 everybody. Before we get started, let's ask if anyone has any additions to the agenda they'd like to make. If you do, let me know and I'll have Harlan. Fourth class road policy. Fourth class road policy. Yeah. Anybody else, something they want to talk about? Nope. Alright, then we'll start with the minutes from the annual town meeting on March 4th. The minutes is packed up, but I think they're pretty inclusive. I move to approve them. Second. All in favor? Aye. And then we have the minutes from the last select board meeting, which I also read and approve of. I move to approve these. Second. All in favor? Aye. All right. Those, somebody else coming in? Oh, it's not a great spring. And so we've got news. So Harlan, what is your question about a class four road policy? What is the What is the road policy? Right now, it's the state policy that we're required to control water and erosion, but that's about it. On the class four road. We can do more, but we're not required to do more. But there are requirements from the state. It's basically the controlled water. Okay. Yeah. Anybody given any thoughts on that in relation to the situation in Bingo? What's the situation? Bingo, I mean, Bingo or Pine Gap Road. Oh, Pine Gap Road. Well, it's obviously that erosion has not been controlled on there. So but yeah, we've given thought to that that that is there's other arguments about that road that are taking precedence now. But once that settled, then we'll be, you know, addressing what needs to happen. The upper half of Pine Gap Road is going to be used by the Forest Service when they do their big, you know, the Robinson project timber harvesting. And they will leave the road as we desire at the end of that. So that's because that's getting pretty pretty bad up there. And we're Yes. Yes. Yeah. Excuse me. Did you say Robinson project? Yes. My computer's not working. So I'm doing my hands. Oh, my hands are only to slow down. That's all right. I just want to make sure I got it right. Thank you. That road is also on the list of the roads permit. So that road is already slated to have states on the ditching. What's that? Pine Gap Road is on on the list of hydrologically connected roadways, and it will be placed into the program of improving the ditches by mandate of the state under the Clean Water Act. So that all of those improvements are will be coming about in the next few years. Road one is a 20 year project. So when the state says it's time to do that road as a priority, we will be improving the ditches on that road. So you pretty much made a decision that it's going to be in a four class road? No, as I said before, we'll see how it all falls out. And then we'll move forward after that. So there's no really, you know, we're all waiting to see how that's going to be. Well, it is on the map. There it is. The state hasn't listed as a class four road. You know, but obviously we're not doing anything now until the legal question is settled. That'll affect how, how and how much this work is being done and by who. Well, people still need, you're okay before they can work on it. Yeah, wish they do. Joan, speaking of roads and road permits and all that stuff, what have you got for us? Nothing specific to that, but other stuff that's equally fine. First, I think it's kind of a decision time for the issue of the bus shelter at the park and ride. I've been talking to the new community relations person at stagecoach about whether having a shelter at the park and ride is the right place to have it. He's very new, so he doesn't have a full picture of, you know, where people are picking up the bus or what their needs, what the town's needs are. But it seems to be from everyone I've talked to so far, including some of you, that a shelter at the park and ride doesn't really make much sense. For one thing, we have $10,000 in that grant budget with a limited time left to be able to do something. And it appears that even a basic ADA compliant shelter with all the installation that goes on costs that go on that minimum cost is somewhere more like $20,000 for something that's going to be reasonably, you know, stable and last for a while. This is based on some other shelters that stagecoach has recently installed. And not clear where else it should be in town at this point. And it may be something that gets resolved a little down the road once we have a larger sidewalk improvement project underway. And there's, you know, a better sense of what's the right place for people, whether it's school children or adults who take the stagecoach where they want to stand, where they want to hang out, rather than trying putting it in a place where no one's actually going to use it. And it appears that I thought for a long time that the stagecoach was actually stopping at the park and ride, but it appears that they're not right now because no one's standing there waiting for it. They're all up at either max if they're adults. And I guess if they're school children, they're high schoolers, they tend to be more at the skid mark, which isn't necessarily a great place for them to hang out, but that's sort of a related but separate issue. So I'm bringing it back to you for each side, whether it's time to just pull the plug on the idea of a shelter at the park and ride, which is the only funding we have at the moment at some point down the road. You know, we could find some more if we want to place it someplace else. But right now, the $10,000 that we have is only for locating it at the parking right. I think that would be kind of a way of putting a special here at the parking ride because it's not used that much. And I think that makes sense to just let the situation age and then have a clearer need for it than we could move forward on that, but I don't know what you guys think. I agree because, you know, I know everyone uses Max, but Max is private land and that's not going to happen. Putting up the shelter? No. So I think it's just, I think we should just spend that idea of a table for a while. Nancy, you had something you wanted to say? I think there's a stagecoach sign at Max and if the sharing kids pick up the bus at Max and the other kids who picked up at the skip mark. You know, I would think that, you know, Max is convenient, but it doesn't seem like a safest place with all these cars coming and going with kids. Seven o'clock in the morning. But I know. They don't open till eight. Well, I'm just thinking. Yeah, no, that was a good point. But there's definitely a little rush hour in Rochester. Yes, this was brought before the school board and they discussed it and they brought it to the parents of the students. We have so few students who just bring it to the parents and they decided to leave it as it is. They thought about moving the kids down to school and that that wasn't a peaceable idea for them either. And then the parents said they liked the idea that they'd close to a minimum. Yeah, oh, it's just a benefit. Yeah. It's frozen on, so just spend as is for now. The next thing is, I've heard about this before, but we have gotten a grant, it's actually a sub-grant from the state agency for, from the Department of Public Safety for updating our pre-disaster mitigation plan. And Two Rivers is going to be doing the primary amount of work, but there is also a committee headed up by Vic Roboto to help them draft a plan, work together with Two Rivers staff, put that together. The grant amount is something like $7,700 and there's a 25% match from the town required, which will be essentially filled by townspeople donating their time to put together the plan. So anyway, that's taken forever to come through the state. We finally received it this week. I'm not sure what happened, but it doesn't matter. It's in your packet there for, for signature. And I let Vic know that we have it now so they can start scheduling their work. And he's out of town, but he wanted me to let you know that he's putting together a planning meeting for the emergency preparedness committee for April 10th. So they'll get that under way. And at least an update on the town garage funding for the stormwater. White River Partnership did get a grant from the Clean Water Block Grant for $100,000. That's based on an estimate from our consultants of $72,000, but she made it $100,000 just to incorporate any add-ons that might come on or adjustments that maybe might be made to the cost based on doing the final plan. Because we have a preliminary estimate and a preliminary plan from the consultants, and part of that grant would be used to make it a final plan. So we know exactly what we're doing. The match required for that is $14,400 based on if it's $72,000, but if it's actually a $100,000 project, the required match is $20,000. Some of that can be fulfilled by the town crew doing some of the work, but some of it would be cash. And so White River Partnership had applied to the National Forest Foundation. That's not the exact, something like that for actually pay the match amount. Unfortunately, we just learned that that one was not approved. So Mary has gotten back to us with a proposal, a couple different ways we could approach this. One is to simply use a portion of the Clean Water Block Grant that we already have in hand to do just the final, finish up the planning part, the design part, but it would not cover implementation unless we found more money for that. And then delay, wait delay doing the implementation until say next year. The risk in doing that is that we would have a plan that would be sitting on the shelf and next year's funding for projects like this are very uncertain because where the state legislature seems to be going in this term with Clean Water Funding is that's all going to Lake Champlain, all going to the Lake Champlain Basin. And Connecticut River Basin projects are going to be put on hold. So that's a change from what it's been for the past few years and it's not certain it's going to go that way but it seems to be the way it's headed right now. So there's like funding for it, yeah. Yeah, so that would be a problem for, because there are other grant sources like the ERP program, Environmental, what's that stand for? I forget now, ERP is, Environmental, I can't remember anymore. Anyway, it comes through DEC, Department of Environmental Conservation and it's been around for a long time, you know, we've gotten, WRP has gotten a number of grants to do ERP projects and it's been a good source of funding but not clear that it will be going forward. So that would kind of leave us high and dry in terms of being able to implement a project at the garage. So she's asked whether instead we might be able to sort of do a swap with WRP's assistance with funding for TAMP projects and if we do get a state grant, e-trans grant, structures grant, to do the Cushman Road Culver installation. WRP was saying as of last week that they would look for funding to help us meet that match which is a 10% match and the amount is very close, the 10% match would be very close to what the 10%, the 20% match would be for the town garage, 17.5 is what that is estimated to be. She feels like she can probably come up with that entire amount from a different source and then have the town instead of coming up with 17,500 for the Culver installation to come up with somewhere between 14,000 for and 20,000 as the match for the town garage. So effectively the town would be spending the same amount of money but on the garage project instead of applying it to the Cushman Road Culver. There are obviously some details that need to be resolved but I said at least this is something I just found out this afternoon about it's kind of a developing situation but I just wanted to run that by you and see whether you felt you might be willing to take a little risk on that in order to implement the garage project rather than having just a sign that sits on the shelf for you know something. Because money for the Culver project would still be likely there in a year whereas money for the wastewater or the runoff water, strong water is likely to runoff to another basin. We should also look at the plans again to see how much along with Culver to see how much we could do in-house. Yeah and that's something once we have a final design of a much better idea of what we can do in-house. Right so let's go for the design see where we stand. And what about the implementation part of it? Well let's see what Mary comes up with. Is that something you're open to or she can come up with the money and then the next thing I would be to ask her is how soon she would know whether she could actually come up with the 75 or the pull. Right bring it on. Sounds like we're still in the exploratory phase and see what's actually feasible that could happen. Okay but the only thing I would ask you to say is you're open to the idea without you know making a commitment. Yes yeah okay great. Martha did you have a question on that? I just wanted to make sure but I think I'm correct on this that Mary Restis is going to help you get funding for could help you get funding for the matching requirement for the town of Sarmata runoff at the county garage project. Okay she has funding to help the yeah to do 80% of the cost okay but the 20% match which she was also hoping to get from a different brand but that's what did not come through. Okay but she still she thinks she can get help you get a matching fund for which would be for the stormwater runoff. No it would be for a different project. Okay but it's all it's all about this was about the town garage. It's about two projects it's about a culvert replacement on Mount Christian Road okay and a town garage project. Okay but at the town garage the project has to do with stormwater runoff. Yes that's correct. Okay that's what I meant sorry. So if you could sort of keep that part of it sort of made because I don't want to see people to read into that but there's a commitment there from what the partnership I'm going to say she she would try to help explore yeah or what explore getting to feel that research. I won't tell you how right you are but that's all right I don't want two people to think it's a done deal but on the other hand I need to say that this is what we talked about. Right. She'll tell you. See actually what the actual funds are and it's easier to know what we're talking about. We have we have a good representation from all sorts of departments here tonight and the next one on the list is the library welcome to show up. First off do you have anything that you want to share specifically? Well we've got good news. We've had a very successful fundraiser this year specifically for programs and the trustees have decided to spend a portion of that money this year to hire a part-time children's librarian that hopefully we will get started before summer reading season starts. We'll be expending these monies over the next year or two but we'll be putting the rest of that money towards general programming at the library so that's all coming from donations. That's good news. So I saw I saw some notes from the library but I have a question. Does ARCA media show up at the library meetings at all? No but they're always welcome. Yeah I know that would be interesting to see because it can't always get to every median that's out there. That was just something that caught my eye was the decision to fund the health 40 some hundred dollars going into a fund for the health care management funds or what is it? You want to take that? She'll meet you. You go ahead. You know I'll never lie to you. The trustees have decided to withdraw from the town group Blue Cross Blue Shield policy as of July the 1st and I will be going on Medicare at that point and that it will be approximately half of the money that we have been spending towards Blue Cross will go into a HRA for Medicare supplement. So we'll be you know saving about 50% on those expenses. Unfortunately that money has already been the savings. We have been advised by our investment advisor work that we are with we are planning to withdraw too much money from our endowment fund the an unsustainable amount so that savings will go towards that hole that would develop in our budget if we reduce that draw. Okay well yes we we needed a way to plug that hole. We have been between what we had budgeted for 2020 to pull and what the advisor told us we needed to reduce to was it's about almost $6,000. So that kind of echoes how the town trustees found they couldn't contribute to the the budget on the town side of things too. Is that probably the same factors coming into play here from your your the guy managing your funds? Is that what you're saying? Return on investments. Yeah yeah we had been withdrawing too much in the last couple years and had planned the same amount for next year and he said a total of $10,000 we shouldn't exceed that but we had been budgeted for about $16,000. Marks nice to see you here tonight. Do you got any updates any interesting stories to tell? It's possible one thing I didn't want to mention for I forget I was just dodging the calendar next month I'm not sure how much advertising we done but April 27th is take back drug day again that we do participate in. So you know prescription drugs and all kinds of people maybe you're rid of I'll be here at the office from 10 to 2 on the 27th collecting that stuff to turn over to the feds. So that's that I got some training stuff going on next several months here actually so actually went to a the OBOA drug seminar I'm brought in here last week and later this week I'm going to a school shorter training so this is around a lot of training in the next few months and it's spread around of course but Okay 10 to 2 on April 27th drop off your drugs. Yeah yeah in the back office yeah all those signs and I haven't I'm pretty sure it's it's actually a trash day so oh good here so it actually works out well yeah get the mentality done yeah and that's another thing I heard I haven't heard back you guys haven't had to get back probably for anything so I guess we're all set um just a couple concerns I'm not sure where we're at with the office downstairs if we want to do anything with the issues I'm having down there whether we want to get a dry or whatever you want to call it a dehumidifier something when the summer comes it'll be better anyway but yeah yeah still I'm sorry but down here it's not as a big expense be plowing tonight I hope we're done plowing and we're getting ready for mud and there will be something always here just be patient I really we've had some truck issues again different truck we get that bad life goes on just another day um I saw you running around with getting the meter readings today or what was that yeah man because you can't see them what buried in the snow yeah standing rules are great except for when you got a look or something but yeah seven four to eight okay is that before dosy or after what's that it's after dosy right after dosy dosy for the soda ash right okay how much how what's the difference between you see between the two wells about uh if it's running off well two I think it's about seven four okay and for the same dose off well one a lot of times it's running right between seven eight and eight okay so you're dosy dosy the same soda ash there's no way I can change it okay so that's the range you're seeing yeah okay sometimes it's I mean Dana's not saying wrong when he did it for me a couple times it just I don't know I mean I've seen as high as eight two but not very often so then I tried we knocked it down a little bit and then I dropped way down I mean only five clicks I mean we aren't talking right but you haven't seen going on a six no I haven't been six it's been seven long just because it got air okay but that's just a one time deal all right I usually check it if I mix in the morning I'll check it in the afternoon just make sure it doesn't have air in it but okay they get it there once in a while most problem with the air is when you add the pouring to it you know just that I mean you're talking a cup with three bags that's just for both wells test about the same so there's gotta be something in the water it's a little bit different yeah but you haven't seen any seasonal variation okay that's good all right so we've been working on the new town policy for the polling place parking lot and campaign sign rules and you had some input you just found something else about that well on the on the secretary's date site there there was there's a comment for the day of the election the presiding officer which is the town clerk can adopt a policy to allow signs to be placed in certain areas as long as the policy is applied evenly to all candidates basically what it says is that the presiding officer which is the town clerk can amend the rules change the rules on the day of the election as they see fit so I was taking this this policy and I was going to suggest that that be added to it so that it's clear so it's clear why don't I read what we have here so we could know how that would fit in so that the proposed is the presiding officer in Rochester it is the town clerk has jurisdiction over whether vehicles can be parked in the town office parking lot and where political signs can be placed on election day which is 17 vsa 2508 that's just a statement the established practice in Rochester is to not allow any public parking in the town office parking lot on election day so as to allow parking spaces for voters individuals and businesses who regularly use the parking lot must find parking in other areas of town the one exception to this parking policy is for those persons employed in the town office and poll workers who will be required to park at the entrance to the parking lot not close to the building but at the backside the presiding officer will not allow signs to be placed in the ground or fixed to anything on the property of the polling place individuals are allowed to stand and hold a sign at the entrance to the town office parking lot a budding school street so long as a voter is not hindered or impeded from going into or out of the polling place exit polls or surveys can be done outside of the polling place as long as a voter voluntarily offers to participate and the person conducting the polls or survey does not hinder or impede the progress of the voter as he or she enters or leaves the polling place that's 17 vsa 2508 again so that's the proposed and so how this doesn't um i don't know if that really changes much of what we said right where else that that is real specific so um if that if that works and that is something it you know you still have the authority on that day to say wait a minute this doesn't work um but it should be made clear that the town clerk who is the official presiding officer is the one with the authority to make or change the rules on that particular day i mean we if we happen to have had a snow storm and there was you know snow banks you may need to change the rules about where they would stand we wouldn't want anyone to get run over standing at the edge of the parking lot any question yeah i have a question i didn't get that gentleman's name that was at the tom meeting what did he violate i'm you know because he went on and read this whole statement was he in violation of the rules that you just read was he too close to the polling place no that was uh that was um that was a strange situation basically i um the previous town clerk took it upon herself to there was a generally there is a no overnight parking and and and she showed up in the morning and um saw a vehicle parked there unattended with a political sign on it and um and her perception was that that had been parked i think it had been parked there all night and it was um and so she she took action that she thought was appropriate which was didn't confer with us on that and we probably would have you know said you know no need to get too worked up about it but it brought to the light the um the fact that there were those unwritten policies for years and now if there's something that's written down it's it'll do away with sort of a confusion will you do it will you like post something out there like a week before a live chance so that people can read it know what the other uh rules this will become part of our website yeah on the website i suppose you could be posted in the in the bulletin board right outside there i'm also going to ask july to send me a copy of that because i couldn't write as fast as you talk i'll email her and ask her to send it to me so i can include it in my article thank you another input on this feel comfortable now to adopt a policy i think i don't think we just approve that right now do we have to i think we have to have a um Nancy clarify that you can adopt a policy and adopt it now and then just as long as it's in a public public setting so so i moved to adopt this second home favorite this is 25th right frustrations great area great emotions we have a um um liquor license application from the um folks running the hunkington house in renewal and also for the um outdoor for their little deck outside so i think to approve these two services that is offering to have the um the hazardous waste pickup and they talked about this last meeting and it turns out um one of these dates um coincides with the usual recycling day and that probably would be um too much to host both of those at the same time so we'll get back to them and ask to shift that one day to the next to before after we've been and you make the call for that so we'll announce those days maybe the next okay thank you they're um not until june and august so we have some time sure thank you old business there um about the is there any been any progress on locating the missing record book well i can report that there are a lot of interesting books yeah in that ball uh if anybody wants to see a copy of url mac and tires discharge papers we have them so far i've got the north wall all completed and i've got the east wall all done and i'm preparing an index for the town clerk to have so they'll know you know just what books are but it was pretty interesting we found for those of you who remember a stenographers notebook a big that was tucked in between other normal size ledger books and it had been apparently misplaced for a great number of years until mary davis located it among you know all these others so i believe it was the selectman's minutes march of 50 to july of 52 so it just tells me that i'm not looking just for a ledger book there it may be in some other form but i've still got the south wall and the west wall to do it thank you yeah was was that in shorthand no actually thank goodness pencil because i don't know if there's anybody around that can read it so i trusted the town is uh there won't be any decisions made until this book is found i don't know if we can say that i don't think that really well what would what would the town's legal liability be under the freedom of information act if it can't provide records that it's responsible for doesn't for you apply to federal law what's that doesn't for you apply to federal law not us really steep but it's really stable also there's there's been a lot of evidence and information and i don't think that there's i mean the the process that's in play now is it seems to have plenty to to work on and i think that just holding up this missing book is kind of a red herring the opposing process might have plenty to work on if they had the minutes to look at that might be but if they're missing and we can't find like a lot of what the question is what is the select board's you know the town's liability i don't think i don't think there's any for not being able to provide records that are needed in a civil law you know there's we don't know if they're needed i think that's totally up to our attorneys in both sides really well i think it'd be something that i don't want to look into it well we are that's why we hire attorneys yeah there are a lot of towns missing a lot of records there's been fires i know the town of gosin has had several fires that have put big gaps in their town records that's a fire has anybody reported them missing or anything i mean if you've had reported them please we're talking about it like several meetings now so it's public knowledge yeah it's not done did you get that marin well i was just i'd say that gosin losing their records is relevant because a large portion of the town of rochester part of exactly the early records were gosin records and going back further part of it was philadelphia records try to find those now i mean if i recall signing off on the invoices the legal invoices we have a lot of times it's been looking for the first major factor in this is that if a significant decision had been made when it was in those records it would have been communicated to the state and shown up on the state roadmaps which then those did not reflect that kind of a movement from the town so it's really you know looking at talking about evidence and putting the puzzle together there is well the the records go back earlier than there's the town that the roadmaps and the monopilio they searched anyway hopefully we're getting closer to uh resolution you would be having a little earlier question the book that you're looking for am i correct that it's select board minutes and town records or just one or the other as far as we know what just is select okay okay that's what i thought but i just want to make sure thank you at least that's what i'm looking for thank you and in congress what from 37 well i don't know i'll have to go through this index to see what we've got and that figure yes um i guess i'm in a squeaky wheel again um has any effort been made for fund funds procurement for the uh west hill bridge at this time not at this time it's been recently inspected and approved by the state as safe for what it's rated for but it's not done when was that done well when was the last time a follow-up question on that i was over at the uh windbrook bridge looking at what a great job that was um it's a shorter span than west hills about 30 feet and uh i've talked to the contractors who have gone over our bridge inside the bridges in pretty good shape physically but the underpinning is starting to fail and that concerned me from two different contractors in town but on the windbrook windbrook bridge how was that funded clean water block grant not by the town not by the town was that all national forest service or no clean water grant funds the clean water block grant right so technically could we apply for funds like that for no well there's highway funds that are available to the state putting a wing for it for a totally different reason it's not that it needed a bridge but on culvert before it was done as a for the fish okay so that's like your culvert on maybe we'll help both those culverts were replaced for to help fish move upstream and for flood resiliency also the culverts were undersized and for sure right yeah that the lower bridges to wash out all time do you have any idea that how long it would take for to investigate state funding which is again it's some a lot of its federal money that goes into the state coffers for bridges like that i mean if you don't investigate it you'll never know how much it would cost the town in the future i mean it's definitely on the radar that it is something that's going to have to be addressed when it comes up but in terms of um well what do you mean but it comes up like it gets washed out it's going to get fixed yeah yeah yeah and we put it separate but no but aside from that there is it is on our radar that that you know we're going to have to address that sooner or later but you know meanwhile there's you know it's not approved but it is limiting for the people that live on their road weight limits yeah so it's been that way for a long time yeah but it'll um it'll eventually it'll need to be upgraded there's no question about it so and it doesn't hurt to come and be the squeaky wheel and we do we do you know we have overweight permits that are that we approve if uh you know a heavier vehicle needs to go across it but um i just don't want to shoot myself in the foot but every time i get a propane delivery he's up they're overweight yeah so i guess we're just casting a blind eye to that delivery because i need heat i guess no comment means a good thing just hang in there just hang in there i don't know if i live long enough to see a new bridge but hey who knows we hope so not the way they're talking i don't know harlan i you have to hope