 Good evening. This is Flo Smith. I'm the vice chair for the Berlin Select Board. I'm gonna call tonight's regularly scheduled meeting to order. It's about 6.15. We're starting a little later. We had some technical difficulties. Thank you all for being here. Tour Nelson, also board member and interim town administrators with us, as is Joe Staub. I'm not seeing that David Sawyer is with us tonight. So this is the folks that will be at tonight's board meeting from the board. We also have people who are on the computer with us tonight through Zoom and Diane Isabella is here, other staff from the town. And Mr, I hope I pronounced your last name correctly, Denchiko. That's correct. Wonderful. It's here with us from Browns Mill Court. And also Mr. William Driscoll is on Zoom with us in terms of town highway 74. We just did site visits at both locations and we'll be discussing that within the public hearings during the select board meeting tonight. Any additions or changes to the agenda to her? Do we have two? One is discussion with the police department on highway and Burlington Communications about issues with the radio system and also energy improvements to the garage. Thank you. So what we'll do is we'll open up right now for the public hearing regarding the possible reclassifications of the Browns Mill extension, town highway 17. And basically we did at a little after five o'clock tonight have that site visit, which was an extension of a site visit we did previously. And that was also discussed at a prior select board meeting that we had here on June 5th. And Mr. Dincheco is here with us this evening. And what we discussed at the site visit tonight was how it could be plowed consistent in a way to how we've been plowing it. And Tim Davis, our highway superintendent is here with us tonight, who can also discuss that and we'll open it up for discussion and comment. Mr. Dincheco, would you like to start in terms of your thoughts and what you'd like to see? Sure. Wonderful. Yep, again, my name's Mark Dincheco. I am a resident at 56 Browns Mill Road extension. Geographic location in the town of Berlin. So as far as I know, the town has been plowing this little hill that leads up to my property line for a very long time, decades. And this notice arrived in the first one I got was in June this year. And signifying that the town was looking at reclassifying my dish, I did attend a meeting shortly after that at this office and argued for consideration to continue piling it, not reclassifying the road. A couple of reasons, primary reasons which I covered at the site visit tonight. I need to have ingress, an egress from the property. It's very, very helpful to me that the town is able to plow and also salt and sand road there. So that when I'm coming down, I don't fly into the river. It's icy. That's very helpful to me. But more than that, it creates, it provides availability for my trash knowledge service, Kassela, to be able to back up the little hill. I have to have a place that's flat for the barrels to be located so they back up that hill. And by plowing, that space is created so that they can do that. And then my mailbox for U.S. mail delivery is also on the right side of that extension that you're going up to my property line. And by plowing, that creates the space for the U.S. mail carrier to bring mail to my box. In addition to that, I also work for pre-mild power. And as part of my duties there, I do have to get called out, especially during bad weather, just like the folks who are driving the plows. And it's extremely helpful and beneficial to me to be able to get out onto the road without having to try to get someone to plow at various hours in town. It's very good about keeping the roads open at various hours. And so I'm able to avail myself of that. And then finally, the dilemma that I have is if the town is unable to plow before you put section of the extension, it means I have to find a way to plow out in the house towards the bridge that's located there. And in doing that, there's no clear location to push the snow. I'd be pushing the snow onto town land or towards the bridge itself or onto my neighbor's driveway. And there's no good place to put it. So it's certainly very well that the town is able to push the road of the snow up the hill and off to the side and it drains down into the river. And everything's great. So this, a lot of why we're here today is probably my fault because beginning back in the storm in November of last year, the ground was soft. And so in addition to the snow, a lot of rocks and boulders and road surface and stuff came up and could be blocked. My ability to get out of this was quite a chore to remove it. You can imagine a big truck, positive stuff. I had an easy way to remove it. And so what I did right to the town and ask, is there a way we can do this in the future? Is there anything I can do to assist with this to make it easier? And I regret that it happened again later in the winter. And I wrote this time to Mr. Davis and to the town administrator at Cobb, and he got back to me and indicated he would look into it. He did get back to me and the next time it snowed heavily, no plowing was done at all in that area. So I inquired again. I said, is there a problem? Is there something I can do to help here? And the next time the guys came through the cloud, they clouded it and the clouded up to where they wanted to dump it and it stayed that way for the rest of the winter, but I wouldn't have had something. So I was happy with the resolution to that and I was quite surprised. The classification letter showed up in my mailbox that summer, so my goal here tonight is to try to convince you all to be plowing that and it's very helpful to me. And I would probably incur a lot of extra work and cost to try to deal with that little section of the road myself in the time you enter and get out of it. So it would also be difficult for people to get my mail to me interactually. So that's it in a nutshell. It's not a very complicated issue. It's just about 40 or 50 feet of road that should be plowed or should not be plowed. And I appreciate you bringing it to our attention. It's enabled us to go, to see, to talk with you, to discuss everything you just described, also to have Tim there and to be able to brainstorm what can be done in terms of whether to continue plowing it like you said or to reclassify the road. So I'd like to have Tim give his viewpoint and then see if we can make a determination in terms of which way we go forward tonight. You know what I mean? It is a hassle to plow such a short section of road in such a big truck. Unfortunately, the sand and the dirt in this does happen to, you know what I mean? Especially in the fall and spring, you know, those plows are heavy. It's, it does dig in every once in a while. The snow and the dirt are not purposely left in those places. I'm not the one that plows it. It's like, you mean there might have been a reason why it had to happen that one or two times. It's gonna need some, I've noticed from just being down in the summer that it's gonna need some brush cutting if we continue to plow it. The canopy is encroached into that road quite a bit as far as like knocking mirrors and breaking mirrors and stuff like that. If you guys choose to not reclassify it, then we will work with Mark and see if we can come to a mutual agreement on how things go, but. That's helpful. That's helpful. It's up to you guys whether you want to reclassify the end of this driveway or leave it the way it is. And I guess if you do not do then I will be my due diligence through with him and try to make all parties happy. Thank you. Thank you both. Would you like to entertain a motion or would you like to put this on the next agenda when more board members are present? Well, I think continue with time highway 74 and close the hearing suddenly can discuss it. And then we can discuss it from there. Okay, very good. So we will end the discussion at this point in terms of Browns Mill Road extension and we will move now on to town highway 74 and Mr. Driscoll, can you hear us okay? I can, thank you. Wonderful. So we did a site visit with Mr. Driscoll this evening after Browns Mill extension and we went over his views and I'd like to open it up now for you to express your views and concerns. Mr. Driscoll. Sure, thanks very much. It was great. Thank you. Good to see you folks earlier today. I think the primary concern I have which is really more of a question first I discussed with you is I don't know I haven't had an opportunity to review which I believe is gonna be in the paper records in the town. How if at all my right of way is addressed in the land records and given the range of options you have in terms of any possible changes as to the highway there if there would be any impact on that. And I would hope and think that there probably wouldn't be an issue there but it would be good to know what the what if any impact there might be depending on what path you might consider before you make a final decision. I have an opportunity to address that too. That's the primary thing. With regard to the crux of the issue in terms of snow maintenance obviously I'm the only one who uses that stretch of highway. So I sort of acknowledge that. It is certainly a benefit if I am away and coming back and there's been a heavy snow that I have at least the opportunity to pull off of the road before addressing everything else in the driveway there above rather than having to park the entrance to Browns Mill Road. But I also certainly would acknowledge that that's the same kind of issue that my neighbors face. Because they don't they have a their driveway is right there on this same stretch of road as well. So I've not tried so I wouldn't want to raise it as a huge critical issue but that's certainly one factor for myself. I was trying to think I don't think that if the town does not plow that stretch there that that will necessarily require I go back and forth over the railroad more. There's always usually a little bit left there that I have to do that anyway. So it's really more in terms of a sort of safety issue is what I have to do if I'm coming back to it to a block driveway. That's the only thing I think I would raise for that consideration as far as that goes. Obviously it's more work to clear that myself but that's not necessarily a significant issue. The only other issue which occurred to me after your visit is you know there are some trees along especially the south side of that stretch which are a potential hazard. I'm not sure if there are any left that are a hazard to route 12. I think those may have been taken care of but there's certainly one as a hazard to fall over town highway 74. And there's others nearby that might have issues with the power lines there. I don't know what the extent of the highway is in terms of what is currently town property or town responsibilities with regard to dealing with those trees. Again, I think it might be an issue of at least knowing what if anything would happen with an alternative status that could affect who's responsible for those trees or dealing with that. Again, it may be mostly just knowing rather than that being a huge issue in your decision but I think it would just be good to know. So just to sum up really, I certainly understand and appreciate the safety issues that Tim raised. And I don't know if there's a history of incidents or closed calls along that stretch of road in the past that's we're trying to address but I appreciate those concerns. So I guess my primary request is not necessarily to strongly object or anything at this point is if we can get an answer to the right-of-way question and maybe some of the other sort of responsibility consequences of who's responsible for what depending on what alternative you might consider going with, I'd appreciate that just so that we know what those are and if those create an issue. And we appreciate you too. Thank you for describing that. And Tim, can you also speak to those trees? Are you familiar with the trees that Mr. Driscoll is speaking of? Yeah, there's a kind of foundation in those trees. They're like down inside it and everything else. I don't even, I don't know what was ever there. I don't know if they're borderline whether they are in the right-of-way or not depending on what the right-of-way is on that particular road. As far as like the reclassification, if it gets reclassified to a class four and there's no right-of-way issues, it's no different than any of the other roads, it's just the lack of the word maintenance. And then if you turn that to a class four road today and that tree fell tomorrow, you go clean it up. We'd remove it from the class four section of our, we would have to be like, it's not something we'd go cut, especially if it's anywhere near power line without having to either hire somebody to do it or you don't even have to take it down by a bucket truck or something like that because it's too bad to be caught. Stuff like that. I mean, there's dead trees all over the road system. It's usually just if they fall down, they go clean them up. So as far as that tree goes. Thank you. And some of the things we discussed tonight with Mr. Driscoll when we were there on the site visit was the speed of the traffic through there. We were looking at the safety element as you described, Mr. Driscoll. And also that there will be paving next year of Route 12 from, you know, near Northfield to Montpelier and that could also increase the speed of the traffic as well, which would factor into the concerns for safety. We discussed how many times with Tim that the road would be plowed and Tim explained to us that it's the same number wherever he plows for whatever roads for he and his staff, which was good to know as well. And so ultimately the decision is whether to reclassify or continue as is, taking into consideration the safety factor. Yes. And I would recognize again, I think those seem very legitimate issues to consider I don't know if it necessarily changes anything in the, but I was curious if, obviously the roads been paved many times over the years. I didn't know if there's a history of that increasing the risk or incidents there or not, but I'll just raise that as a question. I think regardless of whether there have or haven't, I can certainly appreciate the concerns on a basic level. And ultimately we just want there to be safety. So it was really good to come out and be able to meet with you and hear your views and for you to be here tonight as well. And I basically open it up for discussion and thoughts from anyone at this point in terms of what we're discussing for town highway 74. Any comments or concerns from anyone? Well, I guess my concern is if we don't reclassify it, how do we improve the safety of the snow plows backing out onto the highway? And I have that same concern. Well, so what I think my concern would be, we're buying bigger trucks, right? And we have all these other, these small little roads and now our trucks are just getting larger and larger, whatever. I think it's how we, our process, we're plowing with the same truck that we plow any of the other roads where we have, we do have a pickup, we do have loaders to push back banks. Maybe you're using a different vehicle, you know? How many, because our trucks are bigger, how many other small roads are we gonna toss up? That would be a question. And if we were to toss them up, do they currently? But even if we had a pickup, they'd still have to be backing up onto the highway. Not necessarily, if you're pulling in, you pull in much like a pull-off, like a parking area. And then you reset yourself and you can still be off the road. I mean, I did it for 18 years from the state. And that's all state highway. Everything's 50 plus miles an hour. I realized that the corners there, people are driving excessive, even at the posted speed limit. There could be a safety concern, sure. I think we just change our process in how we plow our roads, or maybe the equipment we use to plow our roads. And again, I guess if you're going to plow all the roads with the big trucks and you're gonna pick them up with something smaller, well, they're not gonna be plowed at the same time. It's a little later in the storm. You have that possibility. And these roads, if we were to reclassify them as class four, they're currently class three, right? Right. They are. Do they meet class three standards? Current. I would question of town highway 74 does. And so if they are class three and we maintain them as class three and then we turn them to a class four, then I don't necessarily have a problem with it. I guess if that's the direction we're gonna go, but if we have let them slip beyond what is our class three standard and just toss it up, then I don't know. I feel like we've done them as justice to the residents on those roads. I see your point. Any other thoughts or concerns or Tim, do you wanna speak to that? So as far as the plow will pick up or adding whatever like staffing to run those trucks or extra means of plowing, and then as far as town seven or as far as the 74, I mean, we just went through that last summer, reditched it, cleaned up all the debris on the sides, turned the water off of it. So it stopped washing out, but there's only so much we can do there. As far as maintenance wise, we re-grabbled it, but I mean, there's a little one car or one resident there. The grass grows back faster than anything. So that's why it looks like it's just a little two-track because there's no traffic there to beat the grass back. That was all ditched and grabbled. Was it a last summer or the fall of the four? What I wanna say was last summer, and that was mainly just trying to make it a little easier to plow because it was all burned up and from years of just plowing and pushing dirt around when it's soft because it doesn't get a lot of traffic, so it doesn't freeze as hard as the rest of them. So to speak as far as the maintenance goes, as far as using a different piece of equipment, to maintain small roads. My question would be, are we gonna add staff? So that could be further discussion as we move forward. So what's that gonna look like, as far as what you guys want us to do? Are we gonna take two vehicles down there because we're gonna go plow the Browns Mill Road with a dump truck and then somebody gonna go back down and we'll pick up the plow the two little side roads. Thank you. So is there any other discussion or comments before we close the public hearing and have open discussion? Okay, I'll go ahead and close the public hearing and we will move on to the possible decision and findings on the reclassification of Browns Mill Road Extension and County Highway 74. And I would ask whether board members present this evening would like to move forward with a motion on Browns Mill Road Extension or defer the discussion to the next board meeting when more board members are present. I guess theoretically, I would like to get the town out of plowing what are basically individual driveways. These both instances, they are servicing one house, one residence each, which I don't know is really the best use of our limited town resources. But I don't know that I've already had the stomach to change the classification of either of them. I do very much acknowledge the safety concerns with Town Highway 74. And I don't have a solution to that. I mean, if we were gonna move ahead on reclassifying one, I would say that would be the one. Browns Mill Road, I mean, I think there's a problem to be fixed there. So it's not broke, don't fix it. Kind of my philosophy on that. And I also say that both residents have been so understanding and thorough and working with us so that we could understand what the concerns were and offering up suggestions to how it can be changed even without a reclassification per se. So I concur with what Tour just explained and your views, Joe. I think, I don't think I'd be in favor of changing the classification of either one of those roads without maybe seeing a list of how many town roads that are servicing a small number of residents. And how many of those are out there? I know a few. And are those gonna be the next ones coming to the board? So right now I wouldn't be in favor of reclassifying the road, either one of those roads. Shall we entertain a motion? I will make a motion that we do not reclassify Browns Mill Road extension town Highway 17. We keep it as we'll class three. Do I hear a second? I'll second. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. So moved. And do I hear a motion for town Highway 74? I'll make the motion to leave town Highway 74 classified as class three. I'll second. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. So moved. Thank you all. Appreciate it. And now we'll move on to the treasurer's report. I would, Madam Chair, we have Burlington Communications here with us tonight. Excellent. We have the Chief and the Sergeant. Fabulous. Let's move to that. So if you could talk about the radio issues, please. That's wonderful. So we'll move into the police department and discussion with Burlington Communications at the present time. Right. Thank you. Welcome. Thank you. It's a tour. Yes. All right. Where's Major? Yep. Yep. And Tim's in the corner. Wonderful. Yeah. Thank you. So, well, Tor asked me to come down because I know you just had an incident that sounds like maybe more than one. Yeah. So first I'd like to listen to hear what's going on. You know, it's always been my guys that have come down so I get everything secondhand. So, so let's tell me. I'll give you a summary of the problem. The Sergeant can probably talk more intelligently about radios because it's not really my strong point. But the hand tunnels especially are not working. Really in any case, we can't communicate from like a mall to here. If you're somewhere like on the other side of the hill, forget it. They appeared to be at least passable when we first kind of deployed them. Since then, over the probably the last few months, they're just not acceptable. And given state police dispatch force and they really aren't, and they just don't have the staff, they're really not tracking their whereabouts. It'd be one thing if we had a dedicated dispatcher that was kind of on top of things, kind of knew where officers were. She could be shipped with resources or send resources if something concerning came up. But basically an officer's out there by themselves with no ability to communicate if there's an issue. The cruiser radios, I get the impression that they're at least functional, a bit better than the hand tunnels, but the hand tunnels are not good. Sergeant, do you have anything to add to that? Is that accurate? Yeah, I don't know if it's a tuning issue with the radios or if it's a VSP equipment issue certainly, but it's a very chief assessment. It's been getting worse throughout the summer since we changed over and places where we would be able to have decent communications before with our hand tunnels. We no longer, we're having dispatch telling us that you can't hear us, we're all static and so forth. As far as the repeater system goes, and that has never worked for us because it was a primary channel and there's no way for it to be our primary channel because our state police dispatch does not have the ability to access that frequency. So for us, that's not gonna be, that repeater going up is not gonna resolve our problems at all. So how are the cruiser radios in there? For the most part, I think that they're probably like about what we had before. So it's just running back to analogs though. I think that they're what we would have had with their old names. Right, yeah, it's not that you lost coverage for those. It's really, so with the coverage from like the mall to whether, even when it's coming to here, it's still going through the state police network. So it's always on that state police channel, correct? That's what you're operating on. Yes, that's the state school around the time, yeah. Okay. So just the portables, they are five watts, which is the most power you can get an anode. So that is what they are in. A lot of the older models were only four watts. Now, this particular model, one of the reasons, it's a good radio. One of the reasons we went to it was because one of the requirements was to also provide some interoperability between highway and police. And that's why the new repeater on Mount Irish, which is also a digital repeater. And so that it was Vince that gave me the requirement of what he was trying to accomplish. And they didn't want to have to buy two separate repeaters like a new one for police and a new one for highway. So the only way to do that is with digital. And that's why, so it's a single repeater up there. And it can allow two simultaneous conversations. So highway can be talking at the exact same time as in this case, police. I realize it's not your primary channel, but it was more for if you guys didn't need to talk to each other and can hear each other, it's there. You actually now have a radio before you didn't. Now you actually have a radio that can talk to each other. I guess there will be some question about whether that works or not, right? Yeah, so I guess that's the other question you're... My question is that if the antenna ever get moved to the top of the tower? It is not. So it's been scheduled a couple of times and weather kind of washed us out. And then the road was completely impassable for several weeks after the heavy rains. And it was scheduled during that time, which didn't do us any good. So we're trying to get it back on the schedule. We're short staffed like everybody. And so it's obviously a priority now, but so I did call state police to ask them if they have any issues, but they said on handhelds, their troopers really aren't using handhelds on this channel. And that when they do, they're on the highway, they have vehicle repeaters in their cruisers and their police cars. So if a state trooper has to get out on the highway, he does traffic stop, he can switch to his vehicle repeater on and then it boosts the signal. So whereas you're relying on chess, the handheld radio. And so there really is no one else on that channel using portables to compare with to say, are you having issues? So, is Northfield still on that channel? Still be on their own channel. Yeah, and so I did do some coverage maps just to see whether it would work. I covered the propagation maps so that actually in the mall it should not work anyways. So if it has been working, like it must have always been scratchy, I would think, or marginal. So it's kind of, so it's marginal. So all it takes is for just something to be different on their system, something might have degraded. Everything affects it, you know, foliage, trees, ice, you know, in the course buildings. Every time, you know, more infrastructure goes up, you know, it degrades your signal. So what I do want to do is I'll have some texts, take some signal readings in the mall. I would be curious to know. So if there is a problem with the state police system, we'd like to know, right? You know, to see if it's on paper, it doesn't match what it should. So, you know, it shows, you know, mobiles outside do work. Just to be clear, it's not necessarily inside the mall, it could be either parking lot. Okay, yeah. I would expect somebody to interfere with it. Yes, so, and I can leave some of these maps with you. So they're, you know, their coverage, you know, and I may have to explain it. And probably it'd be best if I emailed the maps to you guys. So you can, cause you can actually zoom in a little better. And even though the roads aren't named, you know, I did put them, you know, I marked the highlights where the mall is, where the office is, and where, you know, the different computers are. So the, and I can, you know, explain the different colors. But as soon as I go to even talk back with a portable, even outside the mall, there are as like, so like I said, the mall is straight here. The white means no coverage. So there are spots more this way, closer to the town offices at the mall that show there it should not work. So it seems to get better as you head a little bit further down the line. So, which, you know, and you gotta, the other thing to keep in mind is that when state police tried to go digital, that was a failure, right? They, and so typically when any user goes from analog to digital, when it all goes bad, it's because their analog infrastructure, as it was, wasn't built up enough. So, and they already know, that's why they abandoned it. They know they need more transmitters, more repeaters, more infrastructure. So, you know, you're relying on one site, although they do have receivers on like Mount Mansfield, which might help you when you get on, you know, more to the other side of town, headed more west. But so I'll leave the maps with you. Where is the state police? It's on Millstone Hill, right in the Porties. Okay. Yeah, and it's not, it's really, it's really not that high a tower actually. So, you know, they're at the top of that tower, but it's still probably only, you know, 50, 60 feet in here at the most, you know, whereas, and I did do a comparison on Mount Irish. So, Mount Irish does fix the model. It fixes all those issues, but, you know, we have that tower, you know, up to do. So, to get that intent out top, and the, so we're gonna, you know, make that a priority, just get it done. And I'd be curious to know if the state police would be open to dispatching you on the new channel if we get Irish built up. So, now you have a site that actually works for you or better if they'd be open to it. I mean, they dispatched Northfield on their own channel. I may be wrong, but I talked to your texts, I think when they were installing that, and they saw which that would require them to have special equipment to be able to access that frequency. Well, it's just a radio, you know, just a little control station. So, for example, for Northfield, all it is is a mobile radio to their console. We maintain, you know, so we do all the after hours support for state police. So, we have accessed all their sites and equipment, you know, they would let us go in and do that work. So, it's not that, you know, it would just be whether or not the dispatchers, you know, the dispatch supervisors would agree to say, okay, we can, we'll dispatch you on the channel. So, that would be the ultimate fix, right? Is that you get dispatched off of Irish? Is that a UHF or UHF? It's all UHF. It's all UHF, okay. Yeah, so, it's just a matter of, you know, so I'll open up that dialogue with them to see if they'd entertain it. And then us fixing the antenna for the town crew and yourself would fix that issue, both the hand out and in those. So, I'm thinking that's the way we need to go. And perhaps if, you know, we can show state police that, you know, the infrastructure is just not covering for you guys, you know, it sounds like you have an agreement in place for a few more years at least, which is pretty rare because there was a point when they were, they were gonna, they're trying to get rid of it. They would kick everybody off. They, you know, their, the whole plan was that they were only gonna take care of state police and stop dispatching for local agencies and both police and fire. So, I actually thought when Vince and I started the project that that was the plan, is that Irish was gonna be your main site and that's how we built it around. And I found out after that you were still gonna continue to be dispatched by state police off of Millstone Hill. And I think it's because you, they're probably not charging you, right? I don't know, you're nine years, probably. Okay, yeah. Question. Yeah. So, in your current state, would, would mobile repeaters cure it? It would help, but it's only gonna help as much as the mobile would work. So, so, cause what it does is it uses the vehicle's mobile. So if you have, you know, I suspect you still have, even with the mobile, some coverage problems, yeah. But because Mount Irish isn't built yet, you don't know how much that's gonna help you with that. But so on the, on the state police system, the answer is yes, it would help because now you're going from a low power panel to a high power mobile. Right, sure. So, so that would make a difference. The, but you know, it's, so an analog one, you know, you're probably looking at with installation $2,000 a car, a digital ones can be $4,000 a car, right? So, I would say it's worth first trying to build up the infrastructure, get the Mount Irish site, get you up higher on the tower, get, you know, just get the coverage fixed. And, you know, so one thing to point out is like right now, so you're sharing part of my antenna system because we have commercial users up there, you know, the bus companies, some fuel companies, you know, that sort of thing around the county and actually around the state. So the antenna combining system that you're sharing is, now, so you're sharing half of it because the frequencies, the public safety frequencies are really close together or they're closer to the transmitter one affects the receive of the other. So for you to put, you're fully in the combiner, you'd be interfering actually with Washington County Sheriff. So that's why we need the other antenna up on the tower higher to separate, we have to do some antenna separation. And so, you know, that antenna combiner that you're sharing, I've been providing that at no charge and I do, so like I don't charge Northfield. Northfield PD's been up there for free for years. The sheriffs use the combiner and you guys now use the combiner or part of it. So, you know, so we have full control of the antenna system and everything the site owner, I pay $1,500 a month in rent, but it's, you know, I do this all over the state for public safety. Just so you know, I just, if someone, one of my customers needs to go in, I put them in my combiner because it doesn't cost me any extra. It's just so, you know, but for this particular one, I can't just fully put you in the combiner because of this interference issue. So that's why this antenna issue, it become an issue. It wasn't gonna, originally that it wasn't gonna be an issue. We discovered it later in the planning that it's like, oh crap, we gotta put another antenna on the tower. So, we're working on it. It's a difficult tower to climb to work on. It's full of everything. Cellular, it's, you know, it's a challenge. Just getting equipment up there can be a challenge, so. So, but yeah, we're gonna, we'll work on it, but I, so my first step is I am gonna take some signal readings in the mall or just in that area to see if it's not even performing the way it should be on paper. There are other, other UHF repeaters also on Millstone Hill, Berry City and Berry Town are also there. And I don't know if you guys scan them to monitor them to know if they sound clearer than state police. They seem pretty clear usually when they're broadcasting they rarely have issues with it being static here. Yeah, same tower. So, so that I guess that's, that's really telling. So, so, you know, we can, by comparison, take readings from their, you know, off of their channel and, you know, get a reading. And if they, you know, if they're coming in clearer than state police, which is at a better location on the tower, then perhaps we can get state police to look at the, look at their system. So maybe something's degraded and they just don't know because, you know, they're, they're only using it when, you know, for, for their moles and not their handhelds, like you are, so, all right, all right. Good point. And also because Northfield PD is up there on the tower, you could even do some radio checks in the mall just to see how yours is gonna perform. If, you know, I'm sure they wouldn't mind you just doing some radio checks. He didn't like to not ask me anything. Yeah, there you go. That's kind of drunk. But I think someone's bugging him, right. So, you know, just something to, some tests that you can do on your own, okay? How long has this been going on, Chi? When you first noticed it? Three months or so. Two, three months. Yeah, it's just the answer. Just go first. Yeah. Yep. I just really appreciate you coming here and addressing this. Absolutely. Thank you so much. No, it was important. Glad you invited me, actually. Like I said, it's, you know, I only, you know, I hear what the guys tell me, you know, they've done. And I, you know, the kickoff went poorly because we did it at the exact same time state police went digital, right? So they, so here it is. We're putting in these brand new digital radios. And in, their infrastructure can handle it. You lose a little bit of coverage as soon as you go to digital. When it's in good range, it's clear, right? Digital is nice and clear, but as soon as you get on the fringe and you guys are operating in the fringe of the coverage area. So it just all went bad. What's the state police plan for going back to digital? Are they looking at it seriously or? Yeah, there was an RFP out. They're looking for a consultant. And they're also looking for a project manager well, I guess it's also a big project manager and then like they're looking for someone to design the system and we know the solution is gonna happen. It's gonna be more sites, you know, we have. So the city of Burlington, you know, is, you know, they have five voted receivers and, you know, one transmitter right in the center of town, the tallest building and they're, they don't have great coverage and they're building it out to three sites on the cast. So they're gonna have three sites covering the whole city. City 11, I'll be taking care of, they built seven sites just to cover their city. And, you know, so we do town of Hanover police and, you know, they have nine sites some will cast it, but it's for more, a big chunk of the county too, they dispatch other agencies as well. But even for the city, there's like four or five sites all hitting it. And you guys are stuck with one site down in this corner. So it's, it really is comes out to the infancy. So that's why once we get you on Mount Irish and state police did reach out at one point if they could put a repeater on, in our combiner on Mount Irish. So they know that they need that site as well. It's just, so I think the consultant, that could take years, right, before they build it out. I don't see them trying to go digital again for a while. You know? Okay. And like I said, I can, so would you want these on paper or do you rather just email these to me? If you could email them, if you would be able to do it. Yeah, okay, yeah, because you can, like I said, you can zoom in and see where they work and where they don't work. And then you, I made up some for Mount Irish as well. You can do the comparison. Okay. Okay, anything else? Do you want it to address or that I missed? No, it's all right. Okay. I didn't want to talk to you about another issue. Oh, okay. Not as pressing as we just did. Yeah, we can start. Yeah, we can start for you. Okay, let me just see if I, my notes, I had anything jotted down real quick. Nope, we're good. Okay, all right. Thank you for your gift. Thank you very much. I'm glad you get to us. All right, thanks guys. Look at you, me. Thank you all, thank you. I'm sorry. It seems like I've done it. I'm sorry. Hold it on. Since Tim said we're, do you want to talk about the garage? That's what I was thinking. Let's move improvements to the town garage and Tim, like come up and join us at the table or if you'd like to discuss it from there, your choice. Okay, very well. I open the floor to you, Tim. So what it was, was we discussed about the events that started this spring, about trying to reformat the garage a little bit for a more usable space within four walls that we have. Because it's kind of broke out fine. It has a wall in the center section and it kind of like gives us, quite a bit of dead space on the outside. So it was more along the lines of just to relocate the two heaters that are in there, that are coming from the ceiling. They're on either side of the wall. We want to move them to the two corners to make the air move around and then remove half of the wall because the other side of the wall is where the break room is. And then put a man door, which isn't so much of a have to do. It was more of an idea. We have cold storage on the back of the building. In order to get there, you gotta go outside. You go in inside the cold storage. We have discussed about putting a man door so you can go from the garage into the cold storage. So we keep our tires and skip to another miscellaneous stuff. There was discussion of me moving some of the five gallon buckets of hydraulic fluid and stuff that we use that we don't keep for storage or for supply, but not use every day. Just kind of tidy up that side of the garage, give us a little bit more usable space. So we are shoe pouring everything into the garage. So much to get a little bit more space. So maybe we have the garage room and the funds that we have used in a while. But it did go on, you know what I mean? We kind of got it to the back burner there with the discussions going on with us companies. We're kind of waiting to see what the outcome of that was gonna be. And then the hotel stuff started. Kind of waiting to see where that was gonna go. We were not getting any further than we were when we started. And we get close to the winter. I was hoping to do some of this stuff. You know what, before winter, and the blood kind of came in and it kind of got back burner. I had spoke with him last week. We kind of refreshed with two of us on where we had left it. What we were gonna do, we were gonna talk to all the fellows about doing, relocating the heaters and doing some of that work. The removal of the, you know, it's just two by fours of plywood. Stuff we can do. Outside of the what you could do, do you have an anticipated dollar figure in mind for the improvements you see? No, we never really asked Bob for like kind of what he was gonna, what it would cost to be, well, Vince may have talked to him, but I didn't get a price on what Bob was thinking of the cost of relocating the two heaters. I was wondering if we'd need to go out for an RFP. I haven't feel it in the RFP. You do? Well, actually we increased it to 10 months, yeah. I would be very surprised if it was much more than five, but I don't know what it cost to move heaters, but I would definitely look at different options if it was going to cost us $5,000 just to be posted. I think we ought to do a site visit. I would like a site visit. I was thinking about that when you were describing it. I was taking notes because I've never been there. I would like to see it and have you describe it to us, all of us as a board. I think that would be a real good thing. Thank you for addressing that, Tim. Any other questions for Tim while we're on the topic? But if we were to do such a project, do we have funds that are set aside for building? We have $5,000 in the energy. Yeah. Okay. I got. That should be. Sure. There's a lot of stuff that hasn't happened over there. Okay. I don't want to have the large doors as much as I could do. The large maintenance utilities, they got $20,000. Yes. Maybe that's it. That's it, yeah. Okay. Maintenance. It's all one. I got $20,000 in that, I got $5,000 in the garage, energy, water, any water, like bottled water. Is that what you were asking? Yeah. I think in the first office, I don't know if there's any in the closet or not. There might be some in this closet to the radio. Okay. So yeah, there's been some discussions over the last few years. Maybe, but it's always been. We can see what happened to the next hotel, or less company, you know what I mean? There's no insulation in the walls over there, so we can go. And I can see your point. Ideally, you'd like to have it done prior to winter, and winter's fast approaching. Well, you know what I mean? We're just mainly looking to move the wall and relocate the heaters for now. That's all we're going to do for this year. Okay, good to know. But like... So it'd be like a two-stage or three-stage project. Well, I guess I'll look at you and what the planning for the board that Diane is on, that we all met with and wants to meet. So we're the departments that's doing the flooring. Stay here, we're going to go to Australia all hearing that's another discussion about the insulation that's all fallen. That building is just a steel building, steel uprights, and it's got every two feet, it's got a two-by-six. It goes from one steel beam to the other steel beam, and that's what holds the inside and the outside together. We had to do some repairs to the tin on the other side of the building. Two years ago, I think it was. I think all the insulation is fallen now, so there's no insulation at all. So it's like, where do you start, where do you end? Right. So you can work with tour and set up a site visit for us. That would be wonderful. Thank you so much. Thanks for addressing that with us. Okay, and now we'll move on to the Treasures Report and the Budget Status Report. I think you followed the Budget Status Report. So this is as of today. This includes the vendor payments that we made today and the first payroll of September. So in the first part of it, as far as the revenues go under the State of Vermont, what the state has done to help us because of the flood is they have made three payments on the Vermont Highway Summer and Vermont Highway Winter Roads. Normally we only have one this time of year, but they've made three in all, just to help everybody. So that gives us a little more cash, which we're going towards the flood. Okay, so that part of it, it's very thankful for that. Then down under Property Taxes, I still don't have what the state education tax rate is going to be yet. So if you look under Budget, we have like four million. If you look under Actual, it's 11 million. Well, I haven't pulled out the education part of it and from what I understand, that's finally been calculated as of last week, but I just don't have that information. So I'll be pulling that out. So that will make more sense after that. Pilot Revenue, I've only got one more item to go into Pilot Revenue. That's Blue Cross Bill Shield and sent them the bill for $75,000. So we will be over projection as far as revenue, which has been very good, as long as Blue Cross Bill Shield faces. All the other pilots have paid us for the year. I think that mostly other things in revenue, there's nothing really that's new in there or changed. I think we're in pretty good shape for that. Now under expenditures, under general government. The exception of the flood, we're in good shape. Okay, we haven't spent a whole lot of money. Obviously, we haven't done projects so it would have because we have the flood. So that part doesn't help. But if you look at the expenses, they are all in line, the payers are in line as far as the general government. I don't see anything that's out of line. In records restoration, we spent $2,200 and that's because we changed the vote lock. So now we have a lock that's working and everyone has put, not everyone, but everyone in the office can open it without issues. And that's really, really important. That is so important. Yeah. Yeah, so I think I'm hoping that'll be the expenses for the record restoration for the year, but I'm not certain. And a lot of it, I don't think we're gonna be getting too much more in that expenditure because everything's being digitized. And so we will not be replacing books as much as we have in the past as far as the books that people look through for real estate and the attorneys are looking through. Everything is gonna, well, at least 40 years will be digitized. That should take care of most of our books. And then we will have the ability to go back in even further. From what I understand from the town clerk, that project has not been completed yet. The project was completed as far as coming in and scanning all the documents. Now they're back at the office and they're putting in the correct formats so that they can go online. I believe there's some online, but not all of them yet. Not always. So hoping, yeah, within the next month, that will happen. That's great. Yeah, so I'm looking forward to that. The assessing department, there's nothing new on that. They have more supplies. I think they had a printer that went. So they were a little bit over budget on that. So far, I'm not anticipating any other issues with that, the timing. We got our bill for tax maps and that was lower than we anticipated, so that part is really good. Meetings and elections, we obviously have not had any yet for FY24. We will have the special meeting in November. That will be in November. Also, we'll have the budget when I should say the annual report in March, which is the only two that I'm aware of for FY24. That will be happening. The insurances, they're all in line. Nothing that's out of the ordinary on that one. Zoning has had almost no expense so far. DRB, not very much expense, but they also have not had that many meetings. The Planning Commission, that's all pretty much what we're expecting at this point in time. And other boards and commissions, the only expender group has so far is the Recreation Board, and that's been minimal. Cemetery's, the mullings are almost done for the year. We will have mullings, we pay through September right now, so we'll probably have another month for cemetery mullings. Our taxes and assessments, we pay the county fees in full. Right now, we have not received a bill from Berrytown as far as the ambulance service goes. I am anticipating that should be happening anytime, either that or I will be giving them a call and asking them. We should have something like that. Okay, but we do have a contract, so I know what it's going to be, but we book things as well as we do. Moving forward onto town offices. I don't have anything that's out of work there. And the general expenses, I'm not seeing anything out of work there. And police expenses are not the only thing as normal is the wages for the police overtime or over budget already. But we still, once again, we have two people in the police department that are out. Absolutely, yeah. So that tends to happen to us, unfortunately, more often than we like. Otherwise, in that, I'm not seeing anything else that's on the map, okay? And then- Question on the police? Question on the police department. So, hilltop, we submit a bill and they pay it. Where does that go? That goes to the revenues. Revenues. And that is on the very first page. If you look at the very bottom line, police, other revenues, $6,700. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah, okay. So, and I have not billed them yet for the month of August. I haven't had that information yet. So once I get that. So moving on to some of our highway builds. The thing we're building right now is we get to get some culvert materials out. We put under inventory, but from what I understand from Tim, we've got the inventory now, but we may have to pull that out of inventory for the flood. But we did not want to put it into the flood unless we've actually expended in the flood. So there will be some accounts like that, that maybe for instance, there could be gravel or whatever. It's probably going to be an inventory item, but as we use it, it will come out of that inventory item and go into the flood expense. And that's where you come into that flood damage. So far, we've built $658,000, whereas we have in flood expenditures, except for that does not include the payroll, because I'll get that separated. Now, when I go through FEMA, I will be including payroll. I'll be part of it, but just so that everything matches in the records and it's not, and I don't have three different payroll accounts, which would be very difficult to maintain. I put it there. So the flood account only has the actual vendor expenditures that we get. So that includes the materials, that includes the hauling, that includes the culverts that we've used so far, and any subcontractors that we hired out. I agree too. Okay. The winter expense, obviously that's worth coming. We are starting to build our inventories as far as gravel. We did have a very good inventory left over. In the previous year, we've also got money in the reserves in the previous year. So we're in good shape as far as the materials go for that. That's wonderful. Highway general, I don't see anything that's out of right there. Okay. In highway other, I don't see anything that's out of right there. And capital expenditures, we have not really spent anything yet. I believe we have a police vehicle that says it's in, but we haven't been built for it yet. We haven't received it yet, but I've been told that we can go pick it up, but that's just not happening right now. No. But we have a good word that we're gonna be having that soon. And then I know that we're waiting for the truck for the highway department. They said that's ready, but we still haven't seen that yet either. So that's all we've got on those. And otherwise, not people appropriations and I've been paying this as we've been receiving the invoices from them. So that's what I've got. Let's just answer if you've got questions. It's great information. Really enjoy that you go through it with us and help explain it. Any questions from the board for Diane? No. Any questions from anyone here tonight on it as well? If not, we'll move on, but thank you so much, Diane. Yes, thank you. Thank you. Okay, we'll move on now to the select board appointment of the fire department merger and steering committee for the two remaining members. I've talked to Pete Kelly and Joe, I believe you have as well. He's expressing interest in serving on the committee. And are you gonna vote on that? Are you abstaining? Vote on Pete? Yeah, are you abstaining? I can vote on that. Okay. And then the select board member, I'd recommend Flo. So I move that we appoint Pete Kelly and Florence Smith to the committee. Second. I'll second. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. So moved. So we have a full committee now. Move forward. Wonderful. Thank you all. Now we'll go on to discuss the Lovers Lane Bridge, the local and regional input questionnaire. To where can you go over that with us? This is a questionnaire we received from the Regional Planning Commission, looking at the Lovers Lane Bridge, which has been closed for several years now. There are several sections. I've also sent this to the Planning Commission. They're reviewing it. They're reviewing it. I think, I mean a lot of these is not applicable since it is closed. But I think if you go down to design configuration, starting at the bottom of page two, you know, alignment issues with the current bridge, well it's a tight curve with a tight bend in the river. So I really don't know if there's much they can do as far as the alignment on that. With the existing bridge, you know, very narrow to one lane bridge. But I don't know if there are, so who's gonna fill out the questionnaire? I will if you give me information for it. Okay. I didn't know if this was going to another committee. They feed me, I'll fill it out with the inputs. I get it from everybody else. I would request a motion to appoint tour to fill out this questionnaire. It's extensive and it's good information. They're asking and it's pertinent to moving forward this process. Second. All those in favor? Hi. Hi. Thank you, Tour. Okay, and now we'll move on to the approval of the November special town meeting for bond vote, the warning and the notice. So, we talked about there are five articles that we'll be voting on. Does anybody have a copy of the document that does not say draft on it? I just have a draft. draft. So, to move forward on the November vote that we have scheduled, Tom Clerk is asking to just be approved. The warning is included as well as the ballot and a mayor postcards included. So, I recommend approval of this. I make that motion. Second. All those in favor? Hi. Hi. Hi. Post. So moved. And now- I do need signatures on that part without the original, I don't know. Perhaps we can locate it after it might've gotten filtered into one of the other folders. I think you can look for that after. And now discussion on the capital budget planning? Let's hold off on that. Okay. Okay. Could I see approval of licenses, permits, vouchers and applications for the payrolls and the warrants? Oh, there you go. Nope, nope, nope, nope. Oh, okay. Thank you, Joe. Make motion to pay warrant 24G06 with checks 23344 to 23376. For a payable amount of 111,912.31. Reconciled August bank statement for general fund sewer, water and checking accounts. Second. All those in favor? Hi. Hi. So moved. Oh, thank you, Tim. That's great. Now we'll go to the approval of the minutes for 9-11-23. So we won't be able to approve those. I wasn't present. So we will postpone that to the next select board meeting. And then amendment and re-approval of previously approved minutes from June 5th of 23. I just made one small change to that. Yep, everybody was here. So that is under the discussion of the police department body cams. Just added one sentence there to the motion that stating that it was the only contractor for that purchase. So put it in line with our purchasing policy. So I recommend, or I'll make that motion that we re-adopt those minutes with that noted change. Do I hear a second? Second. All those in favor? Hi. Hi. So moved. Is there anything on the agenda that you wanted us to discuss tour that we haven't thus far? Nope. Okay. What are we? Board round table. Joe, do you have anything this evening you'd like to discuss? So Thomas Casavet, is this something that we're gonna? I don't think, have you had a chance to look at that right away permit yet? I doubt it. So we'll hold that off to the next meeting. Hold it to the next meeting. I recommend that. And also we were going to discuss capital budget planning or did we want to postpone it? We'll hold that off until the next meeting. Okay. So we will hold off the capital budget planning until the next meeting, as well as the permit that we have here from Thomas Casavet. We'll do that at a future board meeting as well. So now with the board round table, Joe, would you like to discuss anything this evening? No, I'm good, thank you. Thank you. And tour? I'm good. Okay, very good. And are we expecting an executive session? Yes. I move that we enter executive session for personnel regarding treasure hiring in the 261 VSA 313A3. Do I hear a second? Second. Do you want to take a break? I don't see you need a break. Well, yeah, I'll take a minute from the breakdown. That sounds wonderful. Thank you very much. Good night. Good night. Good night.