 Good evening. I'm going to call and select the November 5, 2018 select board meeting in order and invite you to rise and join us in pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. I'd like to welcome everyone to tonight's select board meeting. Nice to have you all here. Just as a reminder, you have one of these, which most people do. If you could turn it to silent or off or something that it doesn't ring, that would be greatly appreciated. Thank you. Okay, the next item is agenda additions and changes and we have a few things at our table. A few things that can all be added to item 5D, which is the workshop on firearms ordinance. There's some thoughts from Max, thoughts for November 5, select board discussion on shooting ranges. There's also two documents sent over by Fish and Wildlife earlier today, both tied to the West Mountain shooting range and its purpose of the range and some rules and guidelines just as an example of what a public range might look like. Okay. Thank you, Greg. That's it. Yes. Okay. Do I have a motion to add these items to agenda 5D? Thank you, Irene. Do I have a second? Thank you, Mike. Any further discussion about adding these to the agenda? Okay, hearing none, all those in favor signify by saying aye. Opposed? Okay. Motion passes 4-0. I will try to lean in on this. One select board member, Andy Watts, is not at the table right now. He's on his way. He's going to be a little bit late, but he will be joining us soon, depending on traffic. Okay. So we're on to the point of the agenda, which is public to be heard, and that's a time for the public to speak to the select board on items that are not on the agenda. Is there anyone here tonight wishing to speak during public to be heard? Okay. We'll end. That being the case, we're going to go to our first item of business, and we have an interview tonight for a position on the Energy Committee by Michael Gifford. Is Michael here? Wonderful. Why don't you join us at that table with the microphone? First, we'd like to welcome you, and thank you so much for being willing to step forward and volunteer to be on the Energy Committee. What we'd like to do is just hear about your background and what your reason is for wanting to be appointed to the Energy Committee. Okay. My background is I am a civil engineer who is shifted to energy services. I work, actually, for Vermont Gas and the Energy Services Department, and I am about to reach my hours where I can sit for the professional engineering licensure, and I'm working towards my certified energy management licensure. So that's kind of my educational background, but my other background is I'm an Essex resident, obviously, and I have a little boy. I'm a new dad, and so I don't know if some part of that for me makes me want to do more civic duty and get more involved in the community, and I feel it's important. In terms of why I want to join the committee is I'd like to be, we obviously are facing climate situations that affect us all, and I want to help the town and the village reach energy efficiency goals while trying not to put too undue burden on the residences or the taxpayers. Okay. That's excellent. Thank you. Appreciate that. Okay, I'm going to open it up to questions from the board for Michael. Anybody? Elaine? Hi Michael. Hi. I would just like to know what your goals or priorities might be for the committee if you join? My goals and priorities are to support the committee using some of my engineering knowledge to help with certain aspects of maybe measures and procedures and reading through some of the documentation to help maybe provide insight into what the engineering behind some projects might be, but the other part of it is my major goal is to reduce energy consumption city-wide, whether it's even municipal buildings, commercial enterprises, and residential, trying to find a way to reduce energy consumption. No magic bullet per se, but save the taxpayers money, save the people money, and also decarbonize, find renewables that can be a benefit for people, solar wind. So most likely sharing some technical expertise that may not be present on the committee at the moment? Correct. Yes. And I'm open-minded. You know, I may work for the gas company, but I'm not here to sell gas. I'm here to solve energy solutions, find energy solutions. Okay. Other questions? Michael? It's my understanding that you've been to a few of the meetings. I've participated in one. Right. Okay. In that very brief experience, do you find the committee moving in the direction that you thought that they would be? Well, there's a lot of excitement right now for one of the initiatives taking place, the button-up initiative, and that was the meeting I was at. So anytime you're seeing that kind of excitement and, you know, feet on the ground kind of activism towards a program, I think that's moving in the right direction. That's, you know, putting the energy into the energy committee is a good way of looking at it. I don't know really where they're moving, but there was a great group of people and diverse group of people, which I think is also important for, you know, brainstorming, talking through ideas, and looking at things. The different points of view, I think, are really important. Great. Thank you. All right. What do you think of the meeting venues? I like to eat. We met at a restaurant that the energy can do good. Was that right? Nice. Yeah, it was cozy. I'm actually, we're actually, it gives me an opportunity too, because we're trying to launch restaurant initiatives. It's at the gas company, but we're working with Efficiency Vermont to try a couple ways for restaurants to reduce their energy usage, because they tend to be high users. Okay. All right, sure. May I just say something about button up, or would you like to, there's a big event this week at Founder School? Yes. So the button, yeah, I can go briefly. Button up event is a coordination with the Essex Energy Committee and Efficiency Vermont, and it's launching on Wednesday. And what it does is it provides the residents of Essex and Westford the opportunity to get a free energy walkthrough, if they sign up. And the Building Energy and Energy Co-op of Vermont will provide the audit expertise to do a walkthrough on people's homes at no charge. And now it's not a full audit. If they find stuff that could lead to a full audit, that could go from there, but they can find little things to help people save on heating and be a little bit more comfortable this winter. Excellent. Okay. And what about time? Do you have the time that available for the slots in which they meet? Yes. And my wife is very supportive of this. She's at home right now putting little Logan to bed. So she's available for me to have the time. And also because I work in energy services, Vermont Gas encourages it. And so it's not something, it's something that if I'm putting time towards the energy committee, they believe in that kind of civic engagement. Okay. Good support. Wonderful. Okay. Any other questions? Okay. The process typically is we will go into executive session at the end of the meeting, have a discussion and come out and make a decision. But if the board wants to do it differently, we can entertain that. Yes, Mike. I would move that we go ahead and have, rather than go into executive session, just do it and then open it right now. Okay. Yeah. Is that okay with everybody? Yeah. Is the application process closed? Were there other applicants? It's been open since July. And this is the only applicant that has come in. And this will bring it to full compliment. There's just one opening that today. And the energy committee is starting to take off and do some good works there. Okay. So if it's okay to do it open with the board, then I would entertain a motion. I move that the board approve Mike Gifford's application to become a member of the Essex Energy Committee effective immediately. Thank you, Michael. Do I have a second? Second. Thank you, Elaine. Any further discussion about appointing Michael Gifford to the energy committee? Okay. Hearing none, all those in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay. Motion passes unanimously. Welcome aboard. And again, we thank you so much for being willing to give up your personal time on behalf of the town. Absolutely. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Thank you, Mike. Okay. So that's going to move us through business item 5a and 5b. So we're on to business item 5c and that's approval of property setback agreement for GMP, for Green Mountain Power, Essex solar slash storage LLC, solar facility on River Road. Greg, you want to kick that off for us? Sure. And Wolf of A is here as well and representing the company, GMP Essex Solar Storage if you have questions for him. Basically, GMP Essex Solar Storage is putting on a four and a half megawatt solar facility with battery storage at 251 River Road. That is typically permitted through the public utility commission at the state. In this case, they came across issues on the site or they have some rare threatened endangered species that they don't want to disturb. And our agency of natural resources doesn't want disturbed. And that was a surprise. That wasn't known during the application process. Because of that, GMP Essex Solar Storage has approached the town and the abutting landowner to look for a waiver from the typical 50-foot setback. The Public Utility Commission is deferred. Well, they don't defer. They'll look for input from the town and the abutters before they make a decision on that. The abutting landowner has signed an agreement saying that he was okay with the reduced setback so now it's coming before the town. The Planning Commission reviewed it on Thursday of last week. They didn't take a formal vote but they took a straw poll of four to one to just recommend that this be waived at the select board level. The one dissenting vote was concerned about potentially setting a precedent for other projects for the Public Utility Commission but otherwise it's before you tonight to see how you feel. Okay, thanks for that intro. Okay, questions from the board about this request to go from a 50-foot setback that's defined to a waiver for 10 feet? How do staff feel about the precedent setting nature of this? Is it truly dangerous or? I think it's a valid question, a valid concern. And I still think you can take it case by case. In this instance, it's the project is on industrial zoned land. It abuts other industrial zoned land. Typically in those zoning districts, there's a 25-foot setback from rear and side property lines. I think you can certainly make it an emotion if you vote to support this, which is what the recommendation from staff you could do so and acknowledge that this is not setting a precedent. I think you could still take it on a different approach if it came up, say next to a residential neighborhood or a mixed-use district. I don't believe that you're setting a precedent in that sense. Okay, Mike? I'm not a big fan of waivers in the first place. I worry about the precedent as Dave Raphael is worried about the precedent. There are two things that are going to allow me to vote in the affirmative on this. One of them I'd like to see taken to a more permanent status, and that's because it is a budding industrial property. I do not believe waivers. I don't believe in waivers on residential property for that. For industrial and the fact that the owner has signed an agreement saying that he's okay with it is going to allow me to say yes on this one, but I would like to investigate the possibility of having that be reduced to writing, where it would only be granted against industrial property or the industrial zone. I think that's where it would be best served. Okay, anybody else? Andy? The request mentions that there's a substantial impact to the project. If this isn't allowed, can you quantify what substantial is? Yes, I can. My name is William Veve, and I represent GMP, Essex Solar Storage, and direct answer to your question by allowing us to site in that 50-foot area. We would be able to approximately increase the deployment of panels by 6% or 420,000 watts DC, which would equate to a 3-4% overall increase in total output, and over the life of the project, which is estimated to be about 35 years, is a significant number. Just to remind the board that this project is a GMP project for all GMP rate payers, and the more solar production the system is able to produce produces a higher rate of return for the project, and the higher rate of return lowers the overall cost of operating the system, and all benefits from this project, including the storage component, do go back to the rate payers as it's presented in the full petition. So directly about 6%, which equates to 3-4% overall. Other questions? You okay with that, Andy? Yeah. I just want a clarification from Greg. You said that typical is 25. In the local zoning regulations, an industrial district has a 25-foot side setback and a 25-foot rear setback. It's 50 feet from the front, where a bunch of road, but side and rear is 25 feet. Okay, so 25 would not require a waiver? No, it's just tricky because basically all utilities are permitted by the state, and so because if they came in, if they had stuck to the 50-foot waiver, the state would be issuing its permit, as long as it was satisfied with the other requirements. Because they're requesting less than that 50-foot setback, that's why the state defer looks to the town and the budding landowners to see their sentiments on the matter, basically. It's a built-in rule to the 248 process. So 50 feet is the standard that we generally have to meet unless there's a three-party agreement, and the three parties are the select board of budding property owner and the petitioner. Make another comment? Sure. Yeah, I guess with regard to Mike's comment, because it's industrial, I think I'm okay with the 10-foot, but I'd rather review them all individually rather than make it a common rule of 10 feet. Yeah, I think this would be just the exception, right? It doesn't change the ordinance of the 50. No, if there's another application that came in, it'd be similar permitted by the Public Utility Commission if they requested a waiver that would again come to the select board for input. Like Steph is saying, you can take any future case on a case-by-case basis, you're stating your reasons for potentially permitting this one. That doesn't mean the next one that comes through the door gets it or not. He has his circumstances, you're listening to it. As I understand it, you had a 50-foot setback proposed, and then you came up against natural habitat and other things that the state wanted you to avoid. When we first came and presented to the Planning Commission, the select board was through the initial design and the RTE studies were not done, and then to be responsive to the steep slope aspects, we also took out a significant portion of vegetative management, so this all goes into increasing the output, which was not known at the time until all of the site walks were done by all the agencies, and that just got completed about two and a half weeks ago. Greg, do you know if any other waivers have been allowed in that zone in recent time? For solar stuff? No, just any setback waiver in the industrial zone. I'm not aware of any setback waivers. The zoning district to the north is a resource preservation district, industrial, this just butts up against the industrial piece of that district. Within there, there's occasionally requests for waivers to go into the 50-foot front buffer, which is supposed to be a forested area. The Planning Commission has granted some waivers in that instance, and that's for various reasons. In some cases that 50-foot buffer is kind of scraggly and does not much force there to maintain any waste, so it varies, but that's an example. Okay, thank you. Okay, any other questions on this? It seems kind of straightforward. Okay, Irene? May I add some language to it, such as between industrial parcels or the word one time to make sure that I know that it's not broad? So it's not precedent setting at all? Yeah, I think you'd want to stick to the terms not precedent setting. I think you'd want to give the reasons why you are considering it, which I think have already been stated, but if you want to... Include it into motion? Yes, sure. What's the board's pleasure? Should we ask for public comment? Anybody want to make a comment on this item? Okay, no? Yes, ma'am. Sure, that'll be great. Thank you, Irene. Let me refer to our side. I would move the select board agree to a one-time reduced property line setback of 10 feet between industrial parcels for a solar array at 251 River Road for environmental and performance reasons. Thank you, Irene. Do I have a second on that? Second. Thank you, Michael. Any further discussion on allowing that waiver from 50 feet to 10 feet? With the other conditions. Any further discussion? Okay, hearing none, all those in favor signify with saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay, motion passes unanimously. Thank you very much. Thank you, and good luck. Thank you. Okay, we're on to item 5D and just guessing, but I bet that's where a lot of you are here for. So as I've done in the past workshops on the firearms ordinance, I'd like to just give an overview of how we're going to run this one. So just a little bit of background. On October 15th, the select board proposed eliminating the discharge of firearms on the town properties of Indianbrook and Saxon Hill parcels, except during November 1st through December 15th. These no discharge areas extend to property boundaries of these parcels without a 500 foot buffer beyond their property lines. The current 500 foot no discharge buffer extending out from Indianbrook's High Watermark will remain in place year round as it is today. No discharge of firearms will be allowed on the tree farm parcel all year. The town will develop a policy for signage at these parks regarding firearms discharge ordinance, and the town will also develop a plan to educate the public on any firearms discharge ordinance changes. And again, these changes don't go into effect until it gets accepted by the select board, has to get approved by the select board. We go to a public hearing to hear from the public, and then it has to get approved after that. So there's a long process. Tonight, we're going to have just the workshop going on. Yeah, tonight we're going to discuss and deliberate on the firearms discharge ordinance as it relates to sport shooting ranges. The select board at a previous meeting decided to break up the discussions into discrete parts, and tonight it's the sport shooting range discussions. After the select board has had its discussions on the sport shooting ranges, we will open it up to the public for comments. And as I've done before, I'll give you more details on that when we get to that point in the process. But after the public comments, I'll bring it back, bring the discussion back to the select board table to get a sense of the board and what, if any, changes they propose relating to sport shooting ranges that we would then ask staff to draft some language for. So we won't be taking any formal vote. It'll be, you know, a consensus of where we want to go because we, with ordinances, we discuss them and then at one, at one time we do an approval on the whole thing. So, but we're just breaking it up for discussion, manageable discussion points on this one. So is that clear about what we're going to do tonight? We're going to have a select board have our discussion, but we will certainly invite you for your comments after that. So if there's no questions on that, then I'm going to, we're going to start. And as I did on the other discussions, as chair, I thought it would be wise to put a straw man out there for the select board to, as Irene mentioned before, throw darts out. So, and we added that to the agenda at the beginning of the meeting. So what I'd like to do is just go over those points for the board. And again, this is only to begin the discussion. You can take it to whatever direction you want, but I thought I put a stake in the ground that I thought we could maybe discuss. So the select board acknowledges the legitimate concerns many residents have regarding safety and noise generated from residential sports shooting ranges. So therefore I'd like to make this proposal to just start the discussion. We've all been giving this a lot of thought. This is not something that we just started thinking about recently. It's been, you know, we've been on this for years. But what I, regarding sports shooting ranges, what I'd like us to consider for discussion anyway is having all shooting ranges in Essex be required to obtain a permit from the town in order for a property owner to operate an active shooting range on property. Currently permits are required for open burn on private property today, just as an example of a permit that you have to get if you want to do burn your leaves or large amount of brush. I'd like us to consider making permits renewable every couple of years or at some other regular frequency. I would propose that the permits list all the criteria that the select board decides is pertinent for reasonable safety and noise level. Some examples regarding that criteria, understanding what date the range was established. I believe the pertinent proof would be on the property owner. And it's important for the select board to know when it was established because there's, the legislature has some rules depending on when it was established. I'd like to request the police chief or his department anyway to review perhaps either the NRA's range source book or some other reference to see if it's valid to use as a reference manual for backyard shooting range design criteria. For example, we would expect it to be designed to contain all fired shots so that we don't have any errant ones going off in a direction that was not intended. In the permit, I would propose that there's a sketch of the property. Is that me? Okay, we'll try that. A sketch of the property, can you still hear me? Okay. A sketch of the property with the location orientation of the proposed range, including all buildings and properties within a certain defined distance. I don't know what distance that would be, but that's something we can talk about. I propose that the defined hours of operation also be included in there. I'd like it to contain clear language that the property owner takes on all liability risks of the range. I'd like to make sure that there's clear language that states that the town takes zero liability risks of your personal range. Police will ask the police to do some type of background check, whatever they're able to do on the permit requester, similar to what we do for liquor licenses before we approve a liquor license. There's just a criminal background check. This is not the background check you would do for obtaining a firearm. This is one that, again, that we would do for similar to what we do for liquor license if that's possible. I'd like it also to be very clear on fines and penalties that we think are appropriate for violations of the permit. I don't expect those to ever have to be enacted as long as we have it very clear up there what they would be so that nobody's surprised if there is a violation what that penalty may be. I would like the permits to be reviewed and approved by this board, the Select Board, similar to how we currently approve liquor licenses where we would have the permit request on a Select Board agenda, require the requester to be present before the Select Board so that he can be there to or she can be there for us to ask questions and to receive an admonition as similar to what we do for liquor licenses. I'd like us to also this have it at an open, it'll be an open meeting and therefore the public will be given an opportunity to speak before the Select Board decision is made and I would like the town staff to reach out to all abutting neighbors and businesses on all sides of the property at which the permit is being requested so that they're notified and if they so wish to attend that they know that we would have a meeting with that discussion and that if they so choose to make a comment that we would do that before a decision is made. So I'm in no way dictating this is what we would do, this is just thoughts that I had to begin the discussion trying to use common sense, also practices that we're doing today whether it's a a burn permit or a liquor license and trying to come up with something that would be allow the police to know exactly where these are located. We don't know where they are today. The assumption is that any existing ones are being run properly. We know that people are almost always responsible when it comes to this and the respect that we understand that we appreciate it but we're looking to make some progress here towards safety and noise and how can ranges also work to be good neighbors as most of them I assume are today. So with that stake in the ground I'd like to open it up to the board to feel free to throw darts at it or or propose something else. Who would like to go first? I'll start with one question and that is do you know of any other towns that have something like this? Does anyone else permit private ranges? Not in this sense. We came across two towns who responded to several inquiries from myself from community development staff and towns of Colchester and Milton do permitting through zoning. We have not come across something like this yet. Anybody else? Darts are welcome. Would we hope to generate a map that we could post on the website to show folks where the ranges are for example if someone were thinking of buying real estate and they wanted to or not be you know depending on their hobbies maybe they wanted to be close to a couple of ranges where people could actually see them once they're comfortable. Because all permits would be public record and the request would be for the permitting to have a sketch of the of the range so it's clear where it's located on the property lines where it's located regarding buildings what direction it's pointing it's a public record so anybody could could request it whether we want to put it on the website or not I think we can talk about but if somebody requested a copy of it it would be a public record in their court available. Andy? Does the permitting and or establishment of some sort of criteria imply any liability on the town's part? Well as I read I'd like the permit to state clearly that the liability lies with the range owner and language that says it's not the town inspecting it and have would have no liability but our our attorney is here perhaps we could put him on the spot and see if that's what his thoughts are if you're willing Bill. If the town excuse me attorney. The question is good evening the questions whether the town would have any liability if it was involved in the permitting scene for ranges yep nothing like as I indicated in my memo I don't know if you saw that or not that insulating yourself from liability is very difficult anyone can sue you can get sued for anything successfully getting sued is a different question my thought was on the liability and you have insurance but you also have indemnification language that you could require as part of the permit and insurance requirements on the part of the property owner that would be your first fallback if the town was ever dragged in because it would be one of many defendants I'm sure if that was the case the property owner whoever pulled the trigger they're going to be a defendant as well so I'm not overly concerned with any liability issues if you go to a permitting paradigm. Thank you. With regard to the 2006 date I guess the question is can we force someone who has a has a range that was that they can prove was in existence prior to that date. Can we you know can we have them come through the permitting process and if so why would we do that if we can't really say no. Remember we still have some authority over those ranges that were in existence prior to 2006 the grandfather calls or whatever you want to call it says that they can operate at the same level they were at that time so by doing the permitting on all ranges including those we can establish what that level is so that if there's any complaint we know if they've been if they're above or not but to ask your question legally can we ask them to do the permitting again I don't want to even I think you would probably want to know the location as Irene just pointed out it's I don't think that that in any way would I'm just looking for the language here prohibit reduce or limit discharge that's what you can't do right with anything that existed as of May 22nd 2006 which is a date that that legislation was amended right other other questions comments Elaine I have a couple different different questions um first of all under the sketch of property with location and orientation of range yes I think it would also be important for a property owner to indicate prominent terrain features if there's exposed ledge or there's a hill of some kind it just I think would be a valuable piece of information um and I wasn't uh expecting any uh professional plot to come in but even you know I wouldn't want to impose on a property owner yes you have to go out and get a surveyor to go get this you know parcel map but just indicating I mean I think it's important to know if there's exposed ledge and there's a suiting range near it I think that's important right and by having it reference that they will be following as closely as possible the something similar to the NRA's range source book it would uh expect them to to be designed in a way where there wouldn't be you know rock ledge that they're shooting into sure they would I'm sure wouldn't do today potentially but yeah that's that was the purpose of that okay yeah go ahead a couple more if that's okay um defined hours of operation I think that's the town's responsibility I don't think that the property owner should be coming in and saying this is when I'm going to operate my shooting range I think we have an opportunity here to say that you can operate it from 8 a.m to 6 p.m and on weekends from 9 a.m to 5 p.m I don't know that I think that's our responsibility I don't know that the property owners could all come in and say that and we have a variety of operating hours I when I wrote this I realized that you know some would maybe would be in the hinterlands and they could operate 24 hours a day and nobody would know or care right and I'd hate to put a limitation of hours you know too restrictive on them versus somebody who's next to a business that's trying to make a business and allow that 24 hours a day you know so I wanted to allow some judgment there anyway that was my intent but it doesn't mean that's but that but that says to me that there's you know subjectivity in terms of the location whereas if we are saying this is the hours of operation similar to a noise ordinance I feel like that would be a little bit easier to enforce particularly for the neighbors who are impacted but that that's my opinion on that okay so you're saying hours to find hours of operation by the town by the town okay um and just two other things one question I have is if a property owner chooses not to come forward and share that they have a range yes and we don't know that it exists how are we going to know it exists and so I would like to know how we're going to enforce this because I don't think this includes people going around checking out whether there's ranges right on property my thought process was then that's why I added the fines and penalties um just like a dog license if you have a dog and you don't get it licensed nobody's going to come and check but if that dog gets in a fight and gets reported well you're going to get fined and the same idea would be here if a complaint is lodged and the police have to go check and they'll take the permit to understand what what's allowed and if there is no permit on the property then whatever fine we we had defined would come into play and my last question is um referring back to our packet from the october 15th meeting I recalls a memo or some questions being answered by chief gary his concerns about permitting and so I would like to hear from the chief now that we have something more concrete to think about whether what his concerns might still be okay that's still the chief here would you mind giving us your thoughts on my apologies for putting you on the spot concerns about the permitting if you could come up uh we're billage as well please some of those were i've just done about 10 memos in reference to this that's right um it was not a specific you the memo I'm referring to was you were you were answering some various questions about um the firearms the the previous conversation and you had a generic concern a concern about issuing permits it was not specific as to why you didn't think we should do that the one I remember most is talking about a decibel reading in order to dictate noise and I recommended that that is not going to work well um that you've you've either got to set a date or a time limit or hours if you so choose trying to set a decibel reading almost any firearm you're going to shoot is going to be up in the upper level of all of those readings and so we have as you probably know willis didn't had a case where they tried to set the limits and that was overturned by the supreme court basically referring back to what the standard is that it's been operating on a regular basis um I think permitting is probably my opinion at this point is probably the right way to go whether it's zoning or whether it's through the select board it at least will allow us to set a standard that's reasonable and acceptable and allow us to know where they are and then also have the ability for enforcement if they're not followed I think you also get the ability to review right you need to set the standards and if you're having problems with them we can look at them if you have neighbors that have issues they can come in and talk to you say these are the issues who have thank you appreciate that yeah in elaine that's I did have a noise you know limits and I took that out in favor of saying let's define the hours of operation because of feedback that I got from the chief yeah and from the villages experience with noise ordinances with the champlain valley expo you know it could be raining it could be foggy the wind could be going a different direction it's just it's unenforceable yeah first I'll address the hours I wonder when the audience has a chance to speak if folks think it would be fair to limit the number of hours per day that arranges in use because I know neighbors often say that from dawn till dusk they're hearing shots and they're hearing shots every day of the week and they're hearing shots all year round so I wondered if it's reasonable to ask range owners and range users would a four hour would a six hour window every day be offensive to you or is that something you could work with another question I had it's about the timeline as far as when we envision actually setting up this permitting process and how soon or how long people would have to make the application I know hunters especially are busy this time of year yeah because these wouldn't go into effect until the ordinance is passed and we haven't really come up with a timeline yet although we're coming in budget season and we're probably going to need to put this on the back burner perhaps or maybe not it's up to you but so that we can focus on this and with the intent of bringing getting back to it soon thereafter town meeting say in order to affect the you know the upcoming next next year's season but timeline for permitting I don't know it depends on how difficult it is to come up with a permit that we think is reasonable that you know it's workable and enforceable and all that good stuff Michael you had your head up I didn't you did not okay not yet but Andy does that come back to you Andy yeah I'm wondering how we come up with a consistent and fair criteria for saying no will we ever say no what's the what's the you know I and I also have concerned about the the background check that you're suggesting I'm not sure that that's really relevant to a discussion about operation of a shooting range and and and and how potentially public that could become the the the discussion about background check so I'm I'm a I'm a I'm kind of leery of this this this the the permitting process the approval becoming somewhat arbitrary if if you know it's it's I don't I don't know how to quantify the measure to decide whether to say yes or no I know I know that you know concerns our safety and and noise I've had neighbors come over and ask me to stop playing my ukulele so you know my wife will let me play the banjo in the house so you know I I just I just don't know I don't want to end up having an arbitrary uh decision-making process yeah well the thing that would be not to be arbitrary but to have reason you know with this waiver we were talking about a case by case decision and I would assume we could apply the same you know methodology there in a case by case and if we wanted to say these are the key criteria maybe that's a good thing that for us to be able to guide and also to let you know the folks who want to do the permit know exactly you know how we would would judge it I guess well could could we end up though could we end up having a by permit hours of operation discussion too you know that I'm not following well if if if uh if someone works a 12-hour shift and they're not not home certain hours of the day and the their neighbor is on a different 12-hour shift and they're never overlap anyway then you know there might be more freedom there or if somebody has a business next door to a place where there's a shooting range could there be hours of operation that that don't coincide with the the the business operation you know dude does it have to be a one-size-fit-all discussion or is it a and I just worry about it being too nitpicky and arbitrary yeah I was I am still more in favor of it being a flexible time based on the location of it you know Elaine mentioned that she would prefer to be defined and that's a fine you know position to argue if you want and that's what we'd have to figure out but I think because the properties out there where these would be are very different you know some near businesses some out a little nowhere I have a hard time saying one size fits all because of that it's up to us to decide Mike unfortunately the comments I have are going to be impossible I think to to be able to put into a permit form but that doesn't mean that I can't ask for them anyway first of all I like the idea of a permit process I mean we've gotten feedback from staff um that they don't want to be anywhere near there I think that responsibility does fall to the select board um and I welcome that challenge to try and put something together that is going to be fair to all concern it would be my hope and again I don't know how you you couldn't permit this but it would be my hope that people that have ranges would would do the neighborly thing and just let their neighbors know if if they haven't already that they're going to be establishing a range where it's going to be and just just approach a neighbor and just let them know what the plan is I think I think that's common courtesy it's certainly not regulated it's not enforced it can't be but I think it would be a good first step the other piece I I agree with Elaine I I've I've gone back and forth between the dawn the dusk versus setting hours I think that setting hours while not the favorite of everybody I think would be the fairest way to try and establish you know somebody not setting their sights at 6 30 in the morning just because it's light enough and they can see so I I'd like the idea of us at least discussing that I'm going to be really interested to hear what the shooters themselves have to say about environmental impacts and I don't see any bullet points about that but I know that over time you know there's lead and yeah thank you I'm just again curious from members of the audience to hear what you would suggest for yourselves and for your friends as ways to mitigate the dangers of the lead and other things that get into the environment with range use thank you so something in the permit of environmental protection perhaps yes absolutely and you had your hand up to you right yeah um your what your comments here don't mention the possibility of a public shooting range I know that's been brought up a number of times I know there's there's some resistance to do that because of the potential liability but I think the bill has told us there's ways around that and I particularly asked the question with regard to you know like we have the the tree farm is operated by the tree farm management group they they run the whole thing we're essentially not involved they have their own insurance and so forth and I don't you know if a if an organization came to the town and asked to operate in a similar fashion operate a shooting range that we didn't have to operate or supervise or maintain you know is that is that something that we would ever consider and what would the purpose be to do that well you could say no to some of these permits and then people would still have a place to go to go so if we if there were an available public one you would say no more private shooting ranges is that what I didn't say no more I said would there if there are some that are in questionable locations or have safety risks that we do you know we could say no to them without eliminating the possibility of those folks using a shooting range or I mean people people in this room have said if there was a place to a public place to shoot they may not shoot on their own property I don't know if that's true or not I do not know if people would you know join a club where they would have to pay a membership fee and travel someplace to go to go shoot and or make a reservation to get a to get a lane or however that's that all might work but I you know and I don't know if people will bring that up again tonight whether there's a possibility of a shooting that's why I'm asking I'm bringing it up here because it has come up in the in the online service that we did and also discussions and yeah if it reduced the number of other ranges out there I that would be you know something that would be positive that would be a reason to to try to pursue it but from the liability perspective I'm I'm not we're excited about adding additional shooting ranges that if it's not going to reduce the total number of others I mean I would rather offer discount tickets to other existing shooting ranges to our residents to go elsewhere at a discount similar to what we do for you know amusement parks and and things that we sell at you know during the summer from the town so there's there's other ways to do it then just have it arranged but the reason I didn't talk about that is because it really has nothing to do with the with with the residential you know permitting process of ranges but that could you know if somebody wanted to come forward and propose something you know we wouldn't say no right off the bat I think we'd have to give a due consideration and see where that can see where it goes and to follow on with that because I also have spent a lot of time thinking about public range I'm wondering given the fact that Dennis in this packet talks about not using the landfill area near the CSWD drop-off center I'd be curious for staff at some point to research are there other town-owned properties or even school-owned properties where each could be set up that could be safe and could be public okay but that can all be outside the the ordinance the other thing kind of dovetails a little bit with what Irene just said and would probably be it would definitely be outside of the ordinance but I would I would really be interested to know what neighboring municipalities have in terms of their ordinances on shooting the the the area that has been impacted most recently was near run there was a well publicized back at the beginning of this process there was a well publicized incident where a round was discharged into a home thought it came from Jericho the the report came back and said that it was inconclusive and that there was no way to know where that round came from I would be really interested to know what Westford and Jericho and other the other neighboring communities have just on their books it would just it would be a polite inquiry but or just one that we do on our own but I would I'd be interested to know what's in place around right I think we have yeah as of a few months ago and I can double check if it's changed but Westford has no regulations Jericho has no regulations cold cold chest and Willis didn't have I believe it's tied to zoning district but they have some limitations based on where in town what what type of firearm and I apologize for wasting everybody's time okay any other comments about the permitting so included here from from what was originally drafted as far as the sketch of the property with location orientation of brains including terrain pictures want to consider should the town define the hours of operation or have them be flexible to figure that out and another comment was environmental protection plan or would you want to call it okay if there's any other discussion doesn't have to be honest I just shoot shooting yeah yeah the the I mentioned that I was I had concerns about the background check yes I don't know if you want to note that in your whatever notes you're taking okay um let me just explain why the background check yeah if we do a permitting process and say it's a two-year permit and over those two years you know go by and then the person would come back to to get renewed and I think as part of our data packet for whether or not we want to renew it is I think it's important to look and see have there been violations have there been complaints or valid complaints for that particular range and and by asking the chief to either keep track of them or do a background check whatever it would be that you know they would need to do I would like to see that data before I go ahead and and renew the application as it is the or the permanent as is or if we we want to modify it based on the feedback we get from what we hear from the police so that was the reason for doing that and I would you know we we could talk about whether or not we included or not but I think we could really be remiss in not having that information do you want to say yeah yeah I just I just didn't realize that you were implying that would it would be limited to issues surrounding the the shooting range itself I thought you know drunk driving wife beating you know any any infraction would come up and then become part of the public record and that's that's what I that's that's the biggest part of my concern but yes if there are violations against a particular shooting range I think we shouldn't wait for two years to the two-year renewal to do something about it I think it needs to be more immediate then yeah but that would require the feedback whether you call it a background check regarding the range okay if it's limited to issues associated with the range I'm certainly okay with that but if it's just a general overall background check I'm more concerned okay okay that's what I wanted to add with the liquor license scenario the chief is getting back to us with liquor license violations only and I would want to make sure that any background check for like Andy said for the shooting range would be relevant to just the shooting range and not the person's entire personal life we actually get other other background violations such as seating tickets and other things for liquor devices yes well the chief is here when we maybe you could touch on when we do liquor background checks it's basically property related and the ownership of so maybe that is correct it's the owner the property itself you're dealing with the owners that are associated with the establishment there is it's not through us but you guys do get a criminal history background check through the state of Vermont on those owners and anything that's related to violations of that establishment are misusing uh miss like serving alcohol or anything that's related that you may need to make a decision about granting that permit but there is a criminal history that's done not through us with the state of Vermont of the owners or the people that are applying for the application and one of them is while sometimes we do not ticket a person for DUI on that establishment we come to find out where you were and that is attributed back to that principal place of business so that's kind of the background stuff I think we're talking about and you know we're not trying to limit you know what but we are trying to balance public safety and neighbors and neighbors rights we've had to complaints from businesses trying to operate from residents of neighbors and I think one of the things that's important is brought when were you established because somebody moves in next to you all right they think they should either know that something is there or now you move in and you complain about your neighbor who's been there for 20 years we could at least say no they've been here for 20 years we could talk to them about what they're doing but those types of things get balanced but we can't regarding background say regarding range violations so the first round we would have no no feedback we would just have all the other information we wouldn't have any background check not until the renewals came in would we have that yes the word background check I'm not a gun owner but to me it has certain connotations so if we could change those words background check to say something else a review of something you know but sure review of suitability but if we could use just our own unique phrase that doesn't say background check which to me has all kinds of connotations that I don't know that we want to introduce and maybe that's getting at what Andy was saying earlier okay but the data we're looking for is any permitted range have there been violations right and we want to know that before we do a relative to the right and that's and certainly incentive to make you know to make sure the ranges are operating as okay anything else you want to discuss before we open it up to the public so this is the part of the meeting where I'd like to open it up to the public input hopefully you're able to hear what we were talking about so I just like to review some things and just just say that as always please keep your comments respectful brief and focused on shooting on sport shooting ranges tonight there'll be opportunities at subsequent meetings when we open it up to the whole ordinance but again tonight we're defining it to just sport shooting ranges again please do not interrupt or have side conversations while others are speaking just to let's show everyone that they're due respect direct all your comments to me the select board chair um speakers we give a limited time for their comments and if time is running out and you're getting close to the uh that time limit either Evan or I will uh clearly let you know that your time is about up and again please be respectful of others time if someone ahead of you makes a point that you would wanted to say uh you can just say ditto or I agree with the person that just spoke uh moments ago uh the select board will listen again this is not a negotiation or a dialogue as stated before we may not produce an outcome that you want and we are painfully aware that we that is excruciating for you to watch to watch happen but we are attempting as Evan said we're trying to balance many interests including safety rights traditions and many other things so uh is that clear how we're going to do this okay see no question so what I'd like to do is just by a show of hands if you would so I know about how much time to give to each uh how many people by show of hands would like to speak tonight on this okay so okay so okay so we'll do uh we'll do three minutes uh per person and we'll just start uh that was 12 right we said 12 okay and even go left to right we'll start we'll go left to the right last time I think with the other direction so so I had Tim you had your hand up okay I want to be closer okay good no uh yes Brad yeah if you could uh you want to turn on the microphone okay yeah and I didn't say it but yes please do it Brazil and and and use the mic and state your name and your address for the record please yeah Brad Keneson in one club next to Hill Robert you're going to be talking to me okay yes sir um I'm referencing uh Mr. Ellis's memorandum uh date of November 2nd and in there referencing shooting ranges that were established prior to May of 2006 it says that point 291 number eight shall not prohibit reduce or limit discharge at any existing sport shooting range as the term is defined 10 vs a 5 2 2 7 and that goes on to say the phrase has been interpreted by the Supreme Court to specifically restrict municipal authority to prohibit reduce or limit discharge at any sport shooting range in existence as of May 2006 so no matter what you establish for your guideline and maybe you're thinking more of about shooting ranges that were established after to May 2006 but anyway it doesn't appear that you have the authority to restrict shooting ranges that were existed at the time so you can have a permitting process or whatever but according to the statute doesn't appear that you have that authority to to limit or restrict the use of shooting range that was established at that time okay just a quick response the answer is yes we do as long as it's not restricting you below where you were at 2006 if you go above that yes we can knock it back down that's true yeah I understand that but as far as any other restrictions below that that's correct the legislature was clear so why would you go through the process of you know the permitting process for someone who hadn't arranged already existing where you really can't restrict it other than what you just pointed out we want to well I said this is not a negotiation or a discussion but no it's so that we know what that level is right now we don't know where the ranges are or and what level they're operating this permit will allow us to document that all of them including those before 2006 what level were you running at so that we know if a violation or a complaint is made we can go well oh they're above it so yeah that's a violation or they're below it we can't do anything so we need that information I don't understand how you're going to establish that level of usage it'll the burden of proof will be on the owner of the property okay thank you okay that was that was good okay so who's next on this side okay we'll go here and we'll come to you again sir okay again your your your name and address and we'll be talking to me the problem I have is with the burden of proof being on the land owner and I honestly don't know how any person here that has a shooting range on their own property how we go about proving that it's been there number one how we go about establishing any type of do you want number of shots fired per hour per minute per day per week per year there's there's absolutely no way to establish any of these items that you're asking us to provide you the burden of proof is is an impossible thing for for us to establish for you it seems like this is kind of a loaded a loaded thing where this feels like a very underhanded way to strip away land owners rights to shoot on our own property to tell me as a landowner that I can and can't do things on my own property certain times a day I just have a real problem with with a board telling landowners what they can and can't do on their own property that we've been doing for years and years and years so I guess for me it feels like it's a foregone conclusion that you're basically trying to take away all of our shooting rights in the town of Essex to me this feels very similar to multiple votes on town merger where we voted no and yet the board continues to consolidate things here and things there even though people spoke out and said they didn't want it so yet again I just feel like there's an agenda and we're just not being listened to or that like I said there's a foregone conclusion that you just want to take our shooting rights away and that's unfortunately how I feel okay thank you okay sir help with gentist some of them on gentist road in Essex we're told and I pursued it we've had a range on our properties it's 1948 now do you want me to prove it I can't because those individuals are no longer with us but I can go and prove it until 1955 that's when I was learning to shoot so I don't know you don't talk about noise I gotta admit sometimes it looks like we're having a range war sounds like around the range war there in soviet we were there long before houses we fell up around us and I was told by an individual he's no longer involved with a town that seems like we've been there so long that we're grandfathered and there's not a whole lot that you can do I'm sure you can probably try but no I asked the police chief then you want to come look at it he says no soon as we look at it and we say it's okay we're on the hook also so he says no so whether we have somebody's right and somebody's wrong I'm just saying against any regulations on hours we only have a family and our invited friends here to shoot it's not open to the public tensions of stand there yes whether it's the right thing to say or not okay so burden of proof is a big one for you right well being able to I'm 72 years old and it's been there ever since I've been okay so what else you want thank you sir okay uh yes gentlemen it's hard to come and talk to the board because I don't usually do this although I do work for the town of Richmond and I've dealt with things like the thing that kind of confuses me a lot right here is that usually a board decides to make a decision based on a need and number one I don't see any need there is no safety issue in Essex zero zero incidences we've proven that so there is no need number two every one of these meetings that I've been to has been overwhelmingly in favor of the position that I have which is no change to the firearm ordinance no change to the shooting range I agree completely with what he said and I agree completely with what he said I've lived in the same place since I was born we've had a shooting range on my property since 1948 all my neighbors know that and I don't have any problem with my neighbors so if I decided I want to grow squash and a neighbor just want me to grow squash I'm going to have to come in and get a permit to grow squash and somebody doesn't agree with it my neighbors don't have a problem with my shooting because I get along with my neighbors and I respect my neighbors and that's what you're supposed to do and you're making a big issue out of something here when I think the board should spend a little more energy on mediating some of these people that actually have the problem because there's no problem on old pump road my name is Kendall Chamberlain that's where I live so I just find this extremely frustrating because in ordinance change there's no way that we're going to change the board's opinion is there you did the place feet we participated in the place feet we overwhelmingly swamped the place feet with people that did not want to change the firearm ordinance you're still pursuing it now you're going to go to public hearings we're going to fill those public hearings with all your residents that don't want this and you're still going to do it then you're going to tell me that I got to come in and get a permit to do something and I've been doing all my life where I live I'm really beginning to feel discriminated against as a long time s6 resident who stayed here made a life here works here am I going to have to move to Jericho because I'm on the property line of Jericho you know I can step across the line in Jericho do all the shooting that I want at any time what is going on in s6 that's my question thank you for your time uh yes sir with the yeah and I'll come to you no not now yes I don't have your name so it's hard to well we'll discuss that in a second my name is john bourbon I live out on 348 Browns River Road about halfway between Halitz and Petton Hill Road that's in the middle of the blue area big flood plain little little issues back here I've owned this house since 1988 I've been shooting in my backyard literally my backyard since 1988 and it needs me I can get signed to affidavits and the people that shot with me and we can establish that I don't know I haven't heard you use the word affidavit yet but I assume that would be the process to go about establishing some sort of history is that we don't know what process that would be this is just an outline of what we're thinking about anyhow 1988 a couple times a week sometimes pistols sometimes rifles you know and in fairness to my neighbors I wait till she's not home when I work 12 hour nights I get up early and look out in her driveway there's no car in the driveway now's a good time much like the kinds of things that you said a few minutes ago never had a complaint other parts of my comments I like to make in the issue of brevity is that all of your ideas for these permits seem designed to keep us from shooting as opposed to quantifying the amount of shooting and whatever it um I'm not real fond of getting additional government involvement in me doing things on my property and the concept of having to look below enforcement people come take a look at it kind of bothers me also because I remember when I tried to get a silencer I took my form forward to police chief I believe was Gary and he told me he wasn't going to sign it because he says you might be a good guy today but you might be a bad guy tomorrow and I don't want to be on the hook for when you do some bad you know that's not really given me a lot of faith in the whole process of getting law enforcement to look at my my surroundings I didn't do nothing bad before then I haven't done nothing bad since then but in two years now five years now when there's a new group of people either on the board or perhaps in law enforcement will I have to prove myself again I don't know this whole idea of two years every now and every two years getting permanent redone kind of gives me the same kind of heartburn because I don't know who's going to be on those tables in two years and what their views will be so I think I pretty much addresses my main points and thank you very much thank you okay uh yes sir I'll stand up I just got one quick question name okay could you say your name sir you go set restrictions that means I can't shoot on my own property after those hours well we're talking only about sport shooting ranges just sport that's what we're talking about today okay thank you for clarifying okay uh who's next you want to go no you're right here I'll have you next there Brian Murphy I'm 187 Towers Road extension I'm gonna show you a map because I think context is everything and I'm gonna I've got for people at the table I don't have a copy for everyone but I have enough for the tables and I just want so I have no doubt that there are many people here that fire on the range and are very safety conscious I have no doubt that but the problem is you get into subjective notions of what safety is so I'm just going to tell you a little bit of my world to give some context of one landowner and I'm not going to speak that everyone has this experience that's mine so on this map you'll see a couple parcels you'll see 187 Towers Road it's marked that's my parcel with my residence mark with the white letters residence my neighbor and the good thing is I've talked to my neighbors several times and we've improved over time and if he was here if he was sitting right here we'd have the same conversation I worry about the fact that if I didn't have a good relationship with him that I wouldn't be able to have these conversations but on this shooting range and we'll leave aside for the moment the legal question what is the sport shooting range which is in everything he and visitors will shoot from what's there's an X where you see the discharge area and that can move but that's typically where it is but frankly it could be north of where the swimming pool is but when you're shooting at the dirt pile which is about 12 feet high my entire property on either side of that is exposed the field where you see the white letters where we walk and we take brush and stuff like that becomes completely unusable when someone's out there with firearm and in fact if there's like a 15% deflection of the dirt dirt pile it's coming into my house and do I think it's going to happen no am I fearful at absolutely I wouldn't be here if I didn't care for my family and uh there's there's no there's no berms there's the dirt pile into which folks shoot sometimes he's there sometimes it's unsupervised people that I don't know who they are in fact a couple times I went there and nobody knew who the landowner was um and so I'm also on google maps measured the distance between my residents and the discharge area and it's under 750 feet which is what happened when Dr Rice was shot at his dining room table having dinner a boat went right through his head um and the testimony in that case was the person that operated the rain said that his attorneys argued he had done everything he thought to make the range safe but with 750 feet there's just no room for error 20 seconds okay um the other thing which is by the way if you shoot over that dirt pile you're going to end up in indian brook if you extend that line um and the other thing is there are four sport shooting ranges within 15 miles two or 10 miles away and two or 15 the leverage range is free and it's 15 miles away so the notion that you can't shoot if there's people that can prove they've got a safe range I'm not going to get in their way but frankly you're not going outside when they're shooting you know and walking in my field none of you would thank you thank you bright okay sir breck norton sandhill road um i've lived on sandhill road since october 1963 my family's been in vermont says before it was vermont so i'm actually a real the board has zero right to make any of these existing ranges get a permanent zero absolutely zero and i can see where it's headed it's just one little thing after another and it's all just a squashy it's plain as day to me thank you okay who on the side um we'll come to uh yeah you sir and then uh man after we don't know yeah it's just an again an outline idea we don't have details of how we would do any of it yet sir it's not latino 68 brickham hill road um oh boy there's so many issues at hand here it's not a black and white issue i totally get i first want people to know that i have a business that i've had for nine years um it's a plant nursery i grow my own perennials we have lived at um my husband and i have lived in this address for 21 years um when we moved in there was hunting in the back rifle season musket season nothing to do the johnson's who are three houses down had a shooting range way up in the woods you hardly ever heard it when you did it was like oh here's the johnson's what a couple of crazy folks wonderful folks um and i understand land owners rights and it's my right as a landowner being there for 21 years to have peace in my my grant on my land i moved to the country um i grew up in the country i have lived in in the wild some big sirs studying plants for months at a time so i totally understand the whole living in the off the land vibe um and i also want people to understand that recently shooting ranges have moved into my section of the woods in brakeham hill road nobody ever came to any of the neighbors and said is it okay if i do this i will tell you we have this wonderful vet who lives nearby he came to me maybe four years ago and said hi a friend came by with the um high caliber rifle we have a shooting range set up where i'm pointing back to the land it's going to be really noisy do you mind if i shoot how could i refuse it was so nice of him that he had this ability to come and ask now my business is plagued um it's been very quiet in my neck of the woods um but on several days especially um mother's day from one o'clock in the afternoon until sunset there was a semi-automatic weapon it was so loud i had customers leaving because they couldn't stand it the noise and i my customers bring in not only money to my business but money to other sx businesses um and i feel like i have a right to do my business um in peace and quiet if there was a way that the shoot the shooting range that is next door could put up a special diamond bubble if you will 30 seconds okay thank you wouldn't that be great we could all live in peace but it has been really frustrating i wish there was a way that we could all work together i understand your right to have your shooting range for for so many years but it really pains me when my rights are not respected as a landowner who's been there for many years and i feel it's very dangerous and i really feel like something could happen with this uncivility thank you very much thank you sir Phillips i live in the direction so i don't really have a dog in this fight i can't have shooting range even if i want to um i do worry listening to people and listening to you say you don't know how you're going to quantify this it seems like there has to be a lot of work done and i hope you're going to listen to people on both sides of the argument as you decide how you're going to quantify this because there's a lot of issues are you going to take credible testimony if you are how are you going to decide who's credible is it going to be the neighbor who hates guns and who's afraid is it going to be the person who says they've had a range for years is it going to be the person who said they shoot five times a week is it going to be the person who says no they only shoot twice a week is it going to be are you going to say okay this is the level it was in 2006 if i look around this room there are people who have been deployed multiple times over the past few years are you going to say because they have been deployed that takes out their constant use or continuous use or whatever it is there that says it so they don't meet that criteria anymore and when these people who have served come back they can't have the ranges that their family established or they established well before this i'm hoping that you're going to take that into consideration i hope you're going to take into consideration that it may be difficult for people to prove this both on both sides of the aisle so to speak or both sides of the room or whatever you want to say also consider that as people go more cognizant and more people have moved into areas where there hadn't been neighbors they may have improved the ranges and so what existed prior to 2006 is very different now so if they have photos or whatever it might not be the same thing that you're looking at it may look like a brand new parcel a brand new range when in fact the range has been there but the range used to be the 12 foot pile of dirt but they heard people like mr. Murphy saying i don't feel safe there's a house there now there's a business there now and they put up a proper burn they put up a 35 foot burn they put up steel planks or whatever it is you do to make it safer i hope that these are things that you will all consider as you are creating whatever it is you want to create good points thank you thank you Lee okay um we should have one more out there yes and then we'll end with Tim if you get six forest road essence so we heard from besides everybody is very focused on how they're going to prove if they are the range and i think it's really distract from the issue of the two people who after here i've don't have it i haven't had an issue with the range that have been here forever there are issues with people who just started to shoot one of them it's an air 15 that's the map that you have you have here a lot of you here are military i am one too you tell me that this is safe it is not safe so the real issue here is ballistic you wanted quantification that's quantification you and i know that it's ballistic you cannot fight ballistic you cannot pretend that it doesn't exist if that bullet is going to ricochet it will end up in Brian's house that's just just the way it is so yeah you may have a ranch for a long time i shoot at the ranch i'm branch safety officer i have kids 8 to 13 shooting and trust me i have my eyes on them constantly so but it's at the jaco ranch where everything is very safe doesn't mean that we never have an accident i respect your right to do whatever you want in your life but what happened and that's a question to achieve when the bullet extends from your life from your yard you have to think about that and instead of okay so i think we all agree the idea of proving your that you're ranging system prior to 2006 is is probably not feasible let's work together so that we don't have people who are shooting everything because by the way you guys are hunting in the lots adjacent to it don't forget that that may affect you too so think about that and let's work together so that we can find a solution where those people are not affected the way i'm under the fire audience i don't really care but it is something that is the other thank you okay yeah hi my name is gail we live over a white tail and i like that word that that channel in there i grew up around guns my whole life um my father's and haven't gone over i hear guns fire in the woods with my son yesterday and i'm thinking hey you know maybe some some young boy or girl got their first year you know it's good you hear guns you fire off in the distance you think that's probably a deliberate shot when you're out in the woods in the winter time hiking and you hear 15 rounds go off at once from an automatic semi-automatic weapon and you don't know where it's coming from it gets a little bit scarier and i think that it i'm not seeing this right or wrong i hear what people are saying about about the right to have guns and and discharge firearms on their own property um i hear fears that that people's rights are going to be infringed upon and i and i and i get those and i also i have to agree i think that the burden of proficiency is going to be very challenging for people who are over on firing ranges um i don't know how we're going to come about that uh but the other statement i heard by that other gentleman about neighbors coming up and asking for permission um i'm going to be firing my my gun is that okay i mean that's an ideal world we don't need gun we don't need laws and permits in a society where everybody gets along and does the right thing we need them to help govern people that are acting irresponsibly those gentlemen that were firing in a pit the other day well the other day a couple years ago and killed the professor at ubm they were behaving irresponsibly there has to be a way to govern these things so that everybody can feel safe and i have to i have to agree with i have to thank you guys for taking on i think a very difficult and obviously heated issue the um you're not just hearing the complaints of the of the verbal i don't know majority or minority here that has that has shooting range but i know you're also hearing from concerned citizens that are concerned about the noise in their neighborhoods concerned about their safety concerned about ricochets concerned about bullets that are lodging into the side of their homes this just happened down the street from me so you can't say that there haven't been accidents or there hasn't been that there's no danger there's always a danger there's a danger every time you go out in the woods to go hunting that's why we're bright we're bright orange so i think we just have to find a way to come together with this from both sides i only think i think the only way we're going to do this is from a point of moderation and not division and we have to find something that's going to actually help us all find an answer that helps us all feel safe but also not burdened by the law thank you that's all thank you okay so that should be oh tib you wanted to be the closure okay so this will be the last one okay so tim pham 171 bringing hill road my original question at the very beginning or what i wanted to start with was when you put the term sport shooting range are you is how general was it as far as you know if it consists of me pulling my rifle out going in my backyard and shooting four rounds down range to verify that it's on target for the season and then i put it away or is it for the enthusiast gun owner that's out there wanting to shoot year round multiple rounds have a gun collection that they want to try various calibers all that good stuff so the description of the shooting range because should you take action and decide that everybody needs to be permitted and whatnot for example at my house i started shooting or target practicing down there and it's citing in target practicing it is not a process to where i'm going all the time it's usually about four to ten shots depending on if it's a new rifle an old rifle whatever long story short bought the house in 2006 so obviously that's the only proof i have to show you that my range has been established since before year uh that the hardest part about it for me is i envy your position or i'm not envious of your position for the simple fact that that mat that gentleman that handed that in scares the hell out of me as a shooter and as a hunter okay the stuff that sarah has to deal with okay it's unfortunate because where i live i live pretty nice up on hill away from everybody else i can see some houses but they're substantially away and where i shoot is in between two ledges down a valley into the ground type of thing you know it's ricochet uh bounces the sound like up and away type of thing so probably not too many people hear me the issue that sarah deals with i can hear from my house and i was like oh my god i could not to be as close as sarah is to the neighbors that she has which are the minimum set back away when they develop the land okay that would be excruciating me to hear that much shooting going on at one time unfortunately that's what i don't envy for you guys is to have to i think there needs to be a differentiation from that because where albert's been shooting all his life up on his property i'm sorry for all of you guys that moved in next to him sorry he's been there forever it's just like an old farmer that's owned all that farm land down there that's his property he's paid taxes on it forever he deserves to do and continue his traditions which almost all these traditions are gone by the wayside now everything's just kind of going away and and the way millennials come up through their tradition there's no there's no care and we're eroding that kind of behavior every time we take one more piece of it out so i'm against making changes to all this stuff for the simple fact that there is no easy answer to it and not everybody's going to be happy but like a few other people said we kind of got a feeling as to where this board in general wants to go with it and as far as i'm concerned this topic will never stop until all those firearms are at the border not here in the state not here in burbesex and i don't think it's fair for any of us to have to deal with it the safety issues i had a problem i don't know if you can figure out a way that if a neighbor could call and use the names like a sara and say listen this is going on yep can you wrap it up the police can go out there yet another burden on the police and say listen where are you shooting i'm shooting that way now come on this is unsafe she's got a business to deal with i get it um where kendo lives i know where he lives been there all my life too you can't you're not going to affect anybody and then as far as you know it's just it's just one of those things you got i don't know that you can legislate it because it's hard to legislate stupid but i mean i don't look at that picture it scares the hell out of you but you ought to be able to go to that property right there that is shooting that gentleman's property and shut it down i do believe in them i do believe in that because that's some has to be done about that thank thank you for your comments then okay so that was everybody plus two uh i'd like to bring it back to the board what i do is there's one person that's dying to speak that hasn't that that didn't raise their hand before if not uh i asked for one clarification yes right i didn't hear all of what the enemy had to say was there going to be any discussion about are you going to go here are you going to discuss that it sounds like in the future the board would like to discuss that but that's not on the docket for tonight okay so as i said now we had the public input thank you so much for your feedback and your your thoughts uh and tim's right this is not an enviable enviable position to be in we're trying to balance you know your rights and traditions with your rights uh to enjoy your your property uh the way you want the main in a safe way um so it's it is a difficult thing to do we're not trying to strip anybody's rights what we're trying to do is get a handle on shooting ranges and where they are so we can see maybe they're more uh like this that we saw on this map and boy wouldn't that be good to know so that we can we can address that before another incident like professor rice uh the tragic death uh professor rice happened so um it is a tough situation that the board is in but we don't uh we don't shy away from from hard work this is it's painful for all to watch it's painful to do it but we all love our community it's a tight community and we're hoping to come up with something that is a reasonable position chances are nobody would be happy with the position but uh we're going to do the best we can with the information we have and our requirement for the the health and safety of the community so all right with that lecture sorry i'm going to bring it back to the board um so we had talked about the idea of permitting we had some outlines we made some adjustments to it uh as we've done before now that we heard input on on this from the public who's here tonight um is there many changes you like to consider uh so Elena come to Andy right um i have no changes to offer at this time but what i do want to say based on what we heard in the audience is the difference between burden of proof and evidence of existence okay and i think it's very important that we know where these places are and we may find as we continue this conversation that establishing the age of certain ranges may be impossible and we need to acknowledge that yes yes that is absolutely true thank you okay andy um i'm i'm in favor of getting a catalog of where all the shooting ranges are so we know where they are i have concerns about the need to renew them um because as as has been explained they go with the land so even if the property owner changes the shooting range continues to exist is what okay he's not excited um so and and and i think that if some you know some violation occurs not and we haven't defined what those violations could be um i think it needs to be brought up immediately and not wait for two years so i i don't understand i guess i'm i'm i'm less uh in favor of having uh folks come back uh every other year to say yep i cited my gun in with i shot four bullets last year um because that because i think that's the other thing that we determine that a sport shooting range is anything from somebody who's an enthusiast who's out there every day with her guns all the way down to plinking at a pie plate on a tree um and there's no there's no official definition of that um so anyway i i'm not in favor of i'm i'm less in favor of having the renewal discussion um i would like to know where they are and i and i think that you know given you know maps this picture that was given to us that there should be some at least some safety review um as long as it doesn't put us in a liability situation um okay so what if there's a change or or if the shooting range moves would it need to get repermitted or would that original permit still suffice that's a good question and that was the idea of this renewal thing is that if there are changes we'd want to we'd want to be able to document that so that we now know where they are if they if they remove real quick just with what you just said right there what happens once you establish this catalog and a landowner leaves is that shooting range so if i went out and bought another piece of property whether it had an established range on it or not say i thought it was a good place to have one or say i found out it had one and i played on using it is the establishment from the original owner who owned it or because i just bought the property i'm no longer allowed or what if i what if there was never one there and i wanted to establish one yeah yeah i'm not sure so i'm just saying yeah thanks to consider tim i think the the the uh the advice from our legal council is that it goes with the land it follows so so if you if you purchase a piece of property that has an established shooting range on it you may use it and if it's a grandfathered shooting range it's continues to be grandfathered it's my understanding now grandfather meeting the 2006 yep point yeah yeah okay mike i've been target shooting since i was 10 we had the perfect lot for it it was we had my my dad had a single shot 22 p shooter and we used to just put we put beer cans on the stake and we'd shoot into a hill nobody behind us it was perfect i have zero problem with hunters zero we have absolutely no injuries fatalities nothing the the tree warden confirmed it what bothers me is the same thing that bothers mr mirth i'm going to miss your name i'm sorry this scares the hell out of me and that's why that's why i'm doing this what i'd like to see instead of hunters telling us or shooters telling us why they feel like they're infringed on stand up and go knock on this guy's neighbor's door and tell him that that range is insufficient we've gotten letters over the last six months same names at the bottom of the letter same names form a committee it doesn't have to be a legal committee but form a committee and help us out here help us out help us do the right thing because the last thing i want to do is take away your ability to target shoot but dammit i don't want somebody coming here and telling me that they pulled around out of their house so you know what help us out here a little bit stand up go see this guy you don't have to act like the police or anything else just go see him take take take okay okay then i'll tell you what my my my request still stands help us out here help us find the ranges that are insufficient that aren't safe sorry yeah yeah you need to actually just raise your hand and not shout out that goes for everybody and then you wait to be recognized we brought it back to the board and i need to follow that protocol okay there's going to be time afterwards before this ever becomes an ordinance for further input but tonight i explained how we're going to run this i'd like to keep on that tag everybody understood that i don't like to apply that thank you so i wonder if instead of having a two-year automatic you got to come back in and talk to us again or whoever's here in our seats um what if whenever there's what if there's a list of things that require someone to come back in if and when they happen if the owner of the range doesn't change you don't have to come back in once it is established once this mandatory survey we're doing if we could call it a survey i don't want to get all into permitting and make it this onerous thing but i really do want to have a survey and if i call it a survey no one's going to take it seriously so i think we have to call it a permit at least up front get an idea of where all these ranges are and once we know unless you sell your property unless you change the direction of your range unless you take down the berms and the things that are protecting it that we approve in the first round you never have to see us again you can have your range for 50 or 70 or 90 years as long as it stays safe you're still in charge of it and so forth i want to make this easy on folks and with all due respect i really don't know the outcome of these conversations i've been to many properties i've talked to many people on all sides of this issue i'd love to know where it's going to end but i with all due respect i do not know where this is going to end i'm along for this ride and i'm learning every day and i thank you for all of your input but please don't assume that you know where this is going to go because i certainly don't okay so so it sounds like we want to get rid of the automatic renewal in favor of some other other thing is that right or andy you look at the words you use is to get rid of the automatic renewal not the i'm sorry i mean that's two yeah good good clarification i meant the the the regular renewal say every two years or four years whatever but not do that but do it if there's a land transfer or if a substantial change to the range occurs is that for those that do for now i mean i'm open to suggestions maybe there are other things that would trigger us needing to re-examine your range but what i'd like to do for tonight as as a conclusion is posted to try to define everything is at least get an idea if this is the direction we want to go then i'd like the uh staff to be able to work with what maybe a permit would look like maybe what the uh not the burden of proof of the establishment of the date what that criteria may look like to let them work with legal and and our law enforcement and then come back with the draft at some time in the future but if we think that the permitting thing is the way to go with roughly what we talked about here with questions about you know maybe the renewal piece um i don't think we have to get too much more detail for now to give at least some direction to the staff just to see what they can pull together for is that reasonable yeah yeah no no i i mean bill you're here you're listening correct and we've taken notes we've got lots of input uh to go with yes and so yeah i think uh given some a construct of what it was some more some options within that construct we can put it up in a couple months okay all right so if we're good it's starting to be budget season are we good then with the uh with the idea we're not going to be in this we're not going to be in this hunting season anyway so we're not gonna have to see so are we good with where we are today for shooting ranges with the idea of some type of permitting we had a lot of input i think you have plenty of notes i outlined it and then they'll come back at a future meeting and again maybe we want to put give them plenty of time it's not like maybe some months that'll give us time to do the budget and we can pick this up on the other side and hopefully in time to be able to affect if we decide any change to affect and get the outreach and the signage and stuff in place before you know november next year so i just got more thoughts um true the more i think about this the more the 2006 date doesn't mean anything to me you can have a range for as long as you want if it's unsafe it's unsafe i'm looking at safety i'm looking at noise but i'm not looking at a date per se so again that's something i want to explore more in our conversations but i'm more concerned about things that are not the date that you establish a range and how your use has varied because you could be a very heavy range user as long as you're safe i don't care um okay we can come back when you remember but i think that's going to be a problem okay okay i mean it was determined by law that that date was a key date as far as range concerns so i don't think you can get rid of it i'm not looking to shut them down i i'm either either or am i okay i want them safe too i just i thought i said that yeah but i i don't think you're gonna be able to get around i don't think we're going to be able to get around okay any final comments uh from elaine nothing andy final comments okay i mean did you remember no but i'm sure okay so yeah it sounded like there were some a few other comments that wanted to be said tim did you want to take a moment okay could you just go up to the mic again just to make sure everybody can hear what mike said about helping you guys out whatever and getting up and trying to confront people or whatnot one of the guys that shoots on our road a lot or was for a lot i haven't heard him in a while i actually made an attempt one day to go down there and speak to that individual selfishly to basically tell him you know relax calm down a little bit till you guys get this all figured out so you're not giving you guys more ammunition to go against us that's the way i looked at it honestly um talk to talk to the neighbor who then told me you don't want to go over there the guy i'll meet you at the door packed in both sides doesn't seem quite a little bit right there and i'm like look at him out of here so no i'm a little scared about that part telling regular civilians if you will to go do that i guess that's where we get the police involved and say listen can you make a stop by there make a suggestion find out if there's something maybe unsafe about it or whatever and potentially deal with that and i was also told that the police even said no confront them where do we go from there you know it's like we got somebody in the area that's background checks no all right thank you uh yeah just real quick if you can keep it 30 seconds microphone please microphone please thank you okay every time i've gone to this i've heard the same type of an area where there's a neighbor have an issue with a neighbor noise um can you explain to me why the police can't address that i was under the impression that was what the police were here for was this an issue with your neighbor that they would mediate if you were doing something wrong or something something wrong i keep hearing from everybody the police no please no no please don't even go there i don't understand that i'll give you an example back when i was in my 20s my brother came up from connecticut he did a lot of shooting next thing i know not not not there was an officer on my door somebody had called said hey there's a lot of noise here at night talk to us explain that somebody was unhappy and everything and that was the end of it we stopped i don't understand why that isn't the approach now okay thank you kennel um evan do you want to just share that and in a perfect world and in a perfect place where neighbors are neighborly you can go talk to your neighbor but when your neighbor decides no i don't want to listen to you i get to do whatever i want whenever i want the police need something called an ordinance which is what we're talking about they need something to be able to go to your property and say you are in violation and then if it has to to go to court and only then a judge decides where that goes that's what the police need they will talk to anybody they always do but if you don't want to listen and you don't want to be a good neighbor that's what we fall back on and you've heard i don't want to call it testimony uh but we've heard all the comments most of the good neighbors we never hear from you we don't hear from you because you've taken care of it yourself we range from people who let their dogs out um to people who play loud music to people who shoot their guns in in their backyard we get the whole range most of them you never hear about it because it's dealt with these things sometimes don't that's why you need an ordinance you have to direct it to me please uh for the police is uh where where does our police department stand on issuing uh permits for suppression devices i don't know is that something you can answer team we don't need permission right we have to apply to the federal government to do that but i was under the impression that we also needed uh permission from our local police department you have to notify us um it has one of the other gentlemen spoke you know to be perfectly frank which one of the problems with that i don't know all of you and so i am very concerned i have children and i own a home i don't want to sign off on somebody being okay i'd rather say i don't know them right to say that they're okay and then tomorrow have something happened and then someone's showing up at my door because i signed off on something that why didn't you know that this because we're not allowed to do background checks for those it's a permit that's issued by the feds right you guys apply to as a trust and they come back and just say can you sign off on this okay so there's no requirement you guys can deliver to us we take them but we are required to over strict unless we contact them and say there's a problem it won't restrict you from giving you i guess my question then would be why would a noise suppression device all of a sudden make me do criminal activity or make my shooting more or less responsive i appreciate but we're not here to talk about suppressors we're here to talk about shooting are about noise i understand the noise right but yeah we're not we're not and i like the other thing is and we were talking about nobody will certify that a range is safe nobody no not not one police our local police will not do it fishing wildlife will not do it because nobody wants to take a while on the liability of saying yeah i saw it and it was they're not going to do it probably for some of the same reason we don't we don't know what you're going to do with it we're not responsible or don't want to be whatever you do with it off your property nobody wants that to come back to and say is this your signature nobody's going to do that and so that's why when when we talk about some of the stuff we're not saying we're going to certify your range or your thing we're going to show you that the nra had a handbook or the fish and wildlife has a handbook you should we're just looking at the general conditions like this map we'd prefer you to turn that way and not towards this person's house that's kind of the stuff we're talking about but we'll never certify it whether your range or your property is safe we're not going to do that okay thank you so we're going to be done for tonight there'll be other opportunity to to to provide input uh i i get lots of email and i read all of them so you want to write to to the board send it to me but copy the rest of the board so they all know what you're thinking too um so this is not done this is just the workshop uh step there's a lot many more steps to go before we get in ordinance so there'll be lots more time for opportunities but we have other work to do tonight so we're going to conclude this business item 5d for tonight and thank you all for your time and your input very much yes sir excuse me can i make one recommendation real quick instead of a regular meeting all the specialty we talk about that but we have so much work to do that we have to end up combining them but yeah thank you and it's just going to get busier as this budget season goes so let's take a few minutes right while everybody's moving yeah let's be back in about three or four okay we're going to uh we're going to bring it back i think where were we like definition is for so we're going to finish d we're on the finish d we're well we didn't really yeah we're done talking about we decided to move on decided to move on yeah so we're going to go to five e and that's the approval of the lease agreement with national business technologies for copiers um looking to align and consolidate things this is one of those opportunities so greg do you want to sure thank you for that click on your red at all but so basically uh one of the tasks that it is taken on around consolidation and alignment over the past several months is looking at our copiers across our many different buildings and there's all kinds of agreements all kinds of equipment different companies different brands different contracts um it found a company national business technologies that which we can enter into one contract one agreement to serve all our properties um it's actually would result in savings annual savings of almost ten thousand dollars ninety nine hundred dollars and the recommendations will be replacing sixteen copiers between the town and the village be paying the company would pay off the existing lease agreements buy them out um it would add a copier to the finance department which they have been looking for and it would replace a public copier at the brown L library with a device that includes money collection capabilities which would allow the profits to go to the library the lease agreement includes all the toner the parts labor travel and supplies the only exceptions are paper and staples um so this is going to go to the select board and the trustees i believe you're seeing it first and looking for approval to to authorize the unified manager to enter into the lease agreement with national business technologies is this color and black and white or we're actually up to 18 copiers and it'll be a little bit less but um um we realized a copier uh hadn't been included but rob did a great job with this um it really takes care of a lot of things the uh i was going to mention the one copier that we do have at the uh brunel library currently it is coin operated but we don't the library does not get the funds now when we put this in the library does get the funds in the library can determine what they want to do with the proceeds we'll double check on the color uh evan i think that's the case but um the chief is familiar with it in the past past contracts uh two hunts just to double check so we can do that because that's expensive can i just ask a question about um our purchasing policy i thought that um we just approved a change to the purchasing policy that contracts under 40 000 don't have to come to the board over the life of this contract it is over 40 000 got it okay just want to see if we could eliminate some work for you but you're right and we had a discussion about that right great the first one out of the box and then we said no ethically this is the life of the contract this is the right thing to do and we wanted the the boards to see the work that had gone into this and what happens when you work together um and combine your contracts with uh i i guess to extend the purchasing question did we go out for bids for this how do we choose the company um actually they came to us and they did an audit yes i remember that discussion previously that's what i was wondering if if the results of their audit or when we approved the the we had the discussion about the audit i don't know if we approved anything in that discussion no we just did an audit and and we have verified their references etc to look at and one of the things we'd be doing is as a sole source right so i guess they're a reputable firm we project they're i'm not i'm not saying they aren't i'm just questioning whether whether because of the amount and the that and that it's multiple years there isn't multiple years um do we need to go out because our purchasing policy requires to go out for bid for this no what it what it does say is that if we do it we could claim it as uh a sole source a i'd have to look up the language in the policy but i believe it gives us the ability to recommend it uh without going out to bed other questions on this and go get a role yeah um i i sent this question in an email i'm sorry i left my house at 4 30 this morning and haven't seen any email i'm not seeing much right now either but um the question i think i think you answered it is that the library gets to use the money collected in that cop here that's the intent is to allow them to to to do that and i understand it's the village library so maybe i have no right to ask the question but does there need to be a discussion about the fact that this is a i don't know is this a joint contract is this a town or is it is it how's it being paid for and do we care i don't really care but i just just from the standpoint of we're we're enabling an outside funding source for the library are we using town funds to do that and you just want to make sure we're being transparent on that i can speak to that a little bit address that um in the past many years ago i would say five or more years ago whenever the library collected overdue fees they always went into the general fund for the village and not back to the library and so the trustees voted to allow small amounts of income from late fees photocopier that kind of thing to go back to the brown library general fund and not the village general fund i just wanted to make sure there was a discussion about it like it's probably not my business because it's probably a trustee library village library trustee discussion i can say this time i mean it i think we're just talking about nickels and dollars literally okay the second part of your question was finance department goes through it and they apportion the contract so you had a copier you now have another copier this is the cost and they apportion it back into the budget okay all right thanks okay uh chief the town the town actually the town library does collect 24 copies up there it's just the machine doesn't collect it it's on an honor system when it comes to the town is also that's okay four copies just doesn't have it's not a common operate you make the copies there's a sign on it says how much you did you pay the deficit so the town library is collecting fees for copies okay and they can they use they put it into their own i do not know anything about where it goes i just know that they do charge for copies there but then i just want to make sure we're being consistent we probably are and i'll be brutally honestly don't know what they're doing with their nickels and dimes now right but i hope they're putting it into shingles because we just you know fixing up the building so it wouldn't all right i'm done okay anybody else i would move that the select board authorized the unified manager to enter into a lease agreement with national business technologies to supply all of the copier needs for the town okay good job uh do we have a second on that one second thank you mike any further discussion about this uh lease agreement for copiers okay hearing none all those in favor signify saying aye aye okay it passes unanimously thank you thank you all all right now we're moving on here to five f and we have the approval of the select board minutes of the uh the joint meeting on october that there's a joint meeting yes of um says october 19th but on on the uh minutes it says october 11 what's that yeah but um the uh oh i'm sorry my bad i'm looking at the check warrant everything's fine october 11 do i have a motion to approve the select board minutes of october 11th with corrections so moved thank you all right now a second second all right let's start on page one now these pages aren't numbered but i did number them myself so page one okay page two all right online 60 please um it was miss sub check that discussed the progress of the process okay so change miss ready to miss subject you agree yes thank you awesome anything else on two okay number three page three i'm looking at line 117 it had been two years since the last effort to consolidate recreation and wear the wrong glasses and voters were told this is why i'd like to insert because this is what i said and voters were told that if the rec district proposal did not pass the departments would not merge and then i would insert back then voters were afraid not are afraid and on 118 i would then put a period after absorbed and say therefore it is important to inform the public frequently about with much discussion along the way okay it's quite fit yeah i think rake has it everybody okay with that no issues okay i'm not hearing issues then we'll go on to page four we'll go on to page five all right once again online 225 i believe miss sub check for marking about co-location on the video not myself is it correct i believe that is correct thank you okay then we'll give you the credit for that okay and then page five and then online 230 please there was a discussion regarding how to and then i would delete to the end of that sentence and say how to inserting the following use words to clarify townwide or town outside the village rather than the word town which has different meanings so what is it you're in the commentary at the end yeah it's going to say there was discussion regarding how to and then i will cut out the rest of the sentence and add instead use words to clarify townwide or town outside the village rather than using the word town which has different meanings you have that okay and then we're on to six nothing there okay so all those in favor of the october 11 select board minutes with correction signify by saying aye i i pose okay most of that is unanimously i would move approval of the select board minutes of october 15th 2018 the select board member corrections okay thank you mic let's start on page one i would like to add something to line 43 where it says i announced that uh sam was gonna um let's see was was what does it say miss announced tonight was the last night yeah as the official recording secretary blah blah blah i'd like to just include that uh miss delt's received the standing ovation from all present okay anything else on one okay page two page three uh andy are you waving over there so i didn't see it yeah line 132 it says starts the previous line mr watts was opposed because it would be inconsistent with the tree farm property it should say inconsistent with the blue zone okay everybody okay with that you got that right here very good okay anything on four i just don't want 56 having the word foot it's a 500 foot buffer around the parks that's flying 156 yeah there's a 500 there but i think we need to give it a so we can put that little comma label your answers okay sure we said maybe man i'm sorry again it says 500 but it needs to just have a label on it 500 foot buffer i just want to have the you know just as 500 buffer yeah the word is very good thank you okay was that page four that was four page five and page six just i'm asking for clarification on 254 was it an electric sign or an electronic sign that you wanted i said a new sign i didn't i didn't say electronic all right so let's change it to do went to that all right and that's exactly the change i wanted it yeah so on 254 we can take out an electric and put a new instead thank you okay anything else on page six page seven eight or nine okay all those in favor of the October 15th select four minutes with correction signify by saying hi hi most unanimously let's all the minutes we had so do i have emotions to approve consent second okay thank you all right so what do we uh any comments on consent i read hooray for the cemetery commission i don't know what the last grant that they got was but that's fabulous that that cemetery needs a ton of work so i grant some more time to apply for our song really they got it yes um i put this on consent to know we're still working with what's consent what's business it seemed like a no-brainer you always have the chance to pull it off but i do an echo i read that cemetery commission this is completely on their own doing they they got this $25,000 grant i think it's a wonderful thing for them that will allow them to do a lot of work so i almost could have put it on business just to draw attention to that but i'd like to do that now okay yeah wonderful so please let them know it's like where it's thrilled that they they found a significant grant and i know that there's quarterly reports due for this is there any way we could have the commission do that not staff uh they are hoping to know certainly help with it um it might be a little bit of staff support but i think they're really gonna take the lead on this okay that'd be wonderful they could take the lead on that so it doesn't fall off to the staff okay anything else good all right all those in favor of the consent agenda sing five say hi hi pose okay passes unanimously all right now we're on to the reading file comments about the reading file on the um upcoming meeting scheduled the meeting scheduled before town meeting is two weeks before and we're typically not ready two weeks before um so i'm just wondering i know i realized that the week before town meeting is school holiday uh or school vacation but i don't i just i don't know if we need to have a discussion maybe it's just too early to have that discussion so what's what is it ending your time February 18th well there's two things it's a holiday and it's two weeks before town meeting we've typically in the past had a meeting much closer to town meeting because we're not always ready by the 18th that's actually a typo um the schedule that was approved last year i think it was the either 21st or 22nd but was that Wednesday or Thursday to avoid the holiday yeah okay okay it's a little bit closer to some meeting it's it's not completely out of that correction on that completely and as long as we're on that one i just want to remind the board that i will not be present for the november 19th one i'll be out of town and unable to even call it um so mike we'll be up to bat back and home okay anything else on unconsent or not consent but on green fire no okay so we'll move on to executive session none required because we did in open meeting so is there any business there's no other business we can do it's not worn i'm gonna move me a turn okay five seconds second all right my any further discussion about a journey all those in favor six and five is saying aye aye post all right we're done here folks