just under 400, 397 traffic stops in year one to just over 700 traffic stops in year two and with that noticeable increase in presence, your overall rate of crashes reduced as well for Waterbury overall. So again, I think from a state police standpoint, it's certainly working out well. The COVID crisis pandemic really put a damper on things. Obviously mid 2020 with the state police, we went into a modified service level just trying to limit our interaction with anyone, especially in the early months of COVID. So a lot of our proactive work across the board was all but completely, it just didn't happen. We did a lot of things, a lot of the initial cause for service, we would take over the phone and then take a good hard look to see if it's something that we needed to respond to. Obviously if it required a response, we responded, but those were obviously some of the challenges that we faced in early COVID. We've backed off that just a little bit, but at the same time, we're still being cautious and how we respond and what we respond to, motor vehicle stops. We still continue to stop vehicles. Our water barrier guys are, I feel, are doing a good job, but they have decreased some just based on the state police COVID protocols that obviously they have to fall in line with. And obviously you guys, everyone knows as well as I do, we have no idea where this is gonna go and how long it will linger. So we're just kind of along for the ride like everyone else. Other than that, one challenge that we are gonna face moving into 2021 with the Waterbury contract is the day shift trooper Keith LaWea. He is in the National Guard and he is potentially scheduled to deploy, so still trying to sort out when and pretty much when that will happen and then we'll have to determine how we move forward from there. Good, well, thank you, Dave. And I think the graphics that Mark helped put together really points out how activities and interaction with the public really dropped off to almost nothing in April. That's clear on the information that you have in front of you. Select board, if you have any questions or comments, certainly feel free to speak up now. And Mark, I know you're not a select board member anymore, but you do put these numbers together for me. So if there's any observations that you wanna share and see, certainly from my perspective, feel free to interject and add that. So select board members, Dave is here to answer your questions if you have any. How do we feel that we're addressing the concerns of citizens with some of those speed areas that it seemed to come up through the summer? Do we feel like call volume's gone down of complaints in that regard and feeling like we're able to help produce some of that concern? Well, I'll take that from my perspective right now. These things are cyclical and with social media, of course, sometimes it tends to be a feeding frenzy and if one person complains and somebody else feels free to complain and then before you know it, you've got a couple of weeks going where there's a lot of comments and a lot of concerns being expressed. We heard this year from folks who came to select board meetings, people from Little River Road came to some of our Zoom meetings, people from Stow Street and to a lesser degree for a different issue, people from Blush Hill and the Blush Hill was mainly with regard to parking and how voters at the reservoir were impacting the road. The state police were very proactive in especially the Little River concerns. Anytime people reached out to me to complain, I asked them, have you called the state police to report your concerns to them? They're the agency that really is the boots on the ground, the wheels on the road, whatever the phrase you want to use is and if you call them and express concerns, they like that and they'll do something with it. And I know the troopers were instrumental in getting one of the feedback radar signs there and that was a state police sign that was put down there. From that, we used that information when we dealt with the people from Stow Street and since we have bought two additional radar feedback signs that we're moving around the community, it's mainly been on Stow Street and on Wienersky Street in addition to the two permanent ones that we have on Stow Street up as you come down the hill before you get to Henry Flats but the affordable one has been placed a little bit closer to the school, mainly in the direction from Route 100 toward the school and the other ones been on Wienersky Street. So that's my perspective. We're getting far fewer complaints now. I don't know if that means people are happy or they're just tired of complaining but they're not contacting me to the degree that they were before and I'm not sure what the lieutenant knows about any of this but that's my perspective. Yeah, I would say just from our perspective, just looking through the general calls for service, I think the overall motor vehicle complaints from that standpoint, from speeding and things like that, I think that they have gone down and again, like Mr. Sheplek said, whether that's because people just got tired of complaining or we're actually making a difference but I think that anything, well, certainly anything that comes in gets addressed immediately. I know anytime that Mr. Sheplek gets something, he forwards it to me and I immediately forward it to the troopers and I almost always get a response back where they get right on it. So I think visibility says a lot about all of these things. Yeah, from my perspective, I appreciate the responsiveness of Lieutenant White. He is really my contact. I can't remember the name of the first trooper that we had here who hit the retirement age, unfortunately. When he took this position, he really kind of reached out to the local staff. I think he may have reached out to some of the select board members and was very active in terms of his wanting to communicate with me. And I'm not saying that's good or bad. I'm not making a value judgment on the current troopers but their MO, their operation in terms of how they do their day to day work is a little different and they do not reach out to me directly. And I respect the chain of command that we have with the state police when we entered into this agreement, I was told that if there were concerns or problems or requests that they should go to Lieutenant White. And he is my point of contact. And on the rare occasion when we did have the situation going on up with the folks camping up on the ledges up between Batch of Brook and the interstate ramp, I reached out to Lieutenant White and I had a little bit of contact with some of the troopers that were involved in that just because that was a specific incident that they were responding to. But Lieutenant White has been very responsive to me and how the community feels about it. You probably as a select board members you probably get more feedback than I do from the citizenry as a whole. I'll take a stab at it, Lieutenant White. This is Chris Viennes. I apologize to everybody for really spacing on this meeting. Can I, I just got ahead of myself on something else and forgot all about it. But I guess my question, Lieutenant, it would be a couple of things. When speed patrols are ducted, are they at random during any portion of the day or is there a consideration during commuting times when especially coming home at night when people seem to be most impatient and don't care who's in the way, but their main concern is to get home. The other question is, is there a possibility? I don't know what's entailed, you have to explain it to me. Of switching up some of the hourly schedule, be able to maybe change one weekday for one weekend day, maybe a couple of times a month. As right now, I think the citizenry around here has a pretty clear indication that there's not much this activity on the weekends and that seems to be when most of the higher rate of speed takes place, especially on the roads by my place here on the own flat and got the road and other areas up here in the center. So for the first question, I mean, if there is a specific concern somewhere that we know about, we'll definitely direct attention to that. And if there's a specific time that's known to be a problem in a certain area, if we know about that, if the troopers know that there's an issue, they will focus their activity in those areas on those times. Otherwise they're out patrolling and responding to calls for service. So a lot of their patrol work probably depends on their comings and goings from those areas where the calls for service are. In terms of switching up the days, I would have to look back at the contract. I think the initial contract was for a specific day shift Monday through Friday and an evening shift Tuesday through Saturday, but not having the contract in front of me. I would have to refer back to that and see if there is any sort of leniency within the verbiage. I guess that's my question more or less, is would there be a consideration if the board had any interest in it? Maybe change that up to a little bit so we could get a couple of days a month during on a weekend day, specifically more or less Saturday. Yeah, yeah, I would tend to agree with that. Just simply because I know I would be open to that just because I see the numbers and I see how those numbers obviously increase the traffic through Waterbury can double, triple, and quadruple on any given leaf people weekend, so especially during the daytime. So I'm definitely not opposed to it. Obviously the troopers that are working the contracts entered into that under certain guidelines that this work would be specifically within these days. So again, I would just have to look at how that contract is worded and what we can do, but I'm certainly open to going down that road and seeing what we can come up with, because ultimately you guys are the customer to the Vermont State Police, so if we can better our service, certainly something that I'm open to. Did you understand what I asked him, Bill? I think so. And I don't, maybe even going as far as saying is there a way of pushing one of, and again, I'm just inquiring, is there a way of switching day or two a month with one of the full-time officers that Waterbury employees, perhaps another officer from Middlesex that we worked more weekends, whether or not you could switch out a day instead of changing the current officers? Yeah, I don't have the contract in front of me either, and I know there's something in there, we asked about the hours of operation, that was a concern of the select board when we started the contract, and I don't remember what time the trooper starts in the morning, but we did ask that if from time to time, we wanted the trooper to come in a little bit earlier to catch some, maybe early morning, people going to work every once in a while, so it was not always an exact date and old clockwork when they were going to be out there, and that was something that the state police hierarchy that was involved in writing the contract said that they would be open to, but it would have to go through and at white, and it's a little different than the question that you're asking, Chris, and I think we can look at the contract just to remind everyone, we have had two full years of this contract plus now, the contract expires on June 30th of 2021, so we need to do a couple of things, we need to look at the contract, and we can look at how the services are provided and whether we can get a little bit more flexibility, like Chris is suggesting, and that Lieutenant White seems to think might be beneficial from time to time, given how the weekends are very different from a weekday, especially in the high furs in times of the year, but we're also gonna have to kind of touch base pretty quickly with the state to see what their appetite for continuing this contract is, and I don't know if Lieutenant White is in a position to speak to that or not, and I won't put him on the spot, but the contract does expire on the 30th of June, so we're gonna have to make some reaching out to the state to see whether or not they're open to continuing this, or my point of view, I think it's a great contract, I think it provides good service to us at a very reasonable cost, you know, it's $365,000 a year, so it's $1,000 a day basically, but having been the manager for the village and seeing the police department and the costs that they had and the personnel, challenges with that, I think this is a good deal for us still, and I hope that we can work things out that it can continue to speak to myself. Well, as part of your question, Bill, I mean, I'll add a little bit more to it, and I think I talked to you about this earlier on a couple of weeks ago, but my question was moving the barracks to Berlin, how would that impact relationship as we have it now? Well, I think that's a better question for Lieutenant White. I enlarge the agreement is that for all intents and purposes, when these officers are on duty and assigned to watering, they're in water right now, I know they have to go back to the barracks, especially if there's an arrest and things like that, and Berlin is certainly a little bit further away, but I think that question is really more for Lieutenant White. Yeah, and that would be the biggest thing. On the occasion, when they do need to go to the barracks, when they have to process someone, when they have to interview someone, obviously, that journey from Waterbury to Berlin is now extended, but obviously moving my location will not have any effect on the relationship that myself and Mr. Sheplack have from my vantage point, and it would just extend the amount of time that the troops are out of Waterbury to do those small things. And there may be, if we do move forward with another contract and Mr. Sheplack, I'd love to think I had that kind of power, but I do not, but moving forward, there could be some talk about having some sort of better utilized space, maybe at the fire department or something with a printer or with something like that set up so that it's just to print or copy or do something like that. Perhaps it's not, we would only need to go to the barracks for processing and things like that. It may be something where we have a regular relay of paperwork or information if they do have to print something off at the barracks remotely and we can relay it up. So it's certainly something that we can look at and talk about in the future. So Karen White, this is on my card. I just want to briefly talk about one, I think this is a really good model contract that I know I spoke of, we had a conversation up at Deer Camp and there were several police from out of state and they thought the idea of small police departments are very hard to manage. And I think this is a really good model that maybe can be perceived as a little bit more due in other places. Going on again, can we probably hear more things about the quality of life thing such as competing and stuff like that. People kind of talked about, I want to go in a little different area. Statewide, we have a epidemic of OPI and stuff like that. How would you rate the Watterbury community in terms of a prediction rate and or possibly, is there a bunch of evidence of dealing with narcotics you know, drug use? From that vantage point, based on the information, the drug-involved investigations and things that at least that we're aware of and that we've responded to, there's, let me see if I can pull it up while I'm sitting here because I was just looking at it. Your drug violations, so that's drug arrests. Well, for year one and year two are 20. So I would say that Watterbury is doing a pretty good job in terms of avoiding that instance. And could there be a lot of things that certainly go unreported, so therefore unnoticed by us? Absolutely, but I can tell you that there are much smaller communities throughout central Vermont who have much larger problems that we respond to on a regular basis. Okay, that's good to know. Thank you much. Certainly. Yeah, there's select board members, got any questions? Yeah, so when would we have to start talking about like really diving into the terms of this contract? Like when is that need to be finalized by? Well, reach out to the contact folks that I have with regard to the contract relatively soon. We're really gonna need to know from our perspective as best we can by January. Now, the state police clearly have a different budget year than we have. They're on a July 1st to June 30th year. That's why the contract is got a June 30th expiration date and they're gonna need the legislature to make appropriations for their budget. And whether they are agreeable to continue to have this contract, it's all subject to the legislative process as well. But from our standpoint, we're gonna try to work things out and at least get pricing in place. So we have it for our town meeting and then we'll have to just kind of cross our fingers and see what happens with the legislature and the civilian administration of the Department of Public Safety, they'll have to weigh in and like every government entity, they have competing interests and we'll just have to see where it comes up. Chris, can I make a couple of observations? Go ahead, shoot Mark. Okay, the statistical stuff that Bill had mentioned, the graphic portrayal that I put together in over the last two years, you can really see the consistency in what's there and the way that's put together is really to try to give you a picture of the type of calls and the type of services that are being provided. And also we wanted to look at when we initially started, how much of the workload was being covered by the troopers that are assigned to Waterbury and how much are covered out of the Middlesex Station directly. And over time, that's running pretty much about a 50-50. You have to keep in mind that the town is paying for 80 hours of coverage and there are more than 80 hours in a week. So the fact that the resident troopers are picking up 50% of the workload is actually pretty good bang for the buck. The other thing that I've seen, and Chris, this kind of goes back to your concern with the shift coverage stuff, is that, and I'll let Lieutenant White speak to this as well, but it seems as though with the resident troopers here and their presence here, it's been a relief for the rest of the troopers at the Middlesex Station. So they've generally provided favorable feedback on the fact that we are supporting the two troopers to cover the workload here in Waterbury. We're averaging anywhere between 80 and 100 plus calls a month and half of that is being covered right with the two troopers that are assigned. So that's a good relief for the station troopers at Middlesex, but it also seems to generate a lot of interest in some of the other troopers providing patrol coverage when they are covering for the Waterbury troops not being around. I think there's a good relief factor to the fact that we've got full-time assigned people here so that even if a station trooper is covering something, if there's a need for additional follow-up and everything, we've got people that are assigned here that will cover that responsibility pretty well, plus they know the community. And that's the important thing. But going back to what Bill had mentioned earlier, Rick was the first trooper that you were talking about Bill and he made a good point of connecting with the business community, town officials and the like. And that's really the role of the day shift trooper. Our night shift trooper, he's showing up and he's working at a time where a lot of the contacts are just no longer available. It's great to hear that Lieutenant White has maintained that close contact with Bill and that's an integral part of it. The commitment from the station supervisory staff is critical to the success of this project. And to this point, it really has worked well. To Mark's comments about the model that's being used here, there are several communities around the state that envy the working relationship that we have. And this project was really intended to be that pilot to see whether or not it was a viable model to follow, to replicate in some other communities. So in addition to simply renewing the Waterbury one, the department I'm sure is gonna be looking at the prospect of whether or not they replicate this and other communities. It certainly has provided stable coverage for us and it has lessened some of the management headaches that may have been in place previously. Yeah, that was my main attraction to this model from the get go when it was originally brought to the table along with the proposal for down wide police was the fact that, you know, from a state's perspective to add two additional troopers believe it was 15 troopers for covering 18 towns, if I'm correct. And now we've gone to 20 troopers, I suspect. If you wanted to knock off, or I mean, I'm sorry, 17 troopers and take one of those 18 towns that they would have covered under the 15 trooper model, take that away. And now there are 15 troopers covering 17 towns as opposed to 18 with two additional troopers for backup if necessary. I don't know that anybody's asked Lieutenant White this question, but has there been any conversation of using this model in other towns throughout the state? Lieutenant? Yes, this is an ongoing conversation and just as several of you have mentioned, it's definitely a very good model pretty much right from the get go when I took over here the conversations throughout multiple towns, especially those immediately surrounding Waterbury. Richmond was certainly one that was a big talk but there's a lot of people that have been continuing to keep an eye on how this Waterbury contract goes just because with the collaboration between state police and local municipality and working so closely and so well together, it seems to be a good fix and a good possible solution for a lot of smaller communities or even larger communities that have a smaller municipal police department and just to, obviously it's very, very enticing to be able to have that coverage and none of the headaches that go along with all of that. So it's definitely a good model and I'm not sure obviously what the higher ups are looking at and whether they're looking at other communities to get involved with but I know there's a lot of emphasis on how well this contract goes just for future ventures. I would think that other municipalities that are barely close within the proximity of barracks throughout the state, I don't know how many sets of barracks you have, two or three, but if you can surround yourself with other towns that perhaps use the same model that relieves additional officers put back into these further towns that it's more both a reach on a timely basis, may be able to concentrate more in those areas for more. Yeah, certainly it allows the state police to give a more concentrated effort to individual communities while also increasing our number of troopers that are actually out on the road which increases visibility across the state. So just adding a couple of more bodies does a world of difference across the state. So I would like to mention one more thing and then probably had enough. Had a debate today on WDV for representatives running for also representatives positions. I brought to the table consideration that instead of we got talking about the defunding police or that topic came up real briefly. And I said from this racial equity thing and the problems we've had, Black Lives Matter concerns, all that. And rather than defunding the police, I suggested that we help segregate, try to segregate the state police more, bring in more people of minority and into the state police positions and somehow allow them to deal with minority phone calls, minority calls that came in that were minority related and able to send these minority troopers to deal with that rather than the troopers that have been doing it and then maybe take out this racial card problem. Do you think there's any capability of that happening or what's the potential of that? I think just from overarching view, simply getting any qualified candidate wanting to do this job right now is difficult. Trying to diversify our membership has been something that we've been attempting to do for years now and it's just a matter of finding the people that wanna do the job. It's certainly not a lack of effort on our recruiting division. It's just a matter of really finding anyone that's capable and wanting to do this job period. Obviously that was gonna be one of my questions on recruiting. All right, we're all done with Lieutenant White. Probably can let him dress the night off. If there's any more questions. Thank you very much, Lieutenant. To the select board members, I assume based on the comments made that there is an appetite for keeping this contract going into the future, that's where the contract, as I said, is gonna expire and no one is wanting to not have this contract, right? Can't make the state do it, but we're gonna ask, is that the direction you wanna give me? I give you a thumbs up, so. Yeah, I think it would be a real shame to lose it. I think we don't wanna go backwards. As I kinda said, you're seeing small police departments as the economy of jail of having this small police department very inefficient and it doesn't provide good policing. And I think that's what everyone wants. I know this whole defunding the police, but I think this is a model and I know I wanna go forward. I think this is a great idea. I think more communities are probably gonna wanna go forward. Yeah, I'll say that I'm in support of a continuation of the contract, but I would like to at some point have a discussion on what services we aren't getting because of the type of contract we're doing, parking. There's definitely a list of items that we didn't expect going into this contract that we were gonna receive, but there's definitely things that a local police department has done in the past or maybe could or should have been doing that this contract doesn't fulfill. So I think at some point, we really do need to talk through the things that maybe we're missing and how we backfill those with whatever we need to do, but I support the continuation. E? Yep, I'm in support and thank you for your service. I'm sorry about the recruitment. I know my grandfather's been trying to get me to go into that kind of future. He used to be a captain and a state police, but I appreciate the work you do and thank you. Okay, Lieutenant White, thanks for showing up and answering all our questions. All right, folks, thanks for having me on. Good luck with your continued meeting and I hope all of you stay well. Have a good night. Thank you, you as well. Mark, Mark Friar. I didn't mean to take over the meeting here. You're welcome to continue running it if you want to. No, you're fine, I'll pass it off. Okay. All right, so we'll talk about an interview for DRB alternative, alternate term ending April 30th, 2021. Who might that be? That's me. George? Yep. Okay, interested in jumping in the hot seat on the DRB, huh? That's right, the last one. What's your interest about that? Well, I went through the process this spring and I'm a civil engineer, environmental engineer now. And so I've been on the other side of the table many times and I sort of realized that this is a way for me to give back to my community in an area that I'm familiar with and also realized if I wanna keep Waterbury this great place that I like to live, that joining the development review board would be a way to keep doing that. Obviously your engineering background have some sense of what you'd be dealing with. Yep, that's indeed. Was this an advertised position, Carla? All the positions are advertised. We have to tell meeting sometime in April. Okay. Board members, you'd like to ask any questions? Ian's how we got two board members that were previous DRB members. They ought to be full of questions for you. So George, you really don't have anything else to do on Wednesday evenings? I was putting the meetings into my calendar today and I sort of had a, oh boy. No, I think it's all really interesting to me. That's great. And I think between you and the current chair, there's a wealth of knowledge there on the engineering and the permitting side of things. And what is your position on Waterbury and things like historic preservation and we're doing a big rewrite of all of our zoning laws right now and what's kind of your interest there? I think the historic preservation piece is hugely important, especially in this state. And I started my career in Wyoming, which is interesting is everything's new construction. There's very little historic anything. So I think it's important to preserve that but not at the expense of new development and improvements. And I always think back to, I went to UVM and Vody Hall, which is the engineering building is on the list of historic places in Burlington. And it's, in my opinion, a really ugly building but it precluded them from making necessary improvements to the engineering building. So we were left with some out-of-date labs and some out-of-date equipment and that sort of thing. So I definitely think it's important to preserve the historic nature of things but not necessarily at the expense of progress. Great. Well, I think that the DRB would be lucky to have you. I wish you luck. Thank you. Steve, you popped in on it Sarah for a second. Did you have something you wanted to add or? Yeah, we're just, oh, were you asking me Chris? Yes, I was talking to you. Yeah, sure. Well, I'm just grateful that George is willing to step up. And I don't really have any questions. I wanted to let the board know that one of our members, Andrew Stroninski is in the process of moving to Southern Vermont. So we're gonna have an opportunity for one of the alternates to step up as a regular member but I also wanted to let you know that our alternates are very active on the board as long as one or two of our members are absent, we encourage alternates to participate. So just giving you a heads up, George, we're gonna welcome your involvement. That's all I have Chris. Okay, Michael. Michael, were you gonna say something? Yeah, George, this is Mike Barnard. I'm also a former longtime DRB member. And one thing, thank you for stepping up for your service. I think the DRB is one of the more important committees that we have in the community. Let me ask you, this is something that always kind of bothered me on the DRB and still is probably not. How would you work to correct, just there have been a number of permanent conditions that we've had installed and some of the applicants over a long period of time have not complied with these permanent conditions. How would you deal with enforcement actions of the DRB? It's a tough one, I threw you a basketball. Not something I was necessarily anticipating, but I guess my initial reaction is to require corrective action. I mean, unless there's good reason for not adhering to permit conditions, I mean, you think of an engineer puts design plans together and if they spec number eight or E-bar and you put something else in, it's non-compliance and you have to fix it or you have to come up with a different solution that's still gonna be appropriate. So it doesn't seem to me at least in the little bit of research I've done thus far, there's really an avenue to follow through or require people to be in conformance. So I'm not sure how you would even pursue that, but I guess that the short answer to your question is, yes, it's important and the situation should be rectified. You're saying the regulations might need some more teeth? It's a difficult question and yes, it's probably the regulations. Your background is very uniquely suited for inclusion on the DRB and it's always good to have a number of different kind of skill sets equal to engineering skills set. Thank you. Any questions? Thanks, Mike. Comments? Nope. 80, sounds like you're good too as well. Good. Okay. All right, so we won't belabor the issue any longer. Somebody'd like to make a motion to nominate George Lester as an alternate for the DRB term ending April 30th, 2021. You can move ahead. Make a motion to approve George to the DRB. For a second. Any other questions or comments? Seeing none, hearing none. All those who wish to approve say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Welcome aboard, George. Thank you very much. And enjoy your term. Alrighty, Steve, are you about the grant application for the Vermont Urban Community and Community Forestry? Yes, that's me. So, absolutely. So I set out a bunch of materials on Friday and hopefully you all receive them. Bill and I have been working together for a while on our approach to the Emerald Ash Boar, which is a pest that you've probably heard about. It's been found in Montpelier at the National Life Building. It's a bug which has now been found in quite a few Vermont communities. It started in the towns of Barry and Orange and has since covered much of the geographic area. So it's not very far away. It's a bug which once it's infested, ash trees in an area, it's deadly and ultimately will kill out most of the ash. So other areas of the country have experienced a lot of devastation, if you will. Luckily, only about 5% of our woodlands are ash trees, but on the other hand, we have a lot of ash in our roadside areas. We did an inventory last year of about 11 miles of wooded roadside area with the Central Mont Regional Planning Commission. We found over 650 ash trees and we found a couple of our several pockets where the ash are in poor condition. We found a few that are dead that are quite large. So the state has a grant program to address the removal of roadside ash trees. And we'd like to make an application to that program. It's due at the end of October. And there are two parts to this grant program. One is the removal of roadside ash and then the other is a complimentary planting of trees. They do not have to be in the same area, but it would need to be either in a public right of way or on public property. So the areas that we'd like to address for removal are going to be on Maggie's Way where there's a dead ash and a number that are in poor condition. Greg Hill Road, where we have a couple dead ash and some in poor condition. And Sean Manchin Road. So this is really going to be an annual program, but we'd like to start with funds that we have budgeted this year for the town highway department and for the cemetery and cemeteries. And Bill, I think it's going to address the budget issue here shortly. But I just wanted to outline the complimentary planting. Our tree committee has been very active and we've been working with the cemetery commissioners, Jack Carter who's a cemetery commissioner is on our tree committee and we coordinate with John Woodruff and we've started coordinating with the cemetery commissioners to do a planting in Hope Cemetery. And you've probably noticed on Wynuski Street, there was a hedge, if you will, of cedar trees, very large cedars that were overgrown and filled with weed trees that were removed this past summer. And that's the area we'd like to do a planting. So I sent you a planting plan. It's really conceptual at this point. We're going to work with the cemetery commissioners on refining this plan, make sure that they like it. And in the meantime, we can apply with your authorization. I would like to apply for $6,500 in grant funds through the state department of forest products and recreation, the urban forestry program. And it requires an equal match. We currently have $6,500 in our FY20 budget that is split between the highway department. The tree maintenance line there is 4,000 and the cemetery budget tree maintenance line there is 2,500. So what we'd be looking for is, I believe, a commitment to re-budget those funds for next year. And we would use that as the match. So we also happen to have a $2,000 private donation that came from John Woodruff's uncle, memory of his wife. And I won't go into all the details. He's an interesting fellow. He grew up here and then went to Alaska and had a career as an attorney in Alaska and has made that commitment. So we may use a portion of those funds to help with this project. And with that, Bill, do you want to talk a little bit more about the budgeting side of this? Steve's really has hit the highlights. I think the main thing is that this grant opportunity requires a 50% match, budgeting $6,500 between the highway fund and the cemetery gets us $6,500. Gets us $6,500, so it'd be a $13,000 project. I think that's a reasonable amount of money to ask for. I think the limit is, you've said 15, Steve. Correct, Bill. But while the maximum grant is allowed up to 15,000, there's a statewide limit that, you know, they're not gonna be able to give $15,000 every community that might ask. The donation that Steve talked about, just so everyone's clear, that was a donation that was made to the cemetery fund. It's an unrestricted donation, but it was basically made when the gentleman saw the area where the cedars had to take it down. That was gonna be happening there in the future, so he did make a $2,500 donation, which is in the cemetery fund now. And this project is, will be too prognetic. I think that the planting plan that Steve sent you was clearly for the cemetery, but the removal of trees is gonna be happening mainly in the highway rights of way, Steve, correct? Correct, Bill. They're roadside ash within our right-of-way, correct? Right, so as Steve indicated, we did have a plan that was produced. We did an inventory, and this is the first step of kind of implementing a plan to deal with the ash trees. It's a good opportunity, I think, that we would be remiss not to seek the funding because we're already putting $6,500 into our budget. We might as well use that and hope that we can leverage that to get an additional $6,500 to allow us to do some more of this work. Well, Steve, I need to pick your brain a little bit about the ash program. How many trees are we talking about total, any idea? Well, the number we inventoryed in the town road rights of ways was a little over 650. It does not include ash trees that are under the utility lines, Green Mountain Power and Consolidated and Comcast. So those trees are the responsibility of the utility companies. And I believe Bill told me that there's surcharge that they're now assessing to help with a program to remove ash in utility rights of ways. So these are freestanding ash. We'd have to hire an arborist to take them down. But right now, the vast majority of our trees are actually in good condition, our ash trees in the roadside. So we're really trying to get proactive, remove some, we'll check them when they come down, make sure, you know, if there are any ash borer present that that's reported to the state. But right now, probably 80% or more of our roadside ash are in good health condition. But we're anticipating eventually they'll, it'll get here and it will decline rapidly. Are we removing them because they're public safety hazards or are we removing them just because they're dead and they may be contaminated with the ash for? Well, it's really for both reasons. Ash, as you know, Chris, you've done a lot of work in the woods. Ash is a very brittle wood. And once it dies, it tends to shatter when it falls. It's expensive to take down for, you know, for a tree company. And once they're dead, so it's really better. The state is recommending that municipalities become proactive and remove ash, you know, once they're going into a poor condition and it's cheaper that way. And I think we're going to advocate for an annual program to try to stay ahead of the curve. But the focus will be only on trees that are dead that I would call hazard trees just because they're going to be prone to breakage and coming down in windstorms and so on. And the ones that are in poor condition that have dead limbs and so on that are going to come down in the windstorm as well. What happens to the wood to contain the spread of, if there is that emerald ash borer indications in the wood, does the wood stay local? Does the harbor take it off? Truck it off somewhere? Right, it has to be if it's invested. All the landowners get it. Right, so the first offer is to give it to the homeowner. That's the state guidance. And then if the homeowner doesn't want it, we would need to find a stockpile area, one of our material storage areas. And it can be moved in the winter when the ash borer is dormant, but there's guidance on how it can be utilized. Firewood certainly from those trees cannot be transported any distance. So if we do find it, then we'll seek guidance, but that's the requirement either. It is a first offer to the homeowner, adjacent landowner. Second goes into a stockpile area and then there's a plan for utilizing that wood. So if we get the grant, well, Bill and I will work with Celia and Bill Woodruff to have a plan there. Yeah, I mean, it's pretty clear. I mean, the number of trees that we'll be able to remove with $6,000 or so is not in a lot of trees. Now, this is a planting project and it's a removal project, but a big ash tree can easily be, I would imagine $1,000 or more to remove. Right, yeah, we're anticipating, most of these trees are in the 12 to 24 inch caliper size. So we're anticipating, we'd probably end up removing 10 give or take. My concern more was about possible spread of the insect if there wasn't some controls in place to keep the wood locally to where it's been cut. Absolutely, that would be the intent to keep it local. Great. And just so you know as well, there are some ash trees in the cemeteries, the cemetery commissioners, I think it was in 2019, a year ago, actually had some of the trees in the Hope Cemetery inoculated. There is an inoculation that can vaccinate the tree and help it gain a resistance to the ash borer beetle. And it's too early to tell here, but there's evidence from other places where it's been used that if you have a really nice ash tree, it might be worthwhile doing this, especially before the ash borer beetle gets in close proximity. So that has been done in Hope Cemetery. Mike Byrd, you were gonna say something? Steve, if an ash tree is shown to be negative, you know, not containing ash borers and a homeowner does not want the tree, is there a possibility to sell some of the firewood to defer some of the costs of the grant for us? That's a question we can ask the state. I don't know the answer. I know some communities have programs through nonprofit organizations to split the firewood and give it to low income for modders. So we could pursue, I would suggest we pursue a program of that nature. That was my other tax is, you know, giving it to low income individuals for firewood. But, you know, if there was not need there and we can't sell it, boy, you know, that'd be a way to put money back in the town's offers. We'll have to talk to the state and see if there's restrictions on marketing or what. I can find, I can try to find that answer, Mike. Yeah, the biggest thing is that the trees have to be ash borer, you know, negative because again, you know, I'm a big proponent of not moving trees around, you know, I have a camp up to the Northeast Kingdom, you know, as much as I would like to move some of my firewood down here up to camp, I try to keep all my firewood up there local. That would be our intent, certainly. Okay, well, we're looking for a motion to. Right, Chris. So the motion would be to, well, Bill, you may want to jump in on this, but to commit to the $6,500 budgeting, the $6,500 match from the town budget and to authorize Bill to sign the application and submit it to the state. Sound all right, Bill? Easy peasy motion. Somebody want to move that forward. I make a motion to go forward with $6,500 toward the Emerald Ash Forest Tree Program and recommend that the town manager enter into an application for that purpose. Okay. There's, go ahead, Bill. That's fine. Okay. Somebody second it? I'll second that. Okay. Any further discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. You're off and running, Steve. Thank you very much. Appreciate that. Yep. If you're posted. Okay, Bill. It looks like the rest of the night, yours. Okay. Shouldn't be too difficult. So we're asking the select board to approve the use of the pay gov, which is a credit card payment service to allow members of the public to pay their zoning fees, the RB fees and the like with a credit card and potentially dog licenses. So we're asking you to approve the use of pay gov for zoning and related applications, the fees for zoning applications and dog licenses. Carla will make a determination if authority is given whether she wants to do it. Right now, we accept credit card payments for taxes on the town through pay gov. EFOD elects or allows people to pay water and sewer fees through pay gov. We have a different credit card system for the creation programs that works quite well. There is no cost to this, to the municipality, the user, the AE pays a 3% of courtesy fee. So there's no loss of revenue from any of these permits that are filed this way. This works quite well. We've had the pay gov for, I wanna say probably close to five years for taxes and water and sewer. And I think especially given COVID, it's good to allow these folks to be able to make these payments remotely. Most of our zoning and planning work still happens remotely. People can make appointments to come in to see Steve or Dina, but I would say by and large, most people are interacting with them by phone or through the computer. And of course, the DRB meetings are all Zoom meetings still, correct Steve? I know the planning commission is meeting in person with Zoom capability as well. So anyway, that's the recommendation to allow pay gov credit card payments for zoning, DRB, and guide licenses. I don't think there's probably too many concerns with that. And we wanna make a motion, we can jump forward there. Make a motion to authorize bill to go ahead with the pay gov. Second. Any complicated questions or comments? Seeing none, hearing none. All those are fair, say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. All right, thank you. Thanks, I'm gonna duck off the meeting here. Thanks everybody. Thanks Steve. Sure, welcome. Thanks Steve. 2020 CIP status report. Yeah, so just a quick update. Let's see where is it going on. Okay, can I, I can't see any of you. Can you still see and hear me? Yep. Okay, good. So just very quickly, just to let you know where we stand. We budgeted a half million dollars for paving and we have spent about 483,000 of that. That's probably gonna be it for the year. There may be a little bit of more, you know, last minute catching that we can do, but we've essentially spent our budget for paving. We're still waiting on revenue from the state. The paving fund was going to be funded by $447,000 transfer from the general fund and $100,000 of pilot money was gonna be going into the paving fund. The state has not made their pilot payment yet. I believe they probably will. We'll probably get the full funding this year as best I understand, but until the check comes, I'm not gonna celebrate and then we'll have to see about next year. I presume next year we'll be lower. On the infrastructure budget, we really pulled our horns in on that. You know, we had $429,000 budgeted and except for, you know, 160 of that money budgeted was for Main Street and that's really what we've done. We've spent about $125,000 to date a little bit for building improvements at the highway garage. We had $46,000 budgeted there. We're not gonna spend all that. So, and that was purposely done. We decided to delay many of the infrastructure projects. The highway vehicle fund, just so you know, we did buy the roadside mower that we had authorized last November. We bought that early in the year and we spent the whole amount on that. We got $3 left over if anybody could figure out what we could do with that three bucks for the roadside mower. We just received delivery on the tandem dump truck. We paid $129,000. That truck has been delivered to Viking to have the body and the plow equipment put on. We're hopeful, but not certain that we'll get the truck for, you know, before the snow really starts to fly. But they were a little bit behind schedule on that. And let's see. We had $87,000 budgeted for a one ton truck replacement we decided earlier this year that we were not gonna go ahead and replace that vehicle. Unfortunately, the vehicle that we kept has developed some significant problems and is probably gonna cost about $18,000 to get it back on the road. But I think that in the long run, while nobody's really thrilled about having to put $18,000 into that truck that's six years old, I think, it will, it should allow that truck now to go forward for, I would hope, three more years anyway. So we'll come out okay. It would have been sad to have that damage happen and then, you know, trade the truck in and lose trade in value. But I think we'll be keeping that truck. So in the long run, it will probably wash more in our favor than against. On the fire department side, last November, we agreed to buy two fire trucks, one in 2019, which we took delivery on at the end of last year. And then we ordered a truck for this year that was about that same price. And that truck was delivered to the fire department last week. We have not paid for it yet, but we've received the bill, the vendor allowed us to take the truck and get it on the road and gave us a couple more weeks before we have to pay. So that was generous to him. But that'll be about $489,000 that will be going out the door. I am in the process of working up the proposals for the borrowing, some of these purchases, the roadside moor and the fire trucks we have borrowing authorized. I'll talk a little bit about that in the spring. And I'm not sure, probably be, I'm hopeful and it looks like we're gonna be able to make it. I'm hopeful that we'll actually be able to do the borrowing in December. My goal is always to borrow as late in the year as possible because that allows us not to have to make the payment of principal or interest until after we collect taxes in the following years. So my hope was that we'll be able to wait until December to borrow that money. And it looks like we're gonna be able to make that. So anyway, I'm sorry I didn't send you this. And if I was a little bit more up to speed I probably could figure out a way to share my screen with you, but I think it was just as easy to go through it verbally like that. So I'll stop there if you have questions I'll try to answer. I don't really have a question more of a comment just what you know there. I was up at the Waterbury Center fire station there the other day meeting on the skate park with Bell McDougal and when I drove out of the parking lot there I kind of looked at the sighting on the fire station and noticed that it's starting to kind of come apart a little bit. I don't know if you're aware of that. Yeah we are and it's something that we're talking about probably for next year's parking. Yeah, I don't know if that's that hearty plank or. I think so. I use that same stuff on the building that my son lives in down here at the bottom of the hill. And they don't recommend face nailing on that but I'll tell you anytime I've used it, I've used it there and I've used it on another building of mine and I face nailed every bit of it. And I haven't had any issues with it. And one thing I noticed about the stuff on the fire department was blind nailed and it's starting to really kind of all apart there as far as I didn't know if we could go back through and face nail that. There's a little bit of a technique to do it but whether or not we could salvage what's there for a few more years before having to do anything major to it. Well, I'll be happy to talk to you at some point. Clearly you know a lot more about this stuff than I do. I think I know what face nailing is and I think I know what the other nailing is that you talked about but I don't have any experience with it. But yeah, we do know that it's starting to show somewhere in there. We got to do something with it. And clearly we want to do something that says cost efficient as possible but also maintains the building and the condition that we want it in, so. I mean, there's no sign of rot or deterioration of the actual siding itself. It's just starting to kind of fall off the building. I understand, I understand. But it is something that talked about with Gary. Also, just so you know, we didn't have any idea what the value of the two old fire trucks, the 20 year old fire trucks that we just replaced. When we replaced the truck that we purchased last year, the truck that was mechanically unsigned, we just moved it out behind the wastewater treatment plant and left it there. Pete would start it up every so often and drive it around just to keep the battery charged and stuff like that. And then the truck that we just replaced with the new vehicle, Gary put the word out and the little town of Albany, Vermont paid us $10,000 for both trucks. So they took one and they couldn't be happier. You know, I think they're, I think their newest truck was 1985. So now they've got a 2000. So they're really tough in the world, two 2000. And one of them, you know, they took as a parts vehicle and they're talking about, you know, maybe putting some money into it. But anyway, we did get $10,000 for those two trucks that was better than having the salvaging. So that's what you call good old Vermont to make you live in here. Okay, any other questions on that stuff? All right, good. Good. Thank you. And let me see the last thing here. Health insurance. So yeah, I sent you a memo about health insurance for 2021. Full disclosure, the EFUD commissioners met Wednesday last week. I presented this same memo to them and they approved my recommendation. I don't want to read the whole memo again compared to last year when the rate increases from the insurance companies were above 13%. And even using, you know, inflation in the 50-50 weighting would have got our costs down to a 7.5% increase. We ended up offering the employees a 4.6% increase last year, putting a lot more weight on the cost of living. I'm recommending 3% this year with full knowledge that that is above the cost of living. But as I indicated, no employees in 2020 have received a raise and just anecdotally, I talked to a couple of the employees and they very much appreciate the benefit that we offer. So I think this is not a budget buster for 2021. And I think it goes a long way to continuing to show the employees that we do appreciate their work and our concern for them. So that's my recommendation. I know many of you out there in the private sector would love to have this, I get it, but I think it's the right thing to do for 24 hours. One more. Go ahead, Mark. Or Mike. Yes, just one question, Bill. I'm basically in favor, but how many of our employees, especially with everything that's happened this year with COVID are not taking the insurance and doing the, you know, getting money instead? You know, has that changed at all? Hang on a second, Mike. I can tell you just in a second. I'm just, it may have been in the stuff that you said, but it wasn't, but so it looks like right now, one, I think there's five altogether, Mike. One is an E-File employee. Is that any different from what we saw in like last year, non-COVID year? No, I mean, we haven't, nobody signed up yet for 2021, so we won't know until this gets approved, but last year, last year there was one, I think five altogether, including one in E-File, and there's about 30 that are eligible. Okay, thank you. All right. I'm for, I think as the commissioners, I think it's in the public sector, this is a fairly common, you know, they may get paid sometimes a little bit less than somewhere and sometimes in the benefits, that's where they'll feel a little better, but I'm in favor. Mr. Friar, do you have healthcare for your people and how many are you up or down to at this point? About a hundred staff members, and yeah, I provide healthcare to a certain number of them. Any of you seeing the same type of increase? Three out to the of my partner deals with most of the increases and looking at them, but I definitely heard that they're going off, I'm not sure what the percentage is. We use MVP, I believe. And as I said in the memo, a number of our people have moved towards MVP, and when I sent out that memo to you, you look on page two, the percentage in relation to the Blue Cross Blue Shield Platinum is going down. Now it's still a very rich benefit, but you know, we are moving that down and I'm hopeful over time, you know, that I still think it makes sense to allow people to choose which plan they take. And if some people want to take Blue Cross, I don't understand why they do because on a personal basis, based on what's offered, I have chosen to move to MVP and have had fine experience with them, no issues. But some people still like to have that Blue Cross Shield for whatever reason, but when they make that choice, they are using money out of their own pocket to do that because we're trying to move this more towards the MVP side of things. So as long as they're spending their own money, I don't see why we would care. So that's my recommendation anyway. I want a motion to hear that. Yeah, I think it would be helpful if you just made a motion to approve the manager's recommendation for the 2021 health care benefit. What do you want to step up for that? I'll make a motion to approve the account manager's recommendation for healthcare coverage for employees for the 2021 year. Second. Okay, there's Katie. Katie, second it. Any further discussion? Mark? Hey, all those who wish to approve, say aye. Aye. All right, one quick question before we adjourn. Well, we have one other thing that we put on the agenda before you show that. Okay, I'm sorry. Yeah, so. Carla has the request out there, but the Green Mountain Romer Stonehill Club got a letter into us after the agenda went out last week. And they're looking to have permission of the select board to ride stone machines on three roads in Waterbury. They are Woodard Hill extension where we've already allowed APVs to go. And then Twin Peaks. And the Twin Peaks one is basically to be able to get to the trails they cross from Harding Farm, cross over off of Neyland Plats and then go up to Twin Peaks to get on to some of the other trail networks. So we've done this in the past. It hasn't caused us any heartburn, but they need to ask permission. So that's the request. I think staff's recommendation is that you approve it. Okay. It does take a motion. Yep, may I like to make that motion? I'll make the motion to approve the snowmobile club to include the roads as stated. Second. Any further discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Bill, one quick follow-up. I heard that maybe that snowmobile bridge going over the river is gonna, I guess I'll use the word condemned, but maybe no longer allowed to be used. I think you're on mute still. I had not heard that, except for this kind of information that would get from the snowmobile club. I don't know a lot about their trail system. I don't have a machine myself, but that would be too bad if that's the case. But a lot of way around. Yeah. That's a fairly lengthy bridge. And I imagine it's a pretty good expenditure to maintain it. I guess the ice damaged support structure on the Waterbury side, and as far as I'm hearing, the state's not gonna allow use of that. Wow. Looking forward. Alrighty, another obstacle. So my question real quick, have there been any thought about, as things stand right now, how down meaning is gonna be conducted? Yeah, that's a, that's an interesting question. Had a library commissioners meeting at five o'clock before this meeting and talk about this with them a little bit. You know, the whether we can meet in person for a traditional town meeting is still an open question right now. And as, you know, the country in particular, not too much lesser degree like it's been throughout starts, you know, sliding down the path towards, you know, more problems, as we've been hearing about, you know, it seems a little bit, a little bit optimistic to think that we're gonna be able to just go into the gym at the school like a normal year. I took part in the VLCT annual meeting a couple of weeks ago out there. And, you know, we adopted the municipal policy and we had that meeting was, it was a virtual meeting. It was by Zoom and, you know, we had maybe 35 or 40 people on the Zoom call, typically at a normal town fair, you'd have 150 in the room and, you know, you'd have most of those people would be voting and as it was, we had maybe 30 people participating and it was a challenge and it was not easy. Now, just for your information, the state legislature, I called Vermont League of Cities and Towns back in probably June and said, you know, we better be talking to the legislature about the ability to have Australian ballot voting in case we can't have in-person meetings. So to remind you, there's normally a two-step process to go from open town meeting like we have to an Australian ballot vote on the budget. We have Australian ballot voting for officers and for bonds, but for the budget, as you know, we have open town meeting and emotions made, there's discussion that can be amendments and then we vote. To get to Australian ballot voting, there's a normally a two-step process where you have to have a town meeting, put it on the warning to ask the voters if they would like to move to Australian ballot voting. And then if they say yes to that at an open town meeting, then the next town meeting, the budget is voted by Australian ballot. But having that open town meeting to get to the point where you can have a ballot vote is still that problem. Are you gonna be able to get people out? Is it wise to get people out into a public space? So the legislature has passed a COVID-only exception which will allow the select board of any community to on its own motion to simply say we're gonna have Australian ballot voting on the budget. Now, I'm not recommending that tonight necessarily, but it is an option and we're gonna have to think about it a little bit. So I will check to make certain, but I'm 99% sure that passed as I just suggested it did. And that means if the town decides that for 2021 only, that we're gonna have Australian ballot voting, we can do it. Once the COVID emergency ends, we would go back to open town meeting with have to go through the two-step process again. I specifically asked when we asked the legislature to allow this, not to simply allow select boards to do it on their own, going forward forever. And as I understand it, that's what's happened. So that's an option right now. Miss that last bit, as you what? I said that's an option right now, as I understand it, you could vote to have Australian ballot voting. I don't like that. I think you all know that I much prefer open town meeting. There are definitely frozen cons. The participation rate will be much higher with ballot voting, of course, but it's just an up or down and you don't get the discussion that I think is helpful and informative, but there are many people who don't care about that discussion. They just want to have a chance to vote. Yeah, I guess my bigger concern to your point there, only allowing it to happen for one year. I mean, nobody knows how long this COVID's gonna last. And quite honestly, I'd hate to see our open forum town meeting die because of this, because of the COVID. Last couple of years, I've been a little bit full and enthusiastic of seeing a little bit more attendance. I was hoping that that could continue. I think it's important that we all meet together and discuss these budgetary issues. Yeah, I agree. You're right, that's where the information's gathered. I agree, but my guess is for 2021, even if we decided to have a traditional open town meeting, my suspicions are that attendance will be way off. I think a lot of people are not gonna be willing to come out. I would agree with that, Bill. I think you're gonna see a lot of people being very hesitant. But I'm still a little reticent about having Australian ballot because one, call me a cynic, but I don't think people understand a lot of times what they're voting on. And at least a town meeting, there is some explanation of what's happening. And I think that's a really important thing for townspeople. I know some people will say the contrary because they say a few people speak for the majority. And, but I will say, if you wanna show up, you show up. And I think it's really, it engages our citizenry to learn about what's happening in town. And I think open town meeting is, to me, is really important. Yeah, I agree, Mike, but I think we may have an exception in 2021 and we may have to hold our nose and do it the other way just because we don't have too much of a choice. But I agree with Chris and you. I would not like to go that route or for the long term, that's for sure. But can we not go to some sort of a virtual meeting? I don't know what capacity that we have in Zoom to have a hundred people on a Zoom call. And I know it's sometimes when you get bigger Zoom meetings, how you control a meeting gets more and more difficult. So I don't know, there are pros and cons. Yes, I don't think we're gonna be able to have this year a very traditional town meeting just because I don't think COVID is gonna be cured by the beginning of March. So we're either going to be a one year vote or some sort of a hybrid or use virtual technology. And I may be leaning almost to virtual technology. Well, I'm sure it's probably an option. It's a little bit of a challenge. We're gonna have to, we'll have to have somebody other than Carla or myself host the meeting. You've got to deal with the moderator, how's the moderator gonna be able to interact through Zoom? How are you gonna recognize people who wanna speak? I know just from attending that VLCT meeting that it was not easy, it was quite cumbersome and it took a long time, frankly, to get through the agenda. And so I'm not saying no, it's up to the select board, ultimately to decide what you're gonna wanna do, but it will be a challenge. I think that any way we slice it for 2021 meeting is gonna be different and it's gonna be a bit of a challenge regardless of how we do it. You're a hundred percent right. I didn't mean to complicate tonight's meeting but I didn't there but I just thought it was good that we put it in our sites because it's gonna be here before we know it. Important discussion and it's something that's gonna be here sooner than later. Yep, yep. Okay, everybody else satisfied? Yep. Sounds like they are. And again, sorry for being late on the meeting here. I totally flipped my head and forgot about it. So, can't wait to see you on the next meeting and everybody take care of yourselves and be well till we see each other again. Hey, just out of curiosity, are you doing your normal November and May or? Right now my workload is such that first time in better than 25 years I may have to not go and I'm beside myself because of it. Yeah. Yeah. Killing myself every day, trying to play catch up but it's just been an unbelievable, unbelievable summer in every aspect. We'll get through it. Okay. Well, let us know whatever your decision is ultimately. Yep. Do that. All right, thanks. Oh, are we meeting the first Monday in November? All of us except Carla. Yes. Okay. Good night. I'm good. I'll do the next one. Yeah, how about? Okay. Thanks. Thank you. Good night.