 of executive session and with all of you here I will restate why we went into executive session we went into executive session our attorney was here to discuss a matter that was that is attorney-client privilege and we have nothing to report out from that discussion. So let me now ask whether there are just additions or changes to the agenda. No. Mark, additions to the agenda? No. Okay. The warrant for circulating Jeremy, thank you for bringing that word to Jeremy. We are moving on to the consent agenda. We have we always optimistically put all the minutes that we have for final approval and we've made it through in our review through the October minutes so so we are related to minutes is coming out of me. So we're doing October 17 and 24 and 27 and 24. So we're doing the October minutes that are listed here and different and removing from the consent agenda the November and December. They're posted but they're not we haven't reviewed them and then we are leaving in the thirty thousand dollar ARPA funds for traffic calming study which was a substantive conversation on the 28th but we didn't vote it. Right. So all right so that is the consent agenda. Is there a motion? I move the consent agenda as all in favor please say aye. Aye. Okay. Next item. I think I might have printed that too. You've got it somewhere. Okay. I'll post that too. The Washington Unified Union School District has requested that we mail the WSU balance to registered voters at their expense but from our town office site. That is not more than one day. Oh I didn't print it. Yeah. I'm just going to make a motion and then we can discuss it. Yeah go ahead and make some motions. Okay. I move that the town of Calis mail the Washington Central Unified Union School District and their meeting balance to all active registered voters on the checklist. Next. Okay. Discussion questions. So I have in front of me a one page letter that came from Megan Roy who is the new superintendent at Washington Central Unified School District. Apparently this is a routine thing at least since the district has been unified. Any questions? Yeah. In this letter we received was probably for the eyes of the Washington Central Unified Union School District. Right. The letter that is Megan Roy. All right. Is there a we have a motion in a second. All in favor please say aye. Aye. Yes. Okay. Do you want me to remind me and you got to remember I'm taking notes. I got to go slow. Right. So I did that. The motion that I made. I think there's more. Okay. All right. So yeah. So let's run it slow down. The next item is a request from the East Calis community trust. This relates to the grants that the town is supporting and I was going to ask if we got what we needed to approve this but you're but you're here. Go ahead. Wait a minute. You have recuses here. Yes. Yes. I will answer questions if necessary. But I as a member of the ECCT and I got very much given the witness that I don't need to. Okay. Well, that remains to be seen. So Denise and Mark because they're involved in the ECCT border refused Jeff. Do you want to introduce yourself for me? Sure. Sorry, I'm Jeff Kinance, I'm a housing consultant and I'm helping the East Calus community trust with the redevelopment of the general store in East Calus. And I live on Gray Road, so in Calus, just right next to East Monterey Square, so, hi, neighbors. So we're here tonight because the town has applied for a grant on behalf of the ECCT and was awarded for $48,000. And the town has received a draft agreement from the state and myself and Liz Hurley, the other consultant on the project, have reviewed it along with a copy I'd like to show them. And the town asks that we pass the resolution accepting the grant. The grant is about to be offered a check today and they set it up in the next day or two. So we have a resolution to accept the anticipated grant that will be forthcoming and to a point marked personally responsible for overall administration. And you will have to keep a look out for myself and Liz Hurley in that regard. And it means Sharon and the chief executive officer to sign the behalf of the town. When you say a point mark, that would be on behalf of the ECCT. That's right, you guys want to make sure that we're clear. That's the chair of the ECCT right now, that's the resolution that we're asking about. So this is where, so the specific resolution is resolution is that we, so the motion I'm looking for is as Jeff outlined, that the board accept and agree to the terms and conditions of the grant agreement that Mark is named as the ECCT person with administrative responsibility for the grant activities and the housekeeping that I'm gonna sign on behalf of the board. That is, are you making the, I'm not, I'm asking for the motion. John, is there a way to say a second? I'm sorry. So moved. I'm so moved. Is there a second? Is there a second here? I'll second it. Okay. Any other, any questions while we have Jeff here? I do have one more item as well. We have to go to this one now. Let's vote this one. Yeah. Okay, all in favor please say aye. Aye. Okay. Go ahead, John. So the decision that was sent out to me was in the administrative services of program action agreement. The grant, as you know, is gonna go to the town, town passes it through with a sub grant agreement to East house community trust. Along with that pass-through comes all the requirements, the conditions and regulations that are put on the town are passed through the East house community trust. So the contract that I've sent out for the administrative services of program management, the points, the East house community trust as the administrative services. Okay, I'm working on my question. Good. Is that, is that, and that's Mark Mahali as well, as point person for the, okay. I'll just say this contract is one. It's got this long list of things that ECCD has to do and all the town has to do to be nice. We have to be nice. We have to be nice to the town. Anything, and you wanna add on this before we make a motion, Jeff? I don't think so. I have a question. Okay, so is there a motion to approve the ECC, the rock community development program contract for administrative services and the program management agreement is what we have in our folders and I've printed out this motion. So. I'll second. I'll second. Any other questions for Jeff? Mark, I filled your name in as person. I'll pass up to you to sign. Okay. And I will sign on behalf of the municipality. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. I don't know. John needs to sign. If you have a pen dated today. Yes. There's a one for today. I did, I did. If you could send me a scene of copies of the ECC. John, could you please sign this? I don't know, Mark. We've talked about maybe changing a word or two on that. Well, it's too late. Okay. We'll wait on this. Good. Just so you know, there's a technicality with this damn thing. It says, as tendered, well, they've approved it. It's working its way up to the final bureaucratic stage which we'll probably have tomorrow. But, I don't think. If they have a problem, let us know. We're meeting again next week, Mark. I just want to thank you. Mark. You're so kind. Thank you very much. Thank you. Nice to meet you. Yeah, we're under construction as you know. Drive by. Pretty exciting. Yeah, it is really exciting. It's great. Thank you. Thanks, Jeff. Yeah. Thank you, Jeff. Have a good day. Oh, we have a person now. This is Mark. No. Yeah, that means that you have to leave. Mark, excuse me. Mark, it's in the select board, though. Right. So make sure I have it back. Here. Yeah, let's do that. Is that just OK? One, two, three. Yeah. Take a breath. Take a breath, do you have everything you need on that? Yeah. And you have one, two, and then next. OK. You have pictures, one, and two. No, why don't you just give me the whole thing? Yeah, here it is. So I have one whole thing together. See you. Three, two, three, then you have four. Then I have four, which is sign. All right. OK. I have one. I want to arrest you, please. OK. Thank you. Cheyenne, I have one. So personnel update. So we had interviewed an athlete with a treasurer and business manager. We were considering an offer, and the person has found a different position to take. They thought that the drive here was too far. This is a different person than the other person that we offered it to. So with that, I would like the board to think about reviewing and revisiting the current job description. I'd like to have Sharon and I talked about it. We would like to meet with Gina Jenkins, town administrator in Eastmont-Pillier, to review our job description, review what she does for the town of Eastmont-Pillier, and see what we can do. I mean, the hiring market is still. I'm sorry to interrupt you, but there's a similar Subaru out across track with a skin side lights on. And it was somebody who was brought here early. Susan. OK. We'll not start again. Yeah. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you, Jeff. So that's, I would like us to revisit the job description. And meet with Gina Jenkins and Eastmont-Pillier. So would the board authorize Sharon and I to do so? I'd like to comment on that. I'd like to comment, too. OK. Through the chair, would you like me to go first? Here you go. You go first. I'll be sweet. I think it's a great idea. The reason is, you remember several months ago, we had a problem with that statement, which I thought was very thoughtful, and what we were discussing, how we were going to do things. And one of the suggestions that was made by several people was that we consider a town administrator. I think, at the time, we thought about it. And I reported back, I remember in the meeting, that we really thought about it hard. And we just thought we were a little small for that. And that we wouldn't be a little small. But I think that it's time to revisit that. And we think it. I mean, we were always open to it. We discussed it. We thought about it. We decided not to do it. But maybe we were wrong. And so I think that when you talk to others, kind of think, keep that in your mind. Are we too small, or is this right for us? Well, we need to do some research on that. But I mean, we've been advertising and advertising, advertising this position for, I don't know, six months, it seems like, it feels like. And we've had some interest. We've had interviews. We've offered the position three times. Yeah, three times. Well, no, four times. We haven't made it all the way to offer. But we were on that road for this last individual that we interviewed, who lives in Berlin, Vermont, and said the drive was too far. Well, there are parts of broken word is very far. Right. So it's on the other side of Berlin. It's on the Northfield line. Right, yeah. So, you know, and this is a hard time a year because people, you know, driving to callus on the back roads, in potential storms, even though we have said that part of the position can be done remotely, which opens up, you know, hopefully more opportunity for candidates to think about it that they don't have to come in the office every single day. There are certain times when the person would have to come in. But anyways, I think it's time for us to revisit. Yeah, so yeah, I agree. And we may be too small, but the fact is we advertise for treasure for a while. That didn't work. We said, well, let's try something different, make it more interesting. We tried that. We had a lot of applicants, but nothing has worked out. And so in the spirit of, well, okay, let's keep trying something different. Well, we can try something different every week because it takes time and bandwidth from us to revisit job descriptions and think about what does it look like. But, and you'll see, we just re-upped the ad in, you'll see, in seven days, I asked them to run it for another month. So we'll keep advertising for what we have, but at the same time, it's, yeah, it's worth maybe the title, Town Administrator Will Garner. We just don't want, no, right? It'll be us gonna try something different. So we may be trying something different in three months too. And talking to folks that we interviewed and offered the position, they liked the idea that the treasurer was gonna do something more than just treasurer duties. They really liked the idea that it was more diverse. There was new things to learn. You know, it opened up an opportunity for people to learn new things. And several applicants made that comment that they really liked that piece of it. Yeah, so yeah, so we're gonna, we're just gonna keep being, we're gonna keep moving on, moving on. Yep, right. I don't know that John wanted to make it. John, John, I think we're ready to move on, are you? Yeah, yeah. I'll move on to something new. Yeah, okay. So there's something I'd like to inform, at least officially inform the full select board of that I decided to resign my position on the select board effective at the end of this meeting. For those in the audience who may not know, I was elected last year to a two-year position. And so by my resigning now, I've been resigning within the first year of my two-year position, I've spoken with select board members individually about the prospect of my being appointed to fill out the rest of this, the remaining part, this half of my two-year term with an eye toward not leaving the select board in a lurch, but, and let me back up, the reason I would resign now, rather than wait till a later date is to give the callous public plenty of time to think about the day we wanna run, or they know someone who might wanna run from my spot. And so I'm allowed for that conversation and thought process to begin now rather than later. So I'm asking the select board to consider appointing me to fill out the rest of my term, the first half of my term. Right, we'd have to do that, I think at the next meeting. So that we have time to warn it. Do we have to warn it? I guess we do. We do have to vote on it. Well, unless it falls under something we already have on. Well, it falls under appointing a public official. Well, I'll let Mark speak and then I will speak to that. Right. First of all, I have to really enjoy this. Yeah, the same to you, Mark. You've done a tremendous. I'm sure we'll continue to work together on stuff. John, you've done a tremendous amount of work for this town for so, so many years. Your service is above and beyond what anybody would expect a volunteer to do. Thank you so much. I appreciate that. You and I have worked together for a long time. So good. You and I have worked together for a long time too. Yeah, thank you. I'm in the same position. I thought I'd hope that perhaps I could do both jobs and I now know that I just don't have it in me. I just, I just can't do it. I can't personally do, I can't do it well. I can't do it right. I can't, I can't be, you know, a Vermont legislator and be on the select works too hard. And so I'm in exactly the same position. I want to give notice tonight and resign effective end of the evening so I can participate in the activity tonight. But if the board wishes to reappoint me on an interim basis to serve through town meeting day when someone else will be elected, that's great, it's up to the board. And I'm doing it now for the same reason, which is that it gives the clerk time to, what is it, a few days you're gonna send out an email, right? I mean a front porch forum. Well the deadline to the candidates is the middle of January, so there will offer time for people to decide if they want to write. They'll give notice somehow, and I wanted to do that. I wanted to give people notice and Jeremy, I think the clerk will be sending out something on the front porch forum. So are you resigning the question of the M in this meeting? The M in this meeting? Yeah, yeah. And then it's up to you guys whether you want to reappoint me. If you feel like you need to notice it and warn it and do it, we're meeting next week. So that we don't have to meet the day after Christmas. Yeah, we don't want to meet the day after Christmas so we're meeting the day next week. And the only thing I'd say is do it at the beginning of the meeting if you want to participate. Right, right. So Mark, similarly, thank you very much. So let me describe in case people have questions now or even have questions, because this is very nuanced stuff. So the cash 22 is that there is no vacancy until a member, any elected official has formally left. You can't announce a vacancy by giving two weeks notice or three months notice. The vacancy, because then you can change your mind. They've been elected. They can say, I'm thinking I'm going to quit, but then they can change their minds. So in order to create a vacancy, the resignation happens now. At the end of this meeting, there is a vacancy. And that two vacancies. And that creates an awareness and an opportunity for people to run. Jeremy's going to be posting a list of what opportunities are available. But we are assured that these are vacant positions because they have reminded that tonight. At the same time, the select board is obligated to appoint somebody to fill a vacant position of an elected official forthwith. And so what we, I similarly have spoken to each person and our, because Mark and John were elected by the public and they're willing to be appointed into the vacancies that they have just created to fill out the vacancy, what feels very democratic to us is that we appoint them to fill their own vacancy. So we avoid any bias of incumbency. We don't engage in a whole process that we would take a whole chunk of time to invite candidates to fill that vacancy, which an election can fill in March. So a town meeting election, that's the opportunity for an election to fill, to elect somebody to fill out Mark's seat, which is two more years and to fill out John's seat, which is one more year. So I, we have warned an executive session for attorney, client privilege, personnel, appointment of or employment of a public officer or employee. We actually did a warrant, warrant that. So we did, we did warrant that. So we will frankly probably appoint them at the end of this meeting to fill their own vacancy again for the reasons that I just said, so that we are not creating a process that would be very time consuming. We are on the heels of the election anyway, and we will be appointing people that the town has already elected. Right. Okay, so with all of that said, anything, you guys are awesome. And thank you, thank you, Mark, I can't. Is it clear to all of you guys why we're doing that by appointing, re-appointing us, that means they're just leaving it to the election to decide rather than trying to appoint someone to get a leg up, you know, or something like that. That's the bias you have come to, yeah. Okay, so thank you. Thank you both very much, Mark. And then, okay, so let me, anything else you want to add on to personnel before we move to public comment? No, I don't think so. I just, Jeremy's here, Jeremy's here. I wanted to just clarify my understanding. We had a conversation last week and last week about Saturday. Sorry, I had a bunch of meetings. We had a bunch of workshops last this week. That's this week that's all about the functioning of the clerk's office. And there was a lot of conversation about hours put in, hourly, and, you know, I processed this and it became pretty clear to me that the town clerk is in an elected position. Just like the select board position is an elected position. You all voted, voted for the town clerk position, I assume. Thanks, Mark. I was gonna lose that. Just like the governor on town to, I guess the town clerk or some towns at the town constable, those folks are elected to fulfill the statutory role. There's a set of job duties. You can do those duties in 10 minutes and then you've completed your job. If it takes you many more hours than you anticipated when you ran for the office, it still remains your obligation to fulfill what is prescribed in statute. It's not an hourly or an hour by hour job. It's an elected position, all elected positions across the country, as far as I understand, are task-oriented, are job description-oriented. They're framed in statute and that's what you're agreeing to when you run for office and that's what you commit to. We're engaged in a conversation about what is appropriate compensation, that's separate. But I just want to make clear it's not an hourly position. Now, the clerk hires his or her assistant. That is an hourly job. That's a position appointed by the clerk. That's their assistant. That's their person and we allocate our budget a dollar amount based on anticipated hours needed for that assistant clerk to fulfill the responsibilities that would be assigned by the clerk. And that information is brought to us by the clerk during budget development time, which is right now. I just wanted to clarify the folks who watch the video every morning or on Saturday. That's how it works. The clerk's job is not a 32-hour job. It's not a 40-hour job. It's as many hours it takes to complete their responsibilities on a weekly, monthly, yearly basis. That's what it is. So in the case of Jeremy, it takes him one week, 20 hours, I don't think it's ever that much, then for that week he's fulfilled his responsibilities. It's never that little. It's never that little, yeah. But there are gonna be times where it's 60 and 80 hours. And I know I've been on this board when Eva was a clerk, when Donna Fitch was a clerk, and when Judy was a clerk. And they all understood that that's what their role in responsibility. And I just didn't want folks to be misunderstanding because I think there was some confusion in our conversation last Saturday. So can we say one thing? Certainly. And Donna, so it's set, so we, it's an electric position. We set the salary. That's the way it works. And so we're setting the salary for the position. We recommend in our budget a salary amount. And then the voters vote on that budget. And if it's not by Australian ballot, they can amend it. Our budget can be amended on the floor. That's up to you all if you show up for town meeting. Right, so what we need to do to fulfill our obligations to the voters is we need to look at what's the surrounding towns? What do they pay? And of course, taking into account are they like us? Are they different than us? Are there things that our clerk does that they don't that we like or vice versa? All of that gets taken into account. And we have to take into account the market. And right now, the market. Which is a comparison. Well, yeah, but some of those surrounding towns may have had someone who was in the job for a long time. The question would be what would they be paying if they had to hire someone now? And that's hard. One of the things that just as a general matter, I'm sure it's no news to any of you. The market, you just heard it. I mean, the market front, it sucks. I mean, it's very hard to find good people and there's not enough of them. But this is tied to market, the SMR, and it's also not, it's an elected position. It's like saying, what's the market for governors? Right, all I'm saying is that when we look at that, we would look at, I think the proper measure is what's the right salary for that position to get in everything. Right. Yes. Get in the surrounding towns, get in where we are. Well, and really market, your market informs, you get informed by the market, a particularly push comes to shove when you can't find any candidate for the position. That's where the market informs you what the market is. All right, so I want to move on. Are we done in a personal? Well, I just wanted to, and also clarify, what other towns are currently paying, it's just like what we're currently paying, it's kind of retrospective. We would be better informed by checking in with other select boards and what are they considering? Yeah, right. And what do they think their clerks salary needs, if you will, will be going forward. Yeah. You know, given the economy and everything else. So I think we'll be doing that in consideration. There's a lot to consider. The request needs to be made. Thank you, but thank you. If I get appointed, we'll be considering. But we will have more budget meetings where we get to talk more about these things. Yes, we are running way behind, we are 15 minutes behind, we had 15 minutes for public comment, given that we are 15 minutes behind, I am going to work very hard to keep public comment in the 15 minutes. And you all know that what that means, nothing personal, but I will be encouraging you to hurry. With a smile on my face. If I remember, if Mark, if I remember the smile, I said, please hurry up. So can you guys raise your hands and let me know how many people want to speak in public comment? Just a couple? Really? Okay. Great. Somebody come forward. Can you tell me your name, please? I don't know. My name is Rene DeGas. I am the Court of the Scouts Fire District. I'm just coming to amend our funding request. We submitted it in July of last year and he's never cleared of me whether we were asking for part of that first year grant or the total, but now I can see that it's being. It's total. The total. Right. So I'm requesting an increase to 60,000. What was it before we? 30. 30. We're accustomed to double. Yeah. Okay. So you said the best thing is to come in person. Shall I tell you? That's great. So I did. I also have a letter. Okay. And then you have something to add to the email. The second page is a copy of the first request that was sent in writing just to let you know it all. Okay. Yeah. I just want to point out that the dam, Curtis Pond is really important and it affects everybody in town. And CB Fiber also affects everybody in town, but it particularly doesn't affect East Couch Village. CB Fiber? Right. Because most of the village is considered served by it's not understood. Right. Right. So they won't begin. Right. So as you think about the fact that, oh, well you guys want 60. Well, so the two of them are kind of close to the rest of the town and not to us. So do you, you don't have an estimate of what it's going to, what you're going to be doing? Soon. We are supposed to get an estimate from the engineer. Last time, I know we were going to be bonding for 250. And I hope this comes in less than that. But we only have a base of 50. And this is for you, Curtis? Yeah. I was going to just ask you. Yeah, to say out loud what the project that the request is, what the project is. So we have a disinfection project. The state requires us to do certain things to improve our system up there. And it will include expanding our, to the reservoir capacity. So the disinfection, I'm just trying to get on the page. So I'm going to do a five. So the disinfection project is required by the state? Because we have excellent water. And yeah, we still have to have a standby thermometer that functions. That's EPA. Yeah, EPA makes A&R, get on the base to do this thing. So disinfection, expand our reservoir capacity, develop another source, hopefully, to make us more drought resistant in the future. And it would open up, it would then be possible probably to expand the number of hookups right now, but they will not allow us to expand our capacity because of the size of our reservoir. Right, right, because I know in the last couple of years we had droughts and then. You got a question, right? Right, yeah, there's seven of bigger reservoirs would make a big difference for that. Reservoir means a tanker. Yeah, very good for your tanker. Thank you, thank you for explaining the topic. Any questions about me? Thank you, thank you. Thanks for volunteering and doing that. Yeah, thank you for that one. Important. It's important. I guess I have a question that you don't have to answer right now, but I'm sort of wondering how are you gonna decide, or how this is gonna go? And our plan is that for town-related projects like the CD-Fiber. What does that mean? We have to help paying for cuts to do some work. The cuts is, I don't know what C-O-T-T-S. Oh, that too. Probably for the town office, I can't remember. Things like that, the board is deciding on how to spend that, but anything outside of a town-related project, we're gonna put it on the list in the town report like to do the social services. So there's a slate of items, yeah, then there's how many people can kind of make more than that, man. We haven't worked out that detail yet. We haven't worked that out. You have to figure out where we're going. But that's the plan, actually. To have the towns people have input in to have the rest of the money is spent. Right, yeah. So this goes on the list? It's already on the list. It's already on the list, but I just have to update the list for this new amount. Okay. Great, thank you. Thank you very much. Thanks for your speech. Is the town work gonna have an explanation, any kind of explanation that follows what that, why the request has gone up? Yeah. We can do it on the floor too. If we can do it on the floor, I plan to write something up for the select board report about our plan. And about that, about, what you mean was about the water district, public community water supply that is serving the village or the town. So that's really important. Yeah, maybe I'll contact Rene about that. Yeah, Rene, Rene, actually, why don't we, could you write a little paragraph of what it's for? Yeah. And it's probably in the letter. That's probably what you're gonna tell us. All right. Okay, thank you. Go ahead. Hi, I'm Daniel Keeney. I'm one of the house representatives of the school board. Yeah, I'm also. Hi Daniel. Hi. I'm sorry, I'm one of the house representatives to the Washington Central Unified Union School District. Wait, can you say that like five times fast? No. And you're also involved in the swim committee? Swimming committee. Yeah, right? Yes. I'm not, I'm not prepped or briefed to talk about this one. That's okay. But yeah, I don't want to be tedious, but so Rosie Lecaire, our district clerk was here earlier. She had to leave. But she did actually wanna just make a slight language change to the proposal which you passed earlier, which was, and I'll defer to you whether that actually. We didn't pass anything. No, we didn't. We didn't pass the resolution to. Right, but we didn't, yeah, we went with the language because we didn't have. Right. Right, so. I'm just, yeah, there was a slight distinction she wanted to make, which was to avoid the eventuality of having a bunch of returned ballots that had to be kept in a vault that is too small in her office. She basically just wants ballots sent out to active, unchallenged and registered voters rather than all registered voters. Who made the motion? I did. And I'm the seconder to you except for the. The, yeah. Can you say that? Yeah. Can you say what it is? Does it, ballots be sent to all active, unchallenged, registered voters? Is that gonna make a big difference? As opposed to. She thinks just why it's gonna make a very large difference in terms of the number of ballots she has to hold for an extended period of time in her vault. She's active, unchallenged, registered voters. Jeremy, you wanted to just, you're nodding your head. You wanna be? Good idea. Well, what I think what it does is that we'll require us to send ballots to folks who are challenged, many of whom have moved out of town, not responded to challenge letters, folks that, and so unless I can't purge somebody off the list, off of the voter checklist, if we know that they've moved out of town, I still have to get that individual to actually sign a form that allows me to purge them. So right now I think we have maybe like 150 people who are on the challenge list. So for instance, so that's, so it's basically it means 150 ballots that won't go out and just get returned to my office or. So. And so that that would cost more than you know, it's the same on postage school, but are we allowed to? You're not, it's not at your cost. It's at the school. It's at the school. It's at the school. Are we allowed to do that? Are we allowed to do that on our election? No one who's challenged got a ballot mailed from the Secretary of State for either the primary or the November general in this last election. Okay, so this is just. It's a standard practice. It's, it's. Okay, I appreciate that. Yeah. And I think that language was not included in the letter that was sent to you. Okay, no it wasn't. And we apologize for that. It wasn't sort of a late addition. I also speak under correction, but I think they can still vote in person those challenges. I had caption on people show up to sign now today, do I still live in town? Great, done, here's your ballot. Okay. So, so Denise, are you making a motion to amend your motion? Or whatever it is that you require? My request. All right. Any other questions for Daniel? All in favor, please say hi. Hi. Thank you. Oh, why don't we vote? We're three for three now. We have two towns to go. We just, so is there a motion to resend the earlier vote? We amended the earlier vote. Right, we just amended the earlier vote. Okay. And did everybody vote in favor? Yes, we all did. We just said we did. Rick is just very quiet. You're, Denise is so busy taking good minutes that you didn't hear us all. Well, they're not gonna be good. They're not gonna like these three. Sorry, I'm under the water. No, it's okay. We're trying to get it straight. So we amended our earlier vote. Yeah, okay. Thank you for volunteering. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Okay, I am going to recuse myself for the next item. Oh, yeah. Who am I? And Mr. Chair, Mr. Vice-Chair, I'll ask you to take over. And you're recusing because you don't like Drew and you don't want to do this? No, she doesn't like maple syrup. I'm recusing because I have done legal work for Drew, which makes him a client. Oh. So if we pick apart the agreement, it's because you made it. No, I've recused myself fully. Fully fully. Okay, I'll ask you. I don't know if you've worked on this one. I didn't know, but you're still, you know. Drew, come on in and join us. Okay. So the item before us is the approval, a three-year approval prior to three years. That's a revised agreement between the town and Lamb Sugar Works. We did this a few years ago, I guess it was three years ago, right? It's five. Was it five? Yeah, so I think it still has my initials up top, like my head. So the, as I understand it, the contract that we are being asked to approve and sign is identical to the prior contract, except number one, the dates have changed. And number two, there were some hours of operation. Right. There's a lot in the contract, but it's one of those wordy, lawyer contracts. But the hours of operation were specified in the prior contract. And as I understand it, they're generally accurate, but not totally accurate. That's correct. So your proposal is that those are struck. And is there any other change? No, that was it, just the dates. Yeah, and you said that you had, we haven't heard any complaints from anybody about the hours of operation and parking, because you kind of have to park on Pekin because your tank is up on the hill there. Yeah, we had the bottom singleton there. Yeah, yeah. I do have a question. There was a typo I just fixed, okay. My question is how many, about how many taps on townland are there? I'm gonna say probably around a hundred. But it's really hard to say because the town, the boundary between our land and townland is not properly surveyed. And so it's kind of, we don't really know exactly where, if the boundary were further up the hill on our land then there would be more taps on townland. But it's all on that side of the hill and the gravity feeds well. So John, where did you find a typo? Oh, I just put the word of, it's in the document. Oh, you just signed, it doesn't matter just anything. So, is there any questions or comments, I guess? Do you want to motion? Wait, so I want to ask, what were the hours of operation and all the changes? They were early in the morning. They were early and they still are, but it just, we've found that depending on road conditions and SAP Hall and exactly what our schedule is, that sometimes we're just there after we had initially expected to be there. Or when is that run? Yeah, I mean we're always out in the morning collecting SAP, but depending on the size of the run, sometimes we have to go out for a second run. That's usually what the trouble is. But it also depends on things that are not very interesting, like which tanks have the most, sometimes we will collect one tank or another tank, which means we get the town tank later. It's just itself, just kind of a scheduling thing depending on amounts of SAP and where they are, because we collect them for different tanks. Am I right in my, I wasn't here when we did the first one. In some ways, am I right in characterizing this to myself as this is something where the company has to go across our property in order to get where they need to get it. And in return for a small license fee, they're gonna tap our property and use our property, which we wouldn't really be able to do otherwise. In other words, it's not like this is some sort of big piece of land where we, there's a huge possibility for making lots of money by tapping it and we should bid it out or something like this. This is a situation where the guy's crossing our land and we're saying in return for a small license fee, tap it. What way do I even turn to fee? It's in there. Yeah, it's 200 bucks. Oh, was it? I forgot about that. Yeah. Did you pay? I paid over here. It's really though, I just add that it's really about the tank placement, much more than the taps. Yeah, because you said, I remember you explained it before, it was easier, access. Yeah, before we had the tank on town land, we had to collect all the sap that was in those parts of our woods with tractor and trailer, which is difficult. And as we've grown, we've moved to basically truck collection and transport back to our sugar house, which is on the top of Jack Hill. We aren't the least lucky person that has all the tap. Taps come down to a nice sugar house that's in the bottom of the hollow. So we're on top, so we collected all that truck. And when we started kind of going with that system, it was much more logical to have a tank down on Beacon Brook, which is on town land. So it was really about tank placement. And that's why we referred to it as the tank lease, rather than, and if it was the project of the town and we talked about this back then to not tap trees on town land, that we're not exactly sure where those trees are because of the boundary issue, then we'd be happy with that. It's not really about the taps for us, it's about the tank. Yeah, it's about the collection. Yeah, and at the time, one of the big issues was not that it was a big issue, but one of the considerations that the town, the select board has was with traffic on the road, parking the truck, and that's been a non-issue. And we said, you have to put up cones. We got cones and some orange. It's all there in the contract, yeah. Do we have a motion? Yeah, I made a motion and then you asked a question. I don't know what's on it. So I'll second your motion. So we have a motion to approve the contract. Any final questions, comments? The motion to approve the contract as revised. As revised, yeah. Well, it's in the contract. It's in the contract. It's presented as a new contract. It's not an extension of the old contract. It's a new contract. Right. Can I have, I do have one quick question. Please. And this is probably not an issue, but something I've seen before. Sometimes, you know, if you've got, you have tried, you know, I get nervous sometimes about over-attacking on trees. I've seen that with people out on land. I've seen five of them, six taps on it. Yeah. And you know, so yeah. It's also in the lease contract that we tapped according to regulations established by the state of Vermont. So yeah, we're very conservative with that. That's very good. Yeah. Any other comments, questions? No. Is there anyone who wants to testify on this matter? It's really good, Sarah. Yeah. Let the record reflect. Thank you very much. Yeah, thank you guys. Yeah, do we have a motion? All right, who's in favor? All right, say aye. Aye. Motion passed. I'll pass. I'll pass. Thank you guys. I just added the date for your service. I just added the date that we're signing this and if you're going to sign it tonight you can give it back to me. Can we just do that right now? And we'll let the record reflect to our cue. Yeah, yeah. Peace you all. Madam Chair, I turn it back to you. Thank you, Mark. That's my, thank you. Thank you. Okay, we are on to the Jeremy. Grace period. Grace period. Jeremy, can you send that back to John and Mark for me? Jeremy, we're ready for you. So the item is changed to the property tax period. Hello. Hello. Nice to see you again. Likewise, good to be seen. Long time no see. Jeremy, town clerk. So what this is was just some pressures that we've seen in the office relating to what we've had in the morning for a number of years. I think this was something that started on the floor and just became enshrined in the morning. But from last year's morning what I'm looking at is Article 13, which talks about a postmark. So postmark being taken to the post office, put the date on it, goes through the mail so you know when it was mailed as being a measure of if it's postmarked and the deadline's the 15th and it's postmarked on the 15th and you get it the following week, you're on time, no problem. There's a tension between that and Article 15, which is a seven day grace period. What ends up happening and what we've seen is that it creates a situation where there's some uncertainty about when the actual deadline is. Is the, I'm sorry, I didn't bring it with me. Is the Article 15 with the seven day grace period, is that also a postmark? Well, this is part of the write, it doesn't reference it but both our prior legal team and our current legal team read that as to allow for the grace period for both of the installments, including postmark. So we have a situation where it might be two weeks after the grace period has ended and we're still getting postmarked because. Did we change the wording from, I feel like we've processed as close as possible. But whatever it is, it doesn't say it but the practice is that you apply that postmark concept from Article 13 for the actual deadline to the grace period. So for instance, if yes, so it's applied to the grace period, it kind of creates an additional week of grace period. Right. And it also creates like we had in this year, it just kind of lengthens the tax collection process, which would be nice to, so I guess what I'm saying, you know, in terms of, well, for the last day on the 22nd, we had $109,000 walk through the door. Thank you. Of the grace period. Excuse me, you mean you had $109,000 which came in. Into the office. Postmarked on the last day. Walked in the, no, walked in. It literally walked in, not in the mail bag. So as long as we're receiving postmark, we, to some extent, we accept people walking in because that's still, that's kind of been the practice of the office. Right, so there's something I'm trying to get the correct one for you. So the postmark, if somebody mails it as postmarked, is accepted, if somebody walks in the office and hands you the check, if it's within that period, it's accepted. But hang on. No, no, no, no. I think what Jeremy's, let's make up some, he's saying, no, but let's, but let's, I think from the conversation you and I had, it's more nuanced than that. Right. That if the deadline, and I'm gonna make updates, if the deadline is September 15th, and for, like the real deadline for taxes. And then that's the beginning of a seven day grace period. After, so by the 22nd, if you get it postmarked by the 22nd, then you're still fine. You're fine. You're not on time, but you're fine. You're not gonna get penalized. Right. And what you explained to me on the phone is as a practical matter, because a piece of mail postmarked on the 22nd may not reach the office until the 30th. And so that whole period, or later, that whole period where mail, where postmarked on 22nd are still arriving in the mail, as a practical matter, you can still walk in even, and they will accept it without penalizing because if a piece of mail can arrive today and not be penalized, then a person walking in can. And I don't understand. That's kind of what I was thinking. I don't understand, why would you think that? It's not people walking in. It just, it lengthens the collection. So the grace period. So basically, it's creating a situation where it's lengthening the collection process. By several weeks. By several weeks, number one. Number two, I think that there's a fairness issue. There's a lot of people who work really hard to scrape up their taxes and get them in on the 15th. Postmarked on the 15th? Yeah, or just in person. And so, if I mail my check on the 15th from Seattle, I basically, it might not come to the 28th or the 30th. And so, in discussing this, so it just creates a, that's something that's available to every single taxpayer. It creates uncertainty. It lengthens the season, the tax season itself. And in talking with our legal, their experience was that it's usually, most communities do one or the other. And they, and Jim, agree with either a postmark or a grace period. But to do both is kind of like, it's, I would stick with postmarked personally. I think that that's fair. And concrete. And concrete, it creates a specific day that you need to get that thing. If you can't get to the office, you need to get to the post office. And so, like for instance, there was a situation where on the 15th, so even in our minutes, not in our minutes, in our morning, it has a five, four PM to the office. This person rolled in at four 22. We were still there. We accepted their payment. But then the following Monday, there were payments coming in that were accepted because they were postmarked. So it's just, it's kind of confusing. And it feels like it would be better just for the certainty and also just to try to shorten the tax collection season and just make it clear. We get people call in the office, when's the due date? It's the 15th, when's the real due date? That kind of stuff, it's the 15th. There's a grace period. There's like a nuance there that would be useful. And so just from talking with Joe, our attorney, he said that, yeah, most communities do either postmark or grace period. Typically it's grace period, or typically it's postmark. And that would be his suggestion as well is if you're gonna do one or the other to do the postmark. And then it's, you know, mail's mail, but typically there's, I just feel like, because there's a tension kind of between the two because an article 13 that references postmark before the due date set in article 12, which are the due dates. So then you have that, but then you have the grace period and it extends it. It's just a little wonky. And we were talking about language and he just said, why don't you just propose to just one or the other and we can ex out article, the grace period piece and just do postmark. I'm kind of exhausted, but not put that on the morning. Ex out 15. Yeah, just not have 15 on the morning. So eliminate the grace period. So that would be my suggestion. I think it would decrease uncertainty and it would shorten collections and kind of still provide a period of time for people to get their payments. And you'd be prepared to defend that on the floor if somebody comes up and says, well, I like the way it was and slick forward to removing that or proposing that it be removed. Well, we just wouldn't put it on the morning. No, no, someone could amend it from the floor. So it would be good if Jeremy could explain how he did to us. Does that make sense? Yeah, people with Jeremy will think, well, wait, I like a grace period. Grace period sounds like it sounds more, sounds more circling and warm and all that. Well, and it came from the floor. It came from originally. And you also really like it and the treasure of that would be ultimately higher. Sure, of course. It just makes it. Or one or the other. People like the grace period have it in hand. The language is in hand. It's in my hands. You have the one week. However you get it. Both is, yes. And then you run the uncertainty that you postmarked it two weeks ahead of time and somehow still didn't arrive. I'm not aware of any other towns that do both. Most towns either have none of those and actually they have much higher penalties. We have extremely low penalties. Some of them love us in the state. So I think that's another factor to kind of consider many towns that 8% or more of a late penalty. And we only charge 0.5% of a percent and fees. That came from the floor. So we are extremely generous with the taxpayers. And I think that this is a simple fix that just feels more fair to me and would really help improve just the flow of tax season, which can be quite hectic for many once the tax bills go out. And now we're in delinquent tax season so we're getting lots of calls. The letters are out and we'll start getting an influx of people asking why am I late and what is this? And so it's, you know, it'll just, I think it'll be, to me it's a good idea. Yeah. Yeah, some people. I have a question. Go on. First of all, you had some of the audience. But Mark, you said we're gonna go through the board first. Okay. You said you had a question. Great, okay. Do you happen to know, as you know, we have a little bit of drama in my family over this, do you know whether when you go to the East Calus Post Office, for example, and it's for Calus and you drop it in the Calus box, do they postmark? Not always. And that's one of the situations where you have to specifically, I wasn't aware of this until this year as well, but so yeah, if something comes in through the mail and it has not been postmarked, the office is really under no obligation to accept that based on our warning. But why don't they postmark it? It's kind of a box. It doesn't always, it just sometimes it's, maybe there's two pieces of mail that I don't know, I'm not a mail worker, but it happens. Did you ask why, did anybody ask? Mark, did you ask why they don't? What was Chris, why they didn't postmark things? They, in our case, they, I think it was just like the end of the day. It was the choice between, do I send it to Barlingville? Yeah, and they'll postmark it. And I think what she, or do I just slip it in the mail box? And I think everything goes in the mail box. And she, I can't remember which way she went, but she thought, oh, God, if I send it to Barlington, it'll take forever, and if I just put it in the box, it'll get there sooner, but of course it wouldn't be postmarked. I got mail from you. Did it happen, apparently? The other day that wasn't postmarked, which is. Yeah, well, as is. I drew the, I threw it into Barlington. The stamp was canceled, they got that money piece, but I drew it into Barlington with my federal taxes that would be on time. So I get that, I just don't want to make a difficult year, I just want to raise an issue with you guys. Well, that's, would it be easier, both in terms of not curing the off the praise period, and not having to deal with this through the stamp or don't understand the problem, just to say you leave the praise period, and it ends, not when it's postmarked, but when it's received. Which would be in hand, that would be. In hand. Articles. Both the other. But then what happened? I was asking for Jeremy to really. Right. Not my fault, the post office, it normally takes. Well. I could see that leading to a bunch of abatement. I think. I don't know about abatement, but I know it would be a parade of people coming in all day. Oh, that's right. So that thing, you know. You have to pick, I think we just have to pick one. Yeah. Well. The federal government uses postmarks. I think that's consistent. It's the other one. Yeah. Right. Well, postmarks are, I mean, that's kind of universal postmark. Yeah. People know what that means. Also, I think we could ask the post people to please postmark them. Well, you got to walk in. Yeah. You know, I know if it's critical, I always go in and make sure to stamp it. I was just kidding about that. Well, and the same can be said if it's dropped off in the box. There's no, there's no. Right, if someone drops it in the box over the weekend, we don't receive it until we receive it. So the postmark kind of gives you a set time. If it has to do, and somebody puts it in the box, and you don't get it until after the due date. So still accept it, right? I just want to crystallize what I'm hearing as consensus. I mean, there's a lot of little questions we're asking, but I'm not going to add a question. I know. I just want to articulate the consensus, I think. But that's the one I want to test because we want to make sure we're all so engaged while Jeremy's here. So I think what we're hearing, I'm hearing two things. One is an inclination to make a change. And the one thing we haven't talked about is how many years has it been that people have been trained that there is a grace period? And what does this change look like? And Jeremy, you might put some thought into how we make sure people are fully, fully, fully aware that there's no more grace period if we go in this direction. And then so the one point, number one, is I'm hearing kind of an inclination and acknowledgment of the point. And maybe some, and willingness to maybe take the grace period off the ballot, which means off the warning, that we are, by if we say we're taking the grace period off, then we are also, and this is consistent what we're saying, what I've been hearing, going with a you get your taxes into the office by 4 p.m. on the date that they are due, which is the only date there is to talk about. It is the real date. There is only one date. Or they are postmarked by that date. And that's it, super clean. That kind of where we all are there. OK, so if that's kind of our general consensus, that makes it clear for people that the board heard a proposal and we are inclined to go along with it. Because we don't formally vote yes or no. We prepare a warning, but this would be an absence of on the warning. Sure, but it's an absence of a thing that used to be We're not saying, we're not warning an item that says we're not doing a grace period anymore. We are just not warning a grace period. It's just not going to be there. OK, so all of that said, Donna, you had your hand up just a second. Oh, I just wanted to clarify that the grace period didn't come from the floor. It was on the warning when we first set it up. I'm pretty sure. No, because Donna was in the office then, and she's It doesn't really matter. I'm just clarifying that it was on the warning. It didn't come from the floor. I'm sure because she was the charterer. OK, so we had a grace period. Maybe it was a penalty reduction. I think penalty reduction definitely came from the floor. That's right, because I remember Leslie Fitch said, spoke to that. If you reduce the penalty, I'm resigning. And then they reduced the penalty, and I think she resigned. I just want to say, I remember that conversation as well, and when it was, but it was very emotional. And so I think, John, you're really on point in saying, it's me to be defended on the floor, because people were very emotional about the people struggling to pay their taxes on time and all of that. So I think that it was a strong, that was where it was discussed. Well, that was more the penalty itself, though. I know if the penalty came from, if only the penalty came from the floor, then it was because the grace period is just around the issue of somebody getting penalized because they are 36 hours late walking in the door while the mailbox is full of taxes just arriving. That sort of oddity. Oh, but it's emotional. I think Jenny's just pointing out, this is an emotional issue, at least generally. And I, in personal experience, have a friend who's been in the hospital for several weeks. And I happened to remember that she needed to pay her property taxes. And if I hadn't made it that day, I think I made it on time. But if I hadn't, and it was the next day, she would have had to have paid that penalty. Or a request. Or a request for the evainment. But if somebody's in the hospital or, well, there is the evainment thing. And we got into trouble, right? And it was only because Jan happened to mention to us that we were in. We had no idea that there was a problem with delivery. But worse come to worse, we could have made our case before trying to evade that. Well, and no matter when you do it, there's always a deadline. So I'm not supposed to making this change. I just want to point out that there are circumstances where, sure. Well, I'm not sure in a lot of the circumstances if one week changes anything. I think once you get through the deadline, there's actually, it kind of eases up because then the delinquent tax collector can make a payment plan with you. And there's lots of folks who are kind of perennial, have a really hard time getting it together. And so with those folks, there has been a concerted effort to not officially have a payment plan. But we do have folks who get a $105 check every month and we just kind of stick it in TA and it's just accruing so that when you get to that first payment, at least that first payment is there for them. For those folks who don't like, like we use an escrow service, we just pay it as a part of our mortgage. And then I don't have to think about it, but not everybody has a mortgage, not everybody wants to escrow and do all that. And so I think for the folks that are more perennially having a really hard time making ends meet, those are candidates to try to reach out to and just say, hey, we've noticed that this has been going on for a while. Can we try to work something out? So that you don't get into the situation because of course once we vote on the delinquent penalties and all that stuff, we have to charge those because that's been decided by the voters. Right, yeah, yeah, penalties was, that was a huge, that was a, we don't know about that sort of time. So you have talked about it all. Thank you, Jeremy. Yeah, thank you, Jeremy. Okay, we wanna move on to your, really, the mind question. Okay, so we're moving on to your budget up. So just generally, and others can chime in, we've been working on, we've had three meetings on the budget. Yep, and we've been doing them on Saturday morning. Some of you, who would we hear is coming? Donna Cain, Jeremy's coming. And we have more work to do and we probably need to set another date. I can't remember if there's anything in specific we wanted to say about our budget work. No, we're seeing what we wanted to let people know that we're gonna- Are we not meeting on Saturday? No, we're not. No, we said we're gonna take this. We're gonna take, we're gonna have a holiday break. We're gonna have a holiday break. Go to the beach. Yeah, a holiday break. Yeah, we have other things we have to work on, but we're not gonna meet on the, on the- Yeah, we'll take what we heard on Saturday. We heard requests from planning, DRV, conservation. We got Jeremy's account office request. You know, we're, I think we're in pretty good, pretty good shape. We're getting there. We're putting numbers in and then what we do, we get everybody's wish list, their dream of what they'd like to have and then we plug the numbers in and look at the reality. Well, we look at the business case. Right, and, you know, not every, you know, not every request could be fully consumed by the, you know, in the budget, so. Right, and we don't, we don't have a sense yet. We have literally not, well, we don't even have numbers in some of the boxes. So we don't have a sense yet of when all the numbers go in, what is, what is that delta over this year's budget? And there will be a delta over this year's budget, but then we say, okay, is that a reasonable increase and. A reasonable overall budget. A reasonable overall budget, and if we, and we do, we've done this every year, and if we don't feel that it's a reasonable overall and we get a sharper pencil and get back in and look at, you know, the budget lines and, try to whittle it down to something that either is reasonable or is as tight a budget as we can justify and still run the town. Right, because, you know, the bottom line is it affects the taxpayers. Right. Especially the ones who are struggling. Right, and we have to run the town. So that's the balance. Anything else folks want to add? Okay. Moving on to the town meeting discussion item. Is this a, this is a discussion item. Right, right. This is a, right, yes. I think we said, I had some notes last time we had, we just said we were going to decide this on the 19th. We are going to vote next week. Yeah. So tonight is a. Further discussion. Further discussion, why don't we start with, why don't we just do a quick, we've discussed it once or twice already. So I'm just going to say, let's go around the table here and get a gut. I'll start with Rick. Rick. Gut on what you would do if you had the magic wand, how would you run town meeting this year? Would you do a town meeting in the town hall or in the school, everybody in person? Would you do 100% in Zoom? Or would you with an informational meeting, an informational meeting of Zoom? Or would you do, well, what would you do? You know, basically my real gut, my gut desire would be to do a town hall type meeting here. But given what I'm hearing about RSV and these COVID, you know, I still have real hesitation. There's some real serious threats out there. I mean, I'm seeing people from that was, you know, serious lung issues and young animals. So I'm still, I don't know how to answer that because we don't really know. So we have to, we're going to vote next week. So be thinking about it. Denise, do you have a gut? I mean, I thoroughly support us having a full blown town meeting at the school, at here, wherever. But I am very concerned. I think I mentioned this last time we talked about it. The reports are that we are going to have a huge crisis with COVID, RSV, even the flu come next spring and, you know, from winter into spring. What we did last year was we did Zoom informational. We did some, with some of us being here at the town hall, you know, so some of the information, right? So some could be in person and some was on Zoom. For the informational. For the informational meeting. And then everything else was voted on on the ballot. But it wasn't a town meeting. It wasn't, no, it was only informational. That's right. So everything had to be voted on by ballot. I mean, the beauty of town meeting is you get to discuss it, you know, you can make changes. But I am very concerned about this coming season and what all this is going to bring. Okay. John. I'm hearing what everyone's saying. An anecdote. A good friend, a good friend's brother-in-law. She married an older guy. He's 75 years of age. Lives in New Hampshire. He's had a heart condition. He's had heart surgery in the last decade. And he ended up with some kind of serious ailment with his leg. And he lived near Dartmouth. And like real serious, for his age, for his heart and because of what was going on and called Dartmouth and they were not accepting any patients. This is two weeks ago. And things continue to crescendo. He, they, he called all the hospitals. He called down and conquered. I guess there's one there called all over. None of the hospitals could take him. His wife fortunately had his heart doctor's cell phone and called him and he was on vacation. And he called his partner, reached out to him and said, just meet me, bring your husband to Dartmouth. Meet me in the foyer. I'll get him in. If he didn't have that cell phone number. And that connection. And that connection, he would have been at shoehorned in. So the reason I tell you all that is I feel like beyond us and our immediate family here in Calis, I think we have a broader obligation to not overwhelm or do anything that might just exacerbate what's going on and what will be going on in the hospitals with our environmental resources. Everything we're hearing is that it's going to be a bad one this winter because of the three elements that are out there of flu, COVID and that are as far as. Yeah, no, it's just not just kids. So it may be, I would not want to be, feel like having on my conscience that people got sick at our town meeting and we were a vector and then people couldn't get to the hospital and people got super ill, damaged health or died. So I think we got to proceed with caution. I think, I don't know if we can warn a hybrid or maybe we should just now proceed. It's already bad enough. Maybe we just do remote. I don't know. I still feel like we need to have the pre-meeting in-person opportunity. There'll be candidates running from Mark in my position. I think folks who don't have Zoom or computers or for whatever reason and who want to explain where they are and why they're running. I just think that was a fair thing to do. So hang on Jeremy, I see you. I don't know what happened to our things here. They disappeared, but. That could be replicated. So what you're saying is, do it like we did last year. So this, what that means folks, right? The informational meeting was on Zoom. It was a couple of weeks before and there was some timing we had. There were even thread and needle around tiny. Yeah. Mark, we did a Zoom informational and then we also had it available here. People could come here, but it was in real time. It wasn't asynchronous, yeah. And then the rest was it was Australian ballot. That's right. That's why we did the informational person. Right, that's right. So if people didn't have a computer, they could still show up and learn. What was the informational? We had not a tennis low that was a concern, I think spreading infection, but we probably online. What you mean in person? Including Zoom. In person there were, I wasn't here. I was actually. I think there were a lot of people on Zoom. There was like a lot on Zoom. I knew it. In person, 10, 12 people. Yeah, I thought it would have been 25. It wasn't as big as the year before. That was all Zoom, right? No, it wasn't all Zoom. Obviously town meeting attendance might be way less if you did it town meeting in person. That's true. You know, everything that's going on. There's a lot of people that have health issues or they have a family member that has a health issue or a child. And also, what I'm hearing is women who get COVID more than once have a higher risk of having long-term effects with heart or respiratory or anything like that. Okay, so I'm sorry. I want to make sure, when you're done, I want to make sure we let Mark. So just to understand, well, as Mark joined the floor, but if we do this, we'll be doing what I'm suggesting. We'd be doing an Australian ballot. And the concern that like Jeremy's requested amendment to the. The warning. Warning would be less of a concern. You couldn't amend it from the floor. You can't amend the budget from the floor. Locks everyone in and for my eye. So there's somewhat of a loss of public engagement. And we basically represent you fully when you get an upper down. But as you said, I would not want us to have a full-blown town meeting. And then we're one of these sites that they say was a super spreader. But okay, let's hear what Mark has to say. Oh, I'd like to start with a question. I take it, am I right? We do not have the capability of having a hybrid town meeting. That is an in-person town meeting with a camera that focuses on people and a way of counting votes on city. No, I would, I mean, our, what. We don't have that. I don't even think. The technology is that little owl. That's the best technology we have. I don't think we can, I don't think that's even real. But I don't think that we have a full, to be able to have some people voting in person and some people voting in zone. I would want us to really check that out. I don't think that's legal. Do you care, do you care strongly enough about that that we actually go and research? And because it's two things. It's figuring out whether we can do it. And then the logistics of that. So the only way to do it, if it's legal, is to have it curated by a person. So that every time, if you have a hybrid meeting and you want to zoom people to be able to hear and understand, you have to spend the money to have someone like that zoom in on them when they talk, like someone in the floor is talking, and there's a microphone, et cetera. That's done, but they're not prepared to do it well. And the visual, I mean. That's why you have a camera. Well, and then counting the votes. Right, counting the votes for those on Zoom. It's gonna be really time consuming. The reason I ask, I'll tell you my hesitation. I think we're permanently in this condition. And that what you're really saying is goodbye town meeting. And I don't feel very good about that. I think that this is happening. I mean, I just read today that there, right now, RISV is the problem, he said. Right now, Vermont is one of the states with the lowest for now, but there are two variants and they're worrying about them. Well, next year, I think it'll be the same. I agree. And I'm worried, I don't know. I personally think, if we do it this next year, the way that we did last year, if you want to preserve town meeting, then we spend the money to do the true hybrid meeting and we figure out whether it's legal. If it isn't, we see if we can change the law and we make it legal and we take the time to count votes on Zoom. That wouldn't be this time you know. That would be right, so that's a budget proposal. Yeah, because we don't, I think rather than asking Denise to go to research whether it's legal from a technology standpoint, we don't have the technology. We would not be in this room if we were having them. It's not for now, it's just for 2024. Because I think people would like us to do select board meetings in that same way, that they're in person and they're Zoom. Well, that we could do once we had high-speed internet. Right, that's what I said. It's the voting. We tried the hybrid, select board meetings and we had so many problems with the internet. Remember, it would kick us off and we'd have to sign back. Standard. Well, not just that, I mean we have sound, it's not just the internet, we have sound issues. I would say we have tech, sure, but we have other barriers. We also have just a plain old setup area, like you'd want another screen somewhere. Well, we would want to do what the legislature did. They fitted up the hearing rooms with two cameras. One facing the chair coming from far under the table facing toward the chair and one from actually in front of the chair facing to the back room. So you get everything. But, you know, we have to work on that and maybe we can put that out of budget. So next week, next week, next week, we got a vote on this. We got to put this to bed, because we're gonna keep going. Well, I can tell you then my inclination is to go with the rest of you on this, but if you have some comments. Well, I don't want to close this. I want to advocate. I agree with Mark also. So I would like for us to consider putting money in the budget. I don't know. I think we discussed this last year about reaching out to whoever did the technological fixes at the legislature, because that worked great. So. Do you have some contact? Do you know anyone who would be representing us? Yeah. You know our representative will be over there. That's your to-do. Okay. Okay. So I saw some hands. Jeremy had his hand up a while ago, then Barbara and then Larry. You guys. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I do know that Marilyn. Okay. Jeremy, you first. Come on up and join us. So unfortunately, the law does not allow us currently to hold anything but a town meeting in person. Oh, we don't even have that hybrid option. The reason that we're allowed to do that last year was the result of S172, which expires this year. Is that the same thing as F70? Prior to that, I don't remember what the number was, but it was the same thing. Well, S172 or whatever we came to pass. So that has a sunset any day now. The sun, it's authorized for 2022 annual meeting only. So late. In other words. We're holding a town meeting unless the legislature reauthorizes that on the first day of the legislature. And keep in mind, there's one third new members. I've had a conversation with Gwynne Zachoff, who is one of the two lobbyists that work for VLCT. There is absolutely no chatter about this happening. Should they're not hearing from any towns. The only thing that they're hearing is actually reauthorizing the law that allows us to hold hybrid meetings currently or completely zoom meetings. That's what they're hearing. They're not hearing from towns about this at all. I think last year it was different because the COVID was much more heightened and all of that. So my concern is that we get too much further into this conversation without acknowledging the reality that this might not even be possible. So I understand what you're saying. So you're saying that the way that the law is now, we can't do an informational Zoom event. So 1S172 was what allowed on a temporary basis for municipalities to apply the Australian ballot system to what is normally a town meeting. And of course the only way to change town meeting to full Australian ballot, as we have for some of the other things is by actually having a vote. And that would be a vote in person also. Okay, all right, well that's good. I don't think, yeah, that would be right. All right, so this conversation is moot. That's why I was trying to, I didn't know that you guys had had the conversation previously or- Yeah, we've put it up for discussion a couple of times. So good, it was moot, good to know. But I do want to say that I wouldn't be surprised if there's starting to be some chatter and the legislature might act pretty quickly. So maybe what we don't, so we want to at least be aware of the conversation because what we may have that opportunity that we don't have right now. Yeah, the thing I would say is that if it's something that is important to you all, I would reach out to the LCT and their advocacy team and let them know. Okay, well, can I have a caring corner over here? I mean, I- And if Mark ends up on Go-Ops or something like that, then we got an ace in the hole, other than that. Well, so I want to speak to the issue substantively. Because we might have a chance to vote it fully if the legislature changes. And what I find the point of losing town meeting very compelling, I love town meeting. And I love, I know Barbara, sorry, you're gonna be there with us too. I love that we have good discussion. That's where people, if there's so many things are great about it, I don't have to catalog them, everybody knows. But the point that John made is also very- Can you speak to that? Well, Marilyn, how about you let me finish first and then I will call you. So I find it very compelling that we, that if the healthcare system is becoming overwhelmed, that's also a civic responsibility that we have to pay attention to. So I feel that's a compelling point. We don't have to decide now. Marilyn, let's go ahead and make your comment. You want to come up and speak to us here? Please come to the table. No, no, no, please come to the table. We invite everybody to do that so that we can hear you better. Having a bit of a medical background, I follow closely during COVID, all the virologists and their talk and what, and how these respiratory infections are passed and so forth and so on. If one does not want to get a respiratory infection, one wears a mask, no problem. You do not get that infection if you wear a mask. Even if it's somebody else who doesn't have that infection. That's actually not true. That's not actually not true. I had to have the medical news. I know something about medicine and I'm telling you if you wear a mask, if you wear a surgical mask, you are not going to see it. Regardless if we're forced to either we decide or we are forced into an in-person meeting, we have the power to say masks. Well, that's a question I'm actually not sure we can do that. Well, even if you don't, if anyone is worried about, you can certainly make the point that if anybody is worried about getting COVID or any other kind of infection, they need to wear a N95 mask. We can certainly, even if we can't require it, we can recommend. There was a period where we, I don't know, but we also can model. So if we are required to be in-person, we can all, and that all is everybody in the room here, we can all wear a mask and set a culture and a tone if we're wearing masks here. I could be happy to wear it. I'm sure, yeah, I would too. So all right, so this is a good discussion. I appreciate it, Jeremy. I'm really glad you were here to let us know that we were here. Yeah, and Larry, you wanna add, come on up. It is just a brief condition, essentially, to follow largely, but perhaps with a little... Speak up, sweetie. Perhaps a little unavoidable emotion behind it. I fear, I really fear this casual, not casual, wrong word, this even study predisposition to jump the traditional town meetings. And I'm not questioning your sincerity at all, but I'm just worried about something is gonna die, and that's gonna be local democracy in Vermont, you know? And it's, I've lived a lot of places in my life, and I'm telling you, this is the best place I've ever lived for local government enacting legislation and the townspeople accepting it, because everybody was there, and everybody who wanted to talk did talk, and everybody who thought that the budget was screwed up could do something about it that day. That's all gone, that's all gone with this, whatever it is, where you have an informational session, but you're just having an Australian event. I really, really, really hope you can see your way through to re-establishing the town meeting, and I think doing it at the school, David, she's well-killing for saying this, but I think doing it at the school would be an even better environment than doing it here, because it's bigger, it's airy, and if you need to do something with the internet, I'm suspecting they've got a good internet system here, as opposed to what we have out here in town halls. Please just don't get the mindset that we have to do this and cancel town meeting again. Try really hard not to if you can. No, I don't just agree how important town meeting is, I've been going to town meeting for decades. I just know being somebody who is very conscious of people with health concerns, and having conditions, that it could be deadly. And wearing a mask is not gonna 100% So I think everybody has said what they want to say and we could discuss for a lot longer, and it's 10 of nine, and we have other things that we want to do too. I'm gonna ask, do we need to review the ARPA fund requests, or can we maybe do that at a budget meeting? Yeah, most of the budget meeting, I'll update with Rene's recent request for the Catalyst Fire District. Yeah, I've got an opinion about that. Okay, so we're gonna save this for a budget, whatever the next budget meeting is. Rick, do you have a Rhodes report? Yeah, I have a hold on it, I didn't get to write out a formal report to you. Yeah, we only warned you for five minutes, and that was for 20 minutes ago. Basically, right now, we've kind of switched into winter roads. We actually just did a repair on Foster Hill for a ditch that was washing out, that's been very tricky, because we've had this really warm weather, we've had almost blood season like conditions. I've been making my shoes. Yeah, it's real concern for us, because weak makes plowing very, very difficult without frozen roads, and it also makes them really unstable, you can see running out there. Yeah. We can't really fix that, even if that's the problem this time of year. So, but it looks like it's stabilizing and it's cooling down. We've also, yeah, so the, the guy I think obviously got all the equipment up and basically running, and we've had, they've been putting the wings on the graders. We don't need that yet. We need that once snow banks build up to be able to push those back so that snow doesn't roll back and under the vehicles. We're having to tool up. It turns out kind of, one of the things that's turned up now, there were almost no tools in the shop. We're actually having the guys go out. They were bringing in their own tools to work on the equipment. And this actually saves, they do a lot of repairs themselves on this, where we can do it. We don't send this out to repair shops. It not only takes weeks to, you know, we've got to get it to those places and then it might take weeks to get them to work on it, but it's also going to be very, very expensive. So we're re-tooling right now, letting the guys take the lead on this. We're looking at, you know, possibly if we can afford to do this, upgrade some of the building equipment so that we can better do repairs. So, yeah, that's one of the shop side of things. That's the shop hand tools, right? Right, yeah. I mean, it's a shop that they didn't have. Yeah, we don't know what happened to them. We don't know, they just disappeared. So, we've had a number of trees down. I've gone out myself, at least two or three occasions already at night with, because Peter, the ropes are gonna go out. I always make sure that they're not alone. I'll go out and work with them. You know, we've had, and that's actually probably a good thing because it's, the wind we've had, at least it's not in really slippery conditions. So, you know, that's taking out some of these weaker trees. The guys have been trying to get those, they actually spend a fair amount of time trying to get down these hazard trees that are blocking, you know, that are potential issues. But we never get a roll while they're probably thousands of them. We've had, there's been a little bit of something's turned up. We can't declare two beaver dams in town that were potential threats right against roads. You know, they were, if a beaver dam is somewhat like a real dam failure, imagine Curtis pond, these things can impound huge amounts of water. And if they fail, there is, you've got potentially acres of water and it will wipe out, yeah, it can really wipe out roads and do downstream damage. So we watch these. We do not, we're very careful about what we take out and what we don't. We really try to avoid, to, you know, assess risk. We're gonna be putting a lot more work into that because we've had some complaints about that because it's, it really is probably at this death sentence for the beavers. And I'm not laughing at that. You know, because at this point they've got their winter storage of food and their lodges submerged to the point where, you know, all of a sudden you drain it out and that's, that's kind of, that's not very good for them, the outcome. You know, we're looking at different scenarios. You know, we had talked about possibly trying to do this early in the year, but that's no good because the beavers actually rebuilt the dams. We've got dams, we've put it and taken it out four times and they're back. Even with it, when it was taken out it was set up for a matter of a week or so. They're, it's back in place. So when we're trying to do some research, we're going to go a little bit on this and, you know, come up with a better policy around it. But anyway, with something we've just done in the past, but we're going to try and explore it and see what other, you know, what's being done out there to see if there's something humane in it. We kind of believe that we see that. You know, yeah, well. Because I, because of our. Sure. When you get to our house you have to cross over a bridge. Well, we have, you know, it's tricky because we can also go. I mean, there's a dam there, remember? I think they would, they would build dams and we'd all pray that our driver was going to be flooded and we'd pull out all the stuff. Oh, the beavers. They'd just come back and rebuild it. Yeah, same thing. It'd hurt as fun. And now we have beavers. The beaver baffles, yeah, it's tricky. But they, you know, and it's, a lot of trouble we have, too, is our roads can really be impacted by the beaver dams that are out in the right of way. We've got one, in fact, that, you know, we'll have to get a cracker and a commission to go in to run an excavator across so that the land can take it out. Because those, you know, they literally blow culverts right out of the ground and take a road. I mean, I've taken, it's, it's, yeah, they can be very serious. So, you know, we're trying to figure out that protocol for determining. I mean, we don't normally do that. I mean, the best scenario with things like that is if beavers work an area until they've completed the food supply and they move, and the dams end to come particularly problematic, because the beavers are preparing dams when they're active, but they're not when they move on, and so it's rotting away, and those things cut loose. And they, you know, that, so that, but that's a time, you know, that's something that may offer us some opportunities to be more, you know, proactive and preventative. So, but we're kind of in the early stages of figuring that out. Let me see. Yeah, the, I don't know, we're still trying to find, you know, we're trying to get this DPW Director of Public Works position nailed down. And I think we're still waiting for some parts of our electronic speed signs. We've got the signs ourselves. I'm waiting for some bases that have been come. We've supply chain issues, so we're waiting to, you know, receive those. As soon as we have them, we actually have three bases in place right now. We're gonna be putting, as soon as we get the base plates to help you. Do we have a date? I don't. I can't tell what that is. They're not even saying no supply chain thing. I've contacted Eric Wolf, and yeah, I gotta follow up again, because I went, yeah, he knows, and he's trying to get them, so I don't have a date. So, but as soon as we get those, we can actually put them in place and start using them. And then, yeah, so, and I think that's going to help some of these speed problems around town. We can actually see what vehicles are actually doing in terms of speed. We'll find out, you know, because they do count, they measure speed vehicles too. Can you move on to this also, or see what's going on? Yeah, we have an item. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, no, it's a, Yeah, it's me. It's a you item, but we're gonna vote on this one. Do you have a proposal? No, I'm sorry. Do you have a motion? Do you have a motion? Yeah, but my motion was to sole source, to be able to sole source the engineering for the east, for the eastbound bridge with the Wolf Engineering. So your, so your motion is to sole source, like it says here on the agenda. Meaning about to put out to bid. Right. Right, we've got a proposal based on a proposal. Okay, so that's the motion. The motion is for a sole source contract with the Wolf Engineering for the Moscow Woods, in Ripley Bridge. I'll second that motion. Is there rich? And it's a repair, it's not a floor replacement. This is a repair. It's a temporary. And what's this for? It is for the engineering design, so that the reason we're very time-pressured on this, we need to kind of get the engineering done on this so we can get it out to bid. And we would like to them to do both the engineering and possibly the kind of the bid management piece as well. So by authorizing this, we're saying that we can sole source if the motion passes. Right. And then you would bring back the contract. That's right, right. But what's the rationale for sole source? Under our purchasing policy. The reason is time. As we. It's professional, it's time. It's professional, it's professional services of a specialized nature. And it's almost an emergency. So it is an emergency, it's almost an emergency. So I think under several, at least two of the criteria on the statute is who it's at, clear who it's at. Of the policy, of the policy. The specialized service. Time specialized services of a professional nature and almost an emergency given the nature of the bridge. Well, and right, and getting it on the radar of the engineering company to be able to do it next spring. Well, we want to get it out as fast as we can because this is, this repair will cost somewhere between 80 and $130,000. And that's actually a low dollar amount. What would engineering cost? I'm working off the top of my head right now. I think I gave you copies of the report for the last meeting. Yeah. I think eight, roughly $8,000. And then there was also some supplemental costs. Right, and then we're also, we're applying for a grant. Yeah, a structure grant. Which, yeah, which we've received, but we've got to follow up. Well, that's part of the urgency pieces that we have received a grant. A structure grant for 80,000. A structure's grant. So everything is like situated to go. And we just didn't know about this sooner. It's eight to 10,000. We've articulated why SoulSource, which is the point because of the purchasing policy. Yeah, there are two pieces to the proposal. One is kind of the actual engineering. And then one is the grant, the grant management. And they all do the grant management. Well, I mean not the grant management, but the bid management piece. Right. They help us put it out there. And bid management. Okay, so the motion that we have. So we'll do the bid management. SoulSource and of the engineering design and the bid management. That's it, yes. For the three reasons that we said. Okay. Any other questions or comments? Nope. You got the motions and who made them Denise? And the rationality of the policy? Yep. Okay. All favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay. Thank you, Sharon. May I say something but quickly before we leave? Sure. I just really want to commend Mark and John for your service. I feel like we should kind of bring a little pause. I bet. We've all come very well together. Thank you. We both devoted a lot. Yeah. Thanks, Jenny. Yes, absolutely guys. Thank you. Oh, thank you. That's the ones I haven't done yet. So I think the thing we wanted to just report out for our own meeting record is that we had a lot of good conversation about how to provide incentive for Cal's residents, which is what we can reasonably influence, to volunteer on the fire crew and the ambulance squad. And Woodbury and Eastmont Pillar. And Woodbury and Eastmont Pillar. And what we hit on is what you heard Saturday at the budget meeting. And Sage Kennedy has volunteered to help us with that project. So what we want to do is essentially, there's detail that goes under this. But in some fashion, match, what is a humble stipend is our understanding. I don't know what the stipends are. That's part of what Sage is going to do the research on. It's not matching the stipend. It's using the same model. Right, it would be using the same criteria that the fire department and EMS use to give the members an annual stipend. They have to go to 50% of the meetings, the training. So they have some really good criteria. Now something I want to bring up, then, I didn't think about. For our people. Right, it would be Cal's people serving in those capacities. And either Eastmont Pillar or Woodbury, the only thing I didn't think of at the time was what about people that maybe live on the edges of Eastmont Pillar in Montpelier or live in Plainfield? But we're talking all about Cal's rights. But that was something I thought it was, it'll be great for Cal's to do this for people. So it's a model for other towns to maybe follow and help with making this happen. So it's a much simpler answer than what at one point had floated as a reduction in property taxes. And we realized, well, money is money. And so there's a much easier way. And it's not match to take that back. It's coming up with some acknowledgment financially that uses the same criteria for who gets it. And it's Cal's residents. So let's. Is this a budget point? It would be. Well, it would be. But if it wouldn't be very big, and if it's too big that we can't afford it this year, then it's too big. So there's no reason we couldn't come up with a number. We might not be able to do it this year, but at least it's in the works. I hope we can. We create a fond and anticipation of it. Well, I certainly think we budget for it next year. But even if it's a fraction of what we would like to do, we could do it this year. We could do something. We could do something. I agree. Yeah, we could do something. And Sage is working on it. Well, Sage is looking at the photos. Right. Photos and how many people actually serve on Rotary and East Montpelier. That'll help us to be able to come up with a figure, I think. Right. And it's just, it's a acknowledgement. It's, you know, they put in so much. We think we've put in a long time. They put in way more. You know, a lot. It's just a whole, whole. Where? Where? Does he do? No. He's been the chief. No. Is he the chief? He's just been on there. No. No, he's just been on there. The entire rolling was the chief. Larry Brown took over for Ty. Yeah, Larry was the chief, I think. Right. And then Paul Guare was the assistant. No, what's his name? Albert Pintrelle was the assistant chief. So he'll now have to fill in temporarily as chief. Paul Guare is vice president. And Toby Cowan is still president. Of the board. Over board. Right. Yeah. He's very, very good. It was one of the best conversations we've had in the fire department in all my history. I do think that, because I can't imagine, it's very many Calis people right now. I've said only two that she could think of. In Woodbury. No. For everything? No, in Calis. Calis for Woodbury Oris, on prayer? Two Calis residents serving in East Montpelier. Right. So she was going to tell me being one and then somebody else. Right. OK. So I think we should do it this year at whatever level we can. Right. Gotta start somewhere. Right. OK. So that's what we wanted to say. Maybe when we have some conversation about bonuses. Maybe we can assign it to being a firefighter as part of this select board duties. OK. Let's move on. We've had, we've carried junk ordinance Denise reminded me since. John, remember the junk ordinance? Eight years ago. It was like, who is Jeff Rubin from Farmhouse Cafe? Remember with the junk cars across 14? Well, and more recently, more recently, there's been a request from a resident on Lightning Ridge whose neighbor collects things. But even so, we carry it there. I want to, I just keep looking at it, thinking seriously are we going to get to this? The choices are take it off or leave it, leave it there. It could be a simple thing. Why don't we, before we get buried in yet another work, large work effort, why don't we just draft a letter from the select board to the agency natural resources salvage our program? You want to do that? Yeah, I'll do that. What's it going to say? The request that you, that there is an identified property that you go out and inspect this property for compliance with the state statute governing the operation or management of junk vehicles or something. OK, do you want to draft such a thing? Sure. When do you want to be on the agenda? 19. OK, that's what he's doing. Whatever you say. Let me eat out. I don't know why he does that. There's enough water out of there. It's not summer anymore. Close that fricking pneumonia hole. OK, so you're just like my wife. Close the door. It's fricking difficult here. Let's move along. I'm just starting, I'm just starting. Can you go over? I would like a motion from the board. I would like a motion from the board to authorize Sharon and Denise to work on job description. We move Public Works Director of Treasury and Business Management. Really, it's exploring, opening up the time of ministry. Mark, wait, the motion is there a second? All right, all in favor, please say aye. Aye. Work, when I was coming here, it worked. Your car is this thing? Well, we know. Time for batteries and connections. Oh, that's fine. Wrapping on the table sometimes. I'll work on them on my way here. Oh, the other thing is you put them under your chin. OK, it makes your body in that town. I'm serious. Works every time. Yeah, great. I'm not, oh, I'm dead serious. Then do it. I don't know what you put in there. This one. That starts it? Well, jeez. OK. OK. So coming up business, we have Curtis Pond, 20 and executive session on the 19th. Stephanie and Denise. Is this the one with Jeff Duggar? Yes. Well, we have to get there. It's there and 20. But that one would be an executive session. Well, no, but the other one would be another thing. We might talk about something else in executive session. Right. OK. And then we have 20 minutes with DuBois and King Jeff Tucker. Yeah. Stephanie and I are not going to, so I talked to Stephanie. And we're going to defer this until January. OK, so maybe. So we can just put down January 2023. And I'm going to say the second meeting, because the first meeting is going to be forward. Just a little pounding and stuff. I would love to volunteer to make calls about people who need to be reappointed. Barbara and I are working on that. You are? Barbara and I are working on it. OK. I think we'll be ready to give something at the 19th. Maybe. Probably not. I don't know about the 19th. Maybe. OK. Of people who are actually ready to be reappointed, who are due this year. Reappointed. Or the positions need to be filled. We're working on that. Can I make a request when you're asking them if they would be reappointed in 2022, to the extent that it's a one year? They would do it in 2023. Well, can we reappoint them in March? Well, that's when we would reappoint them, is after March meeting. But that's not been our practice. Our practice has been, and we just cut off track. Well, right. But we don't want to have to call them back in March. We want them to reappoint. No, we want them to say they'll finish out this year and that we can reappoint in 2023. Yes, OK. Traffic control ordinance. You asked for that on the 19th. Are you still good with that? I saw it on email, so I know you weren't. So I searched the town website for the ordinance, and there is no ordinance, current one, on the website. And then I did an email search. And I found the one that Denise found. And it seems that we actually had it. We dropped it. No, I'm certain we dropped it. Actually, my understanding was referred to Toby because he had some lunch, nothing to do, and then that got lost. And it was on the agenda over and over and over and over and over and eventually. And then it never got done by the person who was going to. Right, so whatever's on the website is the most current official one. There's nothing on there. Should we, John, should we be putting the one that we're going to review? There should always be an ordinance on there. There was an old one. The one that we're revising is an existing one. Right, so that one should be on the website. That's not. Well, OK. So we can make that happen, but if we're going to revise it, you should still put the current one on. We should put the current one on. OK, so the other thing that I noticed when I was going through the October minutes is that in October, we met with Neil Maker. We had our hearing on the tree plan, and we said we would renew that or endorse it or whatever. We hadn't heard anything by December. I think we need to have a fuller discussion on that. I know Dan Singleton raised concerns, and I have people contact me. All right, and the Conservation Commission, it was on their agenda recently, but I don't know what they talked about. I could go to the meeting. Did you go? OK, so I'll always do. I'm going to put it on next. I am going to put the tree shade plan next steps for discussion at the next meeting, so we don't draw teeth. Yeah, it just got drawn out. It's just discussion. Yeah, just to have it right first. Let's keep it alive. We should put it on as something we need to do. I think that Mike Dean is going to get pretty full. I just don't want to lose it. No, I don't want to lose it, but I'm just saying. That's at least a chance for people to see that it's worn, and for people to say there's still concerns we need to process. Or we're just not going to approve it. I mean, why do we need to be enough to eat from the meal? Are you going to appoint a select board for residentees? We have to go into executive space to have further discussion whether we want you. OK, OK. All right. Well, should we be included? You're going to have to go sit somewhere. No, I think we can. I'm comfortable inviting you in. You guys have two games in there. OK, so is there a motion to go into executive session under personal employment or a public officer employee? It is under one. It's appointing an employee or a public officer. Under section 313A3. That's it. It's a motion to motion. And it's your second. Sorry. All in favor, please say aye. So you guys and with Mark and John included with us. Right. So we'll wait for the cameras to shut down. OK.