 Call the meeting to order. The first thing is public comment. This is anything that is not currently on the agenda to be discussed tonight. We have Tamara Morgan. Yes, me. I'm just here to report on the library. They decided the staff has decided that starting Monday, you'll be able to just go to the library with no appointment necessary. From about Mondays 11 to 6, Monday through Thursday 11 to 6, a mask is required. And occupancy and time are limited. I know that they're going to try and limit occupancy to three staff and seven people, but I'm not sure that would be much of a problem. The summer reading program usually has about 90 participants, and this year it has 172. Everybody gets a little, for six weeks, everyone gets a weekly bag of reading-level appropriate book bundle, a craft, an additional reading list. So far, the recipients have been really excited and glad to get those. And that the renovation of the ADA restroom is going to begin in the next couple of weeks. That's the downstairs restroom. And that's it for me. Great. Anybody else? Not seeing anyone? Anybody else seeing anyone? No, I haven't seen anyone. All right. So let's go to approval of the agenda. I move that we approve the agenda. I'll second that. All those in favor? Opposed? Stained? Motion carries. Consent calendar. This has meeting minutes from June, all three in June, warrants and a quick claim deed. Any discussion? I'll move approval of the minutes for all three meetings and the warrants and quick claim deed. I have a question, Trini. One of those is liquor control meeting. Would we be approving that here? Pat, no, we would not. I may have inadvertently sent the board of liquor control minutes as opposed to the select board meeting minutes. I could bring the other meeting minutes to next month's meeting for approval. Well, we all would have got them when they were drafted. Anybody have a problem? I didn't. This is Shannon speaking. I did not send them to the select board. We probably should put them on next. Those were, Shannon, correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe those were the minutes for June 24th? Yes. Yeah. So the regular, so the board of liquor control minutes were included in the packet instead of the select, the regular meeting minutes. So we'll just put them on the next agenda, the regular meeting minutes. So the 24th. Do we have agreement to amend the motion in second to be approving only the minutes of the 11th and 30th? I will move as amended. I'll second that. Okay. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Stained? Curies. New business finance department brief. I believe we have clip on. We do. Just want to bring you up to date on some of the current things that are going on in my department, some of the things I'm working on. First thing, I'm working on a comprehensive document retention policy for the town that's going to define what gets kept and for how long. And what I'm using for a basis of that is all of the Secretary of State requirements. We've got a lot of paper documents downstairs in the vault and the town clerk has ordered new shelving that should be arriving sometime in September. And so once we have that all in order, I'm working parallel to that to get a document retention policy that I can present to the select board for their acceptance. And then the Secretary of State's office has to accept it as well. And then we can move forward with that and just retain documents for X number of years, whatever the policy says, and then destroy them. It'll solve some of our space crunch issues that we have downstairs with some of the documents going back into the probably some into the 90s and even earlier than that. I'm also working on an update to our delinquent tax policy to clarify some of the salient points in it and make it make it a little bit clearer what everybody's responsibilities are and what the parameters are. And I plan on the delinquent tax policy that we have also includes the other sewered frequencies. And I'll work on updating that and also put forth some payment agreement templates that can be on the website. So our customers and taxpayers can avail themselves of that without having to come to town hall. I'm also reviewing the purchasing policy regarding the threshold for purchase orders. We currently have a $500 threshold that I'm looking at, whether it makes sense to raise that raising that threshold to either $750 or $1,000. It's getting so that some of the prices and costs of routine purchases are exceeding the $500 threshold and we're having quite a few purchases in that $500 to $1,000 range and just need to analyze that a little bit deeper. On the on the true finance side, I've been really happy with the tax collections. They've been better than I projected they would be. The taxpayers have been really responsive, heard a lot of appreciation for the select board's decision to vote to temporarily suspend for three months the penalties and interest on both both sides, the tax side and the utility billing side. On the tax side, we started the delinquent delinquency period with somewhere around $600,000 of taxes still owed to the town and we ended the year on June 30 three months later with only $98,000 outstanding. I thought that was pretty good for the townspeople to step up and make their payments. And as of this morning, that number had come down to $89,000. Of those amounts, we've got 22 payment agreements totaling about $38,000 and we've got 32 properties on the tax sale list going to the attorney currently. I think a bunch of those will come off as people pay. Currently two of the 32 on the tax sale list have paid and one of the payment agreements has also paid in full. On the water and wastewater side, we had the first moratorium period over with. The first moratorium started on April, the April 7th bills and we've resumed imposing the late penalty and interest on those outstanding balances and we'll do, we'll continue for each subsequent month imposing them as those moratoriums expire. The delinquencies seem to be fluctuating within the historical realities of that averages. We, in the last 12 months, last four quarters, we've had a low of about $6500 and a high of $20,000 based on delinquencies in the 30 to over 120 days and as of today, our delinquencies were about $16,000 with 36 accounts involved and I'm following up on those to see if we can get payment agreements in place and what we need to do to get the customers to start paying. As far as where the town's finances are overall, we've passed year end, June 30th. We still have bills coming in for things that we committed to and services we received prior to June 30th and so we're still, things are still moving around for last year but in the general fund, I'm projecting a surplus of somewhere between $175,000 and $200,000. Highway surplus, about $20,000 to $25,000. Water with a surplus of $75,000 to $80,000. Wastewater with a surplus of $95,000 to $100,000 and on the police side budget, we're looking probably at a break-even to a small deficit. I'm still gathering the FEMA-related expenses for the extra Orange County Sheriff Department shifts and so those will move out into a FEMA reimbursable account and that's pretty much where we are. Anybody have any questions for me? Can everybody hear me okay? We can, Cliff. Thank you. Any questions for Cliff from select board members? No, I'm good. I'm good. I have a question. Cliff, do you plan on coming in like once a month to talk with us? It might not be once a month, Pat, but I'm working on regular briefings for the board. Good. I find it very useful when you do that. Okay. So one of the things that's out there is actually the budget committee in their charge is required to report to the select board. That might be something to follow up on. Is that your committee, Pat? That's Larry's. Budget is me. That's Larry. And so there's that whole battle of where the information actually should come from. It might, if it's going to come from Cliff, we may want to clean up the charge of the budget committee, which I think was a town voted committee instead of a select board charge too, but there should be two, right now there's actually two sources of data. There should come in. Okay. Next on the agenda is a review of the internal control documents for the town audit. Boy, Cliff, you just got the exciting ones. Get out your glasses of water because these are pretty dry. Internal controls are a fancy word, a fancy phrase for what I like to call asset protection. It basically comes down to no one person should have access or responsibility for all the steps in a transaction. So I think we do a pretty good job of what we call a separation of duties so that the treasurer's office actually handles the money and the finance office keeps the records. And we look at, we do the bank recs on a monthly basis. And so we have multiple people involved on a regular basis to make sure that nobody's stealing any money. And so the whole adage of fraud is kind of like a three-legged stool. And the three legs are opportunity, need and rationalization, and those are the other two, the need and the rationalization. And the only thing, you can't do anything about anybody's need. You can't do anything about the rationalization, but you can deny them the opportunity. And I think we do a really good job with that. And so these questionnaires that I'm presenting to you tonight, our auditor wants them. I've answered the questions as best I could. Our town treasurer has also reviewed them. There's a lot of questions about the things that I just spoke of. Like, do you rec, I'm not going to go read down through them, but do you reconcile the bank and ledger balances monthly? So every month we get the bank statements and we look at what our records entail and make sure that we can, we can get back to what the bank says we have for money in the account. And when we, when we can't reconcile, then we start asking questions. And, you know, most of the time there's legitimate answers to those questions. And so there's three places to sign on these checklists. I think you've got the scan version, but there's a signature page on page one, another one on page four, and another one on page six up in the right-hand corners of the numbers. And Trini is chair of the select board. It has a spot for you to sign. And these, the questions get at the heart of how we conduct our financial operations and how we account for all of them. Okay. And again, I'd love to hear any questions that any of you might have. Any questions? I did note that you said there was some training on financials by the select board. I know that I don't know. I know Pat attended, Pat French attended one of the budget meetings with us in Montpelier. I can't, I don't know about the rest of you. I don't go to any of the town sponsored ones, but in my job we do a lot of training on various financial things from understanding audits to ways to do, you know, to account for things or to process different things. So plenty of that. Anybody else have any questions or comments on the questionnaire? Seeing none, I will make it to that side of the hill and sign that for you, Cliff. Thank you, Trini. Thanks. Next up is tax anticipation note bid review. That's also Cliff. Cliff, you're getting all the exciting stuff tonight. Well, actually the tax anticipation note is kind of exciting to me because I've been, you know, I was kind of optimistic about our collections of the, of last year's fiscal 20 taxes, but also know that sometimes you don't feel the pinch in the pain of a shutdown like we had with COVID for the last three months until later on when it really starts pinching your budget and there's no more areas that you can really cut and borrow from. And so the way this worked was I put together a cash flow projection for next year based on our history for the last two years and projected what we might be in a deficit for as far as cash flow goes against our budgets and sent the town treasurer Joyce Mizuko and looked those over pretty closely. And we were, we had a consensus on that and then she put together an RFP that she sent out to six or seven different banks. I think four of the banks responded back with thanks but no thanks. We're going to choose not to propose. And three banks responded with proposals and we basically whittled it down to one. And the interesting thing is if we don't borrow, if we don't have to dip into the borrowing, the money sits in an investment account and we actually earn more money than we'll pay. And they call that arbitrage and so it's 0.1%. Another bank had a better spread of 0.25 but they also had another data, their interest rates were 2.5%. And so I kind of like the 1.65 a lot better because overall if we do have to dip into it, we'll pay overall less interest. So on behalf of the treasurer's office and the finance office, we're recommending to the select board that the quotes submitted by Union Bank is the bid we should go with. Like I said, the lowest rate and they also will pay us interest on the insured cash sweep account in excess of the borrowed amount. So if we put more money into it for any reason, they will pay us the 1.75 on that money as well. Do you have any questions? That option one, Cliff. Sure. What do you refer to as option one, Pat? I guess this is a proposal from Union Bank. This says option one, option two. Those are two points. Why we're recommending Union Bank. Just one option though with Union Bank. Right. One option. Once the rate that you'll pay, the other one's the interest rate you will earn. Correct. 1.65 is what we're going to pay for the money. 1.75 is what we're going to get paid for what stays in the sweep account. Any questions from anybody on board? That's good. Do you want to make a motion? I will move that we approve the tax anticipations from Union Bank. I'll second. Motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Opposed? Aye. Motion carries. Next up we have an update on the Economic Development Council by Mary. Hi, everybody. So on the Economic Development Council, I became chair on March 5th. And Peter had stepped down. And then in April was when we started encountering the COVID pandemic. So the council had pretty much worked on reactionary mode with the town with Josh as well as local organizations. And just to help people with how to get funds, any kind of assistance. And so that had gone on through several months. And then, excuse me, we finally started coming out where the governor had started lifting some of the restrictions. So I believe it was the June 4th meeting we started talking about, well, how do we communicate to our community that we're slowly opening up and get people downtown but make sure that they realize everything is safe. And so out of that, a small group was formed, a small core group to create a guide and activities or a summer guide. So just yesterday, we released the first one with the help of Josh, Perry, and Valerie Schoolcraft did the graphics. And as of date, we have been receiving a lot of positive feedback. Everybody is liking it. And we dispersed it via electronic social media because we have no funds to do print because one of the ideas were to put an insert in the Herald and then any remaining guides would then be dispersed among the businesses downtown. So right now, we're going to get together tomorrow morning and talk about what our options are regarding funding. And Josh, I know Josh is on, I don't know if he wanted to give a quick update on that piece of it because he and Perry have been working on that part. Yeah, thanks, Mary. Can everybody hear me all right? Yep. Yeah, we, well, when we did start this project, we assumed that there would be funding made available through the legislature based on conversations with staff at ACCD and representatives of our region. That funding was eliminated at the 11th hour, unfortunately. So now there might be some opportunity to secure some of that funding. There was two and a half million dollars that went to the Department of Marketing and Tourism. And I was told yesterday that they still have not decided how that money is going to be entirely spent. So there might be an opportunity to secure some of that. But otherwise, we will have to fundraise and maybe secure some funding from the town if there is any that's available. I think the project to get 5,000 to 6,000 copies and inserted would probably run around $5,000, maybe even $6,000. So it's not insignificant. And so that's what the plan is now, is trying to secure some funding. And I'm hopeful that we can get some funding raised so we can get some print issues out. And then hopefully build on this for a possible fall, winter issue. And in addition to that, we would like to take the initiative to create a website. And so I, for a while, I have put together a very high level plan that has not been shared with anybody and hasn't been touched for over a year. So within the next couple of weeks, I'll pull that out and just take a look at it. My background has been with project management. And I feel that there needs to be a structure to define costs, what the content's going to be, what are the short-term, long-term deliverables, who's going to do the work, and then funding as well as how is it going to be maintained and updated going forward. So those are some of our thoughts. Plus, there are some initiatives as well with, we had our R3 chairs meeting the other day with Pat Moulton. And it has been decided that we will roll the R3 economic development slash tourism piece that was headed by Peter Reed, Damien, Dean Nicola, and Jay Hooper into the Economic Development Council. So that will start with our next meeting in August. And the council also had three vacancies. And I've been able to recruit and fill those vacancies that I have submitted for consideration by the Select Board. And those are Damien, Dean Nicola, who was co-chair on the R3 Economic Development Task Force for R3, Bethany, Silloway, and Megan Harvey, who have been very active here in town on various events and other organizations. And they all agreed that they would like to be considered and be part of the Economic Council. Do you have any questions? Yeah, Tom Ares here. First of all, I'm really ardent to hear what you just said at the end there, Mary. Those are three people who have contributed a great deal. And it suggests a consolidation of all the efforts, rather than all these different groups doing things piecemeal. So I'm really happy to hear that. I just want to make a suggestion. And I made this same suggestion to Gary Der of the R3 group when I chatted with him at our Rotary meeting this afternoon. I think a really economical way of getting the document that Perry and Valerie Schoolcraft and the Economic Development Council have put together out in the hurled might be to explore actually printing it through the same web-based press printer that the hurled uses to print the newspaper. Rather than printing it at a job printer around here, actually printing it in basically in synchronicity with the printing of the hurled in a given week and inserting it there might and I offered to actually reach out to Tim Calabro and explore that option on behalf of the Economic Development Council. It would be a similar size publication to the TV guide that comes in Sunday newspapers and Valerie might have to tweak the design a little bit to make it fit in that format and it would be printed on newsprint or white newsprint similar to an advertising supplement but it might well be the most economical way of getting that document out there in mass quantities not just as an insert in the newspaper but then having stacks of them in retail outlets around the region and other tourism sites around the region. Definitely we welcome anything and any help on that so if you want to go ahead my only concern I think the Herald starts vacation. Am I correct that they start vacation tomorrow? They're taking a week off yeah they're one week okay yeah their annual summer vacation but I'm more than happy to reach out to both the Economic Development Council and to the Herald and see if we might be able to facilitate that printing directly through them. I think it would be more cost effective it's just okay yeah yeah we are having a meeting tomorrow to discuss tomorrow morning to discuss printing and try to get a better handle on all of the numbers. We've received several quotes from printers but printing directly by their printer was I don't I don't believe we got a quote from that so I don't recall recently switched printers as many of you may know which is why the format of the size of the paper changed but they print with a large web-based printer in New Hampshire somewhere that does a lot of the regional newspaper printing including for the Valley News and I'm gonna guess based I mean based on my career experience as a publications manager which is what I've done for much of my career I think we might be able to get I don't want to take business away from our local printers but we could get a much more you know economies of scale economical publication by going with the same printer that the Herald uses. And it should make it easier to keeping it in house where they do both that insert that they could put in the newspaper versus having to go to a local printer pick up the finished product to bring you over to the Herald. Yeah and hand insert it it just yeah look at the supplements that come in the Herald every week the max supermarket flyer the Kenny drugs flyer all those things are inserted by machine as best I understand at the web-based printer so whereas if we sent it from another printer around here to New Hampshire to be inserted it would be a hand inserted process. Well that makes sense it keeps it it keeps it more straightforward because I didn't realize that the max insert and Ace I don't know if Ace Hardware's insert is done that way so you know I don't see a problem with us taking that approach. I'm happy to look into it it might delay us a week or two but given that given the fact that that the Herald is taking their annual summer vacation for a week but I'm more than happy on behalf of the of the council and the town to reach out and explore that possibility with Tim. Great that sounds great Tom I think at the select board level we've got what we need if you guys can do that I think the one action item I heard there was whether the select board wants to take action to appoint Damien Megan and Bethany to the Economic Development Council tonight. If you're looking for a motion on that I would move the appointment of all of Damien Bethany and Megan to the Economic Development Council. I'll second that. All those in favor. All right so I just want to add one thing to that training. Yeah so the goal right now the goal behind getting this paper out was to do something really quick to help the downtown businesses going forward you know the hope is that this can actually sell some average. So that's part of the equation going forward. He's talking about some advertising because we with the responses from this most recent release we have had people reach out and even when I talk to them on the phone prior to the release how they can contribute or funded so we start thinking that possibly putting you know having them pay for some advertising and then the other thing we need is start thinking about expanding this guide to the services on Main Street like the barbershops and other services that are here right now the focus was just on restaurants events recreation and retail. So the goal is as we go forward and if you know if this continues to be a success as it's showing it as it is now then definitely to expand it out even further than what it's offering today. So we could see it getting larger going forward and then we will address the expense and cost as that goes forward because again you need a resource to pull build that whole thing out. So that will be you know we were starting to well we were thinking about talking about it in the during the August meeting just to start prepping on that. Any other questions for the Economic Development Council? If not I believe the next item is there's also the amendments to the tax stabilization agreement I believe it's Josh and economic. Trini if we I spoke with Josh earlier in the week and just because of some of the other projects that were going on we were hoping to ask the select board to table that item until the next meeting in August. I think we can do that and I'm sure the folks from Stone and KAD would love that because they're next up. Trini may I interrupt please for a second? Yep. I just wanted to add one additional item to the Economic Development Council and a concern I have with existing members not attending. Can I go ahead and proceed with my concern? Sure. So we have three members that have not been coming to the council meeting on a regular basis and so it makes it very difficult for me as a chair because I have no quorum and you know so I have to circumvent and right now it's Mary Richter as the Economic Development Council and so I'm looking to maybe if we can replace these folks that are not attending because I have reached out to them to please make every effort but they have not done so and I have kept an attendance record which sounds horrible but you know I just want to you know mention that CJ Schrumpp the last time she has been to a meeting so we had 10 meetings she attended one her last one was April 16th. Then I have Ken Caddo. He out of the 10 only attended two and Jay Hooper only attended four and for Ken his last meeting he was at was April 24th and for Jay was April 30th so my concern is that we don't have a really a full council and I would like to continue to recruit and replace if I can those other council members. I think it's worth recruiting and finding folks that will step up and be active on the committee and I would support replacing the ones that are on the committee now if we could find some that would be active and would help you. You know we've given you three tonight which were the three that you had worked on this week and confirmed would participate. I know there's some other names that have been kicking around of folks that want to participate so I for one would completely support replacing them if they're not going to show up and you need the manpower and woman power to get it done. I'm all for it. Okay seems like maybe they part of me might want to seems like you might want to have a rule as to people can miss so many or whatever so it would be applied equally and then you could tell us who hasn't met the rule. That's my thing. I have no problem removing somebody that's only made 10% of the meetings whether there was a rule or not but. How about somebody that's made four or five. Well the problem is I think you have to treat everybody the same that's my issue. I think we have that on some committees to be enough to do but. Well what I will do is I'll continue recruiting and anybody who steps up who's interested then I will then discuss with them for a commitment and then present it to the select board for consideration and whether or not we can fill positions or we have to maintain what we have now until their term is up next year in March. Sounds good. Okay I'll continue the efforts then. Thank you. Thanks Mary. Thank you Mary. All right so now we'll move to KAD and Stone. Trini if I may share with you and the board one item I've been working with with Dan a voice in who's working with KAD models and they have shared with me a presentation that they have assured me will move along very very quickly it's just a few slides so at one point during Dan's comments I will switch over to a screen share view that will include the brief presentation of the environmental work that has gone on at the former Greenwood building. Sounds good. Are you starting Dan? Yeah I can start. Adolfo has the presentation he could put it up and it shows our pretty branded PowerPoint presentation because you know we need to show that. So my name is Dan Vosian I'm a senior geologist and director of environmental remediation and assessment group at Stone. We've been working with KAD and the Greenwoods and two rivers out of Quichy Regional Commission to do environmental assessment remedial planning at the LW Greenwood and Sons property. You are probably very familiar with it. You can go down two slides Adolfo and just keep things moving along to the site over the map. You're probably familiar with it. It has served as an equipment retailer and repair facility for 70 years or more 80 years I believe and consists of a few buildings four buildings at the intersection of Chelsea Mountain Road and Route 14 and East Randolph. Our work began next slide Adolfo. The KAD came to Ron Greenwood and his family to purchase the property earlier last year and completed with the intention to moving a branch office of his business KAD models and prototyping to the area from the Bay Area to open up a division. Brian Kippen the CEO of KAD is a Vermont native and is looking to come back to Roost and eventually have East Coast, West Coast operations of his business. He can explain more about that later should you want to test him on that. But it is a classic Brownfield success in the making. We have a manufacturing business high-end, a dance manufacturing doing CNC programming, etc coming into a property that is currently vacant and hasn't been vacant for about two years. They intend to hire a general manager, some CNC programmers and eventually grow their staff in East Randolph to 10 to 15 employees. They are already investing in the renovations of the building. They are a tenant with the Greenwoods current light. The intention is to buy it, have an LLC, purchase the property and then rent it to KAD Inc. But investing into both equipment, the renovations of the building and personnel. You go to the next slide. Our involvement started last August. As I mentioned, we did what is called a phase one environmental assessment of the property for due diligence purposes, naming the users being KAD of that report. And that process identifies what environmental conditions could exist at the property that could be indicative of an issue. There's no testing. It's just strictly a desktop review and a site walk to prove what might be there. So we identified that this place has done machine maintenance in it for a very long time. And due to the nature of that work and the fact that there are some mechanisms, some physical attributes of the site, there could be releases of various contaminants to the subsurface. You can envision any shop like this, that they use oils, they have solvents, etc. fuels, and that kind of thing that might be dribs and drabs here and there, and not nefarious in their actions, but in their summation, resultant conditions that are not great for all uses, all future uses of the site. So that was our conclusion based on a phase one. We quickly moved into the phase two, which is where you actually do and test soil and other things for contaminants. This is a picture of the drilling that was conducted at the site. We did soil and groundwater assessment out there. We did sampling of what's called sub slab soil gas, which is the interstitial air between soil particles in soil below the slab of the building to see whether or not there might be a release below the building. And we did find some contamination, and we can get into that. Then we did what's called an ICA, or evaluation of corrective action alternatives. It's a term that is within the process of going through management of hazardous sites. It is where we get to consider different options for cleaning up a site for its intended use. So in that process, we did a little bit of soil gas delineation some further, to bind problems, that kind of thing. And we also were concerned whether or not the slab itself contained volatile organic compounds, the solvents, the gasoline or the diesel fuels or whatever, that might in itself provide a source that would impact indoor air quality. So that was one of the targets of the ICA. And then we did some testing to see how we can go about actually fixing it. So it was some physical tests to design a system that might be appropriate for the site. Next slide. And so what we found, we had soil gas contamination below the buildings for three of the four buildings. And they were essentially, one of the buildings was of focus, the building, what we call Building One, which is the main L.L.B. Greenwood building, where they did the retail sales of parts, they had their offices, they had in their main garage, that's the Building One. There was small concentrations or low concentrations and two of the other, two of the three, the four other buildings. And but not above standards that would be appropriate for a non-residential use. So we have in Vermont, we compare first to residential use across the board. And then we will consider non-residential uses, commercial or industrial uses, based on the land use of the site. So this one is clearly not a residential setting within the property itself. So we were, we default to the industrial standard. So up to the four buildings, one had concentrations in soil gas that had to be addressed. And that was primarily chlorinated solvent known as tetrachloroethene or PCE. It's also known as PERC, dry cleaning solvent. It's very common in automotive solvents. You can go to any auto parts store today and pick up PERC containing carp cleaner. And we also found that it was in the concrete and it was potentially off-gassing into the building. But the other things that we assessed, the groundwater, et cetera, the soil did not contain issues. So we were really happy to see that the problem was very limited to soil gas below this one building of the site. Next slide. So why we're concerned, this is a vapor, this is just a cartoon of what vapor intrusion is. Basically we're concerned with the vapors coming into the building from below it. They use preferential pathways to get in, some cracks or conduits or other sites sorts of things for preparations that go through this lab. And if concentrations are high enough below the building, they can present a condition inside the building that is not acceptable for its use and could have adverse effects. So that's the concept. And then in this site, we also have the presence of cornea solvents in the slab itself, in the concrete. So typically when we do vapor intrusion mitigation, we just cut off below the slab. Now we actually had to treat what's going on with the slab because there are two sources of the contamination, both below and within the slab. Next slide. So the impermeable approach that we came up with is twofold. The first is to seal the slab itself. And we're using an epoxy vapor barrier to do so. These are commercially available epoxy products that you could probably see, you know, seen ads to fix your garage floor with different things to make it look pretty. But in this case, it will both make a very nice usable floor surface, but also prevent vapors from coming out of the slab. So we consider this a passive vapor barrier. There's no active system associated with this, but we're essentially just sealing all the cracks, prepping the floor, and then applying a few coats of this epoxy product that will be a complete retardant of vapor intrusion or vapors coming out of the slab. Next slide. And then for the suspenders to the belt solution here, we're also providing a vent below the slab. So to prevent the buildup of vapors below the slab and possibly finding its way through other mechanisms into the indoor air, we are providing a pathway for it to get out of the building, or out from below the slab and not be in indoor air. And so that's just going to be a, we'll be calling a sub slab vent where we will create a sump below the concrete floor of the building, seal some PVC, essentially to the slab and into that sump, and then root the PVC all the way through the building up to the roof, and then put a wind turbine at the top to create a vacuum below the slab. So it's not intended to actively like extract the vapors, but it will provide a way for those vapors to move out of the subsurface. Next slide. So where we are in the process, this presentation and meeting and associated question and answers should there be any. It satisfies the public comment, public meeting for a loan that is in process with KAD and the Agency of Commerce and Community Development, their ROF, the Revolving Loan Fund that they maintain for round field revitalization. So we are in the middle of the public comment period. The corrective action plan, which contains these two solutions, was presented and posted for public comment on June 17th by the DEC, and they have 30, there's 30 day public comment period in Vermont to respond, public can provide questions or issues or any other kind they can provide a public comment up until the 17th. Then we expect that if any questions come up or issues come be presented to the DEC related to the corrective action plan, they will be addressed in a final cap. And it's not unheard of. Sometimes they have to extend the public comment period if there are iterations of comments or whatnot. But that's why we're here to figure that out. So after the cap is signed, sealed and delivered, the KAD will purchase the property. It will be transferred and then they will be granted the loan to complete the remedy and the owners of the site. The remedy should take no more than a week. And we're expecting that to occur in late August. The next step after that is that there are some documentation steps that we need to complete, as builds, etc., that we call it corrective action construction completion report in the acronym down at the bottom of the table in front of you. And so we can make sure that everything is working correctly, that the owner, KAD, knows how to maintain and document and report its condition to the state, etc., so that that process gets finalized. And then what's drafted is known as a certificate of completion or a COC. And that effectively closes the site for the existing conditions of the site. That, I guess in a sense, transfers liability for the past problems to state. So it removes any liability from KAD. So that process should take about 30 days after we have the corrective action report. And we're expecting that to occur in October. And then along the way, KAD will be doing their outfit and off to the races. And I think we're at the questions slide. We are. So we'll happily maintain, entertain any questions. We have Linda Provencher as well on the meeting. And Linda is our site manager with the DEC. We have Casey and Brian from KAD. And Sarah Rait from two rivers out of Quiche, who is the Brownfields coordinator for the Regional Planning Commission. So we're happy to talk about any questions you might have. Great. Any good questions from board members? Welcome back. I have a question, Jenny. Dan, what causes the pollution in the cement slab? Is that something that was there originally? Or is it from stuff being on the surface? Yeah. So you can envision within a typical maintenance job of a truck coming in or a tractor or whatever that LW Greenwood was working on, they might be doing breakwork or whatever. And they're spraying solvent on the rotors or the discs or whatever is there or cleaning parts. And there'd be drips and drabs off of that process onto the slab. And so that, you know, those small things over time will amount to a condition that will be a problematic. In the building itself, there was a floor drain, a trench drain that daylighted to its outfall. Actually, it didn't go into a dry well. It just went outside. And that was closed, I think, fairly early after they started using it. But that was also what our thought was why we have stuff below the slab is that you have these products and, you know, snowmelt coming off the trucks that are being worked on and that kind of thing that would carry the solvents through the cracks in the concrete or maybe cracks within the floor drain itself to the subsurface. And so it's not a naturally occurring product. And it really is a function of this 80 years of maintenance type issues. And these products are very, very common across sites that are very similar. You know, if you go to most automotive garages that were operating in the 60s and 70s, they probably had Perk in their parts washers or they're around the shelf. Thank you. Any other questions from board members? None. Any questions from the public? Yes, this is John Pimentel from East Randall. I'm curious as to where the postings for public comment have been placed within the town? Sure. So as part of the process, we send out letters to all the butters with specific directions. There's also what's called the environmental notice bulletin, which is a state maintained database, you know, a posting of all of these bulletins that you back to 50 permits or wastewater permits. They all are posted there, but you can find it there. If you want a copy of the cap directly, we could certainly take down your contact information and just send it to you. Any other comments? Not seeing any hands or flags. Dan, just to confirm, there's no action required by the select board, correct? Nope. Is that correct, Linda? I'm pretty sure we got, there's no, yeah, there's no approval or... That's correct. Yeah, this is just part of the requirements just to inform people on what's being planned. Well, thank you. Thank you. We will move on to the next item, which is a proposed solar firm project also in East Randall. Community, we have a representative from Norwich Solar in the meeting. We have Brendan Malley, who has been communicating with the Planning Commission, communicating with Josh, his capacity as zoning administrator. And then there's also a shared information with me, which I then shared with the select board. Hi, everybody. Can you hear me? We can. Okay, great. Thanks for having me. So the purpose of being on the agenda tonight, and I introduced this topic several meetings ago, is to acquire the select board's signature on a letter designating, this is a preliminary step, designating this site as a preferred site for solar with the town. Planning Commission was the first stop, then the select board, and then the regional Planning Commission. One letter with those three signatures is not the end of the permitting process, it's the beginning of the permitting process. So following this begins the state permitting process in which, like the previous group, all the abutters will get notices, and there will be a 45-day comment period and an extended permitting process. So I'm happy to describe the project in general terms, as well as answer any questions that anyone needs. Sounds good. Okay. So it's a, what's called a 500 kilowatt net-metered community solar array. So it's of a size that's common in Vermont. It's connected to the local distribution grid through pre-mountain power. All of the benefits of the array stay local here in Vermont. It's not connected to anything that goes out of state. All the environmental benefits stay here as well as what the array produces. It's going to be located on the Giffords property, just off on the west side of 14, and it takes up somewhere between three and four acres of space on the property. And we've been working with the neighbors to adjust the location to accommodate the neighbors' concerns. And again, I'd be happy to take any particular questions, or I can be my pleasure to continue to talk about solar for a long time. So, Brendan, I don't know if you were on when I was a little late starting, but I had mentioned that I was getting a phone call from somebody that was on the agenda, and it was the neighboring property owners. And my concern was that the documents that were submitted to us for the project to approve were not what I understood was taking place with the abutting landowners. And so, what the board has before them tonight is a March plan. And my understanding is that is not what is actually supposed to be before us to approve. So, the board is not approving any plan at all. In fact, what are circulated are kind of general area designations or concepts. So, all the board is indicating is that this property that parcel is a preferred site for solar. The specific location of the specific equipment associated with the array will continue to be developed according to the input of the neighbors and the other butters. So, the board is not approving any particular plan, either the very general description from March or anything kind of subsequent revisions. It's just a designation that this location is a preferred location for solar, not a particular plan. As a board member, I have a problem approving a solar array being developed in front of where somebody has already gotten a permit from the town to construct a new house. So, as a board, so the property is a larger parcel of land. And so, one of my concerns is, while I am all for solar, I completely understand these folks' concern that they've worked their entire life, saved this money, and are about to build a home and don't want to look out the windows that they've planned and off the deck at a solar array. So, they're asking, how can you make sure if the town is going to support this that that's not what we're looking at? So, how do I answer that question? So, I guess the answer is that we have met with the neighbors and have agreed to modify the location of the array on the property. We have exchanged some additional versions of a conceptual plan with the neighbors and have reached an agreement. However, they will continue to have standing in the entire permitting process that will start now and go through the state as a butters. They will have standing in that process. So, nothing that happens with the preferred siting will kind of remove their standing in the in the permitting process. So, So, as a town, we have zoning and we had to amend our zoning, right, to talk about preferred locations for solar. So, what you're telling me right now is the only authority the town has is to pick a parcel. We can't choose where it's we have no say in where it's located. And we even have a say in where a house is located when somebody builds a home on property or if you're, you know, anything you're doing on your property goes through some type of public review at the town level. And we say yay or nay, it meets our, you know, town plan or zoning or whatever. So what you're asking us to do is just say yep, anywhere on this parcel is okay with us to put solar. But yet we know we have this very valid concern from somebody who is in a butter. Right. So, and we have an agreement with that a butter to, to adjust the location of the specific location of the array to address their concerns. So, what happens the town's letter says we will support it as long as it matches this agreement that is with the butter. So, I don't know the answer to the question. Essentially, if we went back several years, the addition of this step, this preferred signing step that was added to the state permitting process was intended to explicitly include the Planning Commission and the Select Board and the Regional Planning Commission in this process. And so this is kind of following that opportunity that was provided about four years ago. And so, I guess I'm trying to, I don't know what is possible. What is a specific location of the array is not being authorized by the town. The town is not approving of a solar array at this juncture. All that's being done is saying that this, it's possible to pursue the siting of a solar array on, on this property. So, so the town is not in the position of a, right now you are not signing off on the location of a solar array. Just the beginning of the attempt to permit a solar array. What happens if our letter says we're fine with a solar array being on this parcel as long as it's not in the view shed of this already permitted project? I guess I'm not sure. I don't, I don't know the answer. I've never encountered that before, that type of condition. I'm, I'm sure we can look into it. But you understand the concern. So, right. I, I do understand the concern. And in fact, that's the concern that we've worked with the neighbors to address. And that is the concern that will continue to be addressed in the permitting process that we're about to start. So, for instance, as part of the state permitting process, there's an aesthetic assessment that all of the butters have standing in the process, including the neighbors with, with this concern. So no part of the preferred citing letter eliminates any of that standing. All of that work has yet to be done. The, the aesthetic analysis and, and the, and the neighbors standing in the process continues. I still believe that if the town is specific in our support for the project and the property as a solar array, as long as it's in this area that you've already agreed to, so it shouldn't bother you that it's in the letter spelled out, it gives that a budding property owner who has just invested all this money some level of comfort that they haven't just put their life savings into their retirement home to look at a solar array. Right. So I, I guess my only, so I don't have any objection at all to, to that being put in the letter. I don't, what I can't tell you is the consequence of it because it's, I wouldn't know how to necessarily articulate it in, in some terms that would be actionable. We could, we could work to figure out how to put that in the letter or it's just there, what we're trying to do is to put a protection in this letter, which I understand the concern, but it's a essentially a protection that is intended for the next step, the permitting step of the process. But the town's not part of that, right? We're not part of it. Our one shot at what we would normally be participating in for development in town and has to do with, you know, harmony with neighbors and that development will, once we are done with this letter, the town is out of it. So we have a valid concern that normally in zoning or whatever we would address. And there is no standing for the town to help in this position. So my preference is to give the letter of support, but also include in it that it's, as long as, and my understanding is it's doable. You just have to move the project down on the property sum and they're willing to give you a variance of the setback or something and whatnot. I guess I agree with you in the sense that it's certainly possible it's kind of already been achieved in an agreement with a neighbor is the idea. So I suppose maybe the town to help them put a little bit more merit into what they're asking for to try to make sure they get it. Right. But as a town, I think it's a legitimate request from somebody. So I'm trying to think of the easiest way to do this is to I'm wondering if it's possible for you and the and the abutting landowner to reach some sort of a formal agreement that would precede our signing the letter. And so we won't have to try to combine things that aren't normally combined together, but we could still use the town's leverage to address the concerns of one of our residents. So thank you. We have an email that I shared with Adolfo indicating the agreement, but we could try to draft that onto a letter that would make sense. So something formal and enforceable. Right. That would be a reasonable thing to do, which was if there was a letter acceptable to both parties, then we could submit that letter to the select board and that the select board would then upon their review of that letter or agreement then sign the preferred signing letter. And we could even we could even decide to accept that we're going to sign that letter. We could say that tonight, pending, you know, receipt of an agreement. And that and we could, you know, authorize Adolfo to sign that he's on board with that everything is kind of gone according to the spirit of our conversation here. Now, I don't think we wouldn't have to push it to the next meeting. Sure. I appreciate that. If I may, Brandon, I'm sorry to interrupt if that would be the course of the board. I don't disagree with that and I will leave it to the board to decide, but if we are going down that path then I would like the opportunity to if an agreement is reached by Norwich Solar and the property owner and they do submit a formal letter and writing to the town saying we agree this is what we agree on and we both sign any stipulation could also include that, you know, I could be authorized to sign pending a sharing of this agreement through email. And if there are any objections by any board member who could just reply to me through email independently, then then I could go ahead and sign. So this way the board sees a final product of the agreement letter has one final opportunity to comment on it. Outside of the meeting, but maybe to me and then I could disseminate information. And so this way a final agreement can be viewed by everyone before I sign officially on behalf of the town. That sounds good to me. I'd like to ask a question if I may about the nature of the proposed agreement. Does it relate to some kind of buffering, whether it be trees or landscaping or whatever that would mitigate the concerns of the property owner about the visual impact of the solar project on their property? Primarily a relocation or an area of the Giffords property where the array would not be located. Okay. So it's the Giffords property and there's an area of the Giffords property that is adjacent to the proposed home site or the approved home site. And the neighbors would prefer that the array not be located on that portion of the Giffords property. Okay. That's helpful. Thank you. The way the topography is Tom, the way their permit is for their home, they would look right out and see a solar array. Right. Right off their front porch. I get why they're upset. Oh, I do too. I do too. I'm an ardent supporter of solar but I also under and of wind but I understand the dynamics of people's concern particularly in terms of sightlines about both those sources. So I get it. There's a resolution to this one too. Right. You know, they're just saying, how do we make sure that they follow through with it? Right. Because they're asking for board approval tonight and all there is is some emails that have gone back and forth. So I get it. I get it too. I appreciate it and I appreciate the suggestion of the of the signed agreement. And I think that makes a lot of sense. Okay. Do I make some comments, Trini? Sure, Pat. I think my concern is with my biggest concern is with the process because I too am a big supporter of solar. But I sat in the planning, watched the planning commission when they talked about the subject over and couldn't couldn't decide what preferred sites were as I remember from their point of view. So that leaves this option which you have to have the approval of three different groups. So now every solar sighting is going to have to come through to us and go through us. And it seems like if that's the case, we'd have to have some criteria to judge why this is or isn't preferred site. And it also seems like we'd want to have a hearing for public input because we don't know everything. There are a lot of things we don't know as we've already found out that somebody's building a house in there. And the third thing that I'd want to know is what's their answer going to be? Because I'd like to know their thinking. My understanding is all three groups have to say yes. The planning commission has said yes. Did they have any criteria that they judged it by? I want to use the same criteria for each site proposal. And I'm not saying I think we've got into a bad process here. So I can speak to that a little bit. So as many of you know, the planning commission spent probably close to a year discussing the sighting of solar. And I believe we even had a so-called, I guess, an expert in this process who came and made the presentation to the planning commission. And numerous people had reviewed the current criteria that we developed. And it was critiqued by a lot of people. So that criteria is what we, the planning commission, went ahead with in this process. So we have a process and it's not perfect, but it was what was agreed upon by the majority of the people who attended these meetings that the planning commission held. So that's where we're at. And this is why, you know, it's got to come before the select board and it's got to go before two rivers because you need to address these kind of things because we couldn't do that in the planning commission level because of the amount of input that was coming back and forth. And so we came up with the compromise and so this is where the compromise sits. So you actually do have criteria from your earlier work then? There is. It's in, you know, the select board passed it. It's in the zoning document. It was in the amended document that was put before the select board here about a year ago. But you didn't come up with any preferred sites, right? We elected not to do preferred sighting because there was an awful lot of controversy over mapping and picking preferred sites. So it was a very hotly discussed item. There was a lot of input into that. And so when it all was said and done, and I believe that her name was Annette Smith who came and everybody agreed that when she made her presentation that what we had was probably the most workable document and that's why it went into the amendment that the select board approved. Yeah, no, I followed those meetings. Yeah. So, you know, pick up a zoning document and, you know, take a look because that's what we have. Yeah, I would, I would want to have a public hearing. I'd like to know what to River says and I would like to have some criteria in front of me that sounds like from what you're saying everybody agrees on. Well, I mean, like I said, the select board passed this amendment to the zoning document. So I think that's where you want to start and see and the planning commission felt that the project, you know, going forward, these concerns would be addressed and that is the process. And that criteria is what the planning commission used when they wrote a letter. Yep. The planning commission felt that this, this was a was a project that they could approve based on what we had to work with. So, you know, the process going forward is, yes, now the landowner gets to have his say the select board gets to weigh in to Riverside, which he gets to lay in. I'm pretty sure the public service board has to weigh in. So there's a lot of steps going forward that gives the landowner in the town, the authority to chat about it. And I think this is a pretty good solution to the problem is to have a written agreement. As Larry suggested, that's a legal binding agreement going forward. So then the town can say, okay, we did our piece. And can you tell me the criteria that the No, Pat, I'm on a road right now. If you'd like to pull up the zoning document, I believe you'd be able to look in there and see it. I would like to see that. And I'd like to have a public hearing as I think well, a public hearing is, I don't think I'm not sure that a public hearing is required. I don't think it's required, but if we're coming up with a preferred site, we're saying this is a preferred site for the town. Well, that means it's going to have to rewrite the zoning documents. I don't think so. Not from what I remember. Okay. Well, you can dig into the criteria and take a look at it and come up with your own opinion on what you feel should happen. I already gave you my opinion there. Yeah, I know you did. And I'm just telling you that, you know, we have, we hassled on this stuff for over a year. And, you know, everybody had an opinion about it who came to those meetings. And in the end, we worked out a compromise. And that compromise was passed by the select board in an amended zoning document. And this may be one of the best sites in town. It looks like a relatively good site. But I'd like to know the criteria that says it is preferred. Well, if I was sitting in my office right now with my document in front of me, I'd be able to help you with that. But unfortunately, I'm not right now. I'm traveling. So, Pat, help me understand what happens if our planning commission has a public hearing on this. And they come to the conclusion that this is a good site. And then the select board sits down with the exact same criteria. We have a public hearing on it and we decide it's not a good site. How do we reconcile those two? I think somebody should have a hearing. I'm not saying the planning commission had the hearing. If I may add some more information. One of the reasons why the project, this particular project was delayed to make it to the select board agenda was because initially the project had been reviewed by the planning commission and not included in the agenda. So what the town recommended to the planning commission was that this project be revisited by the planning commission to give it an opportunity to post it on the agenda, promote it throughout the town as we should promote it throughout the town. And so we've taken the steps to become very transparent by posting this very specific project on the agenda, sharing it as we normally do, so that the community has had the opportunity to see that the planning commission was meeting, know that they could attend the meeting, and the information was out there. So that's why we took that extra step to ensure that this wasn't a project that was just approved through an amended agenda, but one that was reviewed and approved by the planning commission after having fully been warned on the agenda. Oh, I'm glad of that. Right. And I guess just to add to that, this is the second select board meeting where the project has been on the agenda as well. It just had to get pulled on the one prior to the event discussion. I think that some of the delay was there was some confusion, right? The planning commission reached out to the abutting property owner, but it was at last minute and they were working out of town, got back into town actually the night of the hearing, if I remember correctly, so they weren't able to participate in the hearing. So some of it was to allow that time for the agreement, which you've reached with them, that's just missing that kind of formalized piece. So, and I think that's a great idea. I'm happy to receive it and act upon it and provide it back to the town. We have a proposal on the table to approve this as a preferred site, pending an agreement arriving in the town offices between Norwich Solar and the abutting property owner. It seems like a reasonable compromise to me. Is there anybody that would like to make a motion to that effect? I will make that motion. Is there room for the public to speak? After we get to a second on that motion, then we can discuss it. I'll second the motion. Okay, I believe Jerry had a comment. Yeah, thanks. I've been listening hard and I'm I'm really not hearing the reason why the select board is hearing this or what their purview is here. I'll tell you my understanding of the way the system is supposed to work is that towns have the right, if not the duty, to put into their town plan what are preferred sites. That's, and then that should be as specific as they can be as they want to be. And in our case, as Perry outlined, it was very problematic in Randolph and it was going to take a lot of time and they didn't get very far. And when that happens, which is actually what I think most towns in Vermont do, the PUC has their own criteria for what are preferred sites. That's the only place that I'm aware of that this term preferred sites is talked about. There was talk about it being in a zoning document, which I'm frankly not familiar with. So I'd like to hear what that is if that speaks to the legitimacy of preferred sites. But as far as I'm concerned, it's mostly a PUC decision based on their criteria. If, unless we have it in our own planning, our town plan. And so I'm left with wondering why is this even a select board decision? It seems like it either meets the town's criteria that have been identified as a preferred site or it does not. Should be pretty black and white. And if we can't decide, then I guess a town public hearing is what's going to be needed. But I think the point of the planning commission's work and the town plan we approved was to avoid the select board from having to be involved in decisions like this, which as we're seeing gets sticky. So I just want to raise those concerns and sorry if it sounds impertinent, but I'm questioning the whole procedure that you're going through right now. Thank you. Just a little bit of answer Jerry, I believe we're required in the new process for these, which is part of why the planning commission went through the struggle of how to handle preferred sites. And I think a lot of Randolph's interest was driven out of the 100 acre solar array that was being looked at up in Randolph center. And there was some changes made to legislation that better defined what towns needed to do and what they didn't. Maybe Brendan can answer this, but if a town shows no preferred sites in their town plan, how does that work when you come into develop? It doesn't mean you don't get to correct. So I appreciate the public comment and would just say that this is in fact the process. The towns have the ability as Randolph attempted to do to identify preferred sites in advance of any development. Relatively few towns have made it through that process of doing the necessary mapping and defining in advance what would be preferred. So absent that individual sites are proposed by an individual or developer and then the town, first through the planning commission, then through the select board and then through the regional planning commission, consider them individually. So that's the process. That process is created by the public utilities commission. But these follows those steps. Brendan, could you still proceed if it wasn't a preferred site? That doesn't stop you, right? It just makes the process harder. No, you cannot proceed with this type of project without it being a preferred site. Because you could proceed. Right, so it's impossible. I don't know if one has actually ever made it through in the last four years, but you can do a 150 on a non-preferred site. But not a 500. It's a good process in general. It takes our time and I know it's a burden. But we've worked with many towns in the state and many planning commissions and select boards. I feel like tonight it provides good input and helps people in town. So I'm happy we're doing it. So we have a motion and a second on the table. Any more discussion? I would just like to say my feeling again that I think if we're going to be looking at basically every large solar project, we should have some criteria that we're going on. It should be in writing. We should be able to see that when we're talking about it. And we should have a public hearing that's well announced so that other people in town can comment whether it's a preferred site. Okay. We have a motion and a second on the floor. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Opposed? Aye. Aye. Motion carries. Next up are some right away requests. This is Shannon. Sorry, just to confirm everybody voted yes except Pat. I wasn't sure what Larry voted. I voted for it. Okay. Thanks. Yes, treaty. The right of way requests that have been made to the town. The first one is from Longtime Town resident, Mr. Jack Cowdery. The right of way being requested is a right of way entrance that crosses partially across the Randolph Village fire stations north. Well, the eastern part of the entrance. The driveway that leads to the first apartment complex next to the fire station shares an almost an exit area. The fire chief for the village was not opposed to the right of way, but did have some requests that some conditions that the right of way include a no parking restriction that blocking of the driveway cannot be permitted and just so that fire trucks can have easy entrance and exit even if the right of way has been granted to the apartment. I believe this is cleanup still from when we constructed the fire station because early on there was conversation with him about we dug up a portion of his driveway. And changed the slope. I believe on that bank. And in the end, we were going to clean this up for him. That's right. Yes. Conditions were all discussed at that time that the ability for him and his tenants to cross over that land to access was one thing, but they wouldn't be allowed to. And we had we weren't going to allow anything in there. So there was conversation about I can remember the because it kind of got off kilter a little bit the discussion about they weren't even allowed to have like lawn sales or anything like that and use that space. And it all went back to their access was a shared access with the fire folks. Yeah. Could I move to approve the right of way request, please? If I may make a recommendation, if there is a motion with the conditions correct. Thank you. Your motion pad is to approve it with conditions with the four conditions that are enumerated by the party. It's all second. That you have a motion and a second miss all those in favor. I'm stained. Motion carries. Washington Electric. We received a right of way request from Washington Electric. They are requesting a right of way to install a an electrical pole next to the intersection of Chelsea Mountain Road and Moxley. They firmly believe that the electric pole is outside of the town's right of way, but would still like a right of way. So if they need to trim trees or remove branches that they can do so without having any any issues with the town. I shared this permit and the mapping with Morgan Drury or highway superintendent and he did not have any problems with the location of the pole or the proposed location of the pole or with electrical wires crossing Chelsea Mountain Road and that location. Same reasonable to me. I'll make a motion that we grant Washington County Electric the right of way. I will second that. Motion and a second all those in favor. Look already in the middle of the vote. Sorry we usually have time for discussion. My question would be Adolfo, do you have the map? Are we starting at 94? The map I could bring it up now. There is one dot just north of the Moxley Chelsea Mountain Road intersection. That would be the pole that is being proposed for installation. And the wires would cross from that northernmost pole to the closest pole just south of the intersection of Moxley and Chelsea Mountain Road. And that's is that to get access to number eight here? It would be for a proposed new either trailer or temporary housing where the proposed pole is to be installed. It's to put the electric access to that future construction. So our only right away is from like 94 to 95. Right, it's just that one small section across Chelsea Mountain Road. Okay, thank you. All right, next up we have proposed amendments to the sign ordinance. I don't believe we have any members of the, oh, we do. I'm sorry, we have Perry members of the planning commission here. But I did present in the draft sign ordinance, the very top first page are the comments or the information that the planning commission wanted to share with the select order about the changes that have been proposed in the sign ordinance document. Was that in our documents this time? Yes, it was included in your packets. It's titled Sign Ordinance Draft. Sign Ordinance Draft, yep, in description and proposal. Yeah, it has a talking points for the sign ordinance. The first page is the talking points. Correct. Do we have any comments or questions? Perry, can you speak to the language where it says major change in terms of exactly what content neutral signage code means based on the Supreme Court decision? Yeah, so what happened was we were given a document based on Supreme Court the decision here of Reed versus the town of Gilbert. And so one of those decisions was that all content in these signs needs to be content neutral. So we struggled with that, figured that out, came up with the draft and I believe that we feel that what we presented here meets all those requirements of being content neutral. So I think we spent probably three to four meetings on this. And so we reviewed the remainder of the document and those other changes are in here. Didn't seem to be too big of changes. We did talk about code and how we were going to deal with the offenses. So you can see in there that we've raised the rates on that. And so I think that's pretty much the synopsis on that. What does content neutral mean? Just to get some clarification on that. I suspect I know, but what does that really mean in terms of the content of the signage? Well, a lot of stuff went on in discussions about this. So there was discussions about religious stuff and those kind of things. So you can't deny a church that wants to put up a sign. And so we ran into a lot of that kind of stuff. So it needed to be, I'd have to say, the document I think was six or seven pages long and I can't recite all that to you right now. But we needed to address what we were dealing with and we didn't really have any problems. But this was something that had come up. And so we needed to change the ordinances to make sure that we didn't discriminate and we kept stuff neutral. Tom, to add to Perry's comment, essentially what the town can do is it could dictate the size of the sign, it could dictate that it's located on the property that where the sign is being advertised, like a mobile oil, it would be on the mobile oil side. So the town could set criteria for the sign and the dimensions and everything else. But we can't police whether it says, I like automatic weapons or I like speech issue. Exactly. Those are the things you can't let one group put up something that you wouldn't let another. And that was the case specifically that Perry cited the read versus town of Gilbert and that the town of Gilbert had been accused of denying signs because they didn't like the content of the sign. The content neutral basically speaks to fundamental freedom of speech and expression. Yeah, kind of. As long as it's not a scene or, you know. Yeah, there's some parameters about, you know, upset and good taste, I guess. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you can't do that. But I mean, it was like, you know, religious freedom and those kind of things and, you know, people's political views and stuff like that. So you can't, you can't, you can't regulate that. No, no, absolutely. As a pretty confirmed civil libertarian, I get that. So yeah, yeah, okay. Good, good, good. We felt that, you know, we did a pretty good job with, with taking all those things into consideration. You'll notice here, we talked about murals and arts and what's not a sign and what is a sign. So I think we covered it, you know, based on, you know, history and what we know the ordinance hadn't been rewritten for a long time. So we felt that this was needed. And so I think everybody, I think this was approved by the entire board. I don't think it was anybody who, you know, voted nay against this. Right. Let me just ask a question here. Given the discussion we had at the last select board meeting concerning flags, does this in any way address the question of flags on public facilities as opposed to by the property? I don't remember having that conversation and I don't think we addressed it. So that was kind of after the fact here. Right. Okay. Okay. So I'm looking at a definition of flag here. Any fabric banner or bunting containing distinctive colors, patterns or symbols used as a symbol of a government, political subdivision, or other entity. I just, there's some gray area there that I don't think we need. We don't need to address tonight, but it certainly should this discussion come up again relative to public facilities. It seems like we might want to be prepared to address that in the future. Yeah. And that could be, you know, if you want that to be a planning commission charge, you know, certainly you could ask the planning commission to take a look at that. I don't think anybody we would object to that. So might be an interesting exercise. Great. Any other questions about the proposal? Anybody interested in making a motion to approve it? Was that a motion? You wanted a motion to warn the hearing, right? Is that correct? I don't believe, Pat, to answer your question, I don't believe that it would need a hearing for the sign ordinance unless I missed something. When I was just reading what you sent to us, we're not talking about approval based on that. We're talking about your recommendation here close to the sign ordinance and draft form of the town's website. So is that the motion that we're looking for here? I'd have to review your document. You may be correct. I would have to refresh myself on the process, but it could require a public hearing because it is a revision of the ordinance. The recommendation says, like Larry said, post the revised signed ordinance and draft form on the town's website warn and approve and select board feels ready to do so. Yeah, I'd have to review the process. These comments are from the Planning Commission, so I'd have to review the process. If possible, if we could issue, if the board would consider issuing a motion conditional, conditional to approve the draft and if it requires a hearing for me to continue with the hearing, and if it does not require a hearing, then the ordinance changes going to effect. I'll make a motion that we approve the new sign ordinance pending a decision on whether a public hearing needs to be held, and if so, we hold that hearing. If not, we move forward with formal approval, if that meets your requirements. It's awful. That would. Thank you, Tom. I'll second that. I would just comment. I think all ordinances require a hearing for you. We have a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you. Is the bids for custodial services? Yes, we've reached the point where our existing contract for custodial services will end because of the amount, the annual or the amount of the contract exceeds $10,000. We thought it best to bring the proposed bid document to the board to approve the document so that we may release the document out for bid. The board approves. We'll send it out and hopefully receive bids from custodial companies that are interested in providing the services on the bid document. I can add that the document itself was reviewed by me, was reviewed by our finance department director, and then also by Amy Grasmick at the library as there are specific cleaning conditions that are set by the library. Other than changing the dates, any questions? Adelpho, you gave us four copies in our packet. They're all the same, right? Yes. That was a mistake I noticed after the fact, and I don't know why I included four copies of it, but it's not four times as important. I just have a quick question about how we determine who the request for bids goes out to. Do we have a list of custodial services in the region, custodial service services in the region that we would customarily send this to? And does that list include minority-owned businesses of which I'm aware of at least two in the region that provide these services? What we typically do is we post notices in the Herald in our local publication. We also, within the last year, started posting requests for bids or requests for proposals on a statewide system, a system that Josh was familiar with, and so we started posting there. And then we also post the notice on the town's website. Okay. And we also encourage anyone who knows of businesses that are interested in bidding to share the notice widely. The more competition we have for something like this, ideally the lower the bids. Thank you. Sure. Any more questions on this one? Comments? Motions? Move that we use this document for the bid for custodial services. I will second that. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. So, stained carries. Orange County Sheriff Department data review. We have on the call we have Sheriff Bagnac and we also have Deputy Hinojosa who joined the Randolph team several weeks ago, several months ago. If I may, I would like to preface their sharing of information with the select board just by sharing that prior to us having a connection with the Sheriff's Department, it was very difficult if not almost impossible to track this type of thing. It just was not something that we were able to obtain from the Randolph Police Department. And since switching over to the Sheriff's Department, we have had overwhelming positive response from the community. The initial concern of, you know, we can't lose the Randolph Police Department. We're losing our identity was an unknown fear because now that we have the Sheriff's Department here, the comments that I received are overwhelmingly to the effect of we see them everywhere. We never saw the Randolph Police Department this much. We see them walking the beat in the village. They're very responsive when they need to be, they're very professional when they need to be. And we've also heard very positive comments that Sheriff Bagnac is a town resident, he's a resident of Randolph. So I just wanted to share that before we share this information with the board from the Sheriff's Department. Well, thank you, Adolfo. I appreciate the comments. And I know all the deputies, they do work hard to, you know, making sure they're being a positive image in the community. So just give you kind of an overview on some of the stats. We tracked, you know, everything from the motor vehicle stats, that's the traffic stops themselves. And what I did was a one year snapshot basically from, you know, like July, say July 1st to June 30th. And in that time period, we stopped over 600 and some odd vehicles out of the 600 some vehicles. We actually issued 120 tickets and the rest are warnings. So, you know, we try to work with the public and educate the public on, you know, a lot of them are minor motor, motor vehicle violations like rolling through a stop sign. You know, recently we had several issues of speeding complaints. You know, we, we put the radar card out, especially up on Elm Street. And we've been doing directed patrols throughout the village. And so traffic has been like the number one, number one, if you, even on our arrest, we last year we arrested 49 people. The majority of the arrest were, had to do with some sort of driving infraction. Drivers like suspended. The other arrest that is notable is we had domestic violence, domestic violence arrest. And one was a pretty serious one where a woman stabbed her boyfriend several times. She's still sitting in Springfield jail, I believe, because she did this twice in about a two month period. Once in Randolph and once I believe in the Bethel area. But with that, directed patrols of, you know, that's our next highest incidence. Assisting citizens, you know, almost 100 or 175 of the citizens assist. That's everything. Someone comes either stops us on the street or at the PD, has some sort of question about, you know, it could be anything from a neighbor dispute to just helping with directions with something. And then, let's see here, agency assist, 114 of them. And what entails an agency assist, it's everything from not just helping like with the state police, but agency like Claire Martin Center, different medical center. It could be even helping out with a capstone community, helping them out. So another big one, suspicious incidents. You know, a citizen calls up, they got something that doesn't look right in the, you know, on their street or in the neighborhood or it could be a few times we got called to Cumberland Farms, where there's some activity in the side parking lot. So all together, you're looking about 19, a little over 1900 incidents total. So the deputies have been out and about, you know, the whole thing is we try to keep our vehicle, the deputies out on the road, either on foot patrols or out in the village. You know, it's not just the sitting in the, in the PD, as you can tell, over 600 motor vehicle stops. So, and I think the deputies have been very thoughtful and reasonable, writing over 500 warnings, and like 120 tickets. So, you know, we're not being aggressive as far as tickets. However, when we do have an area like Elm Street was a problem area, we've been addressing that. And also keeping an eye on Maple Street with the truck traffic. And Adolfo, I think you're 100% right, because I witnessed a truck turn down merchants row and then make a right going up Beanville, Pleasant Street to Beanville. So I think the GPS's have a lot to do with that later set up. I'm open for any questions. Sure. Sure. If I just like to ask, you mentioned domestic violence, and there's been a lot of reporting nationally since the COVID-19 shutdown of increases in domestic violence, because people have been basically kept at home. And I'm just wondering if you've seen any indication of that happening in our area as a consequence of the stay at home edicts. What we have noticed almost immediately on the onset of COVID and when the schools shut down was we had a lot of 15 and 16 year olds, they didn't want to listen to their parents. And they wanted to visit with their families. So that was like we had multiple calls like that. So it was like family disturbances. But you know, we went there and we talked with the, you take that few minutes and explain to the 15, 16 year old, hey, this is why your parents are doing this. And this is what's, you know, the ramifications of this COVID virus. And I think only one, I think out of all the ones we dealt with it, there's one person that was a repeat offender like three, four times before he finally got it and stopped trying to leave the house and and do other stuff. Right. But you know, with the, I believe in the last couple months, we did see that increase in the domestics in that, in that first COVID, the first two months, there wasn't increasing as domestics. And what's, what's crazy about it, it's, you know, we're the majority of them, if it's a, if it's a misdemeanor crime, we're citing people out two to three months in advance. So they're, they did something back in April or May and now they're going to court in July and August. So the courts are actually, it's going to be a backlog on the courts because they have many, many cases like that. And it's not just, you know, the sheriff's department, state police also. Sure. Sure. Thank you. Thank you. Sheriff, I have a question. Yes. On a couple of the reports that you gave, the one that says town arrest, the other one that says village arrests, there's a line that's blank on both of them. I was wondering what that's, what that's about. It doesn't list, it shows like an example of village one, 16.33%. It doesn't show what the, you know, exactly what it is. Yeah, exactly. So I could find that out for you, though, because it's listing actually eight arrests for that. That's something I'll, it's probably in a programming. I could find out and I'll get back to Adolfo and you can pass that along to you. Have any other questions on the reports? I have one. No, this is Pat. As you looked over these statistics, was there anything that surprised you that was out of line with, you know, other areas or anything? Not really on the suspicious incidents, you know, I want to, I'm probably going to look a little further into some of those. That one kind of stuck out a little bit because, you know, you say, so what is going on and why people are calling it suspicious, you know, incidents. And that was up there. So that's something else I could also get back to you on. But besides that, you know, everybody drives a car. The majority of people, the motor, you know, public, so we do have a lot of traffic, you know, through the village, you know, being a gateway to some of the resort areas on people go up through 12, 12A. And so we do have a lot of traffic coming into town. And I think that's one of the ways that makes a bigger impact is, you know, showing the presence and, you know, stopping people. And as you could tell, you know, we usually have over 500 warnings. So we're not being heavy-handed on tickets, but yet we're letting the people know, hey, you need to slow down. You need to stop at the stop sign. And also conditions of vehicle. I think that was another, another huge problem. We then, there's a 90-day window on registrations right now through DMV. So if you're, you know, your car could be unregistered up to 90 days. And that goes with inspections also. So, you know, we haven't been, have we stopped people? Sure. But, you know, we, it's within that 90-day window because DMV, as you know, was closed and still, I still believe DMV is not open to the public. Everything has to go through the mail. So there's been a huge delay on the motor vehicle and on registrations so people could get their vehicles inspected. You're 100% correct, Sheriff. DMV is not open for anything other than testing. And then it's only by appointment. Right. And I found out actually today because Colonel Jake Alvarez is retiring end of the month. He is the current treasurer of the Vermont Highway Safety Alliance. And I'm the current chairperson. And so he's leaving end of the month. So we got to meet him to sign off on documents. And he goes, we got to meet outside. We can't meet in the building. He goes, it's still closed. There's many other places too. So the other thing too, what I see around town, people have been very good with wearing masks. You know, I think to having that education piece, you know, just keep, you know, telling people, you know, we're not here to write a civil ticket or anything for not wearing a mask. But and, you know, we're not enforcing anything. But the education piece, I think goes a long way. And sure, we see some people out of masks, but the majority of people that I've been running into have been wearing masks, which I think it's, you know, it's great. It's people are respectful of one another. Great. Any other questions for the sheriff? I just want to, I just want to thank, thank Sheriff Bonyak and Deputy Hossa for their openness to discussing the racial justice inequitable policing policies, forum that was held last evening in conjunction with four and the NAACP Rutland chapter was was a real beginning of an important dialogue in the community. And I'm really appreciative of the sheriff's department for their willingness to have those difficult conversations that need to be had. And I just think it's really to your credit sheriff and Deputy Hossa that you've begun that process. And so thank you. Thank you for that. You're quite welcome. And I received an email from a participant last night. She pointed me to an article written in the New York Times or one of the New York papers as a good article. And I'll share it with, you know, with you, with you, Tom. And she was very appreciative of that, you know, the openness that were the dialogue. And yeah, so. And I also really appreciated the statement that Deputy Hossa read at the outset of the meeting last night relative to some of the recent, you know, violent incidents that have occurred with both vigilantism and police forces around the country. I think it's, it's really to our credit here in Orange County and to your office and department that you're being very forthright about your feelings about those issues. So thank you. You're welcome. Great. Any other comments or questions? Hearing none. We'll thank both of you for joining us and waiting through the rest of our agenda to get to you. You're quite welcome, Trini. It's it's an education listening to the select board. Makes you realize you run for the right seat, Bill. They're both not sometimes, aren't they? Oh, yes. It's interesting. Even when you want to retire, I'm not going to go away. Believe me, you'll still swim me around. It reminds me of that old Confucius saying, may you live in interesting times. It's sort of you're not kidding. It's most interesting. You know, I see, I see it at a local level. I see it on a state level and, you know, on a national level too. So it's, but what I, I can tell you right now, it's going to really, you watch from the end of August when our legislators get back in session. You know, once again, we'll be talking about law enforcement. And I suspect that we're going to see a lot more, a lot more dialogue on a lot of different issues. So it's going to be interesting. And what I really found fascinating when I learned that the Vermont Criminal Justice Training Council had two new members added to it, which was a member of the ACLU and the Human Rights Commission. But they also left a little wording in there, which was any other interested parties. So that can open up for a few other members like Tabitha and Caitlin from the NAACP. So it's, you know, what we talked about yesterday, you know, at the academy level, that's where new officers are going to come in. And I think from the onset, the diversity and the different trainings, that's where it needs to happen. And then follow up, you know, once they get back into the field as through the FTO process, field training, making sure and see how they're performing and watch their behavior, how they interact with different people, especially people of color. And if there's an issue, we need to address it right away. And if you can't modify their behavior, then they really need to look for another job. So, you know, we're conscious of that. And we've, like I said, last night, we want to be transparent and open. And I know I'm rambling on. I'll let you guys go back to your meeting. Thank you. Much appreciated. Thank you. Great. Next up we have the proposed truck parade. Yes, one of the challenges that has been reported by residents on Maple Street and on Highland Avenue is the constant truck traffic or larger truck traffic, the larger delivery trucks that have been making their way from Beanville or Pleasant Street, I should say at that point, down Maple Street or Highland over to Main Street. Just like the sheriff pointed out that he's seen these trucks and I've seen these trucks and I'm sure many people have seen these trucks. So, and just in the course of really focusing on this issue over the last few weeks, I have spoken with the representatives from all of our major businesses, asked what their thoughts are on proposing a dedicated truck route and they all overwhelmingly supported this. One of them in particular, the president of New England Precision initially had expressed some concern. I think he had felt that the town was attempting to limit the large trucks and really just affect businesses on Beanville Road. He actually pointed me to something that I had not just seen. I think it was just so out of the way. He pointed out that we have signs on Beanville Road and Route 12 that limit the size of trucks to 24,000 pounds. He also pointed out that a similar sign exists at the gazebo that says trucks of a certain size and above can't go down that road. And so that, you know, although I can't confirm, but I feel that that was adding to the confusion to some of these truck drivers and why they are choosing to take Maple Street as opposed to just continue on Pleasant Street or Beanville Road. So the proposed route that's in front of you is one that would keep trucks on the more business portion of town. It would affect fewer residents. The business owners, when I had loosely told them of the potential route, all were in favor of it. And if the select board would approve of this proposed route, I could ensure that the signs that are on site of the 24,000 pounds or below are better located, for example, at the ends of Maple Street and Highland Street, so that trucks now know they're not to go to that route. And then also, we would purchase more bright new signs with arrows that clearly say truck route and direct trucks to the appropriate locations, thereby potentially eliminating truck traffic on Maple Street, Highland Avenue, and maintain those to regular vehicle traffic. Any questions? Okay. When you guys, you said so AOT reviewed this, correct? That's correct. So I have a question. Was there some discussion of what we're talking about here primarily, I believe, or probably going to be mostly tractor trailer trucks? So was there some conversation about how those tractor trucks are able to navigate the end of Pleasant Street onto Main Street? And that intersection there? Yeah, that's pretty sharp. It is a wider turn. If trucks are going in that direction, they are essentially making their way up to exit four. And they wouldn't be making a left turn at that intersection. Now I'm not concerned about trucks that are coming down from exit four, and they're accessing that space because when they do, because of the way that turn is set up and the way it was designed, it's really not friendly to the tractor trailer trucks because honestly they have to kind of almost swing over into the further lane to kind of make that corner when they're making the corner onto Pleasant Street. So I've witnessed that numerous times and so what happens there is you end up with some traffic issues because somebody who's coming down Pleasant Street when those guys are trying to get in there, then all of a sudden there's some having to back up and because it's not a smooth transition. It is a bit of a tight turn. The idea of any truck that is traveling from exit four and making a left onto Pleasant Street, as they're making a left, it is a bit of a tight turn. So the rear of the large part of the truck of the trailer would travel on the opposite side of the traffic just because of the nature of the turn. So making that turn, the idea would be that all the trucks or all the vehicles trying to get on the main street would get out of the way. They would either, they would have to turn right and then so that the truck could turn left. It is a squeeze there, but the other option is just to force all traffic to head down Main Street and make a left on Beanville, which is an even more sharp turn and the trucks wouldn't be able to make that turn at all. That's even more of a struggle, yes. That is even tougher. This could be a, I'll use the phrase in government talk short term, what really means five years probably, where we could potentially work toward improving the intersection at Beanville and 12 so that it's more of a direct left turn and we can feed all trucks down that road. But in the short term, this would be, it's not perfect, but it would be a solution to the immediate problem. It would have other challenges, but it would still, it would potentially eliminate the problem on Maple Street or at least the first. Yeah, I mean, I think this will definitely solve the Maple Street issue. It may create another, you're right. Create another, and I just wanted to know if there was any conversation about that intersection there at Pleasant Main, whether or not that could be reconstructed to make that transition easier so we didn't have some traffic problems in there. Yeah, I think the, I think the, you're right, there were traffic. I think the goal would be to just fix Beanville and 12 and then just have everybody go down there as opposed to fixing the gazebo one. Right, because when they're coming up Beanville Road and for some reason they had a delivery, going down to Shaw's or something like that, that's a hard turn to make going either going in or out of there. That's a challenge too. Yeah, I did see a truck today coming up Prince Street and it was a very large tractor trailer delivery truck, which surprised me, and it was a large FedEx truck. So I was surprised that they were coming up Beanville to make a left onto Pleasant Street. So I don't know if that's a pattern where the trucks have adopted where they make a right onto Prince Street by the ice rink, go down by Prince Street down by the bowling alley and then come up Prince Street to avoid that squeeze that you're pointing out Perry, right by the gazebo. Right, I think you find some of the local drivers that I've talked to, they know how to navigate around town. So you have your local FedEx drivers, you have the local, these guys that are making deliveries for UPS rate and those kind of guys. I think the most of those guys are local and they all know pretty much where they can get in and where they can get out. The problem happens here is I do think this is probably more of a GPS guided situation where somebody who's not familiar with the area and ends up in a situation where maybe he missed a turn. So I think absolutely the signing will probably correct that. There's not much of a way to correct GPS stuff, but I think that absolutely signing would be necessary. And the goal would be to, before establishing this, whenever the route is proposed, we're going to send the photo image of it to all the companies. We'll ask them to post it at their loading docks. We'll ask them to forward that to any deliveries that they know are coming in advance so that anyone's showing up, you know, even though there may be a squeeze at Pleasant Street, at the very least they can, they could see what the map is in advance and maybe just exit on exit three and then come up 12. Yeah, that may very well be the solution. Alrighty, that's all I've got to add. Any other questions? I have a question. I keep finding myself on mute. I'm sorry. Adolfo, I'm assuming this takes a traffic ordinance change to establish a truck route? I don't know if we do need a change in the traffic ordinance. I know that when checking with V-Trans specifically, they said that the town had the ability to just choose its own truck route, so long as we, you know, shared the information with V-Trans, but I don't believe we have a specific requirement within the traffic parking ordinance that would require us to make that, like having a hearing or anything of that nature. If you don't do that, you can't enforce it, right? It's just an idea. Well, it's for signs. The issue now is that we have trucks that are 40, 50,000 pounds already violating the posted weight limit signs. So the idea is to try to get them to go to a preferred route as opposed to, you know, the idea is to just educate them at first, see the road. Most truck drivers will see the signs and will follow the signs. I think what's happening now is that they are seeing road signs that say, if you're an axis of 26,000 pounds, don't go down this road, but that's keeping them off of our preferred road, which is Bienville, or Pleasant Street at that point. So, you know, I could look at the traffic and parking ordinance again and see if it would require changing. I don't believe it does, but I could take another look. Thank you. That 26,000 pounds is actual weight, not total vehicle weight, because otherwise you couldn't deliver oil to all those houses anywhere as where that sign is up. That's an axle weight thing, not a gross vehicle weight. Am I correct on that, Trini? You are correct, Perry. It certainly makes sense. So, anyways, just wanted to bring up a point that that's not want anybody to misread that, that, you know, a truck that's over 26,000 pounds can't go down the Bienville road. The drivers know that that's, they should know that that's an axle weight requirement. So, okay. I think you're better off to post something that says, you know, no trucks over a certain weight on that road. I think I've seen that in places we drive because they post bridges that way and things like that, so I think you can do that. Okay. What do we need to do to move this forward? Well, if the Board would like, it could, it could motion to approve the route if they accept the route or motion to accept the route with, you know, any conditions that it would like for me to continue to look into. I definitely don't see this as a, you know, as a, something we're going to implement within the next few days. We still have to order signs and determine the exact location to where to put them. So, if there are any conditions, we'd gladly meet them, but if there are none, if the Board likes the route, we could just set the route and I could order signs and have our highway crew put them up. Okay. Well, I'm fine with that. If there's no, uh, no necessary need to have some form of public hearing. So, I would make the motion to move forward with establishing a truck route. I'll second that. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Abstain? Motion carries. Thank you. Now we're going to move on to grants. And the Burn Foundation grant. In your packets is a letter that we received from the Burn Foundation. The Board had previously authorized the town, the Randolph area arts and culture committee to apply for a grant through the Burn Foundation of $12,000. The Burn Foundation replied to our letter by issuing a challenge essentially saying that they would commit $6,000 to the project proposed by the arts and culture committee with the condition that the committee raised $6,000 from the community. If the Board would, would like to accept the grant or hear from Tom first, who's the representative of the committee and also on the board. If the select board were to accept the grant, it's essentially, essentially would be accepting the challenge that either the town or the committee would work towards raising the other $6,000 as opposed to the town contributing $6,000 from the general fund. I'll speak to that. I have held off as the chair of the arts and culture committee and also the select board liaison, if you will, to the arts and culture committee. I've held off on alerting the committee to the receipt of this challenge grant from Mrs. Burn until it was formally discussed here this evening, but I'm prepared to alert the committee to Mrs. Burn's offer of a challenge of $6,000 and then convene the committee to discuss how we might go about raising that $6,000 match. In these pandemic times, as Mrs. Burns alludes to in her letter, which was included in our board packet, this is pretty much the response that I anticipated from our application letter to our application letter. She is known, the Burn Foundation is known to, even in non-pandemic times, allocate a fair amount of funding in the form of a challenge grant. I'm really pleased that they have come forward with this $6,000 offer and I will put it to the committee for discussion over the course of the next couple of weeks, either through a Zoom meeting or some other kind of gathering to move forward with identifying $6,000 in resources from the community to enable this first mural in this proposed downtown mural project, walk project to happen. It would be great if we could do it given the proposed location of the first mural. It would be great if we could do it coincident with the public infrastructure improvements that are going to occur in that area on the northeastern end of the Winslow block, later this summer and fall, which was our intent all along. I suppose at this point what I could advise the board if it chose to, we could table this particular issue until the next meeting, which would provide Tom the opportunity to share this information with the arts and culture committee and then we can bring it back at the next meeting so we can share information with the board of the response from the committee and how they would like to proceed. If I can suggest a part of that process just because I know how Mrs. Byrne works from having worked with her quite a bit and having written many, many a grant over the years, I would like to suggest that the Arts and Culture Committee craft a response to Mrs. Byrne acknowledging her generosity and so I'll put that before them over the course of the next month and laying out for her process whereby we're going to raise the remaining $6,000. That's just the appropriate way to respond. Okay, sounds good to me. Okay, so Tom would you like us to not accept the grant tonight and give you that conversation with the committee or accept it? I think we should accept it and I'm confident that the committee is going to be ecstatic that we've gotten it and I think there will be a robust response from the committee in terms of how we're going to raise the remaining $6,000. So I think we should accept it this evening and that would be my recommendation. Yeah, sure, then I'll make motion we accept the grant. Second. All those in favor? All those abstained motion carries. Doing the warrant for unlicensed dogs. This was an item that had been tabled from the previous meeting just to provide residents with an additional amount of time given the pandemic and dog registrations. At this point the treasurer clerk has asked that the board vote to accept the warrant and to allow the process to continue so that the clerk can then provide this list of unlicensed dogs or the updated list of unlicensed dogs to the animal control officer. Do we have rabies clinics taking place now? Yes, vets are performing rabies shots in clinics. They are doing them by appointment. They have different every location has a different system but they are providing services including rabies shots. But are they providing the clinics for rabies shots? Oh, I don't know specifically about clinics. I don't know. So one of the challenges that we discussed last time was folks who can't afford the vet visit plus the shots and whatnot, they go to the rabies clinics and get their shots there for the 10 bucks, 15 bucks, whatever it is. And this is going to force them to those that have to go through the process of a vet visit and whatnot not to have Milo knocking on their door. Do we have another alternative to that? Not that I'm aware of. It really is state driven so I'm not sure if we do pass the deadline on the town level if the clerk is still mandated to hand the list over to the animal control officer. But there didn't seem to be a sense of urgency on behalf of the clerk so I don't know if it were if this issue was postponed again. I think whatever would have to happen per the state would happen without the town forcing the issue prematurely. Also it looks like the list of dogs that we have in our packet is the same list from last month. Do we know if this list has gotten smaller since then? It may have changed. It did not receive an updated list from the clerk. So the list that you have in front of you may have changed, but I don't think it would have changed by much because the doors to town hall are still closed and these type of items do happen by appointment and I haven't seen that type of foot traffic. I just want to say I have a background in animal welfare work having been the director of the Humane Society in Chittenden County for a number of years in a past life and the thing that concerns me here is less the number of people that haven't renewed their licenses as some of the older expiration dates on the rabies on the rabies vaccines. There are rabies vaccines that date back to 2019 in number of instances and that's more of concern to me than those licenses that show rabies vaccines being active until 2021 or 2022. I just want to put that out there. There are a number of vaccines here that haven't been updated in close to two years or documented as having been updated and that's significantly concerning to me. I don't know how the state feels about it or what the state statutes stipulate, but it's curious to me that there are a number of licenses that have rabies certificates on them that date back to 2019. I don't understand why this issue didn't come up. Well, I guess it's only a year ago, but still those are the ones that are most concerning to me. We issue this warrant and then that's the last we hear about it. We never hear about whether Milo follows up with anybody. There's never any request to take any action because somebody refuses to do something. It's kind of a useless process to be blunt. It really just empowers the animal control officers to do the work, but it doesn't mandate that they report back or there are no penalties if they don't perform the work or if they can't find the animal. It's sort of another one of those toothless state mandates in a way. I do have one question. Does anyone know the runnels and are they breeders? They sure have an awful lot of dogs. He raises dogs, yeah. Yeah, okay. I thought that might be the case. Just looking at the breeds and yeah, looks like he raises bastards and doxons. Okay. I agree with Tom that we ought to probably move forward on this for health reasons pretty soon. What's the process for setting up these rabies clinics? I don't know much about the rabies clinics. I've never owned a dog to be honest. I know people would do own them, but because we don't own a dog, so I don't know what the process is. I think Joyce sort of works it out with the vets in the area from what I've seen in the past. So do we know if she's tried to do that or has it just kind of faded in the COVID-19 cloudy? I have the feeling that they've done some, but I don't know for sure. Okay. The regional humane society around here, I believe, is the central Vermont Humane Society in the Montpelier-Barre area. And typically humane societies take the lead in coordinating with local vets around rabies clinic. As the owner of two dogs and two cats, I have a very close working relationship with the country animal hospital in Bethel. I would be happy to reach out to the owner of that hospital to just ask her what they've done with rabies clinics in the past. And I can just point out my concern about significant number of old rabies vaccines on this list and just see what she has to say if that would be helpful to Joyce. I think it would be. Thank you, Tom. Yeah, I'll give them a ring tomorrow. I have to set up an appointment for one of our critters anyway, so that's a good excuse for me to call them. Save the receipt for the call. We'll reimburse you. Thank Bethel. Serious long distance charges, I got to tell you. I'll commit to looking into that because this is an issue of concern to me. Yeah, I think it'd be a good if you could find out about that. And I think if we could see if we could offer up a clinic or two and then notify these people that you know there is going to be a clinic going on and then they could bring their dogs into compliance and then they could get their licenses and I think that would be a very good proactive way to move forward with this. Yeah, yeah. Alrighty, I'll look into that with both my vet and I'll give the central Vermont Humane Society a ring too and it could well be that the whole COVID-19 thing has just thrown a wrench into the works here as well and I think we need to be sensitive to that but at the same time you know rabies is a public health issue so. Correct that's why I think if we could figure out how to work it out where people could you know socially distance bring their dog put on her mask. Yeah, maybe we could get this taken care of in the next month or two with a couple different vets. I mean we have a couple here in town so. I'll get on it. I'll get on it and keep you all posted. Okay, great, thank you. The two local vets usually do it so they're if they haven't already done it they're probably well in town. Yeah. Yeah, great. So next up we have other business. No other business. Oh, I got other business. Hang on a minute. It's not really other business. It's so having worked you know on the economic development committee and trying to build some traffic here for the downtown restaurants as you were seeing I put up a tent for a huggable mug I put one up for the chef's market. Sarah has reached out to me and asked for some assistance and we really she'd just love to have two parking spaces blocked off on merchants row and there was a similar conversation that Josh and I had had with main about one main street so we discussed possibly a possibility of moving the handicapped parking space that's currently there down a couple spaces I have the ability to create a handicap ramp with some of the product I have and I'm willing to do that no charge to get some of these people to be able to give them some more space so they can get their restaurants up and running so that's we need a little bit of I don't know permission to block off a couple parking spaces on March row and move those handicapped spaces. It could be if I could point out that the section of the section of merchants row right where Vermont computing and Black Crimer located by that point it really would only require maybe at most two because even though people park beyond a certain area they really shouldn't be parking beyond a certain area because then it impedes the line of sight from anyone needing to make a right turn for merchants row onto pleasant so if the board were open to that we could work with the parking spots that are in front of Black Crim and then extend it into the the front area closer to the intersection and we really wouldn't be affecting traffic very much on the road. There would be the matter of finding a way to block vehicles from potentially hitting pedestrians so we would have to find a way to make some kind of jersey barrier work of some kind but yeah there's there's some barrier options that I'm you know seeing and working on and basically you know she's looking for like six feet off the curb and two parking spaces basically that would start at the crosswalk and go towards Randolph Avenue so Josh and I looked at them you know we thought it was there's plenty of space there you know thinking created a traffic problem and in the future plan those spaces are already going to become green anyways yeah so it doesn't seem like you know we're really doing much other than giving her the ability and her struggle now is is she has to race the setup and she can't open up and set tables until after the computer store closes because you know she's using that portion of the sidewalk and so her arrangement with them was that she wouldn't set up her tables so that starts you know at six and she's in the middle of her dinner starting her dinner service at that point so this would give her the ability to get started you know 435 in the afternoon and be fully set up and of course at a range she's still out of luck but at this point in time I think it would be helpful to her to to be able to move that along the Perry you need a motion to close a portion of the street and to shift the handicap accessible parking spaces yeah I think that's what we need you know and this is you know this is probably you know it's probably up until the weather cools off so you know my guess is you know by mid-october you know these would revert back to what they are so so so just to be clear you're talking about cutting back on two spaces cutting back by two spaces and moving the handicapped spaces yeah so what would happen is so to our merchants row you would eliminate the two spaces that are essentially on the Randolph Avenue side of the crosswalk okay okay that's what those are the handicap we looked at at trying to put you know give one main street space along merchants row but that creates a kind of congestion traffic thing for them because they're not normally serving out that door so that was a little challenging for them so the other option we looked at was basically kind of extending their space along main street and that right now there's a handicap space there which I can you know simply move that handicap ramp down to the sidewalk and we have we actually have that kind of material that would provide a four foot four foot wide handicap access up onto the sidewalk from basically a new handicap space that we would create so it might be simple as you know painting some new lines and providing you know this this walkway I don't think it's a big challenge and I think it would be extremely beneficial and useful to them because as you know still they're all restricted to you know how many people they can have inside and a lot of folks do not want to go inside I've heard that both of them that people are still concerned even though there may be occupancy space inside a lot of people would prefer to be outside right right and to add to Larry to Perry's comments the section on main street where the existing handicap sign is already has a natural barrier between where the seats would be and where the traffic is flowing because of that bulb out so it would closely would more closely resemble the parklit little scenarios that we've seen in in bigger places including Montpelier yeah it'd be very similar to that so okay so can we take action on this as an item under other business not on the agenda um if the board is not opposed to it and it wouldn't require necessarily a vote I could just administratively uh work with our highway crew and work to establish these these scenarios um you know it wouldn't it wouldn't require a vote it would just require the select board to just know of the project and not necessarily voted but I can then move forward as as part of the administrative process that sounds good yeah so what what do you need in terms of a a motion to make that no motion no motion and we don't don't need a motion we just need you know you to know what's going on and the doffal can can uh can bless it well duly duly noted then thank you I don't want to be the naysayer here or be I want to point this out but doesn't the town select board define where uh in public parking we have the accessible parking spaces and that we have them I'm looking at the looking for the um trying to bring up the parking and traffic ordinance traffic and parking and speeding ordinance scope speed limits parking on page two of of the parking ordinance it does discuss uh hours of where parking limits of three hours doesn't specifically say accessible parking says loading zones no parking tow away zones overnight parking does not specifically mention accessible parking or handicap parking that I could see well you could dig into that a little further and you know and if and if you find that that's what's needed for that handicap area then we can simply say you know the only the only available spot which josh and I looked at as the as the optional spot would be you know on the left side of merchants row adjacent to one main street's door yeah and we could give them a couple spaces there um so that might be a my biggest concern was is we needed to put you know some form of barrier uh which as from a safety concern so you know if we end up putting merchants row we can put a barrier there too so I mean what I could do now with the board I could just uh say that you know I would commit to not taking any action that would violate the the town's parking speed and traffic ordinance I think the best approach to Delpho if we're not going to vote on anything is for the research to be done to see if we if there's any action needed if there is then put it out through email get a quick vote of the members and then ratify it at the next meeting yeah that could work okay yeah that sounds fine to me yeah I think that's a very good solution yeah I don't want to I don't want to see us impede programs on this for another month so let's uh let's go that route sounds good sounds good I'm all right thank you everybody for that thank you any other any other other business Perry no I got right now Trini other than other than the fireworks were a tremendous success oh now you're stealing my manager's report oh I'm sorry okay I'll just quit right there and with that go ahead Adolfo well I was gonna leave it towards the very end to end on a high note but I'll start with the fireworks um very broad enough um uh overwhelming positive reviews everyone that has mentioned the um Fourth of July event you know that of course they say that they missed the parade but that they love the fireworks display at Fars Hill they uh spoke very highly of Perry and Lynn's efforts to really pull all of this together um and everywhere I drove that day you would see families gathered but you wouldn't see large groups gathered that violated the governor's uh they could have ordered that least that I saw was driving around um so it was a well-spread out viewing event and everyone that I had spoke to just spoke very very very highly of it so uh thanks Perry for pulling it together welcome um did you want to say something about it um no other than the fact that I will share with you that apparently it was very well attended because the guys who were lighting off the fireworks three minutes after they stopped the fireworks they said it was nothing but a sea of lights across the valley you said it looked like a city was what they're from it there was so many people viewing it from all these different vantage points across the valley and even I was getting comments while it was going on and people could see it pretty much throughout all over the village I mean I was people were posting pictures from main street so it really was you know a community event a lot of people got to see it sat on their porches and watched it drove to where they could find a spot so yeah I think it was pretty pretty pretty uh the only one I'm disappointed with is apparently McDonald's they're a ravishing business up there but they didn't contribute anything yet those corporate types you know out there they're yeah I still might reach out to them I have to run it all the way up the ladder to wherever there's yeah there's somewhere that family lives in Rutland I think I don't know anyways but it was you know I think it was it was truly well received so yeah no well thank you Perry and and kudos to to to Megan Harvey and and Val school craft for all they do yeah oh they're they're a good team here I'll tell you you know I kept them loose on that project and within seven days Valerie had her part done Megan had done a tremendous job of fundraising so you know it was it was a very hugely successful event with all kinds of kudos to a lot of people so excellent excellent so to add to that uh well not to add to that but add to the manager's report um what I do plan to share with the board at either the next meeting um or the subsequent um special meeting of the board chose to to meet is that uh we did receive an offer for 45 South Main Street wonderful yeah I think you know it's still in it was a very last minute thing that came in today at roughly about three o'clock so I did not feel it was I didn't feel comfortable adding it to the agenda today because it was such of the implications of it even though the voters have already voted at town meeting to authorize a sale of the building but I will plan to after I get more information from the attorney of the potential buyer to share that with the board for its review but it's positive that at the very least we have some movement on that front and the last item that I have is that we do have for the most part all of the steps in place to open town hall the building itself to the to the public we did receive confirmation that we do not as a building have to as a public building have to offer restroom use to the public so that was one of the barriers for us to be able to open to the general public but we do have the the the plans in place we're just making sure that we dot our i's and cross our t's with ACCD with their guidance as well as with the remote league of cities and towns and once we have that we could open the building not that we're not providing services I you know we we are providing everything we need I think it's just now going to be a place for people to be able to come in but we have markings on the floor we have x's for people to stand on we have hand sanitizer dispensers placed all throughout town hall in the building so I think we're we're close to being ready to open again but Adolfo what's your thinking or what are you hearing from the league of cities and towns or the state with regard to when we might be able to potentially resume in-person meetings again select board committees etc yeah it's I haven't heard very much about in-person meetings yet all of the guidance is still continuing to suggest that anyone who can work from home work from home groups that are allowed to gather are allowed to gather outdoors nothing specifically that I have received about meetings everything about internal activities related to dining and shopping and that type of activity that would stimulate some kind of economic revenue or activity but I'll continue to reach out to ACCD and to the LCT about in-person meetings and I'll share that with the board as soon as I get it and that's it that's all I have Trini I have one more thing if I may as part of the manager's report doesn't matter it's probably really other business may I yeah go ahead thanks I'm wondering if we could have on next month's agenda a continued discussion of racism and where the town wants to go everybody I think at the last meeting said they could think of things the town could do and I'd like to see us work forward in that direction I'm happy to commit to that Pat and as I indicated at the at the special meeting two weeks ago when we address the racism resolution I'm ready to step up and and either share or help to lead any kind of effort that we might make in that regard and I just felt I thought about bringing it up this evening but just feel like that meeting was only a week and a half ago and I think a month's breathing room will give us a little bit more time to think about what that's going to look like and I'm committed to having that be an agenda item next month I don't know how others feel but I certainly would like to not let the issue just kind of drift away so yeah I think it's important I think the video meeting the sheriff had last night in the NAACP was a good start but it gives us a place to go forward from too yeah any other items I move that we adjourn if there are no other items all those in favor I think we are adjourned