 Okay, I'd like to open a town forum at 630. Everything on. Yeah, we need to get rid of that. The recording. Yeah. No, we're holding on. No, we just want to make the announcement. No, no, we can record it. Yeah. Okay. I'm going to make sure everything was on anything on. This is a momentous occasion. Amy's here. Oh, Amy's here. Oh, we got a form. Not that we need one. Hi. Okay. Okay. Are they any additions to the agenda for the town forum? Don't see any. Public comment. Okay. I'm going to do a discussion of 2023 town meeting articles. So. What do we have? That would like to ask questions. I see a lot of people up there. Can you hear us? We're getting thumbs up and Amy is gently not angered. Amy can hear us. That's good. Anybody else. We see. Okay. You can eventually do a drive run of the select board report. Oh gee. Where is that? It's not in this thing. In the town report. Yeah. Wow. Dangerous. Like board report. I'm going to open up the town forum. Okay. So I think the biggest thing that happened. In the town was a town office. We had three people retire. Bruce Johnson. Don Welsh and Denise Barrow. So since they retired, we've had. Some changes, of course, in the town office. We now have Gina Jenkins, who is the. Town administrator. We've got a Michelle palace, who is a town treasurer. And the municipal assistant position is still open. We had one person. Started there, but she decided to move on. So we only have to need. We have Gina and. Michelle in the office. As new people at the moment. And we have Tyson right there's only administrator, which Bruce was doing before we have Tyson Brown in that position. So as we have three new employees in the town office. And eventually there'll be four. So that is a huge change. It also changed the. It's changed our overhead as far as the salaries go. We've had to. Get more health insurance by more health insurance for new employees. So we've had to move on. And that's pushed up that expense significantly. Come on in. Thank you. So that's the big news really. We still have a good road through that's been steady. And roads are doing well. And we did a big repayment on county road. We placed a bunch of culverts and we got some funding from the state. And we got a lot of funding. It came out well in the long run. Some people were frustrated because it was a slow process, but eventually it went well and it's done. The other thing that we do have is we got a lot of ARPA money. About 760,000. 560. We contributed 100,000 to CV fiber. And we still have the bulk of that money. So that's a big chunk of change. Hopefully we can put it into a project that the town benefit everybody in the town. The fire department's gone through a lot of changes. They. Replace Ty Roland with Larry Brown. Larry Brown retired somewhat unexpectedly. And now we have Albert Pichella in there. As fire chief. He's just interim until they have a vote in May. But Albert is doing an excellent job. And just wanted to reassure everyone that the fire department emergency services seem to be running well. So that is a few changes, but that doesn't seem to have. Made their service, you know, less reliable. And so the big news. The other news is, of course, our budget has gone up. And most of the time, because we had a higher new people in the town office and health insurance has gone up 20% and more people are taking health insurance. So that's those expenses are really hard to. They're really. It's impossible to reduce those expenses. In this environment. So that is going to. Impact the tax rate a bit. And unfortunately, the school tax rate is going to go up a little bit. But it's going to go up a little bit. And unfortunately, the school tax rate is going to go up too. So it looks like there'll be a significant gump in the tax rate. So any questions. Anybody. So I call, I see a lot of names up there. Zooming in. And we really would like to answer any questions that you have. So this question actually might come up when you said that taxes are expected to increase. Do you know exactly by how much? I mean, not exactly, but approximately. Yeah, well. Um, no. So on the budget side and the municipal side, we're looking at around five. Five and 5.6 cents. Or the 5.8 cents, 5.8 cents. It's 8.6 tax percent increase. It's 5.8 cents in the tax rate. That is a, that's kind of a guess. It could be less. It's probably going to be less than that. Um, there has been some of the discussion. On using some of the ARPA money for some of the, uh, one-time expenses that the towns incurred in the last year or two, and also moving forward. So if you have a one-time, um, Expense like digitizing the land records or something like that, we could put some of that ARPA money towards that, which could reduce the tax rate. So that's sort of, we're still exploring the, um, the, the. Use is allowed use is for the ARPA money. And so that may be an offset to keep the tax rate a little lower than is projected. Great answer. Thank you. Anybody else. So if we go over article by article lights, there's done in the past. Or you're just... Yep. We sure can. I don't know that I feel, you know, Yeah, but if there's no more questions on the slack board report, then we can move down on the articles. Okay, so the next one is, is the FY, what is there another question on the slack board report. Well, actually, yeah, because I had trouble getting in. That's why I'm late. So, I don't know if this question goes under select board report or other business, but I did wonder about that are our money that was the recovery act money that we got. So I just wondered the select board's plans for that and. Okay, so what we've done so far is we got around $762,000. We put $100,000 towards CB fiber, because we realized that internet access is important to all the citizens broadband access to everybody is up there. So that leaves about $600 something $1,000. Now there is some of that that we could use for some items that are just a one time expense in the town to offset the tax rate increase. So that's, okay, that's what we're looking into right now, because there's a lot of rules around the ARPA money, what you can use it for and what you can't use it for. So eventually, there should be a significant portion of that money that could be used for a project in town. Okay, we'll, we'll just like for notify us so we can all say what we, you know, are. Yeah, that's our intention we have we have talked about. Once we have clear how this money can be used, then we'll say, okay, this is what our common plan says about the future of East Montpelier what opportunities are there to beat the top plan with this money. The other ideas you're using this money will be. Great, thank you. I'll be quiet now. Okay. So any more questions on the select board reports specifically. So let's just go down the articles and then we can go from there. So the next article three is FY 2024 budget. What do we have for questions pertaining to that. Nothing. Okay. Property tax protocol. That's when you can pay your taxes, whether you can, you have the postmark on the envelope or you have to come in personally and deliver it before five o'clock. Yeah, I think we're with the postmark protocol, I believe. Yeah. Does anybody have any questions on that. Okay. Article five is a call on Harvard library appropriation. Now, I guess I want to alert everybody to the fact that it's not on the Australian ballot. It got left off by accident. We're gonna have to have a separate vote on that. We've only done 30 days after town meeting. So we have to have another town, another meeting, which would be a select board meeting. We have to have a doctor resolution that says we're going to have a separate vote on the Kellogg-Humbert library appropriation, then we'll have to run an election. This is going to run in the office here for that separate article. Sure. So it's going to be a special town meeting that will have the vote just on Australian ballot on the Kellogg-Humbert library item and the blackboard after how many so I don't have to meeting. We will pass the motion to to set that date and and then you'll all be getting ballots for that. Just one ballot. One ballot. Yes. And the actual voting will take place in the town office that day because it's a small, small election. And that way everyone can stay down here and do the other business in the office. I think we have a hand up there. Yeah. Somebody help. Yeah. Hi, I'm Sarah Swift. I just wanted to introduce myself. I'm the new representative to the board of trustees from East Montpelier. And thank Jennifer Micah for her three years of service and reinforce what was said about article five. Just a reminder that this will be level funding. It's the same amount that we asked for last year. And the library's had a very strong year. I'd be happy to answer any questions. Carol and Brennan are one of our executive co directors is also here on on if anyone has any specific questions. Thank you. Okay, no more questions on Kellogg-Humbert library. The next article seven East Montpelier signpost appropriation. Oh, yeah, I did article six, four corner schoolhouse association appropriation. That's about the same. I think 4,000 something isn't it. Any questions on that? The next one article seven is East Montpelier signpost appropriation. Any questions on that? No, I don't see any hands. Article eight East Montpelier trails incorporate appropriation. I'm here to answer any questions on East Montpelier trails. Right. For those who can't see him that's Richard Brock. He's not here. Here. This is Erica Zimmerman under Kevin McCollister's name. That is right. That's Erica Zimmerman. She's under Kevin McCollister name right there. There we go. Sorry. I'm wondering if there's any consideration for the town helping the trails with clean up after the storm. I think if the town is kind enough to pass the appropriation. That should be sufficient. There is a lot of work to power. Yeah. Yeah. I was thinking more of town employees or funding. Is there, you know, town operations money that could help with the restoration of the trails? Richard Brock said there was enough money. I don't know. The board of East Montpelier trails does not believe that at this time, it needs to ask for anything further. Okay. Appreciate your thoughts. Because there aren't really town employees that could go out and do the trails anyway. Right. Well, I don't know if there's hauling or anything, but, you know, that could be done. But I just want to, I guess it's my, my wish that. I just want to make sure that if the, you know, the trail committee operates on a pretty slim budget. And it's got a pretty huge task. So to whatever extent the town could help, I would hope it would. Well, thank you. We appreciate your concern. And I think we show that that willingness by voting for corporations. One of the appropriate is a year after year is a big help. Yep. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Oh, Sam. Okay. Yep. Hi. So along the same topic. I do know that over at you 32. There's a lot of. Trees. There are a lot of trees down, a lot of damage in that area. And I don't know quite how that. Ties in with all the trails that are considered. East Montpelier town trails. I know that there have been people over there trying to assess. The damage and then figure out how to. Get it cleaned up, but it's going to be a massive job. And so I didn't know if any of the ARPA funds. Could go towards that. I think some of the youth or two. Maintenance staff have looked at it. The county forester has looked at it. Paul Kate has looked at it. But it's going to take some serious equipment and, and cost coverage to deal with the mess over there. I don't know what I don't know quite how that. Lines up with the, with our town's responsibility. That's my question. Okay. So I met with a county forester over there at you 32. I don't know. I don't know. Because there's a question on my farm that I went over there in the line. So they're having a skitter come in there and start moving those trees out. Like right away. They'll be there for a while. Right on you 32. On all the trees are down. Who's going to pay for that? What's that? Seth, do you know who's going to pay for that work? The, the count, the log is moving in there. They're going to get some money at it. So you're hoping that the. I mean, that. That they'll meet their expenses. By, by doing the harvesting. My understanding is that they're actually selling the stoppage. To the lotter who's going in there to clean it up. So it's not going to cost anybody any money that may make some money on. Okay. That's what they told me. I have a thought. I'm going to add on that. Thank you. Okay. Yeah. The board of East Montpelier trails. Discuss this issue. Yeah. At our last meeting and. Just. The. There's a lot of business now for foresters and loggers. So it's going to take a while. And part of the delay is that as chair Gardner has mentioned. Many of these down trees have sale value. So it's going to take a while. It's going to take a while. It's going to take a while to landowners, not East Montpelier trails. So. It will take a while. Yeah. That's right. But there will be a skitter in like the day I was over there, which was a week or so. Was there a 32 stress. Yeah. As you, as you probably know, there is a short section. That is actually East Montpelier trails that goes from your property out to Wheeler road. Yes. Yeah. But I said to go on my land and take the trees. You can take the top of the tree. If you want to give me some stuff, it's a lot of great. Right. So there, that's what they're going to do. I said, you see any down trees of my land. Go for it. So it seemed like they were going to do a good job. He said they're going to be there for a while. So that's my information. Yeah. All right. Thank you. Any other questions on the trails. Or comments. I'll see any of you. Okay. Okay. The next article nine Montpelier senior activity center appropriation. I can, I think they may be a town meeting. Answer questions. Yep. No hands on that. I don't see any. Article 10. Twin Valley seniors incorporated appropriation. You know, this is the one towards playing field. And. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Twin Valley. Any questions. Any questions. Article 11 central Vermont home health and hospice. Appropriation. Questions. Questions. Comments. Article 12. Rural community transportation incorporated. Appropriation. separate from the service that goes to people's houses and brings seniors to appointments. This is a separate service. This is the bus that stops down here at the parking right, RCT. Is this the first year that Article 12 and 13 have been separate or did we do that last year or two? I don't remember. I don't remember. But this is an appropriation. Article 12 and 13 together represents an appropriation that the town has made for off the top of my head. I'm not sure exactly, but eight or 10 years, I would guess. And that's for what's described in there for the commuter bus service along Route 2. In the past, originally for many years, maybe up until last year, it was one article. And now we've divided up or they've divided up between themselves with rural community transportation asking for what percentage of what we've been appropriating and GMP asking for the rest. And it comes to level funding in nominal dollars. So when you think of inflation, it's really a kind of funding. Yeah, Rachel. So I think it was actually two separate articles last year. And I'll just plug for the bus because it's a great bus, the Route 2 bus. It's just a great service to the town. And I don't know if it's still free on the RCT end, but I don't remember anything else. Yeah, I think it's still free. Yeah, here to St. Jack. And so the next Article 13 is a Green Mountain Transit appropriation. No questions. Oh, so the next Article 14 funding request study committee recommendation for appropriations to organizations. And there's a whole list of them. I don't have them before me, but they were vetted by the funding request study committee. They had people come in, talk about what they wanted, did a nice thorough job and that's what they came up with. So that's quite a list of organizations. Does anybody have any questions about those organizations? Nothing. Article 15, tax exemption for the 0.68 acre trailhead parking area on Vermont, Route 14 South, owned by East Montpere Trails Incorporated, East Montpere Gully Jumpers Incorporated. They've had tax exemption for a while. Evidently it has to be voted, but every five years or something. That's what we're told. Yeah, it has to be voted as taxes emptied every five years. That's what we're presented with. It's not a very controversial item, but if anybody's got any questions, we're willing to answer them. The idea is that they're managing that piece of land for the benefit of everyone in town. It's a trailhead. Everyone I think knows where it is, right across from the Central Vermont Humane Society. Used to be an old grain store there that I remember. And there was a railroad starting there. No longer. Article 16, at the business. Don't all speak at once. And we have one topic, Mr. Dwayne, that we talked about bringing up. Do you like what it is? I do not. I did not bring my notes on that. I thought of the topic too. We had a topic that we had planned to bring up. I bet mine was different than yours, but I can't remember. We will do a little more. You betcha. Oh, tell me he's tomorrow. Whoops. Yeah. I've been in our comprehensive minutes. Mr. Dwayne, I'm not recalling. Okay. What's that? COVID? Oh heck no, that subject's way long. That train already left. It might have been on the town meetings. I thought it was something else. Something else. Well, the most important thing is the lunch. Was it about the lunch? We decided to have the lunch. They decided. Can I ask a process question? Sure. Questions are welcome. It doesn't matter whether pertinent to the subject or not. I just moved to East Montpelier from Montpelier. So I've never actually lived in a town meeting before. And I'm having a hard time. I guess it looks like from the ballot, I can vote for officers in positions and Article 3, but everything else happens on the floor of town meeting. Is that true? Anything over $25,000 has to be voted by Australian ballot. Oh, I see. The budget gets voted by Australian ballot town officers. What else? So like hover libraries over $25,000. And yeah, there's a few things that are on the ballot and some are voted at town meeting. Are you going to go to town meeting? I can't. I have to work tomorrow. That's why I want everything on Australian ballot. And I invite you as a new resident to the town to try to make your schedule available for coming to town meeting next year because town meeting is a special opportunity to discuss the items with the people who are your fellow town residents and for a day, legislators. And you have a dynamic at town meeting that you don't get by checking off boxes on a ballot. Yeah, but you have a lot more people participating when they vote by Australian ballot. So it's quantity or quality. It's a lot. It's okay. The good picture discussion, we are on different ends of that. But anyway, do you have any more questions on that subject? I don't know. Thank you. I wish you could go to town meeting. Me too. Yeah, they have a good lunch. I'll try to make it next year. Okay, we can always have a discussion about whether to change it, you know. That's a good discussion. But the problem is that 160 people go to town meeting and there's 2,500 voters or not quite, 2,300 voters and he's not there. So you're excluding them from the discussion. Well, the thing is this happened is you have to accept the fact that a lot of people are not going to go to town meeting for one reason or another. So that's when you have to change your thought about how democracy is going to work in the town. Speaking as a resident, some people who have very limited time off as well with a job, that would require them to take a vacation day off of work. And a lot of people may not be able to spare that day. Right. So towns have experimented with putting town meeting on a Saturday or a Sunday. And they found that people say, oh, it's a weekend day. I don't want to take a day of my weekend to go to town meeting. So people don't prioritize participating in the town. There's nothing that we can do to force them to do that. Yeah. But by mailing ballots to people in the town, we have gotten a lot more people to participate. And, you know, we had over 1,000 people, 1,000 ballots last year. And then the question is the quality of the participation, quality versus quantity. Is that fair? It's a fair decision about quality. We have some time. And it's nice that there's enough people here that can listen to us. Sorry. Hello. So one possible solution that would have been a good thing, and I think it's too late to even push for this, if the state had made town meeting day a state holiday, that and put in some incentive for private businesses to give people the day off. But I think it's too late for that. I think too many towns have gone to Australian ballot and town meeting is not what it used to be. That's correct. So that's my two cents. I thought it was a state holiday. I think it is. Well, I think state workers, the state office buildings, I think are closed, but there's no incentive for anybody else to give their workers the day off to go to town meeting. All right. It would have been nice. It's an optional holiday for the state, actually. Is it? Yeah. Yeah. Maybe that train has already left the station is what you're saying. I think so. Yeah, I agree. We had some great town meetings back in the 80s and the 90s. Yeah. But VPR did a special on it today. So it might be worth listening to. At noon, they asked towns and residents what the whole, what town meeting they should look like and what we're going to have to face in the future. I'll listen to that. Thanks, Kim. Well, it's definitely an interesting subject and controversial, too. So we could bring that up another business, which we did tonight, sort of. There's a comment from Scott has to everyone. Somebody wanted to share that. What's the comment? Go ahead. I can't see it. Gina, do you have a possibility of sharing the comments? I said, you can see it on Zoom. That's what his comment was. I thought the town meeting is going to be on Zoom. I thought that we weren't able to. Scott, are we able to Zoom in tomorrow? I'm not, I'm actually not going to be able to go. I need to be careful for the next. I don't think we have that. We have a live stream, but no Zoom. So you can, you can view it, but you can't vote. But how do you see the town meeting? You're not there. How do you watch it tomorrow? There's a link that was sent out by from Portraum. Dead live stream. So, right. So I have a process question. We're getting these comments in the Zoom commenting. And I don't know how to handle those from a public meeting perspective. We're recording this, but those are not going to be part of the recording. Unless we stop. No, somebody's got to read them off. Yeah. I'm wondering if we should just close down the comments, make it not possible to comment and say, if you want to comment, you need to raise your hand and speak like everyone else. So they can be part of the conversation. That doesn't sound very nice. Well, how else are we going to get into the public meeting? I want to make those things. It's convenient to sound that way. I'll raise my hand down with these Don Wells. Yes, Don. I don't if it's appropriate at this point in time, but I was just wondering if there's been any action movement on the town garage. Improvements. I was just thinking about that today. When Guthrie slows down a little bit, we're going to go visit. We had a meeting up at the town garage a month or so ago, and we decided to go look at some garages. And that's where it sits right now. But since he's been really busy, I'm busy. We're going to go when things are a little bit slower up to Cabot. And we identified some garages we had to go look at. So that's where it's at right now. Yeah, we'll go in the town administrators expressed interest too. So it'll be a regular party, I think. But that's going to happen. Good. Because the town garage is something that it's a big project and it does need help. It does need, it needs to be replaced probably. Are you going to have a formal committee for that? We could. But first we're going to have to come up. We already decided to come up with a design. So we've moved to that part of it. I thought we had a committee. Wasn't John going to kind of spearhead that? Yeah, John's on it too. Yeah, I guess we have a committee. We have a committee. John and Guthrie. Me, John and Guthrie, yeah. Yeah, good and you. Yeah. So we kind of have a committee of four so far. It's Gina Guthrie, John and myself. Four. So we're plotting along on that project. And John is John Jewett. John Jewett, psych board member. Yeah. Any other questions about that? No. Anything else? Yes. Mr. Dwayne. Thank you. Speaking. Good to chair. Our state representative, Ella Chapin, is going to be at town meeting. Should be there probably about 11 o'clock. Okay. Hopefully we're still there. I know. I think we will be. I don't know. I'm not so sure. We'll see. 9.30. 9.30 to 11. That's an hour and a half. Yeah. That's not much to talk about. No. We can always talk about other business, whether or not to move town meeting. That'll take up a bunch of. Well, that's okay though. It is okay. It's fine. I think it's great. I do too. Environmental subjects are always fine. See different points of view. Yes. It sharpens your own, actually. At the end of the day. It does. Any more questions? Comments? Yes, sir. Mr. Dwayne again. Thank you, sir. Yes, sir. Are you going to present the select board's report tomorrow? I will. So I will turn to you. Thank you very much. Yes. And it's possible there may be other officers to present reports. There may be. Yep. There doesn't seem to be anybody stepping up at that point, but there couldn't be a surprise, and someone has another report. Mr. Brock said he'd be there tomorrow with regard to the trails. Oh, very good. Yes. Ms. Swift, the new yellow-covered rep, and I were communicating today, and she's going to be there to answer any questions as need be. Very good. Sandal has something to say. Oh, Sandal. Oh, she does. Yeah, yeah. Oh, she's there. Yeah, I'm not. Yeah. Yes, Sandal. Yes. Okay. I just want to thank Amy Willis and Julie, who are stepping off the board. Maybe you're going to acknowledge them tomorrow during the meeting, but I know people put in a lot of nights, and they have to drive cross lots, regardless of the weather, unless they can zoom in, which does make going to meetings a lot easier. But it's just been great having, you know, good representation on the board, and I am wondering how you're going to fill the three-year slot. Well, it's generally what we've done is we've put it out in front porch forum in other public places to look for people to fill that slot. And then we take applicants and interview them, and at the end of the day, we appoint somebody. And it's only for one year. So it's a temporary appointment to fill the slot for one year. After the year comes up, it's town meeting again, and anyone is welcome to run for that position. There will be two years left at that point. So someone would be running for the additional two years. The person that is serving a one year that we appoint sometimes chooses to run for the two-year position, that two years are left. So that's how that process works. So if you were anybody that's on this Zoom wants to apply for that position, well, you're welcome to do so. Thank you. That sound good? And it's, oh, Mr. Dwayne again. Tell me if this is okay. When we get to article one that we're just going to quickly pass over, should I mention that there's an open term and that select board will be putting out more information about it? Sure. Just to get people's attention. I mean, what happened to that is that the select board member that was filling that position wasn't sure about she could commit the time or not. So it was really late by the time we got her response answer to whether she was going to run or not. And it was just really too late to beat the voices and get someone to run. Now you could do a write it. And it takes 30 votes to get a write-in candidate that would be voted in. Takes 30 write-in votes for one person. So if someone wrote Mr. Dwayne in, I'm just saying it. For example. For example. For example, if someone wrote in Mr. Dwayne or Mr. Brock and they got 30 votes, then they would be in, they would be voted in. 50 or 70. I guess they would have to accept it. Yes. They couldn't do it without there. That's right. Yeah. I have to sign the consent form. So we can't trick you in. No way. Okay. I have to sign the consent form. Yeah. Okay. No, I can't vote. We're there. I think the thing that we have traditionally done in town meeting that actually we skipped over it in pre-town meeting was ask candidates for Article 1 provisions to introduce themselves. We have done that in the past, but I thought we did that to Town Forum, not at the meeting. We would do it at the Town Forum. Yes. Yeah. But not at the meeting. You can only. Not at the meeting. You can be acknowledged as a elected person on the Australian ballot. And that's it. There's no speechifying allowed. Yes. For electing people. There is speechifying allowed for like that Kellegr Hubbard Library, for example. So maybe we should. That's just an explanation of an article, however. So maybe speechifying. Circle back to it. Oh, no, you can actually talk and debate and ask questions about non-personal options. So you could have a half hour discussion about Kellegr Hubbard Library, even though it's on the Australian ballot. For example, you could have an hour discussion also, but not for candidates. Not for candidates. Exactly. But we can tonight. Are there any candidates here who would like to say something about their candidacy? Right in or official on the ballot? Please don't speak at once. Erica Zimmerman, I think you have something to say. You might change your name. Oh, yeah. I'm on the wrong Zoom, aren't I? Are you a candidate for a position? I am a writing candidate for planning commission. Okay. Okay. So if you get 30 votes. Okay. Erica Zimmerman is a writing candidate for planning commission. Three year term, I believe? Or is it two? One year. One year. Okay. I didn't think there was one. Scott has something to say, something as well. Yeah. I'm just finishing up with Kevin McAulay. Kevin was indicating she was a two year term. I think so too. It's not one year. They don't have one year candidates. Okay. Mr. Hess, Scott Hess. Were you going to introduce yourself as a candidate for a select board position? Hi. He's muted. So if you want to say something, you need to unmute yourself, Scott. He's leaving. He's done with that. You have to unmute. He's not there. You walked into another box? Oh, he's in another box. Oh, there he is. Like people in portraits. I was looking at his box. Mr. Hess. I am unmuted. Oh, very good. Thank you. Did you have something to say? I do. I just, I am running for Scott Hess. I am running for the two year position for the select board. And I would be honored and thrilled to serve and represent the town of East Montpelier. Are you running on a post, sir? I am running on a post, but that doesn't mean I'll be elected. There is, there is a possibility of writing. You have to get three votes. You have to get three votes. You have to get three votes. Yes. You have to get one more than one more than his opposition. Yeah, yeah. There could, there could be, there could be a coup. We're not sure. But at this point, I am running on the ballot on a post, but that doesn't mean I will be re, I'll be elected. That's true, but you might get one vote. One vote. I'm going to spend the entire night up deciding on whether I'm going to vote for myself or not. That is not, that's not, so that doesn't give us confidence if you can't vote for yourself. Well, I've got, I've got a debate. I can't, I can't take matters lightly. I have to make sure that I'm a qualified candidate that can represent the town of East Montpelier in a proper, in a proper and responsible way. Right. I'm glad you take that seriously. I do. So I will decide on my own privately when I go into the ballot box tomorrow. While I'm working to polls tomorrow from one to four. Is there that conflict of interest that you're going to vote for also working to polls? I, I will not be, I will not be helping people to decide on who they're voting for. Okay. All right. Oh, you'll be stuffing the ballot box. I will, I will not. There, there will be a strict controls. Yes, strict controls. You won't be monitoring. You won't be monitoring. Yes. Yes, I will. There's cameras. Yeah, there's cameras. Anyway, I think I said more, I think I've said more than enough and digging myself enough of a hole, but I appreciate, but I, but I should appreciate anyone's support and, and you can, and you can contribute to my pack. I would like to say thank you too for Scott for serving on the planning commission for over 10, 12 years. So thank you so much. And I'm, I'm excited that you're going to move on up the ladder. Thank you. Thank you, Kim. It's been a pleasure and a joy working with Kim. And she was the one that talked to me, her and Gene, this, or he talked me into joining the planning commission. It is, it's been, it's been a thrill for, for that many years. So happy to help out in another matter and lend some expertise to the select board on the, on the workings and what goes on at the planning commission since I've been involved in that for a long time. So, but thank you all. Wow, that was a big speech. So it is, it is, it is not my Trump speech. It's just my speech. Erica Zimmerman put in the chat that she's clarifying that she's running for the open two-year position. The three-year positions have candidates on the ballot. Yeah, we figured that out. Very good. So there are other candidates for other positions. They just don't happen to be here tonight. I know there's another one for planning commission. Mia Stone is running. And Mia Stone, is there another one for planning commission running? Or is it just two? It'd be three. There is another one, gentlemen. Nicholas or Nicko? Something. So there's three candidates there. And just the one for select board. Okay. All right. So I think we've used up Rachel I still have my hand raised. I'm in another subject. Yes. Ask some questions. We would like some. You can go, Rachel. Oh, I'm just going to be very brief. Just circling back to Fort Corner Schoolhouse, I just realized Hobie's away, and I won't be able to attend tomorrow. I hope somebody, if any questions come up, you can call me if nobody from the schoolhouse is there who can answer. But we didn't organize beforehand to see that somebody would be there. Generally. Well, traditionally, that's not a hot topic. It's generally not a hot topic. So, but anyway, that's all. Thank you. I think you'll be okay. I think so. But we'll throw you one in the bus if you so desire that you're not there. What was that? I said, I'll throw you one in the bus if you so desire that you're not there. Oh, I knew I could count on you, Seth. Thank you. Okay. Yes. So I just wanted to clarify, did you ask for us to call you from the floor of the town meeting if there are questions? No, no, no, no, no. If there are questions. Oh, if there are questions, yeah. You're welcome to call and I'm happy to answer them if I can. Yeah, but usually there are no questions. Right. Right. There may be somebody else from the schoolhouse, Sarah, who can answer the questions as well. Okay. Well, we'll try to cross that bridge and we get to it. Okay. You have a question? I do. You mute it. Oh, yeah. Fire away. I've got like three questions. So after listening today for a while on VPR, just about town meeting and everything, it started me to wonder how we're going to get input from people within the community on our ARPA money. Because the state is having a really hard time deciding what to do with their even ARPA money because they're trying to get it through committees and things like that. And I think we have the same problem as a, you know, as a town, what we're going to do with it. And I know we have a 16 cent tax increase and wondering why we can't use some of that funding for one time expenses. So just the question to the select board is, is when is that going to start to be decided and how and why we didn't have it put on the ballot or something like that to make those decisions earlier? And then the next question I have is the state is also looking at a, you know, proposal to have properties looked at throughout the state and having a, I forget what the, they call it. Maybe Erica's, you know, shaking her head. I forget what it's called a statewide appraisal system. Yes, statewide appraisal system. And what, you know, what that is telling me is that the state is really screwed up on appraisals having the towns doing appraisals. And so therefore that what we have to look at is what really the purpose of having elected listers are because they're not even appraisers. You know, they are not educated in that line of work. They, they're just, you know, voted people onto the, to the, you know, into the town office and they make no sense to have someone who doesn't even know what listings are, what property values are and things like that. So those are my three questions to the select board to start looking at. Okay. Let me just try to answer the ARPA question first. So we haven't clearly defined the uses that we, that we can use ARPA money for yet. When we do so, we'll be putting it out to townspeople on potential ideas to use the ARPA money for certain things or what we have for ideas in the town. We have some ideas ourselves, but it's probably fair to put it out to the town at large in the beginning. But we have to define what we can use it for first. We did give away the 100,000 to CV fiber, which was no loud use. And that was something that was going to benefit all the townspeople to get better broadband access. But there's $662,000 left. Some of that can be used for one time expenses within the town. And we're looking at doing that to try to lower the tax rate for 2023-24. So we're still looking at that. And that's where that's at. I do think we need to consider whether we need to create a committee. I think it is going to be overwhelming for me to be trying to take every comment from, if County Road is any indication of what this is going to pull a lot more comments from our residents than that. And it is going to quickly become a very overwhelming process. Now, some towns have not decided to do that. They decided that the select board had the knowledge and they were elected to represent the people and they put that into various projects that they knew they needed money for. So there's that option. But the other option is to put it out to the townspeople by some kind of mechanism, public mechanism, and then to channel that to a committee and they would come up with some recommendations. Well, I would like to say that how do we vote that the select board has the ultimate authority because the townspeople, as you can see, aren't very engaged to what the expenses are for the town and things like that. So how do we put it out to the townspeople to say, yes, let's have ideas in this category or focus on these issues like helping with taxes and helping maybe with some other high items that might be on the capital improvement committee budget. And how do we focus that attention so that we can get the select board the ultimate authority or the town office? So the feedback that I received from Katie Buckley and she is the VLCT essentially head of their federal grant, you name it, but VLCT, she's the ARPA lead with VLCT. Her, what she said that she's trying to advise towns to do is the towns to your point can, the select board knows that there are certain infrastructure needs that the town has. So what she's trying to advise towns to do is to identify those needs that you know you need to do, use earmark funds, I should say, to cover those things that need to happen and then determine what that bucket is that is left that would go for public comment. So that's the advice that she passed to me and I've said this to the board, to the select board previously already that because she just said that in her opinion, it's a dangerous proposition for everybody to be eyeing that total fund, that the town garage is a problem. This isn't going to buy us a town garage to be clear that the ARPA funds alone. However, they could give us a good study to determine what the needs are for the town garage and what we need to do there to then help us build that plan going forward to replace the town garage. So these are things that the select board knows the town needs that to Kim's point, every resident likely is not aware. Even if they've even driven by the town garage, but to even to understand that there, that that is a definite need that the town has. One of the things that we've been waiting to understand what we are allowed to use the funds for and what not. And where are we in that? I brought the presentation to the select board, right? When I first started. So we can bring that and look that it's a pretty wide scope of what we what we can use the funds for. There was still uncertainty about it though. Is that the state says there's no uncertainty? I'm uncertain how we can go back. That's what we're trying to figure out. But frankly, just haven't had a lot of time to put a lot of effort into into the details. But is how how we can go backwards? That's what I'm more confused about. Because we've spent money on land digitization, for example, I'm not sure how far back we can go and recoup and say we've incurred expenses last year, two years ago that we want to apply to ARPA. So I think it's fair to say that we're still trying to figure it all out. And we will get it figured out fairly soon. But I believe the select board does have the ultimate authority on that money where it would be spent. I mean, we do. We will solicit public input for some of it. And but ultimately, we would make that decision. But we would get public input, of course, whenever appropriate. Yeah. Yeah. Does that answer your question, Kim? Yes. Thank you. I know it was the next question. Well, it was wondering whether you could use it on the to help offset the tax increases this year, because it's like 16 cents on the dollar. And that's pretty high impact for the townspeople. Use ARPA just simply as a revenue source. Yes. We could just call it revenue. Yeah. But we want to be careful. Fold it into our budget. We want to just use it for one-time expenses that are impacting our budget for $23.24, or if we have a shortfall. There is potential to use that money to offset the tax increase to some extent. But just to be clear, it's only 5.8 cents on the municipal side. The other projected 10 cents is on the school side that we have no controller. And that's because for a lot of different reasons, the CLA has dropped tax properties of sole for a lot of money in the town. That means we're going to get less money from the state. And also declining enrollment in the school has a big impact also. And many towns are facing the same problem. Every town around us the same problem. But you had another question at the end of the three questions. The other one was with regards to the state looking at statewide appraisals and what our town is doing with regards to the listers and having unexperienced listers who know nothing about appraisals getting voted in to determine our appraised property values. Okay. So that's been an ongoing discussion for several positions that are within the town and elected positions. One is that internal auditors and that many towns are done away with. The other is elected listers. And that's also been a big discussion. At this point, we've decided more or less decide to form a committee that could study those two positions. Now, I think that Scott has proposed the statewide appraisal service or change because he's concerned about the unevenness of appraisals within each town. So by going to a standardized system they're hoping to get it more standard. But I don't think that's been implemented yet on the state side. But looking at from the town point of view, we've had this discussion at a select board level for the last year. And the last thing we left it at is we probably should form a committee to study whether we want to do away with elected listers and elected auditors versus hiring an auditor or we already hire an auditor. We don't even need an internal auditor anymore. The only thing that they really do is statutorily they're supposed to do the town report. But we could hire the town report. The charter could help with that. I mean, where are you formed? We do have a committee that looked at the charter and they are informed and may be able to help with that. Yeah. And I think that's a good idea is to reform that committee and to look at some elected positions. But to be clear on the list or position you do not have to go through the charter change. You can elect that at a stranded out or a town meeting. So any more questions? No, thank you. Great. Erica has one. Oh, yeah? You have a question, Erica? I do. It was as I listened to Kim and you discussed the ARPA funds it occurred that to me that the town committees might be a source of input on the needs of the town as well as the general public. And I always believe it's good to kind of reciprocate with people who are volunteering by asking for their input. And so offering a forum for the town committees to present what they would see as priorities might be interesting and might feed the idea pool. We'd have to all know what the parameters are. Right. Yeah, we'll definitely be working on that. Right now we're going to get through that we've been working budget, etc. We've been very busy with various things after town meeting to shoot your time that we can start digging into some of these other things that we haven't been able to completely to finish up. So that's probably what's going to happen after town meeting. We'll form committees and we'll work on the ARPA stuff and also on the elective positions that we've talked about the last year. Any other questions? I just wanted to say too. Yeah, no, go ahead. Yeah, the Capital Improvement Committee, Erica, has put the question out to all these committees annually and most of them don't come back with much. And so therefore just to let you know we would really encourage the Capital Improvement Committee would really encourage any committees that need anything over $5,000 to also come back to the Capital Improvement Committee. And I know, for example, that we're going to be working with the select board in things like the town garage. How do if we have to deal with sidewalk maintenance in the future and things like that. So we are encouraging the committees to touch base all the time. Yeah. Okay. I think we're good on our town forum. Nobody else has anything to say? Just like an auction. You have one more chance. Mr. Duane. Also, thank you. Okay. Well, thank you everybody for participating. We had a good discussion, which is nice. It warms us up for town meeting and it prepares us for answering questions that we may have from the town meeting floor. It's a warm up, right? It is, yeah. Often we get questions that we want to put some research into. Oh, absolutely. So thank you. We're going to move on to our town, our regular select board meeting. And we're going to close the town forum at 7.30.